Harry Potter 06 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

wanted to be with him, and that’s the second time he’s made sure he isn’t down on the Quidditch pitch with the rest of the school. He skipped the last match too, remember?’ Harry sighed. ‘Wish I’d followed him now, the match was such a fiasco …’
    ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Ron sharply. ‘You couldn’t have missed a Quidditch match just to follow Malfoy, you’re the Captain!’
    ‘I want to know what he’s up to,’ said Harry. ‘And don’t tell me it’s all in my head, not after what I overheard between him and Snape –’
    ‘I never said it was all in your head,’ said Ron, hoisting himself up on an elbow in turn and frowning at Harry, ‘but there’s no rule saying only one person at a time can be plotting anything in this place! You’re getting a bit obsessed with Malfoy, Harry. I mean, thinking about missing a match just to follow him …’
    ‘I want to catch him at it!’ said Harry in frustration. ‘I mean, where’s he going when he disappears off the map?’
    ‘I dunno … Hogsmeade?’ suggested Ron, yawning.
    ‘I’ve never seen him going along any of the secret passageways on the map. I thought they were being watched now, anyway?’
    ‘Well, then, I dunno,’ said Ron.
    Silence fell between them. Harry stared up at the circle of lamplight above him, thinking …
    If only he had Rufus Scrimgeour’s power, he would have been able to set a tail upon Malfoy, but unfortunately Harry did not have an office full of Aurors at his command … he thought fleetingly of trying to set something up with the DA, but there again was the problem that people would be missed from lessons; most of them, after all, still had full timetables …
    There was a low, rumbling snore from Ron’s bed. After a while Madam Pomfrey came out of her office, this time wearing a thick dressing-gown. It was easiest to feign sleep; Harry rolled over on to his side and listened to all the curtains closing themselves as she waved her wand. The lamps dimmed, and she returned to her office; he heard the door click behind her, and knew that she was off to bed.
    This was, Harry reflected in the darkness, the third time that he had been brought to the hospital wing because of a Quidditch injury. Last time he had fallen off his broom due to the presence of Dementors around the pitch, and the time before that, all the bones had been removed from his arm by the incurably inept Professor Lockhart … that had been his most painful injury by far … he remembered the agony of regrowing an armful of bones in one night, a discomfort not eased by the arrival of an unexpected visitor in the middle of the –
    Harry sat bolt upright, his heart pounding, his bandage turban askew. He had the solution at last: there was a way to have Malfoy followed – how could he have forgotten, why hadn’t he thought of it before?
    But the question was, how to call him? What did you do?
    Quietly, tentatively, Harry spoke into the darkness.
    ‘Kreacher?’
    There was a very loud crack and the sounds of scuffling and squeaks filled the silent room. Ron awoke with a yelp.
    ‘What’s going –?’
    Harry pointed his wand hastily at the door of Madam Pomfrey’s office and muttered ‘Muffliato!’ so that she would not come running. Then he scrambled to the end of his bed for a better look at what was going on.
    Two house-elves were rolling around on the floor in the middle of the dormitory, one wearing a shrunken maroon jumper and several woolly hats, the other, a filthy old rag strung over his hips like a loincloth. Then there was another loud bang, and Peeves the poltergeist appeared in midair above the wrestling elves.
    ‘I was watching that, Potty!’ he told Harry indignantly, pointing at the fight below, before letting out a loud cackle. ‘Look at the ickle creatures squabbling, bitey bitey, punchy punchy –’
    ‘Kreacher will not insult Harry Potter in front of Dobby, no he won’t, or Dobby will shut Kreacher’s mouth for him!’ cried Dobby in a high-pitched voice.
    ‘– kicky, scratchy!’ cried Peeves happily, now pelting bits of chalk at the elves to enrage them further. ‘Tweaky, pokey!’
    ‘Kreacher will say what he likes about his master, oh yes, and what a master he is, filthy friend of Mudbloods, oh, what would poor Kreacher’s mistress say –?’
    Exactly what Kreacher’s mistress would have said they did not find out, for at that moment Dobby sank his knobbly little fist into Kreacher’s mouth and