Pomona found Neville in an empty corridor beside the clock tower, not far from the meeting point. He was reading a book used only in Divination classes, Unfogging the Future.
Exams were about to begin, yet he still had the mood to read something unrelated to them. Most people knew that Sybill's Divination was easy to pass. You did not need to preview or revise at all.
"Mr. Longbottom," Pomona said. "Why aren't you going to Hogsmeade?"
Neville looked at her with a face full of terror.
"Professor Trelawney told me I would encounter a terrible accident."
Pomona looked at Neville suspiciously.
"Why did you tell Professor Lupin about Mr. Potter's Defense Against the Dark Arts essay?"
"I... I wanted to use it as a reference," Neville stammered.
"If you really wanted to copy someone's homework, you should have copied Hermione Granger's, or someone else's who hadn't handed theirs in. Tell me the truth," Pomona said sternly.
"I... I..."
"What happened?"
The "warmhearted" old bat approached with a smile, as if he too was delighted to see Longbottom in trouble.
Neville's face turned bright red. After a while, he said, "My Defense Against the Dark Arts essay wasn't finished, so I asked Harry whether he had done his. He said he hadn't, so I invited him to finish the assignment with me. But halfway there, he told me he had actually already finished it. I wanted to borrow it for reference, but he told me he had already handed it to Professor Lupin, so I went to ask Professor Lupin about it."
"When did this happen?" Pomona asked.
"Last week."
She was still feeling dizzy, but Snape seemed to understand something. The smile vanished from his face, and his brows drew tightly together.
"You may go," Pomona said, and Neville