Unofficial Portkey Archive

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. And that's the truth. Pbbbbttttt.

A/N: Ten pages in ten days! Woo-hoo! I did it this time (if you add a few more for editing). A short chapter this time. Just something to hold you over, really.

I'd intended on this chapter taking us all the way through their trip to the cinema the following Friday. But, condensing an entire week into half of a chapter was proving trickier than I'd expected. So, with the end of "today" finished, and "next week" still in progress, I just decided to post what was already finished, rather than making you wait for it. Plus, the separation between "today" and "next week" seemed an ideal stopping point anyway.

The flip side is that I'm already five pages into Chapter 27, so if all goes well, you should have another chapter in about a week! YAY!

Once again, as Emma explicitly points out, I am quoting someone from a TV show. Five points if you recognize it. Like I said last time... just for fun.

Thanks to my beta, MapleMountain!

Chapter 26. Smile! You're on...

"Oh, and Harry," she added, not looking at him as she started to climb the stairs, "don't forget to change your shirt. You don't want to walk around all day with slobber all over it, now do you?"

When he heard Emma's bedroom door close upstairs, Harry walked over to the refrigerator and softly banged his head against it four times, quietly muttering to himself between hits.

"Effing. Brilliant. Effing. Brilliant." He then turned around to look at Hermione, who was still standing in exactly the same spot, though she looked lost in deep contemplation.

"So, how much trouble are we in?" Harry asked, half-joking, half-surrendering.

Hermione considered his question for a few moments.

"Honestly? Not much, I think. No more than we'll make for ourselves, at least," she replied. Harry just looked at her completely confused.

"What I mean is that our embarrassment from getting caught is probably more than enough for her. After all, the middle names never did come out. If she called you Harry James, then you'd know it was time to pack your trunk. Besides, she probably rather enjoyed that," Hermione added in an undertone.

"What?" Harry asked, hearing her.

"Oh," she replied, realizing he'd heard her. "Well, she said she came down to get the paper around 6:30, 6:40, so obviously she saw us then. How else would she have known about... your shirt?" she added guiltily.

"But she just left us there, and then proceeded to let us dangle on a hook as we pretended to be making breakfast." Hermione finally noticed that Harry had grabbed cereal in his haste.

"Brilliant choice there, Harry," she teased. "Yeah Mum, we got up early to make you a bowl of cereal."

"No worse than pointing at the orange juice on the table when it was still in the fridge," Harry shot back with grin.

Hermione let out a chuckle. "We're not very good at this, are we?"

"What? Lying, or getting caught?" he asked with a smirk.

"Both," she admitted.

"How is it that I can go years not getting caught by Snape, and then your mum catches me the first time?"

"Mum's a lot smarter than Professor Snape."

"No argument there," Harry replied with a slight chuckle. He then remembered something and began to smile.

"Did you see Ron and Ginny?" he asked Hermione; she shook her head. "Go in and look at them. They're still on the sofa. But be quiet though." Hermione went into the living room and returned a few moments later. She looked like she was about to start laughing too.

"When I woke up and found you... where you were," Harry said, feeling a little embarrassment begin to creep back, "I was worried about what Ron and Ginny'd say if they saw us. Then I saw them."

"Yeah, I can't imagine them saying anything unless they wanted us to return the favor," Hermione replied with a mischievous smile. "Did you see Ron all curled up? He looks pretty comfortable there."

As he remembered seeing Ron like that, Harry suddenly remembered something else.

"Erm, Hermione? When I heard your mum's voice upstairs, I was going to wake you up. But when I looked down again, I saw that you were already awake."

Hermione chuckled nervously. "Oh yeah. Well, actually, I was awake. I'd been awake for maybe ten minutes before that. Wait. How long were you awake?"

"Seven minutes," he replied instantly, since he'd been able to see the clock.

"But then why didn't you wake me up?" both of them asked each other simultaneously. After a shared laugh, Hermione answered first.

"Well, something woke me up. Maybe it was Ron snoring or maybe it was even Mum closing her bedroom door. I don't really know how long I was awake. With my... um... head buried in your shirt," she said delicately, "I couldn't tell what time it was.

"Anyway, when I realized... where I was," she continued, using his earlier words, "I became extremely embarrassed. I'd been dreaming that..." she trailed off, speaking the last of her sentence very quietly and into her hand to try to hide it. Harry thought he caught at least one of the words however.

"You were dreaming that you were what?" he prodded her in amusement, intentionally not mentioning the word he thought he'd heard.

Hermione shot him a glare that, if what he thought she said wasn't so funny, he'd actually find scary. "I'd been dreaming that I was..." she said, pausing with a sigh, "that I was cuddled up with a great, big teddy bear... like I used to do when I was small," she added emphatically in explanation.

Harry dropped his head and covered his mouth with his hand and began to laugh uncontrollably. As he stood there, his laughter muffled by his hand, Hermione swatted his arm several times.

"It's not funny!" she hissed at him repeatedly. Each time though, as he continued to laugh with his head down, he could hear her annoyance change to amusement. After the third swat, her voice was crackling slightly, about ready to laugh herself.

Feeling his own laughs subsiding, Harry just looked back up at her. "Yeah, it's pretty funny," he said. Hermione conceded defeat and nodded in agreement, then continued her story.

"Anyway, once I was awake, I figured I'd pretend to be asleep-"

"So that I could wake up and disentangle you from me, then we could both pretend like it never happened," Harry finished, interrupting her. Hermione looked at him incredulously.

"When I woke up and found that I was your own personal teddy bear-OW!" he complained when his comment earned him another swat.

"You deserved that," Hermione said with a slight smile.

"I think you broke my arm," he continued.

"Baby," she replied.

"When I woke up," Harry resumed his story, "I did the same thing... pretended to be asleep so you could wake up and... remove yourself from me... and then we could pretend it never happened."

"Fat lot of good that did," Hermione observed with a smile. "We were both sitting there awake, both pretending to be asleep, both waiting for the other to wake up."

Something else clicked in Harry's mind.

"I probably shouldn't ask," he began tentatively, "but if you were awake, why did you grab hold of me, in the middle of it... I mean even more than you already were?"

"Well... while I was sitting there pretending to be asleep, I kept my eyes closed and head down, just in case you woke up," she explained. "I felt you move a little and then begin to shake a tiny bit."

"That would've been me seeing Ron and Ginny and stifling my laughs," Harry explained.

"I thought maybe you were having a nightmare," Hermione said, then let out another sigh. "I remembered back in the Minister's office after you'd collapsed. Please don't take this the wrong way... but when you were on the floor, you seemed to calm down quite a bit when I grabbed hold of you." Harry noticed that as she talked, all of her embarrassment had disappeared, and if anything, she almost looked proud.

"So, thinking that you were having a bad dream, I... thought that maybe if someone was there to hold onto you again, that maybe you'd feel better, again."

Harry was stunned, to say the least. While he certainly hadn't been having a nightmare (in fact the dream he had been having just prior was quite nice to be honest), he was touched to know that she'd do something like that for him. He wasn't exactly sure what to say. One thing did come to mind, however.

"Thanks for trying to make me feel better."

"Well, what are friends for?" Hermione asked with a grin.

"You mean besides being a teddy bear?" That earned Harry a fifth swat on the arm, though Hermione's embarrassed smile was bigger than ever.

* * *

Harry made the batter and preheated the waffle iron while Hermione went upstairs and changed clothes. There was no point in Ron and Ginny knowing what happened, both decided.

Upon her return, Harry noticed her carrying this morning's Daily Prophet. "It's a good thing you put that charm on the window," she said. "Otherwise Metis wouldn't have been able to get out to go hunting during the night. It's a good thing she's still out. The delivery owl was sitting there, waiting to be paid," Hermione said, waving her newspaper.

Right as he was about to head upstairs to change his clothes, Harry noticed that the headline of the Prophet said something about Azkaban. He started to lean over to read it.

"Go change your clothes first," Hermione told him as she started poured the first waffle. "Then you can read the paper."

As he came down the stairs, the smell of freshly-made waffles was beginning to fill the house. Ah, very nice, Harry thought to himself as he took a deep breath. He then began to take a quick mental count to see how many they should make. Better count Ron twice, he decided. He was interrupted by a shout from the living room.

"AH! GERROFF! GERROFF ME!!" came the panicked voice of Ron, which was followed immediately by a heavy, dull THUD! Harry and Hermione both ran into the living room to see what was the matter.

They found Ron in a disheveled heap on the floor, rubbing his backside as he glowered up at his sister. Ginny was looking down at him with a rather amused expression. Seeing that no one was being attacked by Death Eaters or anything like that, Hermione quickly returned to the waffle that was about ready to burn.

"It's not funny!" Ron protested to his sister. Harry smiled remembering a similar conversation only moments earlier.

"Oh, please, Ron. You'd think you fell asleep on Malfoy the way you were carrying on. And besides, I don't know why you were yelling at me to get off of you, when you were the one to fall asleep on me," Ginny pointed out. She then noticed Harry standing at the edge of the room and glanced momentarily at him with a slight grin.

"Let's just be glad that Harry and Hermione didn't see us like that," Ron said. "If they did, they'd probably say-"

"How absolutely adorable you looked all snuggled up in your sister's lap," Harry finished, startling him. Ron whipped his head around with a horrified look on his face.

"Oh, and you snore, too," Harry added.

"I do not snore!" Ron protested.

"Yeah you do," Ginny added victoriously.

"So do you," Harry pointed out to Ginny.

"I do not snore!" Ginny whined.

"You do too!" Hermione assured her from in the kitchen.

* * *

After breakfast (Dan and Emma both walked into the kitchen with a smirk, but said nothing), there was some discussion as to how they'd spend the rest of their time together on such a wonderful Saturday. Hermione quickly scanned the Prophet while they were eating and said that this issue contained everything that the headmaster had told them yesterday, but there was nothing new (to them). The morning was still pleasant so, just as they had the previous Saturday, much of it was spent in King George's Park.

On their walk down to the end of the street, Emma mentioned that she'd brought her camera with her. She explained that this was the first time they'd ever spent much time with any of Hermione's friends. Since there were only four photographs remaining on the roll of film, she asked if Ron and Ginny would mind if she took some pictures. They agreed on the condition that they got a copy of the pictures so that they could enjoy them also.

As the sun approached its zenith and the six visitors felt sufficiently worn out from their morning of fun (plus it was just plain starting to get hot), everyone made the short walk back to the house. Once they were back in the house, it was only a matter of time until either Ron or Dan brought up their planned chess rematch.

Ron lasted about five minutes.

What he lacked in patience, Ron certainly made up for in his game. As agreed, both opponents focused on the game, though Ron asked Dan what his favorite toothpaste was after making his first move. He then promised he was only joking and he and Dan shared a laugh.

"Checkmate!" Ron finally called half an hour later. He then admitted that Dan was "pretty good" and that he'd hate to have play against whoever taught him how to play.

"Oh, I don't know," Dan said thoughtfully, "I've always felt that I learn more by losing to a better opponent than I do just beating the socks off someone. Why else do you think I keep playing my teacher when I have yet to win? When it's just a game, losing can actually be an extremely good thing, depending on how you look at it.

"And," he then added with a self-satisfied grin, "when you lose to someone not as skilled as yourself, it can illuminate deficiencies you may not have realized. Sometimes a tactically lesser opponent can be just as dangerous as a superior opponent, as they might be more... creative in their attack to make up for it."

After putting the board and pieces back in their case (Ron made sure to leave it out on the coffee table in case anyone else wanted to have a go later), Ginny surprised everyone with a lunch request.

"Dean told me about this restaurant that he liked to go to, but I can't remember the name. They served all kinds of Asian cuisine there," she explained. Ron immediately made a grimace of disgust.

"I don't like raw fish!" he complained.

"You don't have to eat the raw fish!" Ginny hissed back. "We never go out into the Muggle world, and while we're here, I want to try it!"

Harry and the Grangers all looked at each other with a small amount of hesitation. As Hermione had pointed out the previous evening, they'd just had Chinese food just three days earlier, on Wednesday night. But they all knew that the point of Ron and Ginny being over was for them to experience the Muggle world (and to spend some time with their friends, of course).

"Well, we could go to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. It just so happens that our favorite one is literally right up the street from here," Emma suggested.

"And, Ron," Dan added, "they don't serve raw fish there. They do have an 'all-you-can-eat' menu option too." Suffice it to say, but Ron was willing to give it a try. Before going to the restaurant, they made a quick stop at one of the local shops to drop Emma's roll of film off for a quick one-hour develop.

On Ron's fourth trip back to the buffet, only his selection of an extremely spicy dish kept him from eating the restaurant out of business. Ginny was stuffed after two trips, and Harry and Grangers knew what they wanted so they ordered regular lunch entrées which allowed them to take their leftovers home. 'All you can eat' meant, after all, all you could eat, and not all you could take home. No longer able to taste his food, Ron decided he'd had enough.

"Well... how was I supposed to know how hot the sign meant it would be?" he asked in his defense as they walked back to the car.

"Extremely spicy," Hermione reminded him of what the sign read.

"Better have the air-freshening charm handy tonight," Ginny observed grimly.

There was still a good twenty minutes remaining until their photographs were due to be picked up, so they just drove around for a short while showing all the sights there were to see in Wandsworth. When Emma returned to the car with the photographs, she said she'd give them their pictures later.

By the time everyone was once again comfortable in the house, it was just after two o'clock. Ron, who could not get enough of Harry's chess set, hit him up for another game. He was saved from having to decide whether he wanted to play when he saw Emma behind Ron subtly shaking her head at him.

"I'd like to try it," she said behind Ron. Harry watched as Ron's eyebrows rose in surprise. He returned his face to normal before turning to face her.

"Sure, why not?" Ron decided.

As the board was set again, Emma spoke a great deal about how she'd found wizard's chess extremely interesting, about how the pieces moved, and of course how she'd never played before. Dan's first game still fresh in Harry's mind, he could not help but notice how she never actually said that she'd never played chess before; everything she said was in reference to wizard's chess.

Harry also remembered that Dan never did say from whom he'd learned to play chess.

As he got comfortable, Harry noticed Ron watching Emma suspiciously as she spoke. Perhaps he'd learned Dan's lesson well. Once the game began, the two players engaged in idle chit chat, but neither made any real attempt to distract the other.

Ten minutes in, it was clear that both of them were serious and intently focused on the game. Twenty minutes in, it appeared Emma and Ron were pretty well evenly matched. At the half-hour mark, Emma had a slight lead on Ron. Forty-five minutes in, it was clear Emma was winning. Ron knew it, but this time, it was the time to fight to the death... or at least to the checkmate.

Finally, after fifty-seven minutes (Hermione had timed it by occasionally looking at the clock), Ron's king kneeled down in defeat. It was the first time Harry could remember seeing Ron beat by a better player (yesterday didn't count).

From what he'd seen of him in his limited experience as Gryffindor Keeper, Harry didn't expect Ron would take this defeat very well. As the game had progressed, Ron's brow was constantly furrowed in concentration. He couldn't tell if Ron was upset or not. He was therefore very pleasantly surprised when Ron stood up from the kitchen table after the game wearing a large grin.

"THAT was the best game I've ever played," he said, running a hand through his red hair and massaging his scalp as if his brain was tired. "I'm not sure whether I made a wrong move or something, but still, it was a challenge the whole way thorough... which was kinda fun."

As Emma stood up, she smiled graciously. "Ronald, you learn a lot of things as you go through life. Fortunately-or unfortunately depending on how you look at it-if I hear something, I remember it. That makes me extremely susceptible to quoting movies and television programs. I'm going to quote you something from one of my favorites. 'It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.'"

Ron stared at Emma, confused. "If you don't win," she tried to explain, "don't automatically assume that you lost the game. There will always be someone out there who is better than you, smarter than you," she added, sending the briefest of glances to Hermione. Having spent two weeks with Hermione's parents, Harry got the distinct feeling that that was a reminder to her of some conversation they'd shared at some point.

* * *

Faster than anyone expected, and sooner than they wanted, it was ten minutes to five o'clock. "Well, probably time to get going," Ron noted as he climbed off Harry's Firebolt. He'd begged Harry to just let him float around his bedroom on it for a few minutes.

The children were forbidden from flying their brooms while they were at Grimmauld. Molly, having plenty of experience dealing with Weasley children, had therefore locked all of their brooms in her bedroom, knowing that was the only way to ensure someone didn't "accidentally" find themselves flying around the neighborhood.

"Well, Harry mate, don't tell Hermione I said this, but I really did have a brilliant time here," Ron said. "It'll be nice though getting back to the magical world."

"What do mean by that?" Harry asked, slightly confused.

"Well, the Muggle world is a fine place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here," Ron explained. "Take after breakfast this morning, for example. You guys actually had to wash out the popcorn bowls from last night. Why wash them when you can just...?" he asked seriously as he waved his hand as if he was holding his wand.

"Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with that... it's just not me," Ron explained. "Like I said, it's a great place to visit... And I did have fun here. But just don't tell her I said that. She'd never let me live it down."

Don't worry, I won't, Harry thought to himself. He was certain Hermione would enjoy reminding Ron about his time here if she heard that. He was also certain that if she heard the second part, Ron would need to worry more about living, than he would 'living it down.'

While Dan and Emma were in the kitchen looking for some envelopes to put Ron and Ginny's photographs in, the four teenagers said their goodbyes.

"Are you happy now?" Ginny asked Ron with a smirk when she saw him and Harry descending the stairs. Ron nodded, looking almost guilty. "He's been bugging Mum about getting on his broom ever since we moved in," she explained to Hermione.

"I still can't believe your mum beat me," Ron said with a slight laugh to Hermione.

"What'd you expect,Ronald? She'salways been the best chess player in our family," Hermione replied. Ron just shrugged his shoulders.

"All right everyone!" Emma practically sang as she and Dan returned from the kitchen. She handed both Ginny and Hermione an envelope. They both opened them and removed the photographs.

Emma had said earlier that there were four photographs remaining on her roll of film. No one sixteen or younger noticed that there were six photographs in their envelopes.

"They don't move," Ron said, pointing out the obvious, as he stood next to his sister to better see them. Harry stood next to Hermione.

The first two photographs were taken by Dan. The first was of the four of them, just standing together in King George's Park. Emma intentionally had them stand together for that one. The second one was of the four of them, all on the swing set. Harry and Ron had challenged each other to see who could go the highest, while Hermione and Ginny swung leisurely and watched them as best they could.

Whether by luck or on purpose, Dan had snapped this particular photograph at the exact moment at the top of Harry's swing when it felt like gravity let go for a split-second and the chains actually went loose. Just like he remembered when looking at the photograph of Hermione and her parents, seeing that moment frozen in time had a much stronger effect than if he'd seen it moving.

The third and four photographs were taken by Emma, and were of the four of them chasing each other around playing Tag. Ron complained about not seeing the point in that game until he was "It" and the other three started taunting him, saying he just couldn't catch them.

In the third one, Ron was about two seconds away from tackling Harry and knocking him to the ground. Harry thought it funny to accuse Ron of running as if he was flying a school broom. At Hogwarts, that was the only thing worse than for one boy to tell another that he ran like a girl. That, and no one ever said the other because the girls at Hogwarts often hexed boys for saying things like that.

The fourth picture was of Harry reaching out to help pull up Hermione, with Ron and Ginny looking on concerned in the background. Harry was now "It" and had been chasing Hermione, since Ron and Ginny were further away. She'd slipped on a wet patch of grass caused by a leaky underground sprinkler. The fields in the park were used part-time for youth group football games, so the park was exempt from the ban on lawn irrigation for safety reasons to keep the ground soft. Ironic, no?

Thanks to the soft ground, and the tendency for witches' and wizards' bodies to be slightly more durable than Muggles', Hermione hadn't hurt herself when she fell. Since she was already laughing at Harry as he tried to catch her, she merely found her fall even funnier. The picture showed both of them laughing as he pulled her up. At the time, Harry had a sense of déjà vu as he recalled similarly pulling her up back in the hallway of Grimmauld Place.

As Harry and Hermione lingered on that particular photograph, they suddenly heard Ron and Ginny burst into riotous laughter. The two of them looked up at the brother and sister.

"I didn't think it was that funny," Hermione said, befuddled by their reaction. "Yeah, I fell, and I laughed, but nothing like that."

"N-n-not th-that!" Ron managed to choke out between laughs.

"THIS!" Ginny exclaimed as she turned their stack of photographs around. The two of them then began to laugh even harder.

Harry and Hermione's eyes widened in shock as they saw the photograph. They then went to the next one in their own stack. As they looked at them, Hermione had shuffled the top photograph to the bottom of the stack as they looked at them. Since she hadn't bothered to see how many photos there were in her stack, after four, she simply assumed that was the last one. That, and she (and Harry) were very content to look at that fourth photograph.

The fifth photograph in their stack was of Harry and Hermione, asleep together on the loveseat. Harry suddenly heard a voice in the back of his mind. "Where's my camera?" he remembered from his dream this morning. Hermione's and Emma's voices did sound somewhat alike, but the more he thought about it, the more he remembered that it was Emma's voice in his dream, not Hermione's.

The summer storm... there were flashes, but he never did see any bolts of lightning, nor did he hear any thunder. He must have heard Emma when she was getting the newspaper and seen thorough his closed eyelids the flash of the camera and simply incorporated them into his dream.

And so now, there were photographs of the two of them snuggled up together, asleep on the loveseat. All at the same time, Harry felt ashamed, humiliated, guilty, and embarrassed about getting caught like that, and that Ron and Ginny now knew. As for the picture itself... Nice photograph! he thought to himself.

"MUM!!" Hermione practically shouted, looking very upset. Harry looked over at Emma and saw a look of amusement die on her face, as though she hadn't been expecting such a strong reaction from Hermione. Standing next to her, out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see Hermione's face start to get red. At this angle however, he couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or anger.

By now, Ron's laughter had subsided enough that he could now talk properly. "Oh! Well, well, well. Look at who was making fun of us for falling asleep on the sofa. Thought you could get away with it, did you?" he asked finding this extremely hilarious. "Well, it looks like Hermione's mum didn't let you, did she?"

At those words, Ginny immediately stopped laughing and looked back down at the photographs in her hand. She very slowly, and almost in fear, flipped one more to the sixth and final photograph. Her face paled at what she saw.

"Ron," Ginny whispered, "let it go!"

On his side, Harry saw Emma make a motion with her hand. He looked over to see her moving her index finger in a circular motion, trying to tell them to flip to the last photograph. Once they realized what she was trying to tell them, Harry and Hermione looked at the last picture. They then burst out into laughter.

"Yeah, now you think it's funny!" Ron exclaimed with a grin when they started laughing. But then he quickly realized they weren't laughing with him. "What're you laughing at?" he asked.

"This!" Ginny said, annoyed at her brother as she shoved the pictures in front of his face.

"Bloody hell!" Ron shouted loudly as he saw a photograph of himself asleep, curled up in the fetal position, with his head in Ginny's lap. "It's not funny!" he repeated himself from this morning.

Between laughs, Harry managed to get a few words out. "Oh, I think it is!"

"Please, Harry, mate, my best mate! You won't tell anyone about this, will you?" Ron begged.

Harry already knew his answer, considering the contents of the fifth photograph, but he decided to stretch it out a little.

"Well..." he pretended to consider, "I don't know. It depends."

"WHAT?!" he heard Hermione whisper to him, sounding aghast.

"Depends on what?" Ron asked desperately, not hearing Hermione's whisper. Harry grinned and held up the picture of himself and Hermione on the loveseat.

Ron suddenly looked very disappointed. "That's blackmail, you know."

"I prefer to think of it as a mutual agreement," Hermione said. Harry was relieved she'd cottoned on to what he was doing. Ron stared longingly at his own picture of them on the loveseat. He didn't appear eager to remain silent.

"It's your decision, Ron," Harry said. For added emphasis, he flipped back to Ron and Ginny's picture and showed it to them.

"Fine," Ron grudgingly agreed.

"FINE!" Ginny agreed also.

"We keep this to ourselves," Hermione proposed. "We don't tell anyone, and we don't show anyone the pictures." Ron and Ginny acquiesced.

By now, it was 4:59. "Time to go," Dan said urgently. Ginny quickly put the pictures back into the envelope and stuffed it into her pocket. Ron went over to the corner of the living room and fetched his and his sister's shopping, shrinking down all of their bags. He knew that now was probably not the best time to tell his sister to shrink them herself (because of the photographs).

"I had a great time!" Ginny said as she gave Hermione a quick hug goodbye as Harry and Ron watched the exchange (since guys didn't do that sort of thing). After putting his now miniaturized purchases into his pocket, Ron went over retrieved his piece of candy-come Portkey and went over next to Ginny as she similarly stowed her shopping.

"Twenty seconds," Dan warned them as he looked at his watch. It only made sense that the Headmaster would set the Portkey to activate at five o'clock according to whichever clock they looked at. Actually, if anyone had checked closely, they would have noticed that every single clock and watch in the house now showed exactly the same time, down to the second.

Ginny reached out and put her hand on the Portkey.

"One. Two. Three," Dan counted. Ron and Ginny disappeared, on their way back to 12 Grimmauld Place.

Hermione looked back down at the photograph of her and Harry, showing it to him again.

"Well," she said loudly and dramatically so that her mother could hear, "at least Mum took the picture at an angle so you can't see me drooling."

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