Unity & Perseverance

Hagrid's Return

The next day was pretty jam-packed, as Flitwick, McGonagall and Grubbly-Plank all assigned homework for the fifth years that Tuesday. It had usually been common practise for all of them to do their homework in the common room, but with Fred and George constantly testing their products, as well as people talking loudly, it soon became impossible to do it in there anymore.

Straight after dinner, Amelia, Ginny, Ron and Dorea went to Quidditch practise, and Harry felt forlorn as he watched them walk away down to the pitch without him. Harry decided that he was going to get his homework done in the library; so Hermione walked him there before going back to the common room to knit more hats for the house-elves.

Finding a spare table near the back of the room, he sat down and got to work. He finished off Professor Babbling's multiple choice questions before moving on to the Charm's worksheets Flitwick had assigned, which took almost an hour. His Care of Magical Creatures homework wasn't due for another week, and neither was his Transfiguration work, so he got his Arithmancy work out and decided to revise what he and Vector went over last week.

Harry got quite frustrated with himself when, after forty minutes, he still wasn't getting anything. Vector had said that number significance was pretty hard at OWL level, but he hadn't realised how hard, as nothing was making sense.

"Sorry, are any of these seats taken?" He heard someone say. Looking up, he was pleasantly surprised when he saw two people standing across from him. He recognised them from the Junior DA group; Liz Tuttle, a fourth year Slytherin, and Badeea Ali, fourth year Ravenclaw.

"No, not at all, feel free to sit there." He replied, gesturing to the empty seats across the table.

The two girls sat, smiling gratefully. "The library's packed, every other table's taken." Badeea said.

Harry smiled. "It's totally fine."

Liz Tuttle looked at him. "You look quite stressed, Potter."

"Arithmancy." Was all he had to say, as the two girls cringed.

"I would like to take it, but it's always on at the same time as Divination." Liz said.

"Oh, you take Divination?" Harry didn't know that.

"Yeah, my mum's actually a Seer. She's not batty like Trelawney, but she only gets visions ever so often." Liz explained.

Harry found that interesting, though Divination was by far his least favourite subject. He was soon forgetting his Arithmancy work, as Liz and Badeea were very easy to talk to. Liz was fascinated with magical creatures, and wanted to be a Magizoologist when she graduated, and also someone who could campaign for greater creature rights. Harry thought she'd get on great with Hermione, as they had something in common regarding creatures. Badeea, he was surprised to learn, was a very talented artist: she showed him a whole book filled with both sketches and paintings; some of the paintings were even magical. Badeea even wanted to create her own spells one day, which Harry thought was very fascinating.

At eight, the two girls had to leave, and once again Harry was confronted with his hellish Arithmancy work again which he had previously abandoned. He was halfway to giving up when another familiar face greeted him.

"Oh, hello Harry." Susan Bones smiled, and went to sit across from him.

"Hey," Harry greeted the girl. A thought came to him then. "Do you take Arithmancy?"

Susan grinned. "Yeah, I do. You take it as well, don't you?"

"Yeah," he admitted, "I'm not in the class though. I have private lessons with Vector on Wednesday's and Thursday's."