Brewing

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"There we go." Draco said as they added the lakeweed to the potion at eleven pm the night before the task. "We're done it just needs to sit in the moonlight now." The smoke puffed green, it would be aquamarine when she bottled it at eight o-clock the next morning.

Pulling her cloak out of her bag, she turned to Draco. "I'll sneak you back into you're common room again so you're not caught after curfew." He nodded, ducking under the cloak as she pushed open the door. They had gone down several sets of stairs when Hari, glancing down at the marauder's map to check the coast was clear, something else on the map caught her eye . . . something distinctly odd.

Peeves was not the only thing that was moving around. A single dot was flitting around a room in the bottom left-hand corner right near where she was - Severus's office. But the dot wasn't labeled Severus Snape ... it was Bartemius Crouch.

Hari stared at the dot. Mr. Crouch was supposed to be too ill to go to work or to come to the Yule Ball - so what was he doing, sneaking into Hogwarts at one o'clock in the morning? Hari watched closely as the dot moved around and around the room, pausing here and there. ...

Hari hesitated, thinking about going to bed, but her curiosity and wanting to know why someone was invading Severus's office got the better of her.

She turned and started making her way back up the stairs.

'Where are we going?' Draco signed

'Mr Crouch is in Severus's office.'

'You said he was too sick to judge the tournament.'

'That's what Percy said.' It just didn't seem in character, somehow, for correct, law-abiding Mr. Crouch to be sneaking around somebody else's office this late at night....

Draco suddenly fell, it was a trick step. He knocked into Hari who managed to keep ahold of the map but dropped her potions book, it was from the restricted section. It fell down the stair case and from Draco's wince, began screaming. She was about to dart out from under the cloak to run down the stairs to close it, but Draco grabbed her arm. 'What?' She signed.

'Filch.'

Hari hid back under the cloak, she tried to tug Draco up from the trick step, but he was too heavy. She resorted to holding him up so he wouldn't fall further. They watched as Filch made his way up the steps.

"What's this racket? Wake up the whole castle, will you? I'll have you, Peeves, I'll have you, you'll ... and what is this?" He stopped, closing the library book. "My sweet!" he said to mrs Noris. "This is library book from the restricted section! PEEVES! You've been stealing!" He looked up and down the presumably empty hallway. "Hiding, are you? I'm coming to get you, Peeves. . . ."

Sick with apprehension, she watched Filch drawing nearer and nearer in his old flannel dressing gown, any second now Filch would walk right into then.

Suddenly Severus appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "Filch? Whats going on?"

Filch stopped a few steps below the two hidden students and turned. 

"Its Peeves, Professor," Filch said malevolently. "He threw this library book down the stairs."

Severus seemed to recognize the book that his pupils had been using, a weird look on his face. Filch was looking away from them at Severus, and as Severus was looking up at Filch. Hari quickly stuck a hand out from under the cloak and signed 'working on potion' before pulling her hand back under the cloak.

'What are you doing?' Draco signed.

'You wanna get in trouble with Severus or want to get reported to Dumb-old-door?'

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