Chapter Six

What We Don't Say

Matt made a face as he watched Kerry, Letty, and Davis engage in a chugging contest with their pumpkin juice. It was too early to be watching that kind of thing. He looked down at his plate of toast and sausages in disgust. He'd been hungry a minute ago. He caught Basil's eye over at the Ravenclaw table. His friend was quietly eating his breakfast and looking through some comic paper, Milton and Diane Kilburne on either side of him. He grimaced at his own tablemates' antics, and Basil jerked his head to the side, raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah?" Matt mouthed, happily jumped up when Basil nodded, and carried his plate over to the Ravenclaw table, sliding in between Basil and Diane. Diane gave him a sleepy, nearly cross-eyed look of befuddlement before returning her attention to a bowl of cereal of some kind. Her dark hair was still sort of tufty and there was a faint red line across her cheek from her pillow.

"She was up really late with Felicity," Basil explained. "I guess Felicity's still sad that Ferris is over in your house."

Matt looked past Diane and saw another head of brown bed hair above the sleepy, reddened eyes of Felicity Forsythe, who was also ignoring her surroundings with an air of confusion. He glanced around and saw a few people staring at him. Well, there was no rule saying that people weren't allowed to eat at other tables, was there? What was the big deal? He shoved a huge piece of sausage into his mouth and stared back at Faith Forsythe, a third-year. She ignored him imperially, sipping a cup of tea that she took with a little milk and without sugar, no doubt. He glanced pointedly over at his own house's table, where the Slytherin prefect Lysander Sorenson was reading the morning paper in a cozy cuddle with Lark.

Matt saw an owl hovering uncertainly around the Gryffindor table, then, and caught Bear's eye. He nodded toward the bird, and she carefully snatched the bird as it made a pass. It swiped at her, but she held it up to Matt. He got up again with a slightly mournful look at his toast and hurried to grab the letter from the owl before it could scratch Bear too badly. She looked unperturbed by the claw marks in her hand, but Matt admonished her to go get a salve or something from Madam Pomfrey while he unrolled the paper.

"It's just a note from Hagrid," he mumbled. "Hey, he wants me to come down for tea tonight. He wants to meet my friends. Bear, you want to come?"

Startled to be counted among friends Hagrid should meet, she nonetheless nodded. "Yeah, cool."

Matt rolled the letter back up. "We'll go after classes, then. I'll just go ask Basil to come, and you go to the hospital wing before Transfiguration."

"You're like my mother," she grumbled, poking him playfully in the side.

"Maybe I just hear my mum say things like that all the time," he said agreeably, and propelled her toward the doors. "Basil," he said, catching his friend's arm as he was walking past, "you'll come to see Hagrid with me and Bear tonight, won't you?"

Basil smiled. "Sure. Now, I've got to go to the lav, if you don't mind," he said haughtily, tugging his arm free and waggling his eyebrows.

Laughing, Matt let his friend's arm go and shoved his shoulder.

---Break---

"Matt, 'ow are ye?" Hagrid said warmly, his beard split by the expanse of grinning teeth aimed affectionately in Matt's direction—down. Bear and Basil both stared at the big man with awe, as if they'd forgotten his size since being transported across the lake after getting off the train.

"Hi, Hagrid," Matt returned, giving the affable half-giant as much of a hug as he could manage.

"Righ', it's chilly, you lot come inside," Hagrid growled, waving the three inside with a hand that could knock their heads off but never would. "Ye're Matt's mates, then?"

They nodded.

"That's Basil, and that's Bear," Matt said, gesturing. "Guys, this is Hagrid."

"Jus' made a pot o' tea," Hagrid said, crossing the hut as he spoke. "An' a few biscuits that Matt's mum taught me how ter make." He set the huge teapot on the rough wooden table with a plate of chocolate biscuits that Ginny made all the time and Hagrid had taken a liking to. The three friends eagerly seated themselves at the oversized table.

"Heard from your mum and dad, Matt?" Hagrid asked casually.

"Yeah, Charlotte's learned how to say 'goodnight.' Oh, and Crash says hello. He says he wants more gryphon feathers for his birthday, too, the cheeky little snot."

" 'E's not still runnin' inter everythin'?" Hagrid chuckled.

Matt nodded, happily licking crumbs from his fingers. "How's your brother?" He turned to Basil and Bear. "He's got a brother who's loads bigger than him, but he only lives here during the summer."

Hagrid nodded, beaming. "Saw Grawp off las' week, he was ready to get back home ter the mountains an' the others. Says he might come visit at Christmas if it's not too cold ter travel."

Basil and Bear looked stunned at the prospect of anyone being "loads bigger" than Hagrid, but smiled and drank their tea politely.

"Now, what's this abou' not tryin' out fer Quidditch?" Hagrid said suddenly, giving Matt a betrayed look.

"Oh, you know . . ." Matt said uncomfortably. "I just want to get used to Hogwarts before I do all that stuff. But Bear's one of the new Beaters," he said, waving a biscuit at her. "She's a really good flyer, and she's never even done it before, it's great."

Interested, Hagrid began quizzing Bear about her position, how practices were going, whether Roman was doing well as team captain, and Bear chattered about willingly. Basil and Matt grinned at each other over their enormous mugs. Bear had been talking of little else for the past two weeks since joining the team. The obnoxious people had been leaving Matt alone since finding out he hadn't even gone to the tryouts, but Bear hadn't stopped following him around, like a self-appointed bodyguard. Therefore, she and Basil were getting to know each other, and Basil was getting put to sleep by so much talk of Quidditch plays all the time. He kicked Matt under the table, but with no malice, still smiling. In truth, Matt's friend was an unusually cheerful boy.

Matt looked around Hagrid's hut with pleasure. Fang was no longer around but Hagrid had another huge ugly dog named Spike, curled up to sleep in front of the fire. The talk had turned to their classes, and Basil had joined in the animated chatter. He smiled to himself as he raised his mug for another sip of tea. He could do worse for friends.

"I always heard that Gryffindors and Slytherins hate each other," Bear was saying, causing Matt to perk up. "But that prefect is dating our prefect, he and his brother are nice, and Professor Kilburne's brother is in Slytherin."

Hagrid looked thoughtful and a little less jolly than he had a moment before. "Well, it's true that things're different now," he mused. "S'pose it's havin' ter live with each other for a few years, isn't it?"

"Live with each other?"

"School was nearly closed fer a few years when Voldemort was still alive and them Death Eaters were runnin' loose. There weren't enough students ter go into separate dormitories, were there? So anybody that's in seventh, sixth, and fifth year all lived together with their year when they started. We did the Sorting, but we didn't bother dividin' up the houses. So Slytherins and Gryffindors were sharin' rooms an' all, weren't much freedom ter start a rivalry. 'Ad to learn ter get along, see? So they did, right enough. Old rivalry jus' started to pop up again las' year—or mebbe two years ago—when they got enough students fer Quidditch teams again. More harmless now, I'd say. Not like when yer Dad was here, Matt. It was a great mess back then."

"And Dad had enemies like Malfoy and Nott and Bulstrode," Matt said quietly. "The people who became Death Eaters."

Hagrid nodded soberly. "Yer dad caused a lot of the tension, sorry to say. Bein' the Boy Who Lived and all that rot. War with Voldemort divided people, didn't it? Harry started it, in a way. Nothin' like that here now, so things're much quieter. No bloody Malfoys ter start any problems and get anybody killed," he added with a sudden growl.

Matt didn't like thinking about Malfoys. Bear and Basil both knew the story, and all three of them were looking at him with horror, realizing what they'd brought up. Bear had her mouth open, Basil's face was almost the colour of his ashy blond hair—which made his freckles stand out alarmingly—and Hagrid was saying, "Blimey, Matt, I wasn't thinkin'—"

"It's fine," Matt said. He forced himself to look up from watching biscuit crumbs float on the surface of his tea. "I don't mind."

He honestly wanted to scream when people went into these awkward pauses at any mention of Malfoy. Well, one could hardly discuss the war without bringing up the Malfoys, could they? And Matt wasn't about to stop people from talking about the war. It was like Dad said, stop talking about it and people would forget. Let them forget, and it could happen again. People like Neville Longbottom and Seamus Finnigan and Dennis Creevey and the Weasley boys would die again just because people were too scared to talk about it for fear of offending Harry, the Chosen One. Or Matt, Chosen by association somehow. Matt didn't like it. He loved Mum and Dad, he did, but sometimes he wished he'd been adopted by someone a little less famous. Or maybe that anyone besides Draco Malfoy had killed his parents. Why couldn't it have just been a common burglar?

But Hagrid struggled over something silently, then kept his mouth closed. Matt knew, because he'd heard Dad talking to Hagrid about it, that Hagrid blamed Draco for the death of Albus Dumbledore, who by all accounts had been a great wizard and a great man, not to mention Hagrid's champion and friend since his own school days. Hagrid seemed to hate Malfoy more than anyone, even Matt. Yet he didn't want to say anything about it here in front of Matt and his friends.

"We'd better get back to the castle soon," Bear spoke up suddenly. "It's dark and we've all got to write an essay for Professor Smith tonight."

"Yeah, that's right," Basil said, jumping up, "I almost forgot about that. Professor Smith gives out heaps of homework, you know."

"Thanks for the tea, Hagrid," Matt added, giving him a genuine smile.

" 'Ere, Matt . . ." Hagrid started, looking embarrassed, but Matt just shook his head.

"I'll see you later, Hagrid."

They left the hut and shivered as the wind whipped their robes about in their march up the hill.

"Guys, thanks for—"

"So have you started the essay yet?" Basil interrupted.

Matt felt another burst of gratitude. He could do much worse for friends, indeed. He could have come down here with Kerry and Letty.

---Break---

Drew saw Potter and Talbott and that Ravenclaw boy they were always hanging around with heading up the hill from Hagrid's hut just as he himself was struggling along against the wind, back from Hogsmeade. He'd passed an enjoyable evening there, enjoyable enough that he almost thought he'd be able to get straight to sleep tonight. This walk, however, was starting to bother his leg. He didn't want that. He'd been getting acclimated, he had thought he wouldn't need anything for the pain tonight.

Well, he didn't, did he? He was only going to sleep anyway. He'd slept through worse pain. And with a sight fewer comforts like warm bedding and a banked fire and some peace and quiet while he did so. One got used to it when one was possibly Voldemort's least favorite servant, always screwing up and always being punished for some fumble. At least that much was behind him. What was a little pain in his leg compared to that?

A gust of wind made him lose his grip on a stack of essays he'd taken down to the village to grade while he sat in the pub. He managed to hang onto most of them, but a few blew away, up the hill and entangled with Potter and his friends. Crying out in surprise, the three children gathered them up, looking around for their source and finally spotting him in his dark robes in the graying dusk. Potter hurried over to hand the essays back.

"Here, Professor."

"Thank you, Matt."

Matt frowned in the direction Drew had come from. "Were you in Hogsmeade, sir?"

"I don't think that's really any of your business, do you?" he said stiffly. When Potter looked up at him, startled, he winked to take the edge off. "You three need to get back inside and get yourselves prepared for your classes tomorrow," he said as they approached the other two students.

"Yes, Professor," they all three muttered, and traipsed inside with him at their heels.

Drew stumbled over nothing and barely kept himself from falling, releasing an involuntary cry of pain as he caught himself with his bad leg. The three turned back to look at him, and Potter anxiously began asking him if he was hurt, but Drew cut him off.

"I'm fine. Don't worry about me, just worry about doing your homework and getting to bed at a decent hour. I won't have any of you falling asleep in my class," he said lightly, shaking a finger at them jokingly.

"Yes, Professor," they said again, but they were decidedly less enthusiastic this time.

He sighed as they got ahead of him and the Ravenclaw boy separated to head for his own rooms. How pathetic was it, really, that even eleven-year-olds seemed to think he needed looking after?

By the time he finished grading his essays at his desk, he was sure he'd twisted his locked knee joint. It was hurting badly. He stared at the shelf where he kept potion for pain before he resolutely put out the light. He was dealing with this. He was.