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Harry Potter/Granger and the Philosopher's Stone
As time went on, however, Hermione's fears about Snape finding out what he needed to know seemed to be groundless. She'd confided her concerns in Harry and Ron, of course, and they'd all done their best to keep an eye on the Potions master to ensure he didn't try anything, but so far their current avenue of investigation wasn't turning up anything helpful.
Of course, the fact that they were now so busy revising for exams- due in no small part to Hermione's insistence that they revise, of course- also wasn't helping them do any detective work in their spare time. Harry was perfectly happy to take a more leisurely approach to revision, checking over everything in smaller doses over the course of the year and looking at it completely in the last few days prior to the actual exams, but Hermione, for all Harry's attempts to make her calm down over the years, still went… well, 'kind of mad' when it came to exams, to say the least. Generally, Harry found that the easiest thing to do was leave her alone and assure her he was getting on with the revision as well, but Ron, his knowledge of Hermione limited to the last few months rather than the last few years, hadn't learned the wisdom of at least pretending to go along with her claims.
"Hermione," he groaned, as she tried to force one of her own carefully-planned-out revision timetables onto him in the common room one afternoon, " the exams are ages away…"
"Ten weeks?" Hermione retorted, looking critically at Ron as though she couldn't believe anybody could be such an idiot as to not take the exams more seriously. "For Nicholas Flamel, that's practically seconds."
"Hermione," Harry said in exasperation, peering at her over the copy of The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes that he was reading during one of his rare moments of leisure, "unlike Flamel, we're not old enough to remember when the Great Fire of London, the American Civil War and the bombing of Hiroshima; for us, ten weeks is a pretty decent amount of time to prepare for anything."
"Why are you being so CASUAL about this?" Hermione hissed over at her brother, barely remembering that there were other people in the room and she didn't want to attract any attention. "You know that we've got to pass these if we want to stay here another year! I should have been revising ages ago, I don't know what's gotten into me-"
"If you'd started revising any earlier, Hermione, you'd have been revising since you got here," Harry stated, placing the book off to the side and reaching out to grab Hermione's wrists, staring at her in a manner that he hoped would make sure she listened to him. "Don't you remember what I've told you in the past? If you just focus on your work and don't give yourself a bit of time to have an actual life, you'll end up giving yourself a heart attack by the time you're twenty and pretty much ruining your social life with everybody you know, OK? So chill. Out. Got me?"
Looking back at her brother for a moment, Hermione looked like she was considering protesting, but, in the end, she just sighed and nodded, as Harry released her wrists.
"Yeah, I know you're right…" she said, sighing slightly as she stared at her brother, a slightly awkward, embarrassed expression in her eyes. "I guess… it's the new curriculum getting on top of me a bit, you know? At least when we were back at primary school we could always be sure that we knew the essential basics, if nothing else; these days, we've got to start completely over from scratch once again."
Shaking his head ruefully, Harry grinned as he placed a reassuring hand on Hermione's shoulder.
"Don't worry about it, sis; we'll do fine," he said, trying not to let his body reflect his slightly nagging doubts about his abilities in a couple of his classes- potions in particular was a problem; he somehow doubted that Snape would want to play fair when the time came to mark his work- and just seem relaxed about the whole thing.
In general, it wasn't exactly a lie anyway; he knew that he could do this if he had the chance, he just needed to focus a bit and not get too stressed about the whole thing.
"Now then," he said, grinning casually at Hermione as he sat back, "given that it took me this long to get you to calm down, you need to take some time out soon; OK?"
For a moment, Hermione still seemed prepared to protest, but, finally, she sighed and nodded.
"Yeah, OK," she said, smiling apologetically at her brother and her friend before she glanced up at her room. "Now that I think about it, I have been meaning to check out that copy of The Hobbit that Mum gave me for Christmas this year…"
As Hermione headed up to the dormitories to fetch her book, Ron sighed in relief as he glanced over at Harry.
"Thank you…" he wheezed, relief evident in his eyes. "If she'd kept up with that, I really think I might have hit something…"
Harry shrugged. "Don't blame you for that, really; I've felt that way myself once or twice," he said casually, before leaning forward to glare at his friend. "Just so long as you understand that if you hit Hermione in a temper, no matter what your excuse is, I will hunt you down and seriously hurt you back, OK?"
For a moment, Ron looked uncertain as to whether Harry was being serious or not, but then he saw the look in his friend's eyes and simply nodded.
"Good," Harry said simply, as he leant back in his chair and continued to read his book.
Unfortunately, although Hermione was no longer quite as insistent about revising for the exams as she had been prior to Harry's little lecture, the teachers as a whole appeared to have no qualms about giving the students an almost ridiculous amount of work. The homework they had over the Easter holidays took up so much time that those holidays weren't nearly as fun as the Christmas ones had been, and, despite her best intentions, Hermione was commonly to be found reciting the twelve uses of dragon blood under her breath, with her hand unconsciously flicking as though she was waving her wand whenever she was sitting still somewhere or other. However, much to Ron's relief, they didn't visit the library as often as they could have done; Harry had managed to talk Hermione down to just one or two weekly visits to research new information, allowing them time to relax and avoid practically burning their brains out.
It was on one of these visits, however, that two very unexpected things happened; one of them was that Ron noticed the second thing before either of the other two did. They'd just sat down for some Herbology revision- one of the few subjects where all three of them were on a pretty much equal level- when Ron suddenly said, "Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?"
Looking up sharply at that, Harry and Hermione were surprised to see that Hagrid was indeed in the library; neither of them would have dreamed of mentioning it, but they'd always regarded Hagrid as being far from the most literate of people. Why would he be in a library?
"Jus' lookin'," he said, in a slightly shifty voice; it was apparent that Hagrid would never be very good at spy work, even if he wasn't so distinctive. "What're you lot up ter?" His face suddenly looked more suspicious. "Yer not still lookin' for Nicholas Flamel, are ye?"
"Oh, we figured that out a while back," Ron said impressively. "And we know what-"
Before Ron could finish his sentence, however, Harry and Hermione had clapped their hands over his mouth, and were glaring at him critically.
"Ron," Hermione hissed, the gaze she directed at the boy so intense that Harry was surprised something didn't start burning, "do you have no sense? We can't go talking about something like that in public!"
As Ron nodded slightly, Hermione smiled slightly at him before she and Harry removed their hands as she turned back to look at Hagrid. "However, we wouldn't mind knowing a bit more about exactly what else is involved in the protection of the you-know-what, baring the obvious detail of a certain pet of yours…"
"SHHHH!" Hagrid said again, leaning over to speak to them more quietly as he anxiously glanced around the library. "Listen- come an' see me later. I'm not promisin' I'll tell yeh anythin', mind, but don' go rabbitin' about it in here, students aren' s'pposed ter know. They'll think I've told yeh -"
"Check; we'll stay quiet in public and see you later, OK?" Harry said, grinning slighty at Hagrid.
As the gamekeeper shuffled off, however, Harry got up and walked over to the section that his friend had been studying, Ron and Hermione close behind him, although Ron looked a bit confused as to what this was all about.
"Uh… why are we doing this?" he asked, as Harry rounded the corner.
"I just want to know what section Hagrid was looking at," Harry said, as he turned the corner to study the shelves. "If it turns out to have something…"
Then his eyes widened as he saw what was on the shelves.
"Oh, nuts," he muttered to himself, as he looked back at Ron and Hermione. "It was the section on dragons."
"Dragons?" Hermione said, looking over at Harry in shock. "As in, the dragons that Hagrid told us he'd always have liked to own when we first met him?"
"But it's against our- sorry, wizard laws," Ron said, noting Hermione's glare; she had made it clear to Ron that he was to specifically refer to wizarding laws as such, rather than act as though they were somehow different from muggles, regarding it as an almost inverse of Malfoy's typical behaviour. "Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlock's Convention of 1709; everyone knows that!"
"Yeah, dragons aren't exactly the kind of thing you can just hide in the garden shed when you want to keep them secret," Harry said, as he stared in confusion at the door that Hagrid had just walked out of. "So what's Hagrid up to, looking in the dragon section of the library…?"
When they went down to the gamekeeper's hut later that day, Harry's anxiety was just made worse by the fact that the curtains were closed and Hagrid actually asked who it was; neither fact boded well for any hopes that Hagrid might just have been checking the library out of idle interest.
As they entered the hut, Harry felt like he'd walked into a sauna; there was a blazing fire in the grate for some reason.
"So, Hagrid…" Hermione said, looking at their friend as she spoke in a flattering manner; she and Harry had discussed their approach upstairs, and it had been decided that Hermione was the best bet for trying to get through to Hagrid right now. "As far as the Philosopher's Stone goes, we were more wondering who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him protect it, apart from you; we understand completely that you can't tell us what they used, even if you do know everything that goes on around here."
Hagrid almost looked slightly sheepish at that last comment, but shrugged it off as he looked at Hermione, his initially fixed appearance of refusal slightly tempered by Hermione's flattering words.
"Well, I suppose it's all right for ye ter know that," he admitted, as he raised a few fingers as he went over the teachers in his mind. "Let's see, he borrowed Fluffy from me… then some o' the teachers did a few enchantments; Professor Sprout… Professor Flitwick… Professor McGonnagall… Professor Quirrell… oh, and Dumbledore himself did something… there's one more… oh yeah; Professor Snape."
"Sn-" Ron began, but stopped when Harry kicked Ron lightly in the shin; there was no sense in reminding Hagrid of their earlier theories about Snape being after the stone, since it seemed pretty clear that the gamekeeper wouldn't believe them.
Still… based on Hermione's early sightings, it seemed pretty clear that Snape was putting a great deal of pressure on Quirrell to talk, for reasons that Hermione had yet to find out; if this was accurate, it seemed likely that Snape just didn't know what the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher had chosen as his own defence against the Stone.
"Uh… just to make sure, nobody knows how to get past Fluffy?" Harry asked, crossing his fingers slightly as he hoped that Hagrid wouldn't notice Ron's brief yelp of pain from where Harry had kicked him; the less suspicions they attracted, the better.
"Not a soul knows 'cept me an' Dumbledore," Hagrid replied reassuringly.
"Well, that's something…" Ron muttered over to Harry, shooting a briefly hostile look at his friend- probably for the kick- before he looked back at Hagrid. "Any chance you could open a window, by the way? Sorry, but I'm boiling…"
"Can't, Ron; sorry," Hagrid said…
And his eyes flicked towards the fire.
That was all Harry needed to see; glancing in the direction of the fire, Harry inwardly groaned at the sight of the large black egg in the centre of the blaze.
Unless Hagrid had some fondness for really, really big omelettes, there was only one explanation for that thing being there…
"Is that a dragon egg?" Hermione said, following her brother's gaze and staring incredulously at the large black form before her. "Hagrid, it must have cost a fortune; how did you get it?"
"Well… I won it," Hagrid said, looking slightly sheepishly at the three children as he spoke. "I was down in the village having' a few drinks las' night an' got into a game o' cards with a stranger; seemed glad ter get rid of it, really."
"Uh… is this related to you being in the library earlier?" Harry asked, looking back at Hagrid. "We noticed you were in the dragon section…"
"Yeah, got this outta the library," Hagrid said, pulling a large book out from under his pillow; Harry noted that the title was Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit, suggesting to him that the book was more than slightly out of date if dragon breeding was outlawed.
"Bit outta date, but it's all in here," Hagrid explained, apparently not noticing the sceptical expressions of the others as he continued. "Fire's sp hot 'cause their mothers are meant ter breath on 'em in the nest, see, an' when it hatches, it needs a mix of brandy an' chicken wings every half hour. I've even worked out what kind of egg it is; it's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them."
The three students exchanged sceptical glances; even if none of them wanted to voice it directly, the fact that Hagrid lived in a wooden house and was prepared to raise a fire-breathing dragon was more than slightly worrying.
As soon as they could leave without causing offence, the three of them were standing outside the hut, exchanging anxious glances as they walked back to school.
"OK, with that bit of information in mind, does anyone have any idea how we deal with this new problem?" Harry asked, looking at Ron and Hermione. "I mean, we can't just leave Hagrid with a dragon; he could get in serious trouble if anyone finds out."
"Not forgetting the problem the thing burning his house and most of the forest down; I somehow doubt the fire thing is an exaggeration," Hermione said, sighing as she glanced back at the hut briefly. "If the size of the egg is any indication, the thing should be the size of a cat or dog when it hatches, and we have no idea how long it takes for these things to reach full size."
"Yeah…" Harry muttered to himself, before glancing back at Ron. "How fast do dragons grow in the first place?"
"Well, I don't know exactly, but I think it's pretty fast; I recall Charlie saying in one of his letters that he'd seen a dragon born in Easter and it was pretty much the size of a whole room in a month-"
Ron suddenly stopped talking as Harry and Hermione both stopped walking, staring at each other with an incredulous expression as they stared at each other.
"Oh my God…" Hermione whispered, as she stared incredulously at Harry. "We're idiots!"
"Uh… excuse me?" Ron asked, looking in confusion between his two friends. "What is it?"
"Ron, you mentioned that your brother Charlie worked with dragons, right?" Harry said, as he looked back at his friend, a broad grin now on his face. "Do you think he'd be willing to take on a Norwegian Ridgeback if we asked him? I mean, if nothing else at least he might be better-equipped to deal with it without having a mass of legal problems dropped on his head because he's doing something dangerous and potentially illegal if discovered…"
Ron nodded thoughtfully as Harry spoke, a small smile already forming on his face.
"It could work…" he said, as he looked at the two of them with a growing smile on his face. "Charlie said in one of his last letters that he works at a reserve; he's definitely got the space to look after the thing, if nothing else."
"But will Hagrid even want to let it go?" Hermione asked, as the three of them continued to walk up to the castle. "He did seem rather happy about having it…"
"If we tell him it's Charlie, I'm sure he'll understand," Ron said, for once sounding more assured than he usually did when discussing a long-term strategy of some kind. "He's made it pretty clear that the two of them got on well when Charlie was at school; if he'd trust anyone to look after the dragon, it'd be Charlie."
"Well, here's hoping," Harry said, crossing his fingers in his pocket as the three of them approached the castle entrance.
It was a plan, at least, but Harry felt sure they should wait until the dragon was hatched before they suggested it to him; maybe then he'd acknowledge that he couldn't quite handle the thing on his own…
The next couple of weeks were a mixed torment for Harry, Ron and Hermione, as they tried to both focus on their exams and work out a means of suggesting their idea about Charlie to Hagrid. Despite their resolution to avoid bringing up the Charlie suggestion until Hagrid had actually seen what it was like to raise a dragon, they were increasingly tempted to just take the easy way out and try it now…
But they knew that it wouldn't work; Hagrid was too besotted with the idea of owning an actual dragon to consider the consequences of such an action at the present. They had to give him a bit of time to get used to the idea of the problems involved…
Finally, at breakfast one day, Hedwig brought Harry another note from Hagrid, with only two words: It's hatching.
"Wicked!" Ron breathed, as he looked up at the others. "We've got to go; I mean, how often do-"
"Ron, sssh!" Harry whispered, glancing around anxiously; Malfoy was listening far too intently from the Slytherin table for his liking, and the last thing they needed was for that git to find out what was up.
"Look," he continued in a low voice, "I think our best bet is to head down during break; nobody'll miss us and we should at least manage to get a look at the dragon, right? I'll grab the cloak and meet you in Herbology; see you in a minute."
As soon as Herbology was over (Harry only just managing to make it down to the lesson in time, his cloak concealed in his bag), the three of them hurried off to a shadowed area in one of the towers to get the cloak on over the three of them- it was a tight fit, but they managed it. Despite the necessary handicap of moving at a slow speed to avoid being seen, they made their way through the grounds to the edge of the forest as fast as they could. As soon as Harry had concealed the cloak back in his bag, they knocked on the door and Hagrid greeted them, looking flushed and excited."It's nearly out," he said to them, grinning broadly, as though he could hardly believe what was happening in his hut, as he ushered them inside.
Staring around them, the three of them quickly noticed that the egg had been removed from the fire and was now lying on the table, with several deep cracks in it. Something was moving inside, and a funny clicking noise was coming from it. Drawing their chairs up to the table, the four people watched the sight before them with bated breath…
Then, all of a sudden, there was a scraping noise and the egg split open as the baby dragon flopped onto the table. It wasn't exactly as elegant as Harry had expected from some of the fantasy books he'd read when he first started living with the Grangers; it looked more like a crumpled, black umbrella than an elegant master of the skies. Its spiny wings were huge compared to its skinny jet body, it had a long snout with wide nostrils, the stubs of horns and bulging, orange eyes.
Staring around at its surroundings, the dragon sneezed and a couple of sparks flew out of its snout.
"Isn't he beautiful?" Hagrid murmured. He reached out a hand to stroke the dragon's head. It snapped at his fingers, showing pointed fangs.
"Bless him, look, he knows his mommy!" said Hagrid, grinning at the dragon as though it had just tried to grab his finger rather than eat it. "Hello Norbert!
"Norbert?" Ron said, looking incredulously at Hagrid and the dragon.
"Well, he's gotta have a name don't he?" Hagrid said, shrugging nonchalantly as he turned back to the dragon, reaching over to 'tickle' it slightly under the chin. "Don't you Norbert? Te de de de de!"
The newly-named Norbert 'sneezed' slightly, and Hagrid's beard suddenly had some faint flames in it. "Woah!" Hagrid said, chuckling slightly as he battered the flames out with his hands, sounding almost like a parent whose infant child had just had a slightly embarrassing toilet-related accident.
"He'll… have to be trained up a bit, o' course," he said, looking over at the students with a slightly sheepish smile.
"Hagrid," said Hermione, looking skeptically at the dragon in the gamekeeper's arms, "how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly?"
Hagrid was about to answer when his eyes fell on the window behind them, and he cocked his head to one side in a puzzled manner.
"What's the matter?" Ron asked.
"Think I saw someone coming down here through the gap in the curtains- looked like a kid…" Hagrid said, as he looked back at the others. "Yer didn' invite somebody else, did ye?"
"No…" Harry said, a slightly anxious expression on his face as inspiration dawned.
They hadn't invited anyone, but he was still sure that Malfoy had heard something this morning at breakfast…
"Hagrid," Harry said, glancing back at his friends and sister anxiously, "hide Norbert and get some cups out; make it look as though we just came down here for a meal or something."
"Harry, wha-" Hermione began.
"Do it," Harry hissed, as he sat back at the table. "I think Malfoy's coming down to see what we're up to, and I'm not going to let him see… Norbert!"
Nodding in understanding, Hagrid scooped Norbert up in his arms and carried him off to his bedroom, all the time whispering something to the dragon that sounded like he was apologizing to the creature.
As Harry and Hermione raced to get some of Hagrid's mugs, Ron organizing the chairs in the room so that one of them had a decent view of the window that Malfoy would have to peer through so they'd know if he was there, all three of them knew that the same thought was flying through their minds.
The sooner we can convince Hagrid to give the dragon up, the better.
Fortunately, the plan seemed to work; Ron never saw Malfoy at the window when he took his sneaking peaks in the right direction as they drank their tea, so it seemed as though their bluff had paid off. However, not wanting to tempt fate, they left Hagrid's hut after they'd finished their food, noting with satisfaction that there was no sign of the Slytherin anywhere.
While Malfoy's continued glares in their direction over the next week or so made it clear that he was still sure they were up to something, he evidently didn't have anything to go to a teacher with.
However, neither Harry, Hermione or Ron paid him much attention; they had spent most of their free time in Hagrid's darkened hut, trying to work out the best way to suggest that Hagrid give Norbert to Charlie to look after.
"Look, Hagrid," Harry said one day, having decided that the best approach was the direct one, "I get that you're excited about Norbert, but at the rate he's growing, it'll only be two weeks before he'll end up being as long as your house; there's no way you can keep him secret then."
It wasn't exactly the best way to say it, but nobody could deny that it was accurate; Norbert had grown three times in length in just a week. Smoke kept furling out of his nostrils in a very worrying manner that made it look as though it was prepared to fry the first person who looked at it wrongly, and . Hagrid hadn't been doing his gamekeeping duties because the dragon was keeping him so busy. There were empty brandy bottles and chicken feathers all over the floor.
Hagrid bit his lip, looked tearfully at Norbert for a moment, and then sighed and looked back at Harry.
"I- I know I can't keep him forever…" he said, looking regretfully between the dragon and the boy before him, "but I can't jus' dump him… I can't."
"Well, we do have an alternative," Hermione said, raising her hand politely as she looked at Hagrid, a small smile on her face. "You remember Charlie Weasley, right?"
"Yeah…" Hagrid said, looking at Hermione inquiringly, as though wondering where this was going.
"Well," Ron said, taking up the story, "we thought that, since Charlie works on a dragon preserve these days, we could ask him if he could take care of Norbert instead? You know, just until Norbert's ready to go back into the wild?"
"Well…" Hagrid said, studying Norbert for a moment, an almost wistful expression on his face, before he sighed and turned back to look at the group. "OK, yer can give it a try, at least; at least Charlie'd know how to treat Norbert properly."
The following week dragged by. Wednesday night found Hermione and Harry sitting alone in the common room, long after everyone else had gone to bed. For reasons none of them were sure about, they'd somehow been persuaded to help Hagrid feed Norbert at the end of the day- with the dragon currently eating dead rats by the crate, it was too much for one man to do alone- and Ron was currently taking the evening 'shift', leaving them to wait for him.
The clock on the wall had just chimed midnight when the portrait hole burst open, Ron appearing out of nowhere as he pulled off Harry's invisibility cloak.
"It bit me!" he said, showing them his hand, which was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief and already seemed to be swelling up. "I'm not going to be able to hold a quill for a week. I tell you, that dragon's the most horrible animal I've ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you'd think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit!"
"Well, he has wanted one for ages; I suppose it's only natural he's a bit… biased in its favor, really," Harry said, trying to convince Ron to see things from Hagrid's point of view. "And it's not like he's that bad…"
"Not that bad?" Ron said, looking at his friend incredulously. "When it bit me, he told me off for frightening it, and when I left, he was singing it a bloody lullaby! I'd call that a bit more than a bit biased-!"
A tap on the darkened window fortunately ended the argument for the present moment.
"It's Hedwig!" said Harry, hurrying to let her in. "She'll have Charlie's answer!"
The three of them put their heads together to read the note.
Dear Ron,
How are you? Thanks for the letter -- I'd be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but it won't be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Trouble is, they mustn't be seen carrying an illegal dragon. Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it's still dark.
Send me an answer as soon as possible.
Love,
Charlie
They looked at one another, all three of them already calculating how they were going to pull this off without getting caught. The tallest tower was easily accessible, of course- the astronomy tower was the clear choice on that front- but what about actually getting Norbert up there?
"We've got the invisibility cloak," said Harry. "It shouldn't be too difficult- I think the cloaks big enough to cover two of us and Norbert."
It was a mark of how bad the last week had been that the other two agreed with him. Anything to get rid of Norbert- and stop Malfoy's attempts to find out just what was in Hagrid's hut that nobody else was meant to see.
Of course, as always, Sod's Law (Or Murphy's Law; Harry was never sure which was the correct term- came into play; by the next morning, Ron's bitten hand had swollen to twice its usual size. He didn't know whether it was safe to go to Madam Pomfrey- would she recognize a dragon bite?- but he had no choice by the afternoon. The cut had turned a nasty shade of green that made it look as though Norbert's fangs were poisonous; he had to get it properly examined.
Harry and Hermione rushed up to the hospital wing at the end of the day to find Ron in a terrible state in bed.
"I can't do this!" he hissed, looking up at the two of them as he indicated his hand. "The thing feels like it's about to drop off, and Malfoy saw me as I was coming in- I stumbled in the corridor while he was passing and the bandage fell off- I'm sure he knows what it is that did this, his bloody family'll probably keep themselves up-to-date with everything that might hurt somebody…"
"Look, just calm down; it'll all be over at midnight on Saturday," Hermione began, but this only prompted Ron to sit bolt upright and break into a sweat.
"Midnight on Saturday!" he said in a hoarse voice. "Oh no oh no- I've just remembered- Charlie's letter was in my bag when I was walking- I haven't had a chance to get rid of it- but I stumbled in the corridor when I was passing Malfoy and it wasn't there afterwards! If he's got it, he's going to know we're getting rid of Norbert!"
Harry and Hermione didn't get a chance to answer. Madam Pomfrey came over at that moment and made them leave, saying Ron needed sleep.
"It's too late to change the plan now," Harry told Hermione. "We haven't got time to send Charlie another owl, and this could be our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We'll have to risk it."
"Yes, I know…" Hermione said, sighing slightly before a small smile crossed her face. "On the bright side, we have got the invisibility cloak; we know for a fact that Malfoy doesn't know about that."
When they went to tell Hagrid about the letter, neither were entirely surprised to find Fang sitting outside with a bandaged tail; Norbert had been getting increasingly aggressive during their past visits. Even when they tried to talk to Hagrid, he only opened a window to talk to them, claiming that Norbert was at 'a tricky stage'- and Harry did not want to know what else that would involve, if his hunch was correct. Hagrid's eyes filled with tears when he heard about the letter, although Harry thought that it could have been Norbert biting him on the leg somewhere; despite Hagrid's constant claims that Norbert was only a baby playing, Harry still felt that an actual 'baby' shouldn't be able to make the windows of an entire house rattle just by banging its tail.
As far as they were concerned, Saturday night couldn't come soon enough.
They would have felt sorry for Hagrid when the time came for him to say good-bye to Norbert if they hadn't been so worried about what they had to do; Harry had no desire to lose points after doing so much to help Gryffindor gain the House Cup. It was a very dark, cloudy night, and they were a bit late arriving at Hagrid's hut because they'd had to wait for Peeves to get out of their way in the entrance hall, where he'd been playing tennis against the wall with a pan and various eggs (Fortunately it was only conventional eggs. Hagrid had Norbert packed and ready in a large crate.
"He's got lots o' rats an' some brandy fer the journey," said Hagrid in a muffled voice, a handkerchief clutched over his mouth and nose. "An' I've packed his teddy bear in case he gets lonely."
From inside the crate came ripping noises that sounded to Harry as though the teddy was having his head torn off.
"Bye-bye, Norbert!" Hagrid sobbed, as Harry and Hermione covered the crate with the invisibility cloak and stepped underneath it themselves. "Mummy will never forget you!"
Looking back, Harry would never be certain how he and Hermione managed to get the crate back to the castle; the cloak didn't stop noise, as far as he knew, and Norbert refused to stop making some kind of racket no matter how hard they tried to make him stay quiet. As they heaved Norbert through the silent halls of Hogwarts towards the astronomy tower, climbing countless stairs as they did so, Harry still couldn't believe that they'd managed to get this far without running into somebody…
Then he spotted a sudden movement in front of them. Instinctively, the two of them pressed themselves up against the wall as well as they could, hoping that whoever it was wouldn't pass so close to the wall that they felt the cloak.
Then he saw who it was, and he felt like smiling so widely that his head could have split in half; Professor McGonagall, in a tartan dressing-gown and a hair-net, was holding Malfoy's ear and yelling at him.
"Dentention!" she should. "And fifty points from Slytherin! Wandering around in the middle of the night, how dare you-"
"Professor, you don't understand, I think Ron Weasley's trying to get a dragon up here-"
"What utter rubbish! How dare you tell such lies? I shall see Professor Snape about you…"
As the voices died down behind them, Harry and Hermione looked at each other with a broad grin on their faces.
"Malfoy's got detention!" Hermione breathed, as though she almost couldn't believe it; after all the times Snape had ignored Malfoy's attempts to sabotage their potions in class, she'd been wondering if he would ever get in trouble. "I could sing!"
"Please don't," Harry whispered, shaking his head warningly. "Putting aside the fact that it would give us away, no matter how hard you try, you're still totally tone-death with it comes to anything that isn't 'Happy Birthday'."
Hermione just rolled her eyes slightly at that comment- she always resented it when Harry reminded her of her relatively nonexistent musical abilities- but picked up the crate and continued to walk up the tower, trying not to get too jolted by Norbert thrashing around in his crate. As they reached the top, Harry glanced at his watch and smiled with relief; they still had about ten minutes to spare before Charlie's friends showed up.
As promised, the four of them arrived at the top of the tower right at midnight to collect their charge—a quartet of wizards with a jerry-rigged harness running between their brooms to carry the crate. They seemed awfully cheerful to Harry, given that what they were doing was highly illegal, but he supposed, no matter what age you were at the time, people always tended to enjoy bending the rules now and again. In a matter of moments, the crate was hooked up to the harness between the brooms and the four of them were flying off into the night sky, taking the dragon out of their lives forever…
"Thank God," Hermione said, glancing over at Harry as the brooms finally vanished. "Let's just get out of here."
She moved to head towards the stairs, but Harry grabbed her wrist.
"Aren't you forgetting this?" he asked, indicating the invisibility cloak that he'd thrown off to the side when they'd arrived at the top of the tower; he hadn't wanted to attract any questions about it. "Just because Malfoy's out of the picture doesn't mean there might not be somebody down there."
"Oh… right… sorry," Hermione said, chuckling sheepishly as Harry shrugged the cloak on over the two of them.
"Honestly," Harry said, taking care to keep his voice low as they walked back down the stairs. "You're meant to be the smarter one, Hermione; if it was up to you, we'd have just left the cloak behind…"
Underneath the cloak, Hermione glared briefly at her brother, but, that aside, remained focused on the matter at hand; getting back to Gryffindor Tower without being seen. There was a close call with Filch as they neared the bottom of the stairs- he'd been walking by and looked back as though he'd heard something- but, when nobody came down, he appeared to dismiss it as nothing and went back to walking along the corridor, leaving Harry and Hermione to hurry back to the tower in relative peace.
AN: Sorry if anyone wanted to see the scene in the Forbidden Forest; I felt that, given that Harry is a bit smarter- and hence, a bit more thorough- in this timeline, he wouldn't be such an idiot as to forget the cloak at the top of the tower. So, there won't be a meeting with the centaurs, but trust me, Harry will suspect that something's wrong, using the deductive skills he's developed from reading all those Holmes stories in his spare time…