Harry Potter 03 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

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 by the glow of the dying fire, still littered with 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 on 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 pyjamas as he spoke.
    ‘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 authorise 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 got 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.
    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.
    Everywhere they went next day they saw signs of tighter security; Professor Flitwick could be seen teaching the front doors to recognise 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 sacked. 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 only agreed to return to her job 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 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