Ron Weasley had been sitting in the Slytherin Common Room for only a few minutes, having been summoned for...he'd already lost count, how many times now?...to recount what he'd seen. He looked distinctly unrested and fairly annoyed by now; the novelty of having told everyone his side of the story faded when the Aurors arrived. All he wanted to do was get back to the Gryffindor Commons to tell Harry and Hermione the news...which was probably old by now.

"Alright, boy," snapped the Auror grilling him for information, "Let's start from the top. You're Ronald Weasley, Gryffindor Prefect."

"Yeah," Ron replied wearily.

"Now, what were you doing, wandering around the school grounds so late? There's a curfew, you know..."

"As I said, I had Prefect duties. It was my turn last night to catch any students out of bed. By the time I was done, it was 'round eleven, and I really wanted to get back to the Commons to finish up that Potions assignment I'd left to last." Ron cast a careful glance in the direction of Snape to make sure he hadn't overheard the last bit. The Auror didn't seem to notice. "Do I really have to repeat the whole thing? I've said it about five times just to you...no offense, of course."

"Keep going," the Auror growled irritably, scribbling notes on his clipboard. "So why didn't you head back straight to Gryffindor Tower?"

"I was...hungry..." Ron admitted sheepishly as his stomach, on cue, growled rather loudly. He hadn't even had a chance to eat a decent breakfast. "So I decided to pop by the kitchens to grab a bite."

"An extremely long bite, if it took you as long as you said it did," growled the Auror.

"I was starved! And it's hard to refuse a banquet when it's laid out in front of you...anyway, by the time I was done, it was definately past midnight, so I hurried off back to Gryffindor Tower. Of course, I didn't get there, because this Slytherin boy comes tearning down the stairway off to my right, screaming like a girl in some kind of hysterics. I thought he was just causing trouble right there and then, or covering up for something he didn't want me to see, so I try to cut him off. Then he screams, 'A monster! There's a monster, right there!' and he points to this door. I take a look at the door, but when I do he runs right past me, at which point I think to myself, 'Ron, you've just fallen for the oldest trick in the book'.

"So I turn around and yell at the Slytherin and tell him to come back, but...I donno, maybe because he really looked like he'd seen something...sometimes you just don't know...I decided to check out this 'monster' of his. After all, he could be faking and his mates might still be in there, waiting for me to leave." Ron paused to breathe before continuing, becoming a little more relaxed now that he was telling his part of the story again. The Auror just kept scratching away at his clipboard with his quill. "So I take a good look inside this room...but it's empty. Nothing there at all. Okay, it was dark, but still, you can tell a room's empty when you see it.

"Which then makes me think now that the little git made the whole thing up to get himself out of trouble for being out so late. I run down the stairs and down the corridor I saw him run off to, to see if I could grab hold of him. Thing is, I'd spent so much time looking in that room that he'd gone. I figured that he might have decided to make it to his Common Room, so I turned around and then...well, I saw this thing...

"Describe this 'thing'," snapped the Auror.

"I was getting to that. It was...huge, and fast, heading for the Forbidden Forest. It was too dark to say what it really was...but I reckon it was a dragon, or something like it. That's all I managed to see before it dissapeared into the forest. Then I said to myself 'Ron, this is crazy. You'd better go get Professor McGonagall.' And that's what happened. Can I leave now? I haven't slept a wink since then."

"Just a moment, you. Do you know who that boy is, the one who saw the monster?"

Ron frowned. "He was kind of weedy...black hair and all...but yeah, I'd seen him before..." The Gryffindor prefect scanned the room and his eyes came to rest on Theodore. "It's that one over there," he said, pointing to the Slytherin boy. "Theodore Nott!"