Harry Potter and the Order Of the Phoenix [144]
“Choose a moment in history, and reenact it with one other person. You will be graded on accuracy and amount and quality of information given. The top two groups or individuals with the highest grade will get the Advanced O.W.L.”
Harry looked around, seeing who he could work with. Harry saw that Ron had just gone up to pass his test in, so when he came back to his seat, Harry grabbed his arm.
“You want to work together on this?” Harry asked him. Ron shrugged.
“Sure, why not?” Ron pulled his desk over to Harry.
“What event should we do?”
“Well, we could always do the night You-Know-Who was destroyed,” said Ron, quite loudly. “We even have one of the people that was there, a guaranteed A plus!” Harry glared at him.
“No.”
“Well, it was a significant point in time…”
“Come on Ron, we only have twenty-five minutes!”
“Fine, fine, fine! How about… when Hogwarts was decided to be built? We’ve gotten enough details from that about Professor Binns, we could do a perfect job.”
“Okay… but I’m Godric Gryffindor,” said Harry.
“As long as I’m not Slytherin….” said Ron.
They rehearsed their reenactment for the next fifteen minutes, and when the time came to present, Harry saw that three groups were trying for the O.W.L.: he and Ron, Parvati and Lavender, and Hermione by herself. One of the groups would not get it.
“Miss. Granger, you are up first,” said Professor Binns. Hermione gracefully walked up to the front of the class, and reenacted the Speech of 1945: the speech that Dumbledore gave the day before he and his army of wizards attacked Grindelwald’s fortress. She did a flawless job, and emoted perfectly. Everyone, including Professor Binns applauded for her as she skipped back to her seat, the O.W.L. practically hers.
Harry and Ron were next, and their presentation was pathetic compared to Hermione’s. Harry and Ron kept switching back and forth from being Godric Gryffindor to Salazar Slytherin and Rowena Ravenclaw to Helga Hufflepuff at awkward times. Ron kept missing key lines, and Harry tripped over his wand twice, while spinning around to show his transformation between his two people. By the time they were done, half the class was asleep, and those who were awake said nothing. Even Professor Binns looked more gloomy than usual.
“Well, let’s just hope Parvati and Lavender do a worse job than us,” said Ron to Harry when they sat back down to their seats.
“Misses Patil and Brown, your turn,” yawned Professor Binns. Both of the girls walked up to the head of the class, grinning widely. Parvati was holding a cloth in her hand that looked like a wrapped baby, and Lavender was wearing a monster’s mask. Parvati clutched the cloths tightly to her head, and Lavender brandished her wand.
“Give me the boy!” she yelled, in as deep of a voice that she could. It gave the intonation of something very evil.
“No! You’ll never get Harry!” squealed Parvati.
Harry went red, and put his head into his arms. The entire class was now looking at him, because he was the topic of their reenactment. They must have overheard his and Ron’s conversation over what topic to do, and decided to take their rejected idea.
Even though they did a good job in their presentation, it was still one of the most embarrassing moments in Harry’s life. They acted out every detail, just as Harry had seen it in his dream. They went all the way up to the part when Voldemort’s curse deflected back on him, and to demonstrate that, Lavender pointed her wand at herself, and teleported outside the classroom. Everyone clapped when she came back in, and then the bell rang, signaling the end of class.
“Good luck on your next test!” said Professor Binns, looking more cheerful than Harry had ever seen him.
“That test was surprisingly easy,” said Hermione, as they walked to the Transfiguration classroom, for their next test. “I could have skipped reading several books that I glanced at.”
“Yeah, whatever, Hermione,” said Harry, who didn’t thank the test was nearly that easy. “At least we’ll all probably get Advanced Transfiguration