Daughter of a Criminal

December-4th year

The start of December brought wind and sleet to Hogwarts. Drafty though the castle always was in winter, Ann was glad of its fires and thick walls Hagrid was keeping Madame Maxime's horses well provided with their preferred drink of single-malt whiskey; the fumes wafting from the trough in the corner of their paddock was enough to make the entire Care of Magical Creatures class light-headed. This was unhelpful, as they were still tending the horrible skrewts and needed their wits about them.
"I'm not sure whether they hibernate or not," Hagrid told the shivering class in the windy pumpkin patch next lesson. "Thought we'd jus' try an' see if they fancied a kip . . . we'll jus' settle 'em down in these boxes. . . ." There were now only ten skrewts left; apparently their desire to kill one another had not been exercised out of them. Each of them was now approaching six feet in length. Their thick gray armor; their powerful, scuttling legs; their fire-blasting ends; their stings and their suckers, combined to make the skrewts the most repulsive things Ann had ever seen. The class looked dispiritedly at the enormous boxes Hagrid had brought out, all lined with pillows and fluffy blankets. "We'll jus' lead 'em in here," Hagrid said, "an' put the lids on, and we'll see what happens." But the skrewts, it transpired, did not hibernate, and did not appreciate being forced into pillow-lined boxes and nailed in. Hagrid was soon yelling, "Don' panic, now, don' panic!" while the skrewts rampaged around the pumpkin patch, now strewn with the smoldering wreckage of the boxes. Most of the class â€" Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle in the lead â€" had fled into Hagrid's cabin through the back door and barricaded themselves in; Ann, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, however, were among those who remained outside trying to help Hagrid. Together they managed to restrain and tie up nine of the skrewts, though at the cost of numerous burns and cuts; finally, only one skrewt was left. "Don' frighten him, now!" Hagrid shouted as Ann, Ron and Harry used their wands to shoot jets of fiery sparks at the skrewt, which was advancing menacingly on them, its sting arched, quivering, over its back. "Jus' try an' slip the rope 'round his sting, so he won' hurt any o' the others!"
"Yeah, we wouldn't want that!" Ron shouted angrily as he and Harry backed into the wall of Hagrid's cabin, still holding the skrewt off with their sparks.
"Well, well, well . . . this does look like fun." Rita Skeeter was leaning on Hagrid's garden fence, looking in at the mayhem. She was wearing a thick magenta cloak with a furry purple collar today, and her crocodile-skin handbag was over her arm. Hagrid launched himself forward on top of the skrewt that was cornering Ann, Harry and Ron and flattened it; a blast of fire shot out of its end, withering the pumpkin plants nearby.
"Who're you?" Hagrid asked Rita Skeeter as he slipped a loop of rope around the skrewt's sting and tightened it.
"Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet reporter," Rita replied, beaming at him. Her gold teeth glinted. "Thought Dumbledore said you weren' allowed inside the school anymore," said Hagrid, frowning slightly as he got off the slightly squashed skrewt and started tugging it over to its fellows. Rita acted as though she hadn't heard what Hagrid had said.
"What are these fascinating creatures called?" she asked, beaming still more widely. "Blast-Ended Skrewts," grunted Hagrid.
"Really?" said Rita, apparently full of lively interest. "I've never heard of them before . . . where do they come from?" Harry noticed a dull red flush rising up out of Hagrid's wild black beard, and his heart sank. Where had Hagrid got the skrewts from? Ann, who seemed to be thinking along these lines, said quickly,
"They're very interesting, aren't they? Aren't they, Harry?"
"What? Oh yeah . . . ouch . . . interesting," said Harry as she stepped on his foot.
"Ah, you're here, Harry!" said Rita Skeeter as she looked around. "So you like Care of Magical Creatures, do you? One of your favorite lessons?"
"Yes," said Harry stoutly. Hagrid beamed at him.
"Lovely," said Rita. "Really lovely. Been teaching long?" she added to Hagrid. Harry noticed her eyes travel over Dean (who had a nasty cut across one cheek), Lavender (whose robes were badly singed), Seamus (who was nursing several burnt fingers), and then to the cabin windows, where most of the class stood, their noses pressed against the glass waiting to see if the coast was clear.
"This is o'ny me second year," said Hagrid.
"Lovely. . . I don't suppose you'd like to give an interview, would you? Share some of your experience of magical creatures? The Prophet does a zoological column every Wednesday, as I'm sure you know. We could feature these â€" er â€" Bang-Ended Scoots."
"Blast-Ended Skrewts," Hagrid said eagerly. "Er â€" yeah, why not?" Harry had a very bad feeling about this, but there was no way of communicating it to Hagrid without Rita Skeeter seeing, so he had to stand and watch in silence as Hagrid and Rita Skeeter made arrangements to meet in the Three Broomsticks for a good long interview later that week. Then the bell rang up at the castle, signaling the end of the lesson.
"Well, good-bye, Harry!" Rita Skeeter called merrily to him as he set off with Ann, Ron and Hermione. "Until Friday night, then, Hagrid!"
"She'll twist everything he says," Harry said under his breath.
"Just as long as he didn't import those skrewts illegally or anything," said Ann desperately. They looked at one another â€" it was exactly the sort of thing Hagrid might do.
"But th-," Hermione began.
"Hagrid's been in loads of trouble before, and Dumbledore's never sacked him," said Ron consolingly. "Worst that can happen is Hagrid'll have to get rid of the skrewts. Sorry . . . did I say worst? I meant best." The other three laughed, and, feeling slightly more cheerful, went off to lunch. Ann thoroughly enjoyed double Divination that afternoon; they were still doing star charts and predictions, but now that Harry and Ron were friends once more, the whole thing seemed very funny again. Professor Trelawney, who had been so pleased with the three of them when they had been predicting their own horrific deaths, quickly became irritated as they sniggered through her explanation of the various ways in which Pluto could disrupt everyday life.
"I would think," she said, in a mystical whisper that did not conceal her obvious annoyance, "that some of us" â€" she stared very meaningfully at Harry â€" "might be a little less frivolous had they seen what I have seen during my crystal gazing last night. As I sat here, absorbed in my needlework, the urge to consult the orb overpowered me. I arose, I settled myself before it, and I gazed into its crystalline depths . . . and what do you think I saw gazing back at me?"
"An ugly old bat in outsize specs?" Ron muttered under his breath.
"A foggy morning," Ann muttered to the pair. Harry fought hard to keep his face straight. "Death, my dears." Parvati and Lavender both put their hands over their mouths, looking horrified. "Yes," said Professor Trelawney, nodding impressively, "it comes, ever closer, it circles overhead like a vulture, ever lower . . . ever lower over the castle. . . ." She stared pointedly at Harry, who yawned very widely and obviously.
"It'd be a bit more impressive if she hadn't done it about eighty times before," Harry said as they finally regained the fresh air of the staircase beneath Professor Trelawney's room.
"If you dropped dead every time she's told you're going to, you'd be a medical miracle," said Ann chuckling
"You'd be a sort of extra-concentrated ghost," said Ron, chortling, as they passed the Bloody Baron going in the opposite direction, his wide eyes staring sinisterly. "At least we didn't get homework. I hope Hermione got loads off Professor Vector, I love not working when she is. . . ." But Hermione wasn't at dinner, nor was she in the library when they went to look for her afterward. The only person in there was Viktor Krum. Ron hovered behind the bookshelves for a while, watching Krum, debating in whispers with Harry and Ann whether he should ask for an autograph â€" but then Ron realized that six or seven girls were lurking in the next row of books, debating exactly the same thing, and he lost his enthusiasm for the idea.
"Wonder where she's got to?" Ron said as he, Ann and Harry went back to Gryffindor Tower.
"Dunno . . . balderdash." said Harry.
"Could be anywhere," said Ann
But it was discovered that Hermoine had been researching cursed eggs in the common room. Ann made sure Hermoine ate before heading up to bed with her.