PROLOGUE
It was a rather glorious summer day (no different than any other the students attending Hogwarts had enjoyed recently), and as a natural side effect, none of the students were able to concentrate on any of the lessons other than Potions, as that took place in the dank, dreary dungeons, with an even more depressing teacher. Students that were more advanced with magic were levitating and changing their densities to sunbathe on the warm roofs of the greenhouses to absorb the heat they had gathered all day, whilst others were more content lazing around on the almost majestic lawns that graced the landscape of the school. This was not the case for all of the student body however. A certain seventeen-year-old female student who went by the name of Hermione Granger kept Madame Pince some company in the stuffy library whilst she happily spent her time relaxing with a large and heavily mildewed book on a topic that nobody knew about as it was so old and forever ignored by browsers. She found a certain level of comfort in the mouldy books, and what she read now interested her greatly as it involved something that she had learned only recently, so she naturally wanted to research it as much as possible. She didn't even notice she was writing notes in her best handwriting at the same time as she pored over the yellowed pages; she'd done it for most of her life and now it was second nature for her to do it. In fact, it could account for her completing her assignments well before any of her classmates, which happily left her with more time to dedicate to studying. Her friends had learned to adapt to her habits almost as quickly as they'd learned that more or less every conversation held with her contained at least one reference to some unknown book that, according to her, they should have read if they wanted to be taken seriously as a witch/wizard. She didn't really mind being alone for the duration of her reading, as she took pride in revealing facts that she had taken the time to learn, and she felt content when they were impressed. Unfortunately, they now began to take her resources for granted a lot more than they used to, and this fuelled her determination to find out all available on what she was looking at now. Still, it would be nice if her friends kept her some company in this sweltering heat, but right now, neither of her closest friends were capable of such a thing.
Harry Potter awoke to a strange sight—for some reason he was on his back looking up at the Whomping Willow leaning back with precise aim to hit him if he moved even fractionally closer to the vicious tree. He instinctively rolled backwards and watched the branches creak back into their usual places, and an even stranger sight met his sleepy eyes when he summoned enough courage to take his eyes off the willow. Heartily laughing on the grass beside him was none other than Ron Weasley, and instead of becoming angry, Harry found amusement in the situation he had been in moments beforehand. After regaining his breath, he asked Ron why he had been there and why he couldn't recall anything leading up to it, which sent Ron into fits of laughter once more when he tried to explain it to him. It turned out that Harry had fallen victim to sleep in the middle of double Divination and it hadn't annoyed Professor as much as normal; instead she told the class that he was probably fretting over his imminent death that she had sighted in the constellations. It had been going well until the class had just been dismissed and he said something that most certainly was not a word of panic, and she had decided that assisting him into the fresh air would be of benefit to him, and she had roughly set him down near the Whomping Willow, but not close enough for the branches to kill him—it was unthinkable as it would be altering his fate. Only Ron had waited an hour for him to wake up, which brought him up to that point in time, and when Harry had eased the stitch in his side from laughing so hard, they headed off to the Quidditch stadium to enjoy the weather from a higher altitude, thanks to Harry's Firebolt. Madame Hooch was polishing the school's brooms manually, and she was good-natured enough to lend Ron the best broom she had (easily better than his old Cleansweep) and they tossed a Quaffle to each other in the splendid heat. They only ceased their game to enter the main building when they knew their presence would be required at the Great Hall.
They sat down next to their companions at the Gryffindor table and they exchanged light-hearted stories with each other as they ate their fill with delicious food, and neither Harry nor Ron realised that their conversations were lacking comments from Hermione. She sat quietly and quite forgotten a few seats away from them, blissfully thinking about all she had learned from the old, musty book, and when she'd next have access to its information, and she didn't notice that she was being ignored. She left before either of her best friends were finished eating, and she decided that testing the book's knowledge could prove rather advantageous to her status as a contemporary witch. She glowed with excitement when she discovered everything written in her notes were true, and in her ecstasy she didn't realise that she was watched by two people in the quiet corridor. She spun around and pointed her wand upon hearing a small sound from one of them, and she gasped when she heard what they had to say, and what they did…
It was only when they'd left the Great Hall for Gryffindor Tower that Ron realised that neither of them had seen Hermione since History of Magic at first class after lunch, and they hurriedly asked their fellow students if they'd seen her. Dean Thomas said that he'd seen her when they were eating, and that Ginny had seen her heading into her bedroom whilst complaining about a headache around ten minutes ago. They decided that it would be best not to disturb her if she wanted to rest, and instead asked one of the female students to give her their regards whenever they saw her. Now that they were unable to talk to their friend, Harry and Ron were at a loss as to what to do, until inspiration struck the earlier; they could use his Invisibility Cloak and pay a visit to Hagrid in the pleasant weather. They waited for the common room to empty a little before they inconspicuously stole out of the room via the portrait hole, and they silently escaped the castle without being noticed by anyone. The sound that met their ears was a combination of fear provoking and nerve-racking, so whilst they wanted to stop dead in their tracks, their bodies forced them towards Hagrid's Hut at a greater pace than they had been travelling at beforehand. The noise was emanating from Fang as he wailed despondently into the night and scratched at the door ferociously from the inside, and the two boys were almost too afraid to enter the hut to investigate what was wrong with the great boarhound. Harry extended his shaking hand to open the solid oak door, mentally praying that it was something small as the dog was a renowned coward, and he nearly trampled them as he fled from the scene in terror. They entered the hut with fear-stricken hearts, and Ron dropped to his knees when he saw what was making Fang so afraid.
Hagrid lay ashen-faced on the floor with an eerie lustrous symbol floating menacingly above his head, and neither of them had seen anything quite like it before. The thing that was so terrifying for them was that Hagrid was dead.