Sirius's son

Transfiguration Trophy

For the rest of the week's Potions lessons, Harry continued to follow the Half-Blood Prince's instructions wherever they deviated from Libatius Borage's, with the result that by their fourth lesson Slughorn was raving about Harry's abilities, saying that he had rarely taught anyone so talented. Neither Ron nor Hermione were delighted as Ron couldn't understand the handwriting while Hermione followed the 'official' instructions. Rigel didn't even bother having zero interest since he was a compatible brewer while Eliza actually had some sort of competition in her favorite subject.

"The Half-Blood Prince, he was called," Harry said. "How many girls have been princes?"

Hermione seemed to have no answer to this. She merely scowled and twitched her essay away from Ron, who was trying to read it upside down.

Rigel looked at his watch, "Seven fifty-five, aren't you two suppose to be at Dumbledore's office?" he asked Harry, who then looked at his own watch and hurried put the old copy of the Prince's potion book into his bag.

"Ooooh!" gasped Hermione, looking up at once. "Good luck!We'll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!"

 "Hope it goes okay," said Ron, and the trio watched Harry and Eliza leave through the portrait hole. 

"So you're saying that Voldemort's grandfather was in fact a pure-blood mad fanatic who attacked a ministry employee along with his uncle," Rigel said.

"Yes, Rigel." Eliza sai rolling her eyes. "You just wrapped up the entire Pensieve in one sentence."

Rigel shrugged. "Thank God I'm not related to those lot."

Sixth-year work piled up. Rigel's homework and the need to constantly practice nonverbal spells, demanded by most of the classes now because of the N.E.W.T. exams, along with practicing how to use a sword (The battle of the department of Mysteries showed how undertrained he was) and prefect duties. It was an insane routine. And of course with his friend's enormous workload made all of them have no time of coming to see Hagrid since he had stopped coming to meals after Rigel's period with the half-giant when he tried to explain to him why the trio stopped attending his class, on a few occasions when they had passed him in the corridors or out in the ground, he had mysteriously failed to notched them or hear their greetings. So it seemed that Rigel had failed miserably.

"I'm sorry guys," he said. "I wish there's more I could do."

"It wasn't your fault Rigel, you did your best," Hermione said, looking up at the huge empty chair at the staff table the following Saturday at breakfast. "We've got to go and explain."

"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 going to tell him we hated his stupid subject?"

"We didn't hate it!" said Hermione.

"Speak for yourself, I haven't forgotten the Skrewts," said Ron darkly. "And I'm telling you now, we've had a narrow escape. You didn't hear him going on about his gormless brother - we'd have been teaching Grawp how to tie his shoelaces if we'd stayed."

"So what Ron?" Eliza retorted. "Let the giant learn how to act like a human."

"I hate not talking to Hagrid," said Hermione, looking miserable.

"We'll go down after Quidditch," Harry assured her. "But trials might take all morning, the number of people who have applied. I dunno why the team's this popular all of a sudden."

"Well, we did win last year, right?" Rigel said, swallowing the meat.

"That's not the only reason," Hermione said. "It's not Quidditch that's popular, it's you and Eliza! you two have never been more interesting, and frankly, you've never been more fanciable."