分卷阅读46（2 / 2）

“You had better, Mr. Potter.” Hermione scolded, sounding strangely like a certain Transfiguration teacher when she did so.

And so Harry began to explain.

The DA meeting had progressed to the dueling stage, with all of the members trying out the continuous healing spell in a duel setting. Because everyone needed to try out the spell, the staged duels were shorter than normal, timed and without a true victor.

From his section of the room, Draco looked up from his Potions studying to see Harry ascending the dueling platform. Sighing slightly, Draco rested the open book on his lap and watched the duel. No one noticed this extra pair of eyes.

In the first few weeks that Draco had been sitting in the corner, there had been a lot of speculation about his presence. But once the other DA members figured out that he wasn’t going to do anything, they left him alone. In fact, most forgot about his presence during the meetings. Which suited him just fine.

His eyes watched as the duel progressed. It was obvious that this was one of those times when Harry was in his element, but still he was wary.

Harry dodged a bolt of blue light as he concentrated on keeping the healing spell inside his skin, something that was easy when you didn’t have four other people to watch. Ginny sent a curse at him and he jumped to right…right into another spell of red light.

His head came up to see the spell, just inches from his skin, veer off course and spin, heading towards the boy who had cast it. Harry blinked. He hadn’t done that…

His eyes drifted off to the corner of the room directly behind the boy who’d cast the spell at him. They locked onto Draco’s eyes and Harry saw the source of that protection. “That’s cheating,” he mouthed in Draco’s direction, ducking under another well placed curse. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Draco shrug, uncaring.

The next day Ron came down to breakfast looking like Christmas had just been canceled. Seeing Harry’s questioning look, he shook his head, sitting down in his customary seat across from Harry.

“Don’t ask mate, you’ll see soon enough.”

And Harry did see, or hear, when Hermione came down to breakfast a few minutes later.

“Harry,” she asked as she began to load her plate with food. “Do you know when exams are?”

Exams? Harry hadn’t even thought about exams. They were…four months away after all. “They’re four months away, Hermione, give or take a week.” This was the last week in January…so yeah, about four months.

“Exactly! Four months! Only four months!” Hermione said this as if it was a bad thing.

“That’s a lot of time Hermione—” Harry started.

“I missed a whole month of studying! Normally I start when there are five months left to the exams, but I missed almost all of January!”