Disclaimer: No, I don't own Harry Potter.
Zeke Malfoy was up to something. It wasn't just the fact that he was sneaky in class, and often caught staring at Jessie in the Great Hall, shrewdly. It wasn't even the fact that Jades parents had warned her to stay away from him at all costs. He was up to something, and the superior air that he wore when talking to the girls only made them all the more suspicious. Jade had taken to drawing out her marauders map at night, and watching him on it. He would go, for long periods at a time, to the forbidden forest, as though he was searching for something.
This quickly became an obsession for Jade.
"Where is he tonight?" Daniel asked one night, in their second week, yawning widely. The three friends were sitting by the Gryffindor fire, and Jade was pouring over the map intently, while Jessie finished a potions essay.
"In the library again." She said, looking up. "I don't know what he's doing there, either, but he's obviously up to something. We haven't had that much homework."
"Does that mean that we are up to something then?" asked Jessie, reluctant to speak; not taking her attention away from the foot long essay that was trailing over the edge of the table. Jade didn't look up either.
She did understand where Jessie was coming from. The three of them had spent a lot of time in the library over the past two weeks, looking through recent books and Hogwarts records for traces of the woman that had been such good friends with Jade's parents. Their crinkled picture didn't reveal much, however, and they still had no trace of a name. It was almost as though the truth were being hidden from them; torn out pages of books haunted their keen minds, and where there were obvious ink stains on the thick parchment of old Hogwarts records they were sure must hold some clue to the past.
Jessie watched the window, which the owl had flown through and hour before hand. She almost wished that it would come soaring back in if she stared hard enough, the sudden absence of her mum making her yearn for home, no matter how much she was enjoying herself at Hogwarts.
Daniel, Jessie and Jade were invited down to Hagrid's cabin for dinner the next night. Jessie was rather excited about this. She was proud that she had met the man before school, and he was always welcoming when they passed around the school, giving the girls cheery waves and a broad smile, winking occasionally. Jade had known him all her life, and told Jessie a very funny story about Hagrid's pet dragon, Norbert, which had obviously been told one too many times around the dinner table at home, when conversation topics were scarce. It ended with her uncle's friends flying the baby dragon off the top of the astronomy tower illegally. Jessie laughed very hard.
After a long day of classes, and still no letter back from Hermione, the three of them paced their way across the grounds, pulling their cloaks around them against the swirling autumn air, as the days grew shorter and the breeze cooled down.
"Glad you came! Come in, come in!" Hagrid boomed, letting them in the door, his giant boarhound of a dog bounding up to them excitedly, great strands of drool dribbling dangerously out of his large jaws and dripping onto their robes.
"Get off them Fang! Let 'em in, let em in!" Hagrid laughed, and Fang looked guilty, and sulked around to sit behind Hagrid's chair, head on his large round paws, his eyes open and staring. Jessie gave him a scratch on the head, and took a seat at Hagrid's table.
They ate dinner, which Hagrid served up, proclaiming proudly that it was beef casserole, and that they were to make sure to tell Harry how nice and talon free they found it. The nice part they could keep, the talon free part of the deal was not so iron clad, however, they ate it all, and smiled broadly at Hagrid's tear-filled eyes as he scanned the three eleven year olds sitting before him proudly.
They sat around and heard Hagrid's side of the Norbert story next, with a lot more sympathy for the dragon, and a lot less for Ron's mangled fingers, but Jade wasn't interested in that. She was much too busy looking at the picture on Hagrid's mantle piece.
"Hagrid." She said, turning around. "Who is that girl? The one in all the pictures of dad?"
There were four pictures on Hagrid's mantle piece. One was of three young kids, about the age of eleven, wearing neat, clean Hogwarts robes and smiling at the camera happily. They were moving, as all wizarding pictures did. In this one, the young boy with flaming red hair was poking his tongue out behind a girl with bushy hair's back, while she smiled sweetly, tiny dimples protrudent in her face. Another boy, with bright, emerald green eyes and messy black hair, rolled his eyes and then laughed at the red haired boy, waving at the camera.
The second picture was of a man, who was short, with Hagrid's beady black eyes. An eleven-year-old Hagrid stood next to him, an apple tree in the foreground. They both looked happy.
The third picture was one of Hagrid, Fang, and his brother, Grawp. The picture was taken form quite a distance away, and half of Grawp still seemed missing from the picture. Jessie giggled at this.
It was the forth picture, however, that made her gasp.
It was a picture of the same three teenagers that she had seen in the first picture. One she recognised to be her father, Harry. Another was her uncle, Ron. They were wearing dress robes, Ron's seemed to have been savaged and hacked at around the hems. Harry's were a deep bottle green, and made him look rather dashing.
The third person in the picture, when sat so near to the other picture, this version depicting their fourteen-year-old selves, tied together everything for Jade as she hadn't seen before.
The girl, who looked so familiar, was one that she had seen many times. She was standing on her own mantle piece at home; she had been the bridesmaid at her parents wedding. In this picture she wasn't smiling as happily as in the one of that wedding day. She would every so often look over at Ron and scowled, before replacing the frown with an obviously forced smile. The girl on the picture was looing extremely pretty, in this particular portrait, wearing stunning robes of periwinkle blue.
This picture, with her looking young, and yet dolled up so prettily, linked together all the pictures that Jade had ever seen of the woman; the one in the hall, on their first night at Hogwarts, the picture in her own home, and the tiny one, stolen from Ron Weasley's wallet and the one of them in their first year. This was the woman that she had been scouting the library for. She had found her.
Hagrid looked uncomfortable.
"Oh no one, just a woman that I used to know."
"Where is she now? What is her name?" asked Daniel, catching on, his hair transforming smoothing into a persuasive bottle green. Hagrid stared, and then shook his head, as though trying to despatch himself of a very irritable fly.
"She's…" he seemed to be casting around randomly. His eyes fell back onto the mantle piece, and he watched the pictures smiling faces.
"She's dead." He answered finally, putting a lot of emotion into his voice.
Daniel eyed him suspiciously. There was something that wasn't right. Hagrid was not nearly as upset as he should have been, when talking about a departed friend. She couldn't be dead.
Jade stared at him.
"Is that why no one will talk of her any more?" she asked, looking at him empathetically, "What was her name?"
Hagrid's eyes widened, horrified, and he stood up abruptly from his chair, walking towards the door.
"Would you look at that? Look what the time is! Any later and you lot will be in trouble with Filch-"
"Hagrid! Why wont you even tell me her name? What harm could there be in that?"
"Seriously you three, I don't want you on detentions in your first two weeks, no matter how proud that would make Harry…"
"Hagrid!"
"Thanks for coming! Bye!"
The three young Gryffindors stood, staring at the large wooden door that had just shut in their face. They exchanged surprised looks before heading up to the castle, hastily. Hagrid was right, even if he did have an abrupt way of putting it; the caretaker would flay them alive if they didn't get to bed soon…
A/N: ah haha. Very fun to write. Hope that it wasn't too bad to read. Please tell me so, in your review! Just click that little blue button! Yes! That's the way! It's very much appreciated!
Luv Ella Evans xXx
