The Goblet of Fire Page 37

  ‘… don’t see what there is to fuss about, Igor.’

  ‘Severus, you cannot pretend this isn’t happening!’ Karkaroff’s voice sounded anxious and hushed, as though keen not to be overheard. ‘It’s been getting clearer and clearer for months, I am becoming seriously concerned, I can’t deny it –’

  ‘Then flee,’ said Snape’s voice curtly. ‘Flee, I will make your excuses. I, however, am remaining at Hogwarts.’

  Snape and Karkaroff came around the corner. Snape had his wand out, and was blasting rose bushes apart, his expression most ill-natured. Squeals issued from many of the bushes, and dark shapes emerged from them.

  ‘Ten points from Hufflepuff, Fawcett!’ Snape snarled, as a girl ran past him. ‘And ten points from Ravenclaw, too, Stebbins!’ as a boy went rushing after her. ‘And what are you two doing?’ he added, catching sight of Harry and Ron on the path ahead. Karkaroff, Harry saw, looked slightly discomposed to see them standing there. His hand went nervously to his goatee, and he began winding it around his finger again.

  ‘We’re walking,’ Ron told Snape shortly. ‘Not against the law, is it?’

  ‘Keep walking, then!’ Snape snarled, and he brushed past them, his long black cloak billowing out behind him. Karkaroff hurried away after Snape. Harry and Ron continued down the path.

  ‘What’s got Karkaroff all worried?’ Ron muttered.

  ‘And since when have he and Snape been on first-name terms?’ said Harry slowly.

  They had reached a large stone reindeer now, over which they could see the sparkling jets of a tall fountain. The shadowy outlines of two enormous people were visible on a stone bench, watching the water in the moonlight. And then Harry heard Hagrid speak.

  ‘Momen’ I saw yeh, I knew,’ he was saying, in an oddly husky voice.

  Harry and Ron froze. This didn’t sound like the sort of scene they ought to walk in on, somehow … Harry looked around, back up the path, and saw Fleur Delacour and Roger Davies standing half-concealed in a rose bush nearby. He tapped Ron on the shoulder and jerked his head towards them, meaning that they could easily sneak off that way without being noticed (Fleur and Davies looked very busy to Harry) but Ron, eyes widening in horror at the sight of Fleur, shook his head vigorously, and pulled Harry deeper into the shadows behind the reindeer.

  ‘What did you know, ’Agrid?’ said Madame Maxime, a distinct purr in her low voice.

  Harry definitely didn’t want to listen to this; he knew Hagrid would hate to be overheard in a situation like this (he certainly would have done) – if it had been possible he would have put his fingers in his ears and hummed loudly, but that wasn’t really an option. Instead he tried to interest himself in a beetle crawling along the stone reindeer’s back, but the beetle just wasn’t interesting enough to block out Hagrid’s next words.

  ‘I jus’ knew … knew you were like me … was it yer mother or yer father?’

  ‘I – I don’t know what you mean, ’Agrid …’

  ‘It was my mother,’ said Hagrid quietly. ‘She was one o’ the las’ ones in Britain. ’Course, I can’ remember her too well … she left, see. When I was abou’ three. She wasn’ really the maternal sort. Well … it’s not in their natures, is it? Dunno what happened to her … might be dead fer all I know …’

  Madame Maxime didn’t say anything. And Harry, in spite of himself, took his eyes off the beetle, and looked over the top of the reindeer’s antlers, listening … he had never heard Hagrid talk about his childhood before.

  ‘Me dad was broken-hearted when she wen’. Tiny little bloke, my dad was. By the time I was six I could lift him up an’ put him on top o’ the dresser if he annoyed me. Used ter make him laugh …’ Hagrid’s deep voice broke. Madame Maxime was listening, motionless, apparently staring at the silvery fountain. ‘Dad raised me … but he died, o’ course, jus’ after I started school. Sorta had ter make me own way after that. Dumbledore was a real help, mind. Very kind ter me, he was …’

  Hagrid pulled out a large, spotted silk handkerchief and blew his nose heavily. ‘So … anyway … enough abou’ me. What about you? Which side you got it on?’

  But Madame Maxime had suddenly got to her feet.

  ‘It is chilly,’ she said – but whatever the weather was doing, it was nowhere near as cold as her voice. ‘I think I will go in now.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Hagrid blankly. ‘No, don’ go! I’ve – I’ve never met another one before!’

  ‘Anuzzer what, precisely?’ said Madame Maxime, her tone icy.

  Harry could have told Hagrid it was best not to answer; he stood there in the shadows, gritting his teeth, hoping against hope he wouldn’t – but it was no good.

  ‘Another half-giant, o’ course!’ said Hagrid.

  ‘’Ow dare you!’ shrieked Madame Maxime. Her voice exploded through the peaceful night air like a foghorn; behind him, Harry heard Fleur and Roger fall out of their rose bush. ‘I ’ave nevair been more insulted in my life! ’Alf-giant? Moi? I ’ave – I ’ave big bones!’

  She stormed away; great multi-coloured swarms of fairies rose into the air as she passed, angrily pushing aside bushes. Hagrid was still sitting on the bench, staring after her. It was much too dark to make out his expression. Then, after about a minute, he stood up and strode away, not back to the castle, but off out into the dark grounds in the direction of his cabin.

  ‘C’mon,’ Harry said, very quietly to Ron. ‘Let’s go …’

  But Ron didn’t move.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Harry, looking at him.

  Ron looked around at Harry, his expression very serious indeed.

  ‘Did you know?’ he whispered. ‘About Hagrid being half-giant?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said, shrugging. ‘So what?’

  He knew immediately from the look Ron was giving him, that he was once again revealing his ignorance of the wizarding world. Brought up by the Dursleys, there were many things that wizards took for granted that were revelations to Harry, but these surprises had become fewer as he had moved up the school. Now, however, he could tell that most wizards would not have said ‘So what?’ upon finding out that one of their friends had a giantess for a mother.

  ‘I’ll explain inside,’ said Ron quietly. ‘C’mon …’

  Fleur and Roger Davies had disappeared, probably into a more private clump of bushes. Harry and Ron returned to the Great Hall. Parvati and Padma were now sitting at a distant table with a whole crowd of Beauxbatons boys, and Hermione was once more dancing with Krum. Harry and Ron sat down at a table far removed from the dance floor.

  ‘So?’ Harry prompted Ron. ‘What’s the problem with giants?’

  ‘Well, they’re … they’re …’ Ron struggled for words, ‘not very nice,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘Who cares?’ Harry said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Hagrid!’

  ‘I know there isn’t, but … blimey, no wonder he keeps it quiet,’ Ron said, shaking his head. ‘I always thought he’d got in the way of a bad Engorgement Charm when he was a kid or something. Didn’t like to mention it …’

  ‘But what’s it matter if his mother was a giantess?’ said Harry.

  ‘Well … no one who knows him will care, ’cos they’ll know he’s not dangerous,’ said Ron, slowly. ‘But … Harry, they’re just vicious, giants. It’s like Hagrid said, it’s in their natures, they’re like trolls … they just like killing, everyone knows that. There aren’t any left in Britain now, though.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘Well, they were dying out anyway, and then loads got themselves killed by Aurors. There’re supposed to be giants abroad, though … they hide out in mountains mostly …’

  ‘I don’t know who Maxime thinks she’s kidding,’ Harry said, watching Madame Maxime sitting alone at the judges’ table, looking very sombre. ‘If Hagrid’s half-giant, she definitely is. Big bones … the only thing that’s got bigger bones than her is a dinosaur.’

  Harry and Ron spent the rest of the ball dis
cussing giants in their corner, neither of them having any inclination to dance. Harry tried not to watch Cho and Cedric; it gave him a strong desire to kick something.

  When the Weird Sisters finished playing at midnight, everyone gave them a last, loud round of applause, and started to wend their way into the Entrance Hall. Many people were expressing the wish that the ball could have gone on longer, but Harry was perfectly happy to be going to bed; as far as he was concerned, the evening hadn’t been much fun.

  Out in the Entrance Hall, Harry and Ron saw Hermione saying goodnight to Krum before he went back to the Durmstrang ship. She gave Ron a very cold look, and swept past him up the marble staircase without speaking. Harry and Ron followed her, but halfway up the marble staircase, Harry heard someone calling him.

  ‘Hey – Harry!’

  It was Cedric Diggory. Harry could see Cho waiting for him in the Entrance Hall below.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Harry coldly, as Cedric ran up the stairs towards him.

  Cedric looked as though he didn’t want to say whatever it was in front of Ron, who shrugged, looking bad-tempered, and continued to climb the stairs.

  ‘Listen …’ Cedric lowered his voice as Ron disappeared. ‘I owe you one for telling me about the dragons. You know that golden egg? Does yours wail when you open it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry.

  ‘Well … take a bath, OK?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take a bath, and – er – take the egg with you, and – er – just mull things over in the hot water. It’ll help you think … trust me.’

  Harry stared at him.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Cedric said, ‘use the Prefects’ bathroom. Fourth door to the left of that statue of Boris the Bewildered on the fifth floor. Password’s Pine-fresh. Gotta go … want to say goodnight –’

  He grinned at Harry again and hurried back down the stairs to Cho.

  Harry walked back to Gryffindor Tower alone. That had been extremely strange advice. Why would a bath help him to work out what the wailing egg meant? Was Cedric pulling his leg? Was he trying to make Harry look a fool, so Cho would like Cedric even more by comparison?

  The Fat Lady and her friend Vi were snoozing in the picture over the portrait hole. Harry had to yell ‘Fairy lights!’ before he woke them up, and when he did, they were extremely irritated. He climbed into the common room, and found Ron and Hermione having a blazing row. Standing ten feet apart, they were bellowing at each other, each scarlet in the face.

  ‘Well, if you don’t like it, you know what the solution is, don’t you?’ yelled Hermione; her hair was coming down out of its elegant bun now, and her face was screwed up in anger.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Ron yelled back. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Next time there’s a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!’

  Ron mouthed soundlessly like a goldfish out of water as Hermione turned on her heel and stormed up the girls’ staircase to bed. Ron turned to look at Harry.

  ‘Well,’ he spluttered, looking thunderstruck, ‘well – that just proves – completely missed the point –’

  Harry didn’t say anything. He liked being back on speaking terms with Ron too much to speak his mind right now – but he somehow thought that Hermione had got the point much better than Ron had.

  — CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR —

  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 Harry 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 Harry 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 towards werewolves … it’s just bigotry, isn’t it?’

  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 Harry, 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 he still hadn’t done anything about working out the clue inside the golden egg. He therefore started taking the egg out of his trunk every time he went up to the dormitory, opening it and listening intently, hoping that this time it would make some sense. He strained to think what the sound reminded him of, apart from thirty musical saws, but he had never heard anything else like it. He closed the egg, shook it vigorously, and opened it again to see if the sound had changed, but it hadn’t. He tried asking the egg questions, shouting over all the wailing, but nothing happened. He even threw the egg across the room – though he hadn’t really expected that to help.

  Harry had not forgotten the hint that Cedric had given him, but his less-than-friendly feelings towards Cedric just now meant that he was keen not to accept his help if he could avoid it. In any case, it seemed to him that if Cedric had really wanted to give Harry a hand, he would have been a lot more explicit. He, Harry, had told Cedric exactly what was coming in the first task – and Cedric’s idea of a fair exchange had been to tell Harry to take a bath. Well, he 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 Harry set off to lessons, weighed down with books, parchment and quills as usual, but also with the lurking worry of the egg heavy in his stomach, as though he was carrying that around with him 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 by blasting off so forcefully that Hagrid’s cabin caught fire.

  When they arrived at Hagrid’s cabin, however, they found an elderly witch with closely cropped grey 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 towards her through the snow.

  ‘Who’re you?’ said Ron, staring at her. ‘Where’s Hagrid?’

  ‘My name is Professor Grubbly-Plank,’ she said briskly, ‘I am your temporary Care of Magical Creatures teacher.’

  ‘Where’s Hagrid?’ Harry repeated loudly.

  ‘He is indisposed,’ said Professor Grubbly-Plank shortly.

  Soft and unpleasant laughter reached Harry’s ears. He 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 huge Beauxbatons horses were shivering. Harry, 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?’ Harry said, hurrying to catch up with Professor Grubbly-Plank.

  ‘Never you m
ind,’ she said, as though she thought he was being nosy.

  ‘I do mind, though,’ said Harry hotly. ‘What’s up with him?’

  Professor Grubbly-Plank acted as though she couldn’t hear him. She led them past the paddock where the Beauxbatons horses were standing, huddled against the cold, and towards 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 that it made the snow all around look grey. 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 catching Harry 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 girls walked slowly forwards towards the unicorn, leaving the boys standing near the paddock fence, watching.

  The moment Professor Grubbly-Plank was out of earshot, Harry turned to Ron. ‘What d’you reckon’s wrong with him? You don’t think a Skrewt –?’

  ‘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.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ said Harry 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 Harry snatched the page, unfolded it, and read it, with Ron, Seamus, Dean and Neville looking over his shoulder. It was an article topped with a picture of Hagrid looking extremely shifty.