“Fear always springs from ignorance.”
-Emerson, The American Dream

As it was nearing midnight, there was no one left in the Slytherin Common Room, but Harry and Draco. “Everyone’s gone we can leave now,” said Draco, as he got up from one of the couches. Harry got up, too, and headed for the door. Draco turned to him. “Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” said Harry, not too thrilled to be going out into the Hogwarts halls at night. He touched his hand to the stone and it opened. It seemed a lot louder at night than during the day. They walked out into the corridor.

“We’ll just go searching around for a room. Well, you’ll just go searching around for a room, and I’ll just follow behind you,” said Draco. “I’ll watch your back.”

“Err… thanks,” said Harry. They both crossed the corridor. “Right. Well, on the first floor there’s really just the Great Hall, and on the second floor there’s the room you showed me. So, let’s go to the third floor, then later we could go to the fourth. We’ll… I’ll look around.”

Once they reached the third floor, they began looking into the rooms and even behind statues and suits of armor that were on the left-hand side. The rooms that they looked in, were either empty classrooms with tons of dust and spider webs everywhere or very large, also empty, closets.

“Where are the bloody good rooms?” asked Harry, frustrated after coming out of another empty classroom, his voice a little too loud.

”Shhhh… you’re the one who’s supposed to find the room, not me,” said Draco, leaning against the wall casually.

“Well, a little help would be nice, but since I know that you’re not going to help me, lets start looking on the right-hand side,” said Harry, walking to the next door. He stopped short remembering something.

“What?” asked Draco, concern in his voice.

“Didn’t Dumbledore and Snape say something about not going somewhere on the right-hand side of some floor? Was it this floor?” asked Harry.

“Oh. Wasn’t it the fourth floor? I don’t remember,” said Draco. They were both trying to remember what Dumbledore had said. “Well, if you suddenly get killed, I’ll remember you,” said Draco, jokingly.

“Thanks. I’ll remember you, if you get killed,” said Harry, also joking. He turned around to face the door and began to open it, when Draco pulled him by his collar from behind and brought him behind a suit of armor.

“Cor!” said Harry, startled. Draco covered Harry’s mouth with his hand and peeked behind the armor to check the corridor. Harry was rubbing his neck.

“Shhhh… I saw Mrs. Norris,” said Draco, in a whisper, taking his hand away. Mrs. Norris, Filch the Caretaker’s cat, prowls the corridors when he’s not. “We’ll wait, then we can continue searching." Oh, of course, we wouldn’t stop. Even though we almost got caught.

They stood there for a good five minutes until they were sure that the coast was clear. “Lets go through the door across the hall,” said Harry. “The one that I started to open.”

”Sounds good to me. I just want to get out of the hall,” said Draco. They crept across the hall into the room. Draco closed the door silently and followed Harry further into the room. As Harry looked around, he saw that the room wasn’t as dusty as the others. Some parts of the room weren’t even dusty at all. Harry immediately knew that this room had been used recently for something, he just didn’t know what.

“Look, there’s another door,” said Draco, pointing to a large wooden door at the end of the room. The door looked very heavy and hard to move. Harry said this to Draco.

“True,” said Draco, a tone of disappointment in his voice. “But we’ll never know if we can’t move it, if we don’t try.” He seemed a bit happier after he said this.

“Okay,” said Harry, springing forward. He wanted to see what was behind the door, too.

After standing in front of the door and trying to pull it open, they saw that it was locked. “Bloody door,” said Draco.

“Do you know a spell to unlock it?” asked Harry.

“Oh… um. Alohomora.” Harry heard the door click and unlock itself. Harry and Draco put both their hands against the door and began to push it open, to find that it wasn’t as heavy as they expected, but the door still wasn’t light.

At first, all they saw was an empty room, but whilst they continued to open it, they saw asleep a massive three-headed dog. Just then the door, let out a loud creaking noise, and the tree-headed dog awoke and got up. Harry looked from its three heads to its too many legs, and saw that it really was massive. Harry noticed subconsciously that there was a lock on the floor, but he didn’t have time to think about it. It started growling at them, and Harry and Draco couldn’t help themselves from screaming. They grabbed the door, pulled it shut as fast as they could, and ran out into the corridor.

“We need to get out of here. Someone definitely heard us scream and they’re probably on their way right now,” said Harry, out of breath.

“Well then, lets go!” said Draco, also out of breath.

As silently as they possibly could, they ran all the way back to the Common Room. Once they got through, they both collapsed on a couch. All of that running had worn them out completely. But the first thing Harry thought was that he had to tell Ron and Hermione, but he knew that they wouldn’t be awake now, it was almost three in the morning. He would have to tell them tomorrow. Draco and him had been roaming the third floor for about three hours trying to find a room.

“Bloody hell! What was that?” asked Draco, who was lying on his back.

“Apparently, it was a massive three-headed dog,” said Harry. He was having trouble taking in what he had just said. A massive three-headed dog? I must be seeing things, but then again Draco saw it, too. “The question is: What the hell is it doing here at Hogwarts?”

“Good question,” said Draco.

“We can’t tell anyone about this, Draco. That was definitely the forbidden room Dumbledore warned us about, and no one can know that we were there or we would get in serious trouble,” said Harry, very serious.

“Now we know why he warned us about it,” said Draco. “Well, I got to hand it to you, Harry, you did find a better room. In a way.”

“Funny,” said Harry, sarcastically.

They were lying on the couches for about half a second after Draco said that, when the stone door to the Common Room bean to open. They both jumped up and hid behind the largest green couch. Harry looked around the side of the couch where he wouldn’t be seen, and saw Snape and Filch come in. Filch was, thankfully, not carrying or followed by Mrs. Norris. Harry practically held his breath. They were probably here to check whether the students that had screamed, had been from Slytherin and to see if they were still in the Common Room.

“No one’s here,” said Snape. Harry saw that Filch looked disappointed. He liked “disciplining” students, as he would call it. “They either went to the dormitory already or they were from a different House.”

“The other Head of Houses are checking their Common Rooms, too,” said Filch. “When we go back, we’ll find out whether they found any students.”

“Are you sure you heard more than one person scream?” asked Snape.

“Positive. Why?” asked Filch, curiously.

“Lets just say that if it was one student, then I’d have known who it was, but since it was more than one…” said Snape, his voice trailing off into nothing. Harry knew that the student he was talking about was he. “We’d better get back.”

They both left the Common Room, and Harry filled his lungs with air, as he could breathe again. The stone door slid back shut.

“That was close,” said Harry, as he stood up.

“Too close,” said Draco. “Lets get to the dormitory, just in case someone else decides to come in and look around.”

Once Harry got to his bed, he was almost going to go to sleep in his clothes because he was so tired to change, but he did it anyway. He crawled into bed, and fell asleep almost instantly.