Here at the End

Here at the End

By

Ahn Na Blue

Rated PG-13

Chapter Four: The Hippogriff Theory

Disclaimer: Still don’t own Harry Potter. Dammit.

So what’s my favorite new theory this week?

***********************************

“I should be getting back to the Burrow,” Ron said.

“What do you mean? Aren’t you coming back to Hogwarts with us?” Harry asked, surprised.

Ron shuffled his feet and glanced furtively at Hermione, who was dragging her trunk over to them. After the incident at Godric’s Hollow, they had wasted no time and caught the next train back to London. King’s Cross was bustling with people; it was taking her quite a while to reach them.

“Well, sure I am,” Ron said with a grin that Harry thought was a little bit unconvincing. “As soon as the term starts. Or even if it doesn’t, I’ll be back when term was supposed to start. It’s just that- I think my mum is a little worried, and she’s going through this whole, ‘empty nest’ thing, what with Bill getting married and Charlie and Percy gone, Fred and George having the magic shop, and Ginny’s really grown up-”

“I get it Ron,” Harry said with a smile. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.” Harry thought that it was very good of Ron to be concerned for Mrs. Weasley, but he still couldn’t help but wonder if Ron’s departure had something to do with the incident at the cemetery.

“Hey Hermione,” Ron said. She had finally made her way over. She was huffing and puffing and blowing her hair out of her eyes.

“Yes Ron?”

“I’m going to head back to the Burrow until school starts.” He hesitated and shifted his weight again. “Do you- do you want to come with me?”

Harry took an inadvertent step backwards and almost stumbled over his trunk. Hermione caught his arm to steady him, but she was looking at Ron, with a confused expression. It was several moments before she spoke, several uncomfortable moments for Ron, Harry thought. He kept clearing his throat and looking back at the train like it might be leaving.

“Well, Harry, are you going back too?”

“I have to start training,” Harry said, almost bitterly. As much as he wanted to keep his friends out of danger, there was still a small part of him that wanted them with him, helping him, instead of spending another cozy summer at the Burrow together.

Hermione bit her lip. “You’ll be coming back, won’t you Ron?”

Harry brightened. Was she staying? Suddenly the air at King’s Cross seemed much fresher, and he noticed a nice breeze being kicked up by an incoming train.
“Right, well then,” Ron was saying, looking nervously at Hermione and purposefully at Harry. The three of them stood very still in the middle of dozens of milling people. “I guess…I’ll see you at school!” And then there was a Pop! And Ron Disapparated out of the station.

The tone of Ron’s voice snapped Harry back to reality. I’m an idiot, he thought with regret. He probably wanted to say goodbye to Hermione alone! Why didn’t I just excuse myself?

“Mommy! Mommy! Did you see that boy disappear?! Where did that boy go?!”

Harry looked down in horror to see a little girl jumping up and down and pointing to the space that Ron had just occupied. She had seen him Disapparate!

“Oh dearest,” Hermione smiled, leaning down to her and giving one of the girl’s pigtails a twirl, “There was no boy there! What are you talking about?”

The little girl lingered for a moment longer before running back to the safety of her mother’s skirts, away from the crazy disappearing people.

“Oh that’s just lovely!” Hermione huffed. “I probably made that poor little girl feel like a simpleton!”

“Better that than to have to call the Ministry,” Harry observed.

Hermione pursed her lips and began to drag her trunk into the shadows. “I suppose you’re right, Harry, but just the same, Ron has to learn to Disapparate more discreetly! Or to at least learn to cast a decent cloaking spell first!” Her brows were knit in that way that she had when she was very frustrated, and Harry couldn’t help smiling.

“What’s so funny?” She snapped.

“Nothing,” Harry said quickly. “But where are you going? I thought we were taking a train?”

“The Hogwarts Express isn’t running. We’re going to have to Apparate. Or rather, I’m going to have to Apparate both of us, and our trunks. This isn’t going to be easy…but if I mess up I promise to conjure you another shoe.”

********************************

“Oh no,” Hermione was whispering over and over, in between indecipherable mumbles to herself. She and Harry were sitting on their trunks, in the middle of a forest. She had meant to Apparate them directly to the Hogwarts front gate.

“Oh no,” she said again.

Harry watched her for a few seconds with faint annoyance. She had missed her mark because she had been focusing too hard on taking everything with them (which she had succeeded in doing; Harry still had both shoes, and his whole trunk), but if she had just let him Apparate on his own, they’d be inside by now.

“Look, Hermione, it’ll be all right,” Harry grumbled. “I’m sure you didn’t miss by that much.” He looked around at the trees, which looked to him like every other tree in the country. And there were several of them. Whatever forest they were in, they were definitely in the middle of it. He sighed. “I don’t know why you didn’t just let me Apparate on my own.”

Hermione’s brow clouded, and it made Harry a bit angry. “What? Don’t give me that ‘high and mighty’ look, everyone knows that you’ll break the rules when it suits you!” Harry shoved himself off of his trunk and walked a short distance away.

“When it suits me?” Hermione said incredulously.

“Yeah,” Harry snapped, “Everyone else has to follow the rules to a T, just because I got some help from some old notes in Potions last year I’m dirt, but you…” He looked squarely at her. “Have you Confunded anyone lately? To bail your boyfriend out of trouble, maybe?”

“Ron’s not-!” Hermione’s eyes were blazing, and beginning to sparkle with tears.

“Ron’s not what?”

“I can’t believe that you’re saying this to me,” she said, ignoring Harry’s question. “Although maybe I should.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Harry’s eyes narrowed. Hermione had been standing up and smoothing her clothes, and now she crossed her arms at him and nearly yelled.

“It means that I got you out of Umbridge’s office last year to rescue your godfather, and all I got was snapped at because I didn’t think about the centaurs! And all this year, about the Half-Blood Prince, you wouldn’t listen, you…you and Ginny, would just snap at me!”

Harry walked closer to her, barely hearing what she was saying. “Don’t change the subject. You break the rules when it suits you, but nobody else can. What about attacking Ron with those birds?” Harry was remembering the past year very vividly. He remembered his surprise when he had realized that Hermione had Confunded Cormac just to get Ron on the team. It was so unlike her…and that’s what bothered him the most.

Hermione had drawn her wand with a sigh. “Indagatrix Dispicio,” she said clearly, pointing her wand tip into the sky. Harry watched with wonder as bright blue speckles of light emerged from her wand, to arrange themselves in the air. Two of the speckles glowed much brighter than the others, and Hermione seemed to be studying them intently. “We have to go that way,” she said after a moment, pointing west.

“A map spell,” he said softly, trying to keep his voice from sounding like an apology. Hermione nodded. She lowered her wand and the blue lights exploded and fizzed away like tiny fireworks. “I’ll have to remember that one.”

“Why? Do you intend to be lost quite often?” Hermione levitated her trunk and started to walk west with it hovering before her.

“Hermione-”

“Actually Harry,” she said, cutting him off in a business-like tone. “You can’t use that spell. I wrote it for a woman. Actually, just for me. It can be altered of course,” she added, and Harry couldn’t help but be impressed. Hermione slowed her pace and looked down thoughtfully. “Confunding Cormac McLaggen- can you imagine if I hadn’t? You’d have had to choose between him and Ron based on nothing but your own preference. If you’d have picked Ron, you’d be accused of playing favorites and lost your credibility as Captain. If you hadn’t, Ron would be angry at you and you would have been stuck with Cormac constantly trying to take over the team.”

“I hadn’t really thought of it that way,” Harry said honestly. He levitated his own trunk and started off after her. They walked through the trees in silence. Every now and again Hermione would call up her map in a flash of blue sparkles to check their position. They had Apparated about a half mile into the forest just outside the castle grounds.

Harry was still thinking about what she’d said. Confunding McLaggen really had helped him, he supposed. And she had disobeyed a professor when she lied to Umbridge last year…and she had broken school rules with her Time Turner to help him save Sirius from the Dementors…and she had brewed the Polyjuice Potion for him when he needed to spy on Malfoy…and then of course she had set a professor on fire for him in their first year (and Harry smiled as he thought of Snape on fire).

He looked at Hermione, walking in front of him, her brown hair swaying softly, and he suddenly felt very guilty.

“Hermione,” he said awkwardly.

“Yes Harry?”

“When you break the rules,” he paused and heard Hermione sigh.

“Yes? What about it?”

“You break them for me,” he said finally. “I shouldn’t have said what I did, just now.”

Hermione quickly wiped at her face and then turned to him, smiling. ‘It’s all right, Harry.”

Harry stiffened as behind them he heard the very distinct sound of footsteps.

“I can really be a bit of a nag sometimes…you know I-”

“Shush, Hermione,” Harry said, and the tone of his voice made her freeze. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” she whispered. They both stood completely still, their ears and eyes straining. Harry’s heart was pounding. They waited for what seemed like an eternity before they heard it again, this time a sharp crack, of a twig beneath a foot, Just to their right. And then again, to their left. Harry got the sinking feeling that they were being surrounded. He looked at Hermione, and she nodded slightly.

Without a word they started running together, towards the castle, and around them, the forest seemed to erupt from all directions as whatever had been trying to cut them off gave chase. Harry glanced back over his shoulder and saw what looked like a red werewolf, its horrible, spindly legs propelling it extremely fast.

“Impedimenta!” He shouted and sent it rolling, but there were half a dozen more crashing through the underbrush towards them. “Faster,” he said to Hermione, and from behind them, he thought he heard a very scratchy laughter, but that didn’t make sense; werewolves couldn’t laugh, but then again, nor could they be werewolves without the full moon. Harry glanced up to make sure that the sun was alone in the sky. He couldn’t see a false moon anywhere.

Beside him, Hermione gave a little shriek and swung her wand around, guiding her levitating trunk and using it to bludgeon one of the creatures that was getting too close. But they were all getting too close. And Hermione was panting; they just couldn’t run fast enough. Harry was vaguely reminded of the time he and Ron had fled Aragog’s nest, chased by hundreds of hungry and oversized spiders.

“I wish we had a flying car!” he shouted as they ran, and to his surprise, Hermione’s face lit up.

She put her fingers to her mouth and whistled twice, very loudly.

“What are you doing?” Harry asked her.

She smiled at him. “As it turns out, today wishes are hippogriffs. Now use your trunk! Knock them down!”

As she spoke, Harry heard a very familiar and welcome screech, and saw Buckbeak swooping down through the trees. Harry and Hermione stopped running, and swung their trunks from left to right and back again, bowling over every creature that leaped at them. But more were coming. Harry noticed with a sick feeling that when they fell they made no sound, no whimper at all.

“Harry, come on!”

He turned around to see Hermione already on Buckbeak’s back, and ran to climb up behind her. They were in the air in three quick leaps, their trunks floating along behind them.

******

“What were those things?” Harry was pacing back and forth after they had landed in the courtyard. “They looked like werewolves, but werewolves can’t be out in the day…” He was puzzled. And shaking. The creatures, whatever they were, really looked much worse than werewolves. They had spindly, unnatural legs, and their eyes were blood red. They seemed nothing but eyes, teeth and fur…and horribly elongated teeth at that. “Hermione, what do you think?”

But Hermione didn’t appear to be thinking much. She had her arms wrapped around Buckbeak’s neck, and the hippogriff didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was clicking his beak rather contentedly, not unlike Hedwig after she had eaten a very plump mouse.

Now things made even less sense. Because even though Hermione had helped to save the hippogriff’s life, and was obviously fond of him, she had never been comfortable around Buckbeak. And yet Harry had just seen her call him to her, and ride him as if she’d been riding him for ages. Harry suddenly remembered the gray feathers that seemed to be frequently stuck to her sleeves, and the way that she refused to give up feeding him.

“Hermione-”

“I know, Harry,” she said, reading his mind. “I guess I’m just not so scared of him anymore.” Buckbeak bobbed his head as Harry approached, and bowed.

Hermione giggled. “I don’t think you need to bow anymore,” she said. “But you probably should say thank you,” she added, “After all, he’s saved your life twice now, in the last three months.”

Harry looked at her hard. He saw the way that Buckbeak was nibbling at her shoulder and remembered how the hippogriff had charged in from nowhere to save him from Snape’s attack. “Hermione, how long have you and Buckbeak been….friends?” he asked suspiciously.

“Since-” she started, and then blushed and looked away. “Since right after your last Quidditch match.”

Harry reached out to pat the hippogriff. “The night that Buckbeak saved me-” Harry said, intending to ask her if she had sent him, but she cut him off.

“Yes, he was very clever, wasn’t he? Very brave.” She was looking down at the ground and blushing furiously. As Harry looked at her, he felt a curious warmth in his chest.

“He was very brave,” Harry said softly. “And he’s always very clever. Thank you,” he said, and Hermione looked up at Buckbeak proudly.

But Harry wasn’t sure if Buckbeak had been the one he was talking to.

********************************************

A/N: Okay that one was kind of short. But if I had added the next section, where training begins and Ginny (bleh) shows up again, it would have been way too long. Thanks to all of you hippogriff theorists, and to whoever came up with the idea that the Confunding helped Harry more than Ron. I like it.

And the reviews have been excellent. Gnarly. Bodacious. Tubular. And whatever other dorky 80’s word you can think of.

Next week we’re laying more groundwork for the catfight…I don’t think Ginny’s going to be too happy about Hermione helping Harry train…and Ron too, will be feeling suspicious…