Harry's Occlumency practice continued.
But because of the Sweet Dream Charm, he became much more positive about it afterward.
His dormmates, however, were not very pleased—every night in the middle of the night, just as they were sleeping soundly, Harry's sudden, inexplicable laughter would scare away all their drowsiness.
Ron raised the question, "What kind of good dream are you having that makes you jump around and laugh?"
Harry hemmed and hawed, claiming that he was too tired and had forgotten everything from his dreams.
He really was tired. He attended classes during the day and studied Occlumency at night. As the Quidditch season drew closer, Wood started going mad again, raising their weekly training sessions to four nights, with two of those nights naturally concentrated on the weekend.
The only thing Harry was grateful for was that, ever since they had faced danger together last time, Hermione had begun allowing him and Ron to copy her homework. Though she still urged them to write it themselves, whenever the two pretended to be clueless, her impatient temper would make her blurt out the answers.
It was only when they tried to copy even her essays that she got angry.
"Are you trolls? What will the professors think if they see three identical essays?"
Harry and Ron could only slink off to the library, frowning at the requirement for a four-foot-long essay.
They often ran into Vaughn in the library.
He was the object of envy and admiration among all the first-year wizards. Naturally, they admired him because he had killed a troll, while they envied the fact that he did not need to do homework. Even when he read other books in class, the professors never said anything.
At least, Harry envied that.
He also noticed that Vaughn had been