Evanora

Chapter 5 ~ The Quidditch Cup

Over the Easter Holidays, Evanora and Harry began to look at each other in a new light. At first, they were uncomfortable with one another, but they were too stressed out from everything going on to be nervous around each other all the time. Evanora was busy keeping Hermoine from falling apart all the time, getting all the work done that she needed to, taking on the responsibility of Buckbeak's case with Ron, and somehow still being the bright and comedic light of the group. Of course, Ron did help with the comedy, and what she found one of the funniest was Harry's obvious sarcasm and sassy remarks. Somehow she found time to do the other things she enjoyed, such as absolutely nothing with her friends, lying outside on the grass by the lake, improvising songs on her ukulele about daily life (while she was alone or with Hermoine), and wearing cute outfits on the weekend. All in all, the Easter Holidays weren't so relaxing. The third years never had so much homework. Neville Longbottom seemed close to a nervous collapse, and he wasn't the only one.

"Call this a holiday?!" Seamus Finnigan roared at the common room one afternoon. "The exams are ages away, what're they playing at?!"

But nobody had as much to do as Hermoine. Constantly occupied by a stack of books and a pile of homework, she was always last to leave the common room at night, first to leave for the library in the morning. She had dark circles under her eyes like the sick Professor Lupin, and she seemed close to tears very often.

Ron and I had taken over the responsibility for Buckbeak's appeal. In our extra time, we read books from the library about hippogriffs and scavenge them for any useful information. We were really the only ones who could, what with Hermoine's massive amount of work and Harry always being at Quidditch practice and having to manage his homework around it. Speaking of Quidditch, the Slytherin and Gryffindor houses were tenser than ever before. Several fights had broken out in the corridors, I even heard that a sixth year Slytherin had been in the hospital wing with sprouts growing from his ears. All usual pursuits during the night before the Quidditch match were stopped because everyone was nervous for the game. Gryffindors were counting on this match to win the Quidditch Cup. Even Hermoine put her books down because she couldn't focus. Harry was so nervous he was barely speaking. I advised him to (at least for tonight) stop worrying about it because that was his future self's problem. It broke the tension and anxiety in our group a little that I was pretending to act so nonchalant about the game. Harry was the only one who could see through my cover. I brought up other subjects like talking to Ron about the information in Buckbeak's case. We talked about the kind of information we needed more of and I asked him what books he covered and couldn't find anything in. Ron was very intelligent; he understood what it would take to make the judges change their minds and he verbally mapped out the information that he gathered in our conversation. He seemed pleased when I complimented his intelligence. Meeting my friends this year made me feel like I had finally found my family. Of course, none of us treated each other that way. For the first time in my life, I met a group of people that weren't affected by my morphing ability, and they treated me as an equal.

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The next morning I got up and delighted myself in picking out a cute outfit:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/49/49/13/49491358c97c66f70ba353762d901177.jpg

And Gryffindor themed makeup: (except a lot less dramatic)

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mKUU_9u9TfI/maxresdefault.jpg

Harry got terrible sleep last night.

When he went into the hall for breakfast next morning, everyone cheered in excitement for the game, even the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Through the shouting and fists pumping into the air, Harry found Hermoine, Ron, and Evanora sitting at the table.