"It's lonely to be more powerful than any man you know."
- Merlin
Twelve years after Harry Potter defeated Voldemort and put an end to the First Wizarding War, the Wizarding world is shaken by the news that Sirius Black has escaped Azkaban. But no...
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Ravenclaw played Slytherin a week after the start of term. Slytherin won, though narrowly. According to Wood, this was good news for Gryffindor, who would take second place if they beat Ravenclaw too. He therefore increased the number of team practices to five a week.
Along with Lupin's anti-dementor and Patronus Charm classes, this meant that Harry and Rhea had about one night a week to do their homework. Rhea didn't mind as much as Harry since she was pretty effective once she decided to study. Not to mention that neither of them were showing the strain nearly as much as Hermione, whose immense workload finally seemed to be getting to her.
Every night, without fail, Hermione was to be seen in a corner of the common room, several tables spread with books, Arithmancy charts, rune dictionaries, diagrams of Muggles lifting heavy objects, and file upon file of extensive notes; she barely spoke to anybody and snapped when she was interrupted. Rhea was growing genuinely concerned for her. Hermione clearly didn't know her own limits and was pushing herself towards the edge.
"How's she doing it?" Ron muttered to Harry and Rhea one evening as they were finishing a nasty essay on Undetectable Poisons for Snape.
Harry looked up. Hermione was barely visible behind a tottering pile of books. "Doing what?"
"Getting to all her classes!" Ron exclaimed. "I heard her talking to Professor Vector, that Arithmancy witch, this morning. They were going on about yesterday's lesson, but Hermione can't have been there, because she was with us in Care of Magical Creatures! And Ernie McMillan told me she's never missed a Muggle Studies class, but half of them are at the same time as Divination, and she's never missed one of them either!"
"Maybe if you spent less time focusing on Hermione's classes and more on your own, you'd not have to do your homework at the last minute every single time," Rhea said, rolling up her finished essay. When Ron just sent her a glare, she raised her hands in mock surrender.
She was just about to offer Harry — who was struggling with Snape's paper — some help when her eyes landed on Oliver Wood approaching them. She immediately straightened up a little and then cursed herself for having a visible reaction to his arrival.
"Bad news, Harry," Oliver said, taking a seat next to Rhea on the couch. "I've just been to see Professor McGonagall about the Firebolt. She—er—got a bit shirty with me. Told me I'd got my priorities wrong. Seemed to think I cared more about winning the Cup than I do about you staying alive. Just because I told her I didn't care if it threw you off, as long as you caught the Snitch first."
Rhea failed to cover up a snort-like laughter, sad that she'd missed this conversation between Oliver and Professor McGonagall. What made it even more amusing was how Oliver seemed completely oblivious to where his talk to the Head of Gryffindor had gone. His Quidditch obsession was at an entirely new level.
