Jade, Alana, and Abigail thundered down the corridor, never minding that the thumping of their shoes might wake the whole school. Or, rather, Alana and Jade thumped. Abigail glided gracefully a few feet off the floor. The girls had pulled their hair back from their faces, and their wands were out. Jade's wand was beech wood, with a center of hippogryph feather; Alana's birch with a sphinx whisker center.

"Where are we going?" Alana panted, bending over and resting her head on her knees.

"We're going back to the library," Jade said. Her confidence had been sparked, and she was no longer shy. Her eyes were wild, and there was a courageous smile on her face. Her hair away from her face made her look brave. She was a leader now, and she knew, somehow, exactly what to do. "I remember there being a place in the journal where Elissa mentions a hiding spot. I just can't remember what exactly she said. Maybe the pages were really important and she couldn't risk them being read."

Abigail rested her ghostly hand on her hip. "I knew Elissa. She was terribly secretive, but we bonded. She said that, if anything were ever to happen that might necessitate the use of those pages, I was to hide them."

Alana sat up and stared at Abigail. "Well, where did you hide them?"

Abigail sighed. "I-I...I cannot remember. Sometimes, we ghosts have bad memories."

Jade threw her hands in the air. "Well, then I guess we'll have to find the journal again. I think it might still be on the floor, but I don't know where I left it."

They reached the library, at which point the three separated and began combing the shelves of the library. Jade made a beeline for her chair by the window, which still had books scattered around it. She dove for a black leather-covered volume, but it was her Potions notebook. Useful, but not what she needed. The one next to it, however, said Diary of Elissa James on it in bold font. Beckoning to the others, she scanned the book, reading aloud. "'...first day of term', '...Allie being mean again', '...inside the grandfather clock'."

"'Inside the grandfather clock'?" Alana looked excited. "Go back a page, go back a page!"

Jade obliged, and passed the book to Abigail, who began to read in her timid, ethereal voice. "'Today, Allie was trying to steal my notebook, so I hid it in my usual spot- inside that big clock in the Grizzleheart common room. I sneak all kinds of things in there: sweets, assignments, sometimes even really important stuff.'" She closed the book. "I think we have found our answer."

                                                   *                     *                        *                  *

In the common room, the three were crowded around the grandfather clock in the corner, prodding it with their wands. Alana yanked on the handles, and Jade tried a variety of spells, to no avail. She even tried the Verdimillious Charm, just in case Abigail had somehow used dark magic to conceal the pages.

"What are we going to do?" Jade asked. "I suppose we could always try to break the door down."

Alana turned to her, incredulous. "Break it down? ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?!"

"Oh yes." Jade seemed flustered, but flicked her wand at the grandfather clock. "Alohamora!" There was a faint clicking noise, and the door swung open. Inside, the clock was ticking, and inside the mechanisms moving made her think of a beating heart. Behind the metronomes, hidden away in a corner, was a pile of papers with crumbling, jagged edges. on top of that was a box of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Beans and a purple Chocolate Frog package with shining gold stars on it. Alana snagged the chocolate frog package, and Jade took the papers with a careful hand.

The three crowded around the pages, Alana chewing on the chocolate.

"Eww, gross! That's like one hundred years old, Alana," Jade said, lighting the tip of her wand to give them light to read by.

"What? It's still chocolate," Alana said, though somewhat muffled by the candy.

Jade leaned over the pages. One of them was the bottom half of a page, so she decided to start there. She lifted her wand to the page, nervous...

It was empty.