With their afternoon free, Harry asked Dawn if she wanted to go flying again. She quickly accepted the invitation, so she, Hermione and Harry went down to the Quidditch pitch together. Buffy had begged off, saying that she had other things she needed to get done before they left tomorrow.
Harry and Hermione showed Dawn how to control her broom with just her legs, so she could fly with her hands free. At first she was very reluctant to let go of her broom but Harry demonstrated how hard it was to actually fall off one by doing a couple of rolls without holding on with his hands at all. There was a binding charm on the broom which kept the rider firmly attached to it. It took quite a knock to separate someone from their broom entirely. It didn't take long until Dawn was flying hands free, almost as well as she could with her hands on the broom. Then Harry produced a Quaffle.
It looked kind of like a basketball to Dawn, only it was made of leather. They flew around the pitch, tossing it back and forth between each other. Dawn found that it was very easy to catch, and to throw. There were charms on it that made it stick to your hands when you caught, or were carrying it, but it released instantly when you threw. It wasn't affected by gravity much, so it tended to go in a straight line, but Harry was able to make it curve by putting a lot of spin on it when he threw.
They moved on to play a little two on one. They took turns playing Keeper while the other two would try to score. Dawn and Hermione almost never scored a goal against Harry, and they almost never managed to keep Harry from scoring when they were Keeping. Fortunately when he was on the offensive he usually let Dawn or Hermione take the shot, only doing it often enough himself to keep the Keeper on her toes, and not ignoring what he was doing.
Dawn was left with a new appreciation for just how tough a game Quidditch must be. Hermione was a lot better than her at it, and Harry was off in another league altogether. She also knew that it would be a lot more difficult with another team trying knock her off her broom, and firing Bludgers at her head.
When they returned to Gryffindor tower Dawn was an entirely different sort of tired from what she had been feeling for the last two weeks. She was hot and sweaty and physically exhausted. Dawn wanted a bath, and as soon as she was up in her dorm room she started toward the bathroom while peeling out of her t-shirt.
"Just a minute," said Hermione.
"What?" asked Dawn.
"If you want a real treat, grab some fresh clothes, and I'll show you the Prefect's Bathroom."
"It's better than the tubs we have here?" asked Dawn. She found that hard to imagine. Their bathroom had the best bathtubs Dawn had ever experienced. Big and deep enough to totally immerse yourself, and with a comfortable reclined back, and a padded headrest. The water in them was always just the right temperature, and no matter how dirty you were when you started it stayed crystal clear, except for the bubbles if you added the bubble bath.
"Wait till you see it." Hermione had pulled clean clothes for herself from her drawers. "Come on." She grabbed her hair brush too.
Dawn pulled her t-shirt back on, and gathered her own change of clothes, comb and brush. "What about towels?" she asked.
"Already there," said Hermione. She started down the stairs. "Come on."
Hermione took Dawn down to the fourth floor, to a door to the right of a statue of a lost looking wizard who had his gloves on the wrong hands. She placed her hand on the doorknob and said "Scrubbing bubbles." The door opened for her.
There was a small antechamber inside the door, with a second door that opened into a large room. Everywhere Dawn looked was light aquamarine marble, except the ceiling, which was sky blue with fluffy white clouds drifting across it. There was a depression in the floor about the size of a suburban back yard swimming pool. It even had a diving board, and was ringed by gold taps with different coloured jewels in the handles. Hermione bent down by a tap with a clear, colourless jewel—Dawn thought she wouldn't be surprised if it was a diamond—and turned it. Hot water started to flow into the pool.
"Oh my god!" said Dawn.
"Neat, huh?" asked Hermione. She put her clean clothes onto a shelf by the wall and started to pull off her what she was wearing, and just drop it onto the floor.
Dawn only hesitated for a moment. She and Hermione had seen each other naked lots by now, and she had never gotten any sort of indication that Hermione was the least bit interested in her. She had seen the way Willow and Kennedy sometimes looked at her like they were checking her out—not that either of them had ever done more than look—and she had never noticed anything like that from Hermione. The months sharing a bedroom with a bunch of Potentials had also convinced Dawn that she was pretty heterosexual herself. She took another look at the rapidly filling pool as she peeled out of her clothes. It was plenty big enough for all of the Potentials to have shared it, without anyone being forced to be any friendlier with anyone than they wanted to be.
The pool was already half full when they finished getting undressed. They walked down the steps at the shallow end, into knee deep water. Dawn looked at some of the other taps. "What do these do?" she asked.
"Give them a try," said Hermione.
Dawn turned a tap with a ruby in the handle, and pink, lightly rose scented bubbles erupted from it. She turned if off quickly, and moved around to the next one. Each tap she tried let out a different sort of bubbles. One tap sent out a stream of huge bubbles that floated in the air around the room. Another dispensed a thick liquid gel, that quickly foamed into rafts that floated on top of the water. A third tap sent forth a stream of what looked like clear water, but when it hit the water in the pool, it started to fizz. Dawn felt millions of tiny bubbles making every square inch of her skin tingle.
"Scrubbing bubbles," said Hermione. "You just have to lay back and enjoy it. They do all the work." The pool was almost full now, and she went to the tap that had produced the gel. She let some of it gush out into her hand and quickly rubbed it onto her arms and legs. She put an extra thick layer around her neck. It foamed up into a collar and she lay back into the water, letting herself float, supported by the foam, the extra thick layer around her neck keeping her face out of the water.
Dawn emulated Hermione, rubbing the gel over herself, and lay back to float, letting the bubbles tingle over her skin. She lay there thinking about the last two weeks, what she would do, what courses she would be taking…what it would be like to have Harry in this pool with her… She felt herself dozing off.
"There you are!" said a high pitched voice with a distinct whine in it.
Dawn opened her eyes and saw a ghost floating over the pool. It looked like a rather dumpy girl, with thick glasses and a pimply face.
"You looking for us, Myrtle?" asked Hermione.
"Everyone is," said Myrtle. "No one knows where you got to."
"Why are they looking?" asked Dawn.
"You are invited to dinner in the Great Hall tonight, since you're going back to London in the morning."
"Oh!" said Hermione. "How long do we have?"
"Fifteen minutes," said Myrtle.
"Okay, you can go tell everyone you found us, and passed on the message," said Hermione. "Goodbye Myrtle."
"Fine!" said Myrtle. "No one wants me around!" She started to cry.
"Oh, hey, don't cry!" said Dawn. "I'm sure that you're a very nice ghost!"
"You think so?" asked Myrtle.
"Sure!" said Dawn.
"You'll come visit me?"
Dawn was about to say that she would, when she saw Hermione shaking her head at her. "Um…I'll try," she said. "Not sure if I'll be able to." Myrtle burst into tears again.
"Myrtle, you have to go tell everyone you found us, and that we will be along to dinner presently," said Hermione. "Could you do that for us please?"
Myrtle sniffed back tears. "Oh, alright. Nobody wants me around." She disappeared into the water tap.
"What was that about?" asked Dawn.
"Moaning Myrtle," said Hermione. "She normally haunts the second floor girl's bathroom."
"That's the one you warned me to stay away from?"
"Yep, and she's the reason. She cries all the time, over the slightest thing. She's always moaning or complaining about something. Now we have a dinner to go to."
Hermione used her hands to brush the foam away from her skin. She ducked her head under the water. Dawn did the same, and felt the bubbles in the water tingling against her scalp. She shook her head, making her hair spread out around her. She ran her fingers through it when she surfaced again. Her hair was tangle free, and felt completely clean.
Hermione was already climbing the steps out of the pool. Dawn followed her out and over to a shelf full of fluffy towels. They toweled themselves dry and Hermione showed Dawn where to stand to make a jet of hot air blow over her hair, drying it too while she combed and brushed it.
Hermione told Dawn to just leave her dirty clothes on the floor where they were when they had finished getting dressed. She grimaced a bit. "The House Elves will take care of them. Have them back, clean, and in your drawers in the morning."
"I noticed in my instructions that all my clothes should have my name in them," said Dawn. "Is that why, so the elves can keep track?"
"Yep," said Hermione. "With just you and Buffy here, they can keep track easily enough without the labels, but once term starts, they're going to be doing laundry for a few hundred kids."
