Having never ridden in any kind of Muggle vehicle other than a car before, Harry Potter took in the experience with a small sense of wonder. The wind wafting across his face invigorated Harry, as the early summer morning came up slowly around him. Hermione had picked a circuitous route which seemed to take them past a picturesque stretch of woods. He barely even noticed (or maybe he didn’t care) how physically close he and Hermione had to be to ride this thing and that his hands had found themselves attached rather firmly to her midsection.
Harry put his head closer to hers so that he could yell a question at her, but she couldn’t hear him over the combined sounds of the engine and the wind. As they came upon a clearing in the woods, Hermione pulled the moped over to the side and parked it in a patch of dirt a few feet from the main road. “There, this should be secluded enough,” she declared.
“For what?” asked Harry quizzically.
Hermione took one last contemptuous look at his oversized outfit. “Well, for you to change clothes for one thing,” she said in a playful tone of voice.
“Out here? In the middle of a forest?” Harry asked incredulously as he looked at Hermione as though she had temporarily gone mad.
“There’s a nice big tree you can change behind back there,” she said, pointing to a large gray willow about twenty metres away. Harry was still looking at her as though she might sprout another head. “I won’t look. And really, the fewer people who see you looking like that, the better.”
Harry didn’t put up any more of a fight, trudging slowly through the forest as he held his overflowing trouser legs up until he reached the willow tree in question. Disrobing quickly (and privately thinking that a Girl Scout troupe was likely to be tramping through here at any moment to laugh at him in only his boxers), he almost missed Hermione asking him a question.
“So what was it you wanted to ask me before?” Hermione asked. Having not yet put on his jeans, Harry stole a quick glance at her to make sure she wasn’t looking before he answered.
“I wanted to know when you got the moped,” Harry said as he did a delicate balancing act to put his trousers on while staying hidden behind the tree.
“Last summer. I couldn’t actually take it out on the road until my sixteenth birthday, of course, but my parents got tired of escorting me to the library all of the time and taught me how to drive it last year.” Hermione stole a quick look at Harry to check on his progress and turned around quickly again with a blush as she saw he was no longer hiding behind a tree and while his jeans were on, he had not yet put on a shirt. “I could, uh, teach you to drive it later on, if you’d like.”
“Wow, free driving lessons from Hermione,” Harry replied with a chuckle as he came jogging out of the woods. Now that Harry did have a shirt on, Hermione saw that it was navy blue with a Manchester United logo on it. “And it’s not even my birthday.”
“That reminds me,” Hermione said as she put her right index finger up to tell Harry to wait on her a moment. “I do have an early birthday present for you.” She ran over to a tree not far from the one Harry had used to change behind, emerged with a long, thin parcel and handed it to Harry. “Open it,” she instructed.
A large grin coming across his face, Harry tore open the package with vigor. When he saw what it contained, a look of surprise came over his face. It was a Nimbus 2000, just like the first broom he had owned. “Thanks, Hermione. But…you know I already have a Firebolt.”
“Of course I do,” Hermione replied, a little flustered by his reaction. “I just thought you might like a broom you were familiar with to practice on. That’s why we’re here, you know. My guess is your aunt and uncle don’t exactly let you practice quidditch in their back yard.” Harry merely stared at her. She brought him here so he could take quidditch practice? “I’m sorry I couldn’t get a better broom, but I didn’t exactly make a fortune working part time at the library this summer.”
Guilt overcame Harry suddenly. Hermione had been trying to do something nice for him, and he was being a complete jerk to her about it. “You don’t have to apologize, Hermione,” Harry assured her. “I was way out of line. This is all a very wonderful surprise. I can’t thank you enough.” She gave him a shy smile as her eyes seemed to dart to his shoes for some reason.
“You can thank Dumbledore too, when you see him,” Hermione told him meekly. “He was the one who enchanted this stretch of forest so no muggles would come upon you flying around on a broomstick by accident and,” she reached into her pocket and withdrew a small sphere, “he transfigured a hummingbird into this practice snitch.” A blue and silver flying ball left Hermione’s hand and flew to Harry’s, as if it that was where it naturally belonged.
A dark and bitter feeling passed over Harry as he heard Dumbledore’s name, but he wasn’t going to let Hermione know about it. “Neat trick,” he replied, his eyes never leaving the odd-looking snitch. “So is anyone else going to show up and practice or is it just going to be me up there, chasing the snitch all by myself?”
“If I had known you needed the competition, I would have seen if Cho Chang or Draco Malfoy had any plans,” Hermione replied frostily.
“Come off it, Hermione,” Harry said dismissively, not quite getting why she was irritated with him now. He had said he was sorry for how he had treated her earlier. What more did she want? “Of course I didn’t want you to invite Cho or Draco! They’re the last people I’d want to see away from Hogwarts. I was thinking more about the Weasleys. Ron and Ginny are going to be on the team this year, aren’t they? It might be worthwhile to practice with them, especially with Ginny trying for a new position and Ron being so hit-or-miss as a Keeper last year.”
Hermione stopped being angry for a moment to let a quick look of regret come over her face. “I’m sorry, Harry. Dumbledore’s put a lot of restrictions on members of the Order. We’re to stay in small groups at all times, as small as possible.” Harry shot Hermione a look of frustration. “The Weasleys are barely allowed to leave the Burrow because so many of them are in the Order and I’m afraid they’re not allowed any visitors.”
“That doesn’t make sense!” Harry exclaimed in anger. “If Death Eaters attack in force there’s no way a small group would survive. Even those who can apparate…”
“Harry,” Hermione began to interrupt.
“…can’t really protect the ones who can’t and what if Voldemort shows up? Has he even thought about…”
“Harry!” Hermione exclaimed. “Perhaps you should save this for when you actually see Dumbledore rather than waste all of your good complaints on me.” She put a hand firmly on his broom and shoved it towards his chest. “Go practice quidditch. I’ll be out here with some light reading,” she indicated five thick tomes she was pulling from her own knapsack.
Harry smiled knowingly at her. Of course she had brought books along. “Thanks for doing this, Hermione. I know you’re not the biggest quidditch fan ever.”
“No, but I am a loyal Gryffindor,” Hermione reminded him somewhat sternly, sounding for all the world like a miniature Professor McGonagall. “And we can’t have our new Quidditch Captain go all summer without practicing, can we?”
Harry’s head was spinning. Did she just say what he thought she said? Harry stared at her for a moment, and then he did the first thing that came to mind. He ran towards Hermione and pulled her into a gigantic bear hug.
***
Harry Potter had spent his first few minutes in the air whooping and shouting, weaving his new broom this way and that and tossing stones into the air and catching them effortlessly. He felt as though he could take the Irish National team all by himself. He had made Quidditch Captain. Looking back on it logically, Harry supposed it made sense; only he and Katie Bell had been on the team since his first year and Katie hadn’t talked much about wanting to be captain, but of course that didn’t mean anything and oh, who cares about this logic stuff?! ‘I’ve been made Quidditch Captain!!’ Harry’s brain shouted.
After a few more minutes of glorious celebration, Harry noticed a fluttering in his pocket. It was the snitch, seemingly bouncing around in there, anxious to get out and get started. Feeling obliging, Harry withdrew the strangely-coloured snitch from his trouser pocket and let it fly away. He then decided to give it a moment to get a decent head start and then swooped down, following its path and the game was on. Harry spotted the snitch gliding through a patch of deciduous trees and set out in pursuit.
Over an hour later, Harry was still chasing the snitch without success. He had gotten his hands on it three times already, but each time it had managed a daring escape. Once, the snitch flew into his face just as he was trying to pull out of a dive, nearly sending Harry and his new broom crashing to the ground (he wouldn’t have appreciated having to explain to Hermione how that happened). Now he was chasing the snitch through a row of pines as it weaved around each one. After a few minutes, Harry had to take himself out of the hunt; he was getting too dizzy to fly.
A second hour passed and Harry now felt as though he would have trouble taking on a first year Hufflepuff practice team, much less the Irish national squad. Finally catching sight of the snitch again, Harry saw that it had now flown high up in the air and had to rise dramatically to keep pace with it. As he moved closer to it, he began to notice that the little ball was moving them away from the area that Dumbledore had enchanted. Steeling himself, he willed his broom to go faster so that he might catch up to the snitch before it could escape forever. Leaning over the front of his broom, he reached for the snitch, his shaking fingers coming within inches of actually touching it… when it dived sharply out of sight.
“No!” Harry exclaimed in frustration, but quickly pointed his own broom downward, determined to follow the snitch wherever it went. As he caught sight of the little blue and silver object plummeting sharply to the ground, he wondered idly whether it had ever studied the Wronski Feint. Shaking that ridiculous idea out of his head, he mirrored the trajectory of the snitch, his eyes darting down to where it was falling, and he noticed it was getting quite close to the ground now and approaching… Hermione?
Harry could see Hermione Granger sitting on her green moped, seemingly oblivious to everything around her as she was lost, once again, in a book. He considered his options carefully. He could pull up, avoid a near collision with Hermione and lose the snitch for good (and his chances for practicing quidditch for the rest of the summer). Or…
Harry was now headed at breakneck speed towards the ground and, incidentally, Hermione. On a positive note, he was now very close to the snitch. “Just…a little more,” Harry said aloud. With one last mighty effort, Harry’s palm encircled the snitch and his fingers closed on it tightly before it could try anything else tricky. Harry let out a victorious whoop but temporarily forgot he was headed for the ground. Tugging hard on the front of his broom, he managed to pull his Nimbus 2000 out of the dive it was in, missing Hermione’s head by only about a metre. Letting the broom soar along the ground for a while to slow its momentum, Harry turned it around and brought it to a halt in front of his friend.
“Really, Harry,” Hermione said in an annoyed tone of voice, “do you have to be such a showoff?”
Harry was breathing heavily, sweat was pouring from his forehead and his fingers hadn’t released their death clamp from the little silver-blue ball that had given him so much trouble. “I got the snitch,” Harry announced proudly, as if he hadn’t heard Hermione’s complaint.
“Yes, well, does this little stunt mean that you’re through with quidditch practice for today?” Hermione asked with a hopeful, almost pleading look in her eyes. Was it possible that Hermione had actually been bored reading books? “I’ve just been reading about some wonderful things we could do in London.” ‘Nope’, thought Harry, ‘not possible’. She held up the book in question, “The Young Witch and Wizard’s Guide to a Passable Time in Muggle London, or How Not to Be Burned at the Stake (Unless You’re Into that Sort of Thing)” by Millicent Melaflua.
Harry finally looked down at the troublesome little snitch that had been transfigured from a hummingbird by Dumbledore, still clutched tightly in his left hand. He really was in no mood to chase this blasted thing again. Reluctantly stuffing it back in the parcel with his broom, he stashed it behind a tree for safekeeping and turned to face an expectant Hermione. “Right. Let’s go then.”
Harry didn’t say anything to Hermione on the drive into London, mostly because he knew she couldn’t hear him if he tried, but also because he didn’t know exactly what to say. He wasn’t really used to spending time alone with Hermione. Or was he? Didn’t they save Sirius together? Prepare for the Triwizard Tournament together? And last year, didn’t they go on several adventures alone…together?
‘Those times don’t count,’ Harry’s brain assured him, ‘because she was helping me with something I had to do’. He didn’t think he had ever chosen to be alone with Hermione, except for the time when Ron wasn’t speaking to him in fourth year. Oh, and when she met him at Hogsmeade with Rita Skeeter last year. That had gotten him into a lot of trouble with his then-girlfriend Cho, hadn’t it? But still, he hadn’t minded.
‘Those don’t count either,’ Harry’s brain piped up eagerly again, although this time it failed to elaborate. The point was that he had never set out to do anything fun with Hermione; that aspect of friendship had always been something he had associated with Ron. Hermione was his study partner, his partner in crime, actually it was almost like they were partners fighting crime, like those police officers you always saw on American TV shows. And could he think of a description of Hermione that didn’t include the word ‘partner’?
Before Harry knew it, the two of them were in London and Hermione was searching for a place to park her moped. Finally they found a spot that wasn’t ridiculously far from Piccadilly Square. It was nearing midday. “I thought our first stop might be the Texas Embassy,” Hermione suggested.
“Couldn’t we get something to eat first?” Harry complained at the behest of his grumbling stomach. Dudley might have gone off of his grapefruit diet, but breakfast at the Dursleys was still a thoroughly unsatisfying experience. “I’m famished.”
“Splendid Ron impression, Harry,” Hermione said as she rolled her eyes. “The Texas Embassy is a restaurant.” She let out a dramatic sigh and grabbed his hand, pulling him along as if she had to. “Honestly…”