RAVENCLAW!

12. Astronomy

The next weeks Harry spent a lot of time with Terry, Michael and Anthony, as well as Cho Chang. Terry continued helping him in potions which forced Snape to give him at least accaptable grades and lead to Malfoy having one reason less to insult and laugh at him. Malfoy did this a lot lately. But at the moment Harry had more important stuff on his mind. Norbert the baby dragon had grown so much, that he, Ron and Hermione had started trying to avoid visiting Hagrid's hut as often as possible because they feared to leave it with singed hair. They had come to the conclusion, that it was best to somehow get that dragon to Ron's brother Charlie in Romania. Now the only problem was to make Hagrid agree with them. While it was Harry and Ron's job to convince him on that matter, Hermione was busy with studying for the end of year exams
-yeah, she had already started with that-
and with doing research on the philosopher's stone.
She had finally found a book with information on Nicolas Flamel and they all agreed that that stone is what Fluffy was guarding. A stone with the power to make someone immortal and to transform any metal into pure gold. With all that information, why should she still do research?
To find another connection between the stone and Snape, of course. She couldn't believe that all he was after was money and immortality, after all he didn't seem to be a person who was enjoying their life. She hadn't found anything, yet. Neither had the two boys been successful.

"Come on boys! Can it really be that hard to make him let go of that monster?"

Hermione was whisper shouting at them while finishing her illustration of Gemini by naming the dots representing stars. They now had their Astronomy lessons right after dinner at 7pm when it was already completely dark outside to make use of what they had learned in their theory lessons. Their assignment was to copy down one of the constellations they could make out in the night sky above them and to label everything correctly. Hermione was already finished at this point, ten minutes into the lesson, which earned her ten points for Gryffindor. Ron and Harry had only just started off with some dots of ink seemingly randomly placed all over their parchment. They weren't as skilled in multitasking as Hermione was and this conversation was pretty important in their opinion.

"You try and convince him then, 'Mione! You've already read through the whole library twice and couldn't find any new connections anyways."

Hermione sighed.
"You're probably right."

Ron looked surprised. That wasn't a sentence you heard on a regular basis out of that mouth.

"I'll join you tomorrow when you visit him again. Maybe after all Snape hasn't got anything to do with this."

Professor Sinistra glared at them and made a shushing noise. In order not to lose her house points again Hermione stopped talking and instead pulled Harry and Ron's works towards her to finish them as well. Now bored, Harry let his gaze wonder over the rest of his classmates.
Padma Patil, his potions partner, was sitting huddled in a corner with Parvati, her twin from Gryffindor, and Lavender Brown, Parvati's best friend. As always they were gossiping and giggling about something. To their right there were Anthony, Terry and Michael, working on their assignments but throwing annoyed glances towards the girls group every now and then. Next to them there was a lost looking Gryffindor boy, Harry recognised him as the boy who had lost his toad on the train, Neville Longbottom. According to Ron, he lived with his Grandmother and wasn't a very skilled wizard even though he was a pureblood. There had also been a story about Neville being pushed out of a window by his own grandpa but Harry couldn't quite remember. About two meters further the other two Gryffindor boys were working on their assignment together but were also occasionally making small balls of parchment fly into Professor Sinistra's long curly hair (with a bit of wand help of course) where it looked like snow flakes in that deep black mane. To Harry's left the remaining Ravenclaw girls were working on their sheets pretty eagerly. They were Lisa Turpin, Su Li and Mandy Brocklehurst.

Finally his eyes landed upon Malfoy who was sitting alone with an empty parchment in front of him, staring right back at Harry.

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Somehow Draco's thoughts had drifted off. He hated the subject. Back when he was little his mother had shown him the star sign that he was named after.
Draco.
He had looked at it every night possible and knew the position of every single star within the dragon by heart. He could easily sketch it onto the parchment in the last five minutes if necessary. Yeah, he had loved the stars. He still did. But he hated the theory stuff. And it reminded him of his family and he hated to think about them at the moment. He hated to remember that they didn't want him home anymore. So he had left his assignment unattended and somehow his eyes had automatically landed on H- Potter. It got harder and harder with every day to offend him and he was already running out of insults.
He hated that - him!

As the black haired boy turned his head and laid his bespectacled, shining green eyes on him he felt blood shooting into his head, especially his cheeks - in anger of course! When Draco rapidly turned his head down a fuzzy feeling was left behind and he sensed something squirming in his stomach. Maybe he was just getting sick. Similar things had happened a lot recently. Maybe Potter had hexed him. Or slipped him a potion. He should probably go and see Madam Pomfrey about it.

But he didn't.
Instead he found himself in the seventh floor again, after the lesson had ended, knocking on the wooden door across from the tapestry with some stupid dancing trolls. The door swung open soundlessly and Draco entered Nowhere, not caring about how close to curfew it was. A cup of peppermint tea was awaiting him on the table and he sat down on the couch in front of it while the door fell shut behind him. Nobody only spoke up when he'd taken a first sip of the tasteful hot water.

What's the matter now, Draco? You seem more upset and confused than usually today!

"I think I might have been hexed or poisoned."

Really? What makes you think that?

"I always get that fuzzy feeling, my face gets very hot and there's something in my stomach. I'm pretty sure it was Potter. It mostly happens around him."

Nobody laughed. They literally just laughed.

"What are you laughing at?"

My sweet boy. You'll know when you find out. It's not to me to tell you what you feel.

What the Salazar were they talking about?

"What I feel? What is that supposed to mean?"

I told you: You'll find out!

You'll find out.

A\N
Wow that was fast for me...
Two updates in two days...
Don't expect me to keep going by that pace -lol- that won't work out!
-N-