Too Smart for Something Simple
Daphne, Hermione, and Draco leaned over Harry's shoulders to look at the newspaper in his hand. And the more they read, the harder it was not to frown.
According to the Prophet, their friend Hagrid had been declared a danger simply for being the son of a giant and a human. The article went on and on about how dangerous giants had been in the past, especially during Voldemort's reign. And it shamelessly claimed that in his classes, Hagrid seemed to have inherited the dangerous and brutal nature of his mother. Like when Crabbe had been attacked by the hippogriff, or with those creatures called Blast-Ended Skrewts that supposedly injured students every class as if it were some kind of torture.
And of course, the one who had written that article was none other than Rita Skeeter, dragging Hagrid's name through the mud and mocking every part of his life. Even bringing up how he had once been found guilty for a crime he never committed, supposedly opening the Chamber of Secrets.
It looked like she had gone out of her way to dig up every possible thing that could make Hagrid's life harder.
The students who chose to stay close enough to feel the faint danger Harry seemed to be giving off right now slowly took a step back. Even some who didn't fully understand why they were retreating… still did it anyway. As if their instincts were screaming at them that staying too close to him right now was a very bad idea.
Anyone with two functioning brain cells knew that bothering Harry when he was like this was a terrible decision. Because he had already proven more than once that when he was truly angry, his magic stopped being merely dangerous.
It became the kind of thing people remembered later with a trembling voice.
Still, there would always be people born with a tragic shortage of common sense.
"Looks like your half-giant friend's days in this castle are numbered. He really got lucky last time when that beast attacked Crabbe. But I don't think he'll be able to get out of this one," Carrow said, ignoring what everyone had already accepted by now: bothering Harry was not a smart idea in the slightest.
Even the Slytherins who understood that took a step back, putting some distance between themselves and Carrow. Leaving only Crabbe and Goyle standing beside him, probably because the three of them together could barely manage one complete thought.
"The parents aren't going to like this one bit. They'll start worrying he might eat their children, hahaha," Carrow added, clearly enjoying himself as he looked at the group.
Luckily for Carrow, Harry seemed far more interested in how Hagrid was doing than in finding out whether it was possible to rearrange someone's brain with magic. Though, honestly, not even the strongest magic in the castle could probably fix something like that.
So he simply stayed quiet while waiting for Professor Grubbly-Plank's class to end. She came back while dragging Lavender by the arm, eventually giving up after realizing none of the girls, as she had planned, were going to approach the unicorn.
Or any of the students in general.
She at least explained the specific traits of the creature, its habits, and its place in magical fauna until the class finally ended, with all the students quickly moving away from the unicorn.
Maybe it would take some time before they understood that unicorns like Destroyer were an anomaly. Because normally, most of them were actually quite friendly.
Although of course… that might not really apply anymore in Hogwarts.
Not when the Forbidden Forest seemed to be slowly turning into something far stranger than normal.
"How did that horrible Skeeter even find out?" Hermione said with obvious annoyance. If there was anyone in the group who hated that woman with genuine dedication, it was her. Though this time, even the others seemed far less willing to just ignore it. Because more than anyone, they knew how kind Hagrid really was. And they also knew how much something like this could affect him.
"Oh, Hagrid… maybe it slipped out, like everything always does with him. You know how easy he is to manipulate in general," Daphne added, shaking her head with a sigh.
"I don't think so, considering he never told us, even when he had plenty of chances to let it slip," Draco said calmly. None of them seemed bothered by the fact that Hagrid was half-giant.
Well, if they hadn't already assumed that from the start, it would've been more surprising. But it clearly didn't matter much to them. After all, they knew Hagrid well.
"And what about your plan to try and catch her?" Daphne asked Hermione.
After all, they had suspected for quite a while now that Rita was an Animagus. Especially since Harry had felt someone watching him before the First Task.
Selene had also connected the pieces rather quickly. Rita always got information that was far too precise, far too quickly, as if she were present in places she had no business being in.
"They didn't work. Not completely. And they won't work properly until I know exactly what animal she turns into," Hermione said with obvious frustration. She had set traps all around the castle, but so far none of them had caught her. And after that, she had gotten a little… distracted.
"Then I suppose it's time we start taking this seriously," Harry said in a tone that made even Hermione glance up at him slightly.
He had mostly ignored Rita before because he didn't really care what she wrote about him. After all, other people's opinions didn't mean much to him. And Draco and Hermione didn't seem especially affected by it either. Though Hermione did seem to want to catch her out of a more personal kind of revenge.
But it was different when one of his friends was genuinely getting hurt because of it.
"What are you planning?" Daphne asked with interest and an amused smile.
"It's pretty simple. If Rita wants to hide like an animal… then an animal will be the one to find her," Harry said, a faint smile appearing on his face; one just a little too dark to be reassuring.
"For now, let's go check on Hagrid. Tonight, after Divination, we'll improve Hermione's traps," Harry said, bringing the conversation to an end. And from the way his voice sounded when he said it, it was pretty clear that Rita Skeeter had just officially become a personal problem.
After Divination, just like they had said, and of course after dinner, they left the castle and walked down the icy path toward Hagrid's hut.
Unfortunately, even after knocking on the door for quite a while, and even banging on the hut's window, the only thing they could hear was Fang barking from inside.
And honestly, that only made it feel a little worse.
Because it meant Hagrid was in there.
And that he simply didn't want to see anyone.
Even though Daphne very much wanted to kick the door down, her friends stopped her in time, only making her let out a sigh before deciding to give Hagrid some space for now. Maybe he needed time to sort out his thoughts.
As they walked back to the castle…
"He's obviously avoiding us," Hermione said, feeling like it was painfully obvious that Hagrid was inside and simply didn't want to open the door, not even for them.
"It's fine. He probably just needs some rest. It'll be better if we go see him another day," Harry added.
But even after an entire week had passed, they still hadn't seen Hagrid again. Not during dinner at the staff table, nor when he was supposed to be out taking care of the Forbidden Forest.
And somehow, Hogwarts had the annoying habit of continuing as if nothing had happened.
His classes remained in Professor Grubbly-Plank's hands, and for their next lesson, thankfully, she brought a much smaller and calmer creature.
A Puffskein.
At one point, Carrow, clearly taking advantage of Hagrid's disappearance, didn't hesitate to start mocking him again. Especially since the last time, Harry hadn't seemed to do anything to him after he talked about Hagrid.
"I knew it, Potter. Even when you say you're his friend, the moment you found out he was a half-giant, it suddenly doesn't matter to you anymore," Carrow said with satisfaction, seeming to believe Harry might be more like them than he thought. "Did the elephant man get lost?" he added, taking advantage of the fact that Professor Maximoff was the one teaching the class.
But Harry didn't even acknowledge him.
He simply pulled out his wand.
And Carrow immediately trembled like a startled fawn in his seat and quickly hid behind Goyle's body while saying,
"P-p-professor…"
He didn't even manage to finish the word without sounding pathetic.
Which made Wanda, who had been teaching the lesson normally, pause for a moment and glance in that direction.
Only to find Harry wearing a calm smile, as if he had been paying attention the entire time like always, while Carrow looked deathly pale, terrified of somehow ending up as a rat again.
Wanda gave her son a look for a moment before letting out a sigh, while Harry simply gave her the most innocent face in the world.
She just went back to teaching as if nothing had happened.
"Coward," Daphne whispered to Carrow with an amused grin, while Draco looked at him with his usual disgust, and Hermione didn't even seem to be paying attention to them at all, far more focused on the lesson.
"So… did you figure anything out about the golden egg?" Draco asked, sitting beside Harry while still writing down notes from class.
"No. Ever since Luciel only gave me the hint to take a bath, I'm still a little… confused," Harry said honestly. After all, he had already given Draco the same hint. And he hadn't understood it either.
Because both of them felt like there had to be something hidden inside the clue. Like maybe… the Chamber of Secrets, which now that it had been dismantled was basically just a giant empty hall hidden beneath the girls' bathroom on the third floor.
But they didn't think that place had anything to do with the next task.
So they had done all kinds of calculations, thinking maybe "taking a bath" was some kind of code phrase. And after a whole week, even after taking the words apart and rearranging them in every possible way, they still had no idea.
"Isn't it just… taking a bath?" Daphne said from behind them, looking at the two of them like they had just lost an intellectual battle against a spoon.
Since she was Viktor Krum's helper and Hermione was Fleur's, and they were supposedly competitors, Harry and Draco hadn't told either of them about Luciel's clue.
But now that Daphne had overheard it, she was looking at them like they were idiots.
"I don't think it's that simple," Draco said, glancing at her slightly, though now that the clue was out, he didn't seem to care much anymore.
"And what exactly does taking a bath have to do with an egg?" Harry asked, looking at her like she was the one saying nonsense.
"What's this about taking a bath?" Hermione asked.
"He says that's the clue Luciel gave him for the egg," Daphne said casually, not caring in the slightest about sharing the hint with their supposed rivals, if only to annoy Harry and Draco.
"Oh," Hermione said calmly. "What kind of weird clue is that?" she asked. She had also been having trouble helping Fleur figure it out, since it seemed Luciel hadn't given the clue to his cousin.
Or rather, Fleur hadn't wanted to accept it.
Harry rolled his eyes at how easily Daphne had just given away his clue. Though in truth, he had planned to tell them later once he figured it out himself, just so he could show them he had solved it faster than they did.
Unfortunately, he still hadn't.
"Obviously, all you have to do is put the egg in the water and that's it," Daphne said, looking at them as if she genuinely couldn't believe neither of them had reached that conclusion already.
The three of them looked at her like they were refusing, out of sheer pride, to accept that the answer could possibly be that ridiculously simple.
"Maybe if we combine the letters in each word to form a different sentence…" Hermione began to think aloud.
"We already did that," Draco said, cutting her off.
The three of them seemed to fall into deep thought, while Daphne stared at them for a moment before letting out a sigh.
"Sometimes being too smart can also be a problem," she added before going back to writing as if she hadn't just intellectually humiliated three people at once.