Those eyes || Harry J. Potter

snuffles || XXIX

Chapter twenty nine
"Snuffles"
XXIX

☆:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✯☆:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✯☆:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✯☆

As they entered March the weather became drier, but cruel winds skinned their hands and faces every time they went out onto the grounds. There were delays in the post because the owls kept being blown off course. The brown owl that Harry had sent to Sirius with the dates of the Hogsmeade weekend turned up at breakfast on Friday morning with half its feathers sticking up the wrong way; Harry had no sooner torn off Sirius's reply than it took flight, clearly afraid it was going to be sent outside again.

Sirius's letter was almost as short as the previous one.

Be at stile at end of road out of Hogsmeade (past Dervish and Banges) at two o'clock on Saturday afternoon. Bring as much food as you can.

"He hasn't come back to Hogsmeade?" said Ron incredulously. "It looks like it, doesn't it?" said Hermione.

"I can't believe him," said Harry tensely, "if he's caught . . ." "He's too smart to be caught," Said Ara.

"And it's not like the place is swarming with dementors anymore." Ron added.

Harry and Ara hadn't talked much about their kids, nor had they done it again. It had seemed unimportant compared to everything going on with school and the tournament.

When they arrived at Professor Snapes classroom for double potions, they noticed a familiar group of Slytherins.

Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were standing in a huddle outside the classroom door with Pansy Parkinson's gang of Slytherin girls. All of them were looking at something Ara couldn't see and sniggering heartily.

Pansy's pug-like face peered excitedly around Goyle's broad back as Harry, Ara, Ron, and Hermione approached.

"There they are, there they are!" she giggled, and the knot of Slytherins broke apart. Ara saw that Pansy had a magazine in her hands — Witch Weekly. The moving picture on the front showed a curly-haired witch who was smiling toothily and pointing at a large sponge cake with her wand.

"You might find something to interest you in there, Granger!" Pansy said loudly, and she threw the magazine at Hermione, who caught it, looking startled.

At that moment, the dungeon door opened, and Snape beckoned them all inside.

Hermione, Ara, Harry, and Ron headed for a table at the back of the dungeon as usual. Once Snape had turned his back on them to write up the ingredients of today's potion on the blackboard, Hermione hastily rifled through the magazine under the desk.

At last, in the center pages, Hermione found what they were looking for. The three leaned in closer. A color photograph of Harry headed a short piece entitled:

Harry Potter's Secret Heartache

A boy like no other, perhaps — yet a boy suffering all the usual pangs of adolescence, writes Rita Skeeter. Deprived of love since the tragic demise of his parents, fourteen-year-old Harry Potter thought he had found solace in his steady girlfriend at Hogwarts, Muggle-born Hermione Granger. Little did he know that he would shortly be suffering yet another emotional blow in a life already littered with personal loss.

Miss Granger, a plain but ambitious girl, seems to have a taste for famous wizards that Harry alone cannot satisfy. Since the arrival at Hogwarts of Viktor Krum, Bulgarian Seeker and hero of the last World Quidditch Cup, Miss Granger has been toy- ing with both boys' affections. Krum, who is openly smitten with the devious Miss Granger, has already invited her to visit him in Bulgaria over the summer holidays, and insists that he has "never felt this way about any other girl."