Hermione ploughed her way back to Hagrid's cabin through two feet of snow on Sunday morning. Harry and Ron wanted to go with her, but their mountain of homework had reached an alarming height again, so they grudgingly remained in the common room, while Allison met up with Ginny and some of her friends by the Great Lake that had frozen over during last night; a thick sheet of gleaming ice lay above its surface.
After duplicating a pair of ice skates from a Hufflepuff girl in Ginny's year, Allie was now standing on the frozen lake, each hand clutched around one arm of the twins, both still in their trainers, who were pulling her forward. Luna Lovegood was lying with her stomach on the ice, a pair of peculiar-looking binoculars in front of her eyes, apparently trying to spot the Giant Squid. Several people were laughing at her from the side of the lake; only Ginny had kneeled beside her, sparking a conversation.
Around half past twelve, Hermione came back up from Hagrid, snowflakes caught up in her hair. Allison, now back on land, dodged a snowball from Fred, threw one back that missed his head by a few inches, and walked up to Hermione.
"Hey!" she called. "How was it?"
"He does not want to listen to me." Hermione shrugged and pulled her scarf higher, trembling from the cold.
"Come on, let's get you warmed up," Allison said with a glance at Hermione's soaked clothes, waving the others goodbye and linking arms with her.
Harry and Ron were the only ones in the Gryffindor common room, still bent over their homework. They lifted their heads as Allison and Hermione entered through the portrait, looking rather miserable that they were stuck inside.
"So, how's it going?" asked Allie with a grin, pulling off her wet gloves and glancing over their shoulders. Ron pulled a grimace.
"Yeah, you were having loads of fun outside, we heard you," He said grumpily.
Harry grunted in agreement. He had tried his best to ignore the gleeful shouts drifting up from the grounds outside, where students were enjoying themselves skating on the frozen lake, tobogganing, and worst of all, bewitching snowballs to zoom up to Gryffindor Tower and rap hard on the windows.
"I know, but it's bloody cold," Allison said, sticking her fingers down the collars of the boys' jumpers to touch their warm necks. Ron jumped, attempting to poke her arm with his quill, and Harry winced, swearing under his breath, and grabbing her wrist to remove her hand.
"Do that again and I'll give you detention," threatened Ron, but Allie kept on grinning.
"You could... but you know who can't?" And she slid her free hand back down Harry's sweatshirt.
"Stop that!" He said, shoulders drawn together from the sudden cold, though he did not sound a bit mad and was much slower this time to pull her fingers away from his neck.
"Fine, killjoy," said Allison with a grin, freeing herself from his grip and throwing her coat over the free chair next to him before sitting down on it.
"And you?" Ron asked Hermione as she took the seat next to him. "Got all his lessons planned for Hagrid?"
"Well, I tried," she said dully, pulling out her wand and giving it a complicated little wave so that hot air streamed out of the tip; she then pointed this at her robes, which began to steam as they dried out. "He wasn't even there when I arrived, I was knocking for at least half an hour. And then he came stumping out of the forest –"
Ron groaned. The Forbidden Forest was teeming with the kind of creatures most likely to get Hagrid the sack.
"What's he keeping in there? Did he say?" Harry asked.
YOU ARE READING
WE'LL TAKE ON THE WORLD ; h.j.p.
Fanfiction─ "i won't let go with you by my side, the calm, the storm we'll face it all." She had read about love all her life. Never had she imagined she would ever experience it herself, especially with dark forces rising to power and a war approaching fast...
