Paternal Instincts

Chapter 22

Harry still felt bad about Arthur facing an inquiry at work even if his father's letter had made him feel a little better about it. Hermione who had been cold to them since last night thought Ron deserved the Howler, but the good thing was that she thought they had been punished enough that she went back to being friendly to them.

Their first class of the day was Herbology with Professor Sprout. They found Lockhart helping her treat the Whomping Willow who then preceded to humble brag about not being better at Herbology than Professor Sprout. To Harry's dismay, he took him aside and blamed himself for Harry's flying car incident. Lockhart was under the impression that Harry wanted more taste of publicity after the publicity Lockhart had provided him at Diagon Alley since his front page appearance had been canceled by his father. Despite Harry's feeble attempts to explain that it wasn't so, Lockhart continued his false belief and "advised" Harry to calm down as he wasn't there yet to be flying cars to school. Harry could merely shake his head in exasperation as the clown walked away.

At Herbology, they learned about Mandrakes. Hermione earned ten points for correctly answering that Mandrakes were an essential part of antidotes and had a cry that was fatal. They had to use earmuffs due to to this. But since they were only working with seedling Mandrakes, their cry would merely have knocked them out without their earmuffs. Harry also met a muggle-born named Justin Finch-Fletchey and Collin Creevey, a first year muggle-born boy with a camera who was a fan of him.

Classes continued as usual with Draco and gang being gits and Lockhart proving to be a useless teacher who only liked blowing his own horn but never lived up to his boasts when it came to action. But to Harry's surprise, Hermione fancied Lockhart to the point of circling his classes on her timetable with hearts and being blind to his incompetence.

Oliver Wood got the team training hard in Quidditch. On one such morning when the Gryffindors entered the Quidditch pitch for practice, they were met with the Slytherin Quidditch team. Apparently Snape had given them special permission to train their new seeker who to Harry's dismay was Draco Malfoy. Lucius Malfoy had bought the whole Slytherin team Nimbus 2001s. Draco made a smug insult about the Gryffindor team being too poor to buy those brooms for their team. Hermione replied to this by pointing out that at least they didn't buy their way on the team. This enraged Draco to the point of calling Hermione a mudblood.

Both Harry and Ron furiously pointed their wands at Draco and said "Eat slugs". Draco began coughing out slugs from Harry's spell but the spell on Ron's wand which was broken and held together with spellotape backfired and caused Ron to start coughing out slugs.

Ron and Draco were carried to the Hospital Wing by their respective housemates. The spells were removed by Madam Pomfrey with a swish of her wand. It disheartened Harry and Ron to have to explain the meaning of mudblood to Hermione who hadn't heard of that term.

Harry braced himself for what was about to come as he was sure Draco would write to his father and Lucius would do everything in his power to ensure Harry was punished. But fortunately, Lucius couldn't do much beyond getting Harry detention.

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James placed three mugs in front of himself before he sat down with Sirius and Remus. They just had dinner and Miranda who was tired was taking a nap in one of the guest rooms. James appreciated them for spending the day with him on Lily's death anniversary.

"Miranda easily gets tired nowadays. I'm afraid something might be up with her." Sirius frowned.

"Maybe she's just tried from work. If it persists, you could consult a healer to be certain," said Remus.

"Yeah".

"So Remus, how's your new book going along?" asked James.

Remus took a gulp from his mug. "Alright, just have a bit of a writer's block. How's the team?"