"Fuck," Harry sighed, slopping onto his bed.

"She`s OK," Ron assured. "Stop beating yourself up over this."

"But it`s my fault," Harry said. "I shouldn`t have sent her off to do this alone. I should have realized she`d be naive enough to go in there like that."

"Keep in mind I refused to help her, too," Ron reminded.

"But you`re just her asshole buddy. I`m her boyfriend; I`m supposed to be the first to volunteer to help her do anything."

"Harry." Ron sat next to him on the bed as he undid the knot in his tie. "You come from a family that is beyond abusive. In your house, they blame you if there`s a power outage. You`ve learned to take responsibility for everything. Just lighten up, man."

"Yeah...OK. But I still need to do something. This petition thing is getting aggravating. There`s got to be something we can do about it. If we can`t fix it then Hermione will feel responsible for it not working."

"What can we do?" Ron asked. "You can`t make the students like Snape more. Or hate Linus more."

Harry`s eyes lit up. "That`s it."

"No. Whatever it is, I`m not doing it," Ron said right away, recognizing Harry`s tone of voice as when he is coming up with a very risky plan.

"Good. I can take all the credit if I do it alone," he approved. "But...you're not going to tell Hermione about it."

"What? What are you going to do?"

.

"HARRY!"

"Shh!"

"Harry!" It was just after midnight, and Ron was clinging to the arm of a determined Harry Potter, who was fully equipped with his good old trusty invisibility cloak and a wand. Most of his body was out the door of their room, save the arm.

"Harry, listen to me," Ron whispered desperately. "It's not worth it!"

"Let me go, Ron," Harry said straightly.

"Look, you daft cunt. You are going to get caught, because you always do, and this time you aren't going to look like the good guy!" Ron's grip on Harry was clawing into his skin. "This is very wrong!"

"Then be glad you're not involved with it," Harry said. "You're clear, Ron. If they catch me, you won't get in any trouble."

"That's not what I'm worried about!" Ron let go, but Harry had the goodness not to run away. "You're gonna get yourself KILLED!"

Harry laughed. "Killed?"

"Okay, expelled."

"It's for Hermione."

"Oh, fuck you."

"Go to bed, Ron."

"Sick...wanker..."

"Goodnight," Harry called over his shoulder.

.

"Attention," McGonnagal was heard over the intercom. "Students will only be attending their first three classes today, in order to enable time to prepare for the field trip. There will be a staff meeting at eleven. All professors are encouraged to attend."

Ron walked into Linus' classroom and spotted Harry already sitting at his desk, reading. On his way to his desk he paused in front of Harry. Harry looked up from his novel at the disapproving Ron, and just smiled.

Ron shook his head and went to his seat. Within the next minute the classroom flooded with students, and the bell rang. Linus appeared from behind his desk at the front of the room, holding a small stack of envelopes bound with a leather cord.

As the students stared in anticipation, Professor Linus slowly and showingly untied the cord around the stack. "These are your progress reports for the entire semester. I see almost no improvement, as usual."

The reports were slowly dealt out in silence, as Linus had become bored with publicly humiliating the students, but the faces still fell into bottled-up hatred. Mouth after mouth opened into a shocked, confused 'O'. It was clear that most of the students, despite their desperate study habits and meakly improved homework grades, were bound to see another year in that God-forsaken classroom.

And there was only one thing left to ask.

"Psst...Hey, Potter."

Harry looked over at the student, who asked, "What did you get?"

Harry was struggling not to smile as he held up his report.

.

"Hey, Granger," a sneering kid tapped Hermione on the shoulder in the hallway after the third class was dismissed. "I hear your boyfriend's flunkin' DADA."

"No, he's not."

The boy just laughed and walked away. A moment later Harry located her and greeted her with a half-hug.

"Hi, Harry," Hermione said. "I heard that you're failing that one class."

"Oh," Harry put on his best look of dissapointment and looked down at Hermione's boots. "Yeah, I am. It's...pretty tough."

"So am I."

"You are?" Harry was genuinely surprised. He then said he was sorry about it, meaning it in more ways than one.

Ron found the two of them, but didn't say much as they all went through the hallway. Then the three of them passed by Linus' classroom, from which a just-now-excused party of furious kids were emerging. Harry observed the devastation in the children, and for a moment he felt pretty bad, but it all proved worthwhile for what happened next.

The three walked through and were almost free of the crowd outside of the classroom, when someone passionately grabbed Hermione by the arm.

"Give us the damn petition."

.

By the time the crowd was done with the once pathetic list of names, Hermione was jumping up and down with pure joy.

"Harry Harry Harry!" she exclaimed. "We just got over a hundred names in fifteen minutes!!!"

And then she threw her arms around Harry, who said to her, "Oh, yeah...Hermione?"

She drew back and looked at his suddenly serious expression. Then Harry suddenly broke out into a smile, and he said, "Happy birthday."

She gasped. "You fucking remembered!"

"Of course I did, silly," Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a Chocolate Frog. "This is all I got. I'll buy you something nice on the field trip."

"Aw, Harry..." Hermione hugged him again, and then they both looked over at Ron, who was standing against the wall with his arms crossed, looking quite sheepish.

"Happy birthday, Hermione," Ron said, and briskly added, "I forgot."

Hermione laughed. "It's all right, Ron."

"Shall we get more signatures?" Ron offered.

"Be my guest," Hermione replied. She handed the folder to Ron, and then walked off hand-in-hand with Harry.

Ron hadn't had time to complain before he was attacked by another mob of petition-signers.

.

"Well, criminal," said Ron to Harry later, who was still grinning from ear to ear from how things were working out for him. He and Hermione had had the last classes off and therefore had stolen tons of private time. "How many grades did you actually change?"

"Shhh, quiet," Harry said, even though he was still too happy to really care. "It was a matching spell. I changed about fifty percent of everyone`s grades to failing or nearly failing. Most of the remaining fifty percent were already failing anyway."

"There`s a spell for this?"

"No, not specifically for that. I took one envelope and carefully erased the grade in it and made it an 'F'. Then I took about half of the envelopes from the stack and used a spell to make them identical to the one I changed."

"Ah. So you didn`t actually change their scores? Just the grades shown on the progress reports?"

"Yeah. Come on. You have to hand it to me."

"You`re a dumbass."

"I`m a genius."

"You`re a dumbass."

"Okay. At least I`m a dumbass with a happy girlfriend."