"Did everyone see that Grubbly-Plank woman?" asked Ginny on their way up to the castle, the moon dimly reflecting in the Great Lake. "What's she doing back here? Hagrid can't have left, can he?"
"I'll be quite glad if he has," Luna said. "He isn't a very good teacher, is he?"
"Yes, he is!" Allie, Harry, Ron, Neville, and Ginny said at once. Harry glared at Hermione; she cleared her throat and quickly added, "Erm...yes...he's very good."
"Well, we think he's a bit of a joke in Ravenclaw," Luna said, unfazed.
"You've got a rubbish sense of humour then," Ron snapped, as the wheels below them creaked over the road of pebble stones. Luna did not seem perturbed by Ron's rudeness; on the contrary, she simply watched him for a while as though he were a mildly interesting television program.
Rattling and swaying, the carriages moved in convoy up the road. When they passed between the tall stone pillars topped with winged boars on either side of the gates to the school grounds, Harry leaned forward, trying to make out any lights in Hagrid's cabin by the Forbidden Forest. But the grounds were in complete darkness.
Hogwarts Castle, however, loomed ever closer: a towering mass of turrets, jet-black against the dark sky, here and there a window blazing fiery bright above them.
The carriages jingled to a halt near the stone steps leading up to the oak front doors and Harry got out of the carriage first, and Allison and the others followed, joining the crowd hurrying up the stone steps into the castle.
The entrance hall was ablaze with torches and echoing with footsteps as the students crossed the flagged stone floor for the double doors to the right, leading to the Great Hall and the start-of-term feast. The four long House tables in the Great Hall were filling up under the starless black ceiling, which was just like the sky they could glimpse through the high windows.
Candles floating in mid-air all along the tables, illuminating the silvery ghosts who were dotted about the Hall and the faces of the students talking eagerly to one another, exchanging summer news, shouting greetings at friends from other Houses, eyeing one another's new haircuts and robes.
Luna drifted away from them at the Ravenclaw table. The moment they reached Gryffindor's, Ginny was hailed by some fellow fourth years and left to sit with them; Allison, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville found seats together about halfway down the table between Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor House ghost, and Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown.
Harry was looking over the students' heads to the staff table that ran along the top wall of the Hall, and Allison followed his eyes as he said, "He's not there."
Ron and Hermione scanned the staff table too, though there was no real need; Hagrid's size made him instantly obvious in any line-up.
"He can't have left," Ron said, sounding slightly anxious.
"Of course, he hasn't," said Harry firmly.
"You don't think he's...hurt, or anything, do you?" Hermione said uneasily.
"No," said Harry at once.
"But where is he, then?" asked Allison.
There was a pause, then Harry said very quietly, so that Neville, Parvati, and Lavender could not hear, "Maybe he's not back yet. You know - from his mission - the thing he was doing over the summer for Dumbledore."
"Yeah...yeah, that'll be it," Ron said, sounding reassured, but Hermione bit her lip, looking up and down the staff table as though hoping for some conclusive explanation of Hagrid's absence, and Allison, too, wasn't satisfied with that assumption.
YOU ARE READING
WE'LL TAKE ON THE WORLD ; h.j.p.
Fanfiction─ "i won't let go with you by my side, the calm, the storm we'll face it all." She had read about love all her life. Never had she imagined she would ever experience it herself, especially with dark forces rising to power and a war approaching fast...
