They looked around; sure enough,

They looked around; sure enough, there sat Neville with a bloody lip and several nasty scratches along the side of his face, but clutching an unpleasantly pulsating

green object about the size of a grapefruit.

“Okay, Professor, we're starting now!” said Ron, adding quietly, when she had turned away again, “Should've used Muffliato, Harry.”

“No, we shouldn't!” said Hermione at once, looking, as she always did, intensely cross at the thought of the Half-Blood Prince and his spells. “Well, come on ...

we'd better get going...”

She gave the other two an apprehensive look; they all took deep breaths and then dived at the gnarled stump between them.

It sprang to life at once; long, prickly, bramble-like vines flew out of the top and whipped through the air. One tangled itself in Hermione's hair, and Ron beat it

back with a pair of secateurs; Harry succeeded in trapping a couple of vines and knotting them together; a hole opened in the middle of all the tentacle-like branches;

Hermione plunged her arm bravely into this hole, which closed like a trap around her elbow; Harry and Ron tugged and wrenched at the vines, forcing the hole to open

again, and Hermione snatched her arm free, clutching in her fingers a pod just like Neville's. At once, the prickly vines shot back inside, and the gnarled stump sat

there looking like an innocently dead lump of wood.

“You know, I don't think I'll be having any of these in my garden when I've got my own place,” said Ron, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead and wiping sweat

from his face.

“Pass me a bowl,” said Hermione, holding the pulsating pod at arm's length; Harry handed one over and she dropped the pod into it with a look of disgust on her face.

“Don't be squeamish, squeeze it out, they're best when they're fresh!” called Professor Sprout.

“Anyway,” said Hermione, continuing their interrupted conversation as though a lump of wood had not just attacked them, “Slughorn's going to have a Christmas party,

Harry, and there's no way you'll be able to wriggle out of this one because he actually asked me to check your free evenings, so he could be sure to have it on a night

you can come.”

Harry groaned. Meanwhile, Ron, who was attempting to burst the pod in the bowl by putting both hands on it, standing up, and squashing it as hard as he could, said

angrily, “And this is another party just for Slughorn's favorites, is it?”

“Just for the Slug Club, yes,” said Hermione.

The pod flew out from under Ron's fingers and hit the green house glass, rebounding onto the back of Professor Sprout's head and knocking off her old, patched hat.