On the night their trip to Diagon Alley ended, the corridor outside the Hogwarts professors' quarters was so quiet that the snoring from the portraits could be heard.
Zhang Wen had been exhausted long ago. After showering, he had collapsed onto his bed and fallen asleep.
After carrying shopping bags for half the day, both his arms were still sore.
In theory, Mordred should have been asleep too.
But she wasn't.
She lay in bed with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
By all rights, after stuffing herself round at the dessert shop that afternoon and then being dragged off by Artoria for physical training to work it off, she should have been so tired that she would fall asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.
Yet she simply couldn't sleep.
She turned over.
Then turned over again.
Then turned over once more.
When she rolled over for the fifth time, she sat up in bed and glared at her stomach in frustration.
She was hungry.
That was utterly ridiculous, considering how many pieces of cake she had eaten that afternoon.
But the body did not lie. Her stomach was now issuing a very clear protest.
Mordred thought about it for half a minute and decided she could not let something like this ruin her dignity as a knight.
She threw on an outer robe and slipped silently out of the room.
Mordred knew where the Hogwarts kitchens were.
The last time Fred and George had chatted with her, they had mysteriously passed along a piece of "top-secret intelligence." They said that if she went to the still-life painting near the Hufflepuff common room and tickled the pear in the painting, it would turn into a door.
They had even sworn solemnly:
"The elves never close