On a stone pillar a little farther away, Dolohov was picking bread crumbs out of his teeth with a fingernail.
His dinner that day had consisted of only half a piece of black bread and a bowl of water.
Because the paper he had submitted the previous week had received an A.
Old Crouch's comment read:
"Sufficient experimental data, but the conclusion is too arbitrary. Deduct two days' rations."
Dolohov stared at the empty stone table before him, his lips pressed tight.
Then he picked up his pen, turned to a fresh sheet of parchment, and began writing his second draft.
He did not know-the core theoretical framework of the thirty-thousand-word analysis of the residual effects of Purple Flame Curses that he had poured his heart and soul into had already been extracted by Douglas.
The casting pathways had been deleted.
The methods of attack had been deleted.
Only defensive reverse engineering and scientific analogy had been retained.
Then it had been given a pink cover.
A line was printed on the title page-
"Approved by Dolores Umbridge"
At that moment, the core content of that paper lay in the schoolbags of Hogwarts fifth-year students.
Hermione Granger had annotated it with highlighters in three colors.
Ron Weasley had memorized it word by word under his desk lamp late at night.
Neville Longbottom had read chapter five over and over-
The Cruciatus Curse and the science of pain.
Bellatrix did not know.
She did not know that, after Old Crouch had crossed out every boastful description in red ink, her "combat analysis" of the Longbottoms had become a coldly precise Cruciatus Curse Defense Lesson Plan.
It bore Umbridge's name.
Its cover was pink.
Neville Longbottom was using it to learn how to resist the Cruciatus Curse.
Using knowledge she had written