Bella and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter Fifteen

~ Trust me to come down with a sickness bug. 2018 is not my year at all...can we re-start it?~
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To no surprise what-so-ever, Defence Against the Dark Arts had become most people's favourite class. Only Draco Malfoy and his gang of 'friends' had anything bad to say about Professor Lupin. I think Lupin is great, he really is an awesome teacher and lets us get hands-on with situations instead of writing and listening about them. 

"Look at the state of his robes," I remember Malfoy saying once in a loud whisper as Lupin passed. "He dresses like our old house-elf"

But no one else cared that Professor Lupin's robes were patched and frayed. His next few lessons were just as interesting as the first. After Boggarts, we studied Red Caps, nasty little goblin-like creatures that lurked wherever there had been bloodshed, in the dungeons of castles and the potholes of deserted battlefields, waiting to bludgeon those who had got lost. From Red Caps we moved onto Kappas, creepy water-dwellers that looked like scaly monkeys, with webbed hands itching to strangle unwitting waders in their ponds. 

Sounds pleasant, right?

I only wished I was as happy with some of my other classes. Worst of all was Potions. Snape was in a particularly vindictive mood these days, and no one was in any doubt as to why. The story of the Boggart assuming Snape's shape, and the way that Neville had dressed it in his grandmother's clothes, had travelled through the school like wildfire. Snape didn't seem to find it funny. His eyes flashed menacingly at the very mention of Professor Lupin's name, and he was bullying Neville worse than ever.

I was also growing to dread the hours I spent in Professor Trelawney's stifling tower room, deciphering lop-sided shapes and symbols, trying to ignore the way Professor Trelawney's enormous eyes filled with worry and tears every time she looked at me and Harry. I couldn't find myself to like Trelawney, even though she was treated with respect bordering on reverence by many of the class. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown had taken to haunting Trelawney's tower room at lunchtimes and always returned with annoyingly superior looks on their faces, as though they knew things we didn't. They had also started using hushed voices whenever they spoke to me and Harry, as though we were on our deathbed. 

Nobody really liked Care of Magical Creatures, which, after the action-packed first class, had become extremely dull. Hagrid seemed to have lost his confidence. We were now spending lesson after lesson learning how to look after Flobberworms, which had to be some of the most boring creatures in existence.

"Why would anyone bother looking after them?" Ron said, after yet another hour of poking shredded lettuce down the Flobberworms' slimy throats.

At the start of October, however, I had something else to occupy me, something so enjoyable it made up for my unsatisfactory classes. The Quidditch season was approaching, and Oliver Wood, captain of the Gryffindor Team, called a meeting one Thursday evening to discuss tactics for the new season.

There were eight people on a Quidditch Team; three chasers, whose job it was to score goals by putting the Quaffle (a red, football-sized ball) through one of the fifty-foot high hoops at each end of the pitch; two Beaters, who were equipped with heavy bats to repel the Bludgers (two heavy black balls which zoomed around trying to attack the players); two Keepers, who defended the goalposts, and the Seeker, who had the hardest job of all, that of catching the Golden Snitch, a tiny winged, walnut-sized ball, whose capture ended the game and earned the Seeker's team an extra one hundred and fifty points. 

Oliver Wood was a burly seventeen-year-old, now in his seventh and final year at Hogwarts. There was a quiet sort of desperation in his voice as he addressed his seven fellow team members in the chilly changing rooms on the edge of the darkening Quidditch pitch.