"Ron!" whispered Hermione, in an irate whisper, "You spilt ink all over my Arithmancy text book!"
Ron shot her an appalled glance. "Wha-? I never! Why the hell would I want to touch that thing, any way? It's enormous!"
"Well, who else could it have been?" Hermione's gaze was accusatory.
"I dunno?" hissed Ron, "Why not Ginny? Why not Fred or George? Hell, why not Harry- why doesn't he ever get blamed for this stuff?"
"Leave me out of it…" came a dejected mutter from the seat in between them.
"Because it's usually you, Ron!"
"No, it's not! When have I ever touched one of your precious books?"
"What about last week, when you dripped jam on my copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them? I couldn't even read the passage written on the Kappa. I had to borrow Parvati's."
"That wasn't me!" said Ron, indignantly, "That was Neville! Remember? He had that huge piece of toast in his hand at breakfast, and when it dripped he tried to do a cleaning charm. Only it went wrong because he was so upset and blew Seamus' hat off."
Hermione chose to ignore this revelation and continued in a heated undertone. "What about the tea stains in Esoteric Enunciations? Or the dog ears in A History of Druidic Rituals?"
"What the hell is an esoteric… wassit?"
Harry, who had all this time been keeping an eye on the front of the class, shushed them hurriedly.
"Teacher," he muttered.
Ron and Hermione immediately straightened up, as the ghost watching the class drifted by with a glare in their direction.
"Yeah, that pass Pauling made to Heathwood at the last match was pretty good," said Ron, in a loud deliberate tone. "But did you see that glare Rogers gave them at the end of the game?"
"Yeah, talk about a sore loser," chuckled Harry, who was glad for the respite from the fighting, no matter how brief or forced. "He just couldn't believe they got past him!" Hermione, to whom sports held very little interest, crossed her arms and stared sulkily down at her stained text book.
The class was Transfiguration, which normally no one would have even dreamed of talking in. Professor McGonagall ruled her classroom with an iron fist… and was absent from the room today.
Instead of a human substitute, however, an elderly ghost introducing himself as Mr. Pancreatic drifted through the wall and informed the class that they were to be doing text book work for the class. After they had finished, they could "sit at your desks and talk about Quidditch."
And, of course, as an old school practitioner, he soon jumped to the conclusion that any other subject of conversation was nothing short of mutiny. Parvati and Lavender learned the hard way as a whispered conversation on hair care products landed them two days of detention with McGonagall.
Down right annoyed and muttering complaints, the two girls had stormed out of the room, leaving an incredulous class to an hour of broomstick discussion, match commentary, and basically anything else having to do with Quidditch to pass the spare time.
Harry, of course, would have been perfectly willing to spend the class thus, but of course his friends had other ideas.
As soon as the ghost had passed, Hermione instantly seized upon the chance and began heckling Ron again.
"Well, if it wasn't you, Ron, then who was it?"
"I dunno!" groaned Ron exasperatedly, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. "Maybe it was one of your little Arithmancy friends, you lot all share your books. Go ask one of them!"
Hermione looked horrified at the mere proposal. "Don't be ridiculous, Ron! We all have the highest respect for each other's belongings!"
"So? Maybe they just didn't tell you about it!"
"How dare you suggest such a thing!"
Harry looked up at the front of the classroom again. The conversation was getting more and more vocal.
"Guys, shut up. Teacher."
The two glanced up, saw Mr. Pancreatic staring in their direction, and immediately switch topic.
"What was that move Chester pulled on the other seeker?"
"The one where he dived? The Addlebury Feint, I think…"
"Nah, it was just Johanson's Form Six. You know, like Reilly pulled on Jones two World Cups ago."
"Wasn't that the one between the Yanks and the Irish?"
"Yep, that's the one."
"Ireland again? Really? Didn't they just do the World Cup?"
"Yeah, hard to believe it, right? They've got a killer team, Ireland. I hear their training campaign is intense. Like, fierce."
They chanced looks at the front of the class, but the transparent head near the chalkboard had lowered again, so they relaxed. Tensions began to rise again, though, as Hermione persisted, "They wouldn't spill an entire bottle of ink on it!
Ron thumped the table in exasperation. "How is that an entire bottle? It barely covers a sentence!" His wand, which had been lying idle on his desk, began to roll towards the edge of the desk.
"Careful!" said Harry, reaching for it, but it was too late. The wand rolled off the top, thunked against the flagstone floor, emitted a sound like an air horn that silenced the entire class, and shot violet sparks through the air and straight through the center of Mr. Pancreatic's chest.
The classroom fell silent.
There was a very long pause, broken only by the sizzling of the chalkboard from where the sparks had hit it.
"Oops…"
It was a source of great mortification for both Ron and Hermione when, later, they discovered that the stain had been caused by Crookshanks stepping in the inkwell.