Her sharp gaze stabbed at the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, who was about to pull open the door and leave. "You're coming with me to patrol the castle."
"But—" Harry stepped forward anxiously.
"This is an order, Potter!" Professor McGonagall's voice allowed no argument, but when she turned away, Harry clearly saw a flash of tears in her eyes. "Until Dumbledore returns... we follow procedure. Now... go rest. It's for your own good."
When the office door slammed shut in front of him, Harry punched the wall.
The agonizing pain in his knuckles was nothing compared to the despair in his heart. Outside the window, a blood-red moon slowly rose, like an ominous eye watching over the castle. Ginny's time was slipping away second by second.
The castle corridors were dark as ink. Lockhart walked beside Professor McGonagall with a glowing wand in hand, wearing an extravagant sable-fur cloak over his blue silk pajamas, its fabric rustling as he moved. Moonlight streamed through the high windows, casting mottled shadows that divided his flawless profile into fragments of light and darkness.
"If you ask me, Headmistress McGonagall," Lockhart suddenly broke the silence, his voice far lower than usual, "the information Aragog revealed is extremely important." He flicked his wand, illuminating a spider scurrying into a corner. "I clearly recorded in Ghouls Gone Wild that, during the Middle Ages, there was a village in Bulgaria where spider corpses floated in every well—and three months later, a Basilisk destroyed the entire village."
Professor McGonagall stopped abruptly, her eyes behind her half-moon spectacles sharp as blades. "Professor Lockhart, why has this detail never appeared in any of your books?"
"Oh, my dear," Lockhart gave a carefully crafted bitter smile, his fingers brushing the trim of his cloak. "Some knowledge... is too dangerous.