Harry Potter and the Order Of the Phoenix [156]
“You mean you don’t know?” said Harry, flabbergasted.
“No, I’ve never seen or heard of it before… maybe Neville did invent it.”
“What? You can invent spells?” asked Ron, getting up from his seat in the audience.
“Well of course you can,” said Hermione lazily, pulling her backpack on. “Where do you think they come from? Grow on trees? Of course, it does take a lot of Advanced Arithmancy to get it down right, and a spell that powerful… Neville making it… oh, it just doesn’t make sense….”
Just then, the bell rang, and Harry remembered that he was only halfway through his tests; he still had four more to go. He rubbed his aching wrists, and walked out the door with Ron and Hermione, to their next exam, Herbology.
To get to the Herbology room, they had to pass the Gryffindor Common Room, whose door happened to be opened. Harry, Ron, and Hermione peeked inside and saw many younger wizards playing, along with some older sixth year wizards. None of them had to take tests today, all they were doing was playing games, and talking about what they were going to do over the vacation….
“Luckies…” sighed Ron, as they continued to walk.
“Well, they’ll have to take the tests, same as us, soon enough,” said Hermione. Ron still didn’t look too happy. He decided to change the subject.
“I wonder what’s going to happen to Neville’s clone,” he when they walked into the Herbology room.
“Well, seeing the sadistic way they treated the clones today,” said Harry, “they may just kill it.”
“No Harry,” said Hermione, “They wouldn’t kill a clone for no reason. Professor Flitwick just did that so he could test our knowledge of advanced spells, spells that we’ll need to know in the real world.”
“Yeah, when we’re all Aurors,” said Ron, smiling. Harry and Hermione sighed. Ron used that way too much.
Soon, the rest of the class filed in, and everyone took their seats. As Professor Sprout began passing out tests, Harry looked around. The class looked… smaller somehow.
He quietly pointed this out to Hermione, who looked around too, telling him that she didn’t see Neville.
“Neville? Not make the Herbology O.W.L.? But, that’s his best subject!” Hermione put her finger to her lip, indicating to Harry that he should be quiet. Harry tired to concentrate on his exam, but it was hard. Was Neville okay? What did he do that would cause him to miss the most important exam for his best class?
By the time Harry was halfway through the exam, he started to forget about Neville, and began to work much faster, to make up for the time he had lost worrying.
Harry finished his test last, but it didn’t really matter to him much. He just walked back to his seat, feeling no different than is he had passed it in first.
The Advanced O.W.L. exam was the most boring and easy one they had so far. Each of them were given a choice of many ingredients, and they had to choose the best combination of them to make a plant grow as big as possible as quickly as possible.
Harry chose what he thought would be best, and his regular plant immediately sprouted ten feet into the air. Everyone else looked quickly at what ingredients he had used, and chose those as well. Suddenly, eight more ten-foot tall plants appeared. Professor Sprout looked appalled that everyone had done the same, except for Hermione and Ron.
Hermione didn’t use what Harry did, she put a small, thin silvery substance into the mixture she had made before. She poured it all over the pot in which her plant was in. The pot immediately exploded into a million pieces as a twenty-foot high, and just as thick, plant exploded out. Huge mouth-like bulbs appeared at the ends of several tendrils, and they grew quite fast as well. When they were about the size of basketballs, they opened up with a roar as teeth and lips appeared.
“Very impressive Miss. Granger!” said Professor Sprout.
It was now Ron’s turn. Harry didn’t see what he had mixed together. Ron poured it all over his plant and it took a second for any reaction to take place. Then,