Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

hundred golden taps stood all around the pool’s edges, each with a different-coloured jewel set into its handle. There was also a diving board. Long white linen curtains hung at the windows; a large pile of fluffy white towels sat in a corner, and there was a single golden-framed painting on the wall. It featured a blonde mermaid, who was fast asleep on a rock, her long hair fluttering over her face every time she snored.
    Harry put down his Cloak, the egg and the map, and moved forwards, looking around, his footsteps echoing off the walls. Magnificent though the bathroom was – and quite keen though he was to try out a few of those taps – now he was here he couldn’t quite suppress the feeling that Cedric might have been having him on. How on earth was this supposed to help solve the mystery of the egg? Nevertheless, he put one of the fluffy towels, the Cloak, the map and the egg at the side of the swimming-pool-sized bath, then knelt down and turned on a few of the taps.
    He could tell at once that they carried different sorts of bubble bath mixed with the water, though it wasn’t bubble bath as Harry had ever experienced it. One tap gushed pink and blue bubbles the size of footballs, another poured ice-white foam so thick that Harry thought it would have supported his weight if he’d cared to test it; a third sent heavily perfumed purple clouds hovering over the surface of the water. Harry amused himself for a while turning the taps on and off, particularly enjoying the effect of one whose jet bounced off the surface of the water in large arcs. Then, when the deep pool was full of hot water, foam and bubbles (which took a very short time considering its size), Harry turned off all the taps, pulled off his pyjamas, slippers and dressing-gown, and slid into the water.
    It was so deep that his feet barely touched the bottom, and he actually did a couple of lengths before swimming back to the side and treading water, staring at the egg. Highly enjoyable though it was to swim in hot and foamy water with clouds of different-coloured steam wafting all around him, no stroke of brilliance came to him, no sudden burst of understanding.
    Harry stretched out his arms, lifted the egg in his wet hands and opened it. The wailing, screeching sound filled the bathroom, echoing and reverberating off the marble walls, but it sounded just as incomprehensible as ever, if not more so with all the echoes. He snapped it shut again, worried that the sound would attract Filch, wondering whether that hadn’t been Cedric’s plan – and then, making him jump so badly that he dropped the egg, which clattered away across the bathroom floor, someone spoke.
    ‘I’d try putting it in the water, if I were you.’
    Harry had swallowed a considerable amount of bubbles in shock. He stood up, spluttering, and saw the ghost of a very glum-looking girl sitting cross-legged on top of one of the taps. It was Moaning Myrtle, who was usually to be heard sobbing in the S-bend of a toilet three floors below.
    ‘Myrtle!’ Harry said in outrage. ‘I’m – I’m not wearing anything!’
    The foam was so dense that this hardly mattered, but he had a nasty feeling that Myrtle had been spying on him from out of one of the taps ever since he had arrived.
    ‘I closed my eyes when you got in,’ she said, blinking at him through her thick spectacles. ‘You haven’t been to see me for ages. ’
    ‘Yeah … well …’ said Harry, bending his knees slightly, just to make absolutely sure Myrtle couldn’t see anything but his head, ‘I’m not supposed to come into your bathroom, am I? It’s a girls’ one.’
    ‘You didn’t used to care,’ said Myrtle miserably. ‘You used to be in there all the time.’
    This was true, though only because Harry, Ron and Hermione had found Myrtle’s out-of-order toilets a convenient place to brew Polyjuice Potion in secret – a forbidden potion which had turned Harry and Ron into living replicas of Crabbe and Goyle for an hour, so that they could sneak into the Slytherin common room.
    ‘I got told off for going in there,’ said Harry, which was half-true; Percy had once caught him coming out of Myrtle’s bathroom. ‘I thought I’d better not come back after that.’
    ‘Oh … I see …’ said Myrtle, picking at a spot on her chin in a morose sort of way. ‘Well … anyway … I’d try the egg in the water. That’s what Cedric Diggory did.’
    ‘Have you been spying on him, too?’ said Harry