HEART LIKE YOURS | H.POTTER

015

"Gotcha! Get off, you stinking cat—"

"There's Sirius!" Harry said as the great shape of the dog bounded out from the roots of the Willow. They saw him barrel Harry over, then seize Ron. "Looks even worse from here, doesn't it?" The dog pulls Ron into the roots. "Ouch—look, I just got walloped by the tree—and so did you two—this is weird—"

The Whomping Willow was creaking and lashing out with its lower branches; they could see themselves darting here and there, trying to reach the trunk. And then the tree froze.

"That was Crookshanks pressing the knot," Hermione said.

"And there we go," Diana muttered. "We're in."

The moment they disappeared, the tree began to move again. Seconds later, they heard footsteps quite close by. Dumbledore, Macnair, and Fudge were making their way up to the castle.

"Right after we'd gone down into the passage!" Hermione said. "If only Dumbledore had come with us..."

"Macnair and Fudge would've come too," Harry said bitterly. "I bet you anything Fudge would've told Macnair to murder Sirius on the spot..."

They watched the three men climb the castle steps and disappear from view. For a few mintures, the scene was deserted.

"Here comes Remus!" Diana said as they saw another figure sprinting down the stone steps and haring towards the Willow. She looked up at the sky and saw clouds obscuring the moon completely. They watched as Remus seized a broken branch from the ground and prodded the knot on the trunk. The tree stopped fighting, and Remus, too, disappeared into the gap in its roots.

Barely two mintures later, the castle doors flew open yet again, and Snape came charging out of them, running towards the Willow. Snape seized the branch Remus had used to freeze the tree, proded the knot, and vanished from view.

"So that's it," Hermione said quickly. "We're all done there and now we've just got to wait until we come back up again."

Diana took the end of Buckbeck's rope and tied it securely around the nearest tree, then sat down on the dry ground and drew her knees to her chest. Harry sat next to her, she took the opportunity to lay her head on his shoulder. She glanced at the other side of Harry and saw Hermione take a seat beside the boy. They could hear Buckbeck playing with some of the ferrets.

"At least someone is enjoying himself," Diana said, looking back at Buckbeck.

Silence fell over them, she stared at the sky; stars peeked through the clouds. The silence soon was broken by Harry speaking.

"Hermione, Dia," Harry said, continuing when he felt Diana nod. "Before. Down by the lake. When I was with Sirius. I did see someone that someone made the dementors go away."

The girls turned to look at him as Hermione replied. "It was probably a patronus. I heard Snape telling Dumbledore, according to him, only a really powerful witch or wizard could have conjured it."

Harry nodded. "It was my dad." Diana and Hermione looked at him confused. "It was my Dad who conjured the Patronus."

"But Harry, your dad is—" Hermione said.