"Where is it?" said Hermione. 

Harry told her about leaving it in the passageway under the one-eyed witch. 

"... if Snape sees me anywhere near there again, I'm in serious trouble," he finished. 

"That's true," said Hermione, getting to her feet. "If he sees you.... How do you open the witch's hump again?" 

"You -- you tap it and say, 'Dissendium,'" said Harry. "But --" 

Hermione didn't wait for the rest of his sentence; she strode across the room, pushed open the Fat Lady's portrait and vanished from sight. 

"She hasn't gone to get it?" Ron said, staring after her. 

"I bet you a peppermint toad," grinned Amelia, arms crossed over her chest.

 "Fine, I hate peppermint  anyway."

She had. Hermione returned a quarter of an hour later with the silvery cloak folded carefully under her robes

. "Hermione, I don't know what's gotten, into you lately!" said Ron, astounded. "First you hit Malfoy, then you walk out on Professor Trelawney --" 

Hermione looked rather flattered. 

"You're an absolute badass!" Amelie pumped her fist into the air, shoving the last of her peppermint toad in her mouth.

They went down to dinner with everybody else, but did not return to Gryffindor Tower afterward. Harry had the cloak hidden down tie front of his robes; he had to keep his arms folded to hide the lump. They skulked in an empty chamber off the entrance hall, listening, until they were sure it was deserted. They heard a last pair of people hurrying across the hall and a door slamming. Hermione poked her head around the door. 

"Okay," she whispered, "no one there -- cloak on -- Amelia do your thing-" 

Walking very close together so that nobody would see them(Amelia walking invisible beside them), they crossed the hall on tiptoe beneath the cloak, then walked down the stone front steps into the grounds. The sun was already sinking behind the Forbidden Forest, gilding the top branches of the trees.