chapter seven
Time flew by and before he knew it, Christmas break had arrived.
Most of the students were gone to their families, not Ron though, he stayed in order to study more. His excuse to his parents was that his friend, Harry, would otherwise be all alone. And true to his word, Ron spent much of his time with Harry in the great hall, chatting, studying, getting to know each other better. Harry often vented to him about how unfair Snape was and how difficult quidditch training was. They also played quite a bit of wizarding chess. When they weren’t talking or playing chess, Ron was helping Harry with his homework. It was very easy for him -his mind being way more mature than harry’s- but he liked helping. He wouldn’t give the answers right away, he would nudge Harry in the right direction. Suggesting a book or an alternative viewpoint, which helped him greatly.
Sooner rather than later, Christmas proper arrived.
On boxing day, he awoke to the sight of a few presents at the end of his bed.
Unwrapping them, he found a sweater knitted by Mrs. Weasley, a box of bertie botts beans from Harry, a chocolate frog from Hermione and a bunch of pranking items from the twins, including itching powder, a whoopie cushion and a fake wand, which transformed into a rubber chicken when one tried to cast a spell with it.
He was happy with his haul, he hadn’t expected much, with how poor his family was. He only hoped that the others liked his presents. To the twins, he’d sent pranking items, to Harry cookies(baked together with the house elves the day before), to Hermione a book about transfiguration, to percy a set of bronze scales(he’d complained that his scales were no longer working properly) from the room of requirement and to his parents a home made painting(nothing too fancy, just a painting of the black lake. What is there to say, he was rather artistic in his previous life).
After having opened all his presents, he’d gone down to the great hall for breakfast.
The great hall was empty, only a few students and the teachers were there, so, the four tables had been stashed away and replaced with one, long table, where all students and teachers sat together, eating breakfast.
He sat down, next to Harry, who was fidgeting quite a bit, “Are you okay mate?”
“Yes!”, he beamed, “I got so many christmas presents! By the way, thank you for the cookies, they were delicious. But- but I got something even cooler, an invisibility cloak”, he whispered, “It belonged to my father a long time ago and now it is mine”
“Really? That is great, Invisibility cloaks are very rare. Tell you what but keep it a secret”, he looked around, making sure no one was near, “a few weeks ago I was looking around, exploring the castle and I found a relatively new invisibility cloak, the enchantments on it are still up. What say you, we meet up here in the great hall tonight and go exploring under our invisibility cloaks”
“That is a great idea! I can’t wait! With all the studying I didn’t get any chance to explore yet, where do you wanna go to first?”
“I thought about going into the restricted section of the library”
“Okay, let’s meet up here and from there, go to the restricted section”
Before they could formulate the plan any further, the news came via owl post, the daily prophet landed in his lap. On it, it read ‘Sirius Black released from azkaban, Pettigrew guilty:
In a shocking turn of events, convicted murderer Sirius Black has just been released from prison after it was found that he didn’t in fact kill all those muggles and pettigrew. In fact, it was Peter Pettigrew who killed 13 muggles almost ten years ago and escaped through the illegal, unregistered animagus abilities of his. Black too is an unregistered animagus but the court has forgiven this illegal non-registration. Since then, he has been registered and admitted into saint mungus’ hospital to recover from his stay at Azkaban. For more information, see page 15’
The day progressed fine after that, nothing all too interesting happened until it was time for their rendezvous. Under the invisibility cloak, Ron sneaked down into the great hall, avoiding the patrolling teachers. Once he was there, he whispered, “Are you there Harry?”
“Yes, I am here”, Harry’s voice came from Ron’s right side.
“Great, then let’s go… wait a minute- why don’t we two get under your cloak together so that we can see each other?”
“Good idea”
Ron shuffled under Harry’s cloak and put his own into his inventory. Harry didn’t seem to notice that the cloak just disappeared into nothingness or if he noticed, he didn’t show it. Together the two crept down the hallways to the library. They had to be very quiet, because madam Pince was still in the library, reading a book. So stealthily, they crept towards the chain that separated the restricted section from the normal section. They ducked under it and were on their way.
As they were walking, Ron stealthily put a few interesting looking books into his inventory without Harry noticing. They froze however, when they heard Snape’s voice, “You don’t want to make me your enemy Quirrel, have you figured out how to get past the mutt yet?”
A whimper answered his question.
“Remember who you belong to Quirrel, and think carefully about your next step”
Snape came walking straight at them and Harry dragged Ron out of the way, into a corridor, and then into another until finally they were in a room with a very familiar Mirror. On top, it read ‘Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi’ or ‘I show not your face but your heart's desire’, it was the mirror of Erised.
He threw off the Invisibility cloak and walked up to the mirror, looking into it, revealing his deepest desire…