Potter's Girl / Butterfly Effect.

40. Snouts, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs

CHAPTER FORTY;

SNOUTS, MOONY, WORMTAIL, PADFOOT, AND PRONGS

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

By breakfast the next day, Ron and Hermione's bad moods had burnt out, and to Cassie's relief, Harry seemed to have forgotten about her slip-up from the Owlery.

Cassie had barely dived into her eggs before the post owls arrived. Hermione looked up eagerly.

"Percy won't've had time to answer," said Ron. "We only sent Hedwig yesterday."

"No, it's not that," said Hermione. "I've taken out a subscription to the Daily Prophet. I'm getting sick of finding everything out from the Slytherins."

"Good thinking!" said Harry brightly, also looking up. He smiled as a grey owl began soaring down toward Hermione. "I think you're in luck."

"It hasn't got a newspaper," she said, looking disappointed. "It–" Hermione abruptly stopped herself as six more owls landed before her. Cassie picked up her plate and moved it to the side as to keep it safe from the unending amount of owls landing on their table, but a small brown owl landed right in the center of her eggs. She groaned.

"What on earth is this?" Cassie demanded, dropping her plate and untying the letter from the smallest owl first. She yelped and jumped back as another nipped her on the knuckle.

"Did you get one too, Cassie?" said Hermione angrily, shaking her letter in the air. "They're horrible!"

Cassie, who had just finished reading her letter, nodded quickly. "Foul," she agreed, ripping it up and tossing the pieces to the side. "I assume yours say the same as mine?"

"What?" said Ron, glancing between the two girls curiously. Hermione thrusted her paper in his face, then Harry's.

"They're all like it!" said Hermione desperately, opening one letter after another. "'Harry Potter can do better than you'... 'You deserve to be boiled in frog spawn' .... Ouch!"

She had just opened the last letter, and yellowish liquid smelling strongly of petrol gushed over her hands, which began to erupt in large yellow boils.

"Undiluted bubotuber pus!" said Ron, picking up the envelope and sniffing it.

Hermione attempted trying to wipe the pus off her hands with a napkin, but tears blurred her vision and the boils had grown to the size of golfballs.

"You'd better get to the hospital wing," said Harry as the owls took flight. "We'll tell Professor Sprout where you've gone."

"I suppose I'm lucky, then," said Cassie bitterly, tossing another letter on the table and rolling her eyes. "No boil pus in any of mine, but Moony's condition did come into play a few times. Ridiculous!"

"I warned her," said Ron. "I warned both of you not to annoy Rita Skeeter!" He began reading another of Hermione's letters, his face screwed up angrily. "She needs to watch out for herself."

"I didn't annoy Rita Skeeter," said Cassie, a sour taste on her tongue.

"You told her to shove it where the sun doesn't shine," Harry pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "But even if you'd told her that her mother was ugly or something horrible like that–"

"Calling one's mother ugly is worse than telling them to—?"

"My point," said Harry quickly, shooting Cassie a look, "is that it doesn't matter how horrible you were to her. It didn't warrant this reaction."