𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗿𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗹, draco malfoy

˗ˋ 27

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
✧
-: third year :-

── IN WHICH HE'S FOUND

. . .

With her legs still shaking, Marlie ran down the rest of the stairs, running along the corridors and passed the security trolls that stood outside of Gryffindor common room. Muttering the password, the frame swung open and the girl made her way into the almost empty common room, spotting Harry, Ron and Hermione in the corner.

 "Professor Trelawney," Marlie panted, continuing over, "just told me-" She stopped herself abruptly at the sight of her brother and friends' faces. Harry stood up, pulling over another chair and the girl sat down in it, eyes wide. 

"Buckbeak lost." Ron said weakly, holding out a piece of parchment. "Hagrid just sent this." Hagrid's note was dry this time, no tears had splattered it, yet his hand seemed to have shaken somuch as he wrote that it was hardly legible.

' Lost appeal. They're going to execute at sunset. Nothing you can do. Don't come down. I don't want you to see it. '

"Well we've got to go!" Marlie instantly said, looking around, her eyes now filled with thhe beginnings of tears. "He can't just sit there on his own, waiting for the executioner!"

"That's what I said." Harry agreed, looking at Ron and Hermione who seemed to be debating whether or not that was a good idea.

"Sunset, though," said Ron, who was staring out the window in a glazed sort of way. "We'd never be allowed... 'specially you two..." 

"If only we had the invisibility cloak." Marlie muttered, sinking into her chair. Hermione asked about it, and after Harry telling her it was in the passage in the one-eyed witch's hump, and if the twins were seen by Snape they would be in serious trouble, the Granger girl jumped up from her seat and disappeared out of the portrait hall.

"She hasn't gone to get it?" Ron said, staring after her. She had. Hermione returned a quarter of an hour later with the silvery cloak folded carefully under her robes. 

And with the invisibilty cloak secured, they went down to dinner with everybody else, but did not return to Gryffindor Tower afterwards. Harry had the cloak hidden down the front of his robes and he had to keep his arms folded to hide the lump. And when dinner was over, they skulked in an empty chamber off the entrance hall, listening, until they were sure it was deserted. They heard a last pair of people hurrying across the hall and a door slamming. Hermione poked her head around the door.

"Okay," she whispered, "no one there - cloak on -" 

The group of four had to stand rather close together in order for the cloak to cover them all, and after quite a bit of rearranging and hissing as elbows jabbed them in the sides, they managed to be fully covered.

Walking very close together so that nobody would see them, they crossed the hall on tiptoe beneath the cloak, then walked down the stone front steps into the grounds. The sun was already sinking behind the Forbidden Forest, gilding the top branches of the trees.

Marlie found herself feeling rather strange as they made their way down to Hagrid's hut. It was such a nice evening, and usually such a joyous time - their exams were over. But she couldn't help thinking about what Trelawney had said - and if she had imagined it or not. And then there were the horrors of what was happening later on in the place they were heading to.