THE MIDNIGHT DUEL
block them.” There was a very good chance they were going to get
caught by Filch or Mrs. Norris, and Harry felt he was pushing his
luck, breaking another school rule today. On the other hand, Mal-
foy’s sneering face kept looming up out of the darkness — this was
his big chance to beat Malfoy face-to-face. He couldn’t miss it.
“Half-past eleven,” Ron muttered at last, “we’d better go.”
They pulled on their bathrobes, picked up their wands, and
crept across the tower room, down the spiral staircase, and into the
Gryffindor common room. A few embers were still glowing in the
fireplace, turning all the armchairs into hunched black shadows.
They had almost reached the portrait hole when a voice spoke from
the chair nearest them, “I can’t believe you’re going to do this,
Harry.”
A lamp flickered on. It was Hermione Granger, wearing a pink
bathrobe and a frown.
“You!” said Ron furiously. “Go back to bed!”
“I almost told your brother,” Hermione snapped, “Percy — he’s
a prefect, he’d put a stop to this.”
Harry couldn’t believe anyone could be so interfering.
“Come on,” he said to Ron. He pushed open the portrait of the
Fat Lady and climbed through the hole.
Hermione wasn’t going to give up that easily. She followed Ron
through the portrait hole, hissing at them like an angry goose.
“Don’t you care about Gryffindor, do you only care about your-
selves, I don’t want Slytherin to win the House Cup, and you’ll lose
all the points I got from Professor McGonagall for knowing about
Switching Spells.”
“Go away.”
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