Cassiopeia Hope Black is the daughter of the crazed mass murderer, Sirius Black.
Follow Cassie through her teenage years where she battles love, drama, and Voldemort.
Get ready for some twists.
I just want to say that I wrote this in the eighth gr...
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Chapter 12: The Practice
Ravenclaw played Slytherin a week after the start of term. Slytherin won, though narrowly. According to Wood, this was good news for Gryffindor, who would take second place if they beat Ravenclaw too. He, therefore, increased the number of team practices to five a week. This meant that with Lupin's anti-Dementor classes, which in themselves were more draining than six Quidditch practices, Cassie and Harry had just one night a week to do all their homework. Even so, they were not showing the strain nearly as much as Hermione, whose immense workload finally seemed to be getting to her. Every night, without fail, Hermione was to be seen in a corner of the common room, several tables spread with books, Arithmancy charts, rune dictionaries, diagrams of Muggles lifting heavy objects, and file upon file of extensive notes; she barely spoke to anybody and snapped when she was interrupted.
"How's she doing it?" Ron muttered to Cassie one evening as Cassie sat finishing a nasty essay on Undetectable Poisons for Snape. Cassie looked up. Hermione was barely visible behind a tottering pile of books.
"Doing what?"
"Getting to all her classes!" Ron said. "I heard her talking to Professor Vector, that Arithmancy witch, this morning. They were going on about yesterday's lesson, but Hermione can't've been there, because she was with us in Care of Magical Creatures! And Ernie McMillan told me she's never missed a Muggle Studies class, but half of them are at the same time as Divination, and she's never missed one of them either!"
Cassie didn't have time to pretend she didn't know how Hermione was getting to all her classes at the moment; she really needed to get on with Snape's essay. Two seconds later, however, she was interrupted again, this time by Wood.
"Bad news, Cassie. I've just been to see Professor McGonagall about the Firebolt. She — er — got a bit shirty with me. Told me I'd got my priorities wrong. Seemed to think I cared more about winning the Cup than I do about you staying alive. Just because I told her I didn't care if it threw you off, as long as you caught the Snitch first." Wood shook his head in disbelief. "Honestly, the way she was yelling at me... you'd think I'd said something terrible. Then I asked her how much longer she was going to keep it..." He screwed up his face and imitated Professor McGonagall's severe voice. "As long as necessary, Wood"... I reckon it's time you ordered a new broom, Cassie. There's an order form at the back of Which Broomstick... you could get a Nimbus Two Thousand and One, like Malfoy's got."
"No way I'm buying a new broomstick, d'you know how much those things cost?" said Cassie exasperatedly.
"I mean," shrugged Ron. "You could totally afford it."
"Shut up."
***
January faded imperceptibly into February, with no change in the bitterly cold weather. The match against Ravenclaw was drawing nearer and nearer, but Cassie still hadn't ordered a new broom nor had Harry. She was now asking Professor McGonagall for news of the Firebolt after every Transfiguration lesson with Harry and Ron standing hopefully at her shoulder and Hermione rushing past with her face averted.
