Chapter 58.
The Christmas holiday ended, and the wizards returned to Hogwarts, filling the empty school with their usual bustle.
The first lesson after the New Year was Care of Magical Creatures. On that chilly and damp January morning, the students were least looking forward to spending two hours on the grounds, tending to the dull and uninteresting Flobberworm. But Hagrid surprised them by lighting up a bonfire, with flobberworm inside.
This lesson was especially interesting. The students collected dry leaves from trees, letting the fire crackle and roar. The flobberworm jumped in and out of the burning wood. Soren was later to learn that all the Flobberworms had died from eating too much lettuce.
Then there was alchemy class had become more exciting now that the students had mastered the theory of transmuting substances with magic. Professor boks began his first practical lesson.
He found a lot of damaged things in Hogwarts, such as old broomsticks with worn handles, golden wands with cracked handles, and miniature divination mirrors with rust. He let the students take them apart to study their internal structure and practice repairing them.
The Repairing Charm could only repair physical objects damaged by physical forces. Most of these objects contained powerful or complex magic, and if you tried to repair them with a standard wand and the Repairing Charm, you could repair their physical appearance but not their magical state.
However, there was an exception - an old wand. The powerful magic of this wand's Repairing Charm could repair other wands. If Soren wasn't mistaken, other objects could also be repaired by it, as long as they weren't too large or complex, such as the Disapparating Cabinet or the Eryndortheus Mirror.
The students enjoyed the practical lesson on repairing these objects, feeling like they had learned something useful. Even professor bock brought in the Disapparating Cabinet that had been broken by a poltergeist during the previous term. He said that as long as the students mastered the basics of repairing objects, they would be ready for the next lesson, which would be how to fix this Disapparating Cabinet.
On Thursday evening, Harry also officially started attending his weekly private lessons on Defensive Magic, taught by Professor Lupin. Harry was struggling with the lessons and became frustrated, even doubting Lupin's teaching abilities. This was different from the original story, where Harry was the first student in his year to learn the Patronus Charm. In this version, there were at least 60 students in Harry's year who could cast almost a full Patronus Charm, and many could cast a real Patronus Charm.
On the day of the Potions class on Friday, Professor Snape taught about poisons for the first time in class, and true to his penchant for difficult topics, he chose the category of "Undetectable Poisons." These poisons were colorless and tasteless, and cannot be detected by ordinary means such as a cochleari argenteum, making them virtually undetectable.
To everyone's surprise, all the Slytherin students displayed impressive abilities in this class. Even Goyle and Crabbe, who have always been the least competent, showed that they could easily outperform Hermione.
This left the Gryffindor class astonished, and Hermione displayed a look of disbelief, feeling greatly undermined. Harry and Ron grew to despise Potions class even more, believing it was part of Snape's scheme to undermine Gryffindor, speculating that Snape was giving Slytherin students special tutoring behind the scenes. Of course, Harry conveniently forgot that he was also receiving private tutoring from Professor Lupin.
Snape was being unfairly blamed. Slytherin's performance was due to the contributions of Soren, who had shared Snape's notes in September, leading to significant improvements in the Potions skills of all third-year Slytherin students, allowing them to easily overpower Gryffindor.
On Saturday, Ravenclaw and Slytherin faced off in a Quidditch match.
Under the leadership of Roger Davies, the Ravenclaw team indeed displayed remarkable strength, with both their offense and defense being sharp and fluid, no wonder they could easily crush Hufflepuff. Unfortunately, going up against the notoriously underhanded and ruthless Slytherin team proved somewhat lacking.
Due to the continuous fouling by Marcus, Cassius, and Montague, Ravenclaw lost two players to injuries, and although they gained a 100-point lead through frequent penalties, Draco caught the Golden Snitch just a moment ahead of Cho, securing Slytherin's victory, albeit a narrow one.
Of course, this was also because Draco had held back his strength; he chose to follow Soren's advice and did not use the Firebolt in this match, opting instead for the Nimbus 2001.
According to Wood, this was good news for Gryffindor; if they also defeated Ravenclaw, they could rank second.
Thus, Wood increased the frequency of team practices to five times a week. This meant that, including Lupin's lessons on resisting Dementors—those were more exhausting than six Quidditch practices—Harry only had one night a week available to do all his homework.
Despite this, he did not appear as anxious as Hermione did.
Hermione's heavy coursework seemed to have finally taken a toll on her. Every evening, one could always see her sitting in a corner of the common room, surrounded by textbooks, astrology charts, reading runic dictionary, diagrams for Muggle, and countless dense notes. She spoke to hardly anyone, and when interrupted, she often snapped at them.
January unknowingly turned into February, with the bone-chilling weather showing no signs of change.
As the match against Ravenclaw approached day by day, Harry still had not ordered a new broom. Now, every time after Transfiguration class, he would ask Professor McGonagall about the Firebolt, with Ron standing behind him full of hope while Hermione turned her face away and hurried past.
On Thursday evening, after finishing the fourth lesson on resisting Dementors with Professor Lupin, Harry encountered Professor McGonagall on his way back to the common room and finally received the Firebolt he had been longing for.
Back in Gryffindor's common room, the teammates who had heard the news excitedly surrounded Harry, and team captain Wood even exclaimed, "With the Firebolt, Ravenclaw is definitely out of the game; they're riding on Comets!"
People passed the Firebolt around, admiring it from every angle. After about ten minutes, the crowd gradually dispersed, and Harry and Ron finally saw Hermione. She was the only one who hadn't rushed over to them; she was buried in her studies, carefully avoiding their gaze. Harry and Ron walked over to her table, and finally, she looked up.
"I got it back," Harry said with a smile, holding the firebolt high.
"Did you see that, Hermione? There's no problem at all!" Ron said.
"But—what if it was back then!" Hermione said. "I mean, at least now you know it's safe."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking," Harry said, "I'd better take it upstairs—"
"I'll grab it!" Ron said eagerly. "I need to feed scabbers the strengthening solution."
He took the firebolt, holding it carefully as he walked up the boys' dormitory stairs, as if it were made of glass.
Just as Harry and Hermione chatted, trying to mend their friendship, Ron's scream unexpectedly echoed from the dormitory.
The entire common room suddenly fell silent, everyone staring blankly at the staircase. The sound of hurried footsteps grew louder—then Ron burst out, dragging a bed sheet that had a large bloodstain on it.
He then angrily threw something onto Hermione's Runic dictionary. Hermione and Harry hurried over to look. On those strange, pointed characters lay several long strands of ginger cat fur.
Ron and Hermione got into a big fight in front of everyone.
Ron suspected Crookshanks had eaten Scabbers, completely giving Hermione no chance to explain, and rabidly yelled at her until she cried. He even claimed that Hermione had been brainwashed by Slytherin and had forgotten her loyalty to Gryffindor.
This incident caused a great uproar, and even students from other houses, including Zacharias, heard about it.
Because of this incident, Hermione became very sensitive, as if she might cry at any moment; the blow was just too great for her. She became more solitary, often spending time alone in the library, reducing her visits to the Gryffindor common room.
Two days later, during the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, Gryffindor easily won thanks to Harry's outstanding performance and the firebolt's superior capabilities, leading by a whopping 200 points. Unlike in the original story, this semester, Draco, who had started to become a bit more mature, did not conspire with his friends to send a Dementor to interfere with Harry's game, so Slytherin was not penalized and lost face.
After the match, everyone swept Harry along to the Gryffindor common room, where a lively celebration continued into the evening. Fred and George disappeared for two hours, and when they returned, they were laden with bottles of butterbeer, fizzy pumpkin juice, and several large bags of Honey-dukes candies.
The joyous gathering had only one person absent. Hermione sat incredulously in a corner, trying to read a large book titled "Life and Social Habits of British Muggles."
As Fred and George started performing tricks with the butterbeer bottles, Harry took the opportunity to leave the table and approached Hermione, asking, "Did you not watch the match at all?"
"Of course I did." Hermione didn't even look up at Harry, her tone a bit strange, "I'm glad we won, I think you did really well, but I have to finish this book by Monday…"
"Come on, Hermione, have some food." Harry glanced at Ron, who seemed quite happy at the moment. He thought: Is Ron in a good enough mood to reconcile with Hermione?
"I can't, Harry, I have four hundred twenty-two pages left to read! Besides..." Hermione's voice sounded a bit hysterical as she looked in Ron's direction and whispered, "He probably doesn't want me to join."
It was obvious. Because Ron deliberately chose that moment to say loudly, "If Scabbers wasn't eaten, he could be eating a few of those cream-filled toffees he always liked—"
Hermione suddenly burst into tears. She had been on edge lately, whether due to her busy classes and studies or the matters with Scabbers, which kept her in a state of repression... but Harry still didn't expect she would just cry.
Before Harry had the chance to say or do anything, Hermione clutched the big book under her arm, sobbing and frantically opened the door, running out of the Gryffindor common room.
"Can't you let her catch a break!" Harry couldn't help but say to Ron, then glanced at the door, "It's already evening; I think we better find her quickly…"
Ron also took a glance at the half-open door. He hesitated for a moment, but stubbornly set his face. "No," Ron said with a serious expression, "if she showed any remorse— but she never admits she's wrong, that's just Hermione! She still looks like she's off on a vacation or something..."
Harry hesitated for a moment, sighed, and then ran outside with an expression of helplessness.
A/N > Want to read more , join me on patreon.com/Theuntamed0; or support me on Ko-fi.com/Theuntamed.