The Young Padfoot *Book One*

Nicholas Flamel

The day before term restarted at Hogwarts, I returned. As soon as I had arrived, I went up to the common room and was immediately ambushed with information from Harry.

Apparently, for Christmas he had been given an invisibility cloak that had once belonged to his Dad. No one knew who had given it to him but that was probably the least of our worries.

Even with the cloak, Harry hadn't found anything about Flamel despite the fact he had been looking in the restricted section. We had almost given up hope of ever finding Flamel in one of the library books. I had been so overwhelmed with Christmas, though, that I had forgotten to ask Remus if he knew who he was. But the annoying thing was, I was still convinced I had seen his name somewhere.

Once term had started, we had to go back to skimming through books for ten minutes during our breaks. In every piece of spare time we had, we were at the library but it was usually just me, Ron and Hermione as Wood had Harry at Quidditch practise most evenings.

It was obvious why, though. If Gryffindor were to win the next match against Hufflepuff, they would overtake Slytherin in the House Championship; something that hadn't happened in seven years.

On top of all that, we also had our final exams coming up.

Ron, Hermione and I were currently sitting in the great hall, looking through some books for our final exams that were approaching at an alarmingly fast pace.

I was just flicking through my potions book and making some notes on the cure for boils while Hermione was going through her books but Ron was looking at his chocolate frog cards. In other words, he was being extremely productive.

"Look at you playing with your cards. Pathetic!" Hermione suddenly snapped at Ron, who continued looking at his card of Morgan le fay. "We've got final exams coming up soon."

"I'm ready! Ask me any question," Ron said, putting down his cards.

"Alright. What are the three most crucial ingredients for a Forgetfulness Potion?" Hermione asked.

'Lethe River Water, mistletoe berries and Valerian sprigs,' I recited in my head.

"...I forgot," Ron muttered sheepishly, making me chuckle.

"And what, may I ask, do you plan to do if this comes up in the final exam?" Hermione asked.

"Copy off you or Emery," Ron shrugged, making Hermione's eyes widen.

"No, you won't! Besides, according to Professor McGonagall, we're to be given special quills bewitched with an anti-cheating spell," Hermione told us.

"That's insulting! It's as if they don't trust us!" Ron exclaimed before checking his next card. "Dumbledore again!" He then chucked the card across the table so it landed on my book.

"Do you mind?" I asked, pushing the card aside as Harry came and sat with us.

As soon as he sat down, we all noticed that he looked extremely pale.

"What's the matter with you? You look terrible," Ron said.

Harry lent in and started to tell us how Snape would be the referee for the next Quidditch match. When had Snape ever refereed a match? He isn't going to be fair if there was a chance that the Gryffindor team were going to overtake Slytherin.

"Don't play," Hermione said at once.

"Say you're ill," Ron added.

"Pretend to break your leg," Hermione suggested.

"Really break your leg," I countered.

"Let Emery bombard you with hexes so you can't play. God knows she knows a fair few," Ron remembered, making me smile.