Honey Bee

Chapter 34

By breakfast Ron's and Hermione's bad moods had burnt out, you could hear them screaming at each other last night, scared JJ half to death.

When the post owls arrived, Hermione looked up eagerly; she seemed to be expecting something.

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

"Percy? Is that the brother I met at Christmas?" I asked.

"Yeah." Ron answered with his mouth full of food.

"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, also looking up at the owls. "Hey, Hermione, I think you're in luck -"

A gray owl was soaring down toward Hermione.

"It hasn't got a newspaper, though," she said, looking disappointed. "It's -"

But to her bewilderment, the gray owl landed in front of her plate, closely followed by four barn owls, a brown owl, and a tawny.

"How many subscriptions did you take out?" said JJ, seizing Hermione's goblet before it was knocked over by the cluster of owls, all of whom were jostling close to her, trying to deliver their own letter first.

"What on earth - ?" Hermione said, taking the letter from the gray owl, opening it, and starting to read. "Oh really!" she sputtered, going rather red.

"What's up?" I asked.

"It's - oh how ridiculous -"

She thrust the letter at me, who saw that it was not handwritten, but composed from pasted letters that seemed to have been cut out of the Daily Prophet.

YOU ARE A WICKED GIRL. HARRY POTTER DESERVES BETTER. GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM MUGGLE.

"They're all like it!" said Hermione desperately, opening one letter after another.

"'Harry Potter can do much better than the likes of you. . . .' 'You deserve to be boiled in frog spawn. . . .' Ouch!"

She had opened the last envelope, and yellowish-green 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 gingerly and sniffing it.

"Ow!" said Hermione, tears starting in her eyes as she tried to rub the pus off her hands with a napkin, but her fingers were now so thickly covered in painful sores that it looked as though she were wearing a pair of thick, knobbly gloves.

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

"I warned her!" said Ron as Hermione hurried out of the Great Hall, cradling her hands.

"I warned her not to annoy Rita Skeeter! Look at this one ..." He read out one of the letters Hermione had left behind: "I read In Witch Weekly about how you are playing Harry Potter false and that boy has had enough hardship and I will be sending you a curse by next post as soon as I can find a big enough envelope.' Blimey, she'd better watch out for herself."

I stood up and tripped over my shoelace before hitting my arm inside the pus. I screamed in pain as Pansy and Blaise ran over and started to hurry me off to the hospital wing while they carried my bag.

"What happened?" Pansy asked.

"Hermione got sent some pus thing and I fell into it. This hurts!" I said. I sat on a hospital bed listening to Hermione's cries of pain, I stopped screaming as some random nurse came and washed my arm.