A week later, at Hogwarts Castle.
The autumn wind swept up dead leaves and battered them against the windows along the passage to the hall, making a bleak rustling sound.
But that chill was nothing compared with the atmosphere in front of the noticeboard.
Almost half the students in the Castle were crowded in front of those enormous parchment lists, packed as tightly as the spectators at the Quidditch World Cup final.
A complicated scent mingling anticipation, fear, and despair hung in the air.
Today was the day the monthly exam results were released.
Ron's face was as shriveled as a dried plum. He clutched Harry's clothes and refused to take another step forward.
"I can't see, Harry. I can't see anything. This is good."
He muttered to himself, as though he could fool himself that way.
He could already imagine how, once his miserable Potions Class grade reached home, his mother's Howler would explode like a red bomb in the Gryffindor Common Room.
Hermione was the complete opposite.
Like a nimble little boat, she fought her way through the crowd, muttering all the while.
"That Ancient Runes translation-I should have used a more precise root... in the Divination star chart interpretation, my calculation of Mercury's angle might have been a tiny bit off..."
With every sentence she uttered, Ron's face grew a shade paler.
A top student's anxiety was the cruelest torture in the world for a failing student.
Harry's heart was in his throat too.
But the source of his nerves was completely different from everyone else's.
Failing? He wasn't worried about that.
What worried him was whether those "Douglas's private practice papers," which he had spent over half a month and practically all his mental energy completing, had done no good at all...
Heaven knew what kind