His love for Potions I ✔

Chapter 37: Articles and ferrets (hihi funny)

"Sorry about your toffees," Harry told Fred and George on the walk to the Quidditch Cup, keeping his voice down.

They shrugged in unison, but appeared actually downheartened, because they didn't immediately pass it off with a joke.

"My Thinking Mints still barely work, my Cherry Healers taste like blood, and my Calming Chocolates... well, those actually work, but they're basically a less good version of regular Honeydukes chocolate. Dudley did like my Sour Raspberries, but I don't see why - they're designed to try to make your tongue fall off. Not literally."

"Harry makes a good point," said George.

"Life is suffering," added Fred.

"And suffering is art," concluded George.

Which Harry did not quite follow, but they seemed to cheer up.

"We still want to include your candies on the order forms," Fred added.

"Professor Snape would hang me upside down by my heels and skin me," Harry said with a frown. "He said I wasn't allowed to take his lessons and start an apothecary, and I think that includes the candies."

"Life is easier if you don't listen to professors," the twins informed him, and Harry could not actually disagree. But since he didn't want to agree, either, he drifted back to talk to Ron and Hermione.

#

The Quidditch World Cup was wonderful, but waking in the night to scatter into the woods was not.

The colored lanterns that had lit the path to the stadium had been extinguished. Dark figures were blundering through the trees; children were crying; anxious shouts and panicked voices were reverberating around them in the cold night air. Harry felt himself being pushed hither and thither by people whose faces he could not see. Then he heard Ron yell with pain.

"What happened?" said Hermione anxiously, stopping so abruptly that Harry walked into her. "Ron, where are you? Oh this is stupid - lumos!"

She illuminated her wand and directed its narrow beam across the path. Ron was lying sprawled on the ground.

"Tripped over a tree root," he said angrily, getting to his feet again.

"Well, with feet that size, hard not to," said a drawling voice from behind them.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione turned sharply. Draco Malfoy was standing alone nearby, leaning against a tree, looking utterly relaxed. His arms folded, he seemed to have been watching the scene at the campsite through a gap in the trees.

Ron told Draco to do something that Harry knew he would never have dared say in front of Mrs. Weasley.

"Language, Weasley," said Draco, his pale eyes glittering. "Hadn't you better be hurrying along, now? You wouldn't like her spotted, would you?"

He nodded at Hermione, and at the same moment, a blast like a bomb sounded from the campsite, and a flash of green light momentarily lit the trees around them.

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Hermione defiantly.

"Granger, they're after Muggles, "said Draco. "D'you want to be showing off your knickers in midair? Because if you do, hang around....they're moving this way, and it would give us all a laugh."

"Hermione's a witch," Harry snarled.

"You're breaking my heart, Harry."