Ron-Weasly book 1. V2 part 13

Chapter 13 the consequences of a night walk.

Now the Gryffindor house was in last place. He might still be able to win the Quidditch Cup, but he couldn't win the inter-house competition. And all because Harry and Hermione were caught on the Astronomy Tower. How could they forget to wear the invisibility cloak?

At first, no one understood what had happened, and looking at the huge board on which the faculty's points were fixed, everyone thought it was a mistake. This simply couldn't happen — well, imagine how it could happen that the faculty had one hundred and fifty points less in the morning than it had in the evening? But an hour after getting up, everything turned out to be Harry Potter's fault, the famous Harry Potter, a member of the national Quidditch team and the hero of the last two matches. Him and two other stupid freshmen.

Harry, who yesterday was the most popular student at school and everyone's favorite, in an instant turned into the most despised and hated. Even the students from Halfpuff and Ravenclaw faculties abruptly changed their attitude towards him, because everyone wanted Slytherin to finally give up the school Cup to someone else. Wherever Harry went, they pointed fingers at him and uttered all sorts of offensive words at him at the top of their voices, without even trying to whisper. Only the students from Slytherin at the sight of Harry began to applaud and shout loudly: "We owe you, Potter!"

It was just me and Hermione who supported him. Even Fred and George were sulking at Harry and Hermione and Neville. Especially at Harry — they say he's the main ringleader.

"You'll see, in a few weeks everyone will forget about it," I reassured Harry. "Fred and George have received tons of penalty points while they've been here, but everyone loves them anyway."

"But they've never gotten minus one hundred and fifty points at a time, have they?" Harry asked sadly.

Well, not really," I admitted. "And now they're angry because they can't play pranks on you themselves."

It was time to end his nocturnal adventures and surveillance of Snape. Harry was so ashamed of his wrongdoing that he even went to Wood and offered to expel him from the national team on his own. It was in the Gryffindor common room. I was just practicing my wand movements.

"Expel them?!" Wood asked in a thunderous voice. "And what will it give us? If we don't win at Quidditch, then how do we earn points?"

Hermione and Neville were suffering too. But although no one talked to them, like Harry, they had a much easier time than he did, because they were not such famous personalities.

However, Hermione even stopped, contrary to her usual habit, attracting attention to herself in class. She sat with her head down and silently completed the tasks. Neville was in herbology and I was in transfiguration and enchantment, and we were fighting for her.

Harry, Hermione, and I would return to the Common Room after dinner, the three of us would sit down and study late into the night, memorizing the ingredients of the most complex potions, memorizing spells and counter-spells, memorizing the dates of magical discoveries and goblin rebellions. I didn't even have free time to play chess or entertain a rat. The brat was having fun on his own with a foil ball. He was sleeping in his hole.

However, when the exams were about a week away, another incident occurred. Hermione was testing my knowledge of astronomy when an excited Harry came and told us about Professor Quirrell's surrender.

"So Snape had gotten everything out of him!" I concluded when Harry told me what he had heard. And now he knows how to remove Quirrell's spell against the Dark Forces..."

"Yes, but there's still the Fluffy," Hermione reminded him.

"Perhaps Snape himself found out how to get past him, and he no longer needs to find out from Hagrid." I suggested, looking around at the thousands of books that surrounded us. "I'm sure one of these volumes tells you how to bring Cerberus down. So what are we going to do, Harry?"

I wanted to have an adventure again. But before Harry could open his mouth to answer me, Hermione jumped in.

"We're going to Dumbledore's," she said flatly. "I should have gone to him a long time ago. And if we try to do something on our own, we'll probably get caught again, and then we'll definitely be kicked out of school."

"But we have no proof!" Harry objected. "Quirrell is too scared to confirm our story. And it's enough for Snape to just say that he doesn't know how the troll got into the castle on Halloween, and that he didn't even come close to the third floor. And who do you think they'll believe? Him or us? Besides, it's no secret that we hate him. And Dumbledore will think that we made it all up to get Snape fired. Filch will never help us, even if he knows everything. Filch is too friendly with Snape, and besides, I'm sure Filch would only be happy if we were expelled from school. And don't forget-we don't know anything about the Philosopher's Stone and the Fluffy. If it turns out that we know about him, then we'll have to explain too much and we'll frame Hagrid."

Hermione nodded in agreement, but I had my own opinion.

"If we do a little investigation..." I began.

"No," Harry said softly but weightily. "We've had enough of investigations."

He pulled a map of Jupiter towards him and began to study the names of its moons.

I shrugged my shoulders and continued to study astronomy.

A couple of hours later, we went to the great hall for dinner. I took the Brat out and fed him the seeds. Then he handed him a piece of apple. Finally, we reached the great hall.

I helped myself to a pork and kidney pie, and Harry pulled over a steaming mug of chicken broth and stewed chicken. Hermione, as usual, could not tear herself away from a new book, and ate liver pies and rice, and fish and potatoes.

Harry went to practice, and I practiced my wand movements. Hermione was learning advanced transfiguration as usual. After that, she chatted from a Mile away about the wages of house elves. And she grumbled that brownies had completely blinded minds. She tried to connect Harry and me to her movement, but Garry always had no time. She tried to connect me and Harry to her movement, but Harry constantly had no time. And I politely sent her off by taking her to the kitchen and offering to talk to the house elves first and read about their contracts. Hermione calmed down a bit when she found out that the elves get their magic from the source of the house where they work, but she still grumbled about the salary of money for them to buy the right things. After that, I found out that good elves are given lollipops, which they love very much. And they don't like to take their owners' things in their hands. After all, if an elf is thrown out on the street, they give him clothes.

* * *

The next morning, at breakfast, Harry, Neville, and Hermione received notes. They all said the same thing:

"To serve your sentence, be at the school exit at eleven o'clock tonight. Mr. Filch will be waiting for you there.

Prof. M. McGonagall"

I stared at the note in surprise. I've never heard of punishments being imposed at night.

At eleven o'clock in the evening, my friends said goodbye to me and took Neville downstairs.

* * *

I was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace in the Common room, eating meat buns, waiting for my friends to return, and I fell asleep without noticing. When Harry shook me roughly, I dreamed of a Quidditch match. I dreamed of Harry chasing the Snitch in a match between my favorite team, the Pedl Cannon. However, after a few seconds, I woke up completely and listened to Hermione and Harry's story with my eyes wide open.

Filch dragged them to Hagrid and they went to the forbidden forest. At night! On a full moon! Hunting the unicorn killer! What's going on in this school?! It really seems like it's worth writing to your parents.

Harry was so agitated that he couldn't sit up and paced up and down the room, trying to stay close to the fireplace. He was shivering.

"Snape wants to steal the stone for Voldemort. And Voldemort is waiting in the forest... And all this time we thought that Snape wanted to steal the stone in order to become rich... And Vol-de-Mort..."

"Don't say that name!" I asked in a frightened whisper. I was afraid Voldemort might hear us. Or his followers.

Harry ignored my request.

"Firenze saved me, but he shouldn't have done that... Bane was furious... He said that Firenze had prevented what the planets had predicted from happening... They must have foreshadowed the return of Voldemort... Bane thinks Firenze should have let Voldemort kill me. I think the stars predicted my death."

"Stop saying that name!" I hissed.

"So I just have to wait for the moment when Snape steals the stone", Harry continued. His eyes were feverishly bright, and his body was shaking slightly. "Then Voldemort can come here and finish me off... I think Bane will be happy."

"Harry, but everyone says that the only person You-Know-Who has ever been afraid of is Professor Dumbledore." It was obvious that Hermione was terribly scared, but she still found words of comfort for Harry. "As long as he's here, you-Know-Who won't come here and hurt you. And who said that the centaurs correctly interpreted the location of the stars? In my opinion, this is a common prediction of the future, like by hand or cards. And Professor McGonagall says it's a very inaccurate science."

When we finished the conversation, it was already light. When we went up to the bedroom, Harry's invisibility cloak was lying on his bed.