Chapter Text
By the time he had reached the portrait hole and entered the common room, it was almost deserted. Over in the corner, however, sat Ron and Hermione.
“Professor Trelawney,” Harry panted. “She just — just told me —”
But he stopped abruptly at the sight of their faces.
“Buckbeak lost,” said Ron weakly.
– Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 16
Ron left Harry under the ladder leading up to Trelawney’s classroom with a light feeling. Done with exams — and he hadn’t done too bad, as he thought about it. He rounded the corner to the entrance to Gryffindor Tower, holding his nose automatically as he came within smelling distance of mountain troll guard. His goal during most exams was to just make passable enough marks that he didn’t get a telling off from Mum — he knew he wasn’t going to beat Percy, Bill, or Charlie’s grades in third year but at least he seemed to be on par with Fred and George at this rate, anyway. Ginny was smart, but she’d inherited her brothers’ poor study habits, so it seemed like a safe bet that he’d get better grades than her as well…
Happy for once to disappear into the middle of his siblings, he said the password and the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open. Most students were leaving the common room to go out to the grounds, to find a sunny spot to celebrate the end of term… He scanned for bushy brown hair thinking he’d like to do a bit of lying in the sun as well, and Hermione might, too — until —
She was sitting in the corner of the common room, tears welling in her eyes and a bit of parchment clutched in her fist.
“Oh no,” Ron groaned, recognizing the scrawl on the parchment as he got closer. “What’s happened?”
“Buckbeak lost,” Hermione said, looking up at Ron tearfully.
She spread open the letter on the table. Ron saw the great splotch marks Hagrid’s tears had made in the parchment. Hermione, who had been at a breaking point with exams all week, looked on the verge of collapse. A powerful wave of defeat and anger washed over Ron as he took it in. Of course those cowards at the Ministry wanted Buckbeak to die. He felt he could see right through the protocol to the meanness of the Ministry, right into the stupid little hold Lucious Malfoy had over the whole process. They wanted to crush Hagrid’s spirit, and Ron took this personally.
He slumped into the chair next to Hermione, not sure what to say. After a few moments of disbelief, they looked at each other again. Hermione had stopped crying, but her face was still contorted and pink. She stared at him for a minute, as if expecting something.
“When Harry gets back, we’ll have to go down and see him,” Ron said, moved to take charge by her helpless expression.
“Ooooh,” she whispered. “But Harry won’t be allowed to go, and we won’t either once it gets dark. We could get in such trouble…”
“That’s… that’s true,” Ron said.
“Professor McGonagall would be furious if she saw Harry out… and us as well, enabling him… I can’t even imagine what your brother would say, after your experience with Black cutting open your bed hangings,” she added seriously.
“Yeah…” Ron said cautiously. “You think it’s alright if we don’t go, then? Should we just write back to him?”
“But I don’t want Hagrid to be alone,” Hermione said, chewing her lip. “But we’d be breaking a dozen safety precautions by being out after dark…”
“Um… well, you and I could just go now, I s’pose… Harry would understand, wouldn’t he? Then we could come back and tell him about it…”
“No, Harry would want to come,” said Hermione seriously. “We can’t let him be by himself, or he’ll follow us all alone and be a perfect target for Black.”
“Okay,” said Ron, dumbfounded. He was trying very hard to keep Hermione on his good side — especially after what Hagrid said about nearly losing her as a friend — but no matter what he suggested, she had a negative answer for him. It was almost as if she was just using him as a way to talk to herself, and Ron was done suggesting options just so she could deny them.
After a moment of silence, Hermione opened her mouth to speak again, and Ron was sure it was to resoundingly declare that they should not go down to see Hagrid because the danger was too great, but then —
“I really want to thank you, you know,” she said. “I don’t think I could have done it all by myself again.”
“What?” he said blankly.
“In the library, looking up all of the cases of Hippogriffs, and all,” she said, and to his horror her eyes were welling with tears again. “I was just so… just so alone doing it the first time and when you said you were going to help me, I just felt so relieved, and I — I want to say thank you.”
Now it was Hermione who looked away, embarrassed. Ron too felt his ears grow hot as he remembered making up with Hermione, promising to research Hippogriff cases with her, and her flinging her arms around him in one of the first and only hugs she had ever given him. He tried to flatten his hair over his ears. Hermione fingered Hagrid’s letter, pretending not to notice.
“Well yeah,” he said, somewhat defensively after a moment. “You were running yourself dry with all these classes and extra projects. Someone had to take it off your plate for you, because you were never going to stop.”
She laughed and cried at the same time, and the hand that had been on Hagrid’s letter fell to grip Ron’s forearm. He felt himself freeze at the contact.
“You’re right,” she sniffed, “I’d never take it off my own plate. Apparently, I have a problem with that.” She gestured at her bag on the table next to her. An obscene amount of books were spilling out, and it looked like she had sewn the bag back together several times where it had split from the weight.
Ron gave a weak smile, too, amazed that she was making a joke like that at her own expense. Her hand was still on his arm, and he felt a weird, bold feeling that he had never felt before. He lifted his hand as well, moving to put it on hers.
At that moment, the portrait hole swung open, and Hermione withdrew her hand with a soft, “Oh no!”
Harry was stepping through, and hurrying toward them. Ron felt his stomach sink at the thought of telling Harry about Buckbeak, and with a sideways glance at Hermione, saw that she had the same anxiety on her own face.
“Professor Trelawney,” Harry panted as he came nearer and flung his bag down. “She just — just told me —”
He stopped when he saw their faces. After a second, Ron decided he should be the one to break the news. He cleared his throat.
“Buckbeak lost,” he said, holding out the letter. “Hagrid’s just sent this.”
Harry grabbed it and read silently for a moment. Then he looked up, a fierceness in his eyes that Ron had expected.
“We’ve got to go. He can’t just sit there on his own, waiting for the executioner.”
“Sunset though,” Ron said, gazing out the window at the now-darkening sky. He decided the moment Harry walked through the portrait hole that he would be the bad guy so Hermione didn’t have to be. After all the months they spent vilifying her for trying to protect Harry from a killer, he owed her. So he repeated her words now, hoping that Harry would hear it coming from him and take it seriously. “We’d never be allowed, ‘specially you, Harry.”
Harry took his head in his hands. “If we only had the Invisibility Cloak,” he mumbled.
Ron felt Hermione stiffen beside him.
“Where is it?” she asked. Her voice was different than before. She had an air of decisiveness about her that he’d only seen once before, when they brewed Polyjuice Potion in their second year.
“It’s in the passageway I used to get into Hogsmeade,” Harry said, surfacing from his hands. Ron could tell he was just as surprised as he was. “It’s behind the statue of the one-eyed witch that leads to the Honeydukes cellar. But if Snape sees me anywhere near there again, I’m in serious trouble.”
“That’s true,” said Hermione, and she got to her feet. “If he sees you. How do you open the witch’s hump, again?”
“You — you tap it and say ‘descendium,’ but —”
Hermione didn’t wait for him to finish. She moved past Ron so quickly he barely had time to register a faint smell of vanilla as she passed. In a moment, her hair was whipping behind the closing portrait hole and she was gone.
“She hasn’t gone to get it?” he said, mouth agape.
“I don’t — I don’t know,” said Harry, still clutching Hagrid’s note. And then, grinning — “I’ll bet she has.”
The two boys looked at each other and Ron found himself grinning, too. He remembered her grip on his arm. Maybe she had just been using him to talk to herself, but he didn’t realize she was talking herself into going down to Hagrid’s, despite the dark, the rule-breaking, the risk.
Fifteen minutes later Hermione came bustling back through the portrait hole, the silvery cloth of the Invisibility Cloak draped under her arm.
“Hermione, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, lately,” Ron said as she held it out to them triumphantly. “First you hit Malfoy, then you walk out on Professor Trelawney —”
Hermione smiled at him out of the corner of her mouth, and Ron broke off, laughing as they moved to leave the common room together. What a sight she was, mischief all over her face. He had never seen her like this before, but he was starting to like it.