Dear Mum and Dad,
Life is like a hurricane here in Hogwarts, especially whenever Harry is around. I've never met anyone as…well, confusing as Harry. One moment, he seems blissfully unaware of social conventions, things that just happened two seconds ago, and stairs. The next, he's executing complex plans to achieve things anyone would assume would be impossible. Since his arrival at Hogwarts, he's found the Philosopher's Stone, cheated death, and basically gotten Dumbledore sacked in all but name. I sure as heck made the right choice becoming his friend. And I sure as hell wouldn't want to be his enemy.
Over the last few months, I've been pretty busy memorizing my very elaborate lines for the role of Prospero in the Tempest. It's been nice having Hermione around to help me practice my lines. (I will never ask Harry to practice my lines again. I still have nightmares.) The play is interesting enough when I could wrap my head around the dialogue, which took basically forever. I find it fascinating how despite our attempts to erase all traces of magic, the Muggles still can't seem to let go of the idea of magic being real, if only in their stories. From the Tempest to Young Wizards to Star Wars, which is basically magic in space, Muggles are perpetually drawn to the idea of magic being real. I wonder if creative people who get obliviated tend to subconsciously maintain memories of magic and are drawn to creating such stories.
Oh, listen to me, I'm starting to sound like Hermione. You'll be happy to know – well, I'm sure you already do know, but I'm telling you anyway – Percy got resorted into Slytherin. I'm not sure how Harry managed to pull it off. When I asked, he just winked at me. But given how shellshocked his barrister looked in the selfie he took of the two of them right after the meeting, I'm sure it was patented Harry lunacy. Well, let me just tell you, I've never seen Percy so happy. I thought he would be moping a lot because of losing his Prefect position, but being in Slytherin seems to be enough for him. He's been making all sorts of friends and he even hugged me yesterday. I can't remember the last time Percy hugged me. Has he ever hugged me?
O'Neill got sacked and I can't say I'm sad about it. I don't have anything against Muggles, I really don't, but it's bad enough I'm helping Harry break the law with his blog on a daily basis, but O'Neill's breach of the Statute of Secrecy was a hundred times worse and I was seriously worried that if he got caught, he'd drag me down with him for keeping the secret. Also, I thought he was boring. Though everyone says he's a thousand times better than Snape was. We have a new temporary professor, Daphne Greengrass's dad, and he's okay. Kind of average. Harry misses O'Neill, but of course he has no one to blame but himself. (I mean, I can't be sure Harry was involved, technically, but if there's one thing I've learned since coming to Hogwarts it's that Harry is always involved.)
Dumbledore has been cooped up in his office since he got stripped of his power. On one hand, I feel kind of bad for him. I can't imagine what it's like to have such an incredible brain and have it slowly disintegrate. I think I'd rather die than let that happen to me. On the other hand, at least he's not stalking or trying to kill Harry anymore. Though I'm still worried he may try one last time for the road before his departure. Harry feels the same way. He's been very paranoid recently, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And there are a lot of shoes hanging overhead, unfortunately.
Malfoy has been having private meetings with some of the older students. I don't know what happened at those meetings, but it can't be good. Each time he has one of those meetings, he walks out satisfied. But not smug. It's…how can I explain it? It's like he thinks he's doing something necessary but not necessarily pleasant. I don't know how to explain it. But every time he meets with a student, they seem to walk out with a scorn and contempt for Muggleborns and especially for Hermione. A part of me wonders if he's casting some spell on them. I want to talk to Harry about it, and maybe I should, but Harry's response to, well, just about everything but especially this is a half-baked scheme, and I'd honestly like to spend the rest of the year not being in danger.
Malfoy's own hatred of Hermione has also increased and it was pretty high to begin with. Instead of looking at Hermione like she's dirt on his shoe, he looks at her like she strangles puppies in her spare time. Strangely, as his hatred of Hermione has gone up, his hatred of me (and to a lesser extent Harry) has gone down. He's actually tried to be friendly to us. (Like I'd ever want to be friends with a racist git like him.) But it's all an act, of course, aimed at trying to convince us to drop Hermione as a friend.
"You don't understand what people like her are like," Malfoy said urgently one day as we were on the way to potions. Normally, the Emerald Trio, as people call us, are joined at the hip, but Hermione got distracted debating some magical theory with Blaise which went way over my head and had gone ahead of us. "Muggles are pure evil. I've seen it. I've been shown the light. Harry, you know what I'm talking about. You were raised there. Didn't you see it? The way they smile at you to your face and then hurt you when your back is turned?"
"I…" Harry began uncertainly. Given his background, this approach had obviously struck a chord in him. If all Muggles were like the Dursleys, then, yeah, I'd have probably signed onto the hating Muggles bandwagon too. But they're not. You just need to look at Hermione's parents to see that – the Drs. Granger are the best. "Draco, just because some Muggles do bad things doesn't mean all of them are like that."
Malfoy's face twitched. "Oh, really? Bad things. That's a severe understatement if I've ever heard one. Tell me, Harry, has no one told you about the –"
I decided right there and then I had to derail the argument before Harry got caught up in it more. Once Harry got an idea in his head, it would never leave and the only way to stop it was to prevent it from getting there in the first place. If Harry started falling for all this nonsense, we were basically dead men walking. "Tell me, Malfoy, where did you get all this from? You've never stepped foot in the Muggle world in your life, I bet." Harry smirked for some reason.
"My father sent me this book," he said, sounding like he was a zealot telling us about some religious text. "It's told me so many things about the Muggles and the horrible things you're capable of. For example, did you know –"
"I'm not interested in hearing anything more out of you," Harry said quietly and calmly and beyond coldly. Man, was I glad that voice wasn't directed at me. "I should have known your rotten father was behind this." He pointed his finger at Malfoy's face. "Your father was a Death Eater. He may have bribed his way out of prison, but he belonged to the organization that murdered my parents. No matter how rotten you think Muggles are – and believe me, Malfoy, whatever you think the truth is, it's worse – I'll always stand with them against people like you."
Malfoy's eyes were suddenly wide with fury. "Well, what the hell do you know, you filthy blood traitor?!" he screamed. "If the Muggles found out about us, I bet you'd be lighting the fires right alongside them! I won't let it happen. I won't!" And with those alarming words, he ran off.
To be honest, I'm not very scared of Malfoy. Probably because we effortlessly beat him in a duel. It's hard to be scared of someone when you've disarmed him like taking candy from a baby. He doesn't really know any more spells than we do. And he doesn't have someone like Snape available to cover for him. Professor Sinistra won't take any of his nonsense. He's not a threat to us. At least…I hope not.
Hagrid has been stranger than usual and…look, I know Harry likes him a lot. I can understand why, since he rescued him from the Dursleys and all that. But Harry's not the best judge of character and Hagrid kind of freaks me out sometimes. Maybe it's his love of huge animals that would be able to swallow most of us whole. Maybe it's the fact that he has an alarming tendency to sneak up on us and you'd think his size would make that impossible, but it doesn't. Or maybe it's the way he looks at Hermione sometimes and suddenly bursts into tears, like he's heard she's dying or something. And recently, he's been drinking a lot and has had some very frightening outbursts out of nowhere whenever we go to meet with him, which is pretty frequently since Harry thinks Hagrid is the best person ever and usually drags us over to meet with him whenever he's invited for tea.
Recently, Hagrid has been trying to convince Hermione to leave the country and go to another school, which is really strange when you remember he's actually a school employee. These days, it seems like every time we go to his hut, there's more and more brochures for magical schools all over the world all over the place. And, well, honestly, some of those places look super cool, but Hermione won't leave Hogwarts as long as the two of us are still here.
Last but definitely not least, Hermione's parents have started the procedures to get Harry removed from the Dursleys' custody. He's had to have regular meetings with people from social services, which he's attended thanks to Professor Sinistra's weird wormhole spell. I don't know what they've been talking about there, but it's not been pleasant. When Harry gets back, he's tired and sad and one time, he even cried for, like, a half hour. I don't know what he was so sad about (and I wouldn't tell you if I did, no disrespect meant at all), but this is not the Harry I'm used to. I wish I could strangle the Dursleys. I hope they go to jail when all is said and done.
Well, that's about all that's been happening here in happy, happy Hogwarts. Give my best to Bill and Charlie.
Love,
Ron
Operative Echidna, what the hell is going on with you? We haven't heard any reports from you for the last three months. And from what we've been learning from our newest source in the magical world, this is a bloody good time to report on things. The Wizengamot just voted to remove Dumbledore as the Chief Warlock and apparently the International Confederation of Wizards is also going to be ejecting him from the position of Supreme Mugwump at their next meeting. Everyone is saying he's completely gone round the twist. And yet, I have to read about this on Potter's blog. (Also, on that note, have you seen how adorable he is with Granger? I totally ship it and I'm not the only one. Tumblr fanarts of the Harmony ship are exploding!)
But unfortunately, we both know it can't last. Like Romeo and Juliet before them, theirs is a doomed romance, since, as we've previously discussed, Granger is an FSB agent and any love between the two of them is destined to failure. Right now, Granger is probably trying to figure out how Harry's Killing Curse survival power works so she can send it to her superiors in the Kremlin. Which is why, again, as we've previously discussed, you were given specific orders to execute Plan Epsilon!
Look, Echidna, I understand why you might have reservations. Is it an especially moral thing to do? No, not really. She's a child and framing her is not a particularly ethical course of action. But don't you see that's precisely why it has to be done? Eddington's going round the twist and he is this close to giving a kill order on Granger. A kill order, Echidna. On a twelve year old. I did not sign up to have children killed, so you execute Epsilon, or I'll do it myself.
Blimey, Woodpecker, you think this is easy for me? I've had to do a lot of terrible things in my time – Obliviate social services so they can't remove Harry from the Dursleys, shoot three Dutch cops, and, of course, the Saskatoon incident. But this crosses a line. We're targeting a twelve year old girl just her parents convinced her to be a spy for them. We should be removing her from their care, not trying to put her in jail. Besides, you don't know how bad the prisons are here. They're guarded by these things called Dementors which suck all the happiness out of you. And they can suck your soul out too. Still, I suppose since Hermione's a minor she'll be put in Azkaban's minimum security wing. If it's a choice between that and her death…I suppose I know what choice I'm making. May God forgive me for it.
Oh, boy. Stuff happened and, as always, I've decided to confide what happened to me, including all the incredibly incriminating bits, to random strangers on the internet instead of, you know, therapists. In my defense, I don't think the magical world has therapists and I obviously can't talk to Muggle therapists about this stuff because they'll think I'm nuts. Well, more nuts than I already am. I'm rambling. I should get to the point. But it's hard. I'm shaken to my core. I had thought…Well, I had thought so many things, and now they're all wrong. I just don't know what to do.
The day had started off perfectly well. I'd aced my last charms assignment, we were going to be finally covering the Grindelwald war in history (if only Dumbledore had enough of his marbles left to do a guest lecture!), and the weather was surprisingly nice for, you know, Scotland in March. The production of the Tempest is going along swimmingly and Ron's doing so well in it! Though I still think I was robbed of a role in it. I mean, come on, it was my idea! But overall, yeah, life was pretty darn good.
Then I got summoned to McGonagall's office. And I'm sure you all know it never bodes well when you get summoned to the office of the woman who's basically the headmaster in all but name. She wasn't going to subject me to senile ramblings. If I was summoned there, it meant one thing: I was in trouble. The funny thing was I couldn't, for the life of me, imagine what I had possibly done. Ever since the meeting of the Board of Governors, I haven't been up to any mischief. Let me rephrase that. I haven't been up to any mischief that was against the rules.
So it was with a great deal of worry that I walked into McGonagall's office. She was severe and stern and all in all reminds me a lot of that one actress from Death on the Nile, if she was, like, in her fifties. Not the new one, the one with Peter Ustinov. What was her name? Darn it, it's going to bug me all day. Right, not the point, Harry. The actual point is that McGonagall looked even more severe and stern than ever before and it was freaking me out.
"Sit down, Mr. Potter," she said sharply, and contrary to popular belief, I do have a sense of self-preservation, so I sat and waited patiently for her to say something. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"
"Actually, I don't," I tried to say as apologetically and sincerely as possible. "I'm going to guess by the look on your face it's not something worthy of biscuits?"
McGonagall's lips pursed. Darn it. Part of the problem of being such an icon of sass is that eventually, people in authority assume you're always being sarcastic even if you're really, genuinely trying to be sincere. "I am talking about how you have shredded Headmaster Dumbledore's reputation. The most celebrated man of our time, the man who your parents trusted with their very lives, and you have brought him low."
"I somehow think my parents would have changed their minds about trusting me if they'd seen him attacking me with a sword," I pointed out. I would not apologize for my actions. I did the right thing. It was an extreme action, but I was not wrong.
"You deliberately provoked him," McGonagall said. "You acted as if you were some evil dark lord, to a man who's had to watch people die in very painful, very messy ways at the hands of two dark lords. Do you not understand how your actions had consequences?"
Guilt twisted inside of me, because I hadn't thought of it that way. I hadn't thought that Dumbledore might have had real trauma behind his crazed actions. And I do feel remorse for making light of it. I do. But it still didn't change the fundamental truth behind my actions: Dumbledore was out of control and he had to be reeled in. And since no one else was willing to do it, I had to step up to the plate.
"He was stalking me," I shot back. "He thought I had a Horcrux in my head. He thought I had to die – that's basically a step away from thinking he has to kill me. He hurt my snake. I feared for my life. So, yes, Professor McGonagall, I did provoke the headmaster. It was better this happened in public than in private, where he may have tried to kill me without anyone else to stop him."
McGonagall frowned. "Mr. Potter, surely there were other avenues you could have taken that didn't make Albus's…condition public."
"I didn't do anything wrong," I said slowly as if I was speaking to Goyle. "I am sorry it had to go down this way, but I don't regret it either." I straightened my back in my chair. I was proud of what I'd done, all things considered. How many people can say they'd brought down their headmaster, much less such a celebrated man, in their first year of boarding school? "I haven't broken any laws." Not true, but she didn't know that. "And I haven't broken any rules. I appealed to the Board of Governors in accordance with standard practices. I did everything by the book."
I gave a smug smile at her. "That's what happens when you mess with a real Slytherin, professor. Not some brute like Malfoy, but a person with cunning and ambition. I obliterate you. And I'll do the same to anyone who hurts the people I love."
McGonagall looked at me with an ice cold countenance and I shivered a little. "This is not the kind of person your parents would have wanted you to be."
"Don't talk about my parents!" I shouted at her. I am sick of people trying to emotionally manipulate me with the memories of dead people. "Maybe they weren't the saints you thought they were! Maybe there's a reason Petunia was mum's sister! I'm myself. I won't follow the same path that left my parents dead at twenty-one!"
McGonagall would have looked more surprised if I'd punched her. "That is beyond the pale, Mr. Potter. You will receive detention for your…your gross insolence and disrespecting the memory of two great heroes."
I punched my hand in the air. "Yes! My first detention…I don't know how I got this far in the year without one."
"Neither do I," McGonagall muttered, suddenly looking very, very tired. "Now get out."
I was shocked when it turned out that my detention ended up being with Hagrid in the middle of the night. But that was nothing compared to the fact that Ron and Hermione were there alongside me. Hermione had been caught sneaking into the restricted section of the library (why does a school library even have a restricted section) and Ron had punched Malfoy after he'd said one too many horrible things about Muggleborns. And guess what? It turned out they'd both done it on purpose! So we can all have detention together! I honestly don't know what I've done to deserve such wonderful friends as Ron and Hermione.
"Can't say I approve of what you said to McGonagall, Harry," Hagrid said grimly as he escorted us towards his hut from the Great Hall. "Can't say I approve of it at all. Still, it's what your mum would have done. Wouldn't have approved of her doing it either."
Could I just go for one day without people comparing me to my parents? I don't mind when Remus does it, since he was so close to Dad. But Hagrid couldn't have been that close to Mum and McGonagall certainly couldn't have been either. Remus knows what he's talking about when he compares me to my parents. These people don't. "I only spoke the truth," I said stubbornly.
"Sometimes, that's when you get in the most trouble of all," he muttered. "All right, this is going to be pretty simple. The centaurs need some help with manual labor. Since, you know, they have a horse body, there's some stuff they can't do. Centaurs are private creatures, but they don't hurt children. Very often."
That didn't bode well, but I was honestly pretty excited about meeting centaurs, so I took it all in stride. As we walked into the Forbidden Forest, my mind was consumed with thoughts about what other kinds of mythical creatures might exist in the magical world. Vampires? The Loch Ness monster? Platypuses? The possibilities were endless! I was so consumed in my thoughts that I didn't notice when we'd stopped abruptly until I'd walked straight into a tree and my glasses flew off my face.
"Excuse me," I said politely to the tree. Or at least I thought it was the tree. Honestly, without my glasses, I'm blind as a bat. "What's going on, Hagrid? Why have we stopped?"
"I'm really, really sorry about this, Harry," he said, sounding like he was about to cry. "I didn't want this. But sometimes in life we have no choice."
"Dude, it's just an unscheduled stop on our wilderness trek," I said soothingly. "It's okay. Just someone give me my glasses and we can be right as rain." Ron, looking like he was trembling in fear (at least that was my best guess), grabbed my glasses and handed them to me, and then I saw what was happening and I gasped.
Hagrid was pointing his wand at us. "I'm so sorry," he babbled. "It won't be too long. You'll be out before you're an adult. I just needed to take her out of play."
"Hagrid?" I said uncertainly. "What's…what's going on? If you're some kind of trouble, we can help you."
"I'm not the one in trouble," Hagrid said grimly. "You all are. He'll be here any second. You'll understand one day."
I could hear rustling coming from the nearby foliage and we all took out our wands, for what little good that might do us. I didn't know what was coming, but if Hagrid was near hysterical at the thought of it, it couldn't have been good. What would we face? A bloodthirsty dragon? A werekangaroo? An actual xenomorph?
The person who emerged from the trees wasn't any of those things. In fact, they weren't even the person Hagrid was clearly expecting, since it was a woman, not a man, standing before us. A woman of around forty (though I'm not good at judging ages) with long blond hair pulled back into a bun, grey eyes, and a way about her that clearly indicated she was someone not to be messed with. She was wearing a brown trench coat over robes. Something about her absolutely screamed cop.
"Where's Dawlish?" Hagrid said, turning pale with fright.
"Under the weather," the woman said. "I'm Hestia Jones and I assure you, I'm as much of an Auror as he is." The woman gave a nasty smile. "Unless of course you think women can't handle the job?"
Hagrid looked bewildered. "Course not. Well, I guess you'll do in a pinch." Jones did not look very pleased with that comment. "I found these miscreants plotting to smuggle a basilisk out of the castle." Jones's eyes widened in horror.
"Wait, what?!" Ron shouted. "No! Bloody hell, no! We don't even know where we'd be able to find one."
Hagrid pointed his finger at Hermione. "She was the one who planned the whole thing."
"That's a lie!" Hermione shouted.
Jones crossed her arms. She didn't believe Hagrid, I could tell, but her job required her not to dismiss the matter out of hand. "All right, where is this alleged basilisk, then?"
"In the Chamber of Secrets," Hagrid said. I've never even heard of the Chamber of Secrets, but it definitely sounds like some place I'd love to go! I'm going to make a mental note of that. "Potter is a Parselmouth. They're going to sell the beast, make a fortune."
Jones looked at Hagrid with utter scorn. "That's just the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard and I have half a mind right now to arrest you for wasting my time. These children are eleven!"
"I'm twelve!" Hermione piped up before Ron quickly covered her mouth with his hand. She proceeded to lick it much to his disgust. I don't know why he expected anything less; he has six siblings.
"No, no, wait, wait!" Hagrid said frantically. "You don't know what's at stake here!" Jones scoffed and turned away. "Imperio!" he called out and the curse would have hit Jones squarely in the back if she hadn't tripped on a tree root just a second before Hagrid cast the spell.
Whatever that spell was, it must have been bad, because Jones immediately drew her wand and pointed it at Hagrid. "Children, get away from him now." Ron must have known what the spell was because he quickly hurried over to her without saying another word. I followed suit. But when Hermione tried to do the same, Hagrid grabbed her by the throat. "I'm sorry. But it has to be done."
Hagrid started squeezing Hermione's neck. I cast a severing charm at him, but it barely even made a dent in his skin. Jones, on the other hand, knew a lot more spells. She cast a teal spell which impacted Hagrid's arm and disintegrated it from the elbow up. Hermione scurried over to us. The three of us hid behind a bush, as if that would save us if a stray spell hit us.
"I don't know what your game is with that girl, Rubeus, but I'm not going to let you harm her," Jones vowed.
"I'm not the one she has to worry about," Hagrid said with a rueful grin. The two of them abruptly raised their wands and cast spells at each other. Jones sent a spell that must have done something to Hagrid's heart by the way he clutched at it, but it was short living. Hagrid, on the other hand, cast a spell that nearly took off Jones's head and as it were, succeeded in slicing a deep gash into the side of Jones's neck.
Jones encased Hagrid in ice, but he just punched his way through it and sent a wave of flame at her. The flames didn't hit her, but in her haste to escape, she ended up tripping on yet another tree root and knocking herself to the ground. The wand skittered
"I don't want to have to do this," Hagrid said as he aimed the wand at her head. "But killing an Auror is as much of an Azkaban worthy offense as smuggling a basilisk." He gave a twisted grin at me and Ron. "By the time I'm done with you, you'll remember Hermione casting the killing blow. It's for the best."
"There's a werekangaroo behind you!" I shouted. I must have been really desperate to think that would work. But improbably, it did. Just for a second, Hagrid looked behind him and that was just enough time for me to find Jones's wand and toss it over to her.
"EXPELLIARMUS!" Jones shouted and Hagrid's umbrella wand flew out of his hands. Ron hurried over to it and proceeded to snap it in two.
Hagrid pulled out a second wand out his pocket. "ACCIO ROCKET LAUNCHER!" he screamed, laughing maniacally. Everyone was nonplussed for a few seconds, just enough time for the aforementioned weapon to sail through the air and towards Hagrid's waiting hands. And then I tackled him and the weapon missed, slammed into a tree, and fired a rocket deep into the forest.
"I really, really hope that didn't hit anyone," Hermione muttered.
"You're under arrest for attempted use of an Unforgiveable Curse on an Auror," Jones announced and she proceeded to handcuff Hagrid. "Mind telling me why?" I wanted answers just as much as anyone. But Hagrid was staying stubbornly silent. Ron whispered something in Jones's ear and then she stepped away for a few seconds.
"No, we're alone here," Jones told him. "He didn't have any accomplices."
Just then, one of the most horrific sight I've ever seen emerged from the forest. It was a unicorn, but that wasn't what was so horrific. No, the unicorn was a thing of beauty and mystic wonder…or at least it would have been if its horn and half its face weren't gone, blasted straight through by Hagrid's rocket.
"No!" Hagrid screamed. "No, no, no, it can't be!" He looked absolutely frantic. "I didn't mean it! I didn't mean to!" He let out a pained cry. "Now I'm damned!"
"The only thing you can do to help yourself now is try to repent for your sins, Hagrid," Jones said softly. "Tell us what happened."
Hagrid hesitated for the better part of three minutes. Then he pointed at Hermione. "She's a spy," he said. Hermione giggled. "For the Russians. Just like her parents."
Now all three of us were nearly doubled over with laughter. "Oh, come on, that's ridiculous!" Ron said. "The Grangers, spies? That's just the silliest thing I've ever heard."
"Those gas masks they sent you?" Hagrid said. "FSB issue material. We've been on their trail for a long time. They've been linked to at least forty different assassinations, the most recent of which was in Valetta, Malta." I laughed even harder. But Hermione had stopped. "Prague, July 13, 2021; Helsinki, December 7, 2022. The Isle of Skye, just this last summer." With each date that Hagrid listed, Hermione's eyes got wider.
And then my heart sank into my stomach because then I remembered. I remembered when I was in the Isle of Skye, when I'd met those Russians. The ones who pointed guns at Uncle Vernon. Who'd had a guy tied up in the closet. I'd thought the Grangers had looked familiar and I was right. I had seen them before. Hagrid must have been right about them being Russian agents. But that did not mean he was right about Hermione.
"None of this explains why you've targeted Hermione!" I shouted. "Or who you even are."
"Because she's in on it with her parents," Hagrid said. Hermione frantically shook her head. I gave her a reassuring smile. I didn't believe him. "And even if she's not, it doesn't matter. Framing her for a crime, putting her away in Azkaban, it's the last ditch effort before a kill order is given. If my superiors want her dead, she'll be dead, no matter how young she is. I had to stop that. By any means necessary."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Hagrid, the nice guy who'd been nothing but friendly towards me, the person who'd rescued me from the Dursleys, was some sort of…of spy? MI6 wanted to kill Hermione? It was like something out of a terrible nightmare. "It was you, wasn't it?" I realized. "You were the one keeping me at the Dursleys."
Hagrid looked down at the ground with shame. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry isn't good enough!" I screamed at him. "Sorry doesn't give me a bloody decade of my life back! Sorry isn't going to keep me safe! You're a monster, Hagrid. You can keep telling yourself you've done the right thing, but you're worse than Voldemort in my book, because at least he was honest about how evil he was."
Jones brought Hagrid towards his feet. "Okay, I think I'll take it from here. I think it would be best if you didn't tell anyone what happened here for the time being. I'll handle things with your teachers. Go back to the castle."
"What about the unicorn?" Hermione asked. "We need to get it help!"
"Do we?" Jones said with a grin and waved her wand and then the unicorn just disappeared. It had just been a very convincing illusion. "You three handled yourself well under pressure." She looked at me straight in the eyes. "Your mother would be very proud of you, Harry."
Hagrid started laughing hysterically as Jones escorted him away. "You won't win! They'll get to you! You're a dead girl walking, Hermione!" Jones hit him with a silencing spell and the two of them were soon out of sight.
I don't know what to do. I'm just…overwhelmed. I need to sleep on this.
Woodpecker,
With Echidna's failure and arrest, the prime minister has decided there is no other choice but to issue a kill order on Hermione Granger, effective immediately. For the good of all Britain, Granger must die.
Director Eddington