Spells and Visions; A Harry Potter story

Chapter 8: The Memory

Harry and Ron were both out of the hospital wing after a few days. Ron wasn't poisoned anymore, and Harry's skull was mended. Hermione and Ron were friends again, and talked like nothing ever happened.

After another session with Dumbledore, we really had to convince Slughorn soon to give his memory. Since I had done most of my homework, and Harry and Ron were leaping behind a bit, I decided to help them, along with Hermione.
"How do you spell 'belligerent'?" Ron asked, his quill shaking very hard. "Is it b-u-m-?"
"No, it isn't," Hermione said, taking the paper from Ron.
"It's one of Fred and George's Spell-Checking quills," he said, when Hermione looked at it. "But I think the effect's wearing off..."
"I think so," Hermione said. "Because I don't remember you changing your name to 'Roonil Wazlib'."
Ron groaned and put his head in his hands.
"Don't tell me I have to write it all over again!"

"It's fine, we can fix it," Hermione said, taking out her wand.
"I love you, Hermione," Ron said sleepily.
I chuckled under my breath, as I saw Hermione turn pink.
"Don't let Lavender hear you say that."
"I won't," Ron said. "Or maybe I will, then she'll ditch me."
"Can't you just ditch her?" I said.
"Have you ever ditched someone?"
I shook my head.
"But if you don't like her anymore, you can just tell her that, right?" Harry tried.
"Have you ever tried that?" Ron said. "You and Cho-"
"Yeah, we just- fell apart," Harry said.
"Wish that would happen with Lavender and me. But the more I try to hint that I don't want it anymore, the more she clings to me. It's terrible."
"You could use a love potion," I suggested. "Make her fall in love with someone else. As soon as she finds out you did it, she'll no longer want you."
"It's an option," Ron shrugged. "Might actually do it if she keeps going like this."

I went to bed, but the next morning, Neville told me that he had seen Harry peering over the Marauder's Map, when he pretended to be asleep.
"Probably Malfoy," I said. "Still wants to know what he's up to. Can't blame him, but he's going a bit far now."
That morning, at breakfast, Ron told me that they had another idea about Malfoy. Sometimes he just disappeared from the Marauder's Map, and that wasn't possible, unless you were in a place that wasn't on the map. The Room of Requirement was not on the map, so they guessed he was going there for... whatever he had to do. They also found out that he, Crabbe and Goyle might have been using Polyjuice Potion, since there were every time girls trailing him, and Crabbe and Goyle were mostly found near the place Malfoy disappeared on the map. They were keeping watch, according to Harry.
I found it a strange story, but it did fit.

There were, again, strange things in the Daily Prophet, too. A nine-year old boy arrested for killing his grandparents, some other kid killed, and Mundungus Fletcher arrested, and sent to Azkaban. Didn't trust him at all, anyway. Luckily, there was nothing about Cedric, so he was still hiding, but there was something about his father missing from the Ministry, but I hoped they had already guessed what was going on. Even if they did nothing to help them.

Harry started trying again to talk to Slughorn, but everytime the lesson was ended, he was faster out of the classroom than the students.

The days became sunnier, but it was actually frustrating. We hadn't gotten far with anything. We still didn't know what Malfoy was after, and Slughorn still hadn't given the Horcrux memory.

I had told Neville about the Horcruxes in the meantime, and only him, he wouldn't tell anyone else, anyway.
Hagrid had sent a letter that Aragog had died, and of course none of us were allowed to be out of the school late, since he wanted to bury Aragog at dusk, and why would we mourn over an animal that had literally tried to kill us? I did feel a bit bad for Hagrid, though. He had raised Aragog since he was born.

Hermione had passed her Apparition test, Ron however, had failed, by half an eyebrow, and Harry was still too young to do the actual test.
I was with Harry and Neville in the common room, when Hermione and Ron came in to tell us the news. Harry still hadn't had any luck with Slughorn our previous Potions lesson, so we had decided he should take liquid luck this time.