2 | CONFESSIONS° HARRY POTTER

5 | THE GHOUL IN PAJAMAS

ACT FIVE, love
CHAPTER FIVE, the ghoul in pajamas

            The shock of losing Mad-Eye hung over the house in the days that followed and it seemed to make Harry more restless than ever. It took a lot of effort for Ron, Hermione, and Iris to remind him that he couldn't leave since he was still sixteen and had the Trace on him.

"Well, you can't do anything about the" — Ron mouthed the word Horcruxes — "till you're seventeen. You've still got the Trace on you. And we can plan here as well as anywhere, can't we? Or," he dropped his voice to a whisper, "d'you reckon you already know where the You-Know-Whats are?" 

"No," Harry admitted. 

"I think Hermione's been doing a bit of research," said Iris. "She said she was saving it for when you got here." 

They were sitting at the breakfast table; Mr. Weasley and Bill had just left for work. Mrs. Weasley had gone upstairs to wake Hermione, Sabina, Tracey, and Ginny, while Fleur had drifted off to take a bath. Oliver was running around with Fred and George, most likely doing something that he probably shouldn't have been doing.

"The Trace'll break on the thirty-first," said Harry. "That means I only need to stay here four days. Then I can —" 

"Five days," Ron corrected him firmly. "We've got to stay for the wedding. They'll kill us if we miss it." 

Iris understood "they" to mean Fleur and Mrs. Weasley. 

"It's one extra day," said Iris, when Harry looked mutinous. 

"Don't they realize how important — ?" 

" 'Course they don't," said Ron. "They haven't got a clue. And now you mention it, I wanted to talk to you about that." 

Ron glanced toward the door into the hall to check that Mrs. Weasley was not returning yet, then leaned in closer to Harry. 

"Mum's been trying to get it out of Iris, Hermione, and me. What we're off to do. She'll try you next, so brace yourself. Dad and Lupin've both asked as well, but when we said Dumbledore told you not to tell anyone except us, they dropped it. Not Mum, though. She's determined."

This was true. Mrs. Weasley had cornered Iris away from the others and launched into interrogation mode. She seemed appalled when Iris confirmed that the four of them were dropping out of Hogwarts and she couldn't tell her where they were going. Iris's interrogation wasn't nearly as long as Hermione and Ron's were because Mrs. Weasley knew she wasn't going to get anything out of the girl. Her face remained impassive and no matter how many times Molly threw out the "concerned parent" argument, Iris wouldn't budge.

Iris trudged upstairs to her room that she shared with almost all of the girls and found it empty apart from Veles sitting on her bed with The Black Book open in the air.

"What are you doing?" asked Iris.

"The book opened up while you were downstairs. I didn't take it out. Look." said Veles. Iris took the book out of the air and looked at the page it landed on. Everything was in some sort of old language that Iris couldn't understand or read. That's when she noticed something else. This was the very last page of the book. The last page that she had never been able to see before.