Harry Potter and the Order Of the Phoenix [128]
Everyone smiled at this story, even Harry had to admit it was pretty nice. Then Neville suddenly came running up the stairs to the Gryffindor common room. He was looking oddly confident, though slightly shaken at the same time.
“Hey Neville!’ said Harry. “Where have you been?” Neville stopped, and looked at Harry. His facial expression was different too: he looked like he was smiling, and his eyes were bigger. He looked… happy. He was also wearing different clothes… a long black shirt….
“Oh, I… went to the Hogsmeade Party,” said Neville in a monotone voice. Everyone’s jaw dropped.
“You went there!” yelled everybody. Neville grinned.
“Yeah,” he said. He patted Harry and Ron on their shoulders. “Got just what I needed… thanks you guys, I’ll never be the same again… Gootays.” The door swung open, and Neville popped inside, everyone else stayed outside, dumbstruck.
“I can’t believe… Neville? Went… wow….” stuttered Ron.
Harry felt happy for Neville… but he just couldn’t stop feeling that there was something he was hiding from them.
CHAPTER 23- Second Round
After Christmas vacation, it was back to regular work for Harry and the rest of the school. The O.W.L.s looked much closer this side of the holidays, and Harry and Ron started studying almost as obsessively as Hermione. Though they weren’t left with much free time after classes, Animagus lessons, Quidditch practice, and the Dueling Club, they still manage to squeeze in a few minutes each day to study at the library, absorbing any book they could find, trying to learn everything they could.
“I still can’t believe that almost all of the house elves decided to take pay and vacation days!” exclaimed Hermione (during one of those such study sessions) for the fifth time that day. After the immense success of her idea, she just kept going on and on about it, never stopping.
“Okay, Hermione,” said Harry. “We know you’re happy for the house elves, but please, stop telling us every five minutes.”
“You know what,” said Ron, “we go through all of this time studying, and we don’t even know what the O.W.L.s are going to be like! I mean, are they going to be written, hands-on, or what? Fred, George, Percy, Charlie, and Bill have all told me the same thing: ‘It changes every year, so even if we told you, it wouldn‘t help.’”
“Oh Ron,” said Hermione, briefly looking up from a book, “you could have asked me anytime! I already asked all the teachers what it’s going to be like this year months ago, back at the beginning of the year.”
“Well…” said Harry and Ron.
“They told me that every class will have two O.W.L.s available: an Average O.W.L., and an Advanced O.W.L. This means we each can get a possible total of sixteen O.W.L.s. To get the Average O.W.L., you have to pass a written exam, and to get an Advanced O.W.L., you have to pass a hands-on exam, a challenge.”
“Do you know what the Advance O.W.L challenges are?” asked Harry. Hermione shook her head.
“No, and we won’t know until the day of the tests.”
“Why can’t they tell us what the challenges are?” asked Ron. “I mean, we know what the tests will be on, why can’t we know what the Advanced ones will be on?” Hermione was about to answer, when Harry spoke,
“Because if they told us what the Advanced tests were, it would defeat the entire purpose of having it be Advanced. It tests our ability to face fear, danger, and adapt to the current situation.” Hermione nodded.
“That’s exactly right,” she said. “It’s what all the teachers told me.” Ron groaned.
“It seems the more I think and find out about the O.W.L.s, the more I’m not looking forward to them.”
The days continued along like that, quite uneventful. Harry was becoming more and more fearful of Voldemort. Why was he waiting so long to come for Harry himself? Why didn’t he just launch an all out attack on the school? The lack of dark activity was almost unnerving. Harry also began to dread his classes which became horribly boring; all they did was review their first,