Normally, I would go to the library with Harry, Ron and Hermione to study on an afternoon like this, but I really didn't feel like it today. It was the date: it was my mother's birthday. I usually gave her an extravagant card and a giant box of chocolates that I would buy out of my pocket money. Even though I couldn't send her a present, I still felt bad. Bad for missing it, I guess. I didn't tell them this though. I said I was going to study in my dormitory, which would be empty.
I wasn't studying. I was thinking through things. It was late April by now, which meant that there was only about two and half months left of term. Exams were coming closer, but that wasn't really what I was worried about. The sooner exams came, the sooner the end of exams came, which meant the sooner it was that Harry went down the trapdoor. He could lose his life if he wasn't prepard properly.
Hermione came into the dorm as I drifted off to sleep. "Sally!" she shouted. "You're not studying!"
"I'm just taking a little break, I swear," I yawned. "What's up?"
"We're going to go visit Hagrid. Are you coming?"
"Yeah, of course," I smiled, grabbing my wand. "Let's go."
I looked out the window. It was almost evening. On the way down to Hagrid's, Ron explained the situation to me. He was the one that always told me what was going on. He recounted what had happened in the library, to the disapproval of Hermione.
It wasn't any surprise to me, or Ron, that the curtains in Hagrid's hut were shut, and there was a roaring fire in the grate. After politely refusing stoat sandwiches and tea, Hagrid asked us what we wanted to ask him.
"Yes," Harry said quickly. It sounded like he meant business. "We were wondering if you could tell us what was guarding the Stone apart from Fluffy."
Hagrid furrowed his brow. "O' course I can't. Number one, I don't know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn't tell yeh if I could. That's Stone's here for a good reason. It was almost stolen outta Gringotts – I s'ppose yeh've worked that out an' all? Beats me how yeh even know about Fluffy."
Harry can be far too blunt sometimes. Now Hermione – she's the one that's good at getting information.
"Oh, come on, Hagrid," she said flatteringly. "You might not want to tell us, but you do know, you know everything that goes on around here." He smiled, but tried to make it look like he wasn't.
"We only wondered who had done the guarding, really," I continued. "We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you."
"Well, I don't s'pose it could hurt ter tell yeh that... let's see... he borrowed Fluffy from me... then some o' the teachers did enchantments... Professor Sprout, Professor Flitwick, Professor McGonagall, Professor Quirrell... and Dumbledore himself did somethin', o' course. Hand on, I've forgotten someone..."
"Professor Snape?" I suggested, realising that he was the only major Professor that he hadn't mentioned.
"Yeah!" Hagrid said.
"Snape?" Harry asked, astounded.
"Yeah – yer not still on abou' that are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect the stone. He's not about ter steal it."
Harry, Ron and Hermione all looked at each other, exchanging the look that said that they still thought Snape was the bad guy in all of this.
"You're the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy, right Hagrid?" Harry asked apprehensively. "And you wouldn't tell anyone, would you? Not even one of the teachers?"
"Not a soul knows except me an' Dumbledore."
"Well, that's something." There was an air of mingled approval and sarcasm in Harry's voice. "Hagrid, can we have a window open? I'm boiling."
"Can't, Harry, sorry," Hagrid muttered, and glanced at the fire.
"Hagrid?" Harry said. "What's that?"
But the four of us already knew what it was. After the conversation in the library, it wasn't too hard for them to figure out why Hagrid was acting so shifty, and why he was putting up with such heat in his cabin.
"Where did you get it, Hagrid?" Ron asked, crouching down to the fire to admire it. "It must have cost you a fortune!"
"Won it," Hagrid said, sounding surprised. "Las' night. I was down the village havin' a few drinks an' got into a game of cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest."
"But what are you going to do when it's hatched?" Hermione asked. Always the rational one.
"Well, I've bin doin' some readin'," Hagrid grinned. I didn't actually think he could read, but hey. "Got this outta the library – Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit – it's a bit outta date, o' course, but it's all in here. Keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mother breathe on 'em, see, an' when it hatches, feed it on a bucket of brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An' see here – how ter recognise diff'rent eggs – what I got there's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them."
"Hagrid, you live in a wooden house," Hermione pointed out. She had a fair point, but Hagrid didn't hear her. He was humming to the fire.
One week later, Harry was bought a note from Hagrid during the breakfast mail. It's hatching.
"Let's go," Ron said, as soon as he saw the note.
"No!" Hermione said, aghast.
"Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?" Ron whispered back.
"We've got lessons, we'll get into trouble, and that's nothing to what Hagrid's going to be in when someone finds out what he's doing -"
"Shut up!" Harry hissed at them. Malfoy was standing behind them as they argued coming out of the hall. They had no idea how much he'd head. I suspect he'd heard everything from 'dragon atching', which was why he was listening in the first place.
They didn't stop arguing all the way down to Herbology, and finally, just before I decided to shoot one of them, Hermione agreed to go see Hagrid during morning break. The other three dropped their trowels as soon as the bell went and ran down to Hagrid's hut.
"You'd want to put those trowels away, Miss Potter," Professor Sprout said to me. I nodded as I saw the others disappear through Hagrid's door. I set to work cleaning up after them, suspecting that over my next six years at Hogwarts, this would be much of what I would be doing. As I put the tools back in their proper storage places, Malfoy came up to me.
"Is it true that that miserable oaf has a dragon?"
I paused, and wondered whether I should tell him the truth. He did need to know about it, and he did need to see it. Should I be the one to tell him?
"I'm going to assume that's a yes, Potter?" he asked.
"If you get Hagrid into trouble, you will regret it, understand, Malfoy?" I absolutely hated getting called by my last name. It was something the teacher's at my regular, non-magical school did too.
He smirked at me before he went rushing off down to Hagrid's hut. Worried, I ran after him, making sure that I had actually put everything away in it's proper place. He was peering in the window when I got down there.
"You're being stupid," I said to him. "Isn't it good enough to know that he's got a dragon without seeing it?"
"How many times in your life do you see a dragon, Potter? Where's your sense of adventure?"
"Get out of here. If they find out you've seen it, they won't be happy."
"And I'm soo scared of them," he smirked, and looked back in through the window. Suddenly, his face went pale, and then he ran up to the school. Hagrid had spotted him. Quickly, before he got to the window, I ducked between two of them, and then crouched down and crawled around the hut.
The front door opened, and Harry said one word. "Malfoy."
Malfoy was unusually smiley during the next week, and it was disconcerting. The other three spent almost all their free time trying to convince Hagrid to give up the dragon. He was neglecting his duties to the school, and his house stank of brandy.
Finally, a week after the hatching, I went down with them. Hagrid introduced me to Norbert, and then set about serenading it.
"He's lost his marbles," Ron whispered to me, knowing I was probably the only one mature enough not to smirk and giggle.
"Hagrid," Harry said, "give it a fortnight and Norbert's going to be as big as your house. Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment."
"He won't," I said. "He's not that stupid."
"I – I know I can't keep him for ever," Hagrid said, while everybody ignored me, as usual. "But I can't jus' dump him, I can't."
I looked up from the book I was reading, which Norbert had just tried sending flames at (unsuccessfully. There was just a puff of smoke around me.)
Although it had grown to three times its original size in the past week, it still looked remarkably small for a dragon. And it looked incredibly slimy, but that could be because of brandy and chicken blood mix that Hagrid had just fed it, which it had poured all over itself and it's new bed.
"Charlie," I said, absently.
"You're losing it too," Ron said. "I'm Ron, remember?"
I shook my head. "No, your brother Charlie, in Romania, yeah? Doesn't he work with dragons? We could send Norbert to him. Charlie can take care of him, and then release him back into the wild, like they do with disadvantaged animals at muggle zoos."
"Brilliant!" Ron beamed. "How about it, Hagrid?"
Eventually, Hagrid agreed to let us ask him. Ron set to work writing the letter straight away, and it was sent with Hedwig by lunch time.
We got a reply the following Wednesday night. I was sitting with Harry and Hermione, doing nothing, as usual, when the clock stuck midnight. The portrait hole swung open, and Ron pulled off the invisibility cloak. "The dratted thing bit me!" he fumed, holding out his hand, wrapped in a handkerchief. While he told us the story of how it happened, I unfurled the makeshift bandage and looked at it. It was already swollen to twice its size, and was an unsightly green colour.
"You should get that checked out by Madam Pomfrey," I said to him, as Harry and Hermione rushed to the window to let the newly arrived Hedwig in.
"Charlie's answer!" Harry announced, and we read it.
"Midnight on Saturday," I said. "The cloak should be big enough to cover... three of us and the thing in a crate."
The other three nodded. They just wanted to get rid of it.
The next afternoon, Ron went to Madam Pomfrey, hoping that she wouldn't recognise a dragon bite. Chances are she probably would, but she wouldn't tell anyone about it. It was during Potions that Malfoy found out about it. Due to the fact that Ron wasn't there, Professor Snape reshuffled the partners, and put me with Slytherin that the trio probably hated the most.
"Where's Ginger today?" Draco asked under his breath. I don't know why. We were working over the other side of the classroom from Harry and Hermione.
"Hospital wing," I replied, stirring the potion we were making.
"Why?"
It took all my strength not to pause and think about this one.
"The dragon bit him," I whispered. "Poisonous."
"Ah," he smirked. "Poor Weasley, huh?"
I ignored him for the rest of the lesson, but I assume Draco went to visit him during our afternoon break, because when the rest of us went to visit him at the end of the day, he said that Malfoy had borrowed one of his books.
"It'll all be over at midnight on Saturday," Hermione said calmly. Her intent was to make Ron feel better, but he broke into a sweat, and sat straight up.
"Midnight on Saturday!" he said. "Oh no! I've just remembered – Charlie's letter was in that book Malfoy took. He's going to know we're getting rid of Norbert!"
Madam Pomfrey came over to shoo us out before we could answer.
"Too late to change the plan now," I told Harry and Hermione as we walked back to the Common Room. "We haven't got time to send another owl, and this is our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We'll have to risk it. Can you two tell Hagrid? I don't think I want to go down there."
When we arrived at eleven thirty on Saturday night, Hagrid was almost in tears. Harry and Hermione were worrying about what they were about to do. I was worried that Norbert was going to give us away.
"He's got lots o' rats an' some brandy fer the journey," he sobbed. "A' I've packed his teddy bear, in case he gets lonely."
A tearing sound from the inside of the crate sounded slightly like Teddy being ripped to shreds. I wasn't going to be the one to mention it to Hagrid though.
As Hagrid said goodbyes to Norbert, the three of us worked out how to carry him, and stepped under the cloak. Laboriously, we carried him up to the castle, up to the tallest tower. It wasn't easy. I would have used a charm, but that was third year stuff. We weren't supposed to know that, and if Hermione hadn't thought of it, I wasn't going to mention it to her.
Just as we got to the corridor leading up to the tower, a lamp came into view, and Harry and Hermione shrank back into the shadows, forgetting that we couldn't be seen.
It's strange seeing teachers in their pyjamas. Professor McGonagall was in a tartan dressing gown and was wearing a hairnet, and was dragging Draco by the ear.
"Detention!" she shouted. "And twenty points from Slytherin. Wandering around in the middle of the night, how dare you -"
"You don't understand, Professor. Harry Potter's coming – he's got a dragon!"
"What utter nonsense! How dare you tell such lies? Come on – I shal see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!"
As soon as they were out of sight, we headed up the spiral staircase to the tower. As soon as we were out in the open air, Hermione threw off the cloak and started doing a little happy dance. "Malfoy's got detention! I could sing!"
"Please don't," I muttered, sitting down between two turrets. Norbert thrashed around in his crate.
Surprisingly, for the next ten minutes while we waited, we didn't talk. It was nice just to be out in the open night air. When Charlie's friends arrived, we gladly helped them strap Norbert into their special harness. We thanked them, waved them goodbye, and watched as Norbert disappeared into the night air. Finally, they thought their problems with Norbert were over.
"I think I'll stay up here for a little while longer," I told them. "I'll be fine, I swear."
They nodded, and then left down the staircase again. Lying down for a minute, I remembered what happened when they got down to the bottom. Alarmed, I looked around me and saw the cloak lying abandoned on the ground. Then Filch's slimy voice echoed up the staricase.
I threw the cloak on and ran down as silently as I could. I was too late to save them from detention and social ostracism. Gloomily, I made my way back to Gryffindor tower and up to bed. I folded the cloak up and put it at the bottom of my trunk. I'd give it back to Harry later.
Hey guys, hows it going?
So, I thought I'd better do as much writing as I can before the horrible period starts. I have four weeks left of my last year of high school, then I have a performance exam, auditions for uni, a week of school exams, three days of revision at school (ugh), graduation, then i have one week off, and then i have my important exams for uni entrance. All of that over ten weeks! i'm so annoyed about it, i even stopped using proper punctuation and grammar towards the end of this paragraph.
Anyway, I'm planning to finish writing the first book by the end of this week, and start the second book, so I can update more quicklier, and I don't actually have to write before I put the chapters up. I think this might be my favourite chapter so far, because I finally figured out what I want to happen in later moments in time, so I know how to write these chapters better.
Please read and review. Oh, and for those of you who are into it, I've put in an AVPM reference somewhere in this chapter. Find it, and tell me that you've found it, and you have my utmost respect.
Love always, gabi xx