"I'm sure Dumbledore is going to tell the Order, anyway," Hermione said, shaking her head.
                              
"Yeah, but he'll be the one to tell her," Ron grumbled, and they continued discussing the Knight Bus quietly.
                              
However, the rest of the school repeated everything they said the next day when the newspaper announced slaughter. Fortunately, there were not a lot of rumors about the connection between Hagrid's trip and the Knight Bus massacre. After a few days had passed, passionate talks about the Quidditch final replaced the rumors and talk of disaster. 
                              
Both teams were training venomously and attacks were as relentless as ever. The Slytherin team was constantly trying to steal the Quidditch pitch, but Ron decided two could play that game. He switched their training schedule so much, that the Slytherin team could not keep track of them all the time. 
                              
Their teachers had almost given up on teaching any of their classes, but determinately tried to drive them through the material anyway. Snape had almost finished with using Animomency and was threatening even harder spells to work out. McGonagall had started Apparation, which looked even harder than Harry originally thought, but he could not try it until he turned seventeen, anyway.
                              
Ron amazingly held it together rather well and when he was too stressed, Hermione would try to calm him down. Harry thought Ron somewhat resembled Oliver Wood when he would extensively go over Quidditch plays before, during and after all of their classes, but Harry and the rest of the team put up with him as best they could. His strategies were impressive and the team was as better as ever. When they actually got the pitch, Ron worked them hard, and they never felt more ready for the match that was only two weeks away. The Slytherin team tried to butt into their practices, but Ron just held impromptu practices in between classes. 
                              
Unfortunately, one practice they were not paying attention to the time and realized they only had five minutes to get to their next class. They raced down to Defense Against the Dark Arts as fast as they could and sat down right as Snape dramatically burst through the door. 
                              
"Quiet down!" he half-shouted even through the class was completely quiet. He was sweating and severely disgruntled. 
                              
"Alright, as all of you hopefully know, we have managed to get through Animomency as appallingly as possible. Now, we will work on the most powerful and, for a lack of better word, deadly form of magic. The Killing Curse. Now, most of you sadly think that Avada Kedavra is the only spell that kills. However, there are other ways. The reason why Avada Kedavra is so dangerous is because it is unblockable and irreversible," Snape paused and glanced at Harry before continuing.
                              
"Other spells can be blocked and do not necessarily result in death. The person can be restored back to health, but in most cases, the person will die, then or soon after," Snape was almost whispering, but they heard every chilling word. 
                              
When class ended, everyone left quietly toward the door. Snape had been ignoring Harry since their stare down before the break, but when Harry moved to the door, he glanced over at Snape and they made eye contact. 
                              
When Snape did not say anything, Harry turned slowly and followed Ron and Hermione out the door. His Occulmency training was telling him that Snape wanted to say something to him, and as he went down to the Great Hall, he thought about going back, but decided against it. Snape might have been ignoring him lately, but Harry was not about to walk right up to him and ask him something.
                              
Ron, of course, was upset about learning Avada Kedavra, and Hermione tried to reason with him. However, Ron pushed just it all out of his mind when they started training, again. They were not there a half-an-hour into practice before the Slytherin team came strutting out to the pitch. Pucey was leading their very heavyweight team, and Malfoy, severely disheveled and apathetic as he was nowadays, was lagging behind. Ron landed at the entrance to the pitch, and was joined by the rest of the Gryffindor team and Hermione, who had been watching them practice from the stands.