Umbras ? Harry Potter

chapter seventeen

Harry's and Ron's last exam was Divination; while Hermione and Ciara had Muggle Studies. They walked up the marble staircase together; The girls leaving them on the first floor and Harry and Ron proceeded all the way up to the seventh.

The Muggle Studies exam was more difficult for Ciara. It was her first year learning about Muggle technology, and she felt less confident than in her other subjects. Hermione, on the other hand, was practically certain she'd aced it.

As they made their way back to the Great Hall, they spotted Ron, also finished with his exam.

"Harry still not done?" Hermione asked as she sat down at the Gryffindor table.

"No, but he went in right after me, so he shouldn't be too much longer," Ron replied with a relieved sigh, finally done with exams.

Five minutes later he was dashing past the security trolls outside the entrance to the Hall. People were striding past him in the opposite direction, laughing and joking, heading for the grounds and a bit of long-awaited freedom.

An owl had just come from overhead, and delivered a letter in front of Ron. It was Hagrid.

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.
Hagrid

Just as all of them had read it, Harry came bustling into the Hall. "Professor Trelawney," Harry panted, "just told me —"

But he stopped abruptly at the sight of their faces.

"Buckbeak lost," said Ron weakly. "Hagrid's just sent this."

Harry looked over the letter. "We've got to go," said Harry at once. "He can't just sit there on his own, waiting for the executioner!"

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

Harry sank his head into his hands, thinking.

"If we only had the Invisibility Cloak. . . ."

"Where is it?" said Hermione.

Harry told her about leaving it in the passageway under the one-eyed witch.

". . . if Snape sees me anywhere near there again, I'm in serious trouble,"he finished.

"That's true," said Hermione, getting to her feet. "If he sees you. . . . How do you open the witch's hump again?"

"You — you tap it and say, 'Dissendium,'" said Harry. "But —"

Hermione grabbed Ciara's hand and didn't wait for the rest of his sentence; she strode across the room and vanished from sight.

"They've haven't gone to get it?" Ron said, staring after them.

They had. The girls returned a quarter of an hour later with the silvery Cloak folded carefully under Hermione's robes. After dinner had finished they started making their way to Hagrid's.

Harry had the Cloak hidden down the front of his robes; he had to keep his arms folded to hide the lump. 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. Ciara poked her head around the door.

"Okay," she whispered, "No one is there."

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.