And you definitely didn't hear anything?" his friend asked, stooping down to help him pick up the other items from the floor.
"No… I've been in the common room on my own for the last hour, so it can't have happened then – I would've heard it," Harry told him. "I came up here after breakfast, and everything was fine."
"We've been in the common room all morning though," Ron frowned.
"Things were a little rowdy though, weren't they?" he pointed out, thinking back to earlier that morning, when Seamus, Dean and a few of the other boys had been trying out the twins' latest invention: Bellowing Bonbons – not the quietest of sugary treats, and who knew where they'd found the resources to make them.
Ron nodded, in acknowledgement.
"But who would do this? And what did they want with the diary?" Harry asked, more to himself than anybody else.
Ron thought about it for a moment, before he spoke again.
"It must've been Snape."
"Snape?" he repeated, eyebrows disappearing beneath his hairline.
"He must've found out you've got the diary. He doesn't want you finding out what he's been up to, so he stole it back!" Ron declared, sounding more and more confident in his theory as he went on.
"But it's like Seamus said, whoever it was would need to know the password," Harry pointed out. "Snape doesn't."
"Oh come on, Harry. He's a teacher – it can't be that hard to find it out," the redhead countered.
Harry sat on the edge of his dishevelled bed, processing the though, before shaking his head.
"No, I don't think so. You know what the Fat Lady's like – she never lets him in. Besides, don't you think one of us would've noticed if Snape had strolled past us and popped up here?"
At that, Ron had to agree. "Yeah, I s'pose so…. But then, who could it have been? Why would another Gryffindor do this?"
He shrugged. "Well, there's plenty of people around here who think I'm the heir of Slytherin, so who knows? You have just given me an idea though."
With that, he stood back up, pulled his dad's invisibility cloak from his trunk and started back towards the common room.
"Harry, wait up! What idea?" Ron asked, following him back down the stairs and towards the portrait hole. "Where are you going?"
"To the kitchens."
"The kitchens? If I'd known you were that hungry, I would've snuck you something back from lunch," Ron commented.
"Not for food," Harry told him, lowering his voice when he noticed the curious glances of several other students from around the common room. "I need to find one of the kitchen elves. Come on."
"But we're not supposed to go out around the castle without a teacher," Ron reminded him.
"Which is why I've got this," he said, unfolding the cloak.
Checking behind them, Ron gave in, joining his friend beneath the cloak, and the two of them slipped silently from the common room.
"What do you want with the kitchen elves, anyway?" he whispered, as they made their way down the corridor.