The small, skinny boy crouched in the shadow of the gargoyle just outside the entrance to the Great Hall, wand gripped tightly in a sweating hand. It was deserted apart from him: well, you'd expect it to be just after midnight on a Tuesday evening.

However, he had recently discovered that Sirius Black, Gryffindor, Marauder and bully passed this way on the way to the kitchens like clockwork every evening.

This was his chance to extract revenge for six years of torment and three close encounters with death: one with the bloody werewolf, one with an acromantula in the Forbidden Forest and one which involved a very long fall off the Astronomy Tower. Yes, Black was most definitely asking for it.

Hearing footsteps echoing on the stone floors, he shrank back further into his hiding place. His . . . informant - he'd like her to be a lot more than that but she wasn't yet - had told him about the invisibility cloak that the Gryffindors used, so he was ready to trust his instincts.

The dust stirred just in front of him.

"Levicorpus" he thought desperately, hoping against all odds that his new spell would work. If it didn't, well, at least they would never know about it. It took talent to create a non-verbal spell. "Levicorpus!"

There was a muffled yelp and he looked up to see his tormentor dangling by one foot about two metres above the floor. It had worked! The Cloak was on the floor underneath. He slipped out and covered himself with it while Black was panicking and pulled out the slip of paper he'd prepared earlier.

He slipped away, took the Cloak off, folded it and levitated it back. The paper settled on top and he ran back to his dormitory: that would show those Gryffindors.

* * * * * * * *

The next morning, Albus Dumbledore strolled down to breakfast, humming cheerfully to himself as he considered whether pancakes or crumpets would make a better breakfast on a Wednesday. He stopped short as he rounded the last corner.

"Oh my," he murmured. Sirius Black, a rising star of Gryffindor House, was dangling in mid-air, a deep red staining his cheeks as he hung above a crowd of curious students.

He approached them, suddenly intrigued. It was a powerful piece of spellcraft to hold someone and resist the attempts to break it.
"Will anyone tell me what exactly has been going on?" he asked.

"He's been hanging here for hours apparently," Lily Evans told him, glancing furiously at her classmate for breaking curfew. He claims not to have seen who did it. This was all that was found."

She handed the Headmaster a slip of paper.

You've always said you're above the rest of us - tell me, is it nice?
The Half Blood Prince