Hogwarts a History – In the dark of the night
Chapter 01 – Appearances

…

It looked bad. It looked really bad.

"What're we gonna do?"

Hiding beneath his invisibility cloak, Harry and Ron watched their giant friend marched from his home by the Minister of Magic and Lucious Malfoy.

It looked bad. It 'was' bad.

"I don't know Ron. I really don't."

Neither believed it. They knew it couldn't be true. They also knew, there was nothing they could do. They'd come to Hagrid seeking answers to a decade's old mystery, only to have their source dragged off to Azkaban.

"Ron, what's Azkaban?" Harry asked.

"Wizard's prison," said Ron, freckles popping against pale, bloodless skin. "Dad had to go out there once for work. He said it was horrible. Most of the inmates are crazy."

And they were taking Hagrid there!

"We've got to do something. We can't let them take Hagrid to that place."

"Kay. What?"

Hell if he knew. What could they do? What could two twelve-year-old wizards do against the Minister of Magic?

Nothing. They could do nothing, and they did do nothing. They stood outside their friend's hut, impotent, cold, and confused.

"Whatchu think he meant by follow the sp—spiders!" said Ron.

"Follow the spiders," Harry shrugged. "Seems pretty self-explanatory. I mean, you wouldn't expect Hagrid to be too cryptic."

No, that was Dumbledore's thing. And as annoying as that might be, it was a scary thought that he would no longer be in the castle.

The feeling spread through the student body when the announcement was made the next morning. The only ones to appear pleased were certain sections of Slytherin, the predictable ones.

"We're really sure it's not him," Ron grumbled when they heard Malfoy crowing like he had single handedly been the one to oust Dumbledore from Hogwarts.

"Wishful thinking," and oh how they wished.

It would have been so easy for it to be him. The motivation was there, the background; his entire attitude made him look guilty. But when he was out of public view, when he was safe to tell, to brag, to lay claim to it all, he denied it.

It wasn't him, however much they wished it might be, it wasn't him.

It wasn't Hagrid either. And with the third member of their brain trust stuck in the hospital wing staring at the ceiling, they had no idea which direction to go. All they had to go on was a single clue that neither could make much sense of. The whole situation left them paralyzed with indecision.

The heir of Slytherin must have been suffering similarly since there were no further attacks after Hagrid and Dumbledore were gone, and as the weeks passed people started to relax, or was it just complacency?

In the case of their second least favorite teacher, it was the latter.

"I really don't see why I need to escort you to your classes."

Neither did they.

Gilderoy Lockhart was, as they say colloquially, useless as tits on a boar. Every boy in Hogwarts had figured that out by the end of the first week. And, as the end of the year drew near, there were ever fewer females willing to put the elbow into any of them that said so out loud.

"Such a waste of time now that the culprit's been caught," he prattled on, oblivious to the reactions of his audience. "I don't mind telling you I always suspected. I was going to take it to the headmaster of course but then the Minister of Magic beats me to it. Yes, never liked him. Awfully suspicious fellow."

With friends standing not three feet away not just ready, but happy to flatten the idiots face.

Harry wasn't sure why he stopped Ron from doing it. Maybe he just wanted to do it himself if anyone was going to. Hagrid had been his first friend after all, which allowed him a certain tolerance for the man's eccentricities, and a powerful urge to 'correct' anyone speaking ill of him.

Course, that was a lot of people since he'd been carted off to jail.

"We gotta do something Harry. We gotta do something, or I'm going to do something."

And the way his fists were shaking, that something would probably accomplish what the car incident had failed to, get him expelled.

"He said follow the spiders," Harry mused. "Think it might be time to pull out the invisibility cloak again."