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Chapter 959: Sirius in the Fireplace
🕑 Added 2023-12-09 18:49:49 +0000 UTC"Oh, you three are back, how was practice?" asked Hermione rather coolly half an hour later, with a stack of thick books in front of her as Evan, Harry and Ron climbed through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room.
“Completely lousy,” said Ron in a hollow voice, sinking into a chair, his eyes glazed.
Evan exchanged a glance with Hermione, who seemed to understand something, and her frostiness seemed to melt.
“Well, it was only your first one,” she said consolingly, “it’s bound to take time to..."
“Who said it was me who made it lousy?” snapped Ron.
“No one,” said Hermione, looking taken aback, “I thought..."
“You thought I was bound to be rubbish?"
“No, of course I didn’t! Look, you said it was lousy so I just..."
"Nonsense… I'm going to get started on some homework," said Ron angrily and stomped off to the staircase to the boys’ dormitories and vanished from sight.
"What's going on?" Hermione turned to Evan and Harry, “Was he lousy?"
“No,” said Harry loyally.
Hermione raised her eyebrows, obviously not convinced, and turned to Evan.
"He's just too nervous and needs to get used to it," said Evan.
"Yeah, I suppose he could’ve played better." Harry muttered, "It was only the first training session..."
Ron didn't show up for dinner.
Although Ron wasn’t there, Evan, Harry, and Hermione were not bringing up the topic. They all knew that he was too preoccupied with how badly he had performed at Quidditch practice and he himself was having difficulty in getting the chant of “Gryffindor are losers” out of his head.
On Sunday, Evan taught Harry, Hermione, and Ginny their first magic study since the beginning of the new term. The number of people increased appropriately. Colin, Neville, and first-year Kate also joined in. This time, the main learning was still basic spells.
Fred and George didn't come, and neither did Ron.
The spell practice lasted for only about two hours. After some simple exercises with Stupefy and the Impediment Jinx, it was over.
Everyone's minds seemed to be off the top; Harry and the others were still thinking about their homework, and except for Hermione, it seemed like the rest hadn't finished theirs either. Others spent the day out in the grounds, enjoying what might well be some of the last sunshine that year.
At lunch, Ron finally emerged from his bedroom. It seemed like the incident had passed, and he appeared back to normal. Perhaps he was just hungry, and there was no need to starve himself over a poor performance in Quidditch training.
After lunch, Evan and Hermione went for a walk, while Harry and Ron stayed in the common room, buried in their books.
The Quidditch teams of the other three Houses were still training on the pitch. Evan and Hermione stood and watched for a while, then walked to Hagrid's cabin on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
Hagrid hadn't come back yet, and they had no idea where he might be.
Even now, Hermione still believed that Hagrid's impulsive decision to bring a giant back was too reckless. He could encounter any dangers on the way.
Also, they saw the Bowtruckles that Professor Grubbly-Plank had brought.
The Bowtruckles were gathered around a carefully prepared tree, never straying too far. These magical creatures were tree-guardians and usually lived in wand-trees.
They looked like tiny pixieish creatures made of wood, each with knobbly brown arms and legs, two twiglike fingers at the end of each hand, and a funny, flat, barklike face in which a pair of beetle-brown eyes glittered.
Evan and Hermione played with the Bowtruckles for a while, and Hermione decided to go back and revise her sketch. She hadn’t drawn well a few body parts.
In the common room, Harry and Ron curled up by the fireplace, looking particularly exhausted and worn out.
"How’s it outside?" Harry asked Evan, but his eyes were looking at the blue sky outside the window.
"The weather is lovely; everyone is playing outside, what about your homework?"
"Well, not much progress, we should've tried to do more of it during normal times." Harry sighed, as he was wracking his teeth with Professor Sinistra's essay about Jupiter's moons.
Ron was writing a long parchment on Professor McGonagall’s long essay on the Inanimatus Conjurus spell, and he tried to use the one Harry had already completed as a reference.
But to be honest, there was no reference value, it was better to look through the textbook.
“Yeah,” said Ron, rubbing slightly bloodshot eyes and throwing his fifth spoiled bit of parchment into the fire beside them. "Evan, tell me, shall we just ask Hermione if we can have a look at what she’s done?"
"I don't think she would agree!" said Evan, taking out a magic book.
Meanwhile, Hermione was busy revising her sketch of the Bowtruckle, with Crookshanks on her lap while chatting merrily to Ginny.
The three of them fell silent again, and Evan was immersed in the magic treatise in his hand about the accumulation of magic power and the release of energy.
Unlike tedious magic spells and techniques, this spell abandoned other effects and converted magic directly into energy, causing damage to hit targets. It was a very interesting research direction, which was more suitable for Evan's current situation.
In a battle, there was no need to think about which spell to use; instead, he could directly use magical power to harm the opponent, significantly reducing the casting time.
Moreover, Evan had incredibly strong magic power, capable of gathering far more energy than anyone else.
Beside him, Harry and Ron continued to rack their brains, doing their best to complete their essays.
The sky outside the windows became steadily darker; slowly, the crowd in the common room began to thin again.
At half-past eleven, there was no one else in the common room except for Hermione, who finally wandered over to them, yawning.
She sat next to Evan, looked at the book in his hand, and knew that it was taken out of the Black family library.
Driven by Evan, she now also started to read these magic books.
Hermione hesitated for a while, then turned to look at Ron, and tried to say, "It's time for bed, nearly done with your homework?"
"No," said Ron shortly.
“Well, Jupiter’s biggest moon is Ganymede, not Callisto,” she said, pointing over Ron’s shoulder at a line in his Astronomy essay, “and it’s Io that’s got the volcanos."
“Thanks,” snarled Ron, scratching out the offending sentences.
“Sorry, I only…” Hermione seemed to want to apologize for yesterday's Quidditch incident.
“Yeah, well, if you’ve just come over here to criticize…"
"You know, I'm not, I'm... God, SIRIUS!" Hermione exclaimed in surprise, watching Sirius's head suddenly appear from the flames in the fireplace.
