Chapter 18 - The Forbidden Forest (1/2)
The Holidays were finished as the day of the New year was over, everyone returned to Hogwarts and once again, the school became busy.
Daphne almost scolded Neal for giving her such an expensive gift after learning from her mother that it's a real 10-carat ruby which costs thousands of galleons. Neal replied that he didn't know about it and lied that the stone was found by him accidentally in the muggle world.
After forgetting about the matter, as Tracey, Malfoy and Neal showed her that they wear the bracelet with S carved on it, she too showed that she wore it. They decided that the bracelet will be the symbol of their gang and will be worn every day.
While the Gryffindor trio is busy with finding out who the heck is Nicolas Flamel, Malfoy was rapidly improving in the classes and gaining House points from the teachers which surprised the rest of the class.
When the Trio first heard of it, they didn't believe it. Only during the charms, Transfigurations and the Potion class, they saw an abrupt improvement in Draco's studies. They don't know that he daily drinks the Wit-Sharpening Potion to gain intelligence temporarily.
Because of him, Harry and Ron never concocted a potion even once as he always disturbs them at the right time or stalls them for an extra few minutes while brewing the mixture and made Gryffindor lose lots of points in the class.
Outside of the class, instead of insulting Ron with their financial situation, he started to use his brothers as an example and compares him with them, which made him frustrated as all of his brothers were indeed intelligent and Prefects and have great scores.
Slowly the winter passed and Spring started on March 21
In this period, the only major event that happened is that Malfoy made Prof. McGonagall catch the Gryffindor trio successfully red-handed while they waited for a friend of Charlie Weasley who is supposed to bring back the baby dragon Hagrid had, at the top of the Astronomy Tower.
Malfoy who stopped using the Potion didn't ask Neal again and thought he didn't need it anymore and prepared to lose 50 points for 150 points of Gryffindor.
And Just as he had expected, she not only took off 150 points from Harry again and made the points he gained from the Winter House cup useless, she also took off 50 from Slytherin for Malfoy and also told them they will serve detention for it.
From the next day, Everyone in the school started to hate the three of them while Slytherins praised Malfoy even though he lost 50 points.
As Slytherin won the House Cup for the straight-six years, students of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw hoped Gryffindor would break their record just as they broke their Quidditch record. But because of their rule-breaking again, their hopes were dashed and it turned into hate.
One more person who is lying low is Neal which Daphne and Tracey found it really strange. They found after the Christmas holidays, for some reason, Neal is always reading books about magical creatures and rarely available on weekends.
As the March is going to end, Harry is slowly redeeming his reputation by catching the snitch as fast as possible. Especially the match with the Hufflepuff was ended in a mere 2 and a half minutes which was the record in the history of Hogwarts.