"Er --"

"The sixteenth of October! 'That thing you're dreading, it will happen on the sixteenth of October!' Remember? She was right, she was right!"

Amelia looked confused. She thought it was the eighth.

The whole class was gathered around Lavender now. Seamus shook his head seriously. Hermione hesitated; then she said, "You -- you were dreading Binky being killed by a fox?"

"Well, not necessarily by a fox," said Lavender, looking up at Hermione with streaming eyes, "but I was obviously dreading him dying, wasn't l?"

"Oh," said Hermione. She paused again. "Was Binky an old rabbit?"

"N -- no!" sobbed Lavender. "H -- he was only a baby!" Parvati tightened her arm around Lavender's shoulders.

Amelia gave her a small pat on the back. "Foxes are bastards."

"But then, why would you dread him dying?" said Hermione. Parvati glared at her.

"Well, look at it logically," said Hermione, turning to the rest of the group- "I mean, Binky didn't even die today, did he? Lavender just got the news today-" Lavender wailed loudly. "- and she can't have been dreading it, because it's come as a real shock --"

"Don't mind Hermione, Lavender," said Ron loudly, "she doesn't think other people's pets matter very much."

Professor McGonagall opened the classroom door at that moment, which was perhaps lucky; Hermione and Ron were looking daggers at each other, and when they got into class, they seated themselves on either side of Harry and didn't talk to each other for the whole class.

Harry still hadn't decided what he was going to say to Professor McGonagall when the bell rang at the end of the lesson, but it was she who brought up the subject of Hogsmeade first.