October Puzzle Contest

[hpsmarty]

No: HPFGUIDX 45258

And here is the new puzzle for the month (well, the rest of the 
month, anyway) of October. It is a logic puzzle.

REMEMBER, don't post your answer (OR questions OR comments) to the 
list.  Email it to hpsmarty at aol.com.  That's hpsmarty AT aol DOT com.

*****************************************************************
Five Gryffindor students – four third-year students and one second-
year – are all doing their  homework in Gryffindor Common Room when 
the Weasley twins rush in.  Fred yells "There's a troll in Hogwarts 
Castle, and it's headed towards Gryffindor Tower!"  "Quick, everyone 
get downstairs to the Great Hall," screams George. 

The five Gryffindor students rush through the painting of the Fat 
Lady, without noticing that Fred and George have not followed them.  
They run into to the Great Hall only to find a surprised-looking 
Professor McGonagall.  After they explain what happened, she says, "I 
would expect Gryffindors to be less gullible and more experienced.  
Obviously, Fred and George Weasley wanted you all out of the way so 
they could perform some sort of mischief.  I suggest you return to 
the Gryffindor Common Room immediately before you find that your 
socks have been charmed to play snare drums all night long."

The five embarrassed Gryffindors hurry back up the stairs and through 
the secret corridors.  When they get back to Gryffindor Tower, they 
find that the Common Room is full of colorful, flying, swooping 
butterflies – and that the parchments containing their homework are 
missing.

"Oh no," groans Ron, "Fred and George transfigured all of our 
homework into butterflies!"

"How will I ever finish my Charms assignment?" moans Hermione.

"It looks like a simple charm," says Harry, carefully watching the 
butterflies soar around the room.  "They each seem to have different 
colors and markings, and they land for a few seconds every five 
minutes or so.  We just have to catch them."

"That's easy for you to say, Harry, you're a seeker – you can grab 
small flying things. I won't be able to catch anything!" Neville says 
dejectedly.

"You can do it, Neville," says Ginny encouragingly, "It's not 
hard."  "You just have to watch them carefully and wait until they 
land," she adds, and then leaps up and grabs a striped butterfly 
resting by the fireplace.

And each of the students, including even Neville, do manage to catch 
a butterfly.  Eventually, Hermione finds a spell to transfigure the 
butterflies back into homework parchments, and it turns out that only 
one student has caught his own homework.

Using the clues in the text above and listed below, along with what 
you know about Hogwarts and its students, can you figure out which 
student caught which color butterfly, where he or she caught it, and, 
when transfigured, who each homework belonged to and what subject it 
was?  (Each student was working on a different subject.)

1. The most spectacular butterfly had colors which changed every time 
it flapped its wings, blinking from red to yellow to green as it 
swooped around the Common Room, until it was finally caught on the 
stairway and transfigured back into Ron's Astronomy homework.

2. It was the green spotted butterfly, not the butterfly caught under 
a table, that was the History of Magic homework.

3. Neville was helped in his efforts to catch a large purple 
butterfly by the members of the 1845 Gryffindor House Quidditch Team, 
who yelled advice when the butterfly landed on their photograph.

4. The large, solid yellow butterfly turned out to be neither Harry's 
homework nor the Divination homework.

5. The two boys who did not catch their own homework parchments 
caught each other's, as did the two girls.

6. One of the butterflies landed on a copy of *The Monster Book of 
Monsters,* which helped Ron catch it.

7. One student was working on Potions homework, and one butterfly was 
red.