"Are you all right?" Hermione's voice, breathless and small, comes from the next stall. She sounds younger than usual. She sounds afraid. I don't answer. I move. The second-floor girls' lavatory smells of peppermint soap and something else. The something else is worse than anything in the Potions storeroom. A creature squats at the doorway, hunched over, breathing through wheezing gills. It is the size of a laundry basket and smells of rotting parchment and old socks. "Vera?" Hermione squeezes the bars of her stall. "Please—" "Stay low," I say. My wand is already half out of my sleeve. "What's that?" Hermione whispers, small and sharp. I glance at the tiles, the drain, the towel hooks. The beast's skin gleams with an oily film. Its mouth is a vertical tear lined with teeth that look like broken quills. It makes a wet clicking noise. "An awful thing," I say. "Don't show your hands." "Will it—" She chokes. "Will it bite?" "It will whatever it can. Stay backed in. Do not make sound." I push myself along the stalls, my boots silent on wet stone, and stop two stalls down. The creature has not noticed me. It is focused on where the corridor meets the lavatory, as if it's guarding the doorway. "You should go get someone," Hermione says. "I could," I say. "Then we'd wait. Or I can clear it." "Clear it?" The word trembles. "Watch me," I say. Hermione goes very