The next week was gone before I knew it, and exams were upon us. I wasn't incredibly nervous about whether I would pass, because Wren had made sure we spent over a month studying, but tests always make me stressed. I suppose all the anxiety that had built up throughout the year didn't help.

I breezed through Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, and Transfiguration. It didn't take much to realize that my strong suit in the wizarding world were spells. After I finished an exam, and sat waiting for my classmates to complete theirs, I would try to use nonverbal magic again, with very little success. However, it was encouraging to see my quill lift a quarter of an inch into the air just by thinking the spell and focusing.

Potions was hard. I performed on an average level, really, but I was just happy to be done with that class for the year. History of Magic was boring, like normal. I've never liked history much, and this was no exception. The only history books I enjoyed were those children's books that outline daily life of historical people.

Herbology, our last exam on Friday, wasn't hard. That might have been due to the fact that Professor Longbottom had been an outstanding teacher all year, because I don't think I had any particular aptitude for the subject myself.

"One whole week of freedom," Albus said, sighing contentedly, as we strolled back to the castle after our exam.

"One week of no studying," I added, grinning.

"One week until we get our results," Wren said nervously.

"Hey, you did fine," I said, smiling reassuringly. "Don't worry about it. Just relax."

We walked up to the common room, and found Luke trying to teach the other Gryffindor first years how to play BS. I had seen him doing tricks with his deck of cards before, but to my knowledge he'd never actually played any card games with anyone.

Wren, Albus, and I joined them on the floor, and I took over the explaining from Luke, who was hopelessly blabbering about how, "You could just say liar but that's not as fun," and not telling anyone the actually rules.

"Ok, Luke, shut up," I said, drawing laughs from the group. I took a seat between Eric and Luke before continuing. "Luke's passing out all the cards, and then you're going to look at your cards, without letting anyone else see. Luke, you go first so they can see us do it."

"All right." He finished passing out the cards.

"Luke will put down an ace, and say, 'One ace.'"

"Or two, or three, or four."

"Right. But he could be lying. If you think he's lying, say, 'BS,' and he'll flip the card-"

"Or cards," Luke said.

"Yeah, or cards, over. If he was lying, he takes the stack. If he wasn't, you take it."

"So...we all put down aces?" Iris asked, frowning.

"No," Luke said, rolling his eyes. "Astra will do twos, then Eric does threes, then you do fours, and it'll keep going till someone runs out of cards."

"That might take a while," Rose pointed out.

I shrugged. "Yeah. It's really fun."

And it was. We discovered that Iris couldn't lie to save her life, because she'd always start laughing as she put the cards down. Surprisingly, Wren was incredible at this game. Luke only barely stopped her from winning by calling BS every time she put down her last card. Eventually, she won anyway.

We played card games for hours, and Luke started complaining that we should have taught them card games earlier, because this was way more fun than wizard chess. That brought indignant comments from Eric, Rose, and Albus, about how "nothing can beat wizard chess, git" (well, Eric was the only one who said "git").

At dinner that night, I sat beside Luna, and tuned out most of her talk about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and other things. I liked Luna, really, but I hate to admit that she annoyed me a lot. She was very strange, especially with all of her made-up creatures.

She finally caught my attention by saying, "I'm going to look for them tonight."

"Look for what? Where?"

She looked a bit hurt. "Have you been listening? I told you, the Nargles took some of my books and I need to find them. So I'm going to go look for them tonight."

"Where?" I asked again.

"Just around," she said vaguely. "I don't know exactly where they took them off to."

Wren caught my eye from across the table. "Luna..." she said slowly, using the tone someone would use to speak to a toddler who didn't understand something, "it's not safe to wander around alone, especially at night. You might get attacked."

Luna laughed. "I'll be fine, don't worry. I've done it before."

"You have?" Wren looked completely horrified.

She nodded, smiling. "I'll be fine."

I glanced at Wren, thoroughly unconvinced. "All right..." Wren looked just as worried as me.

After dinner, I marched straight up to James and said, "We're sneaking out again."

"Ok." It was about thirty seconds before he thought to ask why.

"We have to protect Luna," Wren said, and explained what the blonde girl said to us earlier.

"All right. Wren's coming?" Wren nodded. "I suppose Albus will, too, then, if both his girlfriends are going."

"Ew," Wren said, rolling her eyes. She seemed really nervous, but that could be due to a lot of things: what her scores on our exams might be, sneaking out later. Hey, maybe she even liked Albus. No - that would be weird.

"I am not Albus's girlfriend," I said indignantly. My brain stupidly added, I want to be yours. I mentally facepalmed. That was not true.

Later that night, we slipped through the portrait hole and donned the Invisibility Cloak. It was a tight squeeze with four of us, but we barely managed it. Barely. James had to step out from under it to pull out the Marauder's Map. We scanned it for Luna's dot.

Most people were asleep in their dormitories. Filch and Mrs. Norris, and two aurors, this time Professor Potter, and Ernie Macmillian, were patrolling the halls. Most of the other teachers were in their rooms or offices. Professor Sulcan was prowling the halls, but he did that quite often, according to James.

Finally, Albus spotted Luna's dot. She was on the seventh floor, it seemed, wandering around in search of her book. Luckily, no one else was near that spot.

"I assume the attacker would show up on here, right?" Wren said quietly.

James nodded. "I think anyone would, since I've noticed people's names that I don't know on here. Once I saw the Minister of Magic in Professor McGonagall's office."

We silently padded through the halls, occasionally checking the map. It was incredibly slow going, and eventually James stopped in the middle of the hall, making us all bump into him.

"What is it?" I hissed.

"We have the map. Let's just carry the Cloak, and throw it on if anyone comes near," he suggested.

"Are you sure?" Wren whispered nervously. "W-what if we don't have time to put it on?"

"Fine then, you wear it," James said irritably, tossing it to her. "Just stay close, ok?"

We walked on, Wren by my side. James turned the map off and ducked into an empty classroom as Mrs. Norris padded by, then we continued up to the seventh floor.

It wasn't until we'd actually reached the corridor where Luna was that we started hearing it.

The screams.

We walked into a truly horrifying sight. The cloaked attacker was using Crucio on Luna, who had crumpled to the floor, screaming. James and I both drew our wands and charged, startling the attacker. He turned and ran.

For one second, I was torn. Chase the attacker, or stay with my friend. I'd been a terrible friend to her recently, tuning her out and ignoring her when she talked. Could I really just leave her? Could I do that to her? Didn't I owe it to her to make sure she was okay? But then the attacker would get away again...

Luckily, Albus solved that. "You guys go!" He dropped to his knees next to Luna. James threw the Map at him and ran after the fleeing figure, with me on his heels. I noticed that I didn't hear Wren's footsteps, so at least Albus had help, and the Invisibility Cloak, if something happened to James and me.

Strangely enough, as we dashed down the hall, I finally realized how stupid we'd been all year to sneak out so many times. James and I were likely running to our deaths. This wizard or witch obviously had skills far beyond ours, and if it came down to dueling, we would lose, no question.

The attacker turned a corner, and by the time we followed, he was disappearing into a room that I'd never seen before. We dashed to the door, pushing it open just as it was closing, and stepped inside.

It was a large room, empty except for a fireplace at the far end that the attacker was running towards. James and I stopped running, confused. Why did he lead us here? There wasn't another way out, and wouldn't it have been simpler to deal with all of us out in the hall? Sure, Wren was invisible and could have stupefied him or something, but he didn't know it.

Once he had reached the fireplace, the attacker turned to face us. His wand was pointed at James, probably thinking he was the bigger threat. He was right, of course, since James was a second year and thus knew more spells.

For an agonizingly long few moments, no one moved. No one spoke. The silence was deafening, and with every second I was growing more afraid. Why couldn't he just torture us already and get it over with? Why couldn't he ask us the questions? Why was he just standing there?

James finally got up the courage to speak. He gulped, then said, "Who are you?"

I sincerely doubted that we would get answer to that, and I was right.

In a chillingly familiar voice, the attacker said, "Where is it? Where has he hidden it?"

It might have been my imagination, but voice seemed to tremble a bit as it spoke. I was in too much shock to process that, though.

The voice...it couldn't...

"Who are you?" James demanded again, stepping forward. He hadn't made the connection.

Slowly, the attacker lifted a gloved hand and lowered the hood of the cloak.

~~~~

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN!

I'm so evil!

Cliffhangers are life.

Who do you think it is...?

Sorry for the short chapter, but I didn't have a choice really, because it needed to be cut short for the sake of the cliffhanger.

Vote and comment and maybe I'll update sooner than normal...

Jk, I have a pretty busy week ahead so don't expect an update before Tuesday.

Unless I get a lot of comments for this cliffhanger...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

~Ellie