"It could've been a woman," said Estella. "The handwriting is very neat, almost suspiciously neat."
"How can handwriting be suspiciously neat?" asked Harry, chuckling.
Estella shrugged. "Don't ask me."
"I think it might have been a girl too," said Hermione, from her seat in the armchair.
"The Half-Blood Prince, he was called," said Harry. "How many girls have been Princes?"
"Me," said Estella as she wrote her essay on The Principles of Rematerialization.
Ten minutes later, Harry nudged her arm.
"It's five to eight, I'd better get going."
"Oh, I forgot about that," said Estella, looking up from her essay.
"Good luck! We'll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!" said Hermione.
"Have fun!" said Estella as Harry leaned down to kiss her before standing up.
"Hope it goes okay," said Ron, and the three of them watched Harry leave through the portrait hole.
There was silence.
"Estella?"
She looked up.
"Yes, Ron?"
He smiled sweetly at her. "What did you write about?"
"Ron," said Hermione, slapping his arm. He'd been trying to look at her paper but had no luck finding the answer he was looking for.
"What?" he gasped dramatically as though Hermione had accused him of committing a crime.
"Do your own work," she muttered, going back to her essay.
Estella rolled her eyes and showed him where he should be looking in the textbook, ignoring the look Hermione sent her.
They did, in fact, wait for Harry to get back before parting ways.
As Hermione had predicted, the sixth years' free periods were not the hours of blissful relaxation Ron had anticipated, but times in which to attempt to keep up with the vast amount of homework they were assigned. Not only were they studying as though they had exams every day, but the lessons had become more demanding than ever before. Estella even had to ask Professor McGonagall to repeat steps once or twice. To Hermione's increasing resentment, Harry's best subject had suddenly become Potions, thanks to the borrowed book.
Nonverbal spells were now expected, not only in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but in Charms and Transfiguration too. Estella frequently looked over at her classmates in the common room or at mealtimes to see them purple in the face and staring as though they had overdosed on U-No-Poo; but she knew that they were really struggling to make spells work without saying incantations aloud. They often asked her how she did it, but it came easier than saying them aloud to her. Estella dreaded Herbology, she and Neville had weekly study sessions, him in Charms and her in Herbology.
One result of their enormous workload and the frantic hours of practicing nonverbal spells was that Estella, Harry, Hermione, and Ron had so far been unable to find time to go and visit Hagrid. He had stopped coming to means at the staff table, an ominous sign, and on the few occasions when they had passed him in the corridors or out in the grounds, he had mysteriously failed to notice them or hear their greetings.
"We've got to explain," said Estella, looking up at Hagrid's huge empty chair at the staff table the following Saturday at breakfast.
"We've got Quidditch tryouts this morning!" said Ron. "And we're supposed to be practicing that Aguamenti Charm from Flitwick! Anyway, explain what? How are we supposed to tell him we hated his stupid subject?"
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Future Nostalgia / Harry Potter Fanfic
Fanfiction"He'd do it again if it meant she got the chance to live." "He looked at her, actually looked at her, and wondered how anyone who saw her, didn't fall in love with her." "A trade was to be made." "Friendship was going to be the only way to get throu...
