After dinner, when Wade and Michael arrived at the Umbrella Room, they found that quite a few people had already gathered there.
Harry and Neville were bent over the table, writing homework with miserable expressions. Theo and Ryan were quietly discussing how to write their Herbology essays. Padma sat by the fireplace, flipping through a book, while the Weasley Twins tinkered with their latest invention in the Practice Area.
Of all the SSC members, only Hermione was absent.
"Hermione isn't here?" Michael asked directly. "Did she run into trouble again today?"
"Probably." Harry turned at the sound of his voice, his face a mixture of sympathy and relief. "The holidays are coming up, and those younger students are practically bursting with energy like Blast-Ended Skrewts, running all over the place. She and Ron have been so busy lately that their feet barely touch the ground."
During Protecting Magical Creatures last year, Hagrid had excitedly introduced them to a new species he had bred himself—the Blast-Ended Skrewt. Apparently, the thing had been crossbred from a human-headed Manticore and a Fire Crab.
Harry had no interest in how two creatures that differed so drastically in every respect could possibly interbreed. All he knew was that, in that class, they had fully learned just how much chaos a single species could cause.
Those strange things were not only ugly, but also extremely aggressive, bad-tempered, and difficult to control. Worse still, they could suddenly explode. They were simply terrifying.
Fortunately, Hagrid was willing to listen to reason. Amid the unanimous objections of all the students, he finally gave up on including Blast-Ended Skrewts in the regular curriculum.
Unfortunately, as Hagrid's friends, Harry and the others had been forced several times to take on such duties as "walking the Blast-Ended Skrewts" and "feeding the Blast-Ended