long search without Madam Pince breathing down their necks.
Five minutes later,
Ron and Hermione joined him, shaking their heads. They went off to lunch.
“You will keep looking while I’m away, won’t you?” said Hermione. “And send me an owl if
you find anything.”
“And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is,” said Ron. “It’d be safe to ask
them.”
“Very safe, as they’re both dentists,” said Hermione.
Once the holidays had started, Ron and Harry were having too good
a time to think much about
Flamel. They had the dormitory to themselves and the common room was far emptier than usual,
so they were able to get the good armchairs by the fire. They sat by the hour eating anything they
could spear on a toasting fork — bread, English muffins, marshmallows — and plotting ways of
getting Malfoy expelled, which were fun to talk about even if they wouldn’t work.
Ron also started teaching Harry wizard chess. This was exactly like Muggle
chess except that the
figures were alive, which made it a lot like directing troops in battle. Ron’s set was very old and
battered. Like everything else he owned, it had once belonged to someone else in his family —
in this case, his grandfather. However, old chessmen weren’t a drawback at all. Ron knew them
so well he never had trouble getting them to do what he wanted.
Harry played with chessmen
Seamus Finnigan had lent him, and they didn’t trust him at all. He
wasn’t a very good player yet and they kept shouting different bits of advice at him, which was
confusing. “Don’t send me there, can’t you see his knight? Send
him
, we can afford to lose
him
.”
On Christmas Eve, Harry went to bed looking forward to the next
day for the food and the fun,
but not expecting any presents at all. When he woke early in the morning, however, the first
thing he saw was a small pile of packages at the foot of his bed.
“Merry Christmas,” said Ron sleepily as Harry scrambled out of bed and pulled on his bathrobe.
“You, too,” said Harry. “Will you look at this? I’ve got some presents!”
“What did you expect, turnips?” said Ron,
turning to his own pile, which was a lot bigger than
Harry’s.
Harry picked up the top parcel. It was wrapped in thick brown paper and scrawled across it was
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