The Family that Chooses You

Chapter 137: Eye of N.E.W.T.

"What am I even looking at?" Harry asked.

The Gryffindor common room was full of floating-colored bubbles. They ranged in size, some as small as peas and others as large as Quaffles. They flew around, bumping into each other and the walls, occasionally exploding and showering the people beneath them in paint. Every so often the existing bubbles that collided with each other created different bubbles in a never-ending cycle of self-renewal.

"We don't know," Mirabelle said. "That's why we came and got you."

"Why didn't you get Hermione? She's better at this sort of thing than me," he said as he watched a large wobbly bubble turn into a dozen smaller ones.

"Because of him," Lyla sniffed, pointing at Ron.

Ron looked sheepish. "I might've begged them to not get Hermione, or any professors. I can still fix it."

"You said that over an hour ago," Mirabelle and Lyla shouted crossly. Most of the other inhabitants of the tower, the older students, looked equally as upset while the younger years looked delighted.

"Where did they even come from?" Harry resisted the urge to poke one. He narrowed his eyes, looking at one closely. He recognized a vague letter inside the bubble. "Ron, you didn't..."

"I mean, I was just trying to raise spirits with tests coming up and I thought this would be better than most things Fred and George make-"

"Don't lie! I heard you say that it hadn't been tested really!" Lyla said angrily.

"Okay, so yeah, it's more experimental but still-"

"Did you ask them how to stop this?" Harry interrupted. "Send them a letter?"

"Not yet because I wanted to prove I could stop it, but I don't think it's just my fault. Seamus did part of the casting and-"

"Oi! Don't blame me that your brothers' product didn't work!" Seamus shouted.

"This didn't happen until after you tried setting some on fire!" Ron shouted back.

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. "Really? You picked now to do this? N.E.W.T.s and O.W.L.s start in a week! How do you expect people to study like this? I don't have time for this, Ron!"

"I know! I can fix it!" Ron waved his wand and muttered an incantation. A bubble exploded and drenched him in multicolored paint, making him look like a clown had gotten sick on him. "Okay, maybe I can't fix it..."

Harry resisted the urge to bang his head on the wall. "Fine, you owe me for this." He grabbed a piece of parchment and drew a series of runes on it. Then he gently pressed it against a bubble, waiting for the runes to glow. When they stopped, he peeled the parchment off the bubble and looked at the words appearing on the parchment.

"What was that?" Lyla asked interested.

"A runic array. It helps you identify spells. Okay, be right back." He left the common room, grumbling. After a while he returned with Luna in tow.

"Oh, this looks rather lovely," Luna said as she looked around the common room. She watched one explode and turn two first years bright purple. "I can see why one wouldn't like it though."

"Hi, Luna," Lyla said, hugging the older girl. "Are you here to help?"

Luna nodded. "Harry said he needed my help with arithmancy. At first I wondered why he did not ask Hermione," she shook her head at the multi-hued Ron, "but now I see why."

Harry was writing out a new series of runes on parchment and pressing them against a bubble, peeling them off as they identified the spells. Luna took them from him and laid them out with interested students clustering around them.