Wish Upon A Star

Half Blood Prince

Harry lost no time in telling them what he had overheard Malfoy saying on the Hogwarts Express.  

"But he was obviously showing off for Parkinson, wasn't he?" interjected Ron quickly, before Hermione could say anything.

"Well," she said uncertainly, "I don't know. . . . It would be like Malfoy to make himself seem more important than he is . . . but that's a big lie to tell. . . ."

"Exactly," said Harry, but he could not press the point, because so many people were trying to listen in to his conversation, not to mention staring at him and whispering behind their hands.

"It's rude to point," Ron snapped at a particularly minuscule first-year boy as they joined the queue to climb out of the portrait hole. The boy, who had been muttering something about Harry behind his hand to his friend, promptly turned scarlet and toppled out of the hole in alarm. Ron sniggered.

"I love being a sixth year. And we're going to be getting free time this year. Whole periods when we can just sit up here and relax."

"We're going to need that time for studying, Ron!" said Hermione, as they set off down the corridor.

"Yeah, but not today," said Ron. "Today's going to be a real doss, I reckon."

"Hold it!" said Hermione, throwing out an arm and halting a passing fourth year, who was attempting to push past her with a lime-green disk clutched tightly in his hand. "Fanged Frisbees are banned, hand it over," she told him sternly.

The scowling boy handed over the snarling Frisbee, ducked under her arm, and took off after his friends. Ron waited for him to vanish, then tugged the Frisbee from Hermione's grip.

"Excellent, I've always wanted one of these."

Hermione's remonstration was drowned by a loud giggle; Lavender Brown had apparently found Ron's remark highly amusing. She continued to laugh as she passed them, glancing back at Ron over her shoulder. Ron looked rather pleased with himself.

"But he can't really think we'd continue Care of Magical Creatures!" Hermione said, looking distressed. "I mean, when has any of us expressed . . . you know . . . any enthusiasm?"

"I did," Ashlyn said indignantly. "I really loved the classes. I just couldn't squeeze him in this year,"

"That's it, though, innit?" said Ron, swallowing an entire fried egg whole.

"We were the ones who made the most effort in classes because we like Hagrid. But he thinks we liked the stupid subject. D'you reckon anyone's going to go on to N.E.W.T.?"

Ashlyn sighed. She had consulted McGonagall and asked her if she could keep all her O.W.L. subjects, but she was sternly told that she could not do so. Especially, since the Ministry was going to keep an eye on all of them, and apparently they destroyed the entire stock of time-turners the Ministry had. And McGonagall thought that she ought to focus more on the subjects she had, rather than trying to squeeze in more, no matter how much she thought she was capable of handling it.

McGonagall went down along the table handing out timetables. Ten minutes later, Ashlyn and Hermione made their way to Ancient Runes. 

Grumbling about the amount of homework they were given, they went down to Defence Against the Dark Arts.

"We got so much homework for Runes," Hermione said anxiously when Harry and Ron joined them. "A fifteen-inch essay, two translations, and I've got to read these by Wednesday!"