"Oh... is it too late to run now?" Ron asked numbly as he watched Filch slowly get back to his feet.
"Of course we can still run! He hasn't seen our faces!"
Harry reacted fastest this time. He immediately grabbed Kane and the still-stunned Ron and took off.
The situation was perfectly clear now.
Malfoy had set them up.
"Once I get out of this completely unscathed tonight, I swear I'm going to..." Ron was just about to make a grand declaration when Harry cut him off.
"Don't! Don't say it! Something bad will happen!"
"Fine."
The three of them kept running with their heads down.
Unfortunately, Filch's physique was nothing like that of an old man. If anything, he seemed more like a genuine track-and-field athlete.
His legs worked astonishingly well. In the blink of an eye, he chased them up three or four floors without even breathing hard, looking every bit like some hidden expert.
And he was getting closer.
"Kane, do something! He's catching up!" Harry whispered urgently.
"No! Filch is a Squib. What if we misjudge our strength and accidentally kill him?" Ron's mind was remarkably clear at this particular moment.
If they were caught wandering around after curfew, the worst they would normally get was a deduction of House points. Maybe detention if things got serious.
But if they actually injured Filch badly, the three of them would probably be sent straight home.
Kane clearly had a different idea.
Compared with his unique shadow magic and summoning magic, hadn't Quirrell just taught him a spell not long ago?
It dealt basic damage, plenty of people knew it, and there was absolutely no way it would cause serious injury.
The Knockback Jinx!
Kane drew his wand.
Blue light flashed.
Filch, who had been hot on their heels, was suddenly struck by a tremendous force. He toppled backward, rolled several times across the floor, then disappeared into a nearby room with a thud.
Just as all three boys breathed a sigh of relief, a low, unsettling growl rumbled from the throat of some enormous beast.
All three shuddered.
"This looks like the fourth-floor corridor. The room Filch just rolled into wouldn't happen to be the one Dumbledore warned us about at the start of term, would it...?"
Ron swallowed.
The next instant, all three charged toward the room at the same time.
As the horrifying noises grew louder, Kane could already imagine pieces of Filch's skin scattered across the floor.
Fortunately, Filch was lucky.
Or perhaps his body was simply tougher than expected.
Or maybe the three-headed dog attacking him had just eaten.
Whatever the reason, it seemed more interested in playing with Filch than seriously mauling him. The scene looked terrifying, but he didn't actually have any real wounds.
He was, however, covered in slobber.
In short, the moment the three boys entered the room, they saw an enormous three-headed dog licking Filch.
If one ignored Filch's miserable screams, at first glance it almost looked like an owner happily playing with his pet dogs.
In an instant, Kane used the Summoning Charm to summon a frog.
Its enormous tongue shot forward and stuck firmly to Filch. Then it snapped back, casually yanking him away from the three-headed dog.
Apparently, the frog's code had higher priority than the three-headed dog's.
Now that Kane and the other two had rescued Filch, the caretaker had gotten a perfectly clear look at all three of their faces.
Still, when Filch remembered that they had just saved his life...
As for how his life had ended up in danger in the first place...
Well, at least they had stopped him from becoming a pile of dog shit by morning.
Filch looked at the three young wizards and ultimately decided he should show at least a little human kindness.
"Just this once. There won't be a next time! Understand?"
Kane, Harry, and Ron nodded frantically.
"Get back to your dormitory. I'm giving you one minute to disappear from my sight," Filch said.
"Thank you, Mr. Filch."
Kane was about to leave when Harry decided to confirm his suspicion.
"Mr. Filch, why were you waiting for us in that room?"
"Have you forgotten who challenged you to that wizard's duel? Now get moving. You've got forty seconds left."
Filch's face returned to its usual stern, intimidating expression.
The moment they heard that, the three boys immediately picked up the pace and hurried all the way back to the entrance of Gryffindor Tower without stopping.
Perhaps it was because Ron had only gotten halfway through tempting fate earlier.
Filch had let them go, but the jinx had still been spoken halfway into existence.
In the end, they didn't escape punishment after all.
Professor McGonagall, dressed in cat-patterned pajamas, had already been waiting in the Gryffindor common room for quite some time.
"You have spent nearly half the night wandering around after curfew. I think ten points from each of you is neither too harsh nor too lenient a punishment."
Professor McGonagall's lips were pressed into a thin line.
"We have no objections," Kane, Harry, and Ron replied in unison.
"Good. Now get to bed. You should consider yourselves fortunate that you have no classes tomorrow morning."
And so, when Gryffindor's young witches and wizards woke early the next morning, they were all greeted by the wonderful news:
Good morning, Hogwarts!
Yesterday's House-point deduction lottery had produced a grand total of thirty points.
Hermione, who had also gotten up early, naturally saw the notice.
Perhaps Kane and the others really had been set up last night?
What genuinely surprised her, however, was that points had actually been deducted.
Considering Kane's status, Hermione could easily imagine him running into Filch, slapping the man so hard he could no longer tell which way was north, and then somehow getting Filch to thank him afterward without it seeming the least bit strange.
And yet even Kane had lost points?
Professor McGonagall truly was impartial.
Hermione sat on the sofa, quietly marveling at the thought.
At that moment, her roommate Lavender Brown came over and sat beside her.
"By the way, Hermione, weren't you out after curfew last night too? And you came back only a little before Harry and the other two. Do you know how they got caught?"
Hermione turned a page of her book.
"No. We just came back to the castle together and went up to the eighth floor. After that, we split up."
"I think I know a little about it," Seamus Finnigan suddenly said.
In an instant, more than half the common room, everyone who had been paying attention to the lost points, turned to look at Seamus.
With so many people staring at him, Seamus instinctively scratched his nose.
"I woke up last night to use the loo. Then I remembered I'd left our dormitory's wizard chess set in the common room, so I came downstairs to get it. When I got here, I saw Professor McGonagall already sitting in the common room, like she was waiting for someone to walk straight into her trap."
Hermione frowned.
"So Professor McGonagall didn't just happen to catch Kane and the others. She already knew they were out after curfew and was waiting here for them?"
In an instant, everyone came to the same conclusion.
There was a traitor in Gryffindor.
They weren't afraid of losing points.
They were Gryffindors. Who among them had never broken a rule?
But if another Gryffindor student had actually stabbed their own classmates in the back, that changed the nature of the entire situation.
And the only person who had known Kane, Harry, and Ron were going out last night, with timing that matched perfectly, was...
Hermione looked around at the group of students, none of whom had apparently considered that Kane and the others had enemies, namely Malfoy.
She sighed helplessly.
Getting a group of eleven-year-old Gryffindors to put aside their hot blood and use logic and their brains to deduce the real culprit was probably harder than teaching hyenas in Africa to write with their tails.
Just as she was privately roasting her classmates, Hermione suddenly sensed something strange.
She raised her head.
More than half the common room was now staring directly at her.
Hermione's mouth twitched.
"...You don't seriously think I'm the one who sold Kane and the others out, do you?"