Harry Potter 03 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

the staff room. Harry, however, wasn’t feeling cheerful. Professor Lupin had deliberately stopped him tackling the Boggart. Why? Was it because he’d seen Harry collapse on the train, and thought he wasn’t up to much? Had he thought Harry would pass out again?
    But no one else seemed to have noticed anything.
    ‘Did you see me take that banshee?’ shouted Seamus.
    ‘And the hand!’ said Dean, waving his own around.
    ‘And Snape in that hat!’
    ‘And my mummy!’
    ‘I wonder why Professor Lupin’s frightened of crystal balls?’ said Lavender thoughtfully.
    ‘That was the best Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson we’ve ever had, wasn’t it?’ said Ron excitedly, as they made their way back to the classroom to get their bags.
    ‘He seems a very good teacher,’ said Hermione approvingly. ‘But I wish I could have had a turn with the Boggart –’
    ‘What would it have been for you?’ said Ron, sniggering. ‘A piece of homework that only got nine out of ten?’

 
     
– CHAPTER EIGHT –
     
Flight of the Fat Lady
    In no time at all, Defence Against the Dark Arts had become most people’s favourite class. Only Draco Malfoy and his gang of Slytherins had anything bad to say about Professor Lupin.
    ‘Look at the state of his robes,’ Malfoy would say in a loud whisper as Professor Lupin passed. ‘He dresses like our old house-elf.’
    But no one else cared that Professor Lupin’s robes were patched and frayed. His next few lessons were just as interesting as the first. After Boggarts, they studied Red Caps, nasty little goblin-like creatures that lurked wherever there had been bloodshed, in the dungeons of castles and the potholes of deserted battlefields, waiting to bludgeon those who had got lost. From Red Caps they moved on to Kappas, creepy water-dwellers that looked like scaly monkeys, with webbed hands itching to strangle unwitting waders in their ponds.
    Harry only wished he was as happy with some of his other classes. Worst of all was Potions. Snape was in a particularly vindictive mood these days, and no one was in any doubt why. The story of the Boggart assuming Snape’s shape, and the way that Neville had dressed it in his grandmother’s clothes, had travelled through the school like wildfire. Snape didn’t seem to find it funny. His eyes flashed menacingly at the very mention of Professor Lupin’s name, and he was bullying Neville worse than ever.
    Harry was also growing to dread the hours he spent in Professor Trelawney’s stifling tower room, deciphering lop-sided shapes and symbols, trying to ignore the way Professor Trelawney’s enormous eyes filled with tears every time she looked at him. He couldn’t like Professor Trelawney, even though she was treated with respect bordering on reverence by many of the class. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown had taken to haunting Professor Trelawney’s tower room at lunchtimes, and always returned with annoyingly superior looks on their faces, as though they knew things the others didn’t. They had also started using hushed voices whenever they spoke to Harry, as though he was on his deathbed.
    Nobody really liked Care of Magical Creatures, which, after the action-packed first class, had become extremely dull. Hagrid seemed to have lost his confidence. They were now spending lesson after lesson learning how to look after Flobberworms, which had to be some of the most boring creatures in existence.
    ‘Why would anyone bother looking after them?’ said Ron, after yet another hour of poking shredded lettuce down the Flobberworms’ slimy throats.
    At the start of October, however, Harry had something else to occupy him, something so enjoyable it made up for his unsatisfactory classes. The Quidditch season was approaching, and Oliver Wood, captain of the Gryffindor team, called a meeting one Thursday evening to discuss tactics for the new season.
    There were seven people on a Quidditch team: three Chasers, whose job it was to score goals by putting the Quaffle (a red, football-sized ball) through one of the fifty-foot-high hoops at each end of the pitch; two Beaters, who were equipped with heavy bats to repel the Bludgers (two heavy black balls which zoomed around trying to attack the players); a Keeper, who defended the goalposts, and the Seeker, who had the hardest job of all, that of catching the Golden Snitch, a tiny, winged, walnut-sized ball, whose capture ended the game and earned the Seeker’s team an extra one hundred