Chapter 17: A Lesson In Stealth
The next hour or so was a waiting game.
Harry lied in bed, trying to figure out if it was yet safe to move. By Draco's snores, Harry gauged that he, at least, was asleep.
When he figured that it was safe, he climbed out of bed, and got dressed, trying to be as quiet as he could. He walked down into the common room, and let out a breath he hadn't known that he had been holding in. Right. Now comes the tricky bit.
He laid out the map on the green, swirling table which one of the sixth years had convinced Snape to install. Thinking back to what the twins had shown him, he pulled out his wand and tapped the piece of parchment, muttering as he did so.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good…" he whispered, out of the corner of his mouth, and sat down to inspect the map.
The first thing he noticed was that there was no sign of the room under the library. Other than that, the map showed every room, and every person for that matter, in Hogwarts. Harry was able to see all the teachers and students, and himself, all marked out by tiny, inky spots.
Harry gazed at it for a while and, after deciding that he was most certainly not showing this to Draco, he realised why he had taken the map out in the first place. He looked over the map, trying to find a secret tunnel. After a minute of searching, he discovered a tunnel out of Hogwarts on the third floor.
Right. No pressure.
…
Looking up from the map, half an hour later, Harry found himself faced with a statue of a one eyed witch, with a large hump on her back. He frowned and tried to find where the exit was. He tried looking behind it, but, unfortunately, that wall was very real. It occurred to him that there could be a trapdoor by the statue, but that too seemed unlikely.
It was after these failed attempts that Harry turned his attention back to the statue itself. He sifted through the spells in his head, but nothing came up… unless… Well, there was only one way to find out.
Breathing in slowly, Harry approached the statue and tapped it lightly with his wand.
"Dissendium." He muttered.
And almost at once, the hump on the witch's back opened up to reveal a passage underneath.
"Well," he muttered to himself, "Not too bad."
And he jumped in, enthusiastically.
…
When he came out, he had not really expected to be greeted by the inside of a sweetshop. Looking around, Harry saw that he was behind the counter. Despite the fact that he rather needed to get the letter written, he talked himself into looking around the shop.
Bertie Bott's every flavour beans, chocolate frogs, fudge flies and cockroach clusters, blood flavoured lollipops, liquorice wands, sugar quills, toothflossing stringmints, cauldron cakes, fizzing whizbees, and acid pops populated the shelves, along with a barrage of muggle chocolates and sweets, where he found the names of multiple companies, and a muggle version of chocolate frogs, which looked quite cartoony and not very alive.
Walking out granted him the name of the shop: Honeydukes. Ron and Draco were gonna have a field day in the third year though hopefully out of the way of each other. The latter would not be so careless as to be caught buying muggle sweets. That reminded Harry that he should probably tell Draco about the map to allow for more flexibility in meet-up spots.
Harry then proceeded to explore the rest of the village. He couldn't enter any of the buildings, of course, but he could see the names of the shops, in the half-light of the moon.
He saw Madam Rosmerta's, the Hog's Head, Dervish and Banges, it was all so full of life… and yet creepily devoid of it too.
Last of all, Harry saw the shrieking shack. Apparently, it was the most haunted building in Britain. Harry was fairly certain that Hogwarts was the most haunted building in Britain, and looked at it disdainfully. He slowly realised that he needed somewhere to write the letter, and an owl with which to send it. Welp. He'd have to come tomorrow, he thought, retreating back into Honeydukes.
…
When he told Draco of his plans to get a letter to Voldemort the next day, Draco was unnerved.
"How? Dumbledore's monitoring the letters-"
"In the Hogwarts Grounds. So, all I need to do is send a letter in Hogsmeade."
"And how are you going to do that?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "I'll show you later, you idiot."
…
Later came in the form of the two boys sitting in the secret room, which Harry had got some bean bags into while he was waiting.
"So…?" Draco asked, in the dark green bean bag under the mirror.
"So what?" Harry asked, unusually snappy.
"So first of all, have you written the letter?"
"Yep. The letter has been sitting in my bag all day, gathering dust."
"Okay…" said Draco, ever sceptical. "Have you got an owl?"
"Getting an owl is the easy bit." Harry said, yawning.
"And, finally, how are you going to get out of school in the first place?"
Yawning again, Harry threw him a tattered piece of parchment.
"Tap it with your wand and say 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good'"
And, as anticipated, there was a gasp as Draco saw the map.
"Well-I-that makes things easier…"
…
"So, remind me why you're coming?" hissed Harry, as they walked up to the owlery.
"Because I want to," he replied. "And that's never stopped you before now."
When they got there, Draco was very keen to be the one to pick the owl. Harry turned down the offer, and chose a small, black owl that would blend in with the dark.
After attaching the piece of parchment to the owl's leg, they told it where to go and left the owlery.
"So… secret exit…?" Draco inquired, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
Harry rolled his eyes at his friend's antics before grabbing the blond's arm and dragging him into the cellar of Honeydukes.