"She's absolutely targeting us on purpose," Ron said with absolute certainty the moment they were safely out of range of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.
As soon as they'd rounded the corner and left the classroom behind, Ron kicked the stone wall in pure frustration. "Just because Professor McGonagall embarrassed her this morning in front of everyone. She's taking it out on all of us."
"It could also be menopause," Hermione speculated thoughtfully.
"Menopause?" Harry's face showed complete confusion, his eyebrows were drawing together. "What's that? Some kind of magical condition?"
Hermione paused for a moment, clearly considering how to explain a distinctly Muggle concept to her friends. Then she explained carefully,
"It's a Muggle term, actually. It refers to a biological period when women reach a certain age, usually around their forties or fifties and their emotions become significantly less stable due to hormonal changes. More irritable, quicker to anger, mood swings, that sort of thing."
Ron nodded with sudden understanding, his face lighting up as pieces fell into place. "I see! So that's why you used to get angry so easily before at the smallest things. Were you also affected by this... meno-pause thing?"
He grinned, clearly pleased with his own wit.
Hermione's elbow struck precisely and painfully against Ron's ribs with accuracy.
"Ow!" Ron cried out, doubling over slightly and clutching his side. "I was just joking! Can't you take a joke?"
"That's not how menopause works, you absolute idiot," Hermione said icily. "And I'm fifteen, not fifty."
"Stop it, both of you," Harry interrupted their familiar scuffling in the corridor before it could escalate further, stepping between them. "Let's go have lunch before the good food is all gone. We still need to find John afterward and talk to him about tonight."
His stomach growled as if to emphasize his point.
At noon, the three of them searched thoroughly all over Hogwarts for their missing Slytherin friend, but couldn't find any trace of John anywhere. He hadn't even appeared in the Great Hall for lunch which was unusual.
They checked the library, Madam Pince hadn't seen him. They checked the grounds where Hagrid was working alone with Fang. They even checked some of the emptier classrooms on the off chance he was studying alone.
Nothing.
"Maybe he's in his dormitory down in the dungeons," Hermione guessed, though she sounded uncertain. "Slytherins do tend to spend more time in their common room than other houses."
"Well, there's nothing we can do about that," Harry said with resignation, running a hand through his messy hair. "We can't exactly waltz into the Slytherin common room. Let's try looking again at dinner."
They had no way of getting into the Slytherin dormitory to find him—the entrance was hidden and password-protected, and even if they could get in, they'd be immediately identified as intruders.
The Slytherins weren't particularly welcoming to Harry either, to put it mildly. Forget about having friends there, he didn't even have a single acquaintance in that house who would help him. Enemies, on the other hand, were plentiful.
Besides this concerning absence, Harry also learned some interesting news from several Hufflepuff students at lunch who were complaining loudly about their morning.
Umbridge had deducted many points in her classes with Hufflepuff and Slytherin as well, and from the younger years at that, first and second years who could least afford to lose points.
"What's that supposed to be? Establishing authority?" Ron seemed genuinely puzzled, stabbing at his roast potato with unnecessary force. "Honestly, with that bizarre, fake tone of hers, there's no real authority to speak of. Maybe she should go learn proper classroom management from Professor McGonagall."
"At least no one dares to slack off in Professor McGonagall's class," Hermione agreed with a nod, swallowing her mouthful of vegetables. "She gets respect through competence, not through petty tyranny."
The three of them spent much of the afternoon between classes enthusiastically badmouthing Umbridge, comparing her unfavorably to every other professor they'd ever had.
By evening, they still hadn't found any sign of John anywhere in the castle. Likewise, they didn't see him at dinner either, his usual spot at the Slytherin table remained empty throughout the meal.
Before heading to Professor McGonagall's office for their seven o'clock appointment, the trio decided to rest temporarily in the Room of Requirement and discuss their strategy for the meeting.
That magical place had almost become like their unofficial secret base over the past few months, because they could easily conjure a comfortable lounge there that suited their exact needs.
Unlike the Gryffindor common room, where the best armchairs by the fire always needed to be fought over and defended against other students, this place was quiet, private, and wouldn't disturb anyone else or draw unwanted attention.
To successfully enter the Room of Requirement, one needed to walk back and forth exactly three times in front of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy on the eighth floor, concentrating intently on the specific type of room needed.
As long as you thought clearly about "comfortable lounge" or whatever you wanted, you could get exactly what you desired. It really was an incredibly convenient and useful room, Harry still couldn't believe more people didn't know about it.
However, just as Ron was pacing back and forth in front of the blank wall for the second time, his face screwed up in concentration, Harry suddenly felt an unexpected pang of unease prickling at the back of his neck.
Something felt wrong.
"Wait! Get over here right now!" He grabbed Ron and Hermione's wrists urgently and yanked them both behind a large suit of armor around the corridor corner, pulling them into the shadows.
"What's wrong?" Hermione asked in a lowered, urgent voice, her was face full of confusion. "Harry, what—"
"Shh." Harry raised his finger urgently to his lips, his green eyes were fixed intently on the wall where the door should appear. "There might be someone already inside the Room of Requirement."
As soon as he finished speaking those words, a familiar door slowly materialized and appeared on the previously blank wall surface.
With the sound of hinges moving and a door opening, a small figure walked out from inside the Room, stepping into the corridor.
Harry quickly withdrew his gaze, pressing himself back and hiding his body completely in the shadow cast by the suit of armor. He held his breath.
"Who is it?" Ron asked in an extremely small voice whisper. "Can you see?"
"Can't see clearly from this angle," Harry shook his head slightly, continuing to signal them urgently to stay quiet and still. "Too far away."
Footsteps echoed in the empty corridor. Unfortunately, they seemed to be getting closer and closer to their hiding spot rather than moving away!
In the increasingly tense atmosphere, Harry's hand moved instinctively toward his wand...
"Potter?" A familiar voice rang out clearly, breaking the silence.
"John!?" Harry emerged from behind the armor in surprise, breathing a heavy sigh of relief. His hand dropped away from his wand. "So, it's you. We've been looking for you absolutely everywhere all day."
John stood in the middle of the corridor, looking at Harry and the others with a mildly puzzled expression on his young face. "This is... were you hiding from me?"
Harry felt his face flush slightly with embarrassment at being caught lurking behind armor.
Harry quickly explained the whole situation.
What he hadn't expected at all was that John actually knew about the Room of Requirement's existence, despite having only been at the school for barely half a year. Most students went their entire seven years without discovering it.
"I learned about it from the house-elves," John explained simply. "They told me there's a magical room on the eighth floor that can transform into anything you need. I asked them where I could find a quiet place to study."
"House-elves would tell you something like that?" Hermione pressed further with interest, her eyes were sharpening. She was the one here who knew the most about house-elves and their typical behavior patterns.
"They won't refuse most reasonable requests from students," John said with a slight shrug, then changed the subject. "Speaking of which, didn't you say you were looking for me all day? What's the matter? Is it about the Defense Against the Dark Arts study group? Has something happened?"
Although Hermione felt something was a bit odd about his explanation, she decided not to pursue it further. Everyone was entitled to their secrets.
"Professor McGonagall wants us to go to her office tonight at seven," Harry explained, getting to the point. "Everyone who participated in the Hogsmeade trip needs to be there for our punishment."
"We were found out?" John looked as though he had expected this outcome from the beginning.
Harry nodded somewhat awkwardly, guilt flashing across his face. After all, John had been invited to Hogsmeade by them—it had been their idea. For John, this was sudden bad news that could affect his already difficult position.
"It's okay, you probably weren't clearly discovered in the photographs," Harry said quickly, trying to reassure him.
He lowered his voice. "As long as you don't say anything to confirm it, we won't give you away or mention your name. But there's still a small chance you'll be found out eventually, so you'd better be mentally prepared just in case."
John shrugged, showing a remarkably indifferent attitude. "It's fine. I might as well go along too and face it."
Harry breathed a sigh of relief at this response. He'd been worried John would be angry at them.
"Even if it's detention, at most it'll just be cleaning up or organizing something," Ron said cheerfully, patting John's shoulder in a comforting gesture. His tone was relaxed and unconcerned. "My two good-for-nothing brothers used to get detention almost every month at least. They survived fine."
Harry privately thought it would be better if Fred and George didn't hear Ron calling them good-for-nothing.
"By the way," he suddenly realized something and turned his curious gaze to John, "what were you doing in the Room of Requirement just now? Have you run into some kind of trouble? Do you need our help with anything?"
John calmly shook his head calmly. "It's nothing important. I just wanted a quiet place to think, that's all."
This evasive, vague answer made Harry feel somewhat strange and unsatisfied. Just as he was about to continue questioning and press for more details, Hermione tugged slightly at his robes and spoke up.
"Stop asking, Harry," she said quietly. "That's John's own private business."
Harry immediately understood what Hermione meant.
Right—John was a Slytherin, and he was obviously being ostracized and excluded in Slytherin House by his pure-blood housemates. As a Muggle-born orphan, John's situation in the pure-blood-worshipping Slytherin was genuinely difficult and probably quite lonely.
He probably couldn't even stay comfortably in the common room without facing hostility and cruel comments. Under these circumstances, wanting a quiet, private place to escape to made perfect sense.
Harry felt a pang of sympathy.
Then, the group of four walked together through the castle corridors to Professor McGonagall's office.
Just as Harry had expected and predicted, their punishment was relatively mild—merely cleaning out the dusty storage room adjacent to the trophy room every evening after dinner, without using any magic at all, for one week.
Seven nights of manual labor.
The group had absolutely no objections to this sentence. It was already a good outcome, far better than they'd feared. Professor McGonagall could have given them much worse.
"I expect you to take this seriously," Professor McGonagall said sternly from behind her desk, looking at each of them in turn over her spectacles. "And I expect you to think carefully about why rules exist. They're not arbitrary—they're for your safety."
"Yes, Professor," they sang in unison.
"You may go," she said with a dismissive wave. "Report to Mr. Filch tomorrow evening at seven sharp."
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