Astra

XLVII - The Blast-Ended Skrewts

"Ouch!" yelled Dean Thomas after about ten minutes. "It got me."

Hagrid hurried over to him, looking anxious.

"Its end exploded!" said Dean angrily, showing Hagrid a burn on his hand.

"Ah, yeah, that can happen when they blast off," said Hagrid, nodding.

"Eurgh!" said Lavender Brown again. "Eurgh, Hagrid, what's that pointy thing on it?"

"Ah, some of them have got stings," said Hagrid enthusiastically (Lavender quickly withdrew her hand from the box). "I reckon they're the males....The females have got sorta sucker things on their bellies....I think they might be to suck blood."

"Well, I can certainly see why we're trying to keep them alive," said Malfoy sarcastically. "Who wouldn't want pets that can burn, sting, and bite all at once?"

"Just because they're not very pretty, it doesn't mean they're not useful," Hermione snapped. "Dragon blood's amazingly magical, but you wouldn't want a dragon for a pet, would you?"

Astra grinned at her friend, nodding in agreement.

"Well, at least the skrewts are small," said Ron as they made their way back up to the castle for lunch an hour later.

"They are now," said Hermione in an exasperated voice, "but once Hagrid's found out what they eat, I expect they'll be six feet long."

"Of course, why do you think I didn't tell him that they like to eat spiders?" Astra said, and the other three looked at her in surprise. She sighed. "How many times do I have to say that I live at Hogwarts? I met the Screwts a week ago and figure out what they like, but told Hagrid about scales and frog livers so that they wouldn't grow too big."

The others then understood and sat down at the Gryffindor table where Luna was already seated, but Hermione began to eat so fast that Astra, Luna, Harry, and Ron stared at her.

"Er - is this the new stand on elf rights?" said Ron. "You're going to make yourself puke instead?"

"No," said Hermione, with as much dignity as she could muster with her mouth bulging with sprouts. "I just want to get to the library."

"What?" said Ron in disbelief. "Hermione - it's the first day back! We haven't even got homework yet!"

Hermione shrugged and continued to shovel down her food as though she had not eaten for days. Then she leapt to her feet, said, "See you at dinner!" and departed at high speed.

When the bell rang to signal the start of afternoon lessons, Astra set off to the North Tower, but went to a secret passageway where she called Marlene, who wasn't currently doing anything important like Lily and James; she would have called Regulus, but didn't want to hear him talk about house-elves. Of course, Marlene quickly agreed to watch over Hermione, saying that she was getting quite bored.

Even with the small distraction, Astra was the first to arrive in the Divination classroom, setting down her bag by a poof in the right corner. After a few minutes, Harry and Ron arrived, looking confused at how Astra always beat them to class. It seemed like they were debating for a few seconds in hushed whispers, until it was actually Ron, who grabbed Harry's arm and sat down next to Astra.

This made her slightly confused for two reasons: Hermione was the only mutual friend, and she didn't know that Harry and Ron would still want to sit next to her, and if one of them was friends, she thought it was Harry, not Ron. Either way, Harry looked a bit annoyed at Ron and gave Astra a sheepish smile.

She didn't know that Ron was trying to get Harry to act on his crush that he was supposedly still in denial about.

"Good day," said the misty voice of Professor Trelawney right behind them, making Harry and Ron jump.