A/N: Things officially get interesting for you mystery/action fans...
Chapter Sixteen: The Midnight Walk
In the common room, Harry and his friends sat in stunned silence “ in the meantime Hermione and Ron were upstairs, also in silence. Ron’s face was still buried in his hands...
“Ron? What’s wrong?”
“Did you miss what just happened downstairs?” His voice was slightly muffled owing to the fact that his mouth was still covered by his hands.
“You said you loved me.”
“Yes...in front of everyone we know.”
“And what’s so bad about that?”
He finally lifted up his face, and Hermione put her hand over his. She looked at him, with an earnest smile. She looked nervous, but calm at the same time.
‘I don’t know... it’s just “ I-...”
He hesitated.
“I’m not exactly good with feelings. I get nervous, and unsure “ and I don’t think that’s the way you should have found out.”
“It seems you’re still suffering the effects of Veritaserum...” Hermione grinned.
This loosened Ron up a bit, he laughed. Then he looked at Hermione, his facial expression changing to resemble the face of someone who was about to jump from a very tall building.
“I love you, Hermione.”
Hermione blushed, but was still smiling. She leaned over and kissed him, and afterwards she put her head and his shoulder and dropped her voice to a soft whisper.
“I love you, too.”
By the next morning, Hermione had told Harry and Ginny everything that had passed between her and Ron after they had left the common room. Harry barely knew what was going on because she had told the entire story in about a minute with a voice that seemed to get more high-pitched by the second. Ginny seemed to understand, however, because she listened eagerly squealing and “awing” at all the right places. Harry shook his head in amazement. Girls are weird, he thought.
That morning all the Gryffindor sixth years had Defense Against the Dark Arts. They all walked into Professor Lupin’s classroom excitedly “ they were doing study of famous Aurors and their best captures, and Lupin was much better at relating history than Professor Binns. To their dismay, Professor Lupin was not in his classroom that morning: Snape was. Hermione leaned over to Harry “
“Full moon.”
Harry made a note to himself to keep track of the lunar calendar and remember to skive off all Defense Against the Dark Arts classes during the full moon. Snape did what he usually did when he covered Lupin’s classes: he spent the entire time criticizing everything Lupin had taught them, and basically implied that he, himself was superior to Lupin in every way.. Harry considered asking Snape why he had never been able to get the Defense against the Dark Arts teaching position, if he was so great “ but decided that he didn’t want to lose any more House points.
After suffering through Snape, Harry didn’t have class all day, because for some reason, Care of Magical Creatures had been moved to midnight. This worried Harry a bit, because Hagrid’s lessons were often dangerous enough without taking place in the middle of the night. So after a mostly relaxing day (except for Quidditch practice, which was quite grueling), Harry headed down to Hagrid’s hut along with the rest of the sixth years.
“Alrigh’ everyone. Got a nice treat fer yeh tonight,” Hagrid said beaming.
A few of the students inhaled sharply; they had had too much experience with Hagrid’s “treats” to believe this could possibly be good.
“Hagrid,” Hermione asked. “Why are we here at midnight?”
“Cause th’ creature we’re studyin’ tonight only comes out at th’ full moon.”
Ron looked terrified.
“Hermione, you don’t think Hagrid’s bringing us to see a werewolf, do you?”
“No, of course not,” Hermione answered, though she didn’t look convinced.
“Yeh have ter be quiet, now “ don’t want ter scare it off...” he said as he beckoned them to follow him; they followed him quite a bit away from the castle, into a very isolated area of the grounds Harry hadn’t even realized was there. The class was very tense; worrying what new creature Hagrid was introducing them too. Harry was doing his best to convince himself that Hagrid would have enough sense not to bring the class to see a werewolf. Finally they stopped; the class was shadowed under thick trees lining the edge of a clearing lit bright with moonlight.
“Quiet, now...” Hagrid whispered. as though the class wasn’t standing in a petrified silence.
The class drew in a collective breath as they saw something emerge from a small burrow in the ground. It was pale grey and had long, thin, spindly legs and huge, flat feet. It’s two round eyes were bulging at the top of it’s head. It crawled out of the hole slowly and looked around. Then it stood up on it’s hind legs and began to move across the clearing, as though it were dancing.
“A Mooncalf...” whispered Hermione.
Harry assumed by the sound of awe in her voice that this creature was not dangerous.
The class watched quietly for about an hour as the Mooncalf performed it’s complicated dance, leaving intricate designs in the tall grass. Then, the Mooncalf disappeared back into it’s burrow. It had left a gleaming silver substance in many areas of the field, which Hagrid informed the class was the Mooncalf’s dung and was very valuable. He then handed them small bottles to collect the dung in, which wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Afterwards the Gryffindor sixth years walked back to the castle happily discussing the lesson.
“That’s the best lesson Hagrid’s ever given us.” Seamus said.
The rest of the group agreed.
“I do wish he would tell us what he’s showing us first though, instead of having us all scared half to death.” commented Hermione.
“I think he enjoys the surprise,” said Harry.
“Well, he’s the only one,” said Dean.
The next morning Harry told Katie about Hagrid’s lesson the night before.
“Wow, that sounds like it was amazing. I wish I could have seen it.”
Harry thought for a minute; Hagrid said the Mooncalf would be appearing again the next two nights...
“If you want, I could bring you to see it tonight,” he said casually.
“Harry you said it comes out a midnight... how are we supposed to sneak out of the castle at that time and make it all the way to the edge of the grounds without getting caught?”
“There’s a way...” he said, grinning. “Meet me tonight in the common room at half eleven and I’ll show you.”
“What if we get caught?”
“We won’t.”
That night, Harry crept out of his bedroom with his Invisibility cloak and Marauder’s Map under his arm. Katie was waiting for him, looking skeptical.
“So, how are we going to get away with this..?”
Harry unfolded the cloak.
“This... is my dad’s old Invisibility cloak.”
He wrapped it around himself to show Katie. She looked at Harry (or lack thereof ) in amazement. Then, Harry took off the cloak, and took out the map.
“And this... is a map of the school and the grounds, including the people and where they are,” He pointed to the dots labeled “Katie Bell” and “Harry Potter” in the Gryffindor common room.
“Well, well... what have I gotten myself into?”
“So, you coming?” Harry said, holding up the cloak.
“Sure...”
Harry through the cloak over the two of them, and they left the common room. They walked pretty quickly downstairs “ the map showed that the teachers were all in bed; Filch was in his office “ then out the front doors and across the grounds to where Hagrid had brought them the night before. They sat down at the edge of the clearing and waited.
“Here it comes...” Harry said, pointing towards the hole that the Mooncalf had begun to emerge from. Katie watched in awe as it danced around the fields. After about an hour, it crept back into the ground and Katie and Harry stood up to leave, throwing the cloak over them. They were just emerging from the trees when they heard a lazy, drawling voice a few feet away.
“Bellatrix, we’re just going to have to be patient.”
Harry felt his blood boiling “ Katie looked at him and mouthed “Who is that?”
He lifted his finger to his lips, signaling that they should stay quiet.
“Lucius, we need to act now. The Dark Lord doesn’t like to wait.”
“If we act too rashly, the plan will most likely fail. It would be better to take our time and bring him back what he wants, than to be careless now and return with nothing.”
“He’s a sixteen year old boy, Lucius; how difficult could it possibly be?”
“You underestimate him, Bellatrix. I’m surprised “ you know his history, you’ve seen him in action... we need to be careful, or Dumbledore will discover our presence here.”
“Fine, Lucius. But this better work.”
“Don’t worry.”
They stopped talking and began walking away, they appeared to be walking to the Forbidden Forest. Harry nudged Katie and whispered... “We need to get to the school now.”
She didn’t need telling twice, they quickly made their way back to the common room.
“What was that about? Who were they.” Katie asked
“Bellatrix LeStrange and Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s dad. They’re Death Eaters.” Harry said breathlessly. “And from the sound of it, they’re here to bring me to Voldemort.”