* * *
Everything was a blur. Harry tried to steady himself and standup, but he had fallen too hard. He lay on the cold stone floor for another ten minutes before fully regaining consciousness. When his senses were back in place, he realized that something was astir in the upper halls. There were sounds of running footsteps, faint gasping and even occasional shrieks. Something had happened while he was off in dreamland. How long had he been out cold? He wondered…then he realized he had to get up and see what was going on. Upon mustering full strength, he got up, and without taking a second look at the mirror, he bolted into the dark halls. What he didn’t see was that the figure in the mirror hadn’t disappeared. He was still there, looking at Harry. Then a wide grin spread across his face and there was a glint in his eye. His dark red eye.
Upon getting back up the trapdoor, Harry immediately realized things were different. Instead of there being another door in front of him, it was a hallway with stairs leading down at the end of it. He rushed to the stairs and looked down. There was the riot. All the Hogwarts students were running down the stairs from every possible direction. There were prefects at every corner, screaming instructions. A few people had already begun to panic. Then he noticed why. The smell of smoke from the upper chambers.
“Hey ! You! Get down from there!” one of the prefects had seen him. But the fact that he came from a forbidden corridor seemed to have slipped the prefect’s mind. He didn’t even seem to know who this prefect was. That didn’t matter. He ran toward the other students’ direction.
“What happened up there?” he asked a ravenclaw girl. She didn’t even look at him, but ran off even faster.
“What’s going on here?” he whispered to himself.
* * *
