Pansy screamed. Right in front of her, the tall, hulking steel warrior was lumbering slowly toward her.
"Duck!" Malfoy, following the sound of her voice, got there first. The instant she saw the armor, she whipped out her wand. "Petrificus Totalus!"
A spell powerful enough to petrify a grown Wizard struck the armor and did absolutely nothing.
Malfoy started to panic. She realized the thing had an extremely high resistance to magic, but she had no choice but to throw every attack spell she knew at it.
It was no use. Nothing worked.
Suddenly the armored warrior's slow but unstoppable advance faltered, as if something in its inner workings had gone wrong.
"Run!" Seeing her chance, Malfoy gathered her courage, dashed forward, and dragged Pansy back.
The two of them were about to flee when the armored warrior started moving again.
This time, though, it moved as if it had a mind of its own. It spun around, darted into the nearby classroom, smashed through the window with a crash, and vanished from sight.
They were still standing there, not knowing what to do, when David came racing down the stairs from not far away. Without a word, he pulled both girls behind him.
"What happened?" he asked, scanning the surroundings warily, his wand gripped tight in his hand.
Pansy answered at once. "Professor, we saw a suit of armor in the corridor, and it was moving by itself!"
"That's right. A moment ago it even went straight through that classroom and jumped out the window," Malfoy added quickly.
Only then did David look at the classroom beside them. He squinted, and sure enough, there was a shattered window.
Just then Kate finally arrived, panting and later than everyone else. She hadn't even caught her breath before she blurted out, "Brother, what happened?"
"Brother?" Malfoy's ears pricked up, and she glanced suspiciously from Kate to David.
There had to be a forty-year gap between these two. Were there really siblings with an age difference that big?
And from what she'd heard, Kate was the only one left of the Shafiq family now, wasn't she?
But before she could think it through, David told Kate to stay and look after the two girls, and walked over to the window to examine it.
"No good. There's no trace of it left."
They were on the first floor, so there were plenty of places to hide. And whoever it was clearly knew concealment magic well, since they'd vanished without a trace in a matter of seconds.
What he couldn't understand was how someone so good at hiding had been spotted by two students.
He turned back hesitantly, and the look he gave Pansy and Malfoy carried a trace of suspicion.
"What exactly happened?" He walked over quickly and tried to speak to them gently. "Can you tell me what went on?"
Pansy glanced uncertainly at Malfoy. Her small face, white with fright, had finally regained a little color, and she told him everything from beginning to end.
"We realized we'd forgotten something, so we came back from the Quidditch pitch. But as soon as we got to the corridor, we ran into a really big armored warrior moving around in there.
Draco heard me scream and came over to help me drive it off. Then, I don't know why, it suddenly ran away."
"It probably heard our footsteps coming to help and got scared off," Kate reasoned, pretending she knew nothing.
But David had caught a whiff of something odd. "Armor? I remember there's an armor corridor on the fourth floor, and it's full of suits of armor."
The thought made him speak in a tone that brooked no refusal. "You two come with Kate. We're going to the armor corridor to take a look."
Malfoy was about to say something, but Kate secretly tugged at the hem of her robes, and she could only frown and go along with it.
The three of them followed behind David. Pansy, still shaken, clung to Malfoy's arm, and Kate kept hold of her sleeve the whole way.
They climbed the stairs in silence. Malfoy's eyes kept darting back and forth between Kate and David.
It was a weekend. Why weren't these two at the match? What were they doing wandering around the castle?
And she remembered that David's office wasn't even in the direction they'd come from.
For some reason, she couldn't help recalling what Pansy had told her earlier: that there was a photo of David on the desk in Kate's room, and that the two of them seemed to have known each other for a long time.
Add to that the "Brother" Kate had blurted out just now…
Kate had no idea that the look Malfoy was giving her back was growing stranger by the moment.
Her attention was elsewhere anyway.
In theory, her Spirit had already reached 76 points, so keeping her main consciousness intact while controlling a clone should be easy.
But at a moment like this, even a small slip would arouse David's suspicion.
They hadn't known each other long, but ever since they met, Kate had noticed how much he resembled his old father.
He was good-natured, a typical Hufflepuff, but he seemed to have inherited his mother's Auror-like sharpness and intuition, which made him unusually hard to deal with in certain matters.
If Sirius hadn't suddenly made that noise, none of this would be happening.
Cursing the troublemaker who'd acted on his own once more in her head, Kate let go of Malfoy's sleeve, stepped forward, and said quietly, "Brother, the armor corridor is just ahead."
Near the Trophy Room, the armor corridor was lined on both sides with plenty of suits of armor.
The moment Pansy saw those tall armored warriors, she tightened her grip on Malfoy's arm and followed behind Kate, tense as a bowstring.
"Is there any armor here like the one you saw earlier?" David walked at the front, asking patiently.
Malfoy, looking rather pale, turned her attention to the passing suits of armor, quietly comparing each against the armored warrior she'd seen.
Only when they reached the end of the corridor did she shake her head. "None of these is the one we saw. But I noticed something. The number of suits here seems a little off."
"Oh?" David turned around and looked at her in surprise. "You mean one suit of armor is missing?"
"Exactly! I come to the Trophy Room often. There should be fifty-seven suits of armor here, but now there are only fifty-six!" she said, nodding with certainty.
Kate watched their exchange in silence. Once she saw suspicion flare again in David's eyes, she cleared her throat.
"So someone's been wandering around the castle wearing a full suit of armor. But who would do that? Is it a prank, or are they deliberately hiding who they are?"
No sooner had she finished than Pansy cried out, "It's Sirius Black! If he snuck in, he'd definitely find a way to cover himself up!"
"If it really is Black, that's very bad." David knitted his brows deeply. "This will have to be reported to the Headmaster so he can send people to investigate properly."
He turned to Kate. "Take them back. I'm going to the Headmaster's office."
"Okay." Kate nodded and watched his hurried back disappear, raising an eyebrow in satisfaction.
But Malfoy, who had been keeping her eyes on Kate the whole time, saw every bit of that fleeting expression.
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