Finding Heather

Year 7 Chapter 12

Author's Notes:

Harry Potter and everything else in his magical world belongs to JK Rowling. I'm just making it Heather's world.

Chapter Twelve

 They landed in an empty field, slamming into the ground. Heather wheezed as the breathe was knocked from her lungs on impact. Hermione quickly sprang up, recovering faster than Heather or Ron, and began casting their protective enchantments. Sitting up and picking up the beaded bag that Hermione had left there, Heather pulled out the tent and erected it with a wave of her wand.

"That treacherous piece of..." muttered Ron as they moved inside. He was walking with a limp where the chest of drawers had pinned his leg. Heather helped him into an armchair and inspected the leg, doing her best to remember what Madam Pomfrey had taught her the year before during her time as an assistant in the Hospital Wing. She found nothing seriously wrong with it, and suggested that Ron stay off of it for the rest of the day.

 When Hermione was done and had entered the tent, the argument that she and Ron had been having in the Lovegood's sitting room about the existence of the Hallows resumed. This time Heather was able to join in, firmly taking Ron's side that they had to be real.

"It all fits!" she cried at Hermione almost an hour later. She had just remembered Marvolo Gaunt waving the ring that became a horcrux in Bob Ogden's face, declaring it had the Peverell coat of arms on it. It had to be, she argued confidently, the Resurrection Stone. With a firmness that had earned both the admiration and vexation of Heather during their years of friendship, Hermione maintained that there was no way that the stone could exist.

"Hermione, we live in a world of magic. Whose to say that somewhere along the line some clever witch or wizard discovered a way to contact the dead" Heather tried reasoning, to no avail. Hermione point blank refused to accept the possibility that the Deathly Hallows were anything more than a fever dream of an eccentric wizard named Xenophilius Lovegood. She even tried to reason that he had just made it all up to keep them talking until the Death Eater's could arrive.

 Heather and Ron continued the conversation without Hermione at that point, giving her up as a lost cause for the moment. They both agreed that Heather's cloak sounded a lot like the one from the story, everlasting and perfect in everyway. It was certainly old, having already belonged to James since he was in school, and Ron pointed out that most invisibility cloaks wore out after a few years or got holes in them.

 As they moved on to the Elder Wand, the bottom dropped out of Heather's stomach, and it had nothing to do with her continued male appearance. Excitement over the Hallows had driven that out of her mind for now. "That's what he's searching for. You-Know-Who's after the Elder Wand." Both of them fell silent, and even Hermione looked slightly worried at that idea, despite having stated that there was no such thing. Springing to her feet, Heather began to pace, loudly exclaiming that she had at least one, possibly two, of the Hallows right here. All she needed to do was track down the wand.

"Heather! Dumbledore told you to track down the horcruxes, not go chasing off after something that doesn't exist!" cried Hermione with exasperation. "Ron, please!"

Torn between his excitement at the idea of an unbeatable wand, and his desire to get back in with her, Ron hesitated before siding with Hermione. Heather felt extremely betrayed at this, but gave it up for now. She knew it probably had more to do with Ron's efforts to get back with Hermione than what he might actually believe. In exasperation she tried to massage away a headache that was growing behind her forehead, and the realization of how she looked became paramount in her mind. Her uncomfortableness in her own body smothered temporarily her newfound obsession with the Hallows.