Butterfly Effect ; H. Potter

5. flight of the fat lady.

In no time at all, Defence Against the Dark Arts had become most people's favourite class. Only Draco Malfoy and his gang of Slytherins had anything bad to say about Professor Lupin.

"Look ar the state of his robes," Malfoy would say in a loud whisper as Professor Lupin passed. "He dressed like our old house-elf."

Other than a couple of hexes from Antheia, no one else paid attention to Malfoy nor cared that Professor Lupin's robes were patched and frayed. His next few lessons were just as interesting as the first. After Boggarts, they 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 they moved on to Kappas, creepy water-dwellers that looked like scaly monkeys, with webbed hands itching to strangle unwitting waders in their ponds.

As happy as Antheia was with her father's class, she couldn't help hoping her other classes could be just as interesting. Worst of all was Professor Snape who was in a particularly vindictive mood these days, and no one was in any doubt why. The story of the Boggart assuming Snape's shape, and the way Neville had dressed it in his grandmother's clothes, had traveled 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.

Harry was starting to dread the hours he 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 tears every time she looked at him. He couldn't like Professor 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 Professor Trelawney's tower room at lunchtimes and always returned with annoyingly superior looks on their faces, as though they knew things the others didn't. They had also started using hushed voices whenever they spoke to Harry, as though he was on his 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. They 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?" said Ron, after yet another hour of poking shredded lettuce down the Flobberworms' slimy throats.

At the start of October, however, Antheia and Harry had something else to occupy them. 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.

Antheia had tried out for and joined the team as a chaser in her second year after a whole summer of practicing with Fred and George. Her father couldn't afford the best broom, but she was grateful for her Comet 290 nonetheless.

There were seven 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-feet-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); a Keeper, 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 fellow team members in the chilly changing rooms on the edge of the darkening Quidditch pitch.