"What?! Ridiculous!" Hagrid spluttered. "Sure I had a couple o'drinks to celebrate winning the egg from the hooded bloke, and sure, he asked a lot of questions about what sort of animals I'd worked with before…"
Hagrid trailed off as he slowly began to realize that he might have, just maybe, told a random stranger about a guardian animal's weakness.
"Hooded bloke? So, you never saw who you got the egg from?" Ron asked, no doubt curious on behalf of his older brother. The dragon preserves would likely want to know who exactly it was that'd given Hagrid the dragon egg, so they could find out who'd poached it in the first place.
"No, never saw his face. And you can't tell anyone about Fluffy!" Hagrid pleaded. "It's very important that nobody besides Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel know about him!"
"We promise, Hagrid," Harry vowed, and the Groundskeeper sagged in relief, before perking up a bit.
"Oh, look at the time! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a busy day and a long night ahead. Gonna have to ask you kids to leave," Hagrid requested, ushering them out of his hut before he could reveal any more secrets.
When the door slammed shut, the six shared a look.
"Hagrid doesn't have a clock… or a watch," Ron mumbled. "How does that excuse work?"
Everyone shrugged in bewilderment and walked towards the castle.
"So, any bets on the thing guarded by 'Fluffy' being the Philosopher's Stone?" Harry asked, glancing at his friends.
"No," everyone replied with a deadpan expression on their faces.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Harry sighed. "So… what next?"
"I think we just leave it alone," Susan offered. "If Dumbledore wants to protect the stone with his inefficient security measures, who are we to argue with him?"
Harry nodded in agreement, but he couldn't help but feel like he and his companions would end up slapped down and forced to deal with it anyways.
He wasn't sure where this feeling was coming from, though, but resolved to find an answer. 'Maybe I should ask Edward about Divination when I see him next. If those bones of his can predict the future, maybe I can, too.'
Nothing of note happened the rest of the day. The friend group did a bit of studying, and Harry decided to try and get a few other people to join them. Besides Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan, Justin Finch-Fletchley and Ernie Macmillan from Hufflepuff along with Terry Boot were invited along to spend time with Harry, Ron, and Neville, while Hermione, Hannah, and Susan had girl time with their counterparts in the other houses.
From all accounts, it turned out pretty well. At the very least, Harry no longer felt slightly guilty for excluding his fellow First Years from the circle of friends.
'I wonder if they'll join us for the hijinks in the future?' Harry couldn't help but wonder as they gathered in the Great Hall for a nice Sunday breakfast.
"Did you hear? Malfoy nearly got attacked by something in the Forbidden Forest last night!" Dean excitedly said to the other Gryffindor students at the table the next morning.
"Yeah, it had something to do with the unicorn attacks!" Seamus chattered eagerly, his accent coming in strong as his emotions rushed ahead.
"Wait, what?" Harry exclaimed, bewildered, a fork full of baked beans pausing halfway to his mouth. "Why was Draco in the forest in the first place?"
"Unicorn attacks?" Ron uttered. "But unicorns don't attack people! They run away!"
"No, I mean, it seems somebody has been attacking unicorns!" Seamus replied. "I heard it from Terry Boot in Ravenclaw, who heard it from Justin and Ernie in Hufflepuff, who overheard Professor Sprout discussing it with the other heads of house!"
"As for why the little Malfoy was there, it seems that was his punishment for being caught out past curfew the other night," Dean continued.
"That's…" Harry uttered, trying to come up with a word to define how stupid that was. "They made a student investigate a monster in the Forbidden Forest that was attacking other creatures within it?"
"I heard Hagrid was with him," Dean said.
"And his giant dog, Fang!" Seamus added.
"That dog's not that giant," Ron muttered under his breath.
"Fangs a total coward," Harry piped up before Dean or Seamus could wonder what Ron had meant. "And isn't the point of the forest that it is forbidden? As in, stay away from it? It's in the name, for crying out loud!"
"It does seem very reckless to have any student accompanying Hagrid on a monster hunt, no matter how safe it might seem," Hermione agreed. "I really don't think staying out past curfew warrants like that of punishment, either."
"Yeah, it's really weird," Padma agreed. "Why do you think it happened?"
"What if Lucius Malfoy finds out?" Lavender wondered. "He's on the school board! No way he'd let that happen!"
"Gran's also on the school board, and she says Lucius has been trying to get Hagrid fired for years," Neville said softly. "If Draco complains, it could become a whole thing."
"Do you think he will?" Harry asked in concern. He shot a curious glance over at the Slytherin table, trying to see what Draco might have been thinking.
Unlike how he normally acted, that morning Draco was very quiet and subdued, silently eating a bowl of porridge. Crabbe and Goyle were sitting closer to him than usual, and the Slytherins as a whole seemed oddly nervous.
'Looks like one of their own nearly being gutted by a unicorn-eating monster seems to have shaken their aura of invincibility,' Harry noted with interest.
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