The Story of Ruby Evans - The Beginning (A Harry Potter Fan Fiction) (Rewriting)

Chapter 13 - Harry nearly knocked Snape of his broom. Yay Harry!

I'm really sorry that I haven't uploaded in ages. I've had writers block and all sorts has been happening. My best friend's little sister/ my little sister's best friend has been really ill and spent two days in hospital so I had my friend sleeping over for three nights because there was nobody to look after her so I had no time to write. Before that, I had my prom and I've just been generally busy. Sorry.

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Dumbledore had convinced Harry not to go looking for the Mirror of Erised again and I didn't need any convincing. I knew it was trouble. As far as I know, for the rest of the Christmas holidays the invisibility cloak stayed folded at the bottom of Harry's trunk.

Harry had started to have nightmares, though, about a green light, a scream and a high, cold laugh.

"You see, Dumbledore was right, that mirror could drive you mad," said Ron, when Harry told Ron and I about these dreams. Hermione, who came back the day before term started, took a different view of things. She was torn between horror at the idea of Harry being out of bed, roaming the school three nights in a row ("If Filch had caught you!"), and disappointment that he hadn't at least found out who Nicolas Flamel was. I laughed at her face when he told her. It was so funny, I fell off the couch.

Once term started again, we were back to skimming through books for ten minutes during our breaks. It got pretty dull. Ma and Harry had even less time than the others, because Quidditch practice had started again.

Wood was working us ridiculously hard, even in the rain. The Weasleys complained that Wood was becoming a fanatic, but Harry was on Wood's side. I sort of agreed with Harry, but I didn't think we needed to work quite that hard, especially in the cold and rain. If we won our next match, against Hufflepuff, we would overtake Slytherin in the house championship for the first time in seven years, then I could laugh at Draco. Other than wanting to win, Harry had another reason for wanting to train so hard. He told me that he had less nightmares if he was exhausted from training.

Then, during one particularly wet and muddy practice session, Wood gave us all a bit of bad news. He'd just gotten very angry with me and the twins because we kept dive-bombing each other and pretending to fall off our brooms. We were bored.

"Will you stop messing around!" he yelled. "That's exactly the sort of thing that'll lose us the match! Snape's refereeing this time, and he'll be looking for any excuse to knock points off Gryffindor!"

George really did fall off his broom at these words. I nearly did too, but I'm too good a flier to fall. I'm also very big headed. YAY ME!

"Snape's refereeing?" George spluttered through a mouthful of mud. I laughed at him and he stuck his tongue out at me. I responded just a childishly, by sticking mine out too. He looked beck th Wood, "When's he ever refereed a Quidditch match? He's not going to be fair if we might overtake Slytherin."

The rest of the team landed next to George to complain, too. As soon as I landed, George pulled me down into the mud as revenge for laughing, making me squeal.

"It's not my fault," said Wood. "We've just got to make sure we play a clean game, so Snape hasn't got an excuse to pick on us."

Harry looked really worried and I think I know why.

The rest of the team hung back to talk to one another as usual at the end of practice, but Harry and I headed straight back to the Gryffindor common room, where we found Ron and Hermione playing chess. Chess was the only thing Hermione ever lost at, something me, Harry and Ron thought was very good for her (especially me. She's always won at everything!)