It's been a while since the last update. Unfortunately, my beta reader fredfred had to stop for real-life reasons in the middle of this chapter, and things haven't changed since then. That's the bad news. The good news is that I've kept writing chapters every week. That means that the draft of the story's finished - all 45 chapters including the epilogue. However, I would like to have a beta reader or two going over it before posting more, so if you're interested, contact me with a PM. Brit-picking would be very nice.
Thanks a ton, fredfred, for your incredible work.
Chapter 10: The Second Trap Part 1
Godric's Hollow, Devon, Britain, July 7th, 1996
"Hello. I'm Pettigrew. Peter Pettigrew." Peter Pettigrew smiled at the muggles.
That Mr and Mrs Granger didn't laugh was understandable. But Lily didn't chuckle, either. And she had always chuckled when he introduced himself like that. That, more than anything else, told him how desperate she was.
"You're the specialist the Headmaster mentioned?" Mr Granger asked.
He nodded. "I've got some experience with handling such matters," Peter replied.
"He's Britain's best spy," Sirius cut in. His old friend wasn't making a stupid joke either.
"I wouldn't say that," Peter protested. "The best spies are those no one knows are spies." He forced himself to keep smiling.
"Bah!" Sirius scoffed. "Being known as the spy who brought down the Dark Lord hasn't slowed you down any!"
Peter didn't want to talk about that. Not at all. He shook his head, still smiling. "Let's not talk about the past! We've got two children to save, haven't we?"
"Yes," Lily agreed. "Did you watch the memories in Albus's Pensieve?"
"I did," Peter told her. "It was a piece of rope."
The Grangers looked dismayed. "A piece of rope? That doesn't sound as if it'll be easy to find," Mr Granger said.
"Most Portkeys are ordinary items," Lily informed them.
"Yes. What's important is whether or not Cobblespun knew about the Portkey," Peter said. "Or, at least, where he got it from before he sold it to Weatherby. And I bet he remembers that." Or would, once they took his memories.
That set the two muggles at ease. Somewhat. Their smiles still looked desperate, but they had some hope. Peter could only hope that he wouldn't disappoint them. As much as he projected a confident facade, he didn't know if he could do anything. Cobblespun had left Britain over a day ago. He would've left Iceland a day ago. Not necessarily a cold trail, but… He cleared his throat. "So, I mainly came to check on you. I better leave - the sooner I'm in Iceland, the sooner I'll get what we need."
Both muggles nodded. "Thank you, sir."
He forced himself to smile back. "It's what I do."
Lily escorted him to the door - she knew he only used the Floo Network while he was working when there was no other way. "Thank you, Peter," she said in a low voice as she opened the door. "You've done so much for us, and now we're asking for help again..."
He felt the familiar sinking feeling in his stomach. "Please, Lily - you know I would do anything for Harry. Or for you."
"I know." She sniffled once.
"Send James my regards - I'll return as soon as I have Cobblespun." He nodded before she could thank him again, and turned to walk outside the wards so he could apparate.
He reappeared near his home. His real home, not the decoy registered with the Ministry - under a fake name - to lure out any remaining Death Eaters who might want to avenge the Dark Lord. None had surfaced so far, but that didn't mean anything - Peter knew better than most how extensive the Dark Lord's network had been.
Merlin's beard, he was thinking about it again. 'The spy who brought down the Dark Lord', indeed. He closed his eyes and sighed. If anyone knew the truth… He shook his head. He couldn't dwell on his failures. He had a mission to carry out. Two children to save.
He checked if his protections had been disturbed, but could find no traces of any such attempts. He still went in and through his home with his wand drawn and a shield up. No protection was perfect; there was always someone who could find the weakness and exploit it. Something else he knew better than most.
But his home was clear. He sighed, reholstered his wand and started to prepare for his mission. He had a pilot to hire and also had to read up on Iceland.
Þingvellir, Magical Iceland, July 8th, 1996
Disillusioned and riding a broom painted black to blend into the night sky, Peter approached the capital of Magical Iceland - well, the regional capital; the island belonged to Magical Scandinavia. Technically. The Althing pretty much did what they wanted, but neither Scandinavia nor Iceland had pushed the issue so far.
Peter didn't mind - it meant he wouldn't have to deal with werewolves. The full moon had been a week ago, but even when they weren't transformed, werewolves tended to have better noses and other senses than most wizards. Peter knew how to get around them from his long association with Remus, but it was still a complication he could do without.
He set down well away from the boundaries of the wizarding enclave, at the edge of the muggle national park, and pulled out his special Omnioculars. A quick twist of the dials, and he could clearly see the hidden building that housed the Althing. According to what he had read, it was built like a Viking longhouse, after the Statute of Secrecy had gone into effect, to claim historical legitimacy. Peter didn't really care. All he cared about was how to break into it. And he could see a number of weaknesses a wizard with his talents could use to get inside.
He lowered the Omnioculars and started to walk towards the building. The area was pretty open, and he had cast a Human-presence-revealing Spell, so he'd know if someone saw him. And despite his Owl-Repelling Charm - no spy wanted to be found by a Post Owl in the middle of a mission, especially not with a letter or package bearing their real name - he preferred not to travel in his rat form in owl country. The mere thought of an owl gliding silently towards him, claws extended, sent a cold shiver down his spine.
To be afraid of owls as a wizard… Peter shook his head. He couldn't help it. He was a coward at heart. If his friends knew why he had been able to fool the Dark Lord when he had taken the Dark Mark, they would curse him. Literally. Although Dumbledore knew. The old wizard had never said anything, had never even hinted at it, had never treated Peter with anything other than the utmost courtesy and respect, but he had to know. He was Dumbledore. He had to know that at the moment Peter had taken the Dark Mark, he had been too afraid to even think of betraying the Dark Lord. That had come later. Much later.
He pushed the thought away and focused on the area ahead of him. It was shortly after midnight, so the guards wouldn't be very attentive. And they would be watching the path leading to the building - if they were watching the outside at all; most wizards would enter and leave using the Floo Network, anyway, so most night guards just kept an eye on the fireplaces.
At least in his experience. Which was quite extensive. He might be a coward and a liar, but he was an experienced spy. As soon as he approached the wardline, he transformed and then carefully moved closer and closer. Even the nastiest wards usually didn't have lethal defences against vermin - most people didn't like dead rats, mice and other animals cluttering up their yard. The Althing building wasn't an exception, as his spells had shown. They didn't even have anti-vermin wards up. At least not ones that worked against an animagus.
After a few minutes of racing through grass which was suddenly too high, he was at the building proper. And no audible alert had sounded. No curse had blasted him across the field. Sloppy. Not that he was complaining. If this were a private residence, he would be worrying about silent alarms and traps, but this was the Althing, not a dark wizard's home.
He scurried along the side wall, until he found the small nook from which heat had been leaking, as he had seen through his Omnioculars. As he'd thought, the rather shabby insulation, which consisted of dried moss and lichen, had been torn by an animal - a rat or mouse by the tooth marks. Perfect.
It was a little tight - he was a large rat - but Peter fit into the hole and was soon travelling through the walls of the building. According to the travel diary of a rather daft witch with an eye for unrelated and usually unimportant details, the records office was in the basement. And for a rat, it was easy to travel to the basement by burrowing a path through the moss serving as insulation.
It didn't take him long to reach the basement. Finding the right office took longer, even with his knowledge of Elder Futhark.
But what took longest was actually finding the records he wanted. Whoever ran this office or archive had never even heard of a decent filing system. It seemed the Althing wasn't necessarily being obstructive when they took weeks to answer information requests - they might be genuinely unable to find the requested information any sooner…
Well, Peter wasn't inept. Ferreting out information was half of what he did for a living, after all. He might have had to look for an hour through misfiled sheets of parchment, always afraid that a guard would appear and he'd have to hide, but he finally found the information he wanted: Cobblespun had taken a Portkey back to France.
Peter grinned. Someone had tried to be a little too clever. Too bad for Cobblespun that Peter knew France very well - quite a number of wizards with questionable ties to Death Eaters had sought refuge there. And it was also too bad for him that the other half of Peter's work consisted of tracking down fugitives.
Unknown Location, July 8th, 1996
Hermione Granger woke up to curses. Swearing, not dark spells. Who would be so…? She scoffed at herself. She was stranded on a deserted island, and there was only one other person with her.
And Potter had a mouth.
She rolled over, grabbed her wand and kicked her improvised blanket away. "What's with all the noise?" If they were in danger, he would've already woken her, wouldn't he? He wouldn't try to face an actual threat without her. At least, he'd better not have.
"I've caught breakfast. Or lunch. It was a slippery bugger, but I got it," Potter replied. He sounded as if he were outside their shelter.
"Breakfast?" She used a spell to quickly put on her shoes. There wasn't any urgency in Potter's voice, but why would he have cursed so much earlier?
"Yes. A snake."
A snake? Potter was standing in the entrance of their shelter, wand raised, and about a yard away from him, a small snake floated in the air, writhing and hissing.
"Do you know anything about butchering animals?" he asked. "I didn't want to waste the blood, or I would've killed it already."
Killing a snake? "No!" she yelled. "You can't kill it!"
"What?" He stared at her.
"Snakes might be sapient. Intelligent," she added when he continued to stare at her.
"It's an animal. A rather dumb one." He scoffed.
"It's not just an animal," she retorted. "Parselmouths can talk to snakes. And understand them."
"So?"
Wasn't it obvious? "They can talk to snakes as if they had human intelligence." Well, not the smartest human, but probably as smart as Crabbe or Goyle, based upon what she had read.
"'As if', Granger," he told her. "It's just the effect of the magic. They are as smart as conjured animals are alive."
She pressed her lips together. "That's not the same. This is more like… a werewolf!" she blurted out.
"What?" He stared at her, then at the snake, which was still futilely trying to escape the grip of Potter's Levitation Charm. "You think that's an animagus?"
What? "No," she told him. "But a werewolf is a beast for a few days per lunar cycle. You wouldn't claim that they aren't intelligent because of that, would you?"
"That's different. Werewolves lose their intelligence temporarily due to their curse. Snakes aren't intelligent and only gain an illusion of it due to magic. Questionable magic."
"'Questionable magic'? Really?" She scoffed. "I've researched Parseltongue. It's not questionable. That's just British prejudice."
"It goes back to Slytherin, who was a bigot and a dark wizard," Potter retorted.
"That doesn't mean everyone who can talk to snakes is a dark wizard. Your ancestry doesn't define you. Or I would be a dentist, not a witch!" She shook her head. Really!
"That's not the same!"
"Even if we were to assume for the purposes of this discussion that Parselmouths were dark wizards, that wouldn't change the fact that snakes are, depending on magic, sometimes sapient and sometimes not. Just like werewolves!"
"That's…" He shook his head. "They aren't the same. You might as well assume that conjured animals are sometimes alive and sometimes not."
"Conjured animals vanish when the spell ends," she pointed out.
"Transfiguration, then. Rocks transfigured into animals are still rocks and not really alive."
"Actually, they are alive for as long as the spell lasts," she objected. "They react and behave like normal animals most of the time."
"The spellcaster can control them. That's a significant difference."
"They're still alive, though," she insisted.
"Temporarily." He narrowed his eyes at her.
"All life is temporary," she retorted. "In any case, we can't kill the snake. Not when it could develop sapience at any moment, should a Parselmouth address it."
"You're serious."
"Of course I am!" She scoffed once more. Did he think she would argue with him over the fate of a snake if she weren't serious? While they were on a deserted island and would soon need every bit of food they could find?
He scowled and turned to glare at the hissing snake. "I bet it's insulting me," he muttered.
"Of course it is - you were trying to eat it!" she pointed out.
"So… like the wyvern tried to eat us?"
She blinked, then nodded. "Yes."
He shook his head, then flicked his wand, and the snake flew through the open door.
Hermione restrained herself from telling him to ensure that the snake was put down safely on the ground outside. It wasn't flying very high.
Potter sighed. "All that effort for nought."
Just how long had he hunted a mere snake? "If the snake managed to evade you for so long, that's another argument for snakes being partially sapient. Unless you want to admit that a dumb animal stymied you," she joked.
He snorted, but Hermione didn't get the impression that he found it funny. "Are there any other animals we can't eat without committing temporary cannibalism?"
Well, if it was another species, it wasn't cannibalism. Technically. But if she told him that, he might then want to eat snakes again. "I wouldn't eat a post owl," she told him.
"Of course not!" he gasped. "Who would eat an owl? That would be…" he trailed off, glaring at her.
What was his problem now?
Harry Potter frowned. Was she trying to use Hedwig against him so he wouldn't kill snakes? "You don't have a post owl," he said. "No one who had one would think of eating an owl. They're part of the family." And every family had a Post Owl. How would you keep in touch with your friends without one?
"Of course I don't have a post owl," she told him. "My parents are muggles, remember?"
As if she'd ever let him forget that. "So?"
She rolled her eyes. "Why would they get a post owl when I can use the owls at school to contact them? They don't know any wizards."
"You could use it to write to Lavender," he told her.
"Her family has a post owl. And if I need to contact her urgently, I can travel to Diagon Alley and use the Floo Network. And soon I'll be able to Apparate." Granger scoffed. "We don't need a post owl."
"You might change your opinion once you're no longer at Hogwarts."
"Of course I will get a post owl then." She grimaced as if he'd said something stupid. "But until then, I'm fine. I wouldn't burden my parents with an owl, either."
"They're not burdens! You have a cat, don't you?" The ugliest cat in the world.
"Crookshanks is a half-Kneazle!" Granger glared at him. "And he's smarter than most wizards!"
Harry knew who she meant with that comment. "Really? All I see him doing is sleeping, eating and begging for treats."
"See?" She bared her teeth at him. "He's smarter than most wizards."
"Ha ha ha." He scoffed. "Very funny."
"Why, thank you!"
Harry shook his head. "Anyway, with snake off the menu, it's coconut for breakfast again."
"Obviously." After a moment, she added: "We could make a fire and heat up the milk."
"Unless you have some powdered chocolate in your pocket, I'd rather not heat the milk," he told her.
She frowned at him in response. "Have you ever tried it?"
"Have you?" he shot back.
"No. But I know you can drink it warm."
"It's already pretty warm out here." And it would be hot soon.
"Well, we're in the tropics."
"Or in a magical enclave that magically feels like the tropics." He smiled at her.
"Or that. We still need to determine the nature of this island."
"We need to get rid of the wyvern first," he told her.
"You've said that before. Have you come up with a decent plan yet?"
He nodded. "I have." He grinned. "But it'll require one of us to be bait."
She pressed her lips together.
"I'll tell you after breakfast." Harry wondered how long Granger would hold out before she started badgering him with questions.
"We can discuss it over breakfast." She huffed and put her hands on her hips.
"I'd rather not ruin your appetite," he retorted.
"I doubt you'll manage that." She sneered. "Or are you making this plan of yours up as we're speaking?"
"I've spent most of my watch planning," he told her through clenched teeth.
"Well, tell me about your plan then!" She sniffed. "Enlighten me!"
"Have you seen Predator? The movie?" he asked.
Now she was frowning. "No, I haven't."
"Well, it's an action movie about a group of soldiers who get hunted by an alien monster in the jungle. It kills them off one by one, until the last soldier lures it into a trap."
"An action movie." She looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
He met her eyes. "With magic, we can make it work. Well, similar traps. We create a kill zone for the wyvern. Once it enters, we spring the traps and kill it. Or cripple it."
"We already tried to trap it. I doubt that it'll fall for that plan again," Granger told him. "It's not stupid."
"It's not - but it did chase us when we broke out of the cave," he pointed out.
"And it barrelled into a dense tree formation," she said. "That should make it more cautious."
"Not if it wasn't hurt by the impact. And we won't use the same traps, of course." That would be stupid.
"You aren't suggesting that we try to have sharpened logs swing at it?" Granger all but sneered at the idea.
"I thought you hadn't seen Predator."
"I've seen Return of the Jedi," she told him.
Ah. So the girl had seen a decent movie and not just BBC documentaries. "No, not quite that. We don't need to, not with magic." He grinned. "We'll need Shrinking Charms and some twine."
She blinked. Then her eyes widened. "That might work. If you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking."
"Well, what are you thinking?"
Hermione Granger pursed her lips as Potter smirked at her. This could be a ploy to make her tell her idea first, then claim he had the same plan. On the other hand, Potter would've probably gone for something a little less obvious than 'Shrinking Charms and twine' if he had expected her to blurt out her own idea in the first place. And for all his faults - and he had a lot of them - he was clever when he wasn't being an idiot. "Shrink a palm tree trunk. Bend it. Secure it with string. Plant it in a way so when it unshrinks, it'll snap forward violently, smashing whatever is nearby."
He blinked, then grinned. "Yes, only I don't think we need to plant it - we can shrink a standing palm tree!"
"That'd be difficult. Both shrinking the entire tree and keeping it firmly planted with all its roots shrunk," she pointed out. "It's easier to cut up trees to get the trunks for shrinking."
"You need to anchor them to the ground, then," he retorted. "That's difficult."
"Have you tried it?" She looked at him and frowned.
"Not for a trap!" he quickly replied.
"For a 'prank' then." She shook her head.
"Not a prank!" he protested.
"Really."
He scowled. "I don't spend all my time on pranks."
"No, that would cut into your Quidditch time," she retorted.
To her surprise, he laughed at that. "No, I just wanted to get in… over a wall, and there was a tree, so…"
"Instead of climbing it, you shrank it, then stood on top of it and dispelled the charm?" She couldn't keep the incredulity out of her voice. He couldn't have been so stupid!
"I've fallen from greater heights during Quidditch practice," he said.
"The ground of the Quidditch pitch is covered with Cushion Charms.," she pointed out.
"We don't stick to the pitch during training," he told her. "When the Slytherins booked the pitch one week straight before McGonagall sorted things out, we trained everywhere - over the lake, in the forest…"
Hermione shook her head. She had known that Oliver Wood was obsessed, but she hadn't realised just how obsessed the former Gryffindor Quidditch Captain had been. Or still was - he was playing Quidditch professionally, last she had heard. Overheard.
"It was hilarious. We barely got hurt," he defended himself.
"'We'?" Just who had been stupid enough to join Potter for such a venture? Weasley maybe, but he had shown better judgement lately. Certainly, no witch Hermione knew would have done that. Potter didn't have a girlfriend, anyway.
"Me and my cousin."
"Your muggle cousin."
"Yes."
"Who isn't used to falling from great heights."
"Everyone has to start someday."
"That's not how that works," she told him, baring her teeth.
He laughed. "Dudley didn't get hurt. Just a few scrapes from the wall - he was too heavy to get launched too high up. I landed on the roof, though."
"Because you're a lightweight?"
"Yes." He blinked, then frowned. "Ha ha ha."
She giggled. "You said it."
"Bah."
She shrugged. "Anyway, I don't think it's a good idea to shrink whole standing palm trees. We'd be less flexible with the location we choose - and the wyvern may notice missing trees."
"That's a good point," he acknowledged. "So, we should make some strips of wood with the shrunken trees stuck to it, then anchor the sticks."
"That might be harder to transport," she told him.
He made a dismissive gesture. "We can always float it."
"Let's test it, first," she said. "After breakfast."
"After yet another coconut meal." He shook his head.
Hermione bit her lower lip. Was Potter already sick of coconut meat? She had expected that he'd hold out a little longer. "It'll keep us alive," she said.
"Once the wyvern is dead, we'll go fishing. In the sea."
She didn't call him an optimist, even though she doubted that their plan might kill the wyvern. It was very tough. Perhaps too tough even for tree traps with spikes. And it wasn't as if they had anything better to do. "Yes," she said. "But for now, it's coconut meat and milk for breakfast."
The face he made, coupled with a disgusted groan, made her giggle again. He reminded her of a grown-up Calvin.
She blinked. That would make herself - smart, proper and far more mature - Suzie.
She didn't like what that implied. Not at all.
"Let's eat," she muttered, heading to their 'pantry'.
Harry Potter eyed the piece of rope - the Portkey - that had brought them to the island with narrowed eyes.
"Are you sure this is safe?" Granger asked.
He glanced at her. She had her wand out and pointed at the rope. "Aren't you an expert on Portkeys?"
"No, I'm not," she spat, glaring at him. "That's why I'm asking you."
"Do I look like an expert?" He scoffed.
"I guess not. You didn't even recognise the Portkey," she told him.
"Neither did you." He bared his teeth at her.
"I didn't claim to be an expert." That was a deep scowl, he noticed.
"Neither did I!" he retorted.
She sighed. "We're going in circles. Neither of us has ever heard anything about a Portkey being dangerous after it was used."
"But we don't know whether or not it's still an active Portkey," he pointed out.
"We both touched it," she said. "At the same time. I even wrapped one end around my arm, like in the shop. And tried it with both ends."
"We did, yes." They hadn't wrestled beforehand, but if Harry had suggested that… His eyes wandered down, over her thin top and short shorts, before he could help himself. No, suggesting that they should recreate their scuffle from the shop wouldn't be a good idea. Not at all.
"So, it should be safe."
"Yes."
Neither of them made a move towards the rope, though.
"It's the best source of string we have," she said. "Unless you'd like to use plant fibres and twist them into string."
"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?" he replied, focusing on her face.
"I'm just making sure that we both agree on this course of action," she claimed. "No blaming anyone if it turns out to have been a mistake."
"If something goes wrong, odds are we won't be able to blame anyone at all," he said.
"That's very morbid," she replied with a frown.
"But realistic. Portkey accidents are nasty." He shuddered.
"I've never heard about Portkey accidents," she said.
"Dad told me about one he had to investigate. It wasn't like Splinching - people were mashed together."
"Like a transporter accident in Star Trek?" She looked a little green. "That's an American TV show."
"I know," he told her. "I've watched it." Not too many episodes - Dudley wasn't much of a fan.
"Ah."
"I'm not an ignorant pureblood like Malfoy." He scowled at her. Why did she keep treating him like one?
She pressed her lips together. "Sorry."
She had actually apologised? He tried not to show his surprise. "Anyway, let's cut it up."
"Let's cut off a small part at the end," she corrected him. "About a foot should be enough."
"I wasn't thinking of cutting a foot off in the middle!"
"No need to get snippy," she told him with a frown. "I'm just trying to help:"
"Yeah." That was her problem. Part of her problem. He pointed the wand at the rope and cast a Cutting Charm. About a foot long piece of the rope was cut. "There."
She glanced at him, then summoned the piece to her. "It's going to take a while to unravel this."
He bit down on a comment about expecting her to know an unravel charm. Or telling her about the Unravel Hex Sirius had mentioned.
Unlike Granger, who didn't seem to mind wearing very little clothing, Harry wasn't keen on having his robes fall off with all the seams gone and revealing his underwear. He watched her sit down cross-legged and start tugging at the strands of fibre making up the rope. Really, she must be doing this deliberately to unnerve him!
He blinked. Wait - she'd been wearing those clothes under her robes in Diagon Alley. Why? Had she been planning to meet someone? No, she had been with Lavender, and then she'd gone to a bookshop. No dates for her, then.
He nodded. That made sense. Of course she wouldn't have a date. Not Granger. You'd have to be a fool to try anything with her.
"Alright." He looked up. Still no sign of the wyvern. But they had heard it earlier. It wasn't dead.
"Push it a little further down into the ground," Granger told him.
"It should be enough," he said. "It's just a small tree, anyway." And tiny now that it had been shrunk.
Granger huffed but didn't push him again.
He took a piece of string and tied it around the top of the tiny trunk, then bent the trunk backward until he could fasten the string around a root sticking out of the ground. It held.
He grinned, and Granger huffed again.
"Let's move a safe distance away," she said.
"Of course." Harry knew all about safe distances when trying out something new. "And let's cast Shield Charms, too."
"Of course."
They moved about twenty yards closer to the entrance to their shelter - Harry still had to see the shrunken tree, after all, to undo the Shrinking Charm and cast their Shield Charms. "Ready?" Harry asked.
"Yes."
"Finite!"
The tiny trunk, barely more than a twig, was immediately replaced by a full-size tree trunk. Which shot out of the ground and spun in the air, smashing against the other trees around. A few shards sent flying by the impact hit Harry's shield and bounced off while the tree trunk still trashed on the ground.
"It didn't actually hit the target area," Granger commented. Harry could hear the 'I told you' in her voice.
"We'll get an anchor next time," he said with a frown.
"A big anchor. And it might still be better to lure the wyvern over the prepared trunks, not near them. But we'd have to build one single device so we can return both the anchor and the trunk to the actual size at the same time."
That was true. "Oh." He blinked. "We could just turn them into spikes and bury them, having them shoot out when the wyvern is above them."
"That would require to target them somehow," she retorted.
"Right." And that would be difficult. Especially with the wyvern bearing down on you. He checked the sky again. It was easier - although not actually easy, to target twigs left above ground. And the power of a trunk growing back to size wasn't quite as strong as a bent tree slamming into a wyvern from above. "This will be more difficult than planned."
Granger rolled her eyes. Typical.
Hermione Granger looked at the finished trap - the finished prototype. The third finished prototype. Then she glanced up. No sign of the monster.
"It looks good," Potter said.
"You said that before. Twice, to be exact," she told him.
"This time, it looks really good." He grinned. Obviously, the fact that it was already afternoon - with coconut meat for lunch - and they hadn't managed to build a working trap hadn't affected him. Or hadn't registered.
On the other hand, it did look more feasible. More practical too. Instead of anchoring the trunks to a log and shrinking both, this was just a log stuck on the ground, stuck to two trees. And the shrunken, bent trunk was fixed on top of the log with another Sticking Charm. It should work better.
Then again, she had thought that of the attempt with a plate in the ground as well. At least they had a nice hole made already should they ever want to build a pool to bath in.
"So, let's try it out?" Potter asked.
"Yes," she agreed. Let's get this over with. She glanced at the sky. Still clear. "You know," she said as they walked back to the shelter, "once we're back in England, we'll have to learn not to constantly check the sky." If they ever managed to get… She pressed her lips together. She couldn't think like that - she had to remain optimistic. They would return home.
"Well, 'they never look up' certainly doesn't apply to us," Potter said, chuckling. Then he frowned. "Although that would be quite annoying in a match. I have to focus on the Snitch, not on a wyvern in the sky."
"You and your Quidditch!" She shook her head. She was worried about developing agoraphobia, and he was worried about a stupid game! "There are many more important things to worry about than Quidditch."
He frowned at her. "Not for me. I'm going to become a professional Seeker after school."
"You're going…" She managed not to continue with '...waste your talents on a game?' and said: "...pro?"
"Of course! I'm the best Seeker McGonagall has seen in all her life!" he boasted.
"She told you that?" That didn't sound like Professor McGonagall at all!
"No. She said that during a visit with my parents," he replied.
She frowned. That meant… "You listened in on them?"
"I was curious," he told her. "Don't tell me you wouldn't have listened in when a teacher visited."
"Of course not!" She had been tempted, but it would've been a breach of trust. "I asked my parents afterwards what it was about." The first time - afterwards, she already knew what the visits were about. And her parents told her about them anyway. In detail and in a slightly louder voice than normal.
He snorted. "Pull the other one! I know what you do when you think no one's going to catch you!"
"There's a difference between retaliating against an aggressor hiding behind school rules and breaking the trust of my parents," she explained. That was perfectly logical.
"I'm not hiding behind anyone or anything!" he protested.
"Says the boy who set a prefect on me last year." She looked up and checked the sky. Clear.
"It's not my fault you got caught - that's the risk of the game! Besides, you always tell on me!"
"That's because if you get punished properly, I don't need to retaliate. That's how society works." If the staff and especially the prefects were better at catching Potter, Hermione wouldn't have had to take things into her own hands.
He snorted. "You're not any better than I am. You just aren't honest about it." He leaned towards her. "You like pranking me. Admit it!"
"I like seeing justice done," she replied.
"Call it what you want, but you're not an innocent witch."
"And whose fault is that?" She cocked her head at him.
He blinked, then grinned. "You mean I took your innocence?"
She gasped. That was… "Boys!" she spat. "Always thinking with your groin." He actually blushed a little, and she narrowed her eyes at him. What was he thinking of?
He scoffed at her. "As if girls are any better! I have a sister, remember? I know what kind of books you read!"
"Textbooks?" She replied, smiling as sweetly as she could manage. Was he rifling through his sister's things?
"No, robe-rippers!" He bared his teeth at her.
She felt her cheek heating up. "That's a stereotype!" She hadn't read more than a dozen of them. Last year. Just to make up her mind. And because Lavender loved them.
"Doesn't mean it's not true. Did you read them, huh?" His grin widened.
"And what if I did? Those are books, not immature comments!"
"Oh, I'm sure those books are very, very mature." He wagged his head like a child.
"Unlike you." She sniffed. "Can we focus on our trap, now?"
He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. "Sure."
They walked back to the shelter's entrance - the sky was still clear - and cast their Shield Charms. If this was like the second test, then splinters could hit them even at their distance.
"Ready?"
"Yes."
Potter aimed his wand. "Finite!"
The twig stuck to the log suddenly turned into a tree trunk, ripping the string apart - and snapping forward, smashing into the ground. Hermione could almost feel the impact as clumps of earth and grass were thrown up.
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
It had worked. After two failures - three if you counted the first attempt without an anchor - they had succeeded! They could strike back at the wyvern now. She smiled widely at Potter, who smiled back at her.