The common room was quiet.
Not the usual kind of quiet—the lazy, post-curfew hush filled with shifting blankets, crackling fires, and someone trying to sneak a chocolate frog under their pillow. No, this was the kind of quiet that crept into your chest and sat there, like something was waiting.
I sat on the couch facing the dying fire, one leg crossed over the other, going over everything in my head. Not the big things, like "don't die" or "don't let anyone else die." That was obvious. I was running over the small things.
Did I triple-enchant the music disc?
Did I remember to test the grease spell for the Devil's Snare? Meh, I've got Petrol.
Did I bring backup chocolate in case morale plummeted?
(Yes. Obviously. I wasn't a monster.)
The portrait hole creaked open.
Hermione stepped in, her wand already in hand, hair tied back in a way that said I'm done playing nice. Her robes were freshly pressed. Her bag, annoyingly symmetrical. Her eyes locked with mine instantly.
We didn't say anything.
We didn't need to.
She crossed the room and sat beside me. We stared at the fire together for a moment, two overly prepared lunatics pretending this was normal.
"You ready?" she asked.
"Emotionally? Not even slightly. Logistically? I'm insulted you had to ask." as I patted my own expanded bag.
A small, tight smile. Then footsteps on the stairs.
Harry and Ron emerged from the boys' dorm, both in dark robes. Harry looked… determined. Ron looked like someone had challenged him to a duel with no wand and promised extra homework if he lost.
"We good?" Harry asked.
"As good as four children illegally trespassing through a magical gauntlet can be," I said.
Ron huffed. "It's not that illegal."
I arched an eyebrow. "Ron, we're about to break into a series of magically protected chambers housing one of the most dangerous objects in wizard history."
"…Point."
Harry looked between us. "Let's go."
We left the common room in silence, except for the Fat Lady giving us a disapproving sniff.
"Out for a midnight stroll, are we?" she asked dryly.
"Something like that," Hermione replied.
"If we die, haunt her first," I whispered to Hermione as we slipped through the portrait hole.
"I heard that!" the Fat Lady hissed behind us.
Getting out of Gryffindor Tower should've been difficult. Should've.
But navigating Hogwarts with a purpose required more than just sneaking shoes and luck—we had a cheat code.
I borrowed the map from the Weasley twins.
Knowing how dangerous just getting there could be, I had requested it from the twins earlier that day. Fred handed it to me with a wink and said, "If you die, leave it in your will."
The Marauder's Map was a godsend. Every moving dot, every shifting stair, every ghost and prefect location was laid out in living detail. It was like having Google Maps for poor life choices.
And yet, somehow… Percy still managed to almost ruin everything.
But of course, Percy had to be doing his "prefect rounds." Which, in his case, meant loudly monologuing to himself about responsibility while marching down the corridor like a man on a mission to personally fight crime with his own two hands and a clipboard.
We ducked behind a suit of armor.
"Percy's patrolling?" Hermione hissed.
"Apparently," I muttered. "I thought he went to bed with a warm glass of ego and a bedtime biography of Binns."
Ron peeked around the armor. "He's heading for the stairs."
I pulled out a small copper disc from my inner pocket. With a tap, it shimmered and changed the Fat Lady's portrait frame to a completely different landscape—an ocean view with seagulls.
Hermione blinked. "Did you… swap the portrait?"
"Temporarily. Memory lock will reset in five minutes. She'll think we never left. Found this nifty piece of work sorting through junk."
Ron whistled low. "You are way too good at this."
"I like to prepare for inevitable rule-breaking. It's a hobby."
Hermione gave me the look—the one she usually reserved for broken rules, broken logic, or broken Ron.
"You're infuriating," she muttered.
"Thank you," I said cheerfully. "I pride myself on consistency."
With Percy out of sight, we moved fast. Down the staircases, through the shadows, ducking around the occasional ghost. Peeves floated by at one point humming something off-key, but a tossed sugar quill from my satchel had him chasing it in the opposite direction.
"Did you just bribe a poltergeist?" Ron whispered.
"I bribed his attention span. Not the same thing."
By the time we reached the third-floor corridor, I'd already counted twelve heart attacks, three bad knee twitches, and exactly one silent promise to never do this again. (A lie. Obviously.)
The door stood at the end of the hall like it had been waiting. Just a door, but wrong in all the right ways. Too plain. Too still.
Hermione examined it without touching. "It's locked. Alohomora might work, but… this corridor's been forbidden since the start of term. It might be charmed against simple unlocking spells."
I handed her a rune-marked key.
She blinked. "Where did you—"
"Filched it. From Filch."
"Sky."
"He was yelling at a suit of armor. I saw an opportunity."
Harry gave me a strange look. "Is there anything you don't prepare for?"
"Emotionally healthy friendships?"
Hermione elbowed me.
The door clicked open.
Inside, it was pitch black.
We stepped through together.
Growling. Deep. Close.
A paw the size of a small sofa shifted. Three heads rose slowly, yellow eyes blinking into the dark. Fluffy.
Ron swallowed audibly. "Blimey…"
Hermione raised her wand.
"Wait," I said.
From my bag, I withdrew a vinyl record. Yes, an actual vinyl. A first-edition pressing of something Muggle and oddly soothing. I tapped it with my wand, and it floated into the air, spinning slowly as enchantments crackled around its edges, humming softly.
Then it started playing a lullaby rendition of God Save the Queen.
Hermione stared at it.
"…Why this song?" she whispered.
"Because I panicked and it was the first thing I thought of," I whispered back.
The heads of Fluffy swayed. One yawned. Another blinked slowly. The third head tilted and let out a soft, confused whine.
Fluffy sat.
Then slowly, he collapsed.
The room trembled slightly with the impact.
We moved carefully. One of Fluffy's massive paws was covering the trapdoor, and even asleep, it twitched now and then like it was dreaming of chasing trespassers.
"Ron, help me shift it," I whispered.
"I—what? That's his foot!"
"Technically, it's a paw. But yes. And it's also in our way."
Between the four of us, we managed to inch the heavy limb just far enough without waking the beast. Every creak of pressure made my heart tap dance in my throat.
Once clear, Hermione knelt and opened the trapdoor. It creaked, because of course it did.
Ron flinched. "Loudest door in the castle."
"Designed by sadists," I muttered.
I stared at him, exhaling slowly. "Still got it."
Harry knelt beside the trapdoor. "This is it."
Ron looked sick. "We're really doing this."
Hermione looked at me. "Now or never."
I looked down into the trapdoor.
This was supposed to happen in June.
But we brought the ending early.
Let's hope it doesn't bury us with it.
"God save the queen" I said with the music still playing the background.
We jumped.