Chapter Nine
Quirrell turned out to be braver than Harry, Ron, and Hermione had thought. In the weeks that followed he did seem to be getting paler and thinner, but to them it didn't look as though he had cracked yet. I knew he had already cracked.
Every time we passed the third-floor corridor, we all would press our ears to the door to check that Fluffy was still growling inside. Snape was sweeping about in his usual bad temper, which, to the other three, surely meant that the Stone was still safe. Whenever he passed Quirrell, Harry would give him an encouraging smile, and Ron started telling people off for laughing at Quirrell's stutter. I refused to take part in the encouragement.
Hermione, on the other hand, had more on her mind than the Sorcerer's Stone. She had started drawing up study schedules and color-coding all her notes. None of us would have minded, but she kept nagging us to do the same.
"Hermione, the exams are ages away," Harry told her.
"Ten weeks," Hermione snapped. "That's not ages, that's like a second to Nicolas Flamel."
"But we're not six hundred years old," Ron reminded her. "Anyway, what are you studying for, you already know it all."
"What am I studying for? Are you crazy? You realize we need to pass these exams to get into the second year? They're very important, I should have started studying a month ago, I don't know what's gotten into me . . ."
Unfortunately, the teachers seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Hermione. They piled so much homework on us that the Easter holidays weren't nearly as much fun as the Christmas ones. It was hard to relax with Hermione next to you reciting the twelve uses of dragon's blood or practicing wand movements. Moaning and yawning, Harry, Ron, and I spent most of our free time in the library with her, trying to get through all our extra work.
"I'll never remember this," Ron burst one afternoon, throwing down his quill and looking longingly out of the library window. I had to share his aggravation. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually all for hanging out in the library, but it was the first really nice day we'd had in months. The sky was a clear, forget-me-not blue, and there was a feeling in the air of summer coming.
I didn't look up from One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, which I was testing Harry on, until I heard Ron say, "Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?"
Hagrid shuffled into view, hiding something behind his back. He looked very out of place in his moleskin overcoat.
"Jus' lookin'," he told us, in a shifty voice that got our interest at once. "An' what're you lot up ter?" He looked suddenly suspicious. "Yer not still lookin' fer Nicolas Flamel, are yeh?"
"Oh, we found out who he is ages ago," Ron replied impressively. "And we know what that dog's guarding, it's a Sorcerer's St ---"
"Shhhh!" Hagrid looked around quickly to see if anyone was listening. "Don' go shoutin' about it, what's the matter with yeh?"
"There are a few things we wanted to ask you, as a matter-of-fact," Harry said, "about what's guarding the Stone apart from Fluffy ---"
"SHHHH!" Hagrid hissed again. "Listen --- come an' see me later, I'm not promisin' I'll tell yeh anythin', mind, but don' go rabbitin' about in here, students aren' s'pposed ter know. They'll think I've told yeh ---"
"See you later then," Harry told him.
Hagrid shuffled off.
"What was he hiding behind his back?" Hermione wondered aloud.
"Do you think it had anything to do with the Stone?" Harry asked, looking at me. I looked back down at my book.
"I'm going to see what section he was in," announced Ron, who'd had enough of working. He came back a minute later with a pile of books in his arms and slammed them down on the table.
"Dragons!" he whispered. "Hagrid was looking up stuff about dragons! Look at these: Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland; From Egg to Inferno, A Dragon Keeper's Guide."
"Hagrid's always wanted a dragon, he told me so the first time I ever met him," Harry remarked.
"But it's against our laws," Ron explained. "Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks' Convention of 1709, everyone knows that. It's hard to stop Muggles from noticing us if we're keeping dragons in the back garden -- - anyway, you can't tame dragons, it's dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie's got off wild ones in Romania."
"But there aren't wild dragons in Britain?" Harry said.
"Of course there are," Ron replied. "Common Welsh Green and Hebridean Blacks. The Ministry of Magic has a job of hushing them up, I can tell you. Our kind have to keep putting spells on Muggles who've spotted them, to make them forget.
"So what on earth's Hagrid up to?" Hermione wondered.
Harry looked at me again, but I didn't say a thing.
When we knocked on the door of Hagrid's hut an hour later, we were surprised to see that all the curtains were closed. Hagrid called, "Who is it?" before he let us in, and then shut the door quickly behind us.
It was stifling hot inside. Even though it was such a warm day, there was a fire blazing in the grate. Hagrid made us tea and offered us some stoat sandwiches, which we wisely refused.
"So --- yeh wanted to ask me somethin'?"
"Yes," Harry replied. "We were wondering if you could tell us what's guarding the Sorcerer's Stone apart from Fluffy."
Hagrid frowned at him.
"O' course I can't," he told him. "Number one, I don' know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn' tell yeh if I could. The Stone's here fer 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 abou' Fluffy."
"Oh, come on, Hagrid, you might not want to tell us, but you do know, you know everything that goes on round here," said Hermione in a warm, flattering voice. Hagrid's beard twitched and we could tell he was smiling. "We only wondered who had done the guarding, really." Hermione went on. "We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you."
Hagrid's chest swelled at these last words. The rest of us beamed at Hermione.
"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 ---" he ticked them off on his fingers, "Professor Quirrell --- an' Dumbledore himself did somethin', o' course. Hang on, I've forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Snape."
"Snape?" everyone except me yelled in surprise.
"Yeah --- yer not still on abou' that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect the Stone, he's not about ter steal it."
"You're the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy, aren't you, Hagrid?" Harry asked anxiously. "And you wouldn't tell anyone, would you? Not even one of the teachers?"
That's when I knew his thoughts, and Hermione and Ron's as well. They thought that, if Snape had been in on protecting the Stone, it must have been easy to find out how the other teachers had guarded it. They figured he probably knew everything except Quirrell's spell and how to get past Fluffy.
"Not a soul knows except me an' Dumbledore," Hagrid replied to Harry's question proudly.
"Well, that's something," Harry muttered to the rest of us. "Hagrid, can we have a window open? I'm boiling."
"Can't, Harry, sorry," Hagrid apologized. We all noticed him glance at the fire. We all looked at it, too.
"Hagrid --- what's that?" Harry asked.
But I was pretty sure he already knew what it was, I know I did. In the very heart of the fire, underneath the kettle, was a huge, black egg.
"Ah," Hagrid said, fiddling nervously with his beard, "that's --- er . . ."
"Where did you get it, Hagrid?" Ron asked, crouching over the fire to get a closer look at the egg. "It must've cost you a fortune."
"Won it," Hagrid told him. "Las' night. I was down in the village havin' a few drinks an' got into a game o' cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest."
"But what are you going to do with it when it's hatched?" Hermione asked.
"Well, I've been doin' some readin'," Hagrid told her, pulling a large book from under his pillow. "Got this outta the library --- Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit --- it's a bit outta date, o' course, but it's all here. Keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on 'em, see, an' when it hatches, feed it on a bucket o' brandy mixed with chicken blood every half-hour. An' see here --- how ter recognize diff'rent eggs --- what I got there's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them."
He looked very pleased with himself, but Hermione didn't.
"Hagrid, you live in a wooden house," she remarked.
But Hagrid wasn't listening. He was humming merrily as he stoked the fire. I burst out laughing. No one else, however, found anything very humorous.
So now we had something else to worry about: what might happen to Hagrid if anyone found out he was hiding an illegal dragon in his hut.
"Wonder what it's like to have a peaceful life," Ron sighed, as evening after evening we struggled through all the extra homework we were getting. Hermione had now started making study schedules for Harry, Ron, and me, too. It was driving us nuts.
In response to Ron's question, I said, "There's no such thing as peaceful." He and Harry murmured in agreement.
Then, one breakfast time, Hedwig dropped a note to Harry from Hagrid. Harry showed it to us. There were only two words on the note: It's hatching.
Ron wanted to skip Herbology and go straight down to the hut. Hermione wouldn't hear of it.
"Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?"
"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.
I looked around and saw Malfoy standing only a few feet away and he had stopped dead to listen. How much had he heard? I didn't like the look on his face. I looked behind him, and there was Lisa. She smiled with a wink, and then she tried to lead Malfoy away. I smiled and shook my head.
Ron and Hermione argued all the way to Herbology and in the end, Hermione agreed to run down to Hagrid's with the rest of us during morning break. When the bell sounded from the castle at the end of our lesson, we all dropped our trowels at once and hurried through the grounds to the edge of the forest. Hagrid greeted us, looking flushed and excited.
"It's nearly out." He ushered us inside.
The egg was lying on the table. There were deep cracks in it. Something was moving inside; a funny clicking noise was coming from it.
We all drew our chairs up to the table and watched with bated breath.
All at once there was a scraping noise and the egg split open. The baby dragon flopped onto the table. It wasn't exactly pretty; I thought it looked like a crumpled, black umbrella. Its spiny wings were huge compared to its skinny jet body, it had a long snout with wide nostrils, the stubs of horns and bulging, orange eyes.
It sneezed. A couple of sparks flew out of its snout.
"Isn't he beautiful?" Hagrid murmured. He reached out a hand to stroke the dragon's head. It snapped at his fingers, showing pointed fangs.
"Bless him, look, he knows his mommy!" Hagrid cooed.
"Hagrid," Hermione said, "how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly?"
Hagrid was about to answer when the color suddenly drained from his face --- he leapt to his feet and ran to the window.
"What's the matter?
"Someone was lookin' through the gap in the curtains --- it's a couple of kids --- they're runnin' back up ter the school."
We all bolted to the door and looked out. Even at a distance there was no mistaking them.
Malfoy had seen the dragon, and Lisa had let him.
Something about the smile lurking on Malfoy and Lisa's faces during the next week made us all very nervous. We spent most of our free time in Hagrid's darkened hut, trying to reason with him.
"Just let him go," Harry urged. "Set him free."
"I can't," Hagrid insisted. "He's too little. He'd die."
We looked at the dragon. It had grown three times in length in just a week. Smoke kept furling out of its nostrils. Hagrid hadn't been doing his gamekeeping duties because the dragon was keeping him so busy. There were empty brandy bottles and chicken feathers all over the floor.
"I've decided to call him Norbert," Hagrid told us, looking at the dragon with misty eyes. "He really knows me now, watch. Norbert! Norbert! Where's Mommy?"
"He's lost his marbles," I heard Ron mutter to Harry as I tried to stifle a laugh.
"Hagrid," Harry said loudly, "give it two weeks and Norbert's going to be as long as your house. Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment."
Hagrid bit his lip.
"I --- I know I can't keep him forever, but I can't jus' dump him, I can't."
Harry suddenly turned to Ron.
"Charlie," he said.
"You're losing it, too," Ron told him. "I'm Ron, remember?"
"No --- Charlie --- your brother, Charlie. In Romania. Studying dragons. We could send Norbert to him. Charlie can take care of him and then put him back in the wild!"
"Brilliant!" Ron exclaimed. "How about it, Hagrid?"
And in the end, Hagrid agreed that we could send an owl to Charlie and ask him.
The following week dragged by. Wednesday night found Hermione, Harry, and me sitting alone in the common room, long after everyone else had gone to bed. The clock on the wall had just chimed midnight when the portrait hole burst open. Ron appeared out of nowhere as he pulled off Harry's invisibility cloak. He had been down at Hagrid's hut, helping him feed Norbert, who was now eating dead rats by the crate.
"It bit me!" he said, showing us his hand, which was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. "I'm not going to be able to hold a quill for a week. I tell you, that dragon's the most horrible animal I've ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you'd think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit. When it bit me he told me off for frightening it. And when I left, he was singing it a lullaby."
There was a tap on the dark window as I took Ron's hand into mine to look at it.
"It's Hedwig!" Harry said, hurrying to let her in. "She'll have Charlie's answer!"
We all put our heads together to read the note.
Dear Ron,
How are you? Thanks for the letter --- I'd be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but it won't be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Trouble is, they mustn't be seen carrying an illegal dragon.
Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it's still dark.
Send me an answer as soon as possible.
Love, Charlie
We all looked at each other.
"We've got the invisibility cloak," Harry said. "It shouldn't be too difficult --- I think the cloak's big enough to cover two of us and Norbert."
It was a mark of how bad the last week had been that the rest of us agreed with him. Even me, and I knew what was coming. Anything to get rid of Norbert --- and Malfoy and Lisa.
There was a hitch, like always. By the next morning, Ron's bitten hand had swollen to twice its usual size. He didn't know whether it was safe to go to Madam Pomfrey --- would she recognize a dragon bite? Even I couldn't answer that. By the afternoon, though, he had no choice. The cut had turned a nasty shade of green. It looked as if Norbert's fangs were poisonous.
At the end of the day, Harry, Hermione, and I rushed up to the hospital wing to find Ron in a terrible state in bed.
"It's not just my hand," he whispered, "although that feels like it's about to fall off. Malfoy told Madam Pomfrey he wanted to borrow one of my books so he could come and have a good laugh at me. He kept threatening to tell her what really bit me --- I've told her it was a dog, but I don't think she believes me --- I shouldn't have hit him at the Quidditch match, that's why he's doing this."
Harry, Hermione, and I tried to calm Ron down.
"I'll all be over at midnight on Saturday," Hermione said, but this didn't soothe Ron at all. On the contrary, he sat bolt upright and broke into a sweat.
"Midnight on Saturday!" he moaned in a hoarse voice. "Oh no --- 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."
We didn't get a chance to answer. Madam Pomfrey came over at that moment and made us leave, saying Ron needed to sleep.
"It's too late to change the plan now," Harry told Hermione and me. "We haven't got time to send Charlie another owl, and this could be our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We'll have to risk it. And we have got the invisibility cloak, Malfoy doesn't know about that."
We found Fang the boarhound sitting outside with a bandaged tail when we went to tell Hagrid, who opened a window to talk to us.
"I won't let you in," he puffed. "Norbert's at a tricky stage --- nothin' I can't handle."
When we told him about Charlie's letter, his eyes filled with tears, although that might have been because Norbert had just bitten him on the leg.
"Aargh! It's all right, he only got my boot --- jus' playin' --- he's only a baby after all."
The baby banged its tail on the wall, making the windows rattle. We walked back to the castle feeling Saturday couldn't come quickly enough.
We would have felt sorry for Hagrid when the time came for him to say good-bye to Norbert if we hadn't been so worried about what we had to do. Actually, I had convinced the other two to let me go instead of Hermione. I said that it would go on her record if she was caught and stuff like that. It worked, luckily.
It was a very dark, cloudy night, and Harry and I were a bit late arriving at Hagrid's hut because we had to wait for Peeves to get out of our way in the entrance hall, where he'd been playing tennis against the wall.
Hagrid had Norbert packed and ready in a large crate.
"He's got lots o' rats an' some brandy fer the journey," Hagrid told us in a muffled voice. "And' I've packed his teddy bear in case he gets lonely."
From inside the crate came ripping noises that sounded as though the teddy was having its head torn off.
"Bye-bye, Norbert!" Hagrid sobbed, as Harry and I covered the crate with the invisibility cloak and stepped underneath it ourselves. "Mommy will never forget you!"
How we managed to get the crate back up to the castle, we never knew. Midnight ticked nearer as we heaved Norbert up the marble staircase in the entrance hall and along the dark corridors. Up another staircase, then another --- even one of Harry's shortcuts didn't make the work much easier.
"Nearly there!" Harry panted as we reached the corridor beneath the tallest tower.
Then a sudden movement ahead of us made us almost drop the crate. Forgetting that we were already invisible, we shrank into the shadows, staring at the dark outlines of two people grappling with each other ten feet away. A lamp flared.
Professor McGonagall, in a tartan bathrobe and a hair net, had Malfoy 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 rubbish! How dare you tell such lies! Come on --- I shall see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!"
The steep spiral staircase up to the top of the tower seemed the easiest thing in the world after that. Not until we'd stepped out into the cold night air did we throw off the cloak, glad to be able to breathe properly again. I began to dance and made Harry join me.
"Malfoy's got detention! I feel like singing!"
"Don't," Harry smiled. We laughed together. It felt so good to laugh.
"It's kinda cold," I said, aiming to spark up a conversation. Instead of talking, however, Harry threw the invisibility cloak around my shoulders and his. I looked down and could only see a small portion of our bodies. I began to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Harry asked.
"What this must look like, two floating heads," I giggled.
"Oh," Harry said, and then joined in my laughter. Suddenly, his hand closed around mine. My heart fluttered and I looked over at him. He smiled, and all I could do was smile back.
I came a voice in my head. Judging by the look on Harry's face and the sudden retraction of his hand, he had heard it, too. Then, we looked down and saw . . .
"Mrs. Norris?"
"Lisa, how did you get a Mrs. Norris morph?"
The cat began to grow and it soon became Lisa.
"I'm just smart like that," she replied.
"What are you doing here?" Harry asked. Lisa motioned toward Norbert's crate.
"Good luck," I mumbled.
"What?"
"She wants to acquire Norbert's DNA," I explained. Harry still looked confused as Lisa knelt down and opened the crate just enough to stick her hand in. Norbert got unusually quiet for a few seconds, but then he began thrashing again. Lisa jerked her hand out of the crate and it took the three of us to get the crate closed again.
By the time we looked up again, four broomsticks were heading straight for us out of the darkness. Lisa jumped into the shadows as they landed.
Charlie's friends were a cheery lot. They showed Harry and me the harness they'd rigged up, so they could suspend Norbert between them. We all buckled Norbert safely into it and then Harry and I shook hands with the men and thanked them very, very much.
At last, Norbert was going . . . going . . . gone.
Harry and I, our hearts as light as our hands, now that Norbert was off of them, slipped back down the spiral staircase with Lisa behind us. She was too drained to morph again, so she was still a human. No more dragon --- Malfoy in detention --- what could spoil our happiness?
The answer to that was waiting at the foot of the stairs. As we stepped into the corridor, Filch's face loomed suddenly out of the darkness.
"Well, well, well," he whispered, "we are in trouble."
If I hadn't been so wrapped in my joy, my emotions, my feelings for Harry, I would have remembered the thing most vital to change. We had left the invisibility cloak on top of the tower.
Quirrell turned out to be braver than Harry, Ron, and Hermione had thought. In the weeks that followed he did seem to be getting paler and thinner, but to them it didn't look as though he had cracked yet. I knew he had already cracked.
Every time we passed the third-floor corridor, we all would press our ears to the door to check that Fluffy was still growling inside. Snape was sweeping about in his usual bad temper, which, to the other three, surely meant that the Stone was still safe. Whenever he passed Quirrell, Harry would give him an encouraging smile, and Ron started telling people off for laughing at Quirrell's stutter. I refused to take part in the encouragement.
Hermione, on the other hand, had more on her mind than the Sorcerer's Stone. She had started drawing up study schedules and color-coding all her notes. None of us would have minded, but she kept nagging us to do the same.
"Hermione, the exams are ages away," Harry told her.
"Ten weeks," Hermione snapped. "That's not ages, that's like a second to Nicolas Flamel."
"But we're not six hundred years old," Ron reminded her. "Anyway, what are you studying for, you already know it all."
"What am I studying for? Are you crazy? You realize we need to pass these exams to get into the second year? They're very important, I should have started studying a month ago, I don't know what's gotten into me . . ."
Unfortunately, the teachers seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Hermione. They piled so much homework on us that the Easter holidays weren't nearly as much fun as the Christmas ones. It was hard to relax with Hermione next to you reciting the twelve uses of dragon's blood or practicing wand movements. Moaning and yawning, Harry, Ron, and I spent most of our free time in the library with her, trying to get through all our extra work.
"I'll never remember this," Ron burst one afternoon, throwing down his quill and looking longingly out of the library window. I had to share his aggravation. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually all for hanging out in the library, but it was the first really nice day we'd had in months. The sky was a clear, forget-me-not blue, and there was a feeling in the air of summer coming.
I didn't look up from One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, which I was testing Harry on, until I heard Ron say, "Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?"
Hagrid shuffled into view, hiding something behind his back. He looked very out of place in his moleskin overcoat.
"Jus' lookin'," he told us, in a shifty voice that got our interest at once. "An' what're you lot up ter?" He looked suddenly suspicious. "Yer not still lookin' fer Nicolas Flamel, are yeh?"
"Oh, we found out who he is ages ago," Ron replied impressively. "And we know what that dog's guarding, it's a Sorcerer's St ---"
"Shhhh!" Hagrid looked around quickly to see if anyone was listening. "Don' go shoutin' about it, what's the matter with yeh?"
"There are a few things we wanted to ask you, as a matter-of-fact," Harry said, "about what's guarding the Stone apart from Fluffy ---"
"SHHHH!" Hagrid hissed again. "Listen --- come an' see me later, I'm not promisin' I'll tell yeh anythin', mind, but don' go rabbitin' about in here, students aren' s'pposed ter know. They'll think I've told yeh ---"
"See you later then," Harry told him.
Hagrid shuffled off.
"What was he hiding behind his back?" Hermione wondered aloud.
"Do you think it had anything to do with the Stone?" Harry asked, looking at me. I looked back down at my book.
"I'm going to see what section he was in," announced Ron, who'd had enough of working. He came back a minute later with a pile of books in his arms and slammed them down on the table.
"Dragons!" he whispered. "Hagrid was looking up stuff about dragons! Look at these: Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland; From Egg to Inferno, A Dragon Keeper's Guide."
"Hagrid's always wanted a dragon, he told me so the first time I ever met him," Harry remarked.
"But it's against our laws," Ron explained. "Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks' Convention of 1709, everyone knows that. It's hard to stop Muggles from noticing us if we're keeping dragons in the back garden -- - anyway, you can't tame dragons, it's dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie's got off wild ones in Romania."
"But there aren't wild dragons in Britain?" Harry said.
"Of course there are," Ron replied. "Common Welsh Green and Hebridean Blacks. The Ministry of Magic has a job of hushing them up, I can tell you. Our kind have to keep putting spells on Muggles who've spotted them, to make them forget.
"So what on earth's Hagrid up to?" Hermione wondered.
Harry looked at me again, but I didn't say a thing.
When we knocked on the door of Hagrid's hut an hour later, we were surprised to see that all the curtains were closed. Hagrid called, "Who is it?" before he let us in, and then shut the door quickly behind us.
It was stifling hot inside. Even though it was such a warm day, there was a fire blazing in the grate. Hagrid made us tea and offered us some stoat sandwiches, which we wisely refused.
"So --- yeh wanted to ask me somethin'?"
"Yes," Harry replied. "We were wondering if you could tell us what's guarding the Sorcerer's Stone apart from Fluffy."
Hagrid frowned at him.
"O' course I can't," he told him. "Number one, I don' know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn' tell yeh if I could. The Stone's here fer 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 abou' Fluffy."
"Oh, come on, Hagrid, you might not want to tell us, but you do know, you know everything that goes on round here," said Hermione in a warm, flattering voice. Hagrid's beard twitched and we could tell he was smiling. "We only wondered who had done the guarding, really." Hermione went on. "We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you."
Hagrid's chest swelled at these last words. The rest of us beamed at Hermione.
"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 ---" he ticked them off on his fingers, "Professor Quirrell --- an' Dumbledore himself did somethin', o' course. Hang on, I've forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Snape."
"Snape?" everyone except me yelled in surprise.
"Yeah --- yer not still on abou' that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect the Stone, he's not about ter steal it."
"You're the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy, aren't you, Hagrid?" Harry asked anxiously. "And you wouldn't tell anyone, would you? Not even one of the teachers?"
That's when I knew his thoughts, and Hermione and Ron's as well. They thought that, if Snape had been in on protecting the Stone, it must have been easy to find out how the other teachers had guarded it. They figured he probably knew everything except Quirrell's spell and how to get past Fluffy.
"Not a soul knows except me an' Dumbledore," Hagrid replied to Harry's question proudly.
"Well, that's something," Harry muttered to the rest of us. "Hagrid, can we have a window open? I'm boiling."
"Can't, Harry, sorry," Hagrid apologized. We all noticed him glance at the fire. We all looked at it, too.
"Hagrid --- what's that?" Harry asked.
But I was pretty sure he already knew what it was, I know I did. In the very heart of the fire, underneath the kettle, was a huge, black egg.
"Ah," Hagrid said, fiddling nervously with his beard, "that's --- er . . ."
"Where did you get it, Hagrid?" Ron asked, crouching over the fire to get a closer look at the egg. "It must've cost you a fortune."
"Won it," Hagrid told him. "Las' night. I was down in the village havin' a few drinks an' got into a game o' cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest."
"But what are you going to do with it when it's hatched?" Hermione asked.
"Well, I've been doin' some readin'," Hagrid told her, pulling a large book from under his pillow. "Got this outta the library --- Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit --- it's a bit outta date, o' course, but it's all here. Keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on 'em, see, an' when it hatches, feed it on a bucket o' brandy mixed with chicken blood every half-hour. An' see here --- how ter recognize diff'rent eggs --- what I got there's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them."
He looked very pleased with himself, but Hermione didn't.
"Hagrid, you live in a wooden house," she remarked.
But Hagrid wasn't listening. He was humming merrily as he stoked the fire. I burst out laughing. No one else, however, found anything very humorous.
So now we had something else to worry about: what might happen to Hagrid if anyone found out he was hiding an illegal dragon in his hut.
"Wonder what it's like to have a peaceful life," Ron sighed, as evening after evening we struggled through all the extra homework we were getting. Hermione had now started making study schedules for Harry, Ron, and me, too. It was driving us nuts.
In response to Ron's question, I said, "There's no such thing as peaceful." He and Harry murmured in agreement.
Then, one breakfast time, Hedwig dropped a note to Harry from Hagrid. Harry showed it to us. There were only two words on the note: It's hatching.
Ron wanted to skip Herbology and go straight down to the hut. Hermione wouldn't hear of it.
"Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?"
"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.
I looked around and saw Malfoy standing only a few feet away and he had stopped dead to listen. How much had he heard? I didn't like the look on his face. I looked behind him, and there was Lisa. She smiled with a wink, and then she tried to lead Malfoy away. I smiled and shook my head.
Ron and Hermione argued all the way to Herbology and in the end, Hermione agreed to run down to Hagrid's with the rest of us during morning break. When the bell sounded from the castle at the end of our lesson, we all dropped our trowels at once and hurried through the grounds to the edge of the forest. Hagrid greeted us, looking flushed and excited.
"It's nearly out." He ushered us inside.
The egg was lying on the table. There were deep cracks in it. Something was moving inside; a funny clicking noise was coming from it.
We all drew our chairs up to the table and watched with bated breath.
All at once there was a scraping noise and the egg split open. The baby dragon flopped onto the table. It wasn't exactly pretty; I thought it looked like a crumpled, black umbrella. Its spiny wings were huge compared to its skinny jet body, it had a long snout with wide nostrils, the stubs of horns and bulging, orange eyes.
It sneezed. A couple of sparks flew out of its snout.
"Isn't he beautiful?" Hagrid murmured. He reached out a hand to stroke the dragon's head. It snapped at his fingers, showing pointed fangs.
"Bless him, look, he knows his mommy!" Hagrid cooed.
"Hagrid," Hermione said, "how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly?"
Hagrid was about to answer when the color suddenly drained from his face --- he leapt to his feet and ran to the window.
"What's the matter?
"Someone was lookin' through the gap in the curtains --- it's a couple of kids --- they're runnin' back up ter the school."
We all bolted to the door and looked out. Even at a distance there was no mistaking them.
Malfoy had seen the dragon, and Lisa had let him.
Something about the smile lurking on Malfoy and Lisa's faces during the next week made us all very nervous. We spent most of our free time in Hagrid's darkened hut, trying to reason with him.
"Just let him go," Harry urged. "Set him free."
"I can't," Hagrid insisted. "He's too little. He'd die."
We looked at the dragon. It had grown three times in length in just a week. Smoke kept furling out of its nostrils. Hagrid hadn't been doing his gamekeeping duties because the dragon was keeping him so busy. There were empty brandy bottles and chicken feathers all over the floor.
"I've decided to call him Norbert," Hagrid told us, looking at the dragon with misty eyes. "He really knows me now, watch. Norbert! Norbert! Where's Mommy?"
"He's lost his marbles," I heard Ron mutter to Harry as I tried to stifle a laugh.
"Hagrid," Harry said loudly, "give it two weeks and Norbert's going to be as long as your house. Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment."
Hagrid bit his lip.
"I --- I know I can't keep him forever, but I can't jus' dump him, I can't."
Harry suddenly turned to Ron.
"Charlie," he said.
"You're losing it, too," Ron told him. "I'm Ron, remember?"
"No --- Charlie --- your brother, Charlie. In Romania. Studying dragons. We could send Norbert to him. Charlie can take care of him and then put him back in the wild!"
"Brilliant!" Ron exclaimed. "How about it, Hagrid?"
And in the end, Hagrid agreed that we could send an owl to Charlie and ask him.
The following week dragged by. Wednesday night found Hermione, Harry, and me sitting alone in the common room, long after everyone else had gone to bed. The clock on the wall had just chimed midnight when the portrait hole burst open. Ron appeared out of nowhere as he pulled off Harry's invisibility cloak. He had been down at Hagrid's hut, helping him feed Norbert, who was now eating dead rats by the crate.
"It bit me!" he said, showing us his hand, which was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. "I'm not going to be able to hold a quill for a week. I tell you, that dragon's the most horrible animal I've ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you'd think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit. When it bit me he told me off for frightening it. And when I left, he was singing it a lullaby."
There was a tap on the dark window as I took Ron's hand into mine to look at it.
"It's Hedwig!" Harry said, hurrying to let her in. "She'll have Charlie's answer!"
We all put our heads together to read the note.
Dear Ron,
How are you? Thanks for the letter --- I'd be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but it won't be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Trouble is, they mustn't be seen carrying an illegal dragon.
Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it's still dark.
Send me an answer as soon as possible.
Love, Charlie
We all looked at each other.
"We've got the invisibility cloak," Harry said. "It shouldn't be too difficult --- I think the cloak's big enough to cover two of us and Norbert."
It was a mark of how bad the last week had been that the rest of us agreed with him. Even me, and I knew what was coming. Anything to get rid of Norbert --- and Malfoy and Lisa.
There was a hitch, like always. By the next morning, Ron's bitten hand had swollen to twice its usual size. He didn't know whether it was safe to go to Madam Pomfrey --- would she recognize a dragon bite? Even I couldn't answer that. By the afternoon, though, he had no choice. The cut had turned a nasty shade of green. It looked as if Norbert's fangs were poisonous.
At the end of the day, Harry, Hermione, and I rushed up to the hospital wing to find Ron in a terrible state in bed.
"It's not just my hand," he whispered, "although that feels like it's about to fall off. Malfoy told Madam Pomfrey he wanted to borrow one of my books so he could come and have a good laugh at me. He kept threatening to tell her what really bit me --- I've told her it was a dog, but I don't think she believes me --- I shouldn't have hit him at the Quidditch match, that's why he's doing this."
Harry, Hermione, and I tried to calm Ron down.
"I'll all be over at midnight on Saturday," Hermione said, but this didn't soothe Ron at all. On the contrary, he sat bolt upright and broke into a sweat.
"Midnight on Saturday!" he moaned in a hoarse voice. "Oh no --- 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."
We didn't get a chance to answer. Madam Pomfrey came over at that moment and made us leave, saying Ron needed to sleep.
"It's too late to change the plan now," Harry told Hermione and me. "We haven't got time to send Charlie another owl, and this could be our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We'll have to risk it. And we have got the invisibility cloak, Malfoy doesn't know about that."
We found Fang the boarhound sitting outside with a bandaged tail when we went to tell Hagrid, who opened a window to talk to us.
"I won't let you in," he puffed. "Norbert's at a tricky stage --- nothin' I can't handle."
When we told him about Charlie's letter, his eyes filled with tears, although that might have been because Norbert had just bitten him on the leg.
"Aargh! It's all right, he only got my boot --- jus' playin' --- he's only a baby after all."
The baby banged its tail on the wall, making the windows rattle. We walked back to the castle feeling Saturday couldn't come quickly enough.
We would have felt sorry for Hagrid when the time came for him to say good-bye to Norbert if we hadn't been so worried about what we had to do. Actually, I had convinced the other two to let me go instead of Hermione. I said that it would go on her record if she was caught and stuff like that. It worked, luckily.
It was a very dark, cloudy night, and Harry and I were a bit late arriving at Hagrid's hut because we had to wait for Peeves to get out of our way in the entrance hall, where he'd been playing tennis against the wall.
Hagrid had Norbert packed and ready in a large crate.
"He's got lots o' rats an' some brandy fer the journey," Hagrid told us in a muffled voice. "And' I've packed his teddy bear in case he gets lonely."
From inside the crate came ripping noises that sounded as though the teddy was having its head torn off.
"Bye-bye, Norbert!" Hagrid sobbed, as Harry and I covered the crate with the invisibility cloak and stepped underneath it ourselves. "Mommy will never forget you!"
How we managed to get the crate back up to the castle, we never knew. Midnight ticked nearer as we heaved Norbert up the marble staircase in the entrance hall and along the dark corridors. Up another staircase, then another --- even one of Harry's shortcuts didn't make the work much easier.
"Nearly there!" Harry panted as we reached the corridor beneath the tallest tower.
Then a sudden movement ahead of us made us almost drop the crate. Forgetting that we were already invisible, we shrank into the shadows, staring at the dark outlines of two people grappling with each other ten feet away. A lamp flared.
Professor McGonagall, in a tartan bathrobe and a hair net, had Malfoy 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 rubbish! How dare you tell such lies! Come on --- I shall see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!"
The steep spiral staircase up to the top of the tower seemed the easiest thing in the world after that. Not until we'd stepped out into the cold night air did we throw off the cloak, glad to be able to breathe properly again. I began to dance and made Harry join me.
"Malfoy's got detention! I feel like singing!"
"Don't," Harry smiled. We laughed together. It felt so good to laugh.
"It's kinda cold," I said, aiming to spark up a conversation. Instead of talking, however, Harry threw the invisibility cloak around my shoulders and his. I looked down and could only see a small portion of our bodies. I began to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Harry asked.
"What this must look like, two floating heads," I giggled.
"Oh," Harry said, and then joined in my laughter. Suddenly, his hand closed around mine. My heart fluttered and I looked over at him. He smiled, and all I could do was smile back.
I came a voice in my head. Judging by the look on Harry's face and the sudden retraction of his hand, he had heard it, too. Then, we looked down and saw . . .
"Mrs. Norris?"
"Lisa, how did you get a Mrs. Norris morph?"
The cat began to grow and it soon became Lisa.
"I'm just smart like that," she replied.
"What are you doing here?" Harry asked. Lisa motioned toward Norbert's crate.
"Good luck," I mumbled.
"What?"
"She wants to acquire Norbert's DNA," I explained. Harry still looked confused as Lisa knelt down and opened the crate just enough to stick her hand in. Norbert got unusually quiet for a few seconds, but then he began thrashing again. Lisa jerked her hand out of the crate and it took the three of us to get the crate closed again.
By the time we looked up again, four broomsticks were heading straight for us out of the darkness. Lisa jumped into the shadows as they landed.
Charlie's friends were a cheery lot. They showed Harry and me the harness they'd rigged up, so they could suspend Norbert between them. We all buckled Norbert safely into it and then Harry and I shook hands with the men and thanked them very, very much.
At last, Norbert was going . . . going . . . gone.
Harry and I, our hearts as light as our hands, now that Norbert was off of them, slipped back down the spiral staircase with Lisa behind us. She was too drained to morph again, so she was still a human. No more dragon --- Malfoy in detention --- what could spoil our happiness?
The answer to that was waiting at the foot of the stairs. As we stepped into the corridor, Filch's face loomed suddenly out of the darkness.
"Well, well, well," he whispered, "we are in trouble."
If I hadn't been so wrapped in my joy, my emotions, my feelings for Harry, I would have remembered the thing most vital to change. We had left the invisibility cloak on top of the tower.
