You Get What You Deserve

The Hall was starting to empty as people headed off towards their first lesson. Ron checked his timetable.

“We’d better go, look, Divination’s at the top of North Tower. It’ll take us ten minutes to get there...”

We finished our breakfast hastily, I stood awkwardly while Harry, Hermione and Ron said goodbye to Fred and George and walked back through the Hall. As we passed the Slytherin table, Malfoy did yet another impression of a fainting fit. The shouts of laughter followed us into the Entrance Hall.

The journey through the castle to North Tower was a long one. Two years at Hogwarts hadn’t taught us everything about the castle, and we had never been inside the North Tower before.

“There’s – got – to – be – a short – cut,” Ron panted, as we climbed our seventh long staircase and emerged on an unfamiliar landing, where there was nothing but a large painting of a bare stretch of glass hanging on the stone wall.

“Fred and George never showed me –“ I began but I feel silent.

“I think it’s this way,” said Hermione, peering down the empty passage to the right.

“Can’t be,” said Ron. “That’s south. Look, you can see a bit of the lake out of the window...”

Harry and I were watching the painting. A fat, dapple-grey pony had just ambled onto the grass and was grazing nonchalantly. I was used to the subjects of Hogwarts paintings moving around and leaving their frames to visit each other, but I always enjoyed watching them. A moment later, a short, squat knight in a suit of armour had clanked into the picture after his pony. By the look of the grass stains on his metal knees, he had just fallen off.

“Aha!” he yelled, seeing Harry, Ron, Hermione and I. “What villains are these that trespass upon my private lands? Come to scorn at my fall, perchance? Draw, you knaves, you dogs!”

We watched in astonishment as the little knight tugged his sword out of its scabbard and began brandishing it violently, hopping up and down in rage. But the sword was too long for him; a particularly wild swing made him overbalance, and he landed face down in the grass.

“Are you all right?” I asked, moving closer to the picture.

“Get back, you scurvy braggart! Back, you rogue!”

The knight seized his sword again and used it to push himself back up, but the blade sank deeply into the grass and, though he pulled with al his might, he couldn’t get it out again. Finally he had to flop back down onto the grass and push up his visor to mop his sweating face.

“Listen,” I said, taking advantage of the knight’s exhaustion, “we’re looking for the North Tower. You don’t know the way, do you?”

“A quest!” The knight’s rage seemed to vanish instantly. He clanked to his feet and shouted, “Come follow me, dear friends, and we shall find our goal, or else shall perish bravely in the charge!”

He gave the sword another fruitless tug, tried and failed to mount the fat piny, and cried, “On foot then, good sirs and gentle ladies! On! On!”

And he ran, clanking loudly, into the left-hand side of the frame and out of sight. We hurried after him along the corridor, following the sound of his armour. Every now and then we spotted him running through a picture ahead.

“Be of stout heart, the worst is yet to come!” yelled the knight, and we saw him reappear in front of an alarmed group of women in crinolines, whose picture hung on the wall of a narrow spiral staircase.

Puffing loudly, we climbed the tightly spiralling steps, getting dizzier and dizzier, until at last we heard the murmur of voices above us, and knew we had reached the classroom.

“Farewell!” cried the knight, popping his head into a painting of some sinister-looking monks. “Farewell, my comrades-in-arms! If ever you have need of noble heart and steely sinew, call upon Sir Cadogan!”

Yeah, we’ll call you,” muttered Ron, as the knight disappeared, “if we ever need someone mental.”

We climbed the last few steps and emerged into a tiny landing, where most of the class was already assembled. There were to doors off this landing; I nudged Harry, and Ron, and pointed at the ceiling, where there was a circular trap door with a brass plaque on it.

“Sybill Trelawney, Divination teacher,” Harry read. “How’re we supposed to get up there?”
As though in answer to his question, the trap door suddenly opened, and a silvery ladder descended right at my feet. Everyone went quiet.

“After you,” said Ron, grinning, so I climbed the ladder first.

I emerged into the strangest-looking classroom I had ever seen. In fact, it didn’t really look like a classroom at all; more like a cross between someone’s attic and an old-fashioned teashop. At least twenty small, circular tables were crammed inside it, all surrounded by chintz armcharirs and fat little pouffes. Everything was lit with a dim, crimson light; the curtains at the windows were all closed, and the many lamps were draped with dark red scarves. It was stiflingly warm, and the fire which was burning under the crowded mantelpiece was giving off a heavy, sickly sort of perfume as it heated a large copper kettle.

The shelves running around the circular walls were crammed with dusty-looking feathers, stubs of candles, many packs of tattered playing cars, countless silvery crystal balls and a huge array of teacups.

Harry and Ron appeared at my shoulder as the class assembled around us, all talking in whispers.

“Where is she?” I asked.

A voice came suddenly out of the shadows, a sot, misty sort of voice.

“Welcome,” it said. “How nice to see you in the physical world at last.”