Everything was quiet in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Well, it was quiet apart from some teachers who were patrolling and some ghosts floating around, softly murmuring to themselves, looking out for the thing that had changed several students into stone.

But there was one more soul out of bed. This time not Harry Potter. You see, Harry wasn't the only one who used the invisibility cloak of the Potters. It was Ronald Weasley.

Slowly, with his books and parchment in one hand, and his wand in the other (in case he met up with the heir of Slytherin, or worse, spiders) he tiptoed, invisible, to the hospital wing on the first floor.

There, he softly opened the door and lit his wand. The Hospital Wing was dark, but the moon shone in, and he saw the silhouettes of the petrified people.

"Hi Hermione," he whispered softly to the girl that was lying on the last bed, thankfully as far as possible from the little chamber where Madame Pomfrey was sleeping. He lit the candle next to her bed and took a chair that stood near the wall. Then, he dumped his books on her legs and sat down.

"Madame Pomfrey wouldn't let Harry and me in today. But honestly, did they think I could just finish my essay for potions without your help? So I thought, I come and visit you tonight."

He looked expectantly at her face, but it remained frozen.

"Okay, so let's see. I asked Lavender today if she could take your Potions book from your dorm. Mine is missing a few pages . . . you know how old it is . . . the twins probably took them out for some prank, or just to fold them into those Muggle airohplaints . . ."

He looked at her fisted hand and noticed that she had painted her nails in a soft, pink, colour, barely visible in the candle light. His eyes travelled to her wrist, where she wore the bracelet he and Harry had given her for Christmas.

"Anyway," he shook his head, "I'm losing my concentration. That's another reason why I need you here. You have to tell me what those airhoplants are, and probably correct me about them, and then tell me that I should get back to work. So the essay has to be about the Deflating Draught, but all I know about that is how Snape used it when Harry threw a firecracker in that cauldron so you could nick the boomslang skin, last semester." His eyes got brighter and he forgot the reason why he was there. He remembered how they had drunk the Polyjuice Potion. How he and Harry had become Crabbe and Goyle, and how Hermione had turned into a cat . . . Hermione . . . he looked at the petrified witch in front of him and shook his head again.

"Anyway . . ." He took one of the books, turned it to the right page and placed it against her legs.

"So it says here that it's made out of gnome secretions . . . Ew! Am I glad I wasn't hit by it in potions! What more? Um . . . leaves of a bonsai-tree . . . some pixie wings and leprechauns' gold, although the last part isn't really necessary, but gives the potion a nice smell."

He scribbled the ingredients on his parchment, and turned the page around.

"Hey! I didn't know you drew in your school books Hermione! Oh, wait, it's a piece of parchment . . ."

He took it out and examined it. It was a poor drawing of a troll, with a wand in his nose and a toilet in the background. Ron smiled.

"Yeah . . . that was great. Our first real adventure . . . Although you could also count the night when we went to the trophy room and met Fluffy as an adventure . . . But well, we weren't friends back then, I suppose . . ." He slipped the drawing into the book, and turned back to the pages on the Deflating Drought, where it said to stir the potion three times counter clockwise, then turn up the flame under the cauldron.

Ron sighed. Copying everything directly from one book would be something Hermione would usually say was "worse than doing nothing." He took the other book Lavender had given him, a book about different potion-ingredients, and checked the index for pixie-wings and gnome secretions (pages 114 and 265).

Ron flipped to page 114, but on page 73, there was another piece of paper, sticking out. He stopped and looked.

This time, it wasn't a piece of parchment; a moving photo lay in his hand, from Professor Lockhart. Ron gagged.

"Hermione, really? That guy is . . . disgusting. I really can't imagine how he defeated all those creatures when he is such an egg-head! I mean, he didn't know how to retrieve pixies! You did! A second year . . . but, well, I didn't and I'm in second year . . . Maybe it was just one of those things you had read, but I mean . . ." He heard himself rambling, and closed his mouth.

He wanted to put the picture back on page 73, but when he did, he felt another picture stuck behind the one of the smiling Lockhart. He pulled them off each other and looked at the new one, putting the old one (now a bit crumpled) between the pages.

It was a picture, obviously taken by Colin Creevey. Harry was trying hard to hide behind the frame, while Hermione and he himself were in the background, looking surprised, but smiling. The Hermione on the photo waved and the real Ron, who was looking at the picture, grinned.

He looked away from the photo, straight at the frozen body of the real Hermione and remembered why he was sitting in the dark Hospital Wing, next to a petrified best friend.

"Oh bugger, I almost forgot about the essay!" He put the photo back in and turned to page 114.

Slowly, very slowly, Ron wrote his essay. When he was done (he had re-written it four times, just as Hermione had instructed him once when she was lecturing him about homework), he collected the books, ink and crumpled parchment, and threw the invisibility cloak back on. Then he blew the candle out, and put the chair back where it had been before. Ron walked to the bed once more, took Hermione's hand and whispered so quietly that even if Hermione hadn't been Petrified, she wouldn't have been able to hear it: "Goodnight Hermione. Thanks for your help and I hope you get better soon."

When Ron walked back to the common room, he couldn't wait until the petrified people could be cured again. Not only because he would have Hermione back to be annoying to him, but also because he needed to speak to Colin Creevey: He wanted a copy of that picture.