“Well,” Harry sighed, sitting down on the grass. “That was… tiring. Right, girls?” He glanced sideways, at Hermione and Silversong, who were already lying down on the grass.
“Girls?” Silver asked, stressing the plural. “What about that was tiring for me?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Well, you weren’t grading anything, but you still had plenty to do.”
Silver raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you mean learning every wand-magic spell we covered in the entire year in just three days? That was nothing. I’ve got much worse waiting for me at home, over the summer.”
Harry nodded. “Yep, me too, and believe me on that. I almost envy you.”
“And come on, Silver,” Hermione injected. “This is where you tell him it was tiring because he wasn’t there.”
Silver rolled her eyes. “But it was tiring for you, right?”
“Not… Not really,” Hermione answered. “I mean, it certainly took some time to grade everyone’s homework and teach you every spell from the entire year at the same time, but I don’t know that I’d call it tiring.” Then she scowled, and turned to Harry. “Oh, and Harry? If you’ve been living with Dudley, how was grading a dozen tests tiring?”
Harry sighed. “It wasn’t the tests that were tiring,” he answered her, lying down. “It’s just- I keep seeing Rarity doing her levitation, and I keep wishing I was a Raeth, rather than an Etrah.”
“Speaking of which, I’m still wondering what the difference is between a regular Aethr and a specialized Aethr,” Silver muttered. “For that matter, what the difference is with the specialized versions of any tribe.” She shrugged, glancing at Hermione. “And how you got to be one.”
Hermione shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m more curious if muggles can also be divided into those same tribes, and if so, what the differences there are.”
Harry scowled at the sky. “Personally, I’ve been wondering about Norberta.”
“How do you mean?” Hermione asked.
“Well, dragon breeding has been illegal for ages, right?”
“Yes, ever since the-!” Hermione began.
Harry cut her off. “So how did Hagrid get her egg?”
“... He said he won it,” Silver muttered. “I wonder how the guy he won it from got it? I wonder if it was a legitimate win, or a plotted one?”
Harry sat up sharply. “You mean…”
“You mean Norberta’s egg might have been a bargaining chip in getting Hagrid to reveal a way to get past Fluffy?” Hermione asked, rising slowly. Back on Christmas night, when they got their invisibility cloaks, Hermione had gone to see what was in the Restricted Section, Silver had wandered randomly through the castle and found the Mirror, and Harry had taken a peek in that third-floor corridor, to find a great, three-headed dog. When they’d mentioned the dog to Hagrid, he’d christened it ‘Fluffy’.
Silver blinked. “... Yes, I guess I do. We’d better go ask Hagrid about that, shouldn’t we?”
“And go straight to Dumbledore if it turns out he has leaked,” Hermione agreed, scrambling to her feet.
“Definitely,” Harry agreed, already leading the way to Hagrid’s hut.
“...a bit o’ music and he’ll go right to sleep.” Hagrid didn’t catch himself until after he’d finished the sentence.
“Huh,” Norberta muttered; she’d followed Harry, Hermione, and Silver into Hagrid’s hut, curious why they were so worried.
“I shouldn’t have told ya that,” Hagrid barked.
“Oh… So it has leaked,” Hermione muttered.
“That’s a problem,” Silver groaned.
“What-!?” Hagrid half-panicked. “Don’t tell anyone! And don’t try it, either- the next protection is deadly, and I can’t tell ya what it is!”
“Uh,” Norberta muttered again. “Dad? I’m a little less worried about them than I am that bloke in the bar.”
Hagrid blinked. “Uhh…”
“Dumbledore needs to know the secret was leaked,” Hermione stated. “Even if we don’t tell him how it was leaked, he needs to know that it was. I mean,” she looked at Harry.
“He is the one with the plans, isn’t he?” Harry asked. Then he shrugged. “Though if you ask me, he needs to forget about them for a little. Madam Pomfrey has already sedated him five times this year.”
“Well, that was a bust,” Silver muttered, as Professor McGonagall disappeared from sight. They’d just tried to ask for Dumbledore, learned that he’d been called to the Ministry, and been instructed to head back outside.
“What next?” Harry asked. “We can’t just… wait.”
Silver blinked, looking off to the side- and stepped around Harry. “Professor Snape!”
“Uhh,” Hermione muttered uncertainly.
But, thanks to her… interesting sorting situation, Silversong had an unusually friendly relationship, for a Gryffindor, with the Head of Slytherin House.
Snape raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“Well, um,” Silver began, glancing around the hall to make sure they were alone. They were, but their voices were echoing. “It’s a little secret, soo…” She hurried forward to meet him.
Snape’s expression was a close match to Professor McGonagall’s, when Harry had said his business with Dumbledore was secret.
She waited until she was right up close to him, before continuing in a low tone. “It’s about the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“How do you know about that?” Snape asked.
“Research,” she answered quickly. “More importantly, we just found out that its first layer of defense has been breached. And Professor McGonagall said Dumbledore just got summoned away- making tonight, or even right now, a good time for someone to try and steal it.”
“When did this happen?” Snape asked stiffly.
“Um,” Silver looked at Hermione. “Two months?”
Hermione nodded. “Right about, yes. We only just found out about it.” Silver could sense Harry and Hermione’s nervousness; they were convinced it was Snape trying to kill Harry and steal the Stone, but Silver wasn’t so sure. As far as she was concerned, the attacker probably wasn’t the Potions Master that had been at the school for over ten years, but was either one of the students… or the one professor that was new. And, according to Harry, no good at his job.
Snape’s eyes narrowed. “And how did you find this out?”
“Asked,” Silver answered. “Two months ago, some bloke in a bar got Hagrid really drunk and got him to talk over a dragon egg.”
“A drag-!?” At least he didn’t yell.
She nodded. “That’s Norberta now. Some… strange interplay with Equestrian magic, I think, turned her human.”
Snape let out a sigh of relief, then raised an eyebrow. “I bet Hagrid was disappointed.”
“Yes, he was. Anyways, we… asked how he got her egg, and… you know how he is.”
Snape nodded slowly. “Yes… I don’t suppose that means you know what that dog’s secret is?”
“Yes, we do.”
He sighed again. “Very well. Rest assured the Stone is in no danger, and for your own lives’ sakes, do not try to get past that dog. It’s one of the less deadly- and more obvious- protections.”
After hopefully allaying the Gryffindors’ concerns, Snape swept up the staircase towards the third floor… and tapped into the Castle Wards. He almost despised using the telepathic network built into them, but he had to agree that it did have its uses.
Like now.
“Professor Dumbledore,” he called. “I’ve just been informed that Fluffy’s secret was leaked.”
“I can’t say I didn’t see that coming,” Dumbledore answered irritably. “How’d they get Hagrid to talk?”
“They got him drunk, then something with a dragon egg.”
He could tell that Dumbledore very nearly cussed. He wouldn’t have blamed the man if he had cussed, of course- he knew as well as the rest of the Heads of House that Dumbledore’s elaborate plans had been ripped to shreds by the Equestrians’ presence. That was something they were still working on getting Dumbledore to realize himself. “Of course they did.” Then Dumbledore noticeably calmed himself. “Though I guess that means Voldemort won’t be killing Fluffy. Has anyone been sent to help Hagrid send the egg off safely?”
Snape grinned in spite of himself, pausing at the end of the third-floor corridor before continuing down it, towards Fluffy’s door. “No need, that was two months ago. According to Silversong, the egg has already hatched- and the hatchling, thanks to a strange effect of Equestrian magic, been turned into a human child.”
“Two months…? Oh, good.”
Professor McGonagall came on even before Snape could respond. “How is that good?”
“Ahh,” Dumbledore muttered. “The thing is, the Stone was already missing when I set the Mirror of Erised down there after Christmas. If that was only two months… we know who didn’t steal it.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this then?” McGonagall asked.
“I… Didn’t think of it, sorry.”
Snape opened the door just far enough to double-check that Fluffy was fine, and that there were no instruments in evidence, before resealing the door and placing a monitoring charm on it. Why Dumbledore hadn’t done that, he had no idea. “Alright then, I guess Fluffy and our defences are a red herring now. Looks like they’re secure, got a monitoring charm on the door, so we’ll know when he’s in the trap. And I hope we find who has the Stone before Voldemort does.”
“You and me both,” Dumbledore answered fervently.
“Snape said it’s in no danger, even with Fluffy bypassed,” Silver reminded Harry. They were sitting in a private corner of the castle grounds an hour or so after Snape had sent them outside again, but Harry couldn’t stop worrying about the Stone.
“She’s right,” Diamond stated. “It’s not like we’re anywhere near as tough as some of the finest witches and wizards in the world.”
Hermione looked at her. “Well…”
Diamond rolled her eyes. “I’m not talking about physical strength, I’m talking about wisdom and combat prowess.”
“But it’s-!” Harry began again.
“How about this,” Silver interrupted. “Tonight, we’ll all don our cloaks. Including you, Diamond- but you stay in the Slytherin dormitories. The rest of us will go to the third floor corridor and make sure the door is still closed. If it’s not, we tell Diamond, who gets Bonbon, then we wait for Bonbon before we do anything else. If it is, we go back to bed.”
Diamond let out a chuckle.
“What?” Hermione asked.
Diamond shook her head. “No, just that it’s usually me making orders like that. No problem- as long as nobody does anything stupid. Like, if Bonbon says to jump, you jump. And if she says to go to bed, you go to bed. No matter what.”
Harry blinked. “Uh-!”
“Definitely,” Silver agreed, before looking at Harry and Hermione. “Bonbon’s probably the best of any of us by a long shot.”
Hermione nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she already went down there once.”