The Cupboard Series 1: The Cupboard Under The Stairs

Chapter 11

"Come in," Professor McGonagall called in answer to the knock at her door.

She watched, quill still poised over the homework that she had been marking, to see the door burst open and for Hermione Granger to stomp in pulling a clearly reluctant Harry Potter by the hand.

"Miss Granger, might I ask what this is about?" she frowned pointedly at the girl's hand still clutching Harry's wrist.

"It's about this," Hermione replied, placing two scrolls of parchment on the desk in front of her teacher.

Professor McGonagall swivelled her eyes from the two scrolls, up to the determined, angry look on Hermione's face, across to Harry who looked to be in some kind of combination of terrified and resigned and back to the scrolls once more.

"Kindly close the door and take a seat," she instructed. "And Miss Granger, let Mister Potter go. He's not going to go anywhere."

The pointed look she gave the boy reinforced her order. Once they had complied, she turned her attention to the scrolls.

The instant that she'd opened the first one, she instantly recognised it as being the completed homework due the following day that she'd assigned to her first year Transfiguration class. The tiny, messy writing could only have belonged to Mister Potter and she sighed inwardly as she steeled herself for the usual barely acceptable work that she'd come to expect from the boy.

After the first few lines, her eyes snapped up and pierced the boy with a calculating look. Harry, though, was refusing to meet her eyes, instead seeming to find something on his boots interesting enough to hold his attention.

Returning to the scroll, she sped through it, paused, looked up once more at Harry, and then read through it again, this time much slower. Absently, she picked up her quill and made a small correction to his third answer and then another minor correction to the answer to the final question. Her quill moved once more to mark a large 'O' at the top of the paper.

Suddenly remembering that there were actually two scrolls that Miss Granger had placed on her desk, she picked up the second.

Once again, Harry's messy scrawl was instantly recognisable. This, too, was a copy of the homework due to be handed in in her next lesson. But this homework had yet to be completed. And what had been done, was exactly as she had expected the first scroll to be. Half-thought out answers and incomplete definitions and examples. Barely good enough for a passing grade.

"I take it this," and here she flourished the first, complete parchment, "was your attempt at cheating?"

Surprisingly, it wasn't Harry that answered.

"No, ma'am," Hermione cut in, her bushy hair swaying viciously as she emphatically shook her head. "That's what I thought at first as well. But it's worse than that."

Professor McGonagall sat back studying her two students.

"I think that you'd better explain that statement, Miss Granger."

"Yes, ma'am," she replied and Professor McGonagall knew that this was going to be one of Hermione's famous long-winded and breathless answers, just like she gave in class.

"Harry hasn't been cheating. Well, I say he hasn't been cheating, but really, I guess he has been. Cheating himself, that is. But I only just found out. You see, apparently Harry always does his homework twice. Has been for years. Even back in muggle schools. He does it perfectly the first time, like this," and here she leant forwards to tap the completed homework, "and then he does it again so that it ends up like this," and here she tapped the second scroll.