The carriages rolled to a stop at the foot of the long flight of stone steps that ascended into Hogwarts. Doors swung open, and students, many of them oblivious to the white-eyed thestrals they passed within inches of, piled out. 

Above them, the castle towered dark and dazzling with some of its many windows ablaze and its spires jabbing black silhouettes against the sky. The grounds rustled and whispered in the grip of a wind that sent ripples over the grassy grounds and across the inky depths of the lake. Peering that way, Harry glimpsed the firefly flicker of lamps on the boats that carried the first-years. 

He let himself be caught up in the moving black-clad tide of robed boys and girls, up the steps and into the cavernous front hall of Hogwarts where portraits waved from the walls and the staircases slid with ominous grating sounds into new positions. Somewhere above in the shadows, out of sight but not earshot, Peeves the Poltergeist jeered and cackled. 

Argus Filch, the caretaker, stood on one of the upper landings with his cat Mrs. Norris cradled in his arms. Filch wore a look even more bitter and sour than usual. Filch had really liked serving under Umbridge, had even almost been allowed to start whipping students for disobedience or trotting out worse punishments. 

Now all of that was gone, his hope and glory snatched away from him, and it showed in every deep and disappointed line of his face. 

The doors to the Great Hall stood open, the glow of hundreds of floating candles spilling down. The polished wooden surfaces of the long House tables and the empty, expectant golden dishes and goblets, gleamed in the firelight. Harry filed in with the others and took his accustomed place, midway down the Gryffindor table beneath a scarlet-and-yellow lion banner.

At the head of the room, the staff table was positioned crossways to the other four, and Harry could see the various members of the Hogwarts faculty already in their seats. His gaze found the hook-nosed visage of Severus Snape, his least-favorite teacher and in the running for his top ten least-favorite people in the whole wide world. Snape, his oily black hair hanging lank around his shoulders, did not look Harry's way.

Harry scanned the other familiar faces. There was tiny Professor Flitwick, perched on a chair that had been stacked with thick books to bring him up to table level. And Professor McGonagall, in a high-collared forest green robe with her hair pinned back in a severe bun. Next to her was the cheery, rotund figure of Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher. 

And there was Albus Dumbledore. His robes were a dark, rich purple sewn with sparkling silver and gold thread, and his long white hair and beard surrounded him with a faintly radiant nimbus. Half-moon spectacles perched at the end of his long thin nose. 

Last year, when the bond between Harry and Voldemort had been at its strongest, Harry had been barely able to gaze upon the headmaster without experiencing the violent urge to bite, to hurt, to kill. He did not feel it now, but was glumly unsurprised to still feel a surge of anger rising like bile in his throat. 

Snape wasn't looking at Harry, and that was fine. That was good. Harry could happily go all year without Snape looking at him. 

But Dumbledore wasn't looking at him either. Dumbledore seemed to be purposefully fixing his attention on the other tables, and avoiding meeting Harry's eyes. 

Three seats down from Dumbledore sat Gwenna Golden. Her hands were folded on the table in front of her, and she held her head high as she surveyed the room. She wore a loose sleeveless robe in the bold colors of a tropical sunset. Spiral gold armbands graced her tanned upper arms. Around her neck was a broad, flat golden torc set with polished semiprecious stones. Her dark hair had been braided into a coronet and adorned with brilliant-pink bird of paradise flowers. 

The students, all of whom were by now well used to the fact that they never had the same Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher two years running, nudged each other and gestured toward her and muttered amongst themselves in interested speculation. 

The doors opened again, and in came Hagrid in his moleskin waistcoat, leading a wide-eyed gaggle of first-years. Harry marveled at how young they all looked, or maybe it was that he marveled to think he'd ever been that young himself. Six years ago, he'd been in that group, following the bearded giant into a huge room where the ceiling was enchanted to mimic the night sky outside, and the curious faces of many strangers had turned to follow him. 

Now, here he was at the other end of things. It simultaneously seemed that the years had gone by in an instant, and that far too much had happened, far too much had changed, for it to have been a mere six years. He had seen so much … learned so much … done so much! 

And yet, really, although he was closing in on his final year at Hogwarts, he was no closer to knowing what he was actually going to do with his life than he'd been when he had walked in here a scrawny eleven-year-old. 

Mulling on this, he barely noticed as Professor McGonagall brought out the same old stool and the same old bent, creased, grimy Sorting Hat. He didn't hear the Hat's singsong message, and was only vaguely aware of the new young Gryffindors taking their places at the table, all of them blushing to the vigorous applause and looking bewildered but pleased. 

Then Dumbledore was rising, smiling his wise and benevolent smile, and inviting them to tuck into the wonderful welcoming feast. The tables groaned suddenly under the weight of the food that had magically appeared, and a babble of cheery conversation filled the room, punctuated by the clink of serving utensils as everyone heaped their plates with cuts of meat, roasted potatoes, buttery ears of corn, slabs of bread drenched in honey, stewed fruit, golden-crisp chicken, and other delicious items. 

Harry ate with the rest of them, rousing himself from his thoughtful funk long enough to congratulate a giddily anxious Colin Creevey on being named one of Gryffindor's two prefects. It only then dawned on Harry that Ginny must not have made prefect, because if she had he was sure he would have heard all about it, and Mrs. Weasley would have been beside herself with delight. 

He stole a sidelong look at Ginny, who was sitting with her fellow fifth-year girls. One of them was laughing and preening and tossing her hair, showing off the shining silver badge pinned to the front of her robes. If Ginny was bothered, she didn't show it, but Harry felt badly for her all the same. He remembered how it had stung last year when Ron had been named prefect instead of Harry himself. For Ginny, who also had her parents to think about, it was probably worse. With the notable and deserving exception of Fred and George, all of her brothers had been prefects. 

At last, the feasting was finished and the tables cleared, and Dumbledore rose again to give his customary speech. He introduced Professor Golden, and for the first time Harry wondered where little Arcturus was. Had the baby been brought to Hogwarts? And if so, who would be caring for him while his mother taught? Who was caring for him now? 

Little mention was made of the previous year, and the various and terrible things the students had suffered under Umbridge. It was almost as if the entire past year hadn't happened, that they were all going to pretend it had been a dream, and move on from here with no further ado. 

"I am pleased to announce," Dumbledore said, "that our own Professor Trelawney has been reinstated as Divinations teacher."

At the Gryffindor table, this news elicited groans from Ron and Hermione, and a mixture of gladness and dismay from Lavender and Parvati, both of whom had been quite partial to Professor Trelawney and partial in an entirely different way to her replacement.

"What about Firenze?" Parvati cried, giving voice to what many of the Hogwarts girls seemed to be thinking. "You haven't sent him back to the other centaurs, have you?"

"They'd kill him," Harry murmured. "Kick him to death, stave in his ribs and skull and trample him."

Hermione, pale, nodded. They'd seen for themselves what the wrath of centaurs could be like. Firenze was lucky to be alive. For that matter, they were lucky to be alive. If Hagrid's full-giant half-brother Grawp hadn't intervened, he and Hermione might have felt for themselves what it was like to be on the receiving end of a centaur's lethal hooves. 

Dumbledore held up his hands, palms out, for silence. "Professor Firenze has graciously agreed to stay on," he said, with a hint of a smile. "In his new capacity, he will be teaching Magical Philosophy and Non-Human Relations."

The girls cooed, tittered, and sighed. Across at the Slytherin table, Harry had a glimpse of Malfoy sneering, and no doubt saying something derogatory to Crabbe and Goyle, who flanked him. 

"On a more somber note," Dumbledore said, his face turning serious, "we're all deeply saddened by the loss of Theodore Nott, of Slytherin House, who died this morning at Diagon Alley."

An uncomfortable hush fell over the hall. By then, of course, the story had to have gotten around to everyone on the Hogwarts Express, told and doubtless embellished beyond recognition by those who'd been at the Leaky Cauldron. A watery gasp from the Ravenclaw table marked Cecily's position, and when Harry turned his head he saw her covering her face with a napkin while the girl next to her patted her on the back. 

After letting the hush stretch out for a few seconds, Dumbledore went on to remind them once again of the school rules, then dismissed them to their respective dormitories. 

Colin bounded up. "All right, Harry?"

"Yeah, Colin."

"Would you mind?" Colin, blushing again, held out his camera. "I've got to take the first years to Gryffindor tower. My first official duty and all. I'd … if you would, please … for posterity?"

Stifling a sigh, Harry lifted the camera to his eyes and snapped a few photos of Colin, puffed up with self- importance, marshaling his charges into a neat line. He gave the camera to Colin's brother Dennis when he was done, and joined Ron, Hermione and Ginny in the crowd moving toward the stairs. 

The Gryffindor common room, guarded by the portrait of the Fat Lady, was the same as ever, with its cheery fire and overstuffed armchairs. Harry, full and logy from the feast, followed Ron, Dean, Neville and Seamus up to their same round room with its four-poster beds. 

He pulled on his pajamas, so stuffed for the moment that all he cared about was how good it was going to feel sinking into the mattress and pillows. He got into the bed, drew the curtains shut, set his wand and his glasses on the bedside table, and was asleep almost before his hand let go of them. 

Some time later, Harry was shaken awake in the darkness. 

"Huh?"

"Harry!" squeaked a high, frightened voice. "Harry, you've got to … you've got to come, you've got to help!"

His eyelids felt coated with lead. He didn't know what time it was, and could only see a shadow-shape beside him. The undisturbed snores from the other beds let him quickly place the others, still asleep. 

Groping for glasses and wand, he poked the former onto his face and illuminated the tip of the latter. "Lumos."

The faint light showed him who it was that stood, half in and half out of the curtains around his bed. Colin Creevey, in yellow striped pajamas and fuzzy, weirdly apt bumblebee slippers, was bent over him with a hand on his shoulder. Colin's blond hair was all over the place in corkscrews that made even Harry's unkempt black hair look tame by comparison, and Colin's blue eyes were swimming with shock. 

"Colin?" Harry blinked and frowned. "Colin, what's the matter?"

"You have to come!" squeaked Colin again, sounding as if he had a teakettle whistle lodged in his throat. "The … the bathroom, Harry! In the bathroom!"

"What is?"

"Please!" Tugging at him, chin quivering, Colin was on the verge of crying. 

"Sure, okay," Harry said. He sat up, swung his legs out of bed, and saw that the sky beyond the window was still inky black and spangled with stars. "Colin, it's the middle of the night."

Colin didn't reply, only hurried toward the door, wringing his hands and throwing back anxious looks over his shoulder. Harry shuffled after him, yawning. 

As they descended the dormitory stairs, Harry heard a whispery scramble and a series of quick pops. By the time he and Colin reached the common room, he saw it half-tidied in the warm glow of the fireplace embers and understood that they had interrupted the house-elves at work.

"What's this all about, Colin?" he asked, awake enough now to really comprehend the depth of Colin's distress. "Are you sick? Do you need to go to the hospital wing? I can get Madame Pomfrey –"

"The bathroom," Colin repeated, ducking through the Fat Lady's portrait hole. "I didn't know who else to … you have to see … I …" Trailing off, he shook his head and bit his lip. 

Sleepy, grumbling figures in paintings snapped at them as they went along the halls with their wands lit. Harry thought longingly of the Marauder's Map … they could get in trouble if they were found wandering the castle this late, and although it was a fresh new year, he didn't relish the idea of starting off with detention. His luck, it'd be Filch to find them.

Or Snape.

Harry shuddered and looked around, almost sure that he would see Snape materialize out of the darkness in a billow of black cloak, thin lips drawn back in a triumphant sneer. All he saw was a bleary Sir Cadogan, hopping on one leg as he tried to buckle on his armor over comical polka-dot undershorts. "Stand and deliver, scurvy knave! Thou'st disturbed my slumber and must answer in honorable combat!" the knight called after them. 

"Hey, wait," Harry said. "Colin, if you had to go to the bathroom, why not use the one in Gryffindor tower?"

But he got his answer a moment later as they rounded a corner and he saw the door to the prefects' bathroom up ahead. Harry had been in there before, when Cedric Diggory had given him a hint about the dragon's egg during the Triwizard Tournament. Strictly speaking, it should have been off-limits to Harry, since he'd only been a fourth-year at the time. 

Wordlessly, actually trembling all over now, Colin extended an arm and pointed at the bathroom door. 

"What's in there?" Harry asked warily. Colin looked like Marley's ghost, if Marley's ghost had been a small teenage boy in bumblebee slippers. He grasped Colin by the shoulders and gave him a little shake. "Colin! Tell me!"

"It's the prefects' bathroom," Colin said in a faint, faraway voice. "I'd heard about it, and I thought I'd sneak in there tonight and have a bath. To celebrate my first day as a prefect, right, Harry? So I got my towel and my soap and everything, and … and I came down here. But … but … then I saw."

Realizing that it'd be quicker and easier to just look, Harry strode to the door and pushed it open. 

The bathroom was dark, the air was dripping with humidity. His glasses instantly fogged over. He could hear water gushing full-force from the taps. 

The rising steam was thick with an odor that made Harry's nose wrinkle. It wasn't a smell he associated with soap, or even with astringent cleansers. It was a richer smell, a … a coppery smell … a meaty, simmering stew of a smell. 

He wiped the lenses of his glasses, and tapped them with his wand. "Impervius!"

Here was the bathroom, just as he remembered. A gilt-framed painting of a mermaid dominated one wall, the mermaid's hair strategically draped to cover her bare, buxom upper torso. Her sleek fishtail was curled beneath her as she slept, head pillowed on folded arms, snoring with a dainty bubbling noise. 

His wandlight glimmered over the surface of the bathtub, which really was far more swimming pool than mere tub. The fixtures, arcing gold pipes that could release streams of water at different temperatures as well as varieties of sudsy foam, sparkled. 

But … something was wrong. The way the water caught the light was … yes, it was wrong. It was … too dark.

Breath catching in his throat like cloth snagged on a thorn, Harry inched into the room and raised his wand higher. 

The water … wasn't water anymore. 

It was … 

Broth.

Harry's gorge rose in a greasy lurch. He locked his jaws against the urge to vomit. 

All the taps were cranked to their hottest settings, so the scalding-hot water was … was cooking the body that floated – facedown, spread-eagle, and slowly revolving in the current – at the center of the pool. The liquid was tinged with red, and a reddish foam had built up along the edges. Harry was nauseatingly reminded of the scummy residue that rose to the surface when Aunt Petunia boiled a chicken for soup. 

His nerves were shrieking at him to go, to run, to get out of here before that meaty stench overwhelmed him. But Harry made himself move closer to the pool. His foot struck something. He looked down to see a litter of bathing supplies. Colin's towel, a bottle of shampoo, soap. 

A bit further on, another towel had been set neatly folded on a bench, and next to it a bathrobe hung on a hook. 

One more object sat at the very edge of the pool. It kicked back Harry's wandlight in tiny glittering flickers. A razor blade, clean silver where it wasn't running crimson. 

"He's dead, isn't he?" Colin asked in a wavering voice. "I knew as soon as I saw him … he's dead."

The body in the pool revolved, revolved. The arms splayed out to its sides were turned palms-down, but Harry didn't need to see to know that the wrists would be cut, and probably even the undersides of the forearms would be slashed, too, lengthwise, gaping in raw-lipped red gashes. 

The heroic thing to do would be to leap in, to wrestle the body over and get it out of the pool. After all, he might not be dead, he might not, even bobbing facedown with his life's blood making a stew in the near-boiling water … there might still be time. 

But Harry couldn't bring himself to do it. 

Because there wasn't time. Anyone could see that. Even if the boy in the pool had still been alive when Colin had first walked in, he would have bled to death or drowned or died of the scalding burns by the time Colin ran all the way back to Gryffindor tower, woke Harry, and dragged him back here. 

The boy in the pool was dead. 

"Yes," Harry said, barely sounding like himself. "He's dead. Colin … why … why didn't you go for … someone … an adult … Filch? Or McGonagall? Or Dumbledore?"

"I … I didn't think of it," Colin said. "I mean … you're Harry Potter."

A wild, crazy laugh that was really mostly a scream issued from Harry. He raked a hand through his hair, which was damp from the steam … and the thought that clanged in his head like a bell was that it was on him, the steam, coating him with wetness that carried infinitesimal fragments of blood and … and that unspeakable broth. 

"That doesn't make me a damned miracle worker!" he cried. 

"But we've got to do something!" Colin saw his cry and raised him a wail, which rebounded from the tiles and echoed around the bathroom. On the wall, the mermaid blew a big round bubble, sighed, and turned over so that her back was to them. 

Harry slapped his own face. It was the only thing he could think of to keep from losing his mind and his supper in the same shattering instant of madness. The sharp report echoed as well, but it cut through the spinning horror. 

"Turn off the water," he barked.

"Good, yeah, I'll do that," Colin said, bobbing his head. 

As Colin hurried to the task, Harry turned around. "Myrtle!" he called. "Myrtle? Are you there?"

The taps went off, the gushing water stopped, and a suffocating damp silence was only broken by the plink of drips. Colin also turned on the lights, though Harry immediately wished he hadn't. The lights, dim though they were, showed too much and in a stark, terrible clarity.

A ghostly-grey girl's head poked through the door of one of the lavatory stalls. She wore glasses and braids and a slightly outdated Hogwarts uniform. Her miserable pout brightened into a coquettish smile. "Hi, Harry. I thought I heard your voice through the pipes. What are you –"

Then her gaze took in Colin, and the rest of the scene. Her mouth fell open. 

"We need help," Harry said. "Can you get Dumbledore, or somebody?"

"Who's that?" Myrtle howled in disgust. "He's naked and ugly and messing up my bathroom!"

Colin, inanely, said, "This is the boys' bathroom! The boy prefects' bathroom!"

"Never mind that!" Harry shouted – and thought that even if none of them went for help, sooner or later someone would come investigate the commotion. A split-second later, the mermaid on the wall woke up, looked around, saw the blood-pool, and began to shriek. 

Myrtle's question suddenly hit Harry. "Who's that?" she had said. 

Who was it?

He had tried not to look very hard at the body, but dread gripped his heart and he made himself turn to the pool again.

Just then, the door banged open and in rushed the very people Harry had been fearing would catch him and Colin in their nocturnal wanderings. Now, though, he was glad to see Filch, and even Snape. 

Filch's feet slid to a halt on the wet tile, and for a moment the issue was in doubt … he seemed likely to go flat on his backside. He caught himself and stood wheezing, clutching at his chest. 

Snape paused for one single stunned moment, then swept past Colin – and through Myrtle without a look, making her bleat in indignation. Harry expected Snape to do what Harry himself had been unable to do, and leap in, but Snape stopped at the pool's edge and yanked out his wand. He leveled it at the body, which began to rise from the liquid in a pattering shower of droplets. 

As the arms flopped down, Harry saw just what he'd known he would see. They were slashed in long wounds, from the fine creases at the wrists – Professor Trelawney had told them these were called the Bracelets of Fortune, he remembered for no good reason – halfway to the elbow. 

The legs and the head dangled, too, but something about the body … the size and shape of it … eerie, ghastly familiarity washed over Harry. He stared. He didn't realize Snape was shouting at him until Snape's bony foot shot out and kicked him smartly in the shin. 

It was, he would later reflect, something that Snape had probably wanted to do for years and now that he'd finally had the chance, he hadn't even been able to enjoy it with everything else going on. 

"The robe, Potter!" Snape ordered. 

Harry jerked, nodded, and went to the bathrobe he had earlier noticed hanging tidily on a hook above a folded towel. He fumbled with it, took it down, dropped it, knocked the towel off the bench while retrieving it, and froze as the magazine that had been under the towel riffle-slapped to the bathroom floor. 

His own sheepishly-grinning face looked up at him from the cover of the Quibbler, above words he knew by heart. 

"Sometime this century, Potter!" came Snape's urgent hiss. 

The bathrobe in his hands was plush and midnight-black. Quite large; on Harry it would have been as roomy as one of Dudley's hand-me-downs. On the left side of the chest was an embroidered logo, the way a posh hotel might stitch the name. But this logo was an emerald-green snake coiled around a silver dagger. 

On legs that felt like jointed stilts, Harry took the robe over to Snape. Filch had recovered his wits enough to have threatened the mermaid into silence and was gruffly shaking Colin by the upper arms and demanding to know what was going on. Myrtle hovered high near the ceiling, watching everything with avid, greedy, ghoulish attention. 

Snape snatched the bathrobe from Harry. He had lowered the body to the floor, and now moved to cover it. 

A big body, hulking and slab-muscled, with the hunched shoulders and long powerful arms of a caveman. The brow of a caveman, too, low and brutish. 

It was Crabbe. 

And Harry thought that he should have known right away, should have recognized him immediately. Would have, surely, except that he simply wasn't used to seeing Crabbe without Goyle. 

Then Snape covered Crabbe from head to knees with the bathrobe, leaving only the scalded-red lower legs and feet sticking out. He whirled to Harry, dark eyes ablaze. 

"Explain, Potter," he snarled. 

"You can't think that I –" Harry began. 

Snape's acid, contemptuous look told Harry all he needed to know on that subject. Of course, Snape didn't think he had anything to do with Crabbe's death … Snape might not have the highest opinion of Harry James Potter, might in fact hate him as much as he'd ever hated Harry's father, or godfather, but he knew Harry, too. Knew him perhaps even better than Dumbledore or McGonagall or any other teacher, and knew that while Harry would happily jinx his Slytherin enemies seven ways to Sunday, he would never have done something like this. Not even to Malfoy, who was the leader. Let alone to a thick-jawed, slow-witted thug like Crabbe. 

"Colin found him," Harry said. "He came to use the prefects' bathroom – he's a prefect –"

"I know," Snape said impatiently, and made a 'go on' gesture with one supple, spider-fingered hand. 

"And he came to get me."

"You."

"Yes. Sir."

"Why in the nine hells would he get you, Potter?"

Harry shrugged, unable to repeat Colin's reason. Snape's eyes narrowed and his lip curled as he surmised it anyway. 

"He came to get the famous Harry Potter, thinking that you would once more save the day," Snape said. 

Biting his lower lip hard between his teeth, Harry looked down and away. His cheeks felt on fire. 

Snape exhaled a derisive snort, as if to say that this dovetailed with everything he knew about Harry and his fan club, of which Mr. Creevey was an enthusiastic charter member. Then, as if that chain of thought led to the next logical Colin link, Snape glanced quickly around. 

"He didn't have his camera," Harry said. 

Those blazing dark eyes bored into his green ones, and it was like the Occlumency lessons all over again, both of them with defenses scoured away and thoughts laid bare for the other to read. 

Filch had sent Colin out of the bathroom, and now approached Harry and Snape. He gave the shrouded body a wide berth as he did so, moving with a strange mincing tippy-toe gait that struck Harry as oddly squeamish for a man who yearned for the good old days of flogging, thumbscrews, and students suspended by the ankles in the castle's dankest rat-infested dungeons. 

"Dead?" he asked Snape. At Snape's brusque nod, Filch grimaced. "Who is it?"

"Vincent Crabbe," Snape said. "Slytherin."

"Not a prefect?" Filch's eyebrows beetled down in disapproval. "But this is the prefects' bathroom."

A cold, dangerous glare made Snape look every bit as vile and evil as Harry had always believed him to be. 

"Perhaps you'd like to give him detention, then, Filch?" he asked in a clipped tone. "I must say that the funeral is liable to pose a conflict of scheduling! Or should we simply expel him?"

"Sorry, Professor," Filch muttered, and actually looked to Harry for help. When none was forthcoming – Harry was staring at him with just as much unbelieving disgust as Snape was – he cleared his throat and nodded toward the razor blade on the floor. "Did himself in?"

"Obviously," Snape said. 

Then, no doubt seeking to ingratiate himself once more, Filch pointed at the magazine. "It's just like the other one, isn't it? Got to be too much for them, the scandal, and all thanks to Potter here."

Before Harry could object, the door crashed open again. This time it was Professor McGonagall, in a tartan bathrobe, and Madame Pomfrey in a long flannel nightie with a flounce of eyelet lace around the collar, cuffs and hem. They both stopped short. As the door swung to behind them, Harry glimpsed Colin in the hallway, and a shifting confusion of figures all trying to crowd into the same hanging portrait-frames for a better look. 

McGonagall, ashen, pressed her palm to the base of her throat. "Oh, my word …" she said, her brogue so thick that Harry could barely understand her. 

Also pale, but with her face set, Madame Pomfrey hurried over and knelt beside the covered body. 

"Go on, Potter," Snape said, giving him a slight push in McGonagall's direction. 

He went, and when he neared her, she first swept him into a surprisingly fierce hug, then stood him back and patted him over as if making sure he was all in one piece, exactly as Mrs. Weasley had done when she'd come to Privet Drive after the incident with Tonks, Moody and Jane. 

"Are you all right, Potter?"

"Fine," he said. 

In one of the mirrors, he saw Madame Pomfrey fold back the bathrobe and expose Crabbe's face. 

"Has the headmaster been told?" Snape asked McGonagall.

"Yes, he –"

Once again, the door opened, this time to admit Dumbledore and a few other teachers. The bathroom was getting crowded. Professor McGonagall gently but firmly ushered Harry out, to where Colin was waiting in the hall. 

She took them to her office, where she coaxed them into drinking hot tea with such a strong flavor that Harry suspected it had been laced with something considerably more potent than honey and lemon. Colin, shakily at first but growing steadier as the level in his teacup went down, told her what had happened, how he'd found Crabbe – not that he'd known who it was – and, in a state of shock and panic, had gone to get the first person he could think of: Harry. 

McGonagall's lips twitched when she heard this, not in amusement but not with Snape's contempt either. It was more of a wry understanding. 

"I'm aware of the futility of asking you not to talk about what happened tonight," she said. "It will be all over the school by breakfast, I'm sure. But if you could find it in yourselves to … shall we say … keep the details on the sketchy side?"

"We will, Professor," Harry said. "Right, Colin?"

"Right," Colin said. "Right, yes, absolutely." He swallowed hard. "I don't want to talk about it. I don't even want to think about it. I keep seeing him … floating like that … and the way it smelled …" 

He leaned over and threw up on his bumblebee slippers, slid from the chair and lay unconscious on the floor. Harry and McGonagall regarded him for a moment, then looked at each other. 

"I don't normally approve of using Memory Charms on students," Professor McGonagall mused. "In this case, however … I think an exception might be in order."

**
Continued in Chapter Twelve -- Sixth Year Surprises.