Speak Up - Female Deaf Harry Potter AU

Skrewts again

By the start of December, a week after the first task there were only ten skrewts left. Apparently their desire to kill one another had not been exercised out of them. They were now all about 6 feet in length with thick gray armor, powerful scuttling legs, fire-blasting ends, stings and suckers; making them the most revolting creatures Hari had ever seen.

Hagrid had decided that they should see if the skrewts hibernated, this, as expected, was going terribly. The skrewts did not appreciate being forced into pillow-lined boxes and started rampaging around the pumpkin patch chasing students. Much of the class had fled into Hagrid's cabin through the back door and barricaded themselves in with only the window open.

Hari, 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.

Sadly, this skrewt had Hari cornered against the wall and had it's sting arched, quivering, over its back. Hari calmed her beating heartbeat, #) Hagrid! (# She called.

"Jus' try an slip the rope 'round his sting, so he won hurt any o' the others!" Hagrid said to Ron

"Yeah, we wouldn't want that!" Ron said as Hari tried to scare the skrewt away from her with sparks. Finally she had had enough, #Raise# she hissed, and levitated the skrewt into the air, and from behind it Hari could now see-

Rita Skeeter, leaning on Hagrid's garden fence, looking in at the mayhem. What the heck was she doing here!?

Hari dropped the skrewt in surprise, directly on top of herself, felt searing heat, and then blacked out.

• • •

When Hari awoke she was in the hospital wing, dammit not again. There was something cold on her forehead. She looked around, Ron was asleep in one of the chairs next to her bed.

Madam Pomfrey bustled over once she saw that Hari was awake. "Hari, how is it that you're always landing yourself in here?"

#) I ask myself the same question every time. (# Hari replied, moving her arm to feel what exactly was on her forehead.

The matron stopped her, "Please try not to move too much, at least not until I take the bandages off."

Bandages? Hari looked down at herself, she was indeed covered in bandages... why oh why did this always happen to her...?

She reached out and touched the sleeping ginger next to her, he awoke with a start. 

"Hari! You're awake!"

#) Yeah, what happened? (#

"You dropped the skrewt on yourself, but barely a second later it was levitated again, the spell came from the cabin but no one knows who cast it, and Madam Pomfrey says a second later and you would have been fried to a crisp so that was lucky. Then Hagrid brought you back up to the castle and Rita Skeeter dragged him away and I think she wanted to have an interview with him and this is gonna turn out badly isn't it." Ron took a deep breath after finishing his run-on sentences.

#) Yeah, (# Hari agreed, #) Yeah it probably is. (#

• • •

It wasn't long before an article topped with a picture of Hagrid looking extremely shifty surfaced.

             DUMBLEDORE'S NEW MISTAKE Albus Dumbledore, eccentric Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, has never been afraid to make controversial staff appointments, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. In September of this year, he hired Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody, the notoriously jinx-happy ex-Auror, to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, a decision that caused many raised eyebrows at the Ministry of Magic, given Moody's well-known habit of attacking anybody who makes a sudden movement in his presence. Mad-Eye Moody, however, looks responsible and kindly when set beside the man that Dumbledore employs to teach Care of Magical Creatures.

　　Rubeus Hagrid, who admits to being expelled from Hogwarts in his third year, has enjoyed the position of gamekeeper at the school ever since, a job secured for him by Dumbledore. Last year, however, Hagrid used his mysterious influence over the headmaster to secure the additional post of Care of Magical Creatures teacher, over the heads of many better-qualified candidates.

　　An atrociously large and ferocious-looking man, Hagrid has been using his newfound authority to terrify the students in his care with a succession of horrific creatures. While Dumbledore turns a blind eye, Hagrid has maimed several pupils during a series of lessons that many admit to being "very frightening."

　　'Draco Malfoy was attacked by a hippogriff, and Vincent Crabbe got a bad bite off a flobberworm," says Pansy Parkinson, a fourth-year student. "We all hate Hagrid, but we're just too scared to say anything."

　　Hagrid has no intention of ceasing his campaign of intimidation, however. In conversation with a Daily Prophet reporter last week, he admitted breeding creatures he has dubbed "Blast-Ended Skrewts," highly dangerous crosses between manti-cores and fire-crabs. The creation of new breeds of magical creature is, of course, an activity usually closely observed by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Hagrid, however, considers himself to be above such petty restrictions. "I was just having some fun," he says, before hastily changing the subject.

While a reporter was present last week, one of these monstrosities attacked none other than the girl who lived, miss Hari Potter. Trapped against the wall of the atrocious cabin Hagrid lives in, she was attacked and mauled by the skrewt that she had been trying to subdue. She was seriously burned  after the skrwet pounced on her and sent to the infirmary. 

　　Hagrid is reputed to have developed a close friendship with the girl who brought around You-Know-Who's fall from power, strange, seeing as he puts her in so much danger.