Hermione Granger was Filius Flitwick's prized student. He liked her even more than the students in his own House, so Hermione could often get firsthand information about exams from Flitwick, even exclusive tips.
Of course, no one said it outright. Instead, there were rumors that Miss Know-It-All had the gift of prediction, and that the questions she guessed often appeared on the exam. As long as things were not too disastrous, one generally would not fail Charms.
As a little witch who loved studying, Hermione had truly been busy in her third year—busy enough to need a Time-Turner. Yet by the end of the term, she was no longer quite so occupied. For an outstanding student who had known what the Switching Spell was in her first year and had even earned points for her House, final exams were no challenge at all. Still, Pomona ran into Hermione in the library. She was reading books on law, a thick pile stacked into a mountain. It seemed she had not given up on saving Buckbeak through that route.
Pomona did not want to dampen Hermione's enthusiasm, because Buckbeak's execution was not as simple as it appeared. After failing to control Hogwarts through his position as a school governor, Lucius Malfoy had shifted his efforts to the Ministry of Magic, expanding his influence there through money. Getting rid of Buckbeak was a "signal."
Likewise, dissecting the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets was not so simple. A basilisk made people associate it with snakes because it moved in the same winding manner, but its head structure was closer to that of a lizard. Travel journals left by Ancient Greek travelers before the Common Era mentioned that the ancient people of Egypt fashioned "basilisks" into crowns and wore them on pharaohs' heads.
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