Chapter XXII: Mother Lioness

They barely made it to the Halloween feast in time. Entering the hall in a tight group, Ginny led the charge, bolstering her way into the centre of Gryffindor table. Space enough for five melted into existence under her overbearing attention; the only ones not shying away from the fiery, and unusually angry, redhead were her twin brothers, who gleefully helped her. In the end all five including Luna were seated, with Harry and Hermione bookmarked protectively by the twins on the wall side, and the others opposite them.

Some of the older students shot them glares, but when Harry met them with narrowed eyes and a smug smile they quickly turned to consternation. The twin going by Fred leant in to whisper with him.

"Something going on, Harrikins?"

"Will be in a minute."

"Hey, look at McGonagall," Neville interjected, "she looks like she's on the warpath."

Harry realised no-one had told Neville what was about to go down. He thought of doing so then, but decided instead to let his mate enjoy the show with the full shock and awe.

"She does, doesn't she?" he agreed pleasantly, as if discussing the weather.

"You didn't tell her…" Fred asked with equal parts worry and excitement.

"We didn't tell the professor anything," Hermione said, failing to keep a straight face, "but she wasn't born yesterday. Really, it was obvious we were going to be missed eventually."

Dumbledore stood and chinked his wand against a goblet, magically loud, which ended the conversation there. Fred gave Harry a measured wink before turning to see what the headmaster had to say.

Ultimately, his Halloween speech was a lot of well delivered drivel about sombre celebration and unity. It was the speech to follow which all would remember.

"…with that all being said, I shall let you all have at this wonderful food," Dumbledore concluded, taking his seat with a self-satisfied smile.

That smile turned to a frown of worry as Minerva stood abruptly, her chair screeching over stone. With the hall rapt on her, she took a long moment to brush down her robes, angle her hat, and clear her throat, exuding an aura of absolute confidence and professionalism. Those with a finely attuned sense for magic would experience a very different aura rolling off her, one they would recognise in an angry child shattering windows by accidental magic; or lingering on a battlefield as the dust settled.

Dumbledore's visage held equal parts concern and curiosity, and Trelawney's was turning white as she slowly shifted away from the source. For once the drunken biddy was acting sensibly.

"Your attention, everyone," Minerva demanded, too busy controlling her emotions to see she already held it. "The following students will stand as their names are called."

"Kenneth Towler."

The boy in question dutifully stood, looking about in confusion. Of the friends around him offering only shrugs, most would be joining him shortly.

"Merida Bott. Dominic Merendas. Jonathan Gerard. Sylvia Stretton. Corbus Hamblin. Cormac McLaggen."

They rose from their benches as though condemned, and as the list neared completion an understanding passed between them; almost as one they turned to stare at Mr Potter and Ms Granger. Little good their realisation will do them this late, but it is nice to have further confirmation.

"It has come to my attention, through my own sources, that the students now standing have, since early September, been engaged in a campaign of intolerance, fearmongering, and vigilantism against members of their own house. Furthermore, when I approached the victims of these hateful actions, I was most appalled to discover that their silence in the matter had been assured by threats against their persons. This behaviour is shocking and utterly repulsive, and if this is what my house has become then I am ashamed to have ever been a Gryffindor. For your transgressions, each of you is to be docked one hundred points, and will spend every evening until Christmas serving detention with either myself or Mr Filch."

Minerva raised her wand to the house point glasses on the wall, and with a vicious flick every marble in the red and gold container vanished. Had negative points been a thing, over three hundred such marbles would have been needed to mark them. The groan from Gryffindor was as loud as the mad cackling of Mr Filch from the back corner of the hall.

"Two students will be moving back into the tower tonight. I expect there will be a great many heartfelt apologies to them as they do. Needless to say, any continued rule-breaking by any of you, or by others acting in your stead, will result in immediate and irreversible expulsion."

"Now, professor," Dumbledore interrupted sagely, "that decision would be mine alone to make. Expulsion is a very harsh punishment, not to be handed out lightly."

Minerva looked down at the interfering fool, and had to suppress an urge to spit on him. Had she not known he would object, she might have expelled the lot of them already, because few things insulted her sensibilities more than older Gryffindors turning against younger.

"Then I shall correct myself, Albus. What I meant to say was, any Gryffindor who draws my ire will find themselves begging to be expelled. Mr Merendas, you will be handing in your prefect badge at tonight's detention. Now sit down the lot of you; the mere sight of you is making me sick."

The bullies sat hastily, and silently. A silence that was broken by a Slytherin loudly exclaiming; "Trouble in paradise, eh?"

Minerva flicked her wand once more, and though she didn't declare how many points she had taken from Slytherin, their marble stockpile was significantly lower than it had been moments prior. The feast was a subdued affair after that, as few dared to speak on the matter yet none wanted to talk about anything else.

Except for Ms Granger, who was quite animatedly lecturing Mr Potter on one academic topic or another. Minerva allowed herself a small smile as she watched the girl's arms gesturing through the air as she taught. The scene reminded her of another pair of students she had once thought the world of, and she allowed herself to hope the son might have the life his father was so cruelly denied. She knew James would have given anything to be there in that moment, and indeed had given everything that it might come to pass; he would be so happy that, for the first time since that terrible night eleven years prior, his little Harry was once again in good hands.

"…so I'm not focusing enough on exactly what I'm trying to create, is that it?" Harry asked, for the second time. Or maybe third - he'd lost count trying to wrap his head around what Hermione assured him was fundamental transfiguration theory. Somehow their discussion of McGonagall's speech had moved onto the topic of how the professor 'still isn't teaching the basics before just letting us all have at it, and expecting that to work'. Harry personally suspected it was because if the 'basics' were far too technical for him to understand, the real dunces of the class stood no chance; at least if they waved a wand about hoped, there was the slightest possibility of something happening.

Hermione hadn't appreciated that input, and to her mind that constituted Harry volunteering to learn everything she could teach him about transfiguration before his next lesson, then trying to convey that to his classmates. Not that he was complaining; it was nice to see his friend with her mind so focused on something other than the heir, or the trepidation of moving back in to the tower. There was even a chance he'd learn a thing or two, and get a better transfiguration grade out of it.

"Or you're focusing too much, as I said. It's possible you're more of an instinctive thinker. Actually, based on your approach to other problems, I'd say that's far more likely."

"And an instinctive thinker…" Harry meant to repeat what she'd told him about that, only to find the information had entered one ear and left by the other.

"An instinctive thinker only considers the process as a whole, in the abstract, and allows their intuitive magic to fill in the blanks. And for some absurd reason, the bigger those blanks are, the better it works."

Obviously, Hermione, as a 'detailed thinker', did not approve of the alternative method.

"Well maybe having bigger blanks gives the magic more wiggle room?" Harry suggested in a flash of inspiration.

"Hmm. I suppose there could be something to that idea. You should try it out in your next lesson."

"Aren't you going to try it?"

"I already have, and it was just as impossible as that method always is. I simply don't see how you can tell your magic to do something, without telling it what to do! I mean, that's illogical to a tautological degree!"

Hermione flapped her hands in the air, nearly wiping out a whole basket of bread rolls. Not that they would have been missed - the feast was all but gone, and they would be left over for sure. Harry wondered at how anyone could let so much food go to waste, and yet with one stuffed in either pocket already and a stomach fit to burst, there was nothing more he could do. Even Ronald Weasley's efforts were a drop in the ocean of wastefulness that was Hogwarts catering. If they at least had some pigs to throw the scraps to, that would be better. Maybe Hagrid had some, tucked away in a forgot part of the grounds.

"We need to go see Hagrid," he declared, cutting right into the middle of Hermione's continuing lecture.

"I, um, well I guess?" she sputtered as he caught her off guard. He had spoken rather loudly. She placed a hand on her hip, in a move that could only be described as 'threateningly sassy', and chided him; "you know if I'm boring you, there are more tactful ways to change the topic. Not that you should ever be bored to learn about magic."

"You weren't boring me," he hastily assured her, hoping she wouldn't catch the little white lie for what it was; what she was saying was genuinely interesting, he was sure, but on a full stomach his brain was trying to sleep and theoretical discussions going over his head did nothing to fight off fatigue. It wasn't that she was boring, he thought, only that she was boring him.

He might even have said as much, to put her mind at ease, if that hadn't been the most obvious pitfall he'd ever seen. Inevitably the words would come out wrong, and he'd make things worse trying to do right by her. He had a bad habit of doing that.

She gave him a little 'hrmph', which he knew to mean 'we will continue this riveting conversation later, possibly from the beginning' and pushed her plate away from herself, along with the half-eaten cheesecake wastefully left thereon. Another pitfall he would be saying nothing about.

"Well, you're right," she acceded, in a tone that acceded nothing, "asking Hagrid about the heir business is a good idea. That is if he'll tell us anything. He might not even want to talk to us about it."

"He'll talk to us," Harry replied.

"You're sure?"

"He's been wanting to get me to sit down and have a chat since a few weeks before I came to Hogwarts. I haven't taken him up on it because… well, you understand." Harry really appreciated that they were at a point where he felt no need to say 'because I'm a social mess without equal' every time it became relevant, even though he'd never told her why. "If I show up to his hut with a couple of friends, no way he turns us away."

Trudging out to Hagrid's hut after the feast, Harry pulled his robes tighter about himself. After dark - and approaching curfew - what little warmth the dying day of October once held had vanished. A howling wind had picked up, making it difficult to hold his lumos-lit wand steady, so he found himself stumbling over every tuft and mound once they left the path. Why there wasn't a beaten track to Hagrid's, he didn't know.

Beside him Hermione was faring better, perversely, due to her lack of sight - the poor lighting he was struggling to provide made no difference to her, nor did the wind whipping her wild hair across her face. And for all she was grumbling about the cold, she wasn't outwardly showing it like he. Not that he was jealous.

On his other side, Luna was happily skipping along without a care in the world. Her knees and hands were muddy from where she'd tripped and fallen more than once, but every time she'd popped right back up with a smile and a "silly me!". It was clear she was the only one there not envious of Ginny and Neville's decision to stay in and leave seeing Hagrid for a nicer day.

When they finally reached the hut, the warm glow through the window cast by the fire within was perhaps the most beautiful thing Harry had ever seen. When the door swung open just before he could knock, the blast of warm air was divine.

"'Arry!" Hagrid greeted him. "Good to see yeh at last! And yeh've brought friends with yeh, tha's great. Come on in the lot of yeh, and don't mind Fang now; he's a big lad but he wouldn't 'urt a fly, would yeh boy?"

The bark was not very welcoming to Harry's ears, but it did lack the sheer ferocity of his Aunt Marge's murderous pack, so he cautiously chose to believe Hagrid and enter the hut. Dumbledore wouldn't let him keep a dangerous dog at the school, would he?

"Can I interest any of yeh in one o' me biscuits, an' maybe a nice cuppa to dunk it in?" Hagrid offered as they filed in and took seats; there were only two, but on was Hagrid sized so Hermione and Luna easily fit onto it together. "They're a little on the 'ard side, so the dunkin' ain't really optional," he continued, passing a plate of rock cakes around.

Harry took one just to be polite - coming straight from the Halloween feast left no room for it, and he briefly wondered how he would manage to eat it, before discovering that the main obstacle would be biting into the thing. Hagrid bit into his own with a crack that would have sent lesser men running to a dentist for a check-up.

Settled in, they made small talk for a time, which mostly consisted of Luna quizzing the man about magical creatures, some real and some questionably so. Hagrid tried at first to make the conversation about Harry, but Luna's passion for her subject was an onslaught to which he quickly succumbed. As Hagrid turned away at one point to put on another brew, Luna shot Harry a look that told him she knew exactly what she was doing; he replied with a grateful smile.

Then Hermione's patience ran out, and she turned to the task at hand.

"Hagrid, we were actually wondering if we could talk to you about something specific," she cut in when he next took a moment to drink.

"Oh, sure 'ermione, fire away."

"It's about the chamber of secrets business." - Hagrid's face fell , in a way that might have been comical, were it not so genuine - "It's just that we've asked a few professors about it, but then we realised you must be about the right age to have been at Hogwarts when it happened before, so maybe you'd know something they didn't?"

"Oh, right," Hagrid stuttered, Hermione's indirect approach clearly not what he expected, "well I was 'ere, yeah, but I can't 'elp yeh much, not if yer wantin' to know who it was what did it. They never caught the heir, yeh see?"

"Oh," Hermione said, doing a brilliant job of acting disappointed by information she already knew. "And there weren't any clues? They didn't make any progress on finding a culprit."

"Oh they found a culprit alright, but he weren't responsible. Dumbledore sorted that mess right out - so don't go worrying on yer own accounts; 'eadmaster's got yer back. Brilliant man is Dumbledore."

"So there's nothing can help us figure out who it is? Or what 'Slytherin's Monster' might be?" Hermione summarised, and Harry thought her dejection might be real this time. He himself was already feeling the trek out had been a waste of time and body heat.

"Well, might be somethin', matter o' fact. 'Ave yeh noticed the spiders recently?"

"Spiders? No, can't say I have."

"I haven't seen a spider in weeks," Luna piped up. "Not since they all went a little wonky."

"Wonky's one word fer it, yeah. Ever since that nasty business with Mrs Norris there's been lines o' the crawlers headin' out into the forbidden forest. I ain't seen that since… since last time."

"Why would spiders be fleeing the castle?" Hermione asked, leaning forward keenly.

"Beats me," Hagrid shrugged. "But there's one what might know."

"Who?"

"Ole Aragog, course. Yeh want to know 'bout spiders, ask a spider," Hagrid said happily, as if his solution made any sense.

"We can't just talk to a spider!" Harry argued, thinking it wasn't such a strange thing that the giant man before him got on so well with Luna; they were both off their rocker when it came to creatures.

"Well not just any ole spider, no. But Aragog ain't yer average spider. E's an acromantula."

Hermione and Luna gasped, but Harry had no clue why. Thinking that asking would make him look stupid, he held his tongue and hoped an explanation would come about naturally.

"What's more is, Aragog was around last time this happened." Hagrid added. "I reckon if yeh really have to know, e's the one to ask."

"But… an acromantula…" Hermione muttered pensively.

"Oh, it's alright, e's a friend o' mine. Acromantulas are mostly 'armless anyway. Just tell 'im 'Agrid sent yeh, yeh'll be right as rain."

Just then there came a quiet knocking at the door. Fang barked immediately, but a calming hand on his shoulder from Luna had him purring just as fast. Hagrid went to answer the door, and swung it open to reveal Neville standing slanted against the wind.

"Neville? What are you doing here?"

"C-c-came to t-tell you it's n-nearly curfew," he chattered through teeth clenched against the cold.

Hagrid ushered him in so the door could be shut.

"You came all the way out here to check we wouldn't be out too late?" Hermione asked, in a voice that told Harry she was both touched by the thoughtfulness, and disapproving of the ridiculousness. A voice Harry knew too well.

"Was G-Ginny's idea," Neville stammered.

"Blimey," Hagrid exclaimed, looking at his pocket watch. "'E ain't wrong! Yeh'd best get goin', fore yeh get in trouble. Go on, go on, we got all year to chat. Don't want yeh gettin' detention on my account. Take yer biscuits with yeh an' all."

Harry couldn't have said exactly what happened in the time Hagrid was saying that, but moments after he found he was stumbling out the door into the cold, rock cake in one hand and the flapping front of his robes in the other.

"So," Hermione said as they trudged away from Hagrid's hut, "we're all agreed that traipsing off into the forbidden forest to find an acromantula colony would be mind-numbingly ridiculous?"

"Wait, we haven't even talked about it!" Harry protested, as the others agreed.

If Hermione had eyes, she would have rolled them skywards, pleading to a God - any God - to deliver her from Gryffindors. In what world of his are acromantulas not to be avoided at all costs. First years wouldn't even know how to go about fighting one off, let alone successfully cast the right spells in the face of a whole colony. That sort of thing wasn't covered at all until third year defence - she remembered the introduction to them in the third year textbook.

"Harry," she cautioned as she realised her oversight, "do you even know what an acromantula is?"

"Big spider isn't it?" he replied like that was nothing to write home about. "Spiders aren't so scary - used to make friends with them in my- at h- home."

"Define 'big'," Hermione challenged, seeing where this was going but letting him get there under his own power. She had read in a book that people responded better to information if guided to discovering it, rather than simply offering it up in a concise, factual manner. Silly as that sounded, it would explain a lot if other peoples' brains truly worked with such inefficiency, so she was keeping an open mind and giving it a go.

"Dunno. Sounds like you really don't like them, so… cat sized?" he guessed.

"Oh boy," Neville muttered. "Dibs not telling him."

"Telling me what?"

"Oh, nothing much," Hermione answered with false nonchalance. "Just that there are spiders in the forbidden forest the size of cars! And for some reason, in fifty years, nobody has bothered to exterminate them!"

"Cars? Exterminate? Hagrid said they're mostly harmless."

"Hagrid thinks a dragon is mostly harmless. He raised the alpha acromantula in the castle! How that man is in any position of responsibility over child welfare is beyond me," she ranted, rhetorically as she knew the answer was simply 'Dumbledore'.

"Alright, alright, so we're not going into the forest," he moodily acquiesced.

"I can't believe you even suggested it."

"I didn't! I just said we shouldn't rule it out before talking it over."

Privately she conceded he was right, and what's more, that was the sort of approach she was encouraging him to take in general. Outwardly, her perfectly rational fear of dying to a giant spider overrode her response.

"Well we've talked about it, and it's a no. I am not taking a single step into that forsaken forest."

"I'm with you, Hermione," Neville said, voice trembling. "That place is downright scary, even without the spiders. P-professor Sprout says there are venomous t-tentaculas growing in there, right up to the edge."

"Thank you, Neville."

"So what, we're just doing nothing about anything Hagrid told us?" Harry vented.

"I never said that. Tomorrow I'm going to see what I can find out in-"

"-the library," they all droned over her predictable statement. She pouted for a second, then let herself giggle at her own expense. There are worse things to be known for, she reckoned. Not that being well read was in any way bad to begin with. And say what you will about the library, but to her knowledge it had never been home to a colossal, man-eating spider infestation, like the forest to her back. It was also much warmer than the open grounds in early November.

She wrapped her arms protectively about her chest and quickened her pace.

A/N

Thanks as always to reviewers :)

Doesn't look like they'll be going out to meet a giant man eating spider this time, does it? Amazing what having the critical thinker of the group available to comment will do for one's safety.