Ron's bad day

Harry awoke with a start. Something was tangling about his hair and inching its way into his collar. He grabbed one of the vines, gave it a huge tug, and was rewarded with an ugly, bulbuous sprouty spinach grinning back at him.

"Urgh!" Ron grimaced, apparently woken by the belching sound the spinach generously gave out at a very regular interval.

"YEWWW!" Ron shrieked. The spinach, deeply offended by the first syllable Ron directed at him, shot a gooey pus out of its mouth into his face. As Ron struggled to wipe the pus off his face with his robe handing on his bedpost, Harry stupefied the green spinach, stuffed it in to a a bag and tossed it back to Neville Longbottom, whose had taken to rearing unfriendly magical vegetabless, after he learnt about their rare qualities in healing.

"Bad morning, huh," Harry grinned at Ron as Ron threw him a deadly look.

"It's unfair! All I ever did was to say urgh. Could we get Neville to disown that thing?" Ron suggested, clearly not intending to forgive the spinach any time soon.

"Come on, we could go for an early breakfast," Harry cheered Ron.

As both of them trudged out of the boys' dormitory, they saw Hermione in the common room, deeply engrossed in her copy of Advanced Charms. Armed with the book in one hand and her wand in another, Hermione flicked the wand according to a certain paragraph of instruction. A glittering stream of light emitted from her wand and went straight at Ron, who looked positively stunned. His right leg did a nasty split, and he found himself struggling to balance as he stood in the practice posture of a ballerina. Harry let out an uncontrolled chuckle as he held out his hands to steady Ron.

"Renegerade!" Hermione chanted as she realised what she had done.

"Ron, I'm so sorry! I was just trying out this new spell before our lesson later." Hermione apologised, as she hurried over to Ron, who was sitting onthe floor and vigorously massaging his muscles, which he was positve would never be quite the same again.

"Harry, didn't you tell me that the bad luck spell Malfoy cast would wear off by this morning?" Ron groaned.

"Well, we're slightly early today, aren't we? It's not daybreak yet," Harry offered, feeling ever so amused by Ron's unfortunate morning.

"That's why I told you to steer clear of Malfoy, didn't I?" Hermione went off unsympathetically. "It's no use bickering with such a sleazy Slytherinanyway. He's just trying to provoke you!"

Wishing to stop Hermione from the lecture, Ron decidedly change the topic.

"Look! The sun's out. My saving day has arrived!" Ron let out cheerfully, as the sky outside brightened up.

"Come on, let's go!"

And they climbed out through the portrait hole.

Professor McGonagoll was heading in their direction, and was clearly relieved to spot them.