"Open up!"
"I can't!"
Ginny had been trudging through the halls back to Divination to retrieve her satchel when she heard voices a few corridors down. Inquisitive girl that she was, she went to investigate.
"Hermione, open this door right now!" Ron's face had turned bright red and his fist was bruised from pounding on the door. Harry too, was flushed from yelling, his bristly hair was sticking up at all angles and he had a determined look on his face.
"Harry, Ron, calm down. I can't open the door. It's stuck. I've been trying to spell it open but it appears to have a Permi-locking charm on it. Don't panic. There are steps in front of me. I'm going to go and have a look around."
"No!" shouted both boys at once. The soft clunk of feet on stone announced Hermione's retreat. At the sight of Ginny, boys both began to talk at once.
"Ginny, help us," Harry entreated.
"She's stuck!" Ron whined.
"We can't open the door."
"Help!"
"Okay, okay" Ginny soothed, agreeing simply to make their babbling cease. "Have you had a look around the other corridors? There could be other doors leading into the room. Then we won't even need to bother opening this one." Both boys looked thunderstruck. Simultaneously they ran in opposite directions, calling Hermione's name and swinging open random doors. Now that she had gotten rid of the knut-brained twits, Ginny got to work. She unleashed an impressive number of complex spells and hexes, all aimed at opening or removing the offending piece of wood and iron. Some of the stone next to the door was singed and a tapestry a few feet away broke out in green pustules, and nearby painting cowered in the corner of his frame but the door held firm. Ginny sighed heavily. She kicked the door furiously for an entire minute. All she got was a sore foot. She sighed again in frustration.
"Hermione!" she roared, "Open this door NOW!" There was no response. Farther down the hall, she heard Ron's eager voice.
"Guys, come quick!" Ginny and Harry pelted down the corridor and into the tiny room from which Ron's voice had emanated. She rushed inside to see Ron's backside wedged firmly in a small domed window. He shimmied out and audibly scraped his bony elbows on the wooden sill. "I see Hermione! She's okay! I found her!" the redhead crowed. "Look!" The sheer number of exclamation points she could hear in his intonation was getting on Ginny's nerves. Unceremoniously, she shoved her elder brother away from the window and peered out. As she craned her neck upwards against the light wind, Ginny saw who she assumed must be Hermione. The girl looked like Hermione for all intents and purposes, except that she had ankle length hair. And a rather poufy dress. In lilac. The dress strangely suited her. Now Ginny could understand the reason for all the exclamation points. She sighed happily.
By fortuitous chance, Hermione happened to look down and see Ginny's squinting face in the window below her. She opened her window and called out to her hapless rescuers.
"Does your magic work? Mine appears to be malfunctioning due to the sub-biorhythms of the…" the rest of her words were carried away in a particularly zealous breeze.
"Let me check," Ginny called. A quick bat bogey hex and counter curse later, she hollered the affirmative. Harry rubbed his still-twitching nose and looked deeply affronted. Following logic even Ron could follow, Ginny aimed a Wingardium Leviosa at the stranded damsel in distress. A few feet away from her, the charm dissipated. All other magic had the same effect. Ron was sent to rescue the invisibility cloak from where it had fallen several floors down when Harry, in a fit of heroic thinking, had throw it at the invisible barrier in a vain attempt to make it "undisappear" as he so aptly put it. Ginny sighed. Harry sulked for a while in a corner; all the while muttering 'made sense' and 'ungrateful heirlooms' until Ginny sent him to get a box of Nudie mags for her 'brilliant idea'. He had been very skeptical until she had pointed out that he could probably convince Seamus to lend Harry some of his best magazines for such a brilliant plan. He had been so enthusiastic to help that he had forgotten that Ginny was not supposed to know about such things nor about what Nudie mags could possibly have to do with a damsel-rescuing plan. Now that she had gotten rid of both boys for a second time, Ginny began to construct a plan. Ginny being Ginny, about thirty seconds later, she jumped up from her relaxed position on the sill with a fresh scheme, rubbing her back where the wrought iron curtain holder had bruised it.
"Hermione, I've got a plan!" she yelled up to the tower. Hermione's head reappeared in the window. "How long is your hair? As of right now I mean?" By this time, Hermione's hair had grown far past her feet and was curled in nut brown, slightly frizzy bundles on the floor.
"It is far past my feet in curled nut brown, slightly frizzy bundles on the floor!" she called back when the wind had died down.
"Excellent," Ginny said to herself. To Hermione she shouted "Do you have anything sharp? Like a knife or some such?"
"Yes, I have…" the rest of her sentence was garbled in the renewed blustery conditions. Ginny trusted that her sharp object would be sharp enough to shear hair and shouted
"Hermione! Hermione, throw your hair down! I'll tie it to this window and you can cut and tie it on your end! Then you can use it like a rope to crawl down!" She hoped her words didn't get gusted away by the breeze that was kicking up again. But Hermione said something and nodded, the words 'Rapunzel' and 'fairytale' drifting down to Ginny's ears. Hermione tossed her locks to the wind. Ginny caught handfuls of hair and knotted them to the loop of one of the curtain holders. It looked rather sturdy but she decided to brace herself on it anyway. One could never be too careful with those far-too-ancient-to-measure curtain holders in long unused classrooms. Meanwhile, Hermione cut off her hair with a pair of scissors that she had accidentally transfigured while trying to open the sealed door. She tied her end to something hidden by the sill and began to shimmy down. Her now calf length hair streamed behind her in gust of curls, the wind caught the deep gold strands and light hues of auburn as they flicked around her temples. Ginny was utterly speechless. About halfway down the makeshift rope, the curtain holder groaned and before her voice could return, the entire side of the window pulled free, taking the curtain holder and Ginny along with it. Dangling far too many feet above the school was Hermione, the wooden beam of the window, and lastly Ginny, with her red hair streaming out behind her in the breeze.
The two girls clung to the Hermione's hair with all the strength of a Blast Ended Screwt, unwilling to loosen their tightly clutched hands even long enough to move either up or down. The force of their fall catapulted them like a tire swing, straight towards the tower wall. In a stroke of luck, Ginny swung right into an open window and landed in a tangled heap on the floor. Hermione's petticoats, acting as springs on the uneven tower wall, flung her backwards, and made her hair into a taught slide which aimed her right into the open window. Her grip slipped from the sudden movement. Hermione scrabbled for a hold but slipped down the hair, thankfully missing the curtain holder as she slithered through the window herself. Unfortunately for Ginny, Hermione landed in an undignified manner on top of her.
"Thank you for rescuing me," she cooed and leant down to give Ginny an almost embarrassingly adroit kiss.
"I don't know why I just did that," stated Hermione after she had released the other girl.
"Don't stop," said Harry who happened to be beside the window, seeing as it was in his dorm room they had landed in.
"Gah," said Ginny.
"What!" shrieked Ron who had barreled into the area for the end of the tonsil-sucking fest his sister and love interest had been engaged in.
"I'll just be going now," squeaked the hero of the wizarding world, he grabbed some 'parts to a brilliant plan' on his way out. Seamus would have a difficult time retrieving those.
"I'm not going anywhere," menaced Ron. Ginny quickly banished him with a super strength banishing spell. He whizzed out the door so quickly that a slight breeze was kicked up by his passing, making Hermione's hair become attractively windswept yet again.
"Gah," said Ginny again. Then she fired off five of the strongest locking spells she knew. Hermione did the same. Hermione pulled Ginny towards her, regardless of poufy medieval regalia and extraordinarily long hair.
"Can I kiss you again?" Hermione asked breathlessly.
"Gah," Ginny agreed and nodded for emphasis. Needless to say, none of the boys in Harry's dorm got to sleep in their beds that night.