Chapter 65: The Rat and the Dog
The Great Hall was noisy, as always at dinnertime, but Hermione heard none of it. She stabbed a lone pea on her plate, the taste of ash in her mouth. Beside her, Ron and Harry were arguing about Gryffindor's latest Quidditch training session, but their voices reached her like a distant murmur, as if she were underwater.
She had skipped her last class, something that normally would have caused her paralyzing anxiety. But not today. She had spent the last hour in the library, not studying, but frantically searching the books of magical law for a loophole, a technicality, anything.
She had found nothing.
"...and I swear, Harry, if Wood makes us do that maneuver again, I'm going to...!" Ron was saying.
"They're going to kill him!"
Hermione's voice was so sudden, so charged with trembling rage, that it silenced both boys.
Harry looked at her, his Quidditch expression instantly transforming into concern. "What? Kill who?"
"Buckbeak!" Hermione whispered, and she felt tears of fury burning her eyes. She hated crying. She hated feeling so helpless. "I just found out. I saw Professor McGonagall. They rejected Hagrid's appeal. The Ministry... Lucius Malfoy... they won! The executioner is coming. At sundown."
Ron's face went pale, his fork halfway to his mouth. "What! Tonight? But... they can't! It's... it's just a Hippogriff!"
"They don't care!" Hermione said, jumping to her feet, her chair screeching loudly against the stone. The movement was so abrupt that Crookshanks, who had been dozing on her lap, leaped to the floor with an annoyed hiss. "We have to go. Now. We can't let Hagrid go through this alone. We can't!"
Ron looked nervously out the window of the Great Hall. The sun was already low in the sky, painting the clouds a sickly orange and purple.
"Hermione... are you mental?" he whispered, grabbing her arm. "It's sundown! The executioner will be there! And Fudge! And Dumbledore! If they see us... we'll be expelled! We can't go there!"
"And besides," he added, his voice dropping, as he reached into his robes and pulled out Scabbers, who was trembling violently. "Scabbers has been acting weird all day! He's shaking like mad and losing fur! I swear that cat of yours has traumatized him for life!"
"RONALD WEASLEY!" Hermione snapped, her voice now a dangerous hiss that made several nearby students turn around. "We're talking about Hagrid's life! His heart! And you're worried about your stupid, cowardly rat!"
"He's not a coward! He's just sick!" Ron retorted, but his conviction faltered under her furious gaze.
"Enough, both of you," Harry said, his voice calm but firm.
He stood up, his decision made. He had been watching Hermione all week. Since Timothy's birthday party, since the kiss everyone had witnessed, she had been... different. Happier, yes, but also more vulnerable. And since her fight with Ron over the cat and rat issue, she had been under constant stress. Seeing her now, so passionate, so right in her fury for Hagrid, made something in him settle.
"She's right, Ron," he said, putting his bag over his shoulder. "It's Hagrid. He's our friend. He helped us last year. We're not going to leave him alone."
Ron looked at Harry, then at Hermione's determined expression. "Bloody hell!" he muttered. "You're both mental. Completely mental. Fine." He stuffed Scabbers back into his pocket. "But if I see that bloke's axe, I'm leaving."
"They won't see us," Harry said, a grim smile on his face. "I've got the cloak."
They slipped out of the Great Hall in the chaos of students coming and going. In an empty niche behind a statue of a one-eyed wizard, Harry pulled out the Invisibility Cloak. Crookshanks, who had followed them with an almost human intelligence, meowed softly.
"You're coming too, aren't you?" Hermione murmured to the cat, who simply blinked.
The three of them huddled under the silky fabric. It was a tight fit, now that they were taller.
"You're stepping on me!" Ron hissed. "And your cat is scratching my ankle!"
"Quiet!" Hermione ordered.
They left the castle, a three-headed lump moving clumsily and followed by a very self-assured ginger cat. They crossed the grounds, the setting sun casting long, eerie shadows from the Forbidden Forest.
They reached the top of the hill overlooking Hagrid's hut. And they froze.
The hut's lights were on, and smoke was rising from the chimney. But they weren't alone. Near Hagrid's pumpkin patch, a heavyset, faceless man dressed in a black leather apron was standing beside a large grinding wheel. He held an immense double-bladed axe.
The sound of stone scraping on metal, shing... shing... shing..., floated toward them on the evening air. It was the executioner.
Ron let out a choked groan. "Let's go. Harry, Hermione, let's go. He's already here."
But Hermione, though she was visibly trembling under the cloak, pushed them forward. "It doesn't matter," she whispered, her voice shaking but filled with steely determination. "He's in there. And he needs us. Now."
They crouched and ran, the world shrinking to the small circle of ground visible beneath the Invisibility Cloak. Crookshanks trotted beside them, strangely calm, as if he knew exactly what they were doing. The sound of the executioner's axe was a sickening heartbeat pushing them forward.
They reached the back door of Hagrid's hut just as the sun sank behind the castle battlements. Harry knocked, his voice muffled by the cloak's fabric.
The door flew open, and Hagrid dragged them inside in a single panicked motion. "You're mental! Absolutely mental!" he whispered, closing the door and throwing the bolt.
The hut was a chaos of sadness. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. Fang, the boarhound, was whimpering in a corner. And Hagrid... Hagrid was wrecked. His eyes were red and swollen, and he was shaking.
"You shouldn' have come! If they find yeh here...!" he sobbed, collapsing into his enormous wooden chair.
"We couldn't leave you alone, Hagrid," Hermione said, her voice trembling with empathy as they emerged from under the cloak.
"It's Malfoy's doing," Harry said with rage, clenching his fists. "That git! I'm going to...!"
"No, Harry!" Hagrid said, his voice a broken thunder. "It's not worth it. It's done. Dumbledore... Fudge... the executioner... they're on their way. Coming to... to do it."
The word "execution" hung in the air, heavy and horrible. They tried to comfort him. Hermione made tea. Harry tried to talk, but what could he say? "I'm sorry" seemed pathetic.
"Oh, look at that!" Hagrid said suddenly, his tearful eyes landing on Ron's hand. "What've yeh got there, Ron?"
Ron, who had been quiet, lifted his hand. Scabbers, his old pet rat, was trembling violently in his palm, his whiskers twitching with terror.
"It's Scabbers!" Ron said, his own voice trembling from the fear of the situation. "I don't know what's wrong with him. He's been acting like this all day, going mental, losing fur!"
"It's probably that monster of hers!" Ron snapped, looking at Crookshanks, who had jumped onto Hermione's lap and was now hissing, not at Hagrid, but at Scabbers.
"Crookshanks, no!" Hermione scolded.
At that moment, there was a loud knock at the front door.
Panic seized the room. "It's them!" Hagrid gasped. "You've got ter go! Now! Out the back! Don't let 'em see yeh!"
Harry grabbed the cloak. "Come on, quick!"
They crowded under the fabric, a tangle of elbows and feet. Ron was the last one in, still trying to force the squirming Scabbers into his chest pocket.
"Hagrid, we can't just...!" Hermione began.
"GO!" Hagrid roared, shoving them toward the back door just as the front door opened.
They stumbled out into the pumpkin patch, hiding behind a particularly large pumpkin. That was when Scabbers completely lost it. The rat, who had been trembling, suddenly went berserk. With a high-pitched squeal that sounded strangely human, he bit down hard on Ron's finger.
"OW!" Ron yelled, his voice too loud in the twilight.
He let go of the rat from the pain. Scabbers fell to the ground and, instead of hiding, shot off. He ran frantically across the lawn, away from the hut, toward the great gnarled Whomping Willow on the hillside.
"SCABBERS!" Ron shouted, completely forgetting the danger, forgetting the executioner and Fudge. "GET BACK HERE, YOU STUPID RAT!"
Ignoring Harry and Hermione's desperate hisses, Ron threw off the cloak and sprinted at full speed, chasing his pet across the twilit lawn.
"Ron, no! You idiot, come back!" Harry shouted, throwing the cloak over himself and Hermione.
"That cat!" Ron yelled over his shoulder as Scabbers scurried under a root. "Crookshanks has driven him mental!"
Harry and Hermione exchanged a panicked look and ran after their friend, the sound of the executioner's axe being tested in the air echoing behind them.
"SCABBERS!" Ron bellowed, his voice shrill with panic.
Harry cursed under his breath and grabbed Hermione's hand. "Come on!"
They burst out from behind the pile of pumpkins, abandoning the Invisibility Cloak in their haste. They ran down the grassy slope, the evening air cold in their lungs. In the distance, they heard a muffled shout and the sound of a door banging open at Hagrid's hut—probably Fudge and the executioner coming out to investigate Ron's yell. It didn't matter.
"RON, LEAVE IT, IT'S JUST A RAT!" Harry shouted.
But Ron wasn't listening. He was obsessed, sliding through the mud as Scabbers, with a speed Harry would never have believed possible for the decrepit rat, zigzagged frantically toward the most dangerous tree on the castle grounds.
"Gotcha, you stupid beast!" Ron yelled, finally diving in a messy tackle. He landed flat on his face in the grass, but his hand closed triumphantly around Scabbers' tail.
He was getting to his feet, panting and wiping mud from his face, when Harry froze.
"Ron..." he whispered, his voice choked with sudden terror.
In the shadow of the Forbidden Forest, not far from the Whomping Willow, something was moving. It wasn't a student. It wasn't a teacher. Emerging from the shadows of the trees, silent as death, was the Grim.
It was enormous. Much larger than Harry had remembered from the Quidditch match. It was the size of a small bear, a black, matted dog whose eyes seemed to gleam with a pale, hungry light in the gloom. Terror, cold and paralyzing, seized Harry.
"HARRY, IT'S THE GRIM!" Hermione screamed, her voice shrill with terror. The omen of death. Professor Trelawney was right. All this time, she had dismissed it as superstitious nonsense, but now, the giant, black, ghostly-eyed dog was real, and it was there.
"Ron, behind you!" Harry shouted, his voice finally breaking through the panic.
Ron spun around, his eyes going wide. He didn't have time to react. The great black dog leaped. It was incredibly fast. In an instant, it crossed the twenty feet between them. Harry drew his wand, but he was too slow.
The dog didn't bite. It didn't attack. It lunged at Ron, its jaws closing not on his throat, but with unnatural precision on his outstretched arm. The same arm holding the squealing Scabbers.
Ron let out a scream of agony. "HARRY, HELP! IT'S BREAKING MY LEG!"
"Impedimenta!" Harry roared. The spell shot from his wand and hit the dog in the flank, but the beast barely flinched, as if someone had thrown a pebble at it.
"Relashio!" Hermione screamed, her own wand trembling. A jet of sparks hit the dog's jaws, but it only growled, tightening its grip on Ron's arm.
The black dog dragged Ron relentlessly, not toward the forest, but directly toward the gnarled trunk of the Whomping Willow.
"NO!" Harry shouted. "ANYWHERE BUT THERE!"
They knew what would happen. The instant they got close, the tree would come to life. Sure enough, the moment Harry and Hermione were within ten meters, a creaking sound filled the air. The branches of the Whomping Willow, thick as the trunks of smaller trees, began whipping at them.
"Watch out!" Harry yelled, shoving Hermione to the ground. A branch whistled past where her head had been, with enough force to decapitate her.
"RON!" she screamed from the ground, watching in horror.
The black dog, with unnatural intelligence, seemed to know about the tree. It moved fluidly, dodging a descending branch, and found a gap in the exposed roots. In a second, it vanished underground, dragging Ron (and the still-squealing rat Scabbers) with it.
The instant they disappeared, the Whomping Willow calmed. The branches returned to their positions, motionless, as if nothing had happened.
Harry and Hermione lay on the grass, panting, battered, and terrified. They were alone. Ron was gone.
"What... what do we do?" Hermione gasped, tears of panic starting to flow. "That thing took him! We have to get Dumbledore!"
"There's no time!" Harry said, his face pale but filled with fierce determination. He got to his feet, wand still raised. "We have to..."
Meow.
They both turned. Crookshanks, Hermione's ginger cat, was there, unharmed. The cat had dodged the Willow's branches as if he knew their pattern. He walked calmly toward the tree trunk.
"Crookshanks, no! Get away from there!" Hermione screamed.
But the cat ignored her. He approached a gnarled root near the base and, with deliberate intelligence, pressed a small knot in the wood with his paw. There was a loud click and a sound of magical gears. And the whole tree froze.
Harry and Hermione stood gaping.
"Did you see that?" Harry whispered, his voice filled with new suspicion. "That cat! He wasn't attacking Scabbers! He was trying to catch him!"
"He's allied with it!" Hermione gasped, the realization hitting her. "The dog! Crookshanks knew!"
Harry looked at the dark hole in the roots where Ron had disappeared. There was no more time for questions.
"Ron's down there. Hurt. And that thing is with him," he said, his voice hard as steel. "Let's go."
He grabbed Hermione's hand.
"Harry, no... it's dark!" she protested, trembling.
"Lumos!" he commanded. The tip of his wand lit up. He looked at the black hole in the roots. "Stay behind me."
And without hesitating another second, Harry Potter slid into the dark tunnel, dragging Hermione with him, following his friend and the ghost dog toward the Shrieking Shack.