Hermione's shriek tore through the silence of the dormitory. For a second, nothing happened. Then her roommates' sleepy, alarmed voices followed:
"What?"
"Who screamed?"
"For Merlin's sake, what was that?"
Only then did the room stir to life: bed curtains rustled, beds creaked, and one by one the girls jumped up, hurriedly wriggling out of their blankets.
"Lumos!" Lila shouted, and wandlight flooded the room.
The girls froze in confusion, trying to make sense of the commotion. Lila was the first to look at Hermione. She was sitting on her bed, pressing the blanket to her face, as if hiding behind it. From behind the soft fabric came her ragged breathing and quiet sobs.
"What happened, Hermione?" Lila asked. "Why did you scream?"
Hermione flinched and slowly lowered the blanket from her face. The wandlight cut into her eyes. She squeezed them shut for a moment, then opened them again and quickly looked around, checking whether it was still hiding somewhere. Her fingers moved on their own to the skin of her neck, which still remembered the touch of that horrible creature.
Lila leaned forward, not taking her eyes off Hermione, as if hoping to read the answer on her face. Olivia was watching at first with a faint smile, but the moment she noticed Hermione's fingers tightening around her throat, the smile vanished, replaced by wary disbelief. Nora, meanwhile, rolled her eyes, folded her arms across her chest, and, without hiding her irritation, turned to Lila and tapped her temple with a finger, as if to say: our know-it-all has completely lost her mind.
Still without saying a word, Hermione crawled closer to the edge of her bed, froze, then carefully leaned out and looked down. On the floor at the foot of the bed lay a single twisted bedsheet. Hermione scanned the room, searching for the pumpkin, and finally spotted it. It lay still in the corner, glinting dully in the wandlight. There was no sign left of the thing that had just been reaching for her.
"There was…" She swallowed, her throat raw and sore. "Something," Hermione said at last, lifting her eyes to Lila and pointing at the sheet and the pumpkin. "It tried to hurt me."
"Something?" Nora echoed. She had been watching Hermione the whole time with growing amazement, and a pleased smirk slowly spread across her face. "A sheet and a pumpkin tried to hurtyou?" She snorted and glanced around, looking for support from the others. "What, are there dangerous cucumbers lurking somewhere too? Or are the pillows in on it as well?" Nora shook her head. "Honestly, Hermione, you've studied yourself into this. You're seeing things. You need a break from those books of yours."
Rolling her eyes, she turned back to Lila. But Lila wasn't smiling. Her face stayed tense, and she kept watching Hermione closely.
"Hermione," she began quietly. "But how could a pumpkin possibly hurt you? We brought it from the Great Hall after the feast. It's just an ordinary pumpkin."
She looked back at the corner of the room, where the harmless orange symbol of Halloween lay, and frowned.
"Or is this… some kind of prank?" Lila looked at Hermione, uncertain, with a hesitant smile. "You're just… uh… joking, right?"
Olivia also looked at Hermione with hope and gave a small nod, as if backing Lila up. But fear was growing clearer in her eyes.
"No," Hermione whispered, still rubbing her throat. There was still a tremor in her voice. "It was here." She pointed to the floor at the foot of the bed. "It had a pumpkin for a head, and the eyes in it… they were glowing red. And the body… it was made of a bedsheet, and the thing was reaching for me… for my throat. It tried to strangle me, and it… it said that retribution is inevitable."
"It?" Nora mocked again. "A pumpkin and a sheet playing strangler?" Lila waved her off impatiently, telling her to stop.
"Retribution?" Lila repeated quietly. "What retribution? For what? And who could even threaten you? This is Hogwarts. It's safe here. You don't have enemies who would —"
"I do," Hermione cut her off. Her voice was hoarse, as if the words were hard to get out. "The League of Light. They've already tried to kill me before. Twice."
"Oh…" Olivia breathed. Her eyes went wide with horror; she pressed her hands to her mouth and slumped back onto the bed, as if her legs had given out.
"Kill you?" Lila echoed, shaken. "But… but that's…" She trailed off, stunned.
"This is all bullshit," Nora tried to say, but her voice no longer sounded as confident as before.
Lila shot Nora a sharp look and said, "That's enough, Nora. This isn't a joke. We're going to Professor McGonagall."
***
The next morning, a sleepy mood hung over Gryffindor Tower. The sun was already high, but students were still drifting out of their dormitories in pyjamas and robes, hair in disarray. Many of them were stretching drowsily. Hermione's scream during the night had woken half the tower, and now everyone who passed by threw her a look: some tired and irritated, some curious or mocking, and some openly wary.
Hermione, already in her robes, stood by the exit with her head lowered, waiting for Harry and Ron. With every sideways glance, her shoulders hunched in tighter. At last her friends reached her.
"Let's get out of here," she said quietly. "Everyone's staring like I made it all up."
Harry nodded without a word, and Ron shot an angry glare at two older girls who snickered into their fists as they watched Hermione go by. The three of them left the common room, and the heavy portrait creaked shut behind them.
The corridor was cooler than the tower, and wrapping their robes tighter around themselves, they hurried towards the Great Hall. A few first-years heading for breakfast exchanged looks and began whispering as soon as the trio passed.
They soon reached the Great Hall. Voices were already buzzing, dishes clinking, but on a Sunday morning everything moved more slowly: people were lazily reaching for their cups, talking in low voices. A few times, someone turned to look at Hermione and then quickly looked away.
They sat down at their table, a little apart from the others, and only then did Ron lean closer to Hermione and ask, concerned, "So how did all this end? Did McGonagall find anything?"
"No. She didn't find anything definite," Hermione sighed. "She said that if anyone can sort this out, it's the specialists from the Ministry of Magic's Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She took the pumpkin and the bedsheet and sent them off to be checked by someone she knows. Looks like she's made some useful contacts during her interrogations," she added with a grim smile.
Hermione poured herself only pumpkin juice. Harry was prodding his eggs and sausages with his fork, barely touching the food either. Ron, on the other hand, was chewing toast thickly spread with jam and butter, with obvious appetite.
"Well, at least she believed you…" he mumbled through a full mouth. "That's something."
"So she didn't have any version at all?" Harry cut in.
"She did. Even a few," Hermione said, lowering her voice. "The first was that I dreamed it all. That I took a dream for reality. Nora, of course, latched onto that idea straight away and loudly backed it up. And now she's going around Gryffindor telling everyone that's what happened."
She pulled a face and shook her head, annoyed by her roommate's behaviour. Just then, someone at the next table burst out laughing, and Hermione flinched, thinking they were laughing at her. But when she turned, she saw they were talking about something of their own.
"I need to calm down," she muttered, barely audible.
Then she looked at the boys and, seeing they were waiting for more, went on, "But there were other versions too. For instance, that it was an illusion. Or a construct."
"A construct?" Harry repeated, raising an eyebrow. "What even is that?"
"It's a kind of spell… a special one," Hermione began, reluctantly, which was unlike her. "It sort of brings an object to life. More precisely, it makes it act according to a set programme. Like there's a sequence of actions built into it, and when the spell is activated, the object… or even several objects start carrying it out."
"Never heard of that," Ron muttered, spearing a piece of bacon with his fork.
"That's because you don't read enough!" Hermione said in her lecturing tone, and Ron rolled his eyes at once. "You know the suits of armour standing all over Hogwarts?" she went on, not noticing his reaction. "Those are constructs too. They follow orders if you activate them. I even read that in case of danger, they can defend the castle!"
Harry listened with real interest, while Ron was already looking around; it was clear from his face that Hermione's lectures bored him.
"So was it a construct after all?" he asked impatiently when she finished.
"According to McGonagall, that's unlikely," Hermione said, taking a sip of pumpkin juice and looking past Ron. "Creating a construct takes very advanced magic. And the caster has to be somewhere nearby. And we don't seem to have any wizards like that in our dormitory. At least not yet."
"But the pumpkin and the sheet really were there, right? You didn't make them up?" Harry pressed.
"McGonagall thinks I might have seen them before going to sleep, and my subconscious put together a frightening image from them," Hermione sighed.
Harry gave her a questioning look.
"I definitely woke up because of a sound," she snapped, annoyed when she caught that look. "It was real. That's why I think it was an illusion…" She fell silent for a second, thinking. "Only that doesn't explain why the blanket had slipped off the bed, like someone had pulled it down. And my throat hurt."
She went quiet, touching her neck and staring into space, as if trying to go back to that night in her mind.
"Yes. It doesn't explain that." Her voice grew firmer. "When it was over, the blanket was halfway on the floor. It couldn't have ended up there by itself."
"So what was it then, if none of the versions fit?" Ron asked, surprised. He had finished eating, and his interest in the night's events had come back.
"I'll have to dig around in the library," Hermione replied uncertainly, shrugging. "Maybe there's something we just haven't thought of…"
Ron snorted and shook his head. He had never understood why, in Hermione's view, the library could answer any question. For a few seconds, silence fell between them. Then Harry broke it.
"By the way, how's McGonagall?" he asked. "Are they still hauling her to the Ministry for questioning?"
Hermione looked momentarily thrown — her thoughts were still spinning around the night attack. But once she understood what he meant, she waved it off, and for the first time in the whole conversation, a hint of relief crossed her face.
"McGonagall is finally in the clear. They held a reconstruction on the roof of the Astronomy Tower. In the end, all the Aurors who were there confirmed that her actions were fully justified, no matter the consequences. She didn't harm anyone — on the contrary, she saved our lives. And she simply couldn't afford to hesitate," Hermione added, recalling that evening. "So the Ministry ruled that her actions were completely justified. More than that, she was officially thanked for saving the students."
"So all the charges were dropped?" Harry asked.
Hermione nodded.
"And what about Honeydew? Are his parents still going on with that nonsense? Or have they finally calmed down?"
"They ought to be questioned themselves," Ron muttered, "preferably with Veritaserum."
He had never had any warm feelings toward Honeydew since the start of term and clearly felt no sympathy whatsoever for his 'suffering' relatives.
Hermione ignored his comment and replied evenly, "No one knows where Honeydew is — not yet. But according to the Ministry, McGonagall has nothing to do with his disappearance. He used the portal on his own. Though their family's lawyer, Scribble, tried his best to pin it on her."
"And what about the fact that she created a portal into Hogwarts? They didn't punish her for that?" Harry asked.
"She received a formal reprimand," Hermione replied. "But in any case, it's an old matter, and the Ministry decided not to pursue it after all this time. Especially since the book-portal is now in their hands and no longer poses any danger."
"Well, that's something," Harry sighed in relief. "Otherwise it would've felt like we set McGonagall up. Like all those problems with the Ministry happened because of us."
Hermione nodded absently. Her gaze grew distant again, and a second later she muttered quietly, "And still… if it was an illusion, how did the blanket end up on the floor?"
She tapped her fingers on the table and touched her neck.
"No. Only a construct explains what happened. Which means my opponent really is dangerous. And very strong in magic."
Hermione looked up at her friends. The worry in her eyes was clear.