The weeks seemed to fly by for Lucy; never would she have dreamed of the day that she was always excited to go to class. Compared to the orphanage's built-in school, this was a heaven. Their uniforms were neat and always something to take pride in, while at Wool's she would wear a grey shirt and trousers (something she now used for pajamas).
She was good friends with Harry and Ron, but that didn't stop her from getting into mischief with her fellow badgers. Susan was more cautious when it came to bending the rules, often acting as the conscience of the group, but if Hannah was up to the task, she would most likely follow along.
It wasn't like they were world renounced troublemakers or anything; mostly Lucy and the girls would do whatever Anthony Rickett or the twins put them up to. More often than not George and Fred Weasley would find them in some corner of the castle and send them somewhere for a project they'd been working on. For being on on it, Lucy didn't know much of what they had planned, but she knew that it was going to be good considering how long they'd worked on it.
Even though they worked with the Gryffindors, Lucy couldn't deny that their commanding officer was Anthony Rickett. That boy was a subtle kind of trouble — his colors were black and yellow, but he had a tongue of silver and knew just which buttons to press without meriting a detention or a punch in the face. His most common target was Daisy Locke, the Hufflepuff prefect whom was oblivious to the fact that Anthony was head over heels for. Lucy thought it was sort of sad, but most of his unrequited love probably came from the fact that Anthony could find a way to annoy her without even trying. Four weeks into school and Lucy had witnessed the prefect yell at Anthony with her face bright red and her auburn hair flaming.
To sum it up, most of the badgers-in-training knew not to mess with Daisy Locke.
"No, Anthony, I'm not doing that to Daisy," said Megan, staring at the boy in front of her in disbelief. He was trying to convince her and Lucy to sneak into the fifth year dormitory to nick Daisy's prefect badge so he could... modify it, whatever that meant.
"Why?" whined Anthony, pulling his lips into a pout.
Lucy retreated up into the dorms, shaking her head as Megan and Anthony both argued their points. The two bickered like siblings, and they looked so much a like that Lucy had a hard time telling if they were separated at birth or something.
Megan's glare didn't let up. "Well, for one, Daisy's nice and you shouldn't make her so angry all the time. And also, she's a prefect! It's like walking into a dragon's den, Rickett!"
Anthony rolled his eyes. "And you call yourself a Gryffindor? Where's your sense of adventure?"
"I must've lost it around the same time I was sorted into Hufflepuff," Megan deadpanned. She turned back to the charms homework that was sprawled out across the coffee table. Here they had been doing her homework like a good little badger, and then Anthony showed up trying to persuade her into doing his dirty work. If he wanted the badge so badly, then he could find his own way up into that dorm.
"I don't recall naming you the sassy one," Anthony muttered. "What happened to my innocent ducklings? When did society corrupt you?!"
Megan slammed her book shut. She looked up at the fourth year boy in pure disbelief. The boy looked genuinely sorrowful and near close to tears, as if he were mourning a fallen comrade.
"Honestly, Rickett, you're sending me on a suicide mission! Nobody — and I mean nobody — in their right mind would ever —"
"Got it!" Lucy called from the top of the staircase.
Megan closed her eyes, feeling Anthony Rickett's triumphant gaze burning holes in her head.
"You were saying, Meggie?" Anthony batted his eyelashes at her innocently.
She rolled her eyes and shoved him. "I said nobody in their right mind. Lucy's never in her right mind."
"Rude," Lucy huffed, and she jumped four steps down to the bottom. She presented the prefect's badge to Anthony, which he took into his hands like he was receiving the Olympic golden medal. "It was just sitting there on her bedside table. Honestly, it wasn't that hard."
"Maybe some of us have a little thing called integrity," Megan sniffed. "If we all start stealing each other's badges, we'll collapse from within!"
Lucy grinned as she envisioned a war among the Hufflepuffs, half painted in black stripes and half painted in yellow. Maybe the Gryffindor's could even join in —
Gryffindors... Ron and Harry!
It was time to go to Hagrid's!
Without explanation Lucy sprinted out of the common room, not bothering to bring her robes or her shoes. In retrospect that was a terrible idea, as it was nearing October and Spring's warmth had begun to shrivel up as the days passed by. But she didn't want to show up late; that would be rude, and after she made it out the front doors she could see Ron and Harry quite a bit up ahead. Her throat was burning, but she managed to catch up to them.
"You look like you've run a marathon," Harry said to the heavily breathing Lucy. She didn't bother responding, feeling as if she might accidentally throw up if she did. Running from the Hufflepuff common room all the way across the courtyard was not a good idea.
She was nothing if not punctual.
A large, slobbering boarhound greeted the three at the door after Hagrid let them in. He was a dog worthy of the giant man, alright — compared to Hagrid, Fang looked like a normal sized dog.
His hut was quaint and cozy; there was one room with a lit stove and a large, quilted bed in the corner. It reminded Lucy of some of the cabins they visited on a field trip to a forest, but for a giant man this was quite a small home. She couldn't bring it in her to judge Hagrid too harshly — hell, she didn't have it in her to judge Hagrid at all.
"Make yerselves at home," offered Hagrid. He released Fang's collar and the massive dog made a beeline for Ron, licking his face.
"This is Ron and that's Lucy," Harry introduced.
Preparing tea and oddly shaped cakes, Hagrid said, "Nice 'ter meet you two. Hope I won' be chasin' you away form the forest like yer brothers, Ron. Spent half me life trying to keep them out."
While Ron and Harry struggled to eat the rock cakes, Lucy found that the best way was to suck on them, otherwise she'd risk breaking a tooth on the treats that definitely lived up to their namesake. Harry told Hagrid all about potions class and how Snape had treated him. Lucy was livid. The man seemed like a sourpuss, but Lucy hadn't expected him to treat Harry so cruelly! Pulling a face at the thought of the potions master, Lucy vowed to annoy him as much as she could. All she'd need to do was to act like Anthony Rickett, after all.
"What a giant sniveling git!" Lucy snarled, squeezing the rock cake so hard that it crumbled in her hand. Even Hagrid had to stop to admire the borrowed strength, although he could probably do the same between his pointer finger and his thumb.
"Don't yeh worry about Snape," Hagrid dismissed, pouring Lucy some more tea in an attempt to calm her down. "I don' think he likes any student 'ere. Didn' like anyone in his days either."
"Then why in Merlin's name is he a professor?" Ron groaned.
"Don' know. He's not just out to get yeh; 'specially hates Gryffindor, I heard."
"But he seemed to really hate me," Harry argued.
"Rubbish! Why should he?"
But all three noticed how Hagrid didn't meet his eyes. He definitely knew more than he was letting on, but out of politeness for having just met the man who gave them tea and pastries, she decided to let it go. For now, she told herself.
Hagrid engaged Ron in a conversation about his brother Charlie and dragons. It was an obvious topic change, but Lucy couldn't find herself complaining because the story was really quite captivating. She'd forgotten all about Snape's mysterious hatred for Harry, until the boy-who-lived suddenly exclaimed, "Hagrid! That Gringotts break-in happened on my birthday! It might've been happening while we were there!"
Lucy quickly gathered that Hagrid wasn't a very good liar. They wrapped up their get together and brought back rock cakes, which Lucy suggested they give to their dorm mates as a prank. The three walked slowly up to the castle for dinner, not wanting to leave each other's company quite yet. Apart from working on homework together and the weekends, they didn't get to spend that much time all together.
"What was that about the break in?" Lucy asked suddenly.
"Oh, that," said Harry, and he began to fill her in on the tale of how he visited Gringotts with Hagrid and how they visited vault seven hundred and thirteen and taken a small lumpy package. Harry reckoned that they were the ones to empty out the fault before the break-in, and Lucy could tell that Ron and Harry were intent on finding out what was in that package and why someone would want to steal it.
"You guys are really nosy," Lucy said, and before Ron could protest she added, "but so am I. We'll find out what was in that package. Hagrid'll have to crack soon enough."
At the Hufflepuff table as Lucy helped herself to more potatoes, she absentmindedly nodded while only half-listening to Anthony's captivating story of how Daisy had yet to notice that her prefect's badge held a picture of himself on it.
She kept thinking of Gringotts, the mysterious package, and Snape's hatred of Harry. Hagrid was hiding things, and it was only a matter of time before the meddling three found out what.