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He darted forward, sidestepped Romilda Vane again, and pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady. The corridor outside, seemed to be deserted.

“Hermione?”

He found her in the first unlocked classroom he tried. She was sitting on the teacher’s desk, alone except for a small ring of twittering yellow birds circling her head, which she had clearly just conjured out of midair. Harry could not help admiring her spell-work at a time like this.

“Oh, hello, Harry,” she said in a brittle voice. “I was just practicing.”

“Yeah… they’re—er—really good…” said Harry.

He had no idea what to say to her. He was just wondering whether there was any chance that she had not noticed Ron, that she had merely left the room because the party was a little too rowdy, when she said, in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, “Ron seems to be enjoying the celebrations.”

“Er… does he?” said Harry.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t see him,” said Hermione. “He wasn’t exactly hiding it, was—?”

The door behind them burst open. To Harry’s horror, Ron came in, laughing, pulling Lavender by the hand.

“Oh,” he said, drawing up short at the sight of Harry and Hermione.

“Oops!” said Lavender, and she backed out of the room, giggling. The door swung shut behind her.

There was a horrible, swelling, billowing silence. Hermione was staring at Ron, who refused to look at her, but said with an odd mixture of bravado and awkwardness, “Hi, Harry! Wondered where you’d got to!”

Hermione slid off the desk. The little flock of golden birds continued to twitter in circles around her head so that she looked like a strange, feathery model of the solar system.

“You shouldn’t leave Lavender waiting outside,” she said quietly. “She’ll wonder where you’ve gone.”

She walked very slowly and erectly toward the door. Harry glanced at Ron, who was looking relieved that nothing worse had happened.

“Oppugno!” came a shriek from the doorway.

Harry spun around to see Hermione pointing her wand at Ron, her expression wild: The little flock of birds was speeding like a hail of fat golden bullets toward Ron, who yelped and covered his face with his hands, but the birds attacked, pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could reach.

“Gerremoffme!” he yelled, but with one last look of vindictive fury, Hermione wrenched open the door and disappeared through it. Harry thought he heard a sob before it slammed.

THE UNBREAKABLE VOW

Snow was swirling against the icy windows once more; Christmas was approaching fast. Hagrid had already singlehandedly delivered the usual twelve Christmas trees to the Great Hall; garlands of holly and tinsel had been twisted around the banisters of the stairs; everlasting candles glowed from inside the helmets of suits of armor and great bunches of mistletoe had been hung at intervals along the corridors. Large groups of girls tended to converge underneath the mistletoe bunches every time Harry went past, which caused blockages in the corridors; fortunately, however, Harry’s frequent nighttime wanderings had given him an unusually good knowledge of the castle’s secret passageways, so that he was often, without too much difficulty, to navigate mistletoe-free routes between classes.

Ron, who might once have found the necessity of these detours excuse for jealousy rather than hilarity, simply roared with laughter about it all. Although Harry much preferred this new laughing, joking Ron to the moody, aggressive model he had been enduring for the last few weeks, the improved Ron came at a heavy price. Firstly, Harry had to put up with the frequent presence of Lavender Brown, who seemed to regard any moment that she was not kissing Ron as a moment wasted; and secondly, Harry found himself once more the best friend of two people who seemed unlikely ever to speak to each other again.

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1. A bright silver light appeared right ahead of him, moving through the trees. Whatever the source, it was moving soundlessly. The light seemed simply to drift toward him.
2. A motherly-looking Healer wearing a tinsel wreath in her hair came bustling up the corridor, smiling warmly at Harry and the others.
3. A vivid image of the shrieking, spitting portrait of Sirius’s mother that hung in the hall of number twelve, Grimmauld Place flashed into Harry’s mind. “I bet there has,” he said.
4. Aberforth Dumbledore stood blocking the corridor ahead, his wand held ready.
5. After glancing once at this portrait, Professor McGonagall made an odd movement as though steeling herself, then rounded the desk to look at Harry, her face taut and lined.
6. All three of them raised their wands again, but none of them struck: they were all gazing, open-mouthed, appalled, at what was happening to the man’s head.
7. And then, abruptly and shockingly amid the frozen silence, one of the dungeon doors on the left of the corridor was flung open and screams echoed out of it.
8. And to Harry’s horror, a voice answered, and the voice seemed to come from Quirrell himself.
9. And to Harry’s horror, Slughorn threw out an arm and seemed to scoop Snape out of thin air toward them.
10. And with a last smile and shake of Harry’s hand, Fudge left the room. Tom now moved forward, beaming at Harry.
11. And wouldn’t those secluded Albanian woods have seemed an excellent refuge when, so much later, Voldemort and needed a place to lie low, undisturbed, for ten long years?
12. As he pushed past Harry into the darkening corridor, Zabini shot him a filthy look that Harry returned with interest. He, Ginny, and Neville followed Zabini back along the train.

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