It Could Have Gone That Way; A Harmione Fanfiction

Chapter 10: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

"Bye, Hedwig," Harry whispered as his owl flew out across the starry sky. It was the end of Boxing Day and Harry had just finished writing yet another letter to Hermione. This one, however, had been unusually short. He hadn't really had much to say, as life was starting to get more and more boring now that Christmas was over. Harry, in spite of himself, was actually longing for classes to restart. He wanted to see Hermione properly again, and even the Weasley boys had had a bit of a crash from their previous holiday euphoria.

Harry had told Hermione about his boring Boxing Day and about the greatly dampened moods of Ron, Fred and George. He explained to her that they had hardly seen Percy at all during the holidays so far, as he seemed rather intent on staying as far away from them as possible. Harry then went on to explaining that he was going to try to sneak into the Restricted Section of the library the next evening. Finally, he told her the late Christmas present that Percy had (reluctantly) gotten him. He had bought Harry his very own chess set so that he didn't have to get yelled at every time he played with Seamus' old pieces. He did feel that this present was meant more to protect Percy's eardrums than to improve Harry's chess skills, but he had counted his blessings and thanked Percy profoundly.

Sighing, Harry pulled the invisibility cloak back over himself. The only reason he had written to Hermione so late in the day was to give him a chance to test the cloak out before he used it the next evening. He sped back through the corridors until he got back to the common room. Flushed and sweaty, he pulled the cloak off of him and let it drop to the floor.

"How'd it go, mate?" Ron looked up from his very late and still incomplete Herbology essay.

"Great!" Harry chuckled at him,"Professor Sprout finally hunt you down, then?"

Ron mumbled something angrily under his breath, which only made Harry laugh more. Ron glowered at Harry, who got the message, picked his cloak up off of the floor and ran up to his dorm. It was late. So late, in fact, that the room was pitch black.

Harry flopped onto his bed and flicked on the bedside lamp. His feet ached from kicking almost every bed on his way over, and his shoulder hurt from completely misjudging where the bathroom door was.

***********

Harry swallowed his fear and scrambled out of the portrait hole. It hadn't been a particularly good day. Hermione had replied to his letter, wishing him luck and telling him that her parents still wouldn't properly acknowledge her presence. Ron had served a rather lengthy detention with a seemingly livid Professor Sprout and the twins had been out playing in the snow all day. Harry, however, hadn't really felt like joining them. Instead, he sat alone in the common room with his new chess set.

That lot hadn't seemed to like him much more than Harry's previous ones had. With the black pieces moving themselves around, Harry had grown rather confused. They were very good, and probably expected him to be the same. Needless to say, Harry lost that game. Next, the black side decided to give Harry an advantage by removing their queen from the board at the start of the game. Not even this would allow Harry a victory. The pieces seemed beside themselves with anger that they had been given to someone with so little chess skill and they vowed to win him a game in the future.

Now, however, Harry put all of that behind him. All that mattered was that he didn't get caught, or else he'd likely be expelled. Harry had been rather surprised at how quickly Hermione had warmed to his plan; he had been prepared to have to persuade her a great deal, but she had seemed rather excited about it from the start, giving Harry only a warning of the consequences of him being caught.

Wrapping the cold cloak tighter around himself, Harry hurried up to the library. It was very dark, but Harry had - on Hermione's orders - brought a lamp with him. He lit it and looked around. The whole room was very eerie, but one area seemed even more so than the rest. Harry moaned quietly as he looked at the uninviting corner that was the Restricted Section. Although he couldn't read the sign on the rope separating it from the rest of the library in the dim light, Harry knew that this section was not really somewhere that someone would want to go, especially at night. Stepping gingerly over the rope, Harry lifted the lamp up so that he could read the books' spines.