Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Chapter Fourteen
Hagrid Returns

Harry was still awake and heard the other fifth-year boys come up to the dorm. Once he felt light falling on his closed eyes and thought that Ron was peeking in on him, but he pretended to be asleep. Presently all the lights went out, and still he lay there feeling as if in a three-pronged caliper, pinched between his hungry belly, his savaged arm, and the bump on the back of his head.

He didn't know when he finally fell asleep, but there was no mistaking it when he woke up. The sound of the bedcurtains roused him just enough to feel hands take his shoulder and shake him firmly. "Harry! Harry wake up, look out the window!" It was Ginny's voice.

"unngh... window wuh? goway..." His voice and brain were both thick with sleep; he didn't care if it was snowing. Over his shoulder he heard Hermione also, shaking Ron.

"Oh, come on!" Ginny seized his arm --- his right arm --- and yanked him upright.

"AAAAOW! Don't do that!"

Ginny jumped back. The curtains on the other side of his bed were immediately thrown open. Hermione leaned over him as Ron was jumping out of bed.

"Harry, what happened!? Are you okay?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, nonetheless clutching his arm.

She noticed the gesture and reached for it. "Let me see."

"No! Not now; I'll show you later. ---It's okay, I'm all right," he added a little louder to forestall Dean, Seamus, or Neville getting out of bed to investigate.

"Gaugh, what time is it?" Ron asked, rubbing his eyes. The dormitory still stood in full dark.

"About four in the morning," Hermione said. "Now you two get dressed --- Hagrid's back."

"Wha? Really!?" Harry questioned.

"I got up early to look in on Lee before the Quidditch trials," Ginny explained. "When I looked out the window I saw a light in his cabin."

"It looks like he really is there," Hermione added. "I'll wait for you two down in the common room."

"Right." Ron started fumbling for clothes.

"Ginny, are you coming with us?" Harry asked. Usually it was just himself, Ron, and Hermione who visited Hagrid.

"No, I'm going to go ahead and see if I can lend a hand with the paper. I'll see you later!"

"Bring me back some pizza," he said as the girls hurried off.

Harry and Ron quickly dressed, and Harry took his Invisibility Cloak from his trunk. If Filch caught Ginny, helping with the paper would probably keep her out of trouble, but Harry and the others visiting Hagrid would have no such luck.

"Oy, Harry," Ron whispered as they were pulling their shoes on. "What'd Ginny do to you anyway??"

"Tell you later," he said. After a little thought, he added "It wasn't Ginny who did it."

Ron stopped short in the middle of tying his shoelaces and sat like that for a moment. "Umbridge!" he hissed.

"Later!"

They hurried quietly down the stairs and met up with Hermione; Ginny had already gone, thoughtfully leaving the Fat Lady's portrait a little ajar. The three of them huddled under the Invisibility Cloak, slipped out, and closed the painting behind them. As they crossed the grounds, Harry was glad to see the light in Hagrid's hut and recognise his massive silhouette moving around inside, but he was belatedly struck with a thought and paused.

"Don't say anything to Hagrid about my arm, all right?"

"Okay, but you have to show us after," Ron insisted.

"Fine," Harry hastily agreed.

With that decided, they crept up to the cabin door and Harry knocked. Immediately they heard a body hit the inside of the door and claws scrabble on it, but they all recognised the welcoming sound of Hagrid's boarhound, Fang. Hagrid must have recognised Fang's reaction, too, as he opened the door directly. "C'mon in," he said, holding Fang back by the collar until Harry and his friends had closed the door behind them.

Even before Harry had fully thrown off the cloak, Hermione slipped out of it and gave Hagrid a hug. "I'm so glad you're back safe and sound!"

"Oh, don' you kids go worryin' 'bout me," he said, blushing through his thicket of black whiskers. "I would ha' waited 'til mornin', yeh know."

As he untucked his head and let her go, Harry noticed a bruise over one of Hagrid's eyes. "What happened to your face?" he asked.

"Long story, long story..." he said. "Things like they bin, I'm awful happy teh see all you kids in one piece, too."

Harry's arm needled him, and he tried to surreptitiously rub it against his side.

"If it's a long story, we have time," Hermione said.

"We are up pretty early, though," Ron said through a yawn. "Got some tea?"

"And something to eat?" Harry slipped. All the injuries from last night were acting up.

"Not a bit o' trouble," Hagrid said, and motioned them all to settle in at his rough wooden table. He already had the copper teakettle --- an even more battered one than that Harry had seen in Lupin's pocket-tin "Castle" --- on the stove, and he found some coarse bread and boiled eggs.

"What is it with you?" Ron asked as Harry took a piece of bread, not waiting to spread butter or peel an egg. "Did Umbridge even feed you??"

"No," Harry admitted between bites.

"Why that---!!" Ron managed to choke back a swearing fit for only a moment before it got through.

"Ron!" Hermione protested. "I know how you feel, but you don't want to get caught talking like that about a teacher."

"She's not a teacher!" Hagrid insisted as he brought over the teakettle. "Nothin' but Fudge's stooge, she is! Sent her here ter give Headmaster Dumbledore trouble."

"Hey, like you're telling us?" Ron said, taking a gulp of the hot tea. "You haven't been in her class."

"I wasn't saying she's really a teacher, it'd just be better to be out of the habit for when someone could get you in trouble," Hermione said.

"But what about you?" Harry asked. The longer they discussed Umbridge the more likely his detention would come up, and he was still looking at that black eye. "Things with the giants didn't go so well...?"

Hagrid's face fell so pitifully that Harry wished he hadn't said anything. "Nah... Wasn' much we could do with 'em."

"Kinda thick, huh?" Ron asked.

"Ron!" Hermione cried, then hissed at him: "Don't forget who you're talking to!"

"No, no!" Hagrid insisted, shaking his great head. "Ron's right, Giants're terrible thick, I know it! An' I am, too, I'm thick 's a post..."

He looked almost ready to cry; Hermione pinned Ron with a glare that said "Now look what you did!"

"But what happened?" Harry asked, hoping to redirect things. "You were gone for a long time, so they must have listened to you for awhile, didn't they?"

Hagrid shook his head miserably. "I should ha' known the first day it wasn' gonna work. Olympe caught on a long time before I did that they didn' really want us there, but I knew Dumbledore was dependin' on me and I jus' wanted ter keep tryin' yeh know..."

"That's certainly nothing to be ashamed of," Hermione said.

"But I insisted on stayin' until finally things got real ugly. We weren't near the thick of it or else I might not ha' got back in one piece but... Well, when we came," he said, leaning back as if really beginning the story at last, "we told 'em 'bout You-Know-Who and how bad he was, an' they jus' didn' really care. He ain't never killed any giants, and well, they got no love fer humans, I can tell yeh that righ' now."

"Dumbledore did say something to Fudge about how the Ministry took Giants' rights away," Harry recalled.

"Worse 'n that, ran 'em clear out of Britain," Hagrid said. "They're all cooped up in this place in the mountains on the continent now, 'cause the Ministry couldn' handle 'em no other way they said. Killed a lot o' Giants gettin' it done, too. Was a long time ago now, but they remember. They remember..."

"So humans did so much to them before, they didn't care about helping someone who came from humans now?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, when one o' those ruddy Death Eaters showed up, they weren't any too shy about helpin' him! But I'm gettin' ahead o' meself... So me an' Olympe --- Madame Maxime, yeh know 'er --- we came ter the place in the mountains where they lived, an' manners for Giants is ter bring gifts fer the Chief when yeh come teh their place, so we brought stuff, and we told 'em all we had to say. None o' the other giants cared teh give us the time o' day, but the Chief, he liked our present, so he said ter keep comin' and talkin'. Olympe didn' think it'd help, but she agreed with me ter keep tryin', so we kept bringin' presents and comin' and talkin', but it never got any better. Some of 'em thought we was from the Ministry, no matter how we tried to tell 'em no, 'cause we wanted to save humans or some such thing..."

"Like no one but the Ministry cares if people die?" Ron questioned. "It's starting to look like they're really the last ones who care..."

"I guess because we want to save society like it is now. We are kind of defending the Ministry," Hermione said.

"What happened after that?" Harry asked. "You said a Death Eater came?"

"Well, like I said, no matter how much we talked, they all thought we was from the Ministry, or that we wanted them to help humans in spite o' all the bad that had been done ter them, and we couldn' tell 'em we had a different idea. But they all liked the presents we brought, and the Chief wanted us ter keep comin'. He liked us well enough, but I don' think he cared neither, what we was sayin', he jus' liked gettin' presents, and I think the others was gettin' kinda jealous already when the messenger came from You-Know-Who. He was all human, but he went talkin' about smashin' the Ministry; he promised 'em revenge on humans if they helped him, and they liked that."

"I bet," Ron scoffed. Hermione jabbed him with her elbow hard enough to make him yelp.

"Who was the Death Eater who came?" Harry asked. "Did you recognise him?"

Hagrid shook his head. "Wasn' close enough. Might ha' even bin a 'her.' We jus' saw at a distance and heard the gist o' what they said. He got 'em so excited, we probably would ha' bin bad hurt if we'd bin any closer. Just one o' the smaller ones saw us an' chased us, an' he did tha'." He pointed to his black eye. "Mostly they all went an' attacked the chief who'd bin list'nin' ter us."

"Did they kill him?" Hermione asked, touching her mouth.

"I don' know. When they do that it depends on how much he fought back. If the big Giant will give up bein' the Chief and if he gave 'em all the stuff we'd brought, they prob'ly would ha' bin happy and not hurt him too bad, but if he fought 'em to the death, they'd do it that a way, and we was already runnin' too far teh see..."

Harry had had enough of the bread that he felt better, and he sat thoughtfully as he peeled an egg. Fang snuffled around his lap almost the say Sirius had done, and Harry smiled at that and scratched his head.. "It's like with Umbridge," he said. "The Ministry's our worst enemy. Maybe the Order ought to try to destroy it, too, then we might have more friends."

"Harry!" Ron cried. "Don't forget I've got family there!"

"I didn't mean it seriously," he said.

"It wasn't your fault. You did your best," Hermione tried to assure Hagrid. He had planted his fists in his beard and was leaning dejectedly on the table so that the wood groaned piteously and Harry had to grab the boiled eggs to keep them from rolling away. "It probably isn't fair to think you didn't do any good," she continued. "After all, you told them there were humans besides the Death Eaters who didn't want to hurt them, right?"

"I did, but I don' think they was list'nin..."

"Maybe some of them will remember it," she said. "You never know."

Hagrid gave a great sigh. "Dumbledore should ha' just sent a human," he said at last.

"What do you mean?" Ron asked him. "That doesn't make any sense."

"You saw what it was like las' year, when that Skeeter woman tol' all the humans about me," he lamented. "I got owls from all over, and they was all sayin' 'Yer mum was one o' them horrible things what killed so many humans!' I always knew that'd be what happened if'n it got out. I guess I always thought with Giants it'd be different, but they was all sayin' 'Yer da' was one o' them things what killed so many Giants!'"

"Oh, Hagrid..." Hermione rubbed his massive arm.

"I guess I jus' don' belong nowhere..."

"Don't say that!" Ron burst out immediately.

Harry was right behind him. "That's not true! You belong here with us!"

At that, Hagrid burst into a broad if teary smile, and with his great arms he reached around the table and gathered all three of them up in a warm, rough, whiskery hug. "You kids are so good ter me!" he sobbed. "Yer all jus' wonnerful!"

"It's okay! It's nothing, really!" Harry laughed awkwardly. He squirmed a little in Hagrid's arms trying to keep his injured arm from getting pinched.

They sat and chatted into the morning, and when the dawn was bright enough to see, they went outside. Hagrid surveyed the pumpkin patch and clucked over everything that had been neglected while he was gone, but he was so happy that the three students had been weeding for him the previous weekend that Harry had to duck around one of the huge pumpkins to evade another crushing hug.

At one point Hermione gazed off toward the Quidditch Pitch in the distance. "I guess they're having the Quidditch team trials," she said.

Ron gave a cry of shock and ran for the castle, presumably to get his broom.

Harry looked toward the pitch; indeed he could just see the flecks that were the players on their brooms, looking at this distance like buzzing insects above the stands. He snapped off one of the little pumpkinlets that Hagrid was culling from the vines and threw it against a fencepost hard enough to smash it in a spray of seed-mush.

"Wha's a matter?" Hagrid asked him.

"Umbridge grounded me. No flying, so no Quidditch..."

"I wonder what got into Ron," Hermione said, looking after him as he sprinted off. "He never said anything about trying out..."

Harry noted with a slightly-cheering bit of satisfaction that girls didn't have the monopoly for catching onto things unsaid.

Not long after that they gave Hagrid a final welcome home and set off back toward the castle to get there for breakfast, but walking under the Invisibility Cloak, Hermione pulled Harry off course. "You said after we visited Hagrid you'd show us that arm," she reminded him.

"Maybe we ought to wait for Ron," he suggested.

But Hermione was having none of it. She took him to a niche in the castle's outer walls, beside the large ramble of rose hedges that grew in the shadow of the Astronomy Tower. Still under the Cloak, she took Harry's arm and rolled back his sleeve to show his assigned line carved into his arm. "My goodness! Harry, what happened??"

"It looks better than it did last night," he offered lamely. Now it just showed fine scabbed-over lines, although it was still quite sore to the touch.

"What did she do to you??" Hermione demanded, undeterred.

"She made me write lines with some odd kind of quill..."

"Made you write lines in your own blood??"

"No, it didn't write in blood; it just scratched me whenever I wrote with it..."

"Harry, you have to go to Madam Pomfrey!" she declared.

He bristled. "It's not that bad!"

"It doesn't look that bad, but... She used a magic quill on you and you don't know what kind! It could've been poisoned or something! It could be brainwashing you!"

Harry sighed, although it was oddly refreshing to hear anyone say such a Muggle word as "brainwashing." "Look, I feel fine; I'm not poisoned. And if it was supposed to write this in my brain and make me agree with it or some such thing," he said, pointing to the sentence on his arm, "I can tell you right now it's doing a miserable job."

"But you know what I mean!" she persisted. "It's like if someone cast a hex on you that you didn't know what it was. The smart thing to do is to go to the Hospital Wing where they can find out what it is and not take a risk! Besides, even if it's not poisoned, that quill has got to be illegal!"

"So it's illegal --- so who do we turn Umbridge in to? The Ministry??" Harry questioned.

"Surely Dumbledore could do something."

"He's got enough problems without me crying to him like a baby!" Harry declared. "I can handle this myself."

"You're just being stubborn!" Hermione shot back. "You're too stubborn and too proud to ask for help, and you're so afraid of looking like a baby you're acting like a worse baby yet!"

"You can think that if you want!" he shot back, his temper flaring. He clasped the Invisibility Cloak around his shoulders and darted off from Hermione, leaving her standing there fully visible beside the castle wall.

"Harry!" she cried after him.

He didn't turn around. If she got caught, he thought, the Prefect and Teacher's Pet could stand to be in trouble once in awhile.

As for himself, he was determined not to be the fragile orphan everyone thought he was. He'd show Umbridge he could deal with anything she could throw at him. He'd show the Order that he could pull his weight in this fight.

It was still early for breakfast when he came into the Great Hall, and it was a strange sensation to find the huge room empty. ---Almost empty. Dumbledore was already seated at the center of the head table, avidly reading the first Hogwarts X-Press of the week. Of course, the Headmaster knew all about Harry's Invisibility Cloak --- had given it to him at Christmas of his First Year in fact --- so after a quick check to ensure that no one else would see, Harry had no qualm taking it off in front of Dumbledore and tucking it into his pocket before crossing to the Gryffindor Table.

"Where are your friends, Harry?" The Headmaster's voice echoed strangely in the huge, empty room.

A moment's pause. "Quidditch trials."

"I was certain that the three of you would go to see Hagrid as soon as you saw him back." As he spoke he kept his eyes fixed on the newspaper.

"We did, then they went to the Quidditch trials," Harry said.

"I see." The Headmaster turned a page.

Harry was keenly aware of his own half-lie, and suddenly running off and leaving Hermione didn't seem like such a good idea. But then, there were the trials he couldn't bear to watch, because Dumbledore had agreed to ground him, and here was Dumbledore, the only other person in the room... He stopped short of sitting down and started toward the head table.

"I understand you had detention with Professor Umbridge last night," Dumbledore said. "Now I see she has you scheduled for them Friday evenings until further notice."

Harry stopped. "Yeah. She, ah... I'm just supposed to write lines, it's nothing big." He was afraid that Dumbledore would look up at him with those piercing blue eyes and know that that, too, was a lie, but the Headmaster didn't raise his face from the paper.

Relieved at that, Harry found a seat and picked up a copy for himself. This week's edition was twice as thick as the first. This time there were several puzzles of various kinds. The interview with Professor Umbridge went on for three pages, but glancing over it, Harry could tell that it would be useless. Flitwick's article about Sport Duelling, on the other hand, kept him fascinated until students began coming in from their dormitories. Breakfast was served, and soon the Quidditch players came in from the Pitch and alighted around Harry like a flock of birds, carrying with them the scent of wind and leaves, all chattering.

"Did you see that first catch, that was good!"

"And Ginny with that coin!"

"I still say she had an unfair advantage..."

Hermione plopped down right next to Harry. "You should have been there, Harry," she said sharply. Twisting the knife was clearly her intent, but he supposed he deserved it after the way he'd abandoned her. "Fred and George aren't any worse off than you and they came and helped Angelina."

"Oh, you should have seen it when they were testing people out for Seeker," Ron exulted.

Harry gamely looked up at him.

"They enchanted a knut so they could fly it around --- smaller the better I guess was the idea --- and Fred would control it and George would toss it up in the air and they all went after it until they got to Ginny..."

"I probably did have an unfair advantage," she said, nonetheless grinning broadly into her orange juice.

"Well George tossed the coin and she just didn't move. Everybody wondered what she was thinking; she just hovered up to him and stuck out her hand."

"He tossed it and caught it again," Ginny cut in. "Fred was flying a second coin out of his sleeve."

"You can't really blame the others for going after it, I don't think," Hermione said.

"Still, it shows a good eye to catch them at it," Ron argued. "I think Angelina made the right choice."

Harry looked up at Ginny. She beamed at him so sheepishly and joyfully that she didn't have to say a thing to tell him that she was the Gryffindors' new Seeker.

"What about Keeper, don't you think that was a good choice?" Hermione asked Ron.

"Well, I guess... I mean it's not like anybody else really tried out for it..." he said, deflating a bit.

"You're the new Keeper?" Harry asked.

"Yeah..."

"Oh, come off the glum!" Ginny insisted. "Hermione, you should have been there earlier; you missed all his good saves. That one shot of Katie's almost knocked him off his broom but he stopped it all right!"

"Won't do us much good if I fall apart ten minutes into every game," Ron grumped.

"You'll be practicing," Hermione said. "I'm sure you'll do fine."

"Seamus made Beater, by the way," Ron said, seeming to want to deflect the conversation away from himself. "Him and Andrew Kirke; he's a year behind us."

"Did you see my article on the paper, Harry?" Ginny asked.

"Not yet; I was reading Flitwick's bit."

"Don't you mean 'in' the paper?" Ron asked.

"No, see, I wrote an article about what everybody thought and how people reacted to last week's paper. It was just about the biggest thing that happened this past week. Well, maybe not for you," she added to Harry, "but I didn't think you'd want me writing articles about that."

"No. No, I wouldn't," he agreed, and flipped through looking for Ginny's article.

Sunday was mostly taken up with homework Harry had let slide, but Monday morning everything seemed to be looking up. The pain in his arm was nearly gone, and even the scabs were starting to shed. Professor Flitwick was practically mobbed by students interested in a new Duelling League. An announcement was posted on the board about a Hogsmeade weekend just before Halloween --- a ways off but something to look forward to. Dumbledore announced that Hagrid was back to teach classes, and most wonderful of all for Harry, Cho came over from the Ravenclaw table and tapped him on the shoulder.

With the Hogwarts X-Press special tribute to Cedric scheduled for the upcoming issue, she wondered if Harry was planning to contribute anything, and told him that it would mean a great deal if he did, since he and Cedric had been Hogwarts' Triwizard Champions. Last year the school had seen more than its share of squabbling about who was the "true" Hogwarts Champion and who the student body was to support, and Harry wholeheartedly agreed with Cho that his voice putting that all behind them would be a wonderful addition to the tribute that Cedric certainly deserved.

Hedwig had to nibble on his ear to pull his attention away from Cho; the owl had brought him a lumpy letter from the Sweepstakes Awards Clearinghouse, and he eagerly tore it open before even thinking to be cautious.

"Oh, I'll leave you to your mail," Cho said, heading back to her table. "About the paper, I really appreciate it!"

"Yeah, no problem," he said, waving after her.

Ron was already looking over Harry's shoulder at the letter, and his squelched laugh directed Harry's eyes to it at last.

Dear Mr. Potter,

Please tell Mr. W that ours is a Sweepstakes Mailing List wherein one has the opportunity to win Inane Muggles.

At that, Harry couldn't help laughing out loud, and his example broke through Ron's restraint as well.

"Oy, Harry, you shouldn't have have sent back the form!" Ron managed between snickers. "You've got more of those than you know what to do with already!"

"Don't I know it!"

"Quiet down you two! People will wonder!" Hermione shushed them despite her own grin.

Potions was still cancelled, although Madam Pomfrey expected Professor Snape to be ready to leave the Hospital Wing on Wednesday. Still, it gave Harry and his friends the chance to run back up to the dormitory until Creatures and read Sirius's new letter.

The hard, lumpy bulk of the envelope was taken up by a present for Ginny, of all things, for use in her "journalistic career;" it was a Muggle audio cassette, and reading between the lines of its attached note, Harry gathered that it was enchanted to work like one his father James had once owned, so that it would "record, play, rewind, or advance" magically by voice command. Harry read the note over twice and found no loophole that would let him keep it himself, but he did insist on listening to it once in case there was a message on it.

He checked that no one would overhear, then told it "Play."

The little plastic reels began to turn, and Harry smiled to hear his godfather's voice: "Right, let's see if I've got it working now. Recording this at Order of the Phoenix Headquarters. Testing. Testing." It seemed the tape didn't include a letter as such; Harry guessed that even the mention of the Order was ironically a security measure meant to take advantage of the Fidelius Charm protecting the Headquarters' location, and indeed at that, Harry couldn't quite think where Sirius would have been taping this. Even if it was just a test, though, Harry still wanted to hear every moment of it, and he chuckled as the whistle of a teakettle brought an "Oh!" from Sirius and the scraping sound of a chair.

A bit of general knocking about and Sirius's voice indistinguishably low and distant --- it sounded as if he were talking to himself --- then another voice came muttering onto the tape with a scraping sound. "Shameful Muggle garbage, covered in Muggle filth... My Lady never forgives such abomination in her house..."

"KREACHER!" Sirius shouted. "Give me that!"

His order was met with a whistle of air, a sharp thump, and a clattering noise. "Ow!" By the sound, Kreacher must have given back the tape by throwing it and hitting Sirius in the face. Now Sirius could be heard picking it up from the floor. "Agh, stop..." The reels stopped moving.

Harry wished he could listen to it over and over, but thought it too risky to keep, and of course he wouldn't want to keep it from being used as Sirius had intended. Experimentally, he said "erase" to it. The reels gave a little twitch, and when he tried it again the recording of Sirius and Kreacher was gone. Harry sighed and handed it over to Hermione to pass along.

As for the letter itself, it was rather short. Not much seemed to be happening. Lupin had left on his "business trip;" Sirius was still cooped up in the house and complained about the noisy and disagreeable "domestic help." He closed with the promise that Harry's magazines --- "Please be assured in advance that any sauce stains on your Delicious Meat Pies Quarterly resulted from malfunctions at the printers' and absolutely did not occur in our office" --- would arrive in the following odd-numbered month that was divisible by three but not an exponential thereof.

Harry boggled as he read it aloud, but Hermione immediately burst out in laughter and needed a few moments to calm down before she could explain to them why there was no such month. Ron remarked that "Mr. Paterson" must have had far too much time on his hands to come up with such a mathematical joke, and when Harry recalled the contents of the letter and the tape, he was sadly forced to agree. It also unfortunately set Hermione to babbling about Arithmancy, her favorite class, and they went out to Care of Magical Creatures listening to her expound on the fascinating properties of non-base-ten numbers. Harry had no idea what she was talking about and only caught that the word "triskaidecimal" and the number "eleventy-eight" were somehow involved, facts which served only to confuse him more.

"Care o' Magical Creatures, gather 'round here!" Hagrid called from the edge of the woods. Harry was glad to turn to the gamekeeper's first lesson of the year as he and his friends joined the group forming around a patch of turned earth and a pile of shovels.

"Got summat as I've bin wantin' ter show yeh fer a long time!"

"No more Blast-Ended Skrewts, please?" Lavender half-asked, half-pleaded.

Hagrid shook his head. "Nah, nothin' new-fangled. These'a bin here fer years an' years."

"Nothing dangerous like the hippogriffs, I hope," Pansy Parkinson remarked.

"No, no," Hagrid hastily assured the Slytherins --- his teaching debut had ended with Buckbeak slashing Draco for an insult. "These things won't do no more'n bite yeh. A bite from one of 'em ain't nothin' too bad, and yer safe from that, even, jus' so long as yeh don' smell like blood or rottin' meat or such as that..."

"So better be careful, Weasley," Draco remarked as an aside.

Ron returned him a rude gesture and Hermione slapped his hand.

Hagrid surveyed the class and apparently found everyone in attendance. "All rightee now, I done coaxed 'em out to the edge of the forest, but to get 'em on over here, I need a few volunteers fer the shovels."

Malfoy noticeably shrank away from the prospect of manual labor. Harry, however, stepped straight up to take a shovel, as did Dean, Lavender, and Millicent Bulstrode from the Slytherins' side.

"Righ' there," Hagrid said, directing them to the grassless oval of turned soil. "Jus' dig that up, an' our lesson won't be able teh resist it." Judging by his grin, he was enjoying keeping his secret for now as to just what wouldn't be able to resist what. Harry pushed in the first shovel, and the volunteers started working. "It ain't buried too deep; yeh should hit it any ol' time now," Hagrid encouraged them, and indeed Millicent's shovel presently struck something in the dirt with a disgusting moist crunch.

"What was that?" Lavender recoiled.

"Ain't nothin' yeh can hurt. Keep at it!" Hagrid urged.

A few more shovelfulls began to uncover the object, which was soon revealed as fragments of a beef that had been buried recently --- but had been buried long enough to look and smell thoroughly unappetising. Several girls and also Draco screwed up their faces in disgust; Lavender too, but she kept working. Only Hermione edged closer to try to get a good look into the shallow pit.

"Nothin' much ter see there," Hagrid told her. "Just give 'em a minute. Try tossin' a little o' that toward the trees; they'll be here any second now."

Harry watched Dean scoop up a slimy shovelful and throw it back toward the forest, and then he froze. Whatever Hagrid was talking about, Harry saw it; black shapes moved around in the shade of the trees, and indeed one did come forward and nose at the meat Dean had flung away. It was a glistening black horse with membranous wings folded against its back --- one of the steeds that had drawn the carriages from the Hogwarts Express this year and never before. Harry watched closely as it opened a mouth lined with wolfish teeth and began eating; he heard a fascinated "Oh!" from Hermione. Now more of the animals were coming forward, following their noses to the source.

"Ho, drop the shovels now," Hagrid said, putting out a hand.

Harry and the other three let their shovels fall, just as the first of the horses came up beside Dean and leaned down into the pit they had dug.

"Aah!" Dean jumped back as its shoulder brushed him. "Something touched me!" He reached beside him and pulled back when his fingers touched its wing.

"Nothin' ter be afraid of," Hagrid announced. He lifted Dean and Lavender back across from the far side of the hole and ushered his volunteers to stand with the rest of the class as more of the black horses gathered to eat from the exhumed carcass. Now they stood in the light and Harry could get a better look; their hides were scaly, their wings ridged like birds' feet but jet black. One flapped slightly and resituated those wings, flashing lacy black membranes between the fingers. Their feet ended in unmistakeable fetlocks and hooves, but how could these be horses of any kind? One tossed its mane and shook its tail, and the strands were too wide and flat to be hairs but hung in the air for a moment like feathers --- they were feathers, long, thin, and iridescent raven-black. One on the far side of the pit raised its head and regarded the students with garnet eyes, chewing at a torn-off strip of meat that dangled from its mouth. At this, several students gasped. Harry didn't think its face was all that scary...

"All right now," Hagrid said, still grinning. "Can anybody see 'em?"

It struck Harry as an odd question, but he put up his hand. Hermione squinted uncomfortably toward the animals, apparently not seeing them and wondering if she should be. As Harry looked around, he was surprised to see no one else raising their hand, until finally Neville offered a diffident wave. "Um, I can, I think."

A few Slytherins scoffed. "You think?" Malfoy questioned.

"Well, I can see them just a little," Neville defended meekly. "Not like I could see them Second Year..."

"Second Year?" Harry questioned.

"The first time we rode the carriages."

At that, Harry was thoroughly confused, but Hermione took a breath as if everything had just fallen into place. "Oh, they're Thestrals!" she exclaimed. "I read about them in the Scamander book! You can only see them if---" She stopped suddenly and gave Harry a strange look.

"Tha's right!" Hagrid exulted at last. "These here are some o' Hogwarts' very own herd of Thestrals. They bin here even longer than I bin Keeper of Keys and Grounds and bin takin' care of 'em, and they always pull the carriages up from the station. It ain't nothin' strange if yeh never knew it, though. See, the thing of Thestrals is... well..." He paused. His enthusiasm flagged for a moment, and he spit out the next sentence all at once. "Yeh can only see 'em if yeh've seen somebody die."

The explanation hit Harry like a bucket of cold water. Just a moment ago he'd been admiring the black horses, and now suddenly to think that it was Cedric's murder that was letting him do so, where they had never been visible to him before. But then, hadn't he seen his parents die when he was a baby...?

"So, er... That is, well..." Hagrid hemmed and hawed. "Don't wanna pry yeh know, but if yeh don' mind me askin'..." He wasn't looking at Harry, only at Neville. No one needed to ask why Harry could see them, as was obvious by the uncomfortable glances they gave him.

"My grandpa," Neville said steadily. "He'd been sick for a long time, and me and Gran were there in St. Mungo's when he passed away."

"An' when was this?" Hagrid asked him. "How old were yeh?"

"Um... Nine I think. It was right around the Christmas before the Christmas before I came to school."

"Mm." Hagrid stroked his beard. "Tha's a long time. It kinda fades, see, the longer yeh go after it happens. I'd say yer pretty sharp of eyes if yeh can still make 'em out."

Neville made a strange little squeak, as if bottling up a word or a laugh in his chest.

Hagrid went on to describe the Thestrals' care and habits, explaining that they were mainly carrion eaters and were especially attracted to dead things that had been buried and then dug up --- grave robberies in other words, Harry thought, and by his classmates' looks of revulsion he clearly wasn't the only one. Hagrid looked a little confused at the students' misgivings. It certainly wasn't with relish that he described the Thestrals' more macabre aspects, but he clearly adored them anyway and didn't see why everyone else shouldn't feel the same.

Professor Grubbly-Plank's start-of-term safety lecture came in useful when Hagrid at last got the students interacting with the Thestrals and insisted that they could be ridden. Most of the class blundered around trying to find, let alone mount, an animal they couldn't see, and Hagrid set about trying to help them; the Thestrals were apparently visible to him, a fact that Harry chose not to pry into. Neville helped the other Gryffindors locate theirs and Hagrid was left mostly helping the Slytherins, with Draco holding back as his cronies managed to look utterly foolish, even to Harry, who could see the steed they were trying to manage.

Harry himself took one of the Thestrals and tried to subtly hide behind it, although the animal seemed overly interested in his hair. The fact that he was the only student able to see them clearly now made him thoroughly uncomfortable, and indeed the others must find it disturbing also; they looked over at him occasionally but didn't say anything or ask him for help until Hermione finally came over to him, with Ron following behind her.

"Have you got one, Harry?" she asked him, softly enough not to direct a spotlight onto him.

"Yeah..."

"What does it look like?"

Before he could describe it, the rest of the class made a kind of curious cheer and Hagrid announced "There yeh go!" They had managed to get Parvati onto a Thestral's back front-side-to.

"Geez, that looks funny," Ron said. To him it must just look like Parvati with her legs oddly bent hovering in the air.

To Harry, seeing her perched on the back of what looked like a horse crossed with a bat and a jet black snake, it still looked funny, but he couldn't look so closely because his own Thestral was insistently nuzzling him in the forehead. "Stop that, you."

His friends turned back to him. "I can see it pushing your hair," Hermione said.

"Well, come here if you want to know what it looks like," he told her, and pointed toward the back of its neck where she could feel the scaly skin and the fine mane-feathers. "Put your hand right there."

With Harry guiding her, she ran her hands over as much of the Thestral as she dared and asked him constant questions about its color and general appearance. "So are the eyes a bright red, or more dark, would you say?"

"I don't think that's going to be on the test," Ron pointed out, still hanging back.

"I just want to know!" Hermione insisted. "It makes me so curious to have it right here --- I wish I could see it!"

Ron caught Harry's eyes in an awkward pause, to which Hermione seemed oblivious. "No, you don't," Ron said finally.

She looked up at him, noticed Harry, and went red. "Well... You know what I mean..." she breathed.

"The eyes are kind of a wine-red," Harry said.

to be continued in...
Chapter Fifteen: Educational Emergency

Author's Notes on Chapter Eleven

A request: if you like this chapter, please post a review and name one specific thing in it that you liked. If you want to say more or give your own crit, that's great, but I realised that the "one specific thing" is a simple kind of comment I love to get, so I'd much appreciate if you would just do that.

Revisions: The version of Secret Prophecy I'm posting at this stage is open to change. Currently I'm polishing these chapters after they've cooled for awhile, but I don't have a full draft of the entire story, so while this isn't what I'd call a beta, I do foresee another round of revisions once I have a complete draft.

And once again Harry wraps the chapter steeped in angst. Poor kid; I feel a bit guilty... (Will have to make it a point not to do that next time...)

Been a few chapters since I let him read anyone's mind, too; must make a note to get in one of those soon...

This one accounted for at least some of the probably-usual Mid-NaNoWriMo slump and there was kind of an attack of the "Waah, this chapter sucks!" But must carry on. First drafts can suck all they want as long as they get written...

I'm hoping I did a decent job with Hagrid's dialect.