you? Didn't you, Professor? 'Around Easter, one of our number will leave us forever!' You said it ages ago, Professor!"

Professor Trelawney gave her a dewy smile.

"Yes, my dear, I did indeed know that Miss Granger would be leaving us. One hopes, however, that one might have mistaken the Signs.... The Inner Eye can be a burden, you know..."

Lavender and Parvati looked deeply impressed, and moved over so that Professor Trelawney could join their table instead. "

Some day Hermione's having, eh?" Ron muttered to Harry, looking awed.

"Yeah..."

Harry glanced into the crystal ball but saw nothing but swirling white mist. Had Professor Trelawney really seen the Grim again? Would he? The last thing he needed was another near-fatal accident, with the Quidditch final drawing ever nearer.

The Easter holidays were not exactly relaxing. The third years had never had so much homework. Neville Longbottom seemed close to a nervous collapse, and he wasn't the only one.

"Call this a holiday!" Seamus Finnigan roared at the common room one afternoon. "The exams are ages away, what're they playing at?"

"Not a clue," said Amelia as she wrote down a note. "Ravenclaw is so full of stress it spreads like a plague. At least three kids have puked just this first week I have been there. That's why we are here."

Amelia hadn't come alone. Adam Whitlock, a tall ginger freckled fifteen-year-old Ravenclaw who liked to wear jumpers, and Cedric Diggory, who all the Gryffindor girls were staring at, were both good friends of Amelias.

"What are you doing here? You're not even a Ravenclaw," commented Wood to Cedric, who simply shrugged. "No, but we do study groups between the two houses. The stress is enough to kill you."

But nobody had as much to do as Hermione. Even without Divination, she was taking more subjects than anybody else. She was usually last to leave the common room at night, first to arrive at the library the next morning; she had shadows like Lupin's under her eyes, and seemed constantly close to tears.

Ron had taken over responsibility for Buckbeak's appeal. When he wasn't doing his own work, he was poring over enormously thick volumes with names like The Handbook of Hippogriff Psychology and Fowl or Foul? A Study of Hippogriff Brutality. He was so absorbed, he even forgot to be horrible to Crookshanks.