ng speed. Now he was running flat out, 
and ahead he could hear galloping. Then he turned a corner into a 
clearing and 


"AAARRGGHH! NOOO!" 

Harry woke as suddenly as though he'd been hit in the face. Disoriented 
in the total darkness, he fumbled with his hangings, he could hear 
movements around him, and Seamus Finnigan's voice from the other side of 
the room: "What's going on?" 

Harry thought he heard the dormitory door slam. At last finding the 
divide in his curtains, he ripped them back, and at the same moment, 
Dean Thomas lit his lamp. 

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Ron was sitting up in bed, the hangings torn from one side, a look of 

utmost terror on his face. 

"Black! Sirius Black! With a knife!" 

"What?" 

"Here! Just now! Slashed the curtains! Woke me up!" 

"You sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?" said Dean. 

"Look at the curtains! I tell you, he was here!" 
They all scrambled out of bed; Harry reached the dormitory door first, 
and they sprinted back down the staircase. Doors opened behind them, and 
sleepy voices called after them. 


"Who shouted?" 


"What're you doing?" 


The common room was lit with the glow of the dying fire, still littered 


with the debris from the party. It was deserted. 
"Are you sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?" 
"I'm telling you, I saw him!" 
"What's all the noise?" 
"Professor McGonagall told us to go to bed!" 
A few of the girls had come down their staircase, pulling or, dressing 


gowns and yawning. Boys, too, were reappearing. 
"Excellent, are we carrying on?" said Fred Weasley brightly. 
"Everyone back upstairs!" said Percy, hurrying into the common room and 


pinning his Head Boy badge to his pajamas as he spoke. 


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"Perce -- Sirius Black!" said Ron faintly. "In our dormitory! With a 
knife! Woke me up!" 

The common room went very still. 

"Nonsense!" said Percy, looking startled. "You had too much to eat, Ron 
-- had a nightmare --" 

"I'm telling you --" 

"Now, really, enough's enough!" 

Professor McGonagall was back. She slammed the portrait behind her as 
she entered the common room and stared furiously around. 

"I am delighted that Gryffindor won the match, but this is getting 
ridiculous! Percy, I expected better of you!" 

"I certainly didn't authorize this, Professor!" said Percy, puffing 
himself up indignantly. "I was just telling them all to get back to bed! 
My brother Ron here had a nightmare --" 

"IT WASN'T A NIGHTMARE!" Ron yelled. "PROFESSOR, I WOKE UP, AND 
SIRIUS 
BLACK WAS STANDING OVER ME, HOLDING A KNIFE!" 

Professor McGonagall stared at him. 

"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley, how could he possibly have gotten through 
the portrait hole?" 

"Ask him!" said Ron, pointing a shaking finger at the back of Sir 
Cadogan's picture. "Ask him if he saw --" 

Glaring suspiciously at Ron, Professor McGonagall pushed the Portrait 
back open and went outside. The whole common room listened with bated 
breath. "Sir Cadogan, did you just let a man enter Gryffindor Tower?" 
"Certainly, good lady!" cried Sir Cadogan. 

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There was a stunned silence, both inside and outside the common room. 

"You -- you did?" said Professor McGonagall. "But -- but the password!" 

"He had 'em!" said Sir Cadogan proudly. "Had the whole week's, my lady! 
Read 'em off a little piece of paper!" 

Professor McGonagall pulled herself back through the portrait hole to 
face the stunned crowd. She was white as chalk. 

"Which person," she said, her voice shaking, "which abysmally foolish 
person wrote down this week's passwords and left them lying around?" 

There was utter silence, broken by the smallest of terrified squeaks. 
Neville Longbottom, trembling from head to fluffy slippered toes, raised 
his hand slowly into the air. 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

SNAPE'S GRUDGE 

No one in Gryffindor Tower slept that night. They knew that the castle 
was being searched again, and the whole House stayed awake in the common 
room, waiting to hear whether Black had been caught. Professor 
McGonagall came back at dawn, to tell them that he had again escaped. 

Throughout the day, everywhere they went they saw signs of tighter 
security; Professor Flitwick could be seen teaching the front doors to 
recognize a large picture of Sirius Black; Filch was suddenly bustling 
up and down the corridors, boarding up everything from tiny cracks in 
the walls to mouse holes. Sir Cadogan had been fired. His portrait had 
been taken back to its lonely landing on the seventh floor, and the Fat 
Lady was back. She had been expertly restored, but was still extremely 
nervous, and had agreed to return to her job only on condition that she 
was given extra protection. A bunch of surly security trolls had been 
hired to guard her. They paced the corridor in a menacing group, talking 
in grunts and comparing the size of their clubs. 

Harry couldn't help noticing that the statue of the one-eyed witch on 
the third floor remained unguarded and unblocked. It seemed that Fred 

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and George had been right in thinking that they -- and now Harry, Ron, 
and Hermione -- were the only ones who knew about the hidden passageway 
within it. 

"D'you reckon we should tell someone?" Harry asked Ron. 

"We know he's not coming in through Honeyduke's," said Ron dismissively. 
"We'd've heard if the shop had been broken into." 

Harry was glad Ron took this view. If the one-eyed witch was boarded up 
too, he would never be able to go into Hogsmeade again. 

Ron had become an instant celebrity. For the first time in his life, 
people were paying more attention to him than to Harry, and it was clear 
that Ron was rather enjoying the experience. Though still severely 
shaken by the night's events, he was happy to tell anyone who asked what 
had happened, with a wealth of detail. 

"... I was asleep, and I heard this ripping noise, and I thought it was 
in my dream, you know? But then there was this draft... I woke up and 
one side of the hangings on my bed had been pulled down.... I rolled 
over... and I saw him standing over me... like a skeleton, with loads of 
filthy hair ... holding this great long knife, must've been twelve 
inches... and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and then I yelled, 
and he scampered. 

"Why, though?" Ron added to Harry as the group of secondyear girls who 
had been listening to his chilling tale departed. "Why did he run?" 

Harry had been wondering the same thing. Why had Black, having got the 
wrong bed, not silenced Ron and proceeded to Harry? Black had proved 
twelve years ago that he didn't mind murdering innocent people, and this 
time he had been facing five unarmed boys, four of whom were asleep. 

"He must've known he'd have a job getting back out of the castle once 
you'd yelled and woken people up," said Harry thoughtfully. "He'd've had 
to kill the whole House to get back through the portrait hole... then he 
would' ve met the teachers...." 

Neville was in total disgrace. Professor McGonagall was so furious with 

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him she had banned him from all future Hogsmeade visits, given him a 
detention, and forbidden anyone to give him the password into the tower. 
Poor Neville was forced to wait. outside the common room every night for 
somebody to let him in, while the security trolls leered unpleasantly at 
him. None of these punishments, however, came close to matching the one 
his grandmother had in store for him. Two days after Black's break-in, 
she sent Neville the very worst thing a Hogwarts student could receive 
over breakfast -- a Howler. 

The school owls swooped into the Great Hall carrying the mail as usual, 
and Neville choked as a huge barn owl landed in front of him, a scarlet 
envelope clutched in its beak. Harry and Ron, who were sitting opposite 
him, recognized the letter as a Howler at once -- Ron had got one from 
his mother the year before. 

"Run for it, Neville," Ron advised. 

Neville didn't need telling twice. He seized the envelope, and holding 
it before him like a bomb, sprinted out of the hall, while the Slytherin 
table exploded with laughter at the sight of him. They heard the Howler 
go off in the entrance hall -- Neville's grandmother's voice, magically 
magnified to a hundred times its Usual volume, shrieking about how he 
had brought shame on the whole family. 

Harry was too busy feeling sorry for Neville to notice immediately that 
he had a letter too. Hedwig got his attention by nipping him sharply on 
the wrist. 

"Ouch! Oh -- thanks, Hedwig." 

Harry tore open the envelope while Hedwig helped herself to some of 
Neville's cornflakes. The note inside said: 

Dear Harry and Ron, How Abut having tea with me this afternoon 'round 
six? I'll come collect you from the castle. WAIT FOR ME IN THE ENTRANCE 
HALL; YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED OUT ON YOUR OWN. Cheers, Hagrid 

"He probably wants to hear all about Black!" said Ron. 

So at six o'clock that afternoon, Harry and Ron left Gryffindor Tower, 

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passed the security trolls at a run, and headed down to the entrance 
hall. 


Hagrid was already waiting for them. 


"All right, Hagrid!" said Ron. "S'pose you want to hear about Saturday 
night, do you?" 


"I've already heard all abou' it," said Hagrid, opening the front doors 
and leading them outside. 


"Oh," said Ron, looking slightly put out. 


The first thing they saw on entering Hagrid's cabin was Buckbeak, who 
was stretched out on top of Hagrid's patchwork quilt, his enormous wings 
folded tight to his body, enjoying a large plate of dead ferrets. 
Averting his eyes from this unpleasant sight, Harry saw a gigantic, 
hairy brown suit and a very horrible yellow-and-orange tie hanging from 
the top of Hagrid's wardrobe door. 


"What are they for, Hagrid?" said Harry.