It was another of their night time trips together, down to the kitchens to forage up some food, up to their ‘room’; a secluded library wing hidden by a secret passage off the third floor corridor. This was as far from the dungeons as you could possibly get, far away enough to be safe from lurking Sltherin classmates ready to rat them out and the lurking Potions Master that stalked the hallways ready to catch any student at their worst, known to everyone as the feared Professor Snape, Death Eater.
The three of them, long time friends, thick as thieves, partners in crime, all for one and one for all; their faces set with concentration and light feet against the stones. The Trio were out tonight.
The first, he liked to be the joker, the rib-tickler, sharp of wit with the patience of a flea, forever jumping out of one project and into another -- his latest being a sweeter-than-honey prank on a Slytherin prince by the name of Draco Malfoy. The second, the quiet steady, methodical worker, with a taste for illicit night walks and clever pranks, the company she kept delighted in her ideas, the spells she helped construct a balanced plan in her hands, her careful mind focused up.The fourth, ringleader, soft- hearted quiet man, wicked sense of Quidditch with an agility few could match, using honesty and valor to help his friends out of any situation, with thoughts on a certain beutiful Oriental Ravenclaw.
They didn’t talk as they slipped through the shadows together, six years of careful practice with the Invisibility Cloak had provided them well. A creak of a door startled them: their bodies freezing by the wall.
Minutes passed and the the lack of sound made them move forward after the bushy haired girl mouther, "The Wind."
They proceeded on, slipping into their sound-proofed room with practiced grace, each beginning to breathe normally again, their laughter escaping like waves.
"Hey, Ron! Another birthday gone, how does it feel?"
"Mione, how’s the wonderful Vicky?"
"Harry, congrat’s on the test score! Who’s the man? Who’s the man?"
"Ron, what’s this I hear about Malfoy trying to make a move on your girl?"
The conversation blundered around like an errant tumbleweed, the three sixth formers letting loose their blatant energies after the separation of Christmas break.
Ron Weasly shook his famous red hair and smiled his goofy grin, tossing himself unabashfully into a low, and decidedly squishy armchair. Hermione Granger folded her legs up underneath her, perched on a desk, and flung out a determined smile, one filled with the pleasure that the splendid map that was in their possession once more, a wonderful item to research and learn more on new experital magic with. Harry Potter folded his arms and his legs and lent on the edge of the desk, his slight build one of power and lean muscle, looking every bit a boy with a crush.
This place was their place: a secret library wing housing restricted books that they half-heartedly cleaned every Saturday -- the neat and ever-precise Hermione often having to track the boys down and force them to do it to keep the dust from building. This was their haven, their escape from the rules and regulations - whenever it wasn't that 'time of the month' for Hermione, not that they would say it to her face. Whenever Harry wasn’t practicing Quidditch with the gryffindor team on the pitch. Whenever Voldemort or some related calamity would spring up and they would spend night and day researching, thinking,even inventing.
Hermione -- the Prefect - was particularly suspicious that both Professor Dumbledore knew of their haven, as did Professor McGonagall. She could never be too sure as to why their Head-of-House chose to overlook their discrepancy, especially theirs on this. until. of course, she came open the realisation that at least it was a safe place away from spying eyes (Malfoy). It was also safe for rather radical conversations that were too risky for the common room or behind the library stacks (vampirism, gossip, and on the occasion, the cross-breeding between a Dragon and a Blast-Ended Skrewt). And at least here, there was absolutely no chance of people almost being killed (Harry).
In the wing itself there was a slightly-caved-in-on-the-left couch, several battered tables and chairs, hundreds of book shelves, thousands of books. and Moody’s old trunk with the addition of a good ladder, that was large enough to fit them all in if Snape or Filch came ‘a-calling’, trying to catch students ‘out of bed’. They, for instance, might have been slightly startled to see so many crosshatches of footprints around on the floor, and wondered why there were none in a certain space in the room. Had they designed to investigate further, they would have found a seven times locked chest with an illusion of nothingness: and inside, two boys and one girl, three young men and woman, three adults with legs and arms: and then no one after the first pulled on his Invisibility Cloak on them with a speed that came from constant use...
Then...
And then...
Footsteps.
A pale-haired figure wrapped in her step-father's cloak of nothingness comes in. She is alone, a slight persona that is fleeting in its quietness and ever-increasing night.
She looks around, seeing the imprints of the past cover the floor in a slow- dance of memory. She finds a battered, much beloved book Hogwarts a History on the table, aged, but quite like the cyber files they had on Hogwarts, she herself, had tucked into the crook of her elbow on her notebook computer.
She felt heavy: weighed down by her fifteen year old past exeriences and the expectations of...a tight knit family of hero’s for the physical hereditary lightening bolt scar from an old war, a lonely world through the past of wrong-doings and empty mistakes. She was tired by the weight the world pressed on her from its needs to have her avenge the murder of her father, not to mention a shattered childhood being raised by a broken hearted parent, shot out at fear itself somewhere in her future.
A broken past. A broken present. A broken future.
"Harriet Drusilla Potter! Come on, before I drag you out! We’ve only got half an hour to eat and finish our fake horoscope for Crazy Trelawny and we have to hurry before all the good PC’s are taken!"
She turned to leave.
The footsteps faltered.
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