The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|48| Golden Egg

Rita Skeeter is a horrible, vile woman who would do anything for a story. Even harming innocent people and make them feel bad. She decided to write a story about Hagrid's parentage— he's half giant on his mother's side. This caused him to be ashamed and even almost quit, but thankfully, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and I finally got through to him and got him to take his position back.

One thing that did make Harry and me very guilty was the fact that Hagrid said the only thing that he wants is for either Harry or me to win this Triwizard Tournament.

Then at Hogsmeade, early January, the four of us ran into Rita Skeeter; Hermione and I almost had a go at her had Harry and Ron not held us back. She'd probably write some horrible articles about us, but I couldn't care less.

Currently, Harry and I were sneaking off to the Prefect's bathroom, as Cedric instructed, to try to see if we could figure out the clue. With our eggs in hand (we took both of them instead of one for the fear of them being different), we waited for the portrait hole to open. This time it was Ron who waited outside to give the Fat Lady the password ("banana fritters").

"Good luck," Ron muttered, climbing into the room as Harry and I crept out past him.

It was awkward moving under the cloak tonight, because Harry and I both had the heavy eggs under one arm while he had the map held in front of his nose with the other. However, the moonlit corridors were empty and silent, and by checking the map at strategic intervals, he was able to ensure that we wouldn't run into anyone we wanted to avoid. When we reached the statue of Boris the Bewildered, a lostlooking wizard with his gloves on the wrong hands, I located the right door, leaned close to it, and muttered the password, "Pine fresh," just as Cedric had told us.

The door creaked open. We slipped inside, Harry bolted the door behind us, and pulled off the Invisibility Cloak, looking around.

It was softly lit by a splendid candle-filled chandelier, and everything was made of white marble, including what looked like an empty, rectangular swimming pool sunk into the middle of the floor. About a hundred golden taps stood all around the pool's edges, each with a differently colored 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 over her face. It fluttered every time she snored.

As Harry played with the faucets of different colored bubbles, we took off our nightclothes, staying in our swimwear to take get in the tub with our eggs. Then, when the deep pool was full of hot water, foam, and bubbles, which took a very short time considering its size, we got in.

It was so deep that I had to tread water, trying to keep myself afloat. Harry looked as if he were struggling as well, but him being much taller than me seemed to have no problem. Highly enjoyable though it was hard to swim in hot and foamy water with clouds of different-colored steam wafting all around me, no stroke of brilliance came to me, 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.

"You idiot, I think Cedric meant to put it in the water, not open it over!" I shouted.

"Oh" is all Harry said.

Together, Harry and I lowered our eggs beneath the foamy surface and dunked in, opened them at the same time— it didn't wail. Instead, I heard a chorus of eerie voices singing to us from the open eggs: