on, Longbottom, I've got some books that might
interest you."
Neville looked pleadingly at Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but they didn't say
anything, so Neville had no choice but to allow himself to be steered away, one of
Moody's gnarled hands on his shoulder.
"What was that about?" said Ron, watching Neville and Moody turn the corner.
"I don't know," said Hermione, looking pensive.
"Some lesson, though, eh?" said Ron to Harry as they set off for the Great Hall.
"Fred and George were right, weren't they? He really knows his stuff, Moody,
doesn't he? When he did Avada Kedavra, the way that spider just died, just snuffed
it right -"
But Ron fell suddenly silent at the look on Harry's face and didn't speak again until
they reached the Great Hall, when he said he supposed they had better make a start
on Professor Trelawney's predictions tonight, since they would take hours.
Hermione did not join in with Harry and Ron's conversation during dinner, but ate
furiously fast, and then left for the library again. Harry and Ron walked back to
Gryffindor Tower, and Harry, who had been thinking of nothing else all through
dinner, now raised the subject of the Unforgivable Curses himself.
"Wouldn't Moody and Dumbledore be in trouble with the Ministry if they knew
we'd seen the curses?" Harry asked as they approached the Fat Lady.
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"Yeah, probably," said Ron. "But Dumbledore's always done things his way, hasn't
he, and Moody's been getting in trouble for years, I reckon. Attacks first and asks
questions later - look at his dustbins. Balderdash."
The Fat Lady swung forward to reveal the entrance hole, and they climbed into the
Gryffindor common room, which was crowded and noisy.
"Shall we get our Divination stuff, then?" said Harry.
"I s'pose," Ron groaned.
They went up to the dormitory to fetch their books and charts, to find Neville there
alone, sitting on his bed, reading. He looked a good deal calmer than at the end of
Moody's lesson, though still not entirely normal. His eyes were rather red.
"You all right, Neville?" Harry asked him.
"Oh yes," said Neville, "I'm fine, thanks. Just reading this book Professor Moody
lent me. . ."
He held up the book: Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean.
"Apparently, Professor Sprout told Professor Moody I'm really good at
Herbology," Neville said. There was a faint note of pride in his voice that Harry
had rarely heard there before. "He thought I'd like this."
Telling Neville what Professor Sprout had said, Harry thought, had been a very
tactful way of cheering Neville up, for Neville very rarely heard that he was good
at anything. It was the sort of thing Professor Lupin would have done.
Harry and Ron took their copies of Unfogging the Future back down to the
common room, found a table, and set to work on their predictions for the coming
month. An hour later, they had made very little progress, though their table was
littered with bits of parchment bearing sums and symbols, and Harry's brain was as
fogged as though it had been filled with the fumes from Professor Trelawney's
fire.
"I haven't got a clue what this lot's supposed to mean," he said, staring down at a
long list of calculations.
"You know," said Ron, whose hair was on end because of all the times he had run
his fingers through it in frustration, "I think it's back to the old Divination
standby."
"What - make it up?"
"Yeah," said Ron, sweeping the jumble of scrawled notes off the table, dipping his
pen into some ink, and starting to write.
"Next Monday," he said as he scribbled, "I am likely to develop a cough, owing to
the unlucky conjunction of Mars and Jupiter." He looked up at Harry. "You know
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her - just put in loads of misery, she'll lap it up."
"Right," said Harry, crumpling up his first attempt and lobbing it over the heads of
a group of chattering first years into the fire. "Okay. . . on Monday, I will be in
danger of- er - burns."
"Yeah, you will be," said Ron darkly, "we're seeing the skrewts again on Monday.
Okay, Tuesday, I'll. . . erm. .
"Lose a treasured possession," said Harry, who was flicking through Unfogging
the Future for ideas.
"Good one," said Ron, copying it down. "Because of... erm. . . Mercury. Why
don't you get stabbed in the back by someone you thought was a friend?"
"Yeah. . . cool. . ." said Harry, scribbling it down, "because... Venus is in the
twelfth house."
"And on Wednesday, I think I'll come off worst in a fight."
"Aaah, I was going to have a fight. Okay, I'll lose a bet."
"Yeah, you'll be betting I'll win my fight. ..
They continued to make up predictions (which grew steadily more tragic) for
another hour, while the common room around them slowly emptied as people
went up to bed. Crookshanks wandered over to them, leapt lightly into an empty
chair, and stared inscrutably at Harry, rather as Hermione might look if she knew
they weren't doing their homework properly.
Staring around the room, trying to think of a kind of misfortune he hadn't yet used,
Harry saw Fred and George sitting together against the opposite wall, heads
together, quills out, poring over a single piece of parchment. It was most unusual
to see Fred and George hidden away in a corner and working silently; they usually
liked to be in the thick of things and the noisy center of attention. There was
something secretive about the way they were working on the piece of parchment,
and Harry was reminded of how they had sat together writing something back at
the Burrow. He had thought then that it was another order form for Weasleys'
Wizard Wheezes, but it didn't look like that this time; if it had been, they would
surely have let Lee Jordan in on the joke. He wondered whether it had anything to
do with entering the Triwizard Tournament.
As Harry watched, George shook his head at Fred, scratched out something with
his quill, and said, in a very quiet voice that nevertheless carried across the almost
deserted room, "No - that sounds like we're accusing him. Got to be careful. . ."
Then George looked over and saw Harry watching him. Harry grinned and quickly
returned to his predictions - he didn't want George to think he was eavesdropping.
Shortly after that, the twins rolled up their parchment, said good night, and went
off to bed.
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Fred and George had been gone ten minutes or so when the portrait hole opened
and Hermione climbed into the common room carrying a sheaf of parchment in
one hand and a box whose contents rattled as she walked in the other.
Crookshanks arched his back, purring.
"Hello," she said, "I've just finished!"
"So have I!" said Ron triumphantly, throwing down his quill.
Hermione sat down, laid the things she was carrying in an empty armchair, and
pulled Ron's predictions toward her.
"Not going to have a very good month, are you?" she said sardonically as
Crookshanks curled up in her lap.
"Ah well, at least I'm forewarned," Ron yawned.
"You seem to be drowning twice," said Hermione.
"Oh am I?" said Ron, peering down at his predictions. "I'd better change one of
them to getting trampled by a rampaging hippogriff."
"Don't you think it's a bit obvious you've made these up?" said Hermione.
"How dare you!" said Ron, in mock outrage. "We've been working like houseelves
here!"
Hermione raised her eyebrows.
"It's just an expression," said Ron hastily.
Harry laid down his quill too, having just finished predicting his own death by
decapitation.
"What's in the box?" he asked, pointing at it.
"Funny you should ask," said Hermione, with a nasty look at Ron. She took off the
lid and showed them the contents.
Inside were about fifty badges, all of different colors, but all bearing the same
letters: S. P. E .W.
"Spew?" said Harry, picking up a badge and looking at it. "What's this about?"
"Not spew," said Hermione impatiently. "It's S-P-E-W. Stands for the Society for
the Promotion of Elfish Welfare."
"Never heard of it," said Ron.
"Well, of course you haven't," said Hermione briskly, "I've only just started it."
"Yeah?" said Ron in mild surprise. "How many members have you got?"
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"Well - if you two join - three," said Hermione.
"And you think we want to walk around wearing badges saying 'spew,' do you?"
said Ron.
"S-P-E-W!" said Hermione hotly. "I was going to put Stop the Outrageous Abuse
of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Campaign for a Change in Their Legal
Status - but it wouldn't fit. So that's the heading of our manifesto."
She brandished the sheaf of parchment at them.
"I've been researching it thoroughly in the library. Elf enslavement goes back
centuries. I can't believe no one's done anything about it before now."
"Hermione - open your ears," said Ron loudly. "They. Like. It. They like being
enslaved!"
"Our short-term aims," said Hermione, speaking even more loudly than Ron, and
acting as though she hadn't heard a word, "are to secure house-elves fair wages
and working conditions. Our long-term aims include changing the law about nonwand
use, and trying to get an elf into the Department for the Regulation and
Control of Magical Creatures, because they're shockingly underrepresented."
"And how do we do all this?" Harry asked.
"We start by recruiting members," said Hermione happily. "I thought two Sickles
to join - that buys a badge - and the proceeds can fund our leaflet campaign.
You're treasurer, Ron - I've got you a collecting tin upstairs - and Harry, you're
secretary, so you might want to write down everything I'm saying now, as a record
of our first meeting."
There was a pause in which Hermione beamed at the pair of them, and Harry sat,
torn between exasperation at Hermione and amusement at the look on Ron's face.
The silence was broken, not by Ron, who in any case looked as though he was
temporarily dumbstruck, but by a soft tap, tap on the window. Harry looked across
the now empty common room and saw, illuminated by the moonlight, a snowy
owl