Glamour

Grades

Hermione was sat on the sofa writing in one of her many Journals when Harry came and sprawled next to her, letting out a sigh of relief that the week was finally over.

"What you doing 'mione" He asked, curious as to what notes she was making from her returned homework.

"Oh, I'm just keeping track of my grades, you know so I can see where I am slipping and what areas I have to work on."

"Ha, out of everyone here, I think you have the least to worry about in terms of that."

"Be as it may, I cant be too careful. Look at my potions grades for example, I slipped from an EE to an A these past two weeks, I really cant afford that, especially in OWLs year."

"'Mione, not to stress you, but Snape has been really pissed these last two weeks, ever since Umbridge put through her last educational decree, I bet the whole class has been marked down because of it. Hang on let me grab my essays, I bet you the same thing has happened to me."

Harry quickly ran up to his dorm, grabbing the stack of old essays from his trunk before returning to Hermione in front of the fire. He handed the stack over to her, and sat back as she looked through scowling to herself before putting them down with a sniff.

"You may have a point. And it is despicable if he lets his feelings get in the way of his grading, but that shouldn't mean I can slack."

Harry grinned at his overachieving friend and went to take back his stack of homework, but Hermione held onto it, pulling out a blank piece of parchment.

"I'm curious, it looks like your grades have improved since the beginning of term, do you mind if I start a record sheet for you? You might find it really useful, especially when you start serious revision."

"Uh, go ahead?" he replied, the response coming out more as a question. Harry hadn't really thought about how his new work ethic would improve his homework grades, but now Hermione had mentioned it, it seemed a reasonable thing to keep an eye on.

Half an hour later, and after giving Hermione a one time pass to rummage through his trunk to the rest of his old homework for the year, Harry found himself presented with a chart depicting his homework grades for the term so far.

It was quite shocking the change in his grades he could see over the ten weeks they had been back at school. In the first few weeks he had been averaging A's with a few P's and EE's scattered around. Now his grades were solid EE's with an occasional O. The only disappointment was the column showing his potions scores. The small list of T's and D's had improved slightly, and he now managed to pass more often than not, but Harry knew that he would never get a true reflection of his potions grades with Snape teaching him.

Looking at his list of subjects he suddenly realised he had never really thought through his electives. At the end of second year, he had been happy to scribble down the same subjects that Ron had chosen, trusting his friend that they were good subjects and an easy O.

"Hermione, what made you choose Arithmancy and Ancient Runes" He asked. The subjects had never really been covered in their first two years, so he hadn't thought much of them when he saw them on the electives list.

"Oh, I wanted to try all the subjects. I didn't have any real knowledge on either when I started. It was only after I started third year that I really got into them."
"Oh." harry said, a bit disappointed. "It seems strange that we didn't get more insight into our electives before we got to choose them."

"I did bring that up with McGonagall, apparently there used to be a period of time in third year where you got to try out the subjects before you made your final decisions. I'm not sure why they stopped that."