The Time Travellers

Daphne, Harry and Hermione watched as the past versions of the three Gryffindors successively appeared out of nowhere, as they left the safety of the Invisibility Cloak. Meanwhile, Oleandra was still hovering silently above the trees, waiting for her moment.

"Ouch," said Harry, wincing slightly. "So that's what it looks like to be watching the Whomping Willow wallop someone."

That someone being Harry himself; he could still feel his already healed wound sting with phantom pain, from where the tree had slashed him with its branches. And then, at the peak of its fury, the Whomping Willow suddenly froze; its swinging branches still poised to strike.

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

"And that's us, going inside the hole…" completed Harry.

"And there goes my sister," said Daphne. "It looks like she's picking up your Cloak of Invisibility."

"What?" said Harry. "But how are we going to…"

"Shh!" shushed Hermione. "It's Professor Dumbledore and the others from the ministry!"

Seeing as they weren't going to be spending the rest of eternity waiting for the Hippogriff to return in Hagrid's cabin, the ministry personnel were going back to the castle.

"If only Dumbledore had followed us into the passage," sighed Hermione. "The whole affair with Sirius would have gone a lot smoother."

"I doubt that an old man would have been willing to crawl into such a small hole," said Daphne. "Could you imagine him actually doing that?"

And then, in the span of a few minutes, Professor Lupin, Professor Hagrid and Professor Snape successively made their appearance, although Hagrid was going to the castle, unlike the two others. 

It appeared to Daphne that Lupin and Snape knew exactly what they were doing, as if they'd done it a hundred times; they knew to poke a certain knot in the Whomping Willow in order to calm it down before heading down the hole.

"All things considered," said Harry, "I think I prefer Oleandra hanging on to my cloak rather than Snape getting his grubby mitts on it."

"And now, we wait," said Hermione, "we were inside the Shrieking Shack for quite a while."

But about half an hour later, something unexpected happened.

"That's a Patronus Charm's Spirit Guardian!" gasped Harry. "It looks like it's coming from Hogsmeade!"

A brilliant, silvery doe was bounding gracefully across the sky at an incredible speed. 

"This is so strange," murmured Harry. "That Patronus; it seems oddly familiar, for some reason."

A nostalgic feeling washed over Harry; he lifted his glasses to rub his eyes in order to wipe away any traces of tears that might have decided to form, but when he put his glasses back on, the Patronus had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, by passing through the castle's walls like a ghost.

There was a brief flash of light when the lustrous apparition phased through the wall; but it was just enough to allow the three to witness something… unexpected.

"What's Ginny doing out here at this hour?" asked a perplexed Hermione. "How could she possibly have got past the guards to get outside the castle?"

"We should take her with us," said Harry worriedly. "It's dangerous to be out tonight."

"But Harry," argued Hermione, "the less we interact with other people while we're in the past, the better! And what we're doing is arguably much more dangerous than whatever she's up to!"

"And Ginny doesn't need our help," said Daphne. "She's strong; incredibly strong. She'll be fine."

"What are you talking about?" asked Harry incredulously. "No, we need to get her before something happens."

"I think she was returning to the castle," said Hermione hesitantly. "It looks like she was coming from Hogsmeade…"

At that moment, the castle's front doors burst open once again; Dumbledore, followed by a few teachers, strode off towards the Whomping Willow. 

"Oh no, Ginny's going to get caught!" whimpered Hermione. But to her surprise, and Harry's, Ginny simply tapped the top of her head with her wand, and she disappeared from sight. The Disillusionment Charm? That was an immensely complex spell; even Hermione'd need a few months of practice before getting it right, and even then, she'd be far from achieving complete invisibility, rather than just camouflage.

"So that's why we never saw her on our way back," said Harry, not appreciating the level of skill needed to achieve invisibility. He didn't see the point of learning a spell that rendered him invisible, when his cloak already did that for him.

Not long afterwards, three floating bodies emerged from the hidden passageway under the Whomping Willow: the injured Ron, as well as the tightly bound Sirius and Lupin. Professor Snape popped out after them, with the past versions of Harry, Hermione and Oleandra in tow. Professor Snape stepped up to say a few words to the other teachers that had come out of the castle, and then they all entered the castle, leaving our time travellers and Hippogriff alone in the dark outside.

"I wonder who could have cast that Patronus," Harry wondered out loud.

"Maybe Snape?" Hermione ventured hesitantly. "Remember how he warned us he'd put us in detention forever if we followed him? He stepped out of the Shrieking Shack for a moment, and then he came right back in."

"There's no way," scoffed Harry. "You need happy memories in order to cast the Patronus, and I don't think the greaseball has an ounce of happiness in his entire body."

"Picking on you seems to make him happy," Daphne pointed out.

"There's just no way," said Harry firmly. "It must have been some Hogsmeade villager who was tired of having Dementors hang around at night."

"SHH!" hissed Hermione. "Look, it's Macnair, the executioner! Now that they've got Sirius, they must've sent him to fetch the Dementors!"

"This is it, then," said Harry, "it's do-or-die."

Harry climbed onto Buckbeak's back and offered Hermione a hand, pulling her up behind him.

"A little help, please?" said Daphne frostily. She was a little short for her age, so she was having trouble climbing onto the Hippogriff by herself.

"Right, sorry," said Harry apologetically, and he pulled her up, sandwiching Daphne between him and Hermione. "Ready, then? Hold on tight—"

And with a slight prod to the sides, Buckbeak extended its powerful wings before lifting off into the skies.