The Egg in the Fire

Somehow, and against every expectation, Quirrell turned out to be braver than Harry, Ron and Hermione had given him credit for. This came as a surprise, when you remembered that the man in question had once fainted in front of the whole school at the mere mention of a troll.

In the weeks that followed, every time they passed the third-floor corridor, the three of them would creep up to the door and press their ears to it, to make sure Fluffy was still growling away on the other side. He always was. And Snape went on sweeping about the castle in his usual foul temper, which surely meant the Stone was still where it ought to be. Whenever Harry passed Quirrell in a corridor these days he gave him an encouraging sort of smile, and Ron had taken to telling people off for laughing at Quirrell's stutter.

Hermione, though, had more on her mind than the Philosopher's Stone. She had begun drawing up revision timetables and colour-coding all her notes. Harry and Ron wouldn't have minded that in the least, if she hadn't kept nagging them to do the same.

'Hermione, the exams are ages away.'

'Ten weeks,' Hermione snapped. There was something slightly unhinged in her eyes. 'That isn't ages. That's about a second, to Nicolas Flamel.'

'Yeah, but we're not six hundred years old,' Ron pointed out. 'And what are you revising for, anyway? You know it all already.'

'What am I revising for? Are you mad? Do you realise we have to pass these exams to get into second year? They're enormously important, I ought to have started a month ago, I don't know what's got into me...'

Unfortunately, the teachers seemed to share Hermione's view. They piled on so much homework that the Easter holidays were looking more like the German defense of Normandy in World War 2. Absolutely merciless. And the bodies were piling up. It was hard to relax with Hermione beside you reciting the twelve uses of dragon's blood, or practising wand movements in the air, or finding some reason to be in whatever room Harry happened to be in. He'd given up asking how she always knew where he was.

Then there was Malfoy. She'd spent the weeks since the Hufflepuff match telling anyone who'd hold still what a violent, dangerous animal Ron Weasley was, and that nobody but a werewolf would attack a lady so savagely, and that her father was looking into it. Most people had been in the stands and had seen perfectly well who'd started it. Ron, for his part, simply kept out of her way.

'She bit my ear, Harry,' he said, more than once, touching it. 'She's mental.'

Moaning and yawning, Harry and Ron spent most of their free time in the library with Hermione, trying to get through all their extra work.

'I'll never remember this,' Ron burst out one afternoon, flinging his quill down and gazing longingly out of the window. It was the first properly fine day they'd had in months. The sky was a clear forget-me-not blue, and there was a feeling in the air of summer on its way.

Harry, who was looking up dittany in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, didn't look up until he heard Ron say, 'Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?'

Hagrid shuffled into view with something held behind his back. He looked very out of place in his moleskin overcoat among the bookshelves.

'Jus' lookin',' he said, in a shifty sort of voice that got all three of them interested at once. 'An' what're you lot up ter?' He peered at them with sudden suspicion. 'Yer not still huntin' fer Nicolas Flamel, are yeh?'

'Oh, we worked out who he was ages ago,' said Ron grandly. 'And we know what that dog's guarding, too, it's a Philosopher's St...'

'Shhhh!' Hagrid looked round wildly to see whether anyone had heard. 'Don' go shoutin' it about! What's the matter with yeh?'

'There were a few things we wanted to ask you, actually,' said Harry. 'About what's guarding the Stone, apart from Fluffy...'

'SHHHH!' said Hagrid again. 'Listen. Come an' see me later. I'm not promisin' I'll tell yeh anythin', mind, but don' go rabbitin' on about it in here. Students aren' s'posed ter know. They'll think I've been tellin' yeh...'

'See you later, then,' said Harry.

Hagrid shuffled off.

'What was he hiding behind his back?' said Hermione thoughtfully. 'Do you think it's got anything to do with the Stone?'

'I'm going to see what section he was in,' said Ron, who'd had quite enough of homework.

He came back a minute later with an armful of books and dropped them on the table with a bang.

'Dragons!' he whispered. 'Hagrid's been looking up dragons! Look at these. Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland. From Egg to Inferno: A Dragon Keeper's Guide.'

'Hagrid's always wanted a dragon,' said Harry. 'He told me so the first time I ever met him.'

'But it's against the law, mate' said Ron. 'Dragon breeding was banned by the Warlocks' Convention of 1709. Everybody knows that. It's hard enough stopping Muggles noticing us without people keeping dragons in the back garden. And you can't tame them anyway, they're dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie's got off the wild ones in Romania.'

'There aren't wild dragons in Britain, though?' said Harry.

'Course there are,' said Ron. 'Common Welsh Greens and Hebridean Blacks. The Ministry of Magic has a job hushing them up, I can tell you. Our lot are forever having to put spells on Muggles who've spotted one, so they forget.'

'So what on earth is Hagrid playing at?' said Hermione.

When they knocked on the door of the gamekeeper's hut an hour later, they were surprised to find every curtain drawn. Hagrid called, 'Who is it?' before he'd let them in, and shut the door fast behind them.

It was stiflingly hot inside. Warm as the day was, there was a fire blazing in the grate. Hagrid made them tea and offered round stoat sandwiches, which they declined.

'So. Yeh wanted ter ask me somethin'?'

'Yes,' said Harry. There was no point going round the houses. 'We were wondering if you could tell us what's guarding the Philosopher's Stone. Apart from Fluffy.'

Hagrid frowned at him.

'Course I can't,' he said. 'Fer one thing, I don' know meself. Fer another, yeh already know far too much, so I wouldn' tell yeh even if I did. That Stone's here fer a good reason. Somebody nearly had it out o' Gringotts. I s'pose yeh've worked that out an' all? Beats me how yeh even know about Fluffy.'

'Oh, come on, Hagrid,' said Hermione, in a warm, coaxing voice that Harry had never heard her use before. 'You might not want to tell us, but you do know. You know everything that goes on round here.'

Hagrid's beard twitched, and they could tell he was smiling.

'We only wondered who'd done the guarding, really,' Hermione went on. She was smiling too, and the smile was doing something to Hagrid, and Harry found himself thinking, for no reason he could put his finger on, of Malfoy. 'We wondered who Dumbledore trusted enough to help him. Apart from you.'

Hagrid's chest swelled. Harry and Ron grinned at Hermione.

'Well... I don' s'pose it'd do any harm ter tell yeh that much... let's see... he borrowed Fluffy off me... then some o' the teachers did enchantments... Professor Sprout... Professor Flitwick... Professor McGonagall...' He ticked them off on his fingers. 'Professor Quirrell... an' Dumbledore did somethin' himself, o' course. Hang on. I've missed one. Oh, yeah. Professor Snape.'

'Snape?'

'Yeah. Yer not still on about that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect the Stone. He's not about ter go stealin' it.'

Harry knew the other two were thinking exactly what he was. If Snape had been part of guarding the Stone, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to find out how the other teachers had done their bit. He probably knew everything. Everything except Quirrell's spell, by the sound of it, and how to get past Fluffy.

'You're the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy, aren't you, Hagrid?' said Harry anxiously. 'And you wouldn't tell anybody, would you? Not even a teacher?'

'Not a soul knows but me an' Dumbledore,' said Hagrid proudly.

'Well, that's something,' Harry muttered to the others. 'Hagrid, could we open a window? I'm boiling.'

'Can't, Harry. Sorry,' said Hagrid.

Harry saw him glance at the fire. He looked at it himself.

'Hagrid. What's that?'

But he knew what it was already. Right in the heart of the flames, under the kettle, sat an enormous black egg.

'Ah,' said Hagrid, fidgeting with his beard. 'That's... er...'

'Where did you get it?' said Ron, crouching down by the fire for a closer look. 'It must've cost a fortune.'

'Won it,' said Hagrid. 'Las' night. I was down in the village havin' a few, an' got into a game o' cards with a stranger. Think he was glad ter be shot of it, ter be honest.'

'But what are you going to do with it once it's hatched?' said Hermione.

'Well, I've bin doin' some readin',' said Hagrid, and he pulled a big book out from under his pillow. 'Got this outta the library. Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit. It's a bit out o' date, o' course, but it's all in here. Keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on 'em, see, an' when it hatches, feed it a bucket o' brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An' look here, how ter tell the diff'rent eggs apart. What I got there's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them.'

He looked extremely pleased with himself. Hermione didn't.

'Hagrid,' she said. 'You live in a wooden house.'

But Hagrid wasn't listening. He was humming to himself as he stoked the fire.

So now they had something new to worry about: what would happen to Hagrid if anybody found out he was keeping an illegal dragon in his hut.

'Wonder what it's like to have a quiet life,' Ron sighed, as evening after evening they battled through the extra homework. Hermione had started making revision timetables for Harry and Ron now, too. It was driving them round the bend.

Then one morning at breakfast Hedwig brought Harry another note from Hagrid. It said only two words.

It's hatching.

Ron wanted to skip Herbology and go straight down to the hut. He'd been on about dragons without a pause since the day they'd found the egg, and now there was one about to come out of its shell. Hermione wouldn't hear of it.

'Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?'

'We've got lessons. We'll get into trouble. And that's nothing to the trouble Hagrid's going to be in when somebody finds out what he's...'

'Shut up!' Harry hissed.

A head of silver-blonde hair had come into view. Malfoy was a few feet away, and she'd stopped dead to listen. How much had the mad girl heard? Harry didn't like the look on her face at all. It was the look of somebody doing maths in her head.

Ron and Hermione argued all the way to Herbology, and in the end Hermione agreed to run down to Hagrid's with them at morning break. When the bell rang out from the castle at the end of the lesson, the three of them dropped their trowels and hurried off across the grounds to the edge of the Forest.

Hagrid met them at the door looking flushed and excited.

'It's nearly out.'

He bundled them inside. The egg lay on the table, deeply cracked, with something moving about in it and a strange clicking coming from within. They pulled their chairs up and watched with their breath held.

All at once there was a scraping sound and the egg split in two. The baby dragon flopped out on to the table. It wasn't what you'd call pretty. Harry thought it looked like a crumpled black umbrella. Its spiny wings were enormous next to its thin jet-black body, and it had a long snout with wide nostrils, two stubs where horns would be, and bulging orange eyes.

It sneezed. A couple of sparks shot out of its nose.

'Isn't he beautiful?' Hagrid murmured.

He reached out to stroke the dragon's head. It snapped at his fingers, showing a mouthful of pointed fangs.

'Bless him. Look! He knows his mummy!'

'Hagrid,' said Hermione, 'how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow? Exactly?'

Hagrid was opening his mouth to answer when every scrap of colour left his face. He leapt up and ran to the window.

'What's the matter?'

'Someone was lookin' through the gap in the curtains. It's a kid. She's runnin' back up ter the school.'

'Stupid bloody girl!' Harry shouted.

Harry bolted to the door and looked out. Even at a distance there was no mistaking that hair. Malfoy had seen the dragon.

Something hot and furious came up in Harry's chest. He was out of the door and after her before he'd decided to be. She was fast, but Harry was angry, and halfway up the lawn he threw himself at her legs and brought her down in the grass.

'Unhand me, Potter!' Malfoy shrieked. 'Assault! Assault! I'm being assaulted!'

It was the word that did it. Harry hesitated, for half a second, and half a second was all she needed. She shoved him off her with both hands and scrambled up.

'I hate you, Pottyhead!' she screamed, and then she was off again, faster than before, and through the oak doors ahead of him. Harry pounded up the marble staircase after her, took the first flight two steps at a time, and felt it shudder and swing beneath him. By the time it had finished moving he was on the fourth floor, facing a tapestry of trolls in tutus, and she was gone.

He trudged back down to Hagrid's with nothing to show for it but grass stains, wondering what Malfoy would do next.

Something about the smile that lurked round Malfoy's mouth all the following week made Harry, Ron and Hermione very uneasy. They spent most of their spare time in Hagrid's darkened hut, trying to make him see sense.

'Just let him go,' Harry urged. 'Set him free.'

'I can't,' said Hagrid. 'He's too little. He'd die.'

They looked at the dragon. In a week it had grown to three times its length. Smoke kept curling out of its nostrils. Hagrid had let his gamekeeping slide entirely, the dragon kept him so busy, and the floor was strewn with empty brandy bottles and chicken feathers.

'I've decided ter call him Norbert,' said Hagrid, gazing at the dragon with misty eyes. 'He really knows me now. Watch. Norbert! Norbert! Where's Mummy?'

'He's lost his marbles,' Ron muttered to Harry. 'Hagrid, you're a bloke. Blokes can't be mums.'

'Hagrid,' said Harry loudly, 'in a fortnight Norbert's going to be as long as your house. And Malfoy could grass on you to Dumbledore any minute.'

Hagrid bit his lip.

'I... I know I can't keep him fer ever, but I can't jus' dump him. I can't.'

Harry turned suddenly to Ron.

'Charlie,' he said.

'You've gone funny too, mate,' said Ron. 'I'm Ron. Remember?'

'No. Charlie. Your brother Charlie. In Romania. Studying dragons. We could send Norbert to him! Charlie can look after him, and then put him back in the wild!'

'Brilliant!' said Ron. 'How about it, Hagrid?'

And in the end Hagrid agreed that they could send an owl to Charlie and ask.

The following week crawled by. Wednesday night found Harry and Hermione sitting alone in the common room long after everybody else had gone up to bed. The clock on the wall had just struck midnight when the portrait hole burst open and Ron appeared out of nowhere, dragging off Harry's Invisibility Cloak. He'd been down at Hagrid's, helping to feed Norbert, who was now eating dead rats by the crate.

'It bit me!' he said, holding out his hand, which was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. 'I won't be able to hold a quill for a week. I'm telling you, that dragon's the most horrible animal I've ever met, but to hear Hagrid talk you'd think it was a fluffy little bunny. When it bit me he told me off for frightening it. And when I left he was singing it a lullaby.'

There was a tap at the dark window.

'Hedwig!' said Harry, hurrying to let her in. 'She'll have Charlie's answer!'

The three of them put their heads together over the letter.

Dear Ron,

How are you? Thanks for the letter. I'd be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but getting him out here won't be easy. I think the best thing is to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit next week. The trouble is, they can't be seen carrying an illegal dragon about. Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it's still dark. Send me an answer as soon as you can.

Love, Charlie

They looked at one another.

'We've got the Invisibility Cloak,' said Harry. 'It shouldn't be too hard. I think the Cloak's big enough to cover two of us and Norbert.'

It was a mark of how bad the last week had been that the other two agreed with him at once. Anything to be rid of Norbert. Anything to be rid of Malfoy, and her stupid, smug, very pretty silver eyes.

There was a hitch. By the next morning Ron's bitten hand had swollen to twice its size. He didn't know whether it was safe to go to Madam Pomfrey. Would she recognise a dragon bite? By the afternoon he had no choice. The cut had turned a nasty shade of green. It seemed Norbert's fangs were poisonous.

Harry and Hermione rushed up to the hospital wing at the end of lessons and found Ron in bed in a terrible state.

'It's not only my hand,' he whispered, 'though that feels like it's about to drop off. Malfoy told Madam Pomfrey she wanted to borrow one of my books, so she could come up here and have a good laugh at me. She kept saying she'd tell Pomfrey what really bit me unless...' He stopped, and went red, and Harry had the impression he was changing what he'd been about to say. 'Unless I packed in being your friend, Harry. That's what she said. Kept saying it. I've told Pomfrey it was a dog, but I don't think she believes me. I shouldn't have hit Malfoy at the Quidditch match. That's why she's doing this. Mum was right. You shouldn't hit girls. Oh, Merlin, I'm in so much pain.'

Hermione did their best to calm Ron down as Harry thought of Malfoy. She just wanted to take away his friends and leave him on his own. Just so she could bully him. She was so much like Dudley. They'd probably get on with each other.

'It'll all be over at midnight on Saturday,' said Hermione.

This didn't soothe Ron in the least. He sat bolt upright and broke out in a sweat.

'Midnight on Saturday!' he croaked. 'Oh, no. Oh, no. I've just remembered. Charlie's letter was in that book Malfoy took. She's going to know we're getting rid of Norbert.'

Harry and Hermione got no chance to answer. Madam Pomfrey came bustling over at that moment and shooed them out, saying Ron needed his sleep.

'It's too late to change the plan now,' Harry told Hermione on the way down. 'There isn't time to send Charlie another owl, and this might be our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We'll have to risk it. And we've got the Invisibility Cloak. Malfoy doesn't know about that.'

When they went down to tell Hagrid, they found Fang the boarhound sitting outside the hut with his tail in a bandage, and Hagrid would only open a window to talk to them.

'I can't let yeh in,' he puffed. 'Norbert's at a tricky stage. Nothin' I can't handle.'

When they told him what Charlie had said, his eyes filled with tears, though that might have been because Norbert had just bitten him on the leg.

'Aargh! It's all right, he only got me boot. Jus' playin'. He's only a baby, after all.'

The baby thumped its tail against the wall and set the windows rattling.

Harry and Hermione walked back up to the castle feeling that Saturday couldn't come soon enough. They'd have felt sorry for Hagrid, when the time came for him to say goodbye to Norbert, if they hadn't been so frightened of what they had to do.

It was a very dark, cloudy night, and they were a little late getting down to Hagrid's because they'd had to wait for Peeves to clear out of the Entrance Hall, where he was playing tennis against the wall. Hagrid had Norbert packed and ready in a large crate.

'He's got plenty o' rats an' some brandy fer the journey,' said Hagrid thickly. 'An' I've put his teddy bear in, in case he gets lonely.'

From inside the crate came a ripping noise that sounded, to Harry, very much like teddy having his head pulled off.

'Bye-bye, Norbert!' Hagrid sobbed, as Harry and Hermione threw the Invisibility Cloak over the crate and ducked underneath it themselves. 'Mummy will never forget you!'

How they got the crate up to the castle, they never knew. Midnight crept nearer as they heaved Norbert up the marble staircase and along the dark corridors, up another staircase and then another, and even one of Harry's short cuts didn't make it much easier.

'Nearly there!' Harry panted, as they reached the corridor beneath the tallest tower.

Then a sudden movement ahead made them nearly drop the crate. Forgetting that they were already invisible, they shrank into the shadows and stared at the dark shapes of two people struggling together ten feet away.

A lamp flared.

Professor McGonagall, in a tartan dressing-gown and a hairnet, had Dracina Malfoy by the ear, and Malfoy was hissing at her like an angry cobra.

'Detention!' Professor McGonagall shouted. 'And twenty points from Slytherin! Wandering about the castle in the middle of the night. How dare you...'

'You don't understand, Professor! Harry Potter's coming! He's got a dragon!'

'What utter rubbish! How dare you tell me such lies! Come along. I shall be speaking to Professor Snape about you, Miss Malfoy!'

Malfoy was dragged off down the corridor, screaming into the dark, and what she screamed, over and over, was, 'I hate you, Pottyhead! I hate you!' until the sound of it faded round the corner. Harry stood very still under the Cloak and thanked his stars she had no idea how close she'd been standing to him.

The steep spiral staircase to the top of the tower seemed the easiest thing in the world after that. It wasn't until they'd stepped out into the cold night air that they threw off the Cloak, glad to be able to breathe properly again. Hermione did a sort of jig.

'Malfoy's got detention! I could sing!'

'Don't,' Harry advised.

Chuckling about Malfoy, they waited, with Norbert thrashing about in his crate. Ten minutes later four broomsticks came swooping down out of the darkness. Charlie's friends were a cheerful lot. They showed Harry and Hermione the harness they'd rigged up so that Norbert could hang between them, and everybody helped buckle him safely in, and then Harry and Hermione shook hands all round and thanked them very much.

And at last Norbert was going... going... gone.

They slipped back down the spiral staircase with their hearts as light as their hands, now that Norbert was off them. No more dragon. Malfoy in detention. What could possibly spoil it?

The answer was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. As they stepped out into the corridor, Filch's face loomed up out of the dark.

'Well, well, well,' he whispered. 'We are in trouble.'

They'd left the Invisibility Cloak on top of the tower.