"Of course I'm here," a voice whispered, seemingly originating from the very molecules of the freezing air.
Ron jumped nearly a foot into the air, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Bloody hell!" He gasped, clutching his chest as Harry's head suddenly materialized in the middle of a snowdrift. "Harry? You—you learned how to Apparate? In the middle of Hogsmeade?"
"Keep your voice down, Ron!" Harry hissed, pulling the Invisibility Cloak further down to reveal his shoulders. He looked a bit windswept but triumphant. "I didn't Apparate. I used a secret passage. Fred and George... well, they've been 'innovating' again. I caught them messing with some rather volatile-looking vials in the common room."
Harry leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "It's a new laxative potion they're developing—incredibly potent, apparently. I promised not to breathe a word of it to Percy. In exchange, they gave me this." He patted a parchment tucked inside his jacket. "It's a map of the entire school. It shows everyone, Ron. Everyone."
Ron's face went through a rapid succession of emotions: shock, awe, and finally, a simmering, indignant heat. "They gave you a map? Why have those two never mentioned a map to me? I'm their own brother! I've been sharing a room with them for years, and they let me wander around like a blind bat while you get the keys to the castle?"
"Maybe they didn't think you could handle the responsibility," Harry joked, but his smile faded as the door to Madam Puddifoot's creaked open.
Ron's hand shot out, grabbing Harry's collar and hauling him behind the thick, snow-heavy branches of a cedar tree. They watched in silence as the trio emerged. Allen Harris walked out first, looking as composed as a king, followed by Draco Malfoy, whose face was pale and set in a mask of suppressed agitation. Hermione trailed behind them, her expression unreadable, her eyes darting between the two boys.
Malfoy leaned in, saying something low and sharp to Allen. Allen merely nodded, a cold, clinical gesture. Without another word, the three split up. Malfoy vanished toward the High Street, while Allen turned back toward the center of the village.
Hermione, however, looked like she was on a mission. She began walking rapidly—almost running—in the direction of the Three Broomsticks.
"She's going to tell him," Ron hissed, his voice trembling with a mix of betrayal and anger. "She's going to tell Allen everything Harry just told us. Or worse, she's going to find a teacher."
"Hermione wouldn't do that," Harry said, though his confidence wavered. "Wait—Hermione! Stop!"
He broke cover, sprinting after her. Ron followed, slipping on a patch of black ice and cursing under his breath.
"Harry?" Hermione shrieked, spinning around as he stepped into her path. Her face was pale, her breath coming in short, ragged puffs. "What are you—how are you even here? Harry, you're supposed to be in the castle! The Dementors—the warnings—"
"I took a secret passage, Hermione. Relax."
The moment the words left his mouth, Hermione's face hardened. That familiar look of "Prefect-in-training" disapproval settled over her features like a shroud. "A secret passage? Harry, have you completely lost your mind? Sirius Black is out there! He's a mass murderer who managed to break into Gryffindor Tower! If you found a way out, don't you think he knows those ways in? The teachers need to know about this immediately!"
"He can't use them," Harry argued, feeling a surge of frustration. "There are seven of them. Filch knows four. One is caved in. Another is blocked by the Whomping Willow. The one I used... the entrance is hidden in a cellar. You'd have to know exactly where to look."
He hesitated, a cold lump forming in his stomach. What if Black did know?
But Ron stepped up, puffing out his chest with a sudden air of worldly wisdom. "Give it a rest, Hermione. The village is crawling with Dementors. Black isn't going to waltz into Honeydukes through a dusty tunnel without someone noticing. Besides, the shopkeepers live right above the cellar. They'd hear a murderer scurrying around beneath their floorboards, wouldn't they?"
Hermione looked at Ron, and for a second, the boy felt a flicker of the old friendship. But then he remembered her sitting at that lace-covered table with Allen and Malfoy. His expression soured.
"That's not the point, Ron! It's about safety—it's about the rules!" Hermione bit her lip, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears of frustration. "Never mind. I can see you two have decided to be foolish. I'm going to find a teacher before someone gets hurt."
Harry's heart dropped. "Hermione, are you seriously going to turn me in?"
"Oh, why wouldn't she?" Ron cut in, his voice dripping with a nasty, sarcastic edge. "She's got new friends now, hasn't she? Hanging out with the 'Prince of Ravenclaw' and the 'Slytherin Heir.' I suppose we're just too beneath her now."
Hermione flinched as if Ron had slapped her. She looked at Harry, searching for support, but Harry was silent, his brow furrowed in doubt.
"I... I'm not reporting you, Harry," she whispered, her voice cracking. "But I have to go. I'm in a rush. I have to find... I just have to go!"
She blinked away a tear, pushed past Harry with a force that surprised him, and disappeared into the crowd, her lavender coat a blur against the white snow.
Harry felt a pang of guilt. He looked at Ron, then at the direction Hermione had run. "Ron, I think... I think she actually looks upset. Maybe we should—"
"Let her go," Ron muttered, though he followed Harry as the boy started to trot after her. "Boys with blonde hair are nothing but trouble, and the ones with 'pure blood' are even worse. She's made her choice."
As the rift between the three friends widened into a chasm, a much more violent drama was unfolding near the jagged, looming silhouette of the Shrieking Shack.
"Back off, Cedric. This isn't your fight," Marcus Flint growled. He bared his yellowed, crooked teeth, his fists clenched as he loomed over the Hufflepuff Seeker.
"It becomes my fight when you corner a girl five-to-one, Marcus," Cedric Diggory replied. Despite the odds, his voice was steady, his wand already in his hand. He stepped firmly in front of Cho Chang, shielding her from the semi-circle of Slytherins. "You couldn't handle losing to Ravenclaw on the Quidditch pitch, so now you're trying to ambush their players in the snow? That's pathetic, even for you."
Flint's eyes narrowed into slits. "I don't give a damn about the pitch right now. All I want is for this little bird to tell me where Roger Davies is hiding. He thinks he can humiliate our house and walk away? I don't think so."
"I told you," Cho's voice came from behind Cedric, cold and sharp as an icicle. "I haven't seen Roger since breakfast. We aren't in the same year. I'm not his keeper."
"And as for what Pansy wants," Flint continued, ignoring Cho and nodding toward Pansy Parkinson, who was twitching with manic energy, "that's a 'girl matter.' I'm not going to interfere."
Pansy stepped forward, a pair of sharp dressmaking scissors glinting in her hand. She stared at Cho's long, lustrous black hair with a look of pure, unadulterated malice. A high, thin laugh escaped her throat. "It's such a shame, isn't it? So long... so silky. I wonder how it looks in clumps."
"You're sick," Cedric hissed, his eyes widening in fury. "Cho, get out of here. Now!"
"To put it simply, you're just looking for an excuse to hurt her because you can't touch Allen or Roger," Cedric roared. "Shameless cowards!"
That was the breaking point. Flint's face contorted into a mask of rage. He drew his wand with a violent jerk and shouted a curse.
The air exploded into a chaotic mess of red and blue light. Cedric was a brilliant duelist, but he was facing Flint, Warrington, and Montague all at once. The snow beneath their feet was quickly stained with crimson as the first spells connected.
Cedric took a heavy blow to the temple, blood streaming down his face and blinding one eye, but he didn't stop. He sent a series of blistering hexes back, blackened Warrington's face with a burst of soot and covering Montague's head in throbbing, glowing red boils that looked like they were about to burst.
But while Cedric was occupied, the "girl matter" began.
Pansy, moving with the jagged grace of a predatory bird, pounced. Cho tried to reach for her wand, but two other Slytherin girls tackled her into the freezing slush. They pinned her arms, the sheer weight of them crushing the breath from her lungs.
"Let's see how pretty you are after a trim!" Pansy shrieked.
Cho screamed, a sound of pure terror that was cut short as a wand hit the snow, kicked away by a Slytherin boot. Pansy's scissors began to snip frantically. Large, jagged hanks of black hair fell into the mud. Cho struggled, her face being scratched by the blunt ends of the scissors and the sharp fingernails of the girls holding her down.
She was collapsed in the snow, her body twisted in a desperate attempt to escape, her once-beautiful hair now a ragged, hacked-up mess.
"STOP IT!"
The voice didn't come from Cedric. It came from the top of the ridge.
Allen Harris stood there, his silhouette dark against the pale sky. His eyes took in the scene—the blood on Cedric's face, the sobbing Cho on the ground, and the scissors in Pansy's hand. A cold, terrifying aura seemed to radiate from him, chilling the air more than the winter wind ever could.
Without a word of warning, he slashed his wand through the air.
"Flash Dust!"
It was a spell he had perfected in the quiet hours of the library. From the tip of his wand, a violent eruption of shimmering golden particulate matter exploded. It wasn't a slow cloud; it was a shockwave of metallic dust that engulfed the entire clearing in a heartbeat.
The effect was instantaneous.
Pansy screamed, dropping the scissors as the dust coated her eyes, causing an agonizing, blinding sting. Flint and the others stumbled back, clawing at their faces as the golden smoke clung to their skin like a second, burning layer.
The dust did more than blind; it traced the very outlines of the air, making every movement visible in shimmering gold. For the Slytherins, the world had turned into a blinding, stinging fog of light.
Allen stepped into the golden haze, his face a mask of cold fury. He hadn't used a lethal spell—this was a crowd-control measure, the most efficient way to end the brawl without killing anyone—but the message was clear.