Although Harley "ran for her life," Professor McGonagall still caught her with ease.
How could she not, when Hermione had been waiting outside the whole time and ruthlessly kicked Harley while she was down?
Professor McGonagall criticized Harley's "crooked path" of research from every possible angle, swearing to set Harley's Transfiguration soul straight and lead her onto the proper road.
Only after writing out a stack of formal guarantees did Harley barely manage to slip away from Professor McGonagall.
As O.W.L.s approached, the atmosphere throughout the school grew increasingly restless and anxious.
Many students had inexplicably developed strange habits, as though failing to engage in some sort of performance art would betray all the hard work they had put into revision.
Ernie Macmillan had developed a fondness for interrogating people about how long they spent revising.
Whenever he learned that someone had studied longer than he had, he would repeatedly question them, trying to pick holes in their story and prove that they had not actually revised for that long.
But whenever someone's revision time was shorter than his, Macmillan would become delighted, even excited, and start showing off his own perfect study schedule.
He had even made a chart listing exactly how many hours he studied each day, and he kept bringing it up over and over again.
Others went to the opposite extreme. Halse Stephen, for instance, had been sighing constantly, saying that if he did poorly on the exams, he would have to go back and inherit the family business in Diagon Alley.
But soon, he heard Susan Bones lamenting as well.
Susan said she did not know whether, if she could only earn six certificates, her aunt would be willing to let her intern for a while as an assistant to the Minister for Magic.
After