"Tell us about the hobs, please, Harry," Luna suggested. Her quill was poised in a stance that I'd come to regard as her journalism mode rather than just being a student. The other Ravenclaw and Slytherin second-years looked on in anticipation. "They haven't been seen in Britain for ages."
It was shocking how fast the wizarding world could adjust to their new status quo. It hadn't been a week since Hogwarts had received unarguable proof of the Nevernever, Britain had signed a long-forgotten pact with the fae, and the entire school had been forced into slumber while creatures menaced the grounds, and it was all becoming just another piece of weird history. The full moon came, I had to sub for Remus' classes, and the kids were more interested in unusual creatures than in the extradimensional politics.
Mathilda's class, the period before, had basically asked the same kinds of things, but endured me trying to teach them the libertas charm instead.
"Shadowy, mean, and prone to getting lured into the Whomping Willow," I explained. "They're pretty similar to demiguises, so I guess we can talk about those too…"
Luna had already hit me up about my general exploits over the previous weekend, and I wasn't sure how much was going to make it into the Quibbler. Apparently the tabloid was experiencing a sudden surge in readership, since they'd been vindicated in the December edition as the only ones that had been talking about the fae. Fortunately, the Daily Prophet had so far been uninterested in interviewing me, possibly because Rita was their only reporter I'd ever talked to, and she was more interested in my family and love life.
I managed to make it through the class/interview, and my own year was next. It was as intense as most of my classes had been all week: Oliver and Alexis were still pointedly not talking. Charms, transfiguration, and defense—the classes they still had in common—had required a frantic reshuffling of partners. My own relationship with my grandmother, head of house, and transfiguration professor was still strained, so McGonagall's class, in particular, had been very tense. She was hesitant to make a big deal of forcing a reorganization of partners, and Remus wasn't an experienced enough professor yet to know how to handle it.
Flitwick, at least, was immune to the teen drama and took it all in stride.
After a sedate lunch and after-lunch period, I got to the fun part of my Friday afternoon, when I had the third- and fourth-years in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff for my last two periods. "Field trip, everyone," I told Hermione's class, and led them out toward the grounds, where Hagrid was planning to meet us with his own afternoon NEWT class of seventh-years in tow. That NEWT class was just the students that had dropped charms (where I should have been if I hadn't been covering for Remus).
"What are we doing, Harry?" Hermione asked. It clearly still grated on her every time she called me that instead of Professor Dresden in my role as Remus' substitute, but I wasn't angling to be anything more than a TA, and didn't want to put on airs.
"Looking into the kind of damage magical creatures can do," I explained. Fortunately, only a couple of the hippogriffs had died, but several had taken wounds from the griffins. Similarly, only a few griffins had been injured enough that they couldn't flee, but their corpses were an excellent demonstration of what hippogriffs could do in a fight.
As far as we could tell, the thestrals had gotten away unscathed with bellies full of pixies, and the hobs had left the different types of flying horses alone. But there were a few pixies to show off that had died from being punted into structures by our spells, and Hagrid, the Willow, and I had made a couple of hob corpses to show off.
Even with preserving charms, this was probably the last day we could show them off before they needed to be cut up for components and then disposed of before they started to stink.
On the way down to the grounds, the class formed a bit of a parade behind me, with Hermione's clique immediately behind and the rest of the kids stretching back in their own little friend groups. While they were trying to be quiet so as not to be overheard by the rest of their classmates, I had no problem hearing the discussion. Seamus continued some discussion they'd apparently been having earlier, "C'mon. I'll ask Bonesey, an' then y'ask Abbott. Easy."
"You and Bones?" Ron scoffed.
"What? Just 'cause I ain't a proper pureblood? Maybe she'll like a li'l tryst wi' a bad boy?"
"Points for knowing the word 'tryst' at least," Hermione interjected. "But I think she and Macmillan are together."
"I can't go to Hogsmeade for Valentine's anyway," Neville explained, grudgingly. I glanced back and caught a look of longing from him as he gazed at the object of his affections. I'd seen him shooting the same looks at Hannah Abbott the last time I'd subbed for their class, as well. Ah, the fun of when young wizards and witches discovered each other.
"Your parents will let you go. Black hasn't been seen in a month," Ron argued. There was a brief silence, which I assumed was the rest of them staring at him for how dumb that was, or at me realizing that I'd been the one who'd last seen him. I kept my eyes front, letting them work it out themselves. "Or we could just smuggle you out in the cloak."
"We will not!" Hermione insisted, her voice rising enough that the others shushed her as we passed through the castle doors out onto the grounds.
"Hmm," Seamus mused. "Double date in the greenhouses? She's gotta like plants, bein' a 'Puff?"
"I still don't think you and Bones–" Ron began.
"Nah," Seamus interrupted. "I ain't gonna try t'get in Ernie's way. I meant double wi' you two."
"What?" Ron and Hermione gasped at the same time.
Seamus chuckled and said, "Jus' a thought."
As much as I hated to interrupt Seamus calling out the romantic tension that had sprung into their friend group as they all hit puberty, I probably should start teaching. "This is where most of the fighting happened," I called back to the group, getting their attention and stopping the side chatter. "You'll notice the ground is still torn up from where the griffins and hippogriffs landed. That crater over there is where Hagrid brought down one of the griffins with his crossbow…"
I proceeded to walk them through the fight, asking questions about why different spells had worked or not on the various creatures. By the time we got to Hagrid's hut, where the bodies had been dragged, there was a lot of interest in pointing out all the bits of damage from my story. The seventh-year students in Hagrid's class helped position the bodies to show the various wounds as I and Hagrid alternated describing them.
Our class was interrupted by an unearthly, high-pitched wailing coming from behind the large metal cube bin, basically a dumpster, that Hagrid had next to his hut, prepared to take the unusable remains of rendering the corpses. Dead horse-sized beasts had a lot of guts.
"A banshee!" Seamus gasped.
"Not in the daytime," Hermione corrected. "Maybe one of the hobs wasn't dead?"
"Actu'ly," Hagrid mused, "Kinda sounds like a cat…"
Sure enough, with the third-years pulling their wands out behind us as I rounded the corner with Hagrid and the seventh-years not far behind, that was exactly what it was: two very distracted cats.
"Crookshanks!?" Hermione exclaimed as she caught sight of the very educational vista before her.
The exclamation scared the cats, and they separated and bolted, quickly disappearing across the grounds back toward the castle. "Was that Mrs. Norris?" Ron asked, bewildered.
"Ha!" Seamus barked. "T'least your cat's int'rested in datin'!"