A large group of people was bunched around the bulletin board when they returned to the common room.
“Hogsmeade, next weekend!” said Ron, craning over the heads to read the new notice. “What d’you reckon?” he added quietly to Harry as they went to sit down.
“Well, Filch hasn’t done anything about the passage into Honeydukes…” Harry said, even more quietly.
“Harry!” said a voice in his right ear. Harry started and looked around at Hermione, who was sitting at the table right behind them and clearing a space in the wall of books that had been hiding her.
“Harry, if you go into Hogsmeade again… I’ll tell Professor McGonagall about that map!” said Hermione.
“Can you hear someone talking, Harry?” growled Ron, not looking at Hermione.
“Ron, how can you let him go with you? After what Sirius Black nearly did to you! I mean it, I’ll tell—”
“So now you’re trying to get Harry expelled!” said Ron furiously. “Haven’t you done enough damage this year?”
Hermione opened her mouth to respond, but with a soft hiss, Crookshanks leapt onto her lap. Hermione took one frightened look at the expression on Ron’s face, gathered up Crookshanks, and hurried away toward the girls’ dormitories.
“So how about it?” Ron said to Harry as though there had been no interruption. “Come on, last time we went you didn’t see anything. You haven’t even been inside Zonko’s yet!”
Harry looked around to check that Hermione was well out of earshot.
“Okay,” he said. “But I’m taking the Invisibility Cloak this time.”
* * *
On Saturday morning, Harry packed his Invisibility Cloak in his bag, slipped the Marauder’s Map into his pocket, and went down to breakfast with everyone else. Hermione kept shooting suspicious looks down the table at him, but he avoided her eye and was careful to let her see him walking back up the marble staircase in the entrance hall as everybody else proceeded to the front doors.
“’Bye!” Harry called to Ron. “See you when you get back!”