Several people chortled. Hermione didn't answer.
"Don't you go upsetting them and telling them they've got to take clothes and salaries!" said George warningly. "You'll put them off their cooking!"
Just then, Neville caused a slight diversion by turning into a large canary.
"Oh, sorry, Neville!" Fred shouted over all the laughter. "I forgot, it was the custard creams we hexed. . . ."
Within a minute, however, Neville had molted, and once his feathers had fallen off, he reappeared looking entirely normal. He even joined in laughing.
"Canary Creams!" Fred shouted to the excitable crowd. "George and I invented them, seven Sickles each, a bargain!"
It was nearly one in the morning when Sadie finally went up to the dormitory with Hermione, Lavender, Tracey and Parvati. 
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The start of December brought wind and sleet to Hogwarts. Drafty though the castle always was in winter. Sadie was glad of its fires and thick walls every time she passed the Durmstrang ship on the lake, which was pitching in the high winds, its black sails billowing against the dark skies. She thought the Beauxbatons caravan was likely to be pretty chilly too. Hagrid, she noticed, was keeping Madame Maxime's horses well provided with their preferred drink of single-malt whiskey. The fumes wafting from the trough in the comer of their paddock was enough to make the entire Care of Magical Creatures class light-headed. This was unhelpful, as they were still tending the horrible skrewts and needed their wits about them.
"I'm not sure whether they hibernate or not," Hagrid told the shivering class in the windy pumpkin patch next lesson. "Thought we'd jus' try an see if they fancied a kip. . . . we'll jus' settle 'em down in these boxes. . . ."
There were now only ten skrewts left, apparently their desire to kill one another had not been exercised out of them. Each of them was now approaching six feet in length. Their thick grey armor; their powerful, scuttling legs, their fire-blasting ends, their stings and their suckers, combined to make the skrewts the most repulsive things Sadie had ever seen. The class looked dispiritedly at the enormous boxes Hagrid had brought out, all lined with pillows and fluffy blankets.
"We'll jus' lead 'em in here," Hagrid said, "an' put the lids on, and we'll see what happens."
But the skrewts, it transpired, did not hibernate, and did not appreciate being forced into pillow-lined boxes and nailed in. Hagrid was soon yelling, "Don panic, now, don' panic!" while the skrewts rampaged around the pumpkin patch, now strewn with the smoldering wreckage of the boxes. 
Most of the class, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle in the lead, had fled into Hagrid's cabin through the back door and barricaded themselves in. Harry, Ron, Sadie and Hermione, however, were among those who remained outside trying to help Hagrid. Together they managed to restrain and tie up nine of the skrewts, though at the cost of numerous burns and cuts. Finally, only one skrewt was left.
"Don' frighten him, now!" Hagrid shouted as Sadie, Ron and Harry used their wands to shoot jets of fiery sparks at the skrewt, which was advancing menacingly on them, its sting arched, quivering, over its back. "Jus' try an slip the rope 'round his sting, so he won hurt any o' the others!"
"Yeah, we wouldn't want that!" Ron shouted angrily as he, Sadie and Harry backed into the wall of Hagrid's cabin, still holding the skrewt off with their sparks.
"Well, well, well. . . . this does look like fun."
Rita Skeeter was leaning on Hagrid's garden fence, looking in at the mayhem. She was wearing a thick magenta cloak with a furry purple collar today, and her crocodile-skin handbag was over her arm.