Chapter Five : The Journey
Hermione was seriously starting to regret this.
She and Harry were both seated on his Firebolt, flying towards Godric's Hollow. It was about 5 a.m., the wind was chilly, the sky overcast. Their only light was a lantern Harry had fastened to the shaft of his broomstick. Hermione sat behind Harry, her arms around his waist, moaning softly while her head rested on his shoulder.
"Did you say something?" Harry asked, half-turning to see her better.
"WHY DID I AGREE TO DO THIS?" she yelled.
Harry winced and turned to face the front again. Hermione realized that with her head on his shoulder, her mouth had been right next to his ear when she'd shouted.
Hoping to distract him from the likely ringing in his head, she moaned again and snuggled deeper into his back, repeating under her breath in an endless refrain, "I'm not going to die, I'm perfectly safe. Harry knows what he's doing."
"Darn right I do," Harry answered. "And I'd appreciate it if you could loosen your grip. I'm starting to feel a little light headed."
Hermione loosened her grip slightly. She raised her head slowly and looked around.
To her embarrassment, she realized they were only flying about fifteen feet above the ground.
Her insecurity in the air must have seemed strange, even amusing to Harry. She thought he must be inwardly laughing at her.
She sat up straighter, putting as much distance between herself and Harry as possible, while keeping her arms wrapped around him.
"It's not so bad, once you get used to it," she said haughtily.
*
Harry was confused, to put it mildly.
The journey had started well enough:
"What on earth?" Hermione asked, leaning out the dormitory window.
Harry hovered outside her window, mounted on his Firebolt, a lantern swinging from the front. He was dressed in a black leather trench coat, though where he could have gotten such a thing, she could only guess.
"Come on, let's go." He said, beckoning her towards him.
Hermione shut the window and got dressed in a pair of jeans, a sweater, and her winter coat. She put a pair of gloves on, along with a woolen hat. Early December was no time to go on a cross-country broom trip, but she had promised.
She put one foot on the windowsill. Harry moved closer to the building, parallel to the wall.
"Get on." He said calmly, as if mounting an airborne broomstick a hundred feet above the ground was the simplest thing in the world to do.
Hermione grit her teeth.
"Just pretend you're mounting a horse from a fence," she told herself.
Just as she put out a leg to swing it over the back of Harry's broom, a strong gust of wind blew past the wall,
knocking Harry off course just enough so that Hermione, already shifting her weight onto her outstretched foot, missed
the target.
"AAAAAHHHH!" Hermione screamed as she fell through the air.
*
Okay, so maybe it didn't start off that well, Harry admitted to himself. He had managed to catch Hermione by her ankle twenty feet above the ground. He landed gently, and sheepishly suggested that maybe she would have better luck mounting from the ground.
Hermione, white to the lips and obviously trying not to scream or faint, had shakily mounted the broom with Harry's assistance. Harry himself had climbed on then, and muttered to her to hang on before kicking off.
Now the trip was progressing smoothly, apart from when Hermione had a grip around him so tight that he could feel his ribs crack when he breathed. Yet, that didn't bother him as much as he expected. If he was to be entirely honest with himself, he actually enjoyed having Hermione pressed up against his back, and it gave him a strange thrill to know that in her mind, he was the only thing that could possibly make her feel safe.
But if that was true, why was she - literally-- acting so distant now? He missed her warmth, and couldn't figure out why she seemed not to trust him very well all of a sudden.
Harry looked at the horizon. As the map had said, there was a forest coming up. The guidelines to safe broom trips had advised flyers to avoid forests where possible, to go around or above. The forest was several miles wide, and there were towns on its outskirts, so Harry opted to go over it. The only problem was, there was dense fog above the treetops. He could only hope his lantern was strong enough to get them through it.
He checked the compass Hermione had given him the summer before third year. As long as the needle didn't move, he knew he was going the right way. He pulled the broomstick up to fifty feet. He reasoned that if there were any unusually tall trees, that would be high enough to avoid them. He also noticed (however much he tried to ignore it) that Hermione once again had him around the ribs in a death grip, and he knew that she wouldn't release him for any price until they were clear of the fog.
Ever so carefully, he reduced his speed. Hermione, from a combination of fear and the confusing effect fog has on distance perception, didn't notice the change in speed. She merely clung to Harry even tighter and shivered.
Harry smiled to himself. The slower he went, the longer she would hang on to him.
He suddenly wondered why he saw that as a good thing.
* * *
AN: I know this is a short chapter, like chapter four, but I have a choir party to go to pretty soon. Chapter six will be added before 3:00 tomorrow, so don't stay away too long!
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