The Torment of Quidditch Training (I)

"So, our training had to be moved up! Now! Immediately! Right away! Gather at the pitch! Ron and Hermione had already headed there. I told them to bring your broom for you! It looked like it was going to rain... but that was exactly when Gryffindor's willpower would be tested! A blitzkrieg! We'll catch them off guard! Move!"

"Wood! Wait! Just now, I..." Harry anxiously tried to turn back toward the bathroom door, wanting to tell Wood about the strange sound and whatever might have been hidden inside.

"Whatever it is, tell me after training! Even if the sky falls, it isn't more important than Quidditch! Especially when we're up against those underhanded snakes!" Wood's voice brimmed with fighting spirit. He gave Harry no chance to explain, scooped him up around the waist, slung him over his shoulder, and carried him away from that cold, secluded corridor with light steps, as though Harry were a sack of cotton. He also carried him away from that eerie door and the secrets that might have lain behind it.

Harry's struggles proved useless, and he was filled with enormous frustration and unease. That evil hissing still seemed to linger in his ears. The abandoned girls' bathroom door, along with the inconspicuous brass tap he had glimpsed by accident—a tap carved with a coiled little snake—left an indelible impression on his mind.

He had a powerful intuition: that tap and that voice were connected in some crucial way!

But before he could investigate, before he could even tell anyone, Wood had dragged him back into the noisy real world of Quidditch with irresistible force.

Behind him, inside the abandoned girls' bathroom, all was silent. Only the snake-shaped tap on the sink gleamed with a cold, mute sheen in the dim light. Deep within the