Chapter Seven; Care of Magical Creatures

Thanks everybody, and I COULD tell you whether or not he makes it, but then that would spoil the rest of the story so I guess that you'll just have to read it and find out for yourself!

Later on that afternoon Harry told Hermione all about his mother's letter. "How can a human body temperature reach two hundred degrees?" she questioned. "That's impossible." She said.

"Not for wizards and witches it's not, our body temperatures can go about a hundred degrees higher than a regular humans so somewhere around 99.6 and one hundred is normal for us. I would have thought you of all people would have known that Hermione." Ron told her as they started their way down the hill and into the grounds by Hagrid's hut.

Although Harry was very excited about his first Care of Magical Creatures class, he was also very worried about his brother and had no idea how he was going to open up his Monster book of Monster since whenever he tried to, it nearly bit his hand off. Obviously Ron was thinking the very same thing because that was the very next thing out of his mouth after Hagrid had greeted his class.

"I have a great first lesson for all of you today, just turn to page 239." He told them.

"And how exactly are we supposed to do that while being able to keep all of our fingers!?" Ron exclaimed.

"Well just stroke the spine of course." Hagrid replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world before he led them into the woods and the class began to gasp and back away as a half eagle half horse walked out in front of them from behind the tree. Harry had known this to be a hippogriff from reading his Fantastic Beasts and where to find them.

Harry gulped, even though he loved animals, he wasn't sure how he felt about this particular animal since it looked very frightening and mysterious and also very dark (grey) in color. "Say hello to Buckbeak." Hagrid said before Buckbeak decided to relieve himself out in front of them and then started to clean his feathers.

"Now the first thing that you need to know about hippogriffs is that they're very proud creatures. You never want to insult one of them, because it just might be the last thing that you'll ever do." He said as Buckbeak looked back up at the class and screeched before blinking his eyes and stretching out his wings and shaking them. "Right, so who wants to come up here and say hullo?" Hagrid questioned as everyone except Harry quickly backed away without his knowledge.

"Well done Harry." Hagrid told him as Harry quickly turned his head to see Ron nervously glancing up at the sky and whistling. Then Harry turned to look back at Hagrid and figured that he might as well stick with it now. "Alright Harry, now the first thing you need to do before you approach him is bow your head. If he bows back, that means that you can go and touch him, and if not well,.. I'd rather not go there right now." He told him as Harry took a deep breath and felt his heart starting to pound up against his chest.

He slowly bowed in front of the animal although he felt rather foolish doing so. Buckbeak cocked his head at him and screeched again before he slowly sunk onto his knees. Hagrid fed him a dead ferret as a reward before he stood back up and Harry slowly rose to his feet again. "Alright, you can go ahead and pat him now." Hagrid told him as Harry slowly walked over to Buckbeak and stuck out his hand.

"Very good, but remember to let him come to you." Hagrid told him as he waited for Buckbeak to approach him and he turned his head and shut his eyes tightly before he realized that he felt the creature's beak nuzzling up against him. "Well done Harry! Well done!" Hagrid cried as he started clapping his hands together along with the rest of the class. "Ten points to Gryffindor!" he exclaimed.

"And now I reckon that he'll let you ride him now." He told him.

"What!?" Harry cried anxiously before Hagrid lifted him off the ground and picked him up and then placed him on top of Buckbeak's back. "Hagrid wait!" Harry exclaimed but it was already too late.

"Now don't pull out any of his feathers, he won't thank you for that!" Hagrid told him before he slapped the creature's behind and Harry suddenly crouched down and wrapped his arms tightly around his neck suddenly feeling like he was back on Diamond the dragon's back again. Although the dragon ride had been nowhere near as bumpy as this. Buckbeak continued to run until he had gathered enough speed and stretched his wings before he started flapping them and taking off into the air.

Harry screamed and tightly shut his eyes once again. Once he understood that he was still alive he slowly opened them and noticed that he was gently gliding over the lake. Buckbeak let out another loud and proud screech as Harry grinned and spread out his arms finally realizing how much fun he was having and let out a great cry of joy. "Woohoo!" he hollered when suddenly he felt another speed bump and grabbed back onto Buckbeak's neck as they climbed higher over the castle and then all of a sudden Buckbeak flew right into something.

The only thing was that Harry didn't understand what it was. For it was some invisible force in front of the castle. Buckbeak shook his head and continued to hover for a moment continuing to flap his wings before he heard Hagrid's whistle and turned back around and flew back over the woods before landing in the dirt bellow with a triumphant gallop.

"Well done Harry!" Hagrid cried. "And well done Buckbeak!" he exclaimed as everyone else continued clapping before Buckbeak pulled to a stop and sunk back down on his knees for Harry to dismount. Then he stood back up again as Hagrid fed him another ferret as a reward.

"Yeah you're not dangerous at all are you?" Malfoy began with a grin before taking a bite out of his green apple. "Are you? You great ugly brute!" he exclaimed when all of a sudden Buckbeak reared up on his hind legs (or hooves) and let out a great angry snort before scratching him with one of his talons and knocked him back over onto the ground while Harry and Ron began to laugh quietly to themselves.

"Buckbeak stop that!" Hagrid scolded before throwing another dead ferret off into the opposite direction. "Away you silly creature!" he demanded.

"Oh no, it's killed me, it's killed me." Malfoy groaned and complained.

"Calm down it's just a scratch." Hagrid reassured him. "Come on, I'll take you to the hospital wing." He told him before he lifted him up into his arms and carried him away.

"It's his own fault, he should have been paying attention to Hagrid when he told him not to insult him but he did it anyway!" Ron exclaimed.

"Yeah but I just hope that Hagrid doesn't get into trouble for it." Hermione said but Harry wasn't listening he was still thinking about what had just happened. Not about Malfoy, but what had Buckbeak ran into when they were in the air? "Are you alright Harry?" Hermione questioned him as he continued to stare at Buckbeak.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." He said as he watched the creature starting to clean his feathers once again before looking back over at Harry and screeching.