"But!"
Hagrid's voice shot up a full octave. The pride on his face vanished, replaced by a gravity none of them had seen before.
"Douglas warned me, and he warned every single one of you!"
"To make them edible, their genes were infused with more active, more unstable magical energy. Which means—"
"Their explosive force is at least five times greater than an ordinary Blast-Ended Skrewt!"
The students didn't fully understand. They were deeply alarmed anyway.
"Right. First task of the day."
Hagrid ignored the looks on their faces and announced at full volume.
"It is not to touch these beauties. It is to set up your workstations exactly as the Safety Guide requires. Every single step. No exceptions."
The classroom immediately filled with the frantic sounds of students suiting up.
Dragon-hide gloves, stiff and heavy. Fireproof cloaks that smelled sharply of Magical Potions. And the noise-canceling earplugs, which looked absolutely ridiculous.
The equipment was so aggressively professional that the students stopped feeling like they'd wandered into Hagrid's class at all. It felt more like the first day of Professor Snape's Potions.
"Fred. Or George. Whichever one you are!"
Hagrid's sharp eyes swept the room and locked onto a red-haired figure who was failing to hide a smirk.
"Put your earplugs in! The guide states clearly — when this thing hatches, it emits a sound human ears can't detect. Enough exposure, and your brain will buzz like a goblin took a spoon to it!"
He said it with real authority, carefully recalling the lines he'd drilled into himself.
"Do you want to be a drooling idiot before your N.E.W.T.s?"
He began moving between the workstations in a steady, deliberate circuit, catching mistakes and correcting them without pause.
"Gloves pulled over your cuffs! Fireproof cloak collar fastened all the way up!"
"Your antidote kit is in the wrong spot! Right side of the belt — so you can grab it the second you need it!"
He quoted the Safety Guide from memory with startling fluency. Startling to himself, as much as anyone. He hadn't expected to have those regulations lodged in his head so firmly , all those dry, incantation-like rules, memorized word for word.
Then again, Hermione's pre-class recitation drills had been absolutely relentless. Apparently they'd worked.
When he got to introducing the incubation boxes, Hagrid gestured toward the moss blanketing the bottom of each one. It gave off a soft green glow, carpet-thick and quietly luminous.
"That's Tranquil Moss."
A touch of pride crept into his voice.
"Rare magical plant from the East. A friend of Professor Holmes sent it from a very long way away, specifically for this. Soothes unstable magical energy, keeps these little ones calm while they're still in the egg."
Just then.
A sharp-eyed Ravenclaw girl pointed to the incubation box in the farthest corner. Her gasp was small, pressed-down, as if she didn't quite trust her own voice.
"Professor, look!"
Every head in the room turned.
On one of the eggs, the pattern , which had always resembled rivers of molten gold , suddenly blazed without warning. A single brilliant flash, there and gone, like lightning trapped beneath pearl.
As if something inside that shell had, for the very first time, opened its eyes.
The entire greenhouse went still.
DING-LING-LING!
The bell for end of class rang out sharp and completely indifferent to the moment.
Hagrid brought both palms together in a single thunderous clap, and just like that, the spell broke.
"Right. That's today."
His voice was steady and sure, clearing the charged air like a window flung open.
"Go back. Memorize the first part of the Safety Guide. First word to the last punctuation mark. All of it."
"Next class, we begin the first stage of incubation."
He looked around at the faces watching him , flushed, pale, buzzing with nerves , and said each word like he meant it.
"Anyone who fails the pre-class safety quiz stands outside that door. And watches."
---
Second class.
The air inside the Advanced Magical Creature Breeding greenhouse was heavier than it had been the week before. That rich, mouthwatering smell , the kind that drifted from the kitchens of restaurants most people never got into , filled the space the same as always. But this time, it didn't make anyone hungry. It sat in the air like a tightening wire, coiling around every student's nerves.
Hagrid had meant every word he said.
He stood in the center of the greenhouse holding a piece of parchment that flickered with steady silver light. An auto-grading parchment, compliments of Douglas.
A pop quiz on the Safety Guide.
Short. Swift. Unforgiving.
"You. And you."
His finger moved without hesitation, landing on two students who had gone the color of old chalk.
"Corner. Watch how your classmates do it."
The two who hadn't believed he was serious learned quickly that he was. They were stripped of their spot in the lesson without discussion, left to stand to the side and watch the rest of the class work, regret written plainly across both their faces.
"Good."
Hagrid nodded once. For the first time, something genuinely professorial settled over his expression.
He raised a tool no one in the room had ever seen. It looked like what you'd get if a wand had been crossed with some kind of precision syringe: a crystal probe at the tip, thinner than an embroidery needle.
"Today's task," he announced, "is the first Magical Guidance."
"You'll be using this. It's called a Conduction Wand. Douglas built it. It's made specifically for working with these little ones."
He paused to pull up Douglas's exact instructions from memory, then translated them into terms that made sense to him.
"The guide says: use the lightest possible touch to wake it up."
He demonstrated with a slow, clumsy gesture.
"Think of it like this. You're gently, gently tickling Fang's belly while he's asleep. You are not jabbing a stick at a Norwegian Ridgeback that's trying to have a nap."
Students sorted themselves into pairs and moved toward their assigned incubation boxes. The greenhouse quieted down.
Just the sound of carefully controlled breathing. The faint pulse of the Tranquil Moss glowing green in each box.
Hogwarts students were not built for sustained quiet. Gryffindors in particular.
Chaos arrived faster than anyone expected.
"Hey, watch this! It's not that complicated!"
One boy had apparently decided Hagrid's belly-tickling metaphor was decorative advice rather than actual instruction. He gripped the Conduction Wand with full confidence, then pushed through a magical pulse exactly three times the safe threshold , a rough, forceful surge that he sent straight into the egg.
He seemed to believe that the strength of his output was a direct measure of his worth as a wizard.
➤ Next: Hagrid Roars: Is Following the Instructions Really That Hard?
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