Early the next morning.
The Gryffindor common room was filled with the smell of frying bacon and toast, along with the hurried chatter of students preparing for class.
Harry and Ron squeezed in beside a table near the fireplace. Their breakfasts sat barely touched before them, but their eyes kept darting toward the girls' dormitory staircase.
"Hermione's still not down?" Harry asked in a worried whisper. "That's not like her. She never misses breakfast, let alone turns up late."
Ron speared a sausage and chewed absentmindedly. "Maybe she went straight to the library? You know what she's like. Maybe that broken mirror scared her last night, and she wants to find out what it was."
"No." Harry shook his head, his brow furrowed. "When she ran out last night... something was really wrong. We have to find her."
He remembered the tears streaming down Hermione's face before she rushed out, the icy hatred in her eyes, and her inexplicable words: "I won't let you get away with this."
Caesar stood beside the fireplace, unconsciously rubbing the wand in his robe pocket with his fingers.
His expression was calm; he had buried his loss of composure that night deep inside. But the faint bluish shadows beneath his eyes gave away the fact that he had barely slept.
They waited in the common room a little longer. They even asked a few Gryffindor girls who were heading to class to check Hermione's dormitory, but they reported that her bed was neatly made and she wasn't there.
Just as the two were growing more and more anxious and preparing to search the library or classrooms themselves,
one of Ron's friends, a younger Gryffindor student, came running over, panting.
"Ron! Harry! I just... just saw Granger!"
"Where?" they both asked at once.
The student