By late November, a thick layer of ice had formed over the Black Lake as it did every year. Hagrid had picked up another large sack of Plimpies and made a huge pot of improved Plimpy chowder-at least this time there were no leg hairs to get stuck in anyone's throat. That counted as progress worth acknowledging.
The sprites of winter jingled away, and Christmas was nearly here. The students, who could already see a wonderful Christmas holiday approaching, once again lost interest in studying. They began looking for anything at Hogwarts that differed from previous years, and the most obvious difference this year was undoubtedly the library's new event.
"The title on the event notice on the library bulletin board says 'Love and sweets, a heartwarming Christmas.' The poster looks pretty nice, but there's a huge pile of declarations and instructions underneath that are a pain to read-I couldn't be bothered with all that. Anyway, Professor Brian's running it, so it's reliable. Nothing's going to go wrong!"
As Ron Weasley spoke, he stuffed two boxes of Honeydukes chocolate honey fudge into Harry's and Hermione's hands. They had been punished by Snape with cleaning duties (he had been bitten by Poxleaf during that morning's Herbology lesson and taken the afternoon off). Ron grinned, revealing two chocolate-stained teeth.
"Actually taking part is easy. There are two big basins outside the library now. One is supposedly a very valuable Pensieve, and the other is an enormous prize basin filled with all sorts of Honeydukes sweets. If you want to pick any three boxes from the prize basin to take away, all you have to do is press your hand against the rim of the Pensieve and think back to some-hmm, let me think-
"The notice put it this way-any memories you think