5th October 1995, Hogwarts grounds, Saturday morning
The first Quidditch match of the season dawned bright and cold, the sky over the pitch a hard autumn blue, and half the castle poured down the lawns in a river of scarves and banners — Gryffindor and Slytherin, red and green, the oldest rivalry of them all.
Harry walked down amid his own small crowd: Daphne and Lavender ahead, deep in a conversation about winter cloaks that had somehow become a conversation about a Ravenclaw sixth-year's disastrous haircut; Neville and Viktor behind them, Viktor talking with his hands the way he only did about Quidditch.
"I am very eager for this," Viktor was saying. "I have never seen the Hogwarts league play. School Quidditch in Bulgaria is... functional. Serviceable." He waved this away. "But everyone says the House matches here are var. Civil var, but var. And I vant to see Ron play. He has the frame for a Seeker, and the eye... I have thought so since the summer."
"He's been sick with nerves all week," Neville confided fondly. "Wouldn't eat breakfast. Fred had to sit on him."
Harry and Hermione brought up the rear, heads together, talking quietly.
"Shame about Draco and Astoria," Harry said. "First match of the year."
"Mm. Astoria's caught some mild seasonal thing, apparently. Gone up to the Hospital Wing." Hermione's brow had the small crease it wore when a fact refused to sit down properly. "Which I don't quite believe, incidentally. That girl once hexed a fourth-year through a nosebleed without blinking. She is not the sort to be laid low by a sniffle."
"And Draco went with her," Harry said, very blandly. "For his Healing studies. Naturally."
"Naturally," Hermione agreed, equally bland.
They looked at each other, and the same mischievous grin broke over both faces at once. 'Healing studies,' Harry thought. 'Of course. Very diligent, our Draco.'
But Hermione's crease came back, briefly. "Although... she goes rather a lot, have you noticed? The Hospital Wing. And always on the same days, near enough. Like it's... scheduled." She frowned at the middle distance a moment longer — then the roar of the gathering crowd rolled up the lawn, and she shook it off, and they let the question go over their heads with everything else.
Ahead, a splash of pink stood out against the streaming scarves like a wound.
Dolores Umbridge had stationed herself along the path, and had attached herself, limpet-fashion, to the little knot of exchange students making their way down to the match — swaying and simpering, her voice carrying in sugared fragments: "...so important that our international guests see the school at its very best... of course, under the new administration, standards have simply soared..."
The exchange students wore the fixed, glazed courtesy of hostages. And among them, Harry spotted a familiar sandy head — Rolf Scamander, trapped at the pink woman's elbow, wearing a wry, long-suffering smile and the visible longing of a boy calculating the distance to the nearest hedge.
And Harry, to his own mild horror, found a small traitorous part of himself enjoying it.
'That's petty,' he told himself sternly. 'That's beneath you, Potter.' The small traitorous part remained entirely unrepentant.
Then he turned, scanning back up the path, and forgot Rolf altogether — because there was Luna, walking down alone some way behind the crowd, and Harry's hand was up and waving before he'd thought about it. Her face lit, and she came on briskly to meet them.
It was only as she drew close that the whole group registered what she was wearing.
On Luna's head sat a hat in the shape of a life-sized lion's head — vast, tawny, magnificently maned, perched atop her dirty-blonde hair as though the lion had simply decided to sit there. And as she reached them it opened its jaws and gave a deafening, extremely realistic roar that made Lavender shriek, Daphne recoil back, and three passing second-years break into a run.
"Good morning," said Luna, serenely, from beneath it. "It roars. I made it to support Gryffindor. Do you like it?"
There was a silence, of the particular kind that surrounded Luna Lovegood several times a day, while five people struggled to compose their faces.
Harry did not struggle at all.
"It's brilliant," he said, and meant every syllable, already leaning in to examine the mane. "Did you charm the roar yourself? Can it do it on command, or... hang on, let me..." And before anyone could speak he had lifted the great lion clean off Luna's head and settled it onto his own, where it roared thunderously, and Harry Potter — the Boy Who Lived, survivor of the graveyard, terror of Dark wizards — stood on the lawn beaming out from beneath an enormous roaring lion hat, entirely delighted with himself.
Luna's whole face went bright as a struck match.
The rest of the group exchanged a long, knowing, deeply entertained glance over the heads of the two of them, who had descended into an animated technical discussion of roar-charms and mane-maintenance and heard none of it.
"They're hopeless," Daphne murmured.
"Completely," Hermione agreed, fond.
"Luna!"
Nobody had seen him arrive — but there was Rolf Scamander, escaped from Umbridge's orbit at last, arriving at Luna's side with the easy gladness of an established friend. "There you are... and that," he said, taking in the lion with genuine admiring wonder, "is the finest hat I have ever seen in my life. The jaw articulation... did you build the roar on a Galloping Gargoyle matrix? My grandfather wrote about..."
And off the two of them went, straight into deep creature-adjacent enchantment talk, while the hat sat on Harry's head and Harry's smile cooled by several degrees behind it.
Rolf caught himself, laughed, and turned to the rest of the group. "Sorry... rude of me. Rolf Scamander. Ilvermorny, Ravenclaw for the year." He shook hands round — Hermione, Viktor at whom he goggled slightly, Daphne, Lavender, Neville — friendly and unaffected with each. And then he came to Harry, and his eyes went to the scar half-hidden under the lion's chin, and widened.
"You're... blimey. You're Harry Potter." The enthusiasm was open and entirely genuine. "Luna talks about you all the time... it's brilliant to properly meet you at last, I've been hoping..."
"Pleasure," said Harry.
He said it beautifully. He shook Rolf's hand with impeccable, gentlemanly courtesy; he smiled a smile of perfect politeness; and the whole performance had the precise warmth of a frosted window, delivered from beneath a roaring lion hat, and it fooled no one in the group for a single second.
Behind Rolf, Lavender had to turn away entirely. Viktor developed a sudden cough. Hermione and Daphne achieved straight faces by means Harry preferred not to imagine.
'Helpless,' said the group's collective glance. 'Utterly helpless, the pair of them.'
The rest of the walk down was, for one member of the party, not much fun at all.
Rolf fell in beside Luna as naturally as breathing, and the two of them talked the whole way — Snorkacks, the hat, his grandfather's journal — and every single time Rolf drifted an inch closer to her, Harry materialised on Luna's other side with some urgent observation about the weather, the pitch, the historic significance of the fixture, anything, timed with the precision of a Beater's swing.
The group watched the whole ordeal from a few paces back with the silent, shaking enjoyment of people at very good theatre, and admired, not for the first time, how Luna sailed through the middle of it all in perfect nonchalance, either noticing nothing or — Hermione was increasingly of this view — noticing absolutely everything.
Deliverance came at the pitch, where a knot of Ravenclaws hailed Rolf away to sit with them, and Harry, with unseemly haste, steered Luna toward the Gryffindor stands, a hand at her back, the lion roaring approval. Daphne, Hermione, and Viktor followed at leisure, still recovering. Neville peeled off with a small wave — Hannah Abbott was saving him a seat, a fact the group noted, catalogued, and mercifully did not comment on.
...
The match had a poison in it before the first whistle.
It came from the Slytherin end, rolling across the pitch in a great jeering chorus, verse after gleeful verse:
"McLaggen is our King,
McLaggen is our King,
he never keeps a single thing,
McLaggen is our King..."
Daphne took one look toward the Slytherin stands, identified the conductor of it without difficulty, and put her face in her gloved hands. "Theodore," she said, muffled. "Of course. It's precisely his sort of cleverness. He can't beat the team, so he'll break the Keeper."
She lifted her head grimly. "And with that Keeper... it might even work. McLaggen's pride is the size of the pitch. Sing at it long enough and he'll stop playing Quidditch altogether and start playing the song."
She was, it turned out, exactly right.
Cormac McLaggen began the match well enough — he was genuinely talented, that was the maddening thing, all reach and reflex — but with every verse the song sank deeper under his skin. He started showboating his saves. Then abandoning his hoops to intercept Quaffles that were the Chasers' business. Then bellowing instructions at players ten years his junior in experience, rearranging Angelina's own formations mid-air while Angelina's face passed through several dangerous colours.
High above it all, the real match was being fought between two Seekers.
Ron flew with his heart in his throat and his eyes everywhere — and Theodore Nott, whatever else he was, could fly. The two of them duelled through the upper air for the better part of an hour, feinting, shadowing, cutting each other off, and when the Snitch finally broke cover along the base of the stands it was Ron who read it first, Ron who came out of the sun in a flat screaming dive with Theodore straining half a length behind...
...and Cormac McLaggen, abandoning his hoops entirely to "call the play," who came barrelling across the diving line with all the spatial awareness of a loose Bludger.
The Gryffindor stands rose in a single horrified gasp. Ron wrenched his broom aside with inches to spare, the Snitch flickered away, and the dive collapsed into a scrambling recovery while McLaggen circled back to his hoops looking baffled that no one had thanked him.
"He's fine," Lavender breathed, both hands pressed over her heart, sagging with relief — and then, in the very next breath, at volume: "that great preening, wool-headed, hoop-deserting..." and onward through an inventory of Cormac McLaggen's failings so comprehensive and so anatomically specific that Hermione and Viktor, beside her, could only nod along in solemn agreement like a Greek chorus.
"He plays," Viktor observed, with a professional's precision, "as if the other six are decoration."
"He reminds me of a Dabberblimp," Luna offered thoughtfully, from beneath the lion. "They're mostly air, and they honk when startled, and they get in everyone's way. But they can't help it. It's how they're made."
Harry laughed so hard he nearly lost the hat.
...
In the end, Gryffindor won it despite their King. The Snitch showed itself once more in the dying light of the match, low over the grass at midfield, and this time Ron came at it from the blind side with nothing in his path — outflew Theodore for the second time in an afternoon, cleanly, decisively and closed his fist around the gold with the whole red half of the stadium coming up in a wall of sound, the lion hat roaring itself hoarse, and Cormac McLaggen already explaining to anyone in earshot how his positioning had made it all possible.
The poison waited for them at the bottom of the stands.
Theodore Nott stood with his crew near the pitch exit, and as the Weasleys came through — Ron still flushed and glowing, Fred and George flanking him — Theodore's voice carried, silky and deliberate, pitched to wound.
The song had been such fun to write, he observed. A pity it had picked the wrong Weasley... though give it time; there was material enough in that family for verses. Their father's little office. Their mother's little... everything.
And Ron oughtn't preen over one lucky catch, when everyone knew the only reason a Weasley could afford a broom at all these days was Potter's charity...
Ron went white, then red. George's wand hand moved.
It was over in a heartbeat — Viktor stepped bodily in front of Ron with the immovable mass of a professional athlete, and Fred, of all people, got both arms round his twin and hauled him back, hissing something urgent in his ear — while Hermione and Daphne stepped into the gap and returned fire, twin streams of cold, elegant contempt that had Theodore's smile thinning at the edges.
And Harry did the most useful thing of all. He said nothing. He simply caught Ron's eye, and then George's, and tipped his head — a small, precise gesture toward the foot of the teachers' stand.
Where Dolores Umbridge stood watching the whole scene, hands folded, sweetly patient, smiling her wide toad smile with the undisguised hope of a fisherman watching a float.
Ron looked. George looked. The fight went out of both of them at once, replaced by something colder and wiser, and they turned their backs on Theodore Nott as one and walked away — which, Harry reflected, watching Theodore's smile curdle into frustration, wounded him more than any hex would have done.
'That's twice he's laid bait,'
Harry thought, walking up the lawn in the dusk. 'The song for McLaggen. The taunts for the Weasleys. He's not just cruel... he's fishing. Her Squad hands out the punishments, and he provides the provocations.' He filed it, cold and careful, with everything else.
...
It was Neville who brought the news at dinner, breathless: there was smoke rising from the chimney of the gamekeeper's hut.
Hagrid was back.
They went down after dark — Harry, Luna, Ron, Hermione, and Draco, released at last from the Hospital Wing — slipping across the dew-wet lawn under the Invisibility Cloak in ones and twos, and knocked at the great oak door.
"Who's there?"
"It's us, Hagrid... it's Harry!"
The door cracked, then swung wide, and there he was — and the five of them drew a collective breath, because Rubeus Hagrid looked terrible.
His face was a mass of half-healed cuts and livid, purpling bruises; one eye had swollen nearly shut; there was dried blood in the wild tangle of his hair, and he moved with the careful stiffness of a man whose ribs had opinions. Fang danced about them all, whining with joy, and Hagrid ushered them in with his old warmth pulled tight over something battered.
Inside, the cabin was as it had always been — the vast bed, the copper kettle, the smell of woodsmoke and dog — and Hagrid lowered himself into his chair with a grunt and picked up, from the table, a great slab of raw dragon meat, which he pressed to the worst of the bruising on his face with a small sigh of relief.
"Stings less'n it looks," he said, to their appalled expressions. "Dragon meat. Nothin' better for a bruise."
"Hagrid," Hermione said, very carefully, "what happened to you?"
"Nothin'. Bin away. Fell off me bike."
"You don't have a bike anymore, Hagrid."
"Fell off someone else's bike."
It went on like that for some minutes — evasions each less convincing than the last, while Draco, unable to help himself, drifted closer and examined the wounds with a Healer-trainee's narrowed eye and visibly disbelieved every word until Ron, watching Hagrid wince as he shifted the dragon meat, said it straight out.
"It was the giants, wasn't it."
Hagrid froze. The dragon meat sagged.
"...How d'yeh..." He gave it up with a great gusty sigh that stirred the fire. "Yeah. All righ'. Yeah." He glanced instinctively at the dark window, lowered his voice, and told them.
He and Madame Maxime had gone, on Dumbledore's errand, to the last giant colony left in the world — hidden away in the mountains of Eastern Europe, eighty-odd giants where once there had been tribes beyond counting. The mission: bring them to Dumbledore's side, or failing that, persuade them at least to stay out of it when Voldemort came calling. Because Voldemort would come calling. He had before.
"An' it started well,"
Hagrid said, and for a moment something proud came through the bruises. "Gurg... tha's the chief... was a great feller called Karkus. Biggest of the lot. Yeh approach a Gurg proper, see: gifts, one a day, an' yeh show respect, an' yeh don' rush. We brought him Gubraithian fire... everlastin' flame, Dumbledore's own work... an' a goblin-made battle helmet, an'... he listened. He was listenin' to us. Three days runnin'." The pride guttered. "An' on the fourth mornin' we come up the mountain an' Karkus's head..." He stopped. Luna's hand found Harry's in the firelight. "There'd bin a fight in the night. Giant called Golgomath ripped the Gurg-ship off him. Killed him. An' Golgomath..."
Hagrid's battered face darkened. "Golgomath had Death Eaters at his fire before we ever got there. Macnair an' another. Vol... You-Know-Who's lot had beaten us to it, an' the new Gurg was theirs, bought an' paid."
"So you left?" Hermione whispered.
"Not straigh' off." Hagrid shifted the dragon meat. "There was giants who wouldn' bow to Golgomath... ones loyal to old Karkus. Got driven out, hidin' in caves higher up. We went to them, nights, quiet-like. An' some of 'em were listenin' an' all." A long pause. "An' then Golgomath's lot found the caves. Attacked 'em. Them that survived scattered inter the high passes, an' after tha'... there weren' nobody left to talk to." He spread his enormous hands, and the gesture held the whole failure of it. "We tried, Harry. Olympe an' me, we tried everythin'. But the giants won' be comin' to help. Best we can hope is some of 'em remember we came peaceable, when he sends fer 'em." He touched his ruined face, wry. "The bruises was Golgomath's lot seein' us off the mountain. Coulda bin worse. Was worse, fer some."
The five of them sat in the firelight with the weight of it — the mission they'd guessed at all term, laid out and lost.
Hagrid, being Hagrid, rallied first. "Anyway!" He slapped his knee and winced. "Enough o' tha'. Term's on, an' I'm back teachin' Monday, an' I've got somethin' lovely lined up fer yer next lesson. Bin savin' it. Creature like nothin' yeh've ever..."
Five voices spoke at once.
"Hagrid..." "Please..." "Whatever it is..." "Nothing with more than four legs..." "...is it approved?"
"It is not dangerous," Hagrid said, wounded to his soul. "Gentle as anythin', this one. Harmless. Yeh'll see."
"Hagrid, listen," Hermione pressed, leaning in, urgent. "Things have changed here. Badly. You can't just... there's a woman, Umbridge, she was at your door already I expect, she's the new Defence teacher and she's High Inquisitor, she's inspecting everyone, she's already sacked..."
They told him all of it, tumbling over one another: the Decrees, the Inquisitorial Squad, Trelawney's dismissal, the inspections, the whole pink tyranny — and Hagrid's face, as he listened, set into an expression of disgust so profound that Fang retreated under the table.
"Her." He said the word like something he was spitting out. "I know of her. She's the one drafted tha' werewolf law... the one Ethan an' Sam broke. Interrogated me bout me journey with them beady eyes not an ten minutes after I walk in me own door..." He glowered into the fire. "Half-breeds. Tha's what her sort call me an' Olympe. An' now she's loose in a school."
"But that's the other thing," Harry said, and could not keep the grin off his face any longer. "You haven't heard who the new Divination professor is."
Hagrid looked up. "New... they sacked Trelawney, yeh said. Who'd they get?"
"Dad."
There was a pause of one full second, and then Rubeus Hagrid's ruined face split into a grin so wide and so bright that the bruises seemed to fade around it, and he let out a great booming laugh that rattled the crockery and set Fang barking, and thumped the table with a fist like a ham.
"Ethan? Ethan Esther, teachin' here... oh, tha's..." He wiped his good eye, still rumbling with laughter. "Oh, tha' poor pink woman. She hasn' got the first idea what's moved in upstairs, has she?"
"Not the first," said Luna serenely, from beneath a lion hat that chose that exact moment to yawn.
And the laughter carried them, warm and loud, deep into the evening — five students, a battered half-giant, and a boarhound, in a lamplit cabin at the edge of the dark forest, while up at the castle the windows glowed and the war, for one more night, stayed the other side of the mountains.