Harry Potter and the Sword of Gryffindor

Chapter 24

The next afternoon Harry sat in the Gryffindor common room with the ponderous Braille book open on his lap. Having learned his way around the alphabet and punctuation, Lupin had set him memorizing the first of many short-form contractions. This turned out to be more difficult than the alphabet as the lists of words seemed to stretch on forever. Not to mention that some did not even make sense to Harry. What idiot thought that having the letter "X" stand for the word "it" made any sort of reasonable logic? Harry yawned and stretched his arms above his head and Crookshanks sprang into his lap, padding happily around on the open book and settling himself into a large, squashy ball, right where Harry needed to read. Harry grinned and stroked the cat's fur, imagining his conversation with Professor Lupin the next day: he would apologize for not learning his assignment because a cat had been sleeping on his book.

The portrait-hole slammed open and Ron stomped into the common room.

"Damn rat. I've been looking everywhere," he said by way of greeting.

At these words, Crookshanks leapt from Harry's lap and bolted from the room.

"Err, hi Ron," said Harry, unsure if Ron was angry with him or even if he was still angry with Ron. Every time he thought about Ron letting the rat go, his face flushed again, but he still had trouble holding a grudge against his best mate.

Ron dumped himself into a chair across from Harry and swung his boots with a thud onto the table.

"Look, mate," he said, sitting up again. "I'm really sorry. I mean I had no idea that bloody rat would..."

"Nah," said Harry, his fingers idly tracing a letter "T" and a piece of cat hair on the page of his book. "It's ok, really. We'll find him again. Maybe he went back to Hagrid's cereal."

"Bloody likely," said Ron in disgust. "When I find him, I'd like to squeeze him myself, pulling a trick like that."

Harry said nothing, but grinned to himself at Ron's flare of anger.

"Astronomy tonight," said Ron. "Weather's clear as a bell. Been a while."

Harry nodded, his attention still more than half on the words "that, us, very, will, it, you, as" running under his fingers.

"Bugger," said Ron, failing to get a rise out of Harry. "You'll have to go from detention with Snape directly to Astronomy."

Harry looked up at this. "Oh, you're right," he said in dismay.

"Oh here," Ron said. "Package came for you. I talked Hedwig into giving it to me instead."

"How did you do that?" asked Harry, somewhat annoyed.

"A bit of biscuit," replied Ron smugly. "Catch."

Harry held up both hands and Ron tossed the small parcel into them. Excitedly, Harry undid the string and ripped off the coarse paper. A rattling box, several folded sheets of paper and a quill fell out onto his book. He unfolded the paper. Fortunately, it was written in Braille; unfortunately, it used all the Grade 2 short-forms Harry had yet to learn.

"Blimey!" said Ron enthusiastically. "Exploding Snap cards." He picked up the box of cards.

Harry grinned, picking up the quill. "Check this," he directed. "A DictaQuill."

"What's it do?" asked Ron.

"I think it writes what I say," said Harry. "Let's try it." He shoved the book to the floor, pulling a somewhat crumpled piece of parchment from his school bag. Spreading it out, he set the quill on it.

"Ronald Weasley is a lowdown, idiotic git," he began, but had to stop when Ron yelled a protest and grabbed the quill.

"Did it work?" asked Harry.