For a while, Harry and Hermione's day seemed like it was going to go pleasantly enough after the initial irritation of Rita's article.

The Hufflepuffs in their Herbology class had finally stopped being so cold towards Harry after the first task, so that Herbology had once again become an enjoyable subject for Harry and Hermione. But as they trudged through the snow up to Hagrid's hut immediately afterwards, their day quickly turned south yet again.

For as soon as they arrived, struggling their way up, they were yelled at for being five minutes late by some old witch standing out in front of the door to Hagrid's hut, after having had to wade their way through waist-deep snow to get there from the greenhouses. And all this despite the fact there wasn't a Slytherin in sight yet, immediately making Hermione wonder if the witch was a Slytherin herself, or merely as cowardly as the rest of the teachers at the school when it came to doing anything that could be perceived as being negative towards the nest of snakes.

But Hermione's musings were cut short by Harry politely asking the witch, "Where is Hagrid?", to which the witch snapped back at him, "My name is Professor Grubbly-Plank. I am your temporary Care of Magical Creatures teacher."

Not liking the attitude of this 'professor' one bit, Hermione said slightly less politely and a lot more sassily, "That doesn't even come close to answering Harry's question — ma'am."

Apparently deciding it was easier to almost but not quite answer the pestering girl, Grubby replied shortly, "He is indisposed."

But before Hermione could point out that the woman had yet again failed to answer the question posed to her, there came sneering laughter from behind them that announced the presence of Slytherins. And once again, to her little surprise, Hermione noticed the clear favoritism towards the Slytherins from Grubby as the woman said nary a peep to any of them about being nearly ten minutes late by that point, and arriving after all of the Gryffindors had arrived.

Instead, she merely said, "This way, please," striding off around the paddock Hagrid was keeping the Beauxbatons horses in.

Harry and Hermione slowly followed the rest of the class to where Grubby led them, a tree at the edge of the Forbidden Forest that had a unicorn tethered to it. But just as Harry stepped forwards to get a better look at the majestic creature, Grubby slammed her arm hard into his chest, nearly clotheslining him, and potentially breaking his neck had her arm been just a few inches higher than it was.

"Boys keep back!" she barked. "They prefer our touch, unicorns. Girls, come on."

So all of the girls except Hermione moved forwards towards the unicorn, but Hermione stayed back in solidarity with Harry and the rest of the boys who were being excluded from the lesson. And to discuss Hagrid.

As soon as Grubby was out of earshot, Harry leaned over and asked her quietly, "You don't think Hagrid's missing because people found out he's half-giant, do you? You did say the entire wizarding world is bigoted against giants and anything connected to them. Is he afraid people will actually hate him because of his heritage as much as Rita says they should?"

"I don't know," replied Hermione, shaking her head. "He did completely lose his nerve after the Buckbeak incident last year, so it's not exactly like he has a track record of standing strong in the face of opposition, at least as a teacher, and against other wizards — intimidating your muggle relatives doesn't exactly count as sticking to his beliefs when he's a wizard and they're just muggles who can't do anything to stop him, magical or size-wise.

"Plus, it's unlikely he's just sick or injured, or surely she would have just said so — she can't hate Gryffindor that much to refuse to give a simple answer because we're Gryffindor. Even Snape was more than happy to tell everyone that Lupin was ill last year when he filled in during the full moon."

"But that would mean he had to quit this morning, the day the article came out. Because he couldn't have quit because of people finding out he's half-giant before today, as no one knew before that article was published. So he didn't even give it a couple days to see if anyone cared," countered Harry.

"Which I'll admit is odd, but remember — completely lost his confidence after Buckbeak. Maybe he just lost his confidence before anything actually happened this time," replied Hermione.

"Or maybe he was badly injured by a skrewt, and they really are illegal, so Hagrid couldn't tell anyone why he couldn't teach, just that he couldn't," proposed Harry thoughtfully. "He didn't want to get in trouble."

"It is possible…" said Hermione slowly, but she looked doubtful.

But before she could say anything else, or propose any other theories as to Hagrid's mysterious disappearance, there came a drawling voice from behind them. "Oh, he hasn't been attacked, Potter and mudblood girlfriend, if that's what you're thinking. No, he's just too ashamed to show his big, ugly face."

Harry turned and gave their favorite snake a raised eyebrow, silently telling him to get on with it already and tell them what he meant, or buck off. Malfoy complied, reaching into his robes and pulling out that morning's Daily Prophet.

"There you go. Hate to break it to you, Potter…" he sneered in a tone indicating the exact opposite. But Harry didn't even bother reaching out to take the newspaper from the Slytherin, able to see from where he was standing the image of Hagrid he'd already seen that morning.

"Yeah, he's half giant — so what?" he said instead. "That's not an answer to the question of why he's not here teaching."

"And before you say it, we're well aware of the bigotry of your kind against giants," added Hermione haughtily. "It's times like this I'm really proud of being a mudblood, and having a half-mudblood boyfriend — we aren't limited by your narrow-minded prejudice against giants, same as we aren't constrained by not being able to say the name Voldemort. All that nonsense really does is restrict you, and pull you down and hurt you more than any good things you could possibly get out of being so intolerant."

Malfoy stared at them for several long seconds, clearly not having expected that response. But he finally collected himself and sneered with much less enthusiasm than normal, "Well, I think this should put an end to the oaf's teaching career. Half-giant — and there was me thinking he'd just swallowed a bottle of Skele-Gro when he was young. None of the mummies and daddies are going to like this at all. They'll be worried he'll eat their kids."

"Skele-Gro? Seriously?" scoffed Hermione. "Then you're all even stupider than I thought. If you knew anything about Skele-Gro, or engorgement charms, or anything else that could potentially cause a human to become extremely large like Hagrid is, you'd know Hagrid isn't big because of any of those. Leaving the only remaining possibility that he is part-giant. I knew it instantly the first time I saw him first year."

Once again, this knocked the wind out of Draco's sails, same as their kiss in the Great Hall on Boxing Day morning had, and same as their already knowing that Hagrid was half-giant and their indifference to it.

But fortunately for him he was saved from having to scramble to come up with a suitable retort, as Grubby shouted over at them, "Are you paying attention over there?"

From over where the girls were all huddled around the unicorn, the witch had been enumerating in a loud voice about the unicorn, as if she were so delusional that she actually thought any of the boys (and Hermione) were actually listening to a word she was saying after being told to stay away. But Hermione was pretty sure she was the only one aware that the witch was even talking loudly enough for the boys to theoretically hear her, as Harry and Draco certainly didn't seem to be noticing it, and none of the rest of the boys seemed to notice either as most of them were chatting with each other, or otherwise doing their own thing that certainly didn't involve listening to Grubby.

So Hermione immediately shouted back to Grubby, "No! We're not!"

Which just as Hermione expected, was completely ignored to the point that it seemed like Grubby never even heard her.

So Hermione turned back to Draco and said, "You had some scathing reply you were going to retort to me after I called you a complete idiot, I think?"

But Draco still hadn't come up with an appropriate riposte, and so after a several second staredown between him and Hermione that Harry watched amusedly from the sideline with a smirk, knowing his girlfriend would win hands down, Draco finally broke and stalked back off to his cronies and hanger-ons, letting Harry and Hermione turn towards Grubby and listen to what she was saying about her precious unicorn she was still only letting females near.

When class eventually let out, and they were all walking back up to the Great Hall for lunch, Harry and Hermione overheard Parvati tell Lavender, "I hope she stays, that woman! That's more what I thought Care of Magical Creatures would be like...proper creatures like unicorns, not monsters…."

"You do realize a unicorn could gore you and three people behind you straight through the heart before you even knew what happened, right?" retorted Hermione as she and Harry passed by. "Or did Grubby fail to mention that small fact? Or perhaps the fact that wizards used them for centuries as war-horses precisely because of how deadly they are with their combined hooves and horn, and intelligence to know how to use them most effectively? Or did she just mention things like they have really pretty coats that change colors as they age, something anyone who's ever opened a magizoology book would already know?"

Parvati stared at Hermione in shock, clearly taken aback by the normally teachers' pet's less than glowing comment about a teacher.

Once he and Hermione had made it out of earshot of their fellow fourth year Gryffindors, Harry leaned over and whispered into her ear, "But I thought you actually thought she was a pretty good teacher. You seemed to be listening pretty attentively to her, anyway."

"I do think she's a good teacher, but that's only because she actually knew how to teach, having a clear objective to pass on and a clear — as anyone here, at least — way of telling it to us," replied Hermione. "Like I said this morning, I do think Hagrid is honestly quite bad at teaching. But that doesn't mean I can't defend Hagrid where he deserves defending, and point out the blatant flaws in Grubby's lesson where they deserve to be pointed out. I don't dislike Hagrid as a person, in fact I think he's a great guy and an overall good influence on you when you've had so few positive adult role models. I just think he needs some actual training in teaching before he's given a teaching post, and a whole lot more self-confidence if all it takes is one article to send him running away."

"So do you want him to come back as teacher, or would you rather have Grubby continue teaching?" asked Harry curiously.

"Hagrid, actually," answered Hermione. "I certainly want him to stop hiding, and while I do think Grubby is a better teacher than Hagrid at this moment, I don't like her attitude, or kowtowing to the Slytherins. The last thing we need is another Snape at this school, and she has yet to prove to me that she won't be, at least in terms of clear favoritism — she doesn't strike me as abusive like Snape, though she caught you pretty hard in the chest. Wouldn't be surprised if you have a bruise there in the morning."

"Then think we should go down to his hut tonight and see if we can't talk some sense into our giant friend?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," replied Hermione with a smile.

~HP~

So that evening after supper, Harry and Hermione walked back down to Hagrid's hut to try to make their half-giant friend see reason and stop hiding.

When they arrived and knocked on the door, they immediately heard Fang's booming barks, but no heavy footsteps of Hagrid coming to the door to let them in ever came. So after several minutes, Hermione knocked again, even harder. When they still received no answer, she and Harry walked around the entire outside of Hagrid's hut, just to make sure he wasn't outside on the other side and somehow hadn't heard either them or Fang's deafening barks, and to try to look in the windows to see if they could see him, but all to no avail. Making it back around to the front door, Hermione knocked a third time.

"Hagrid, we read the article — we know you're half-giant!" she yelled as she knocked. "And we don't care! We've known you for three and half years now — do you really think finding something mildly unpleasant out about your relatives would make us think any different of you? And just so you know, I've known since first year that you had to be part giant!"

"Yeah!" shouted Harry after her. "We missed you teaching class today, and missed seeing you in the Great Hall!"

After still no reply, Harry tried yelling again, "Come on, Hagrid! It's us! You know we don't care about the fact your mother was giant!"

But Hagrid apparently did care, as despite their relative assurity that he was in fact in the hut and not off in the forest or something (as he always took Fang with him on those trips), the front door never opened to present them with their large friend. So eventually, growing cold and disheartened in the freezing temperatures, Harry and Hermione trudged back up to the castle, cursing the wizarding world for creating such an atmosphere of fear that no one was willing to say the nickname of a tyrant (having of course forgotten entirely his real name) and a clearly kind, peaceful half-giant felt the need to run away and hide.

As they sat down together on the couch in front of the fireplace once they'd made it back up to the Gryffindor common room, Harry asked, "So what do we do now? We can't just let him hide away in there like that. And also, is it just me or is it weird that he carried on like normal after Buckbeak scratched Draco — besides his teaching losing all confidence — but he's running away now? Seems to me like a kid in your class getting injured would be as much a reason to run away as this."

"I guess maybe he thought only students would hear about the Buckbeak incident, but this was in the Daily Prophet so the whole world knows?" guessed Hermione. "I don't know — who knows what he's thinking, especially ignoring us like that. But as for what we now do —"

Here she paused, clearly thinking, before finally saying, "Honestly, I'm not sure. If we see him again, we obviously go talk to him and try to convince him to come back like we were planning to tonight. But if tonight is any indication, I'm afraid we may not be seeing him anytime soon. In which case, I don't know how we proceed. We can try sending him a letter, not that he'd necessarily open it based on what we've seen so far, but I'd suggest waiting a few days and seeing if we can't talk to him in person before we try that. I'd much rather talk to him than try to convince him to come back by letter."

Unfortunately, as the week progressed, he never reappeared. Not that someone wasn't taking advantage of his absence, though.

As soon as he saw Harry Tuesday morning in the Great Hall, where Hagrid noticeably still wasn't at the staff table eating breakfast, Malfoy gloated to Harry, "Missing your half-breed pal? Missing the elephant-man?"

But when Harry simply replied calmly, "Yes, I am — I like Hagrid. He's a great friend, even if he does leave a lot to be desired as a teacher," Draco was left just kind of staring at Harry yet again, not knowing what to do when he didn't get the rise he expected from insulting Hagrid and gloating about his absence. But ever the optimist (or definition of insanity), he continued trying every time he saw Harry for the next two weeks, despite Harry simply ignoring him and walking on past without even acknowledging his presence every time after the first.