Harry Riddle || Harry potter

Chapter 27: The Calm Before the Storm

In the years to come, Harry would never quite remember how he got through his exams when he half expected some shadowy, unknown villain to come bursting through the door at any moment to steal the Stone. While he wasn't particularly concerned about who or what got a hold of the life giving Stone, he was still rather on edge after his experience that night in the Forbidden Forest. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone.

Yet the days crept by, and there could be no doubt that the Cerberus was still alive and well behind the locked door.

It was sweltering hot, especially in the large classroom where they did their written papers. They had been given special, new quills for the exams, which had been bewitched with an anti-cheating spell. Harry had attempted to break the spell with some semi-dark magic but it hadn't worked.

They had practical exams as well. Professor Flitwick called them one by one into his class to see if they could make a pineapple tap-dance across a desk. Harry went just a bit further by charming some music to play and having his pineapple dance in tune with it.

Professor McGonagall watched them turn a mouse into a snuffbox – points were given for how pretty the snuffbox was, but taken away if it had whiskers. After concentrating, Harry managed to make his snuffbox very nicely done up in green and silver colors, along with the Slytherin emblem on the top.

Severus made them all nervous (except for possibly Harry and Draco) by breathing down their necks while they tried to remember how to make a forgetfulness potion.

Harry put all of his effort into it, trying to ignore the sudden flashes of heat that Grindelwald's Pendant was wracked with. It had been oscillating between hot and cold ever since his trip into the Forest. But no matter how hot it burned, Harry couldn't bring himself to take it off.

Draco thought that Harry, for some odd reason, had a bad case of exam nerves because Harry couldn't sleep, but the truth was that Harry had been having his old dream again – he would wake up practically every night in a sweat, his father's shout of 'Avada Kedavra' still ringing in his ears.

Maybe it was because they hadn't seen what Harry had seen in the Forest, or maybe because they didn't have a Dark Lord's Pendant burning around their neck, or maybe because none of their fathers were Dark Lords themselves, but Draco, Hermione, and Neville didn't seem as worried about the Stone as Harry. The idea of a unicorn blood sucking monster who was seeking immortality scared them, but they were so busy with their studying that they didn't have much time to fret about what Hagrid or Quirrell might be up to.

Their very last exam was History of Magic. One hour of answering questions about batty old wizards who'd invented self-stirring cauldrons and they'd be free, free for a whole wonderful week until their exam results came out. When the ghost of Professor Binns told them to put down their quills and roll up their parchments, Harry couldn't help cheering with the rest.

"That was far easier than I thought it would be," said Hermione as they joined the crowds flocking out onto the sunny grounds. "I needn't have learned about the 1637 Werewolf Code of Conduct or the uprising of Elfric the Eager."

Harry nodded his agreement, his hand fumbling around with Grindelwald's Pedant. He and Hermione had both taken to studying together all night after they had come back from Easter Break, and they'd apparently read more books than they'd needed to.

Both Harry and Hermione also liked to go through their exam papers afterward, but Draco and Neville both said that this made them feel slightly ill, so they wandered down to the lake and flopped under a tree. The redheaded Weasley Twins, Fred and George, and another Gryffindor boy by the name of Lee Jordan were tickling the tentacles of the giant squid, which was basking in the warm shallows.