I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm."
In spite of himself, Harry leaned around his pile of books for a better
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look at the cage. Lockhart placed a hand on the cover. Dean and
Seamus had stopped laughing now. Neville was cowering in his front
row seat.
"I must ask you not to scream," said Lockhart in a low voice. "It might
provoke them."
As the whole class held its breath, Lockhart whipped off the cover.
"Yes," he said dramatically. "Freshly caught Cornish pixies. "
Seamus Finnigan couldn't control himself. He let out a snort of
laughter that even Lockhart couldn't mistake for a scream of terror.
"Yes?" He smiled at Seamus.
"Well, they're not - they're not very - dangerous, are they?" Seamus
choked.
"Don't be so sure!" said Lockhart, waggling a finger annoyingly at
Seamus. "Devilish tricky little blighters they can be!"
The pixies were electric blue and about eight inches high, with pointed
faces and voices so shrill it was like listening to a lot of budgies
arguing. The moment the cover had been removed, they
*101*
had started jabbering and rocketing around, rattling the bars and
making bizarre faces at the people nearest them.
"Right, then," Lockhart said loudly. "Let's see what you make of
them!" And he opened the cage.
It was pandemonium. The pixies shot in every direction like rockets.
Two of them seized Neville by the ears and lifted him into the air.
Several shot straight through the window, showering the back row
with broken glass. The rest proceeded to wreck the classroom more
effectively than a rampaging rhino. They grabbed ink bottles and
sprayed the class with them, shredded books and papers, tore pictures
from the walls, up-ended the waste basket, grabbed bags and books
and threw them out of the smashed window; within minutes, half the
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class was sheltering under desks and Neville was swinging from the
iron chandelier in the ceiling.
"Come on now - round them up, round them up, they're only pixies,"
Lockhart shouted.
He rolled up his sleeves, brandished his wand, and bellowed,
"Peskipiksi Pesternomi!"
It had absolutely no effect; one of the pixies seized his wand and
threw it out of the window, too. Lockhart gulped and dived under his
own desk, narrowly avoiding being squashed by Neville, who fell a
second later as the chandelier gave way.
The bell rang and there was a mad rush toward the exit. In the relative
calm that followed, Lockhart straightened up, caught sight of Harry,
Ron, and Hermione, who were almost at the door, and said, "Well, I'll
ask you three to just nip the rest of them back into their cage." He
swept past them and shut the door quickly behind him.
*102*
"Can you believe him?" roared Ron as one of the remaining pixies bit
him painfully on the ear.
"He just wants to give us some hands-on experience," said Hermione,
immobilizing two pixies at once with a clever Freezing Charm and
stuffing them back into their cage.
"Hands on? "said Harry, who was trying to grab a pixie dancing out of