The Forgotten Twin

Chapter 8

Soon everyone's favorite class was Defense Against the Dark Arts. Even Draco did, though he was pretending not to because of the boggart incident.

Some hilarious rumors were going around, swapped in whispers. Apparently, during the Gryffindor third-year Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Neville had gone and put Snape in his grandmother's clothes. Snape didn't find it funny, and kept bullying Neville worse than ever as well as glaring at the very mention of Professor Lupin's name.

Delilah really enjoyed Alchemy. They had finally got past the safety and theory and were actually experimenting. It was amazing. The way that it was possible to break down the chemical properties to build something more powerful was amazing.

Nobody really liked Care of Magical Creatures, which, after the action-packed first class, had become excruciatingly dull. Hagrid had lost his confidence. They were now spending lesson after lesson learning how to look after flobberworms, which had to be the most boring creatures in existence. Some of the Slytherins started skipping the class. Delilah wanted to, but she didn't want to fail the class.

"Why would anyone bother looking after them?" Draco complained after yet another hour of poking shredded lettuce down the flobberworms' slimy throats.

At the start of October, however, everyone got something else to occupy them other than classes, something that the whole school participated in. The Quidditch season was approaching, and though the first match was supposed to be with Slytherin and Gryffindor, it had switched so it was Gryffindor and Hufflepuff as Draco's arm was still 'injured'.

Delilah didn't really care about that, or that the first Hogsmeade visit was on Halloween. She was ecstatic about the Animagi lessons. They wouldn't start until after winter break, but in their next Transfiguration class, which was later that week, they were learning who would be in the class and when they would start. The first few lessons would probably be about the dangers and how they would need to register to the ministry, but it would be worth the boring lessons once they got to the actual ones.

Finally it was Halloween. Even in the morning the feast was already being prepared and smelled delicious.

The third-years were all excitedly talking as they walked down to the courtyard. Delilah met up with Fred and George.

"Mind if I join you? I thought you would know how to skip the boring parts," asked Delilah.

"Actually I promised Lee that I'd help him with something, Fred can show you around though," George stated. Fred nodded, a gleam in his eye.

"Great, let's go," Delilah said and she and Fred walked to Hogsmeade.

They had to pass the dementors, which wasn't fun, but bearable. After a few minutes they walked into Hogsmeade.

Hogsmeade looked like a giant Christmas card. There was no other way to describe it. There were evergreen trees that were already covered with snow and Christmas lights. The stores were all cottages, some big, some small.

As they walked Fred pointed out each store and told her what they were and a rating of 1-10.

Dervish and Banges was a magical equipment store that got eight. Gladrags Wizardwear was a clothing store and got three. The Hog's Head got two, but the only reason it wasn't one was because they didn't care about giving Firewhisky to an underage wizard. There was a station that had pretty good service, but it got a five just because it wasn't too useful to them. Honeydukes, a sweetshop, got ten for the great sweats. Madam Puddifoot's, a tea shop, got two because, in Fred's words, it was a "place for couples to make out". The Post Office got four, Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop seven, The Shrieking Shack two, and the Three Broomsticks got fifteen. Then they finally got to Zonko's, a joke shop, which got twenty.