The next day at breakfast Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were discussing magical methods of aging themselves and bluffing their way into the Triwizard Tournament. Hari was doing her best to ignore them, having no wish to compete in anything else life threatening.
"Today's not bad.. . outside all morning," said Ron who was looking at his schedule. "Herbology with the Hufflepuffs and Care of Magical Creatures... damn it, we're still with the Slytherins. . . ."
"We've got Arithmancy this afternoon." Hermione said cheerfully.
"I've got Double Divination," Ron groaned, looking down.
"You should have given it up like me and Hari, shouldn't you?" said Hermione briskly, buttering herself some toast. "Then you'd be doing something sensible like us."
"You're eating again, I notice," said Ron, watching Hermione adding liberal amounts of jam to her toast too.
"I've decided there are better ways of making a stand about elf rights," said Hermione haughtily.
"Yeah. . . and you were hungry," said Ron, grinning.
• • •
When the arrived in greenhouse three, Professor Sprout showing them class the most discusting plants Hari had ever seen. Indeed, they looked less like plants than thick, black, giant slugs, protruding vertically out of the soil. Each was squirming slightly and had a number of large, shiny swellings upon it, which appeared to be full of a thick liquid.
"Bubotubers," Professor Sprout told them, "They need squeezing. You will collect the pus. It's extremely valuable, so don't waste it. You will collect the pus, I say, in these bottles. Wear your dragon-hide gloves; it can do funny things to the skin when undiluted, bubotuber pus."
Hari looked down at the bottles then around the greenhouse. As students popped the swellings, a large amount of pus would burst out and they seemed to be having trouble cathing the stuff in the small opening of the bottle. Hari discreetly transfigured the opening of the bottle bigger, before starting to poop the bubbles and collect the pus. By the end of the lesson she had collected quite a bit more than everyone else. Not drawing attention to herself, she added her bottles to the growing pile.
"This'll keep Madam Pomfrey happy," said Professor Sprout as the lesson ended.
The Gryffindors headed down the sloping lawn toward Hagrid's small wooden cabin, which stood on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
Hagrid was standing outside his hut, one hand on the collar of his enormous black boarhound, Fang. There were several open wooden crates on the ground at his feet, and Fang was straining at his collar, apparently keen to investigate the contents more closely.
"Mornin'!" Hagrid said, grinning at Hari, Ron, and Hermione. "Be'er wait fer the Slytherins, they won' want ter miss this - Blast-Ended Skrewts!"
Hari looked down into the crate, these creatures were worse than the bubotoubers. They looked like deformed, shell-less lobsters, horribly pale and slimy-looking, with legs sticking out in very odd places and no visible heads. There were about a hundred of them in each crate, each about six inches long, crawling over one another, bumping blindly into the sides of the boxes. They were giving off a very powerful smell of rotting fish. Every now and then, sparks would fly out of the end of a skrewt, and with a small phut, it would be propelled forward several inches.
"On'y jus' hatched," said Hagrid proudly, "so yeh'll be able ter raise 'em yerselves! Thought we'd make a bit of a project of it!"
Hari was shoved roughly aside, she looked over to see Crabbe sneering at her; the slytherin's had arrived.
"And why would we want to raise them?" Pansy Parkinson asked. Hagrid looked stumped at the question.
"I mean, what do they do?" she asked. "What is the point of them?"
Hagrid opened his mouth, apparently thinking hard; there was a few seconds' pause, then he said roughly, "Tha's next lesson, Malfoy. Yer jus' feedin' 'em today. Now, yeh'll wan' ter try 'em on a few diff'rent things - I've never had 'em before, not sure what they'll go fer - I got ant eggs an' frog livers an' a bit o' grass snake - just try 'em out with a bit of each."
They picked up squelchy handfuls of frog liver and lower them into the crates to tempt the Blast-Ended Skrewts. Hari couldn't suppress the suspicion that the whole thing was entirely pointless, because the skrewts didn't seem to have mouths. Their ends kept exploding, burning anyone too close. There were also two types, one had a stinger and the others had suckers.
• • •
When the bell rang to signal the start of afternoon lessons, Hari and Hermione set off Arithmancy, leaving an annoyed Ron to head off towards north tower for divination.
Hari, who hadn't taken Arithmancy last year, was rather nervous about joining a year late. She had thoroughly read Numerology and Grammatica years 3 and 4, and New Theory of Numerology, but was still excited.
Professor Septima Vector took Hari aside when she entered the classroom. She was a tall witch, with stern features and raven Hair.
"Miss Potter, I assume you've read everything necessary and caught up on all your work as you weren't in this class last year?"
#) Yes Professor. (#
"Good," Proffessor Vector nodded, "take a seat, we'll be taking a look at basic runes."
I'd love some help if people want to give me suggestions on arithmancy class would be like, I'm fresh out of ideas on how to write it.