Adventures of Harriet Potter

Rita Skeeter's Scoop

Everybody got up late on Boxing Day. The Gryffindor common room was much quieter than it had been lately, many yawns punctuating the lazy conversations. Hermione's hair was bushy again; she confessed to Harriet that she had used liberal amounts of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion on it for the ball, "but it's way too much bother to do every day," she said matter-of-factly, scratching a purring Crookshanks behind the ears. Ron and Hermione seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement not to discuss their argument. They were being quite friendly to each other, though oddly formal. Ron and Harriet wasted no time in telling Hermione about the conversation they had overheard between Madame Maxime and Hagrid, but Hermione didn't seem to find the news that Hagrid was a half-giant nearly as shocking as Ron did.
"Well, I thought he must be," she said, shrugging. "I knew he couldn't be pure giant because they're about twenty feet tall. But honestly, all this hysteria about giants. They can't all be horrible. . . . It's the same sort of prejudice that people have toward werewolves. . . . It's just bigotry, isn't it?" Harriet didn't think so, she'd checked her school books for information on giants and found that most encounters between witches, wizards and giants tended to end violently. Ron looked as though he would have liked to reply scathingly, but perhaps he didn't want another row, because he contented himself with shaking his head disbelievingly while Hermione wasn't looking.
It was time now to think of the homework they had neglected during the first week of the holidays. Everybody seemed to be feeling rather flat now that Christmas was over — everybody except Harriet, that is, who was starting (once again) to feel slightly nervous. The trouble was that February the twenty-fourth looked a lot closer from this side of Christmas, and she still hadn't done anything about working out the clue inside the golden egg. She therefore started taking the egg out of her trunk every time she went up to the dormitory, opening it, and listening intently, hoping that this time it would make some sense. She strained to think what the sound reminded her of, apart from thirty musical saws, but she had never heard anything else like it. She closed the egg, shook it vigorously, and opened it again to see if the sound had changed, but it hadn't. She tried asking the egg questions, shouting over all the wailing, but nothing happened. She even threw the egg across the room — though she hadn't really expected that to help.
Harriet had not forgotten the hint that Cedric had given her, but her unwarranted less-than-friendly feelings toward Cedric just now meant that she was keen not to take his help if she could avoid it. In any case, it seemed to her that if Cedric had really wanted to give Harriet a hand, he would have been a lot more explicit. She, Harriet, had told Cedric exactly what was coming in the first task — and Cedric's idea of a fair exchange had been to tell Harriet to take a bath. Well, she didn't need that sort of rubbishy help — not from someone who kept walking down corridors hand in hand with Cho, anyway. And so the first day of the new term arrived, and Harriet set off to lessons, weighed down with books, parchment, and quills as usual, but also with the lurking worry of the egg heavy in her stomach, as though she were carrying that around with her too.
Snow was still thick upon the grounds, and the greenhouse windows were covered in condensation so thick that they couldn't see out of them in Herbology. Nobody was looking forward to Care of Magical Creatures much in this weather, though as Ron said, the skrewts would probably warm them up nicely, either by chasing them, or blasting off so forcefully that Hagrid's cabin would catch fire. When they arrived at Hagrid's cabin, however, they found an elderly witch with closely cropped gray hair and a very prominent chin standing before his front door.
"Hurry up, now, the bell rang five minutes ago," she barked at them as they struggled toward her through the snow. "Who're you?" said Ron, staring at her. "Where's Hagrid?" Harriet gave Ron a grateful smile, having been thinking the same questions. "My name is Professor Grubbly-Plank," she said briskly. "I am your temporary Care of Magical Creatures teacher." Something didn't add up here, her tone indicated she hoped to become the permanent professor. "Where's Hagrid?" Harriet repeated loudly, an unusually strong wind, seemingly centered on Harriet herself, whipping her hair around wildly,
"He is indisposed," said Professor Grubbly-Plank shortly. Soft and unpleasant laughter reached Harriet's ears. She turned; Draco Malfoy and the rest of the Slytherins were joining the class. All of them looked gleeful, and none of them looked surprised to see Professor Grubbly-Plank. "This way, please," said Professor Grubbly-Plank, and she strode off around the paddock where the Beauxbatons horses were shivering. Harriet, Ron, and Hermione followed her, looking back over their shoulders at Hagrid's cabin. All the curtains were closed. Was Hagrid in there, alone and ill?
"What's wrong with Hagrid?" Harriet said, hurrying to catch up with Professor Grubbly-Plank. "Never you mind," she said as though she thought she was being nosy. "I do mind, though," said Harriet hotly. "What's up with him?" Professor Grubbly-Plank acted as though she couldn't hear her. She led them past the paddock where the huge Beauxbatons horses were standing, huddled against the cold, and toward a tree on the edge of the forest, where a large and beautiful unicorn was tethered. Many of the girls "ooooohed!" at the sight of the unicorn. "Oh it's so beautiful!" whispered Lavender Brown. "How did she get it? They're supposed to be really hard to catch!"
The unicorn was so brightly white it made the snow all around look gray. It was pawing the ground nervously with its golden hooves and throwing back its horned head. "Boys keep back!" barked Professor Grubbly-Plank, throwing out an arm and accidentally catching Harriet hard in the chest. "They prefer the woman's touch, unicorns. Girls to the front, and approach with care, come on, easy does it. . . ." She and the other girls walked slowly forward toward the unicorn, leaving the boys and Harriet standing near the paddock fence, watching. The moment Professor Grubbly-Plank was out of earshot, Harriet turned to Ron.
"What d'you reckon's wrong with him? You don't think a skrewt — ?" Her voice was full of worry, an unnatural wind still whipping her fiery locks around wildly. "Oh he hasn't been attacked, Potter, if that's what you're thinking," said Malfoy softly. "No, he's just too ashamed to show his big, ugly face." Her temper was slowly overtaking her worry. "What d'you mean?" said Harriet sharply. Malfoy put his hand inside the pocket of his robes and pulled out a folded page of newsprint. "There you go," he said. "Hate to break it to you, Potter. . . ." He smirked as Harriet snatched the page, unfolded it, and read it, with Ron, Seamus, Dean, and Neville looking over her shoulder. It was an article topped with a picture of Hagrid looking extremely shifty.