Chapter Text
"Harry!"
Hermione was tugging at his sleeve, staring at her watch. "We've got exactly ten minutes to get back down to the hospital wing without anybody seeing us - before Dumbledore locks the door -"
"OK," said Harry, wrenching his gaze from the sky, "let's go ..."
But it was too late. Professor Snape and Minister Fudge were practically outside the door to Professor Flitwick’s office – there was no chance to get past them unseen. Harry ran to the edge of the tower, looking down towards the ground. He hesitated. Using his powers, he could climb straight down the wall, but there was no way to do so without Hermione knowing it.
Harry looked at his friend and made his decision. The secret of her Time-Turner had put some strain on their friendship during the year, and he didn’t want to keep his own secret from her, or from Ron, any longer.
“Hermione, come here, I can get us down.”
“How are you going to do that?” Hermione demanded. “You don’t have your broom, or your Invisibility Cloak, or –“
Harry put his hand over her mouth. “You trust me, don’t you?” he asked, putting his other hand around her waist. She nodded. “Good. Hang on, and don’t scream.”
And, with that, Harry pulled Hermione off the top of the tower; and the two of them fell into the night-time sky.
******
“Did you hear something?” Fudge asked, as Snape undid the multiple locking charms and other protections on the door to Flitwick’s office.
“Such as?”
“It almost sounded like someone screaming.”
******
“Hermione,” Harry said with a small smile, “I thought I asked you not to scream.”
“If you wanted me not to scream, maybe you shouldn’t have thrown us both off the West Tower!” Hermione hissed. The pair was currently struggling to get through a window located just down the hall from the Hospital Wing. “And just how were we not killed by your little stunt, I didn’t hear you cast a single spell the whole way down!”
“The way you were shrieking I’m not surprised.” Harry joked, attempting to lighten the conversation.
Hermione dropped through the window and turned to glare at Harry. He held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Look, I’ll explain everything to you and Ron when this is all sorted out, let’s just get back before Professor Dumbledore shuts us in. Or out.” Hermione agreed, though the hmph she made indicated that she still wasn’t very happy with Harry at the moment.
The two of them started hurrying down the corridor. They made it back just in time to exchange a few words with Professor Dumbledore and drive Snape (who had not taken Sirius’ disappearance very well at all) into an apoplectic fury.
Once the Potions professor’s shouts had ceased shaking the Hospital Wing and the three teens had been left to themselves, Hermione began explaining the evening’s adventures to Ron. Harry kept an ear on the conversation, until she got to the part where they had swung down from the West Tower.
“. . . and then Harry just said “Hang on, and don’t scream,” and then he jumped off the tower and pulled me with him – “
“Oh, come off it,” interjected Ron. “How could you have done that and not splatted yourselves on the ground?”
Hermione fixed Harry with a penetrating stare. “That’s what I want to know.”
Harry gulped. Hermione sure is scary when she gets like this. Taking a deep breath, he began his explanation: “Well, it started the year before first year. I had gone on a field trip to a muggle science lab and was visiting the spider room . . . “
*********
The next day, after Madame Pomfrey had seen fit to release the three of them, Harry led Ron and Hermione to an unused classroom for a demonstration. To their disbelief, he jumped up to the ceiling, stuck there for a moment, then lowered himself on his webs, doing a few acrobatic twists on the way down.