Can A Phoenix Love A Lion? (Hermione Granger x Male Reader)

30. The Thud of an Axe

Exams were nearly upon them, and instead of lazing around outside, the students were forced to remain inside the castle, trying to bully their brains into concentrating while enticing wafts of summer air drifted in through the windows. Not that studying bothered Y/N; he already knew pretty much everything, and telling Harry and Ron what was wrong with their essays reminded him of what he had forgotten.

He thought he managed pretty well to attend several classes at once, and nobody had noticed that every day, at the same hour, he walked the same path along the corridors—always taking the same ways to go from a class to another avoided walking on himself, which would have been a big problem.

You would have thought that after almost a year with the same schedule, he would have memorized it, yet he still needed to watch at it sometimes. Today, the column read:

Monday
9 o'clock, Arithmancy
9 o'clock, Charms
Lunch
1 o'clock, Ancient Runes
1 o'clock, Divination

"Hide that," Hermione whispered hastily, picking up his schedule and stuffing it inside his bag.

"What?" Ron said, raising his head from the heaps of parchment around their table in the library.

"Nothing," Hermione snapped. "Y/N, have you taken your copy of Numerology and Grammatica? I forgot mine in the common room."

"Um . . . yes, of course," he said, pointing to a big leathered book in his bag.

Just then, there was a rustle at the window, and a Hedwig fluttered through it, a note clutched in her beak.

"No owl in the library!" Madam Pince shouted from a section.

Harry quickly took the note, and Hedwig flew away in the corridors. Madam Pince walked toward the tables where all the students studied, but seeing no owl, she finally backed away in the section where she had been.

"It's from Hagrid," Harry said, ripping the note open. "Buckbeak's execution—it's set for the sixth."

Y/N looked up from his books. Nobody said a word. They didn't like talking about Buckbeak since he had been sentenced to death.

Yet they had to see to something else now. Lunchtime was almost finished, and class would soon start.

Getting up, Y/N said, "I'm going to the bathroom. Don't wait for me."

In fact, he was going to the Ancient Runes class, but Harry and Ron didn't know the whole Time-Turner thing. He couldn't tell them that he was going to a class, and that after he would get in the past to go in Divination with them.

Anyway, he gathered his quill, pieces of parchment and books, Hermione gave him back his Arithmancy book, and he walked away.

Once he had disappeared around the corner, he went exactly the opposite way of the bathroom, climbing the stairs till he got to the Ancient Runes classroom.

Two hours later for him, the same moment for everyone else, he joined Hermione, Harry and Ron as they were going inside the Divination classroom.

"What do you think it'll be this time?" Ron muttered.

"Looking in a crystal ball and seeing nothing," Y/N sighed.

The room was hot, making Y/N sweat the moment he stepped inside; the curtains were closed, the fire was alight, and a sickly scent made him cough as he stumbled through the clutter of chairs and tables.

He sat at a round table between Hermione and Harry, in front of Ron, a crystal ball in the middle.

"Good day," Professor Trelawney said softly as everyone walked in. "If you would kindly gaze into the Orbs. . . . Take your time, now . . . then tell me what you see within them. . . ."