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At lunch in the Great Hall, many of the third graders kept discussing divination. How so?! Potter had been promised death, he'd seen a Grim! The culprit of all this turmoil in the minds of the rising wizards himself was also discussing the subject.

"By the way," Ron turned to Hermione and me at the same time. "We've been wondering what subjects you'll be taking."

"And what did you guess?"

"That's not the point..." the redhead waved his hand. "Why didn't you take everything? Everyone thought you would, with your love of cramming."

I looked intently at Ron, which made the boy look embarrassed. He must have realized he was saying something wrong. Although neither Hermione nor I reacted to "cramming" and stuff like that at all. Ron, by the way, of all his classmates, was the biggest. Not counting me. Malfoy had grown even thinner. He looks like he could be blown over by the wind - and how are his legs holding up?

"We took Runes and Arithmetic because they're really useful," Hermione began to explain the question. At the same time, I looked around my classmates more closely, trying to spot something in the other Houses as well.

Our eternal gossips - Brown and Patil. They began to decorate themselves even more with various bows-ruffles and other incomprehensible stuff. They use makeup, well, or charms, and shooting their eyes in different directions, waving their eyelashes. The girls noticed that their breasts began to grow and immediately felt like great temptresses. Not like our boys - they were careless slobs and still are. And the older ones, too. Although... There's McLaggen, a big guy, a year older, and he already thinks he's a super playboy. In fact, he is no less proud and self-confident than Malfoy, but if McLaggen praises himself, Malfoy humiliates the others.

"Max, tell them" Hermione distracted me, and I returned to the conversation, dejectedly picking at the already-cold stew. Well, there wasn't much of it left.

"What to say?"

"That a good wizard just has to know subjects like runes and arithmetic."

"I agree."

"Oh, come on, runes, arithmancy," Ron waved his hand. "It's boring. Not like the Divination or, you know, Creature Care! Moreover, Hagrid will teach a lesson ... "

"But you slept on the Divination, didn't you?" asked Harry, smiling.

"I didn't sleep at all! I tried to feel, how is it there? Marshmallow matter, soufflé bodies..."

"Speaking of Creature Care," I spoke up, looking nowhere. "This will be Hagrid's first lesson. I'm sure he'll bring in someone very dangerous. Ask him for detailed explanations of what you can and cannot do and what happens if you do not follow the instructions. And in general, someone will definitely climb to show himself - boldly hit with Petrificus, such an individual."

"What's that for?" the redhead wondered.

"Hmm, Max is right," Hermione nodded. "If something goes wrong in class, then Hagrid can easily be dismissed, and his favorite animals can be dispersed or killed."

"Dumbledore won't allow it!" exclaimed Harry, but I waved my hand reassuringly.

"What if they write a complaint to the Ministry?" I suggested. "You never know. And isn't Hagrid a friend of yours?"

"Of course he is!"

"Better to get some detentions for witchcraft than let a friend lose his job. And what a job! Telling stories about your favorite animals."

Lunch was safely finished, Hermione was eager to go to Arithmetic. I had nothing to do here, so we were among the first to leave the Great Hall.

The Arithmancy Room was not much different from the Runes Room - not in form, but in content. There were many big posters of various charts on the bare stone walls, and the same wooden desks in three rows, blackboard, and teacher's desk.

Septima Vector is a stern woman. In her sternness and primness of manners, she could argue with McGonagall, but she had a deceptively kind face. And she seemed a little kinder herself. Perhaps because of her slight fullness?

Greengrass was still in class with us, but she was accompanied by another girl, Bulstrode. Plump and also deceptively kind. Or maybe she was - who knows who they are, those sly ones. From the Ravenclaw, there was again Goldstein and some other brunette, and from Helga's House - emptiness. They are strange, really nobody needs anything there?

I was in the middle of an arithmetic class, and we were doing tests to see if we knew anything at all. Apparently, all we needed to know so far was arithmetic operations, multiplication tables, and so on. Professor Vector was pleased, glancing over the results, summing up that we didn't need to deal with the very childish basics and could proceed to deal with the more complicated purely mathematical operations.

Hermione and I looked at each other throughout the class and then approached the professor.

"Professor Vector, ma'am, we have a couple of questions."

"Yes? Mr. Knight, Miss Granger, right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Here's the thing," I spoke up while Hermione searched her regular school notebooks in her bag. "We're doing math from the regular school curriculum, so that's all we already know, and even more than that - it's too easy."

"Well, well, let's see, young people, what you solve there."

For a few minutes, the professor flipped through the draft notebooks without much enthusiasm.

"Yes, I see you've gone beyond the third, fourth, and fifth year programs. In that case, keep up the good work. Arithmetic uses the same calculations and operations as Muggle mathematics. That includes higher mathematics."

A shadow of surprise seemed to slip across Hermione's face as Professor Vector smirked.

"Yes, Miss Granger, I am very familiar not only with these terms but also with their meaning. Read history - there have been wizards among the prominent mathematicians. True, ordinary people, of course, do not know this. However, young people, there are many other functions and operations in arithmetic that are absent from mathematics as such. Pick up these books in the library."

The professor waved her wand, and on one of the empty parchments on her desk appeared fine text in beautiful script.

"It deals with those and only those operations, signs, and functions that exist only in arithmetic. Study it. And in class, you will still do the practical part that I give you. You'll get used to using math for magical calculations too. Get used to seeing not just Muggle examples in formulas. That's all."

"Goodbye."

We left the classroom.

"She is strict," I remarked.

"That's good," Hermione nodded.