The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|27| Buckbeak

About two weeks, I was woken up by a blood curdling scream. The five of us, in our nightgowns, ran to the boys' dormitory to hear Ron screaming about how Sirius Black had been standing over him with a knife. Security had gotten extremely tight since then, especially with the Hogsmeade trip that is today.

Ron and I hung out at Hogsmeade all day while Harry trailed us under his Invisibility Cloak; Hermione never showed. Good turned to bad when Snape caught Harry coming back into the castle through his secret passageway from the Marauder's Map.

When Ron and I realized, we quickly ran to his rescue.

"— like your father you are, Potter," I heard Snape. I held Ron back and put my finger to my lips, warning him to be quiet. "He too was exceedingly arrogant. A small amount of talent on the Quidditch field made him think he was a cut above the rest of us too. Strutting around the place with his friends and admirers... The resemblance between you is uncanny."

"My dad didn't strut," said Harry. "And neither do I."

"Your father didn't set much store by rules either," Snape went on. "Rules were for lesser mortals, not Quidditch Cup-winners. His head was so swollen —"

"SHUT UP!"

I heard the chair, he must have been sitting in, screech back.

"What did you say to me, Potter?"

"I told you to shut up about my dad!" Harry yelled. "I know the truth, all right? He saved your life! Dumbledore told me! You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for my dad!"

"And did the headmaster tell you the circumstances in which your father saved my life?" he whispered. "Or did he consider the details too unpleasant for precious Potter's delicate ears? I would hate for you to run away with a false idea of your father, Potter. Have you been imagining some act of glorious heroism? Then let me correct you— your saintly father and his friends played a highly amusing joke on me that would have resulted in my death if your father hadn't got cold feet at the last moment. There was nothing brave about what he did. He was saving his own skin as much as mine. Had their joke succeeded, he would have been expelled from Hogwarts."

There was an angry paused and I held my breath.

"Turn out your pockets, Potter!" he spat suddenly. "Turn out your pockets, or we go straight to the headmaster! Pull them out, Potter!"

"Maisey gave them to me." I heard Harry say. It was probably the Zonko's tricks Harry had bought. "She brought them back from Hogsmeade last time—"

"Indeed? And you've been carrying them around ever since? How very touching... and what is this?"

"Spare bit of parchment," Harry said.

The Map.

"Surely you don't need such a very old piece of parchment?" he said. "Why don't I just— throw this away?"

"No!" Harry said quickly.

"So! Is this another treasured gift from Miss Howell? Or is it— something else? A letter, perhaps, written in invisible ink? Or— instructions to get into Hogsmeade without passing the Dementors?"

"Let me see, let me see..." Snape muttered. "Reveal your secret! Show yourself! Professor Severus Snape, master of this school, commands you to yield the information you conceal!"

I clamped my hand over my mouth, restraining from a giggle.

"Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git," Snape said as if he were reading something. "Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor. Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball."