'No Quidditch practice,' said Angelina in the common room after dinner.

'But I kept my temper!' said Harry, horrified. 'I didn't say anything to her, Angelina, I swear, I -'

"Same here!" I said

'I know, I know,' said Angelina miserably. 'She just said she needed a bit of time to consider.'

'Consider what?' said Ron angrily. 'She's given the Slytherins permission, why not us?

"Clearly she's using it as a weapon so we don't act up" I said. I couldn't deny, however that even I could see a slight positive here, which was not having to be in Harry's close company. The awkwardness of it wouldn't exactly be good for team cohesion. Hopefully we'd both have recovered fully from the breakup by the time the teams were reformed.

'Well,' said Hermione, 'look on the bright side - at least now you'll have time to do Snape's essay!'

That's a bright side, is it?' snapped Harry, while Ron stared incredulously at Hermione. 'No Quidditch practice, and extra Potions?'

Me and my friends sat down and watched Fred and George's Skiving Snackbox demonstration. Demelza disapproved, though as they weren't technically doing anything wrong, there was nothing she could say or do about it.

First, Fred would take a bite out of the orange end of a chew, at which he would vomit spectacularly into a bucket they had placed in front of them. Then he would force down the purple end of the chew, at which the vomiting would immediately cease. Lee Jordan, who was assisting the demonstration, was lazily Vanishing the vomit at regular intervals. By the time Demelza, Amy and I went up to bed around 10:30, they had already made 18 galleons, and I wouldn't have bet against them making more.

The Gryffindor Quidditch teams were given permission to re-form the next day. Angelina went to McGonagall, and it's likely she had appealed to Dumbledore, because it worked. So, the reserve team was set for their practice at 6pm, and the first team's would be at 7. At 5:45, I left with Hermione and the reserve team, so that I could talk to Hermione more and watch their practice. Unfortunately the weather hadn't let up, so I bought the Gryffindor Canvas cover for me to sit under.

I saw that Hermione looked a bit nervous and unsure of something as she walked. She was chewing her lip and looked like she was mulling over something important.

"Cat got your tongue mate?" I asked

"No, it's just, well, look, we spoke to Snuffles last night, and he was nearly caught by Umbridge!"

I jumped

"What happened?!" I said quickly

"I was right about what I said to you at lunch yesterday. Umbridge is watching the fires now, because that's how Snuffles spoke to us. Umbridge's hand appeared and he only just got away. We were talking about our defence group, and he passed on a message from your mum that we shouldn't do the group. We said we'd do it anyway of course, but there is something that's made me re-think that"

All thoughts of Umbridge watching the fires were pushed from my mind by that last sentence.

"Why? What could make you not want to do it now?" I asked

"Well, Snuffles was really enthusiastic about it-"

"That's great then-"

"No, that's the problem! I was saying this to Harry and Ron last night. I feel like he's trying to live through us cause he's stuck at Grimmauld Place and can't do anything! He wants to encourage something dramatic so he can feel like he's doing something, even when he isn't"

"I see what you mean, but whether he is or he isn't, that shouldn't matter. We need to learn to defend ourselves properly, and this is the way to do it. Did he suggest somewhere we might be able to do it? Cause we're NOT using the Chamber of Secrets, end of!"

"I hadn't even thought about there, but you're right, we can't use it for obvious reasons. I'm sure we'll find somewhere, don't worry"

It was very difficult to see anything that was going on, because of the weather, and twice, a bludger nearly took my head off, smashing into the stands next to me. Therefore, I had very little idea if the practice had been any type of success.

"Well done for braving these conditions" I said to Alicia, after she cut the practice short, with it only lasting 40 minutes. "Did it go well, I wasn't able to see much of it to be honest"

"Yes" she replied shortly, in a tone which made it very easy to tell she was lying. That didn't give me a good feeling ahead of our practice.

Upon entering the changing room, I found Fred and George debating whether to use one of their own Skiving Snackboxes to get out of flying, with Harry alongside them.

'… but I bet she'd know what we'd done,' Fred said out of the corner of his mouth. 'If only I hadn't offered to sell her some Puking Pastilles yesterday.'

'We could try the Fever Fudge,' George muttered, 'no one's seen that yet -'

'Does it work?' I asked.

'Well, yeah,' said Fred, 'your temperature'll go right up.'

'But you get these massive pus-filled boils, too,' said George, 'and we haven't worked out how to get rid of them yet.'

'I can't see any boils,' I said, staring at the twins.

'No, well, you wouldn't,' said Fred darkly, 'they're not in a place we generally display to the public.'

I laughed and the three boys shot me a dirty look.

"They make sitting on a broom a right pain in the -'

'All right, everyone, listen up,' said Angelina loudly, emerging from the Captain's office. 'I know it's not ideal weather, but there's a chance we'll be playing Slytherin in conditions like this so it's a good idea to work out how we're going to cope with them. Harry, didn't you do something to your glasses to stop the rain fogging them up when we played Hufflepuff in that storm?'

'Hermione did it,' said Harry. He pulled out his wand, tapped his glasses and said, 'Impervius!'

'I think we all ought to try that,' said Angelina. 'If we could just keep the rain off our faces it would really help visibility - all together, come on - Impervius! Right, you two (she pointed at Harry and I) I know what happened on Monday-"

"It'll be fine" we both said in a deliberately determined tone. It was a mark of how important Quidditch was to both of us that we weren't going to let it ruin the team. I was putting aside my worries of the previous night.