October 31st, Halloween, was a day of tremendous excitement for the magical
community, especially at Hogwarts. The Great Hall was festooned with
lavish orange and black decorations, and orange fairies flitted, tittering
gaily, among the grinning jack-o-lanterns that floated overhead. The
tables were laden with regular food, and trays of sweets and pastries. The
hall was full of students' chatter and the clatter of cutlery on plates as
Harry, Ron and Neville walked into the Great Hall.
"Happy Halloween!" Seamus Finnigan, with a mouthful of Bertie Botts' jelly beans, greeted them as they sat down at the Gryffindor table. "Eat and make merry!"
"Now what have we got here?" said Ron, rubbing his hands together with the air of a seasoned gourmet. He set himself on a scrumptious trifle.
"Try the grilled salmon," said Lavender Brown, pushing the plate towards Neville.
Neville made a face. "Fish! I've been eating fish all summer. My gran read somewhere that it improves your memory, so she made fish nearly every night to give me a better memory."
"How much fish did you eat every night?" Harry asked him.
"At least three pounds! No-maybe four-well it might have been two." Neville scratched his head. "I really don't remember."
The students were in the middle of their feasting when suddenly the doors at the end of the hall banged open and a giant man burst into the room. Hermione gasped because he was covered in blood and burns, Harry gasped because he was carrying a small woman and her left side was severely scorched; but Ron cried out loud in horror, because it was Mundungus Fletcher with his fiancee Perdita Clemens in his arms.
"Fletch!" Dumbledore cried, rising in a hurry. "What's going on?"
Fletch ran down the Great Hall, his long strides carrying him to the teachers' table. There he fell to both knees before the Headmaster. "Dumbledore!" Fletch choked out. His voice carried clearly in the silence. "Attack in Hogsmeade-dragon! It was- them!"
For a fraction of a second. the students was completely still. Then the whole room erupted in a frenzy of panic and disorder. Everyone leaped to their feet and surged to the doors in one giant tumultuous flood.
"Silence!" bellowed Dumbledore. The students halted. "Remain here! Head Boy and Girl, prefects, make sure no one leaves the room for any reason!" He turned to Professor McGonagall and they conferred in whispers. Then Dumbledore and Professors Figg, Vector, and Flitwick picked up Fletch and hurried out of the Great Hall. Professor Snape, looking apprehensive, carried Perdita Clemens out of the room, presumably to the infirmary.
"Return to your places," ordered Professor McGonagall. The students reluctantly filed back to their tables and took their seats. The Great Hall filled anew with the chatter of the students, but now it was frightened and fretful.
Harry discussed the matter with Ron and Hermione. "Obviously Fletch meant the Death Eaters when he said 'them'," Ron said. He bit his lip. "I can't stop thinking about how bad he looked. He was burned everywhere and covered in blood." His voice trailed away and he shook his head.
" 'Dragon', he said," Hermione said, frowning. "Is it possible at all that it escaped by itself and came here? There are dragon reservations in the Outer Hebrides and in Wales."
Ron shook his head. "Charlie said dragons are reclusive by nature. They're not the travelling type, I mean. It's very unlikely that a dragon would leave a safe, comfortable reservation to come all the way here and tear up wizards. No, what's more likely is that someone-Death Eaters, by Fletch's words-went to a reservation and took a dragon out of it to bring here. "
"So the Death Eaters abducted a dragon and set it on Hogsmeade?" Hermione said.
"And Fletch and Perdita were in town, probably celebrating Halloween at the Three Broomsticks," Harry said. His heart wrenched as he too recalled the big man's wounds. Then he thought about Perdita. "She's pregnant!" he said suddenly, remembering her motherly bliss only a month before. "What if she loses the baby?"
Hermione was alarmed. "A miscarriage? Oh no!"
"Why did this happen?" Ron asked, letting his forehead thump on the table. "Why?"
"Voldemort wants to frighten us," Harry said.
"He's doing a good job of it too," Ron said into the tablecloth.
"But how did he get the dragon here?" Hermione asked. "It couldn't be very hard for him to steal a dragon, but how could he find Hogsmeade? And- and those pranks a couple weeks ago! People said they were the Slytherins' work, but I thought they were too good. I mean, flooding the dungeons, infesting the school with Bundimun, enchanting all those first-years' wands to make matchsticks into snakes. That stuff's too advanced for students. We could have been killed. It must have been the Death Eaters."
"But how?" said Harry. "You've reminded us a thousand times that Hogwarts is Unplottable and hidden by a million other magical methods."
"So then how did he find us here?" said Ron, raising his head. "Assuming he didn't take the Hogwarts Express with us in September."
"He must have an agent inside the school," Hermione said. "If he did play those tricks -somehow he's gotten a Death Eater into the school and he or she is doing work for Voldemort."
"Or," said Harry slowly, "if the Death Eater is in here, he or she could have led Voldemort himself right to Hogwarts."
This was the more terrifying suggestion. The three had sudden visions of Lord Voldemort calmly walking into their midst and blasting the school to bits. Hogwarts was supposed to be the one sanctuary that Voldemort could not physically pervade. Having a Death Eater on the grounds was frightening enough; but to have the evil wizard himself present in their last safe haven was an alarming prospect indeed.
An hour later they were released from the Great Hall and taken directly to their common rooms. The students passed the evening in terror and restless apprehension. No news was heard from Hogsmeade that evening, but Hufflepuff and Slytherin, whose windows faced the town, could look on the devastation that had occurred. Half the town was ablaze, and the houses and shops lay as rubble. People stood in the street, gaping at the ruins of the town that they had believed their untouchable shelter against such events. The numerous wounded were tended throughout the night by witch- doctors brought in from nearby cities and from St. Mungo's Hospital; the dead, of which there were thankfully few, were buried in the town's graveyard, and their deaths were greatly lamented. It was a sleepless night for many.
The next morning the Daily Prophet's front page shouted DRAGON ATTACK IN HOGSMEADE. Harry pored over the newspaper article, which gave full details of the incident.
At approximately 7:30 the night before, Hogsmeade had been celebrating Halloween. Many of the inhabitants were congregated in the Three Broomsticks pub, including well-known Aurors Mundungus Fletcher and Perdita Clemens. The festivities were abruptly cut short when revellers in the street spotted a large winged speck approaching in the sky from the northeast. Witnesses reported that as the dragon got closer, it breathed out a giant column of flame that engulfed a block of houses and Dervish and Banges, the wizard equipment shop. It carried two masked riders, who had thrown a chain round its neck and stood on its back between the great black wings. The identity of the riders was as of yet unknown, but according to reliable sources of the Prophet, they were most likely Death Eaters, possibly two of the escapees of the Azkaban jailbreak earlier that month.
The dragon landed in the centre of the town and swept away half the town in one sweeping stroke of its massive tail. The quaint little village was turned into a place of utter destruction and wreckage by a massive beast that this morning was identified as a Hungarian Horntail, abducted from a dragon colony in Sweden a few hours before. It escaped into the sky some ten minutes after its arrival. The final count: twelve dead, one hundred and seven wounded.
Perdita Clemens sustained many injuries. She and Fletch had been carousing with friends in the Three Broomsticks when the roof exploded in flames. Both rushed to find out what was happening and Fletch, being phenomenally tall and strong, was called outside to help keep the ceiling from collapsing on their heads. Perdita and two other Aurors tried to fix the damage from indoors, but a burning roof timber crashed down on her left shoulder. Severus Snape, whom Dumbledore had appointed Perdita's guardian until Fletch's return, carried her to the infirmary to be tended by Madam Pomfrey. Perdita had received severe burns and a broken collarbone and left arm. Due to trauma, she also lost her baby. Surgeon wizards from St. Mungo's Hospital removed the unborn child from her body while she was still unconscious. Snape stood outside the door, white-faced, thinking dark thoughts and wondering how they were going to break the news to her.
The left side of her face also had gruesome blisters from the fire, but Madam Pomfrey's magical medicines almost completely cured those, leaving only faint scars on her fair cheek. But blemishes were cause for great concern to Perdita, who, despite her many delightful qualities, suffered a huge lack of self-esteem, and was exceedingly vain. She gazed at her scarred reflection in the mirror for a long time; then she cried. For hours Snape sat awkwardly by her, holding her hand, as Perdita wept, grieving for her child, her disfigurement, and her fiance.
Snape had been reluctant at first to look after Perdita, having no particular love for the girl or for the position of bodyguard; but he came to enjoy his new power. Harry, Ron and Hermione pleaded to be allowed to see her, but they were barred entry to the infirmary by Severus Snape, who was determined to keep his promise to Dumbledore to keep Perdita Clemens safe, and despised Harry. "She will see no one," Snape snapped, taking immense pleasure from their indignation. He also began to almost like the girl. Perdita reminded him of someone he had known once, a long time ago.
Snape was present when Fletch and Perdita were reunited on November 1st. He let Fletch into the hospital wing, which was filled with Hogsmeade's injured villagers. Perdita hid her face when he entered.
"Don't look at me! I'm hideous!" she wailed. Fletch sat down on the bed.
"Somehow I doubt that very much. Perdita, let me see your beautiful face."
He took her chin in his hand and turned her scarred, tear-streaked to the light. "It's not so bad. The scars look livid red now, but they'll fade in time. Perdita darling, it's all right."
"I lost the baby," she said. Fletch stroked her face sadly.
"I know. They told me. It was like a slap in the face. I can't believe it."
Perdita looked up fearfully. "Do you blame me? You don't love me anymore! You're going to leave me!"
"No! Heavens no. We'll survive this together. We'll be married in the spring, and we'll have dozens of children and grandchildren and great- grandchildren, and we'll grow old together and die when we're two hundred. Darling, it will be all right. I love you more than ever."
He kissed her forehead and they held each other and wept while Snape stood by sourly, thinking bitter thoughts of lost love and young romance.
"Happy Halloween!" Seamus Finnigan, with a mouthful of Bertie Botts' jelly beans, greeted them as they sat down at the Gryffindor table. "Eat and make merry!"
"Now what have we got here?" said Ron, rubbing his hands together with the air of a seasoned gourmet. He set himself on a scrumptious trifle.
"Try the grilled salmon," said Lavender Brown, pushing the plate towards Neville.
Neville made a face. "Fish! I've been eating fish all summer. My gran read somewhere that it improves your memory, so she made fish nearly every night to give me a better memory."
"How much fish did you eat every night?" Harry asked him.
"At least three pounds! No-maybe four-well it might have been two." Neville scratched his head. "I really don't remember."
The students were in the middle of their feasting when suddenly the doors at the end of the hall banged open and a giant man burst into the room. Hermione gasped because he was covered in blood and burns, Harry gasped because he was carrying a small woman and her left side was severely scorched; but Ron cried out loud in horror, because it was Mundungus Fletcher with his fiancee Perdita Clemens in his arms.
"Fletch!" Dumbledore cried, rising in a hurry. "What's going on?"
Fletch ran down the Great Hall, his long strides carrying him to the teachers' table. There he fell to both knees before the Headmaster. "Dumbledore!" Fletch choked out. His voice carried clearly in the silence. "Attack in Hogsmeade-dragon! It was- them!"
For a fraction of a second. the students was completely still. Then the whole room erupted in a frenzy of panic and disorder. Everyone leaped to their feet and surged to the doors in one giant tumultuous flood.
"Silence!" bellowed Dumbledore. The students halted. "Remain here! Head Boy and Girl, prefects, make sure no one leaves the room for any reason!" He turned to Professor McGonagall and they conferred in whispers. Then Dumbledore and Professors Figg, Vector, and Flitwick picked up Fletch and hurried out of the Great Hall. Professor Snape, looking apprehensive, carried Perdita Clemens out of the room, presumably to the infirmary.
"Return to your places," ordered Professor McGonagall. The students reluctantly filed back to their tables and took their seats. The Great Hall filled anew with the chatter of the students, but now it was frightened and fretful.
Harry discussed the matter with Ron and Hermione. "Obviously Fletch meant the Death Eaters when he said 'them'," Ron said. He bit his lip. "I can't stop thinking about how bad he looked. He was burned everywhere and covered in blood." His voice trailed away and he shook his head.
" 'Dragon', he said," Hermione said, frowning. "Is it possible at all that it escaped by itself and came here? There are dragon reservations in the Outer Hebrides and in Wales."
Ron shook his head. "Charlie said dragons are reclusive by nature. They're not the travelling type, I mean. It's very unlikely that a dragon would leave a safe, comfortable reservation to come all the way here and tear up wizards. No, what's more likely is that someone-Death Eaters, by Fletch's words-went to a reservation and took a dragon out of it to bring here. "
"So the Death Eaters abducted a dragon and set it on Hogsmeade?" Hermione said.
"And Fletch and Perdita were in town, probably celebrating Halloween at the Three Broomsticks," Harry said. His heart wrenched as he too recalled the big man's wounds. Then he thought about Perdita. "She's pregnant!" he said suddenly, remembering her motherly bliss only a month before. "What if she loses the baby?"
Hermione was alarmed. "A miscarriage? Oh no!"
"Why did this happen?" Ron asked, letting his forehead thump on the table. "Why?"
"Voldemort wants to frighten us," Harry said.
"He's doing a good job of it too," Ron said into the tablecloth.
"But how did he get the dragon here?" Hermione asked. "It couldn't be very hard for him to steal a dragon, but how could he find Hogsmeade? And- and those pranks a couple weeks ago! People said they were the Slytherins' work, but I thought they were too good. I mean, flooding the dungeons, infesting the school with Bundimun, enchanting all those first-years' wands to make matchsticks into snakes. That stuff's too advanced for students. We could have been killed. It must have been the Death Eaters."
"But how?" said Harry. "You've reminded us a thousand times that Hogwarts is Unplottable and hidden by a million other magical methods."
"So then how did he find us here?" said Ron, raising his head. "Assuming he didn't take the Hogwarts Express with us in September."
"He must have an agent inside the school," Hermione said. "If he did play those tricks -somehow he's gotten a Death Eater into the school and he or she is doing work for Voldemort."
"Or," said Harry slowly, "if the Death Eater is in here, he or she could have led Voldemort himself right to Hogwarts."
This was the more terrifying suggestion. The three had sudden visions of Lord Voldemort calmly walking into their midst and blasting the school to bits. Hogwarts was supposed to be the one sanctuary that Voldemort could not physically pervade. Having a Death Eater on the grounds was frightening enough; but to have the evil wizard himself present in their last safe haven was an alarming prospect indeed.
An hour later they were released from the Great Hall and taken directly to their common rooms. The students passed the evening in terror and restless apprehension. No news was heard from Hogsmeade that evening, but Hufflepuff and Slytherin, whose windows faced the town, could look on the devastation that had occurred. Half the town was ablaze, and the houses and shops lay as rubble. People stood in the street, gaping at the ruins of the town that they had believed their untouchable shelter against such events. The numerous wounded were tended throughout the night by witch- doctors brought in from nearby cities and from St. Mungo's Hospital; the dead, of which there were thankfully few, were buried in the town's graveyard, and their deaths were greatly lamented. It was a sleepless night for many.
The next morning the Daily Prophet's front page shouted DRAGON ATTACK IN HOGSMEADE. Harry pored over the newspaper article, which gave full details of the incident.
At approximately 7:30 the night before, Hogsmeade had been celebrating Halloween. Many of the inhabitants were congregated in the Three Broomsticks pub, including well-known Aurors Mundungus Fletcher and Perdita Clemens. The festivities were abruptly cut short when revellers in the street spotted a large winged speck approaching in the sky from the northeast. Witnesses reported that as the dragon got closer, it breathed out a giant column of flame that engulfed a block of houses and Dervish and Banges, the wizard equipment shop. It carried two masked riders, who had thrown a chain round its neck and stood on its back between the great black wings. The identity of the riders was as of yet unknown, but according to reliable sources of the Prophet, they were most likely Death Eaters, possibly two of the escapees of the Azkaban jailbreak earlier that month.
The dragon landed in the centre of the town and swept away half the town in one sweeping stroke of its massive tail. The quaint little village was turned into a place of utter destruction and wreckage by a massive beast that this morning was identified as a Hungarian Horntail, abducted from a dragon colony in Sweden a few hours before. It escaped into the sky some ten minutes after its arrival. The final count: twelve dead, one hundred and seven wounded.
Perdita Clemens sustained many injuries. She and Fletch had been carousing with friends in the Three Broomsticks when the roof exploded in flames. Both rushed to find out what was happening and Fletch, being phenomenally tall and strong, was called outside to help keep the ceiling from collapsing on their heads. Perdita and two other Aurors tried to fix the damage from indoors, but a burning roof timber crashed down on her left shoulder. Severus Snape, whom Dumbledore had appointed Perdita's guardian until Fletch's return, carried her to the infirmary to be tended by Madam Pomfrey. Perdita had received severe burns and a broken collarbone and left arm. Due to trauma, she also lost her baby. Surgeon wizards from St. Mungo's Hospital removed the unborn child from her body while she was still unconscious. Snape stood outside the door, white-faced, thinking dark thoughts and wondering how they were going to break the news to her.
The left side of her face also had gruesome blisters from the fire, but Madam Pomfrey's magical medicines almost completely cured those, leaving only faint scars on her fair cheek. But blemishes were cause for great concern to Perdita, who, despite her many delightful qualities, suffered a huge lack of self-esteem, and was exceedingly vain. She gazed at her scarred reflection in the mirror for a long time; then she cried. For hours Snape sat awkwardly by her, holding her hand, as Perdita wept, grieving for her child, her disfigurement, and her fiance.
Snape had been reluctant at first to look after Perdita, having no particular love for the girl or for the position of bodyguard; but he came to enjoy his new power. Harry, Ron and Hermione pleaded to be allowed to see her, but they were barred entry to the infirmary by Severus Snape, who was determined to keep his promise to Dumbledore to keep Perdita Clemens safe, and despised Harry. "She will see no one," Snape snapped, taking immense pleasure from their indignation. He also began to almost like the girl. Perdita reminded him of someone he had known once, a long time ago.
Snape was present when Fletch and Perdita were reunited on November 1st. He let Fletch into the hospital wing, which was filled with Hogsmeade's injured villagers. Perdita hid her face when he entered.
"Don't look at me! I'm hideous!" she wailed. Fletch sat down on the bed.
"Somehow I doubt that very much. Perdita, let me see your beautiful face."
He took her chin in his hand and turned her scarred, tear-streaked to the light. "It's not so bad. The scars look livid red now, but they'll fade in time. Perdita darling, it's all right."
"I lost the baby," she said. Fletch stroked her face sadly.
"I know. They told me. It was like a slap in the face. I can't believe it."
Perdita looked up fearfully. "Do you blame me? You don't love me anymore! You're going to leave me!"
"No! Heavens no. We'll survive this together. We'll be married in the spring, and we'll have dozens of children and grandchildren and great- grandchildren, and we'll grow old together and die when we're two hundred. Darling, it will be all right. I love you more than ever."
He kissed her forehead and they held each other and wept while Snape stood by sourly, thinking bitter thoughts of lost love and young romance.
