Christmas drew closer, and the weather grew colder. The young witches and wizards put on their thick winter robes again, sometimes having to cross completely exposed walkways to reach their classrooms.
In the second week of December, Professor McGonagall came around as usual to collect the names of students staying at school over Christmas.
With the numerous attacks at school, very few students wanted to stay for Christmas-not even half as many as in previous years.
The Daily Prophet's criticism of the school had grown increasingly blatant, focusing on how the school-or rather, Dumbledore-had yet to produce a proper solution or countermeasures.
Honestly, the Daily Prophet had something of a point. Taking no measures whatsoever really did infuriate parents. Zhang Xiao often saw owls dropping letters off for Dumbledore. All he could say was that the wizarding world really was tiny.
Even ordinary wizards could write directly to the president of the International Confederation of Wizards.
Once normal school life resumed, everything was so peaceful that it seemed as though nothing had happened. Yet Zhang Xiao kept feeling that this was the calm before the storm.
In Potions Class, they had begun learning to make Swelling Solution, a potion that caused any part of the body it touched to swell. He just wasn't quite sure what it was mainly used for.
The lesson was utterly tedious overall. Professor Snape remained very enthusiastic about his little hobby, weaving between twenty cauldrons and patrolling through the swirling fumes as he watched them add two spoonfuls of dried nettles and three pufferfish eyes to their mortars.
Or he would stand behind the young Gryffindors, staring coldly as they weighed their ground powder on brass scales.
At the slightest deviation from the instructions, he immediately berated them harshly, while the Slytherin students snickered gleefully