Back at Hogwarts, the familiar castle felt comforting—but the homework certainly didn't. After a long holiday, half the young witches and wizards stared at their textbooks like they were written in Mermish. It took nearly two weeks before the "post-break brain fog" finally lifted, and Madam Pince had been so busy during that time she practically hovered across the library aisles.
Lynn split his time between two things: refining his little business with the Weasley twins, and pushing forward with his own experimental research. Whether he ended up creating a wand or something more… unconventional, he needed to master the fusion of magical materials. That sort of proficiency only came from endless practice.
Harry—Harrie, in this telling—was equally busy, darting up and down the castle like a charmed Snitch. She even managed to sneak into the Slytherin common room and escape intact. When the little snakes saw someone wearing Gryffindor robes stroll straight through their entrance, half of them nearly shed their skins in terror.
The last time a Gryffindor had walked into the Slytherin common room without starting a duel?
You had to go all the way back to the days of Phineas Nigellus Black—Hogwarts' most notoriously disliked headmaster. During his tenure the four houses were, shockingly, unusually united.
Well… united in how much they disliked him.
He wasn't just a biased Slytherin sympathizer—he stuffed that house with every unqualified pure-blood child he could find. Even the ones whose parents had married a little too close to the family tree and had the intellectual acuity of a mountain troll—he let them all in.
If it weren't for the Founders' enchanted artifacts—the Quill of Acceptance and the Book of Admittance—Merlin knows how many children would've been misled into darkness during those years. The wizarding world might've produced more Obscurials like tragedies waiting to happen.
Considering Queen Victoria was reigning at the time, and the Muggle world was chaotic as well, Hogwarts entered one of its darkest reputational spirals. The school's image collapsed faster than a broken dam.
Britain truly was… gifted in producing disasters.
Thankfully, Harrie made it out of the Slytherin den safely, or Gryffindor and Slytherin would've reenacted another house war.
Bright, kind, pretty, and with a voice as sweet as treacle fudge, Harrie was adored in Gryffindor. The snow outside was beginning to thaw, though that treacherous wet-cold was somehow even worse than midwinter.
Lynn had just wrapped himself in a fur cloak and was heading toward the Room of Requirement when Harrie suddenly hopped into his path.
"Finally caught you!"
Hands on her hips, she glared at him like an angry puffskein.
"Lynn, did you forget something very important?"
"Important…" He thought for a moment, then clapped his forehead.
"Hagrid!"
Harrie nodded sharply. The only thing she'd obsess over this much was unraveling the injustice in Hagrid's past.
"We agreed we'd investigate what really happened back then! But after that day you just… did nothing! Talked big and vanished!"
Harrie was genuinely upset. She and Cho had spent weeks interviewing anyone or anything in Hogwarts that might have known the truth—students, ghosts, portraits. But learning what happened wasn't enough for her. Harrie wanted to clear Hagrid's name. She wanted justice.
"So what did you find out?" Lynn asked gently.
Harrie inhaled, her voice steady but intense.
"You know the rumor—that the Chamber of Secrets was opened fifty years ago, a Muggle-born girl was found dead in a third-floor bathroom, and Hagrid was accused because he was raising an Acromantula as a pet. But the Ministry had no evidence, and thanks to Dumbledore's vouching, he wasn't sent to Azkaban. They still snapped his wand, though."
"And that girl… was Moaning Myrtle?"
"You—WHAT? How do you know that?!" Harrie nearly choked.
She and Cho had spent ages piecing things together! "I never even saw you ask anyone!"
"Well, you didn't ask the kitchen elves."
Lynn shrugged. Sure, he already knew the general story—but he needed an excuse. He had casually chatted with a house-elf while grabbing a late-night snack, and the elf had eagerly spilled the entire tale.
"You could've told me!" Harrie puffed up like an offended kitten. "Cho and I worked so hard to find everything!"
"You two needed the sense of accomplishment." Lynn chuckled and patted her head. "But more importantly—knowing what happened isn't the same as proving it. Without hard evidence, nothing changes."
"Then what do we do?" Harrie asked, frustrated. "There has to be something!"
"Unless we get our hands on a time machine one day," Lynn said lightly, "go back fifty years, and catch the real culprit ourselves."
"That's impossible! Magic can't send people into the past like that!"
"Well, we already have Time-Turners. A full time machine… who knows?"
He didn't actually expect one, but hoping cost nothing.
"If we don't get a time machine, then we wait. One day we might find a witness or evidence. I have a feeling."
"You say that like you can see the future." Harrie puffed her cheeks.
"Maybe I have hidden seer potential."
He reached out to poke her cheek, but she grabbed his hand.
"Either way—we need to ask Hagrid directly. Maybe he knows something he's never had a chance to say."
"Let's grab Cho and go see him together!"
Harrie dragged him straight to Ravenclaw Tower. She pulled the bronze eagle knocker, and a melodic female voice recited:
"I am the black child of the white father.
I am a wingless bird that flies upwards.
At birth I make all who touch me weep,
But once born, I vanish into the air."
Harrie was about to think it through, but Lynn just tugged her forward.
"The door isn't open!" she yelped—
—and then blinked. They were inside.
"Why would we answer a question that dumb?" Lynn asked.
"That's… offensive…" Harrie mumbled. "Is it dumb?"
"It's smoke. If it asked me 'What game gives you a hundred free pulls just for logging in,' I'd respect it more."
Harrie had no idea what he was talking about.
While Harrie fetched Cho from the girls' dormitory (boys couldn't go up there), Lynn browsed the small Ravenclaw library. Despite being smaller than the main Hogwarts library, it still had thousands of books—and some rare ones the main library didn't. Ravenclaws often donated family heirlooms or niche texts.
Lynn even spotted someone's entire family genealogy shoved into a shelf.
Five minutes later, Harrie appeared with Cho.
But when they stepped outside, the entrance door vanished into the wall.
"Oh no…" Harrie groaned, staring at the long spiral staircase.
"It's fine." Lynn extended his hands. "Give me your hands."
"What for?"
"Jumping, of course."
"Wait—"
Too late.
Lynn pulled them over the railing and dropped.
They plunged through the open central shaft of the staircase. Even though both girls were skilled Quidditch players accustomed to high-speed dives, the sudden free-fall still made them scream. But after only a second or two—
Thump.
They landed safely on solid floor.
"Faster than stairs, yeah?"
Still shaking, the girls punched his arm—both missing as he teleported away with an infuriating grin.
"LYNN YOU MENACE!"
Laughing and chasing him all the way outside, the girls finally reached Hagrid's hut. The area around the stone house was strangely free of snow, and the warmth radiating through the door was intense.
"I don't remember Hagrid being sensitive to cold," Harrie muttered. "Why is his house a furnace?"
"Because Hagrid is—well—you'll see."
"That wasn't even a funny joke."
She knocked.
"Hagrid! We're here! What are you doing in there?"
Inside came a loud clatter—clearly panicked—and after a long moment the door creaked open.
"H'lo! Er—shouldn't you lot be in class?"
"It's the weekend, Hagrid."
"Oh—oh! Right!" He laughed awkwardly. "Er—something you needed?"
"You're not inviting us in?" Harrie frowned, suspicious. "Feeling guilty about something?"
"I—"
He wilted, sighed, and stepped aside.
"Alright, come in."
The inside of the hut felt like stepping into a blazing cauldron. The fire roared, and Harrie peeled off her cloak within seconds, already sweating.
Hagrid, wrapped in his usual heavy coat, was perfectly comfortable.
"I—" he began—
But Lynn beat him to it.
"Hagrid! You picked up a DRAGON?!"
Hagrid blinked.
"A dragon? No—this here's jus' a dragon egg—"
"Oh no! Did a mother dragon lay it in the Forbidden Forest and then abandon it? Terrible parenting!"
"It's an egg—" Hagrid tried again. "A Norwegian Ridgeback—"
"A poor baby dragon all alone in the forest! Surrounded by neighbors like Mountain Trolls, Manticores, and short-tempered Graphorns that chase wizards on sight—danger everywhere!"
"Wha—"
"Even Ministry wizards wouldn't go near that. Dragons aren't easy to retrieve unless you want to die horribly."
"But it's an egg, Lynn! I won it in a card game—"
"Oh! So it wasn't abandoned by a mommy dragon—it was dumped by poachers who couldn't handle it? How tragic!"
Hagrid stared, lost.
"So you found it in the forest, right? And it wouldn't leave? And you built a little nest for it deep in the woods where only you could get close?"
Hagrid hesitated.
"That… sounds… right? Right, doesn't it?"
He blinked his huge eyes.
"I suppose I did find it there. And it must've already built a nest! And refused to leave!"
"Yes," Lynn said firmly. "Exactly."
Hagrid slowly nodded, face brightening.
"This little fella must've thought a Mountain Troll was its mum… lived right next door…"
Then he beamed.
"I PICKED UP A DRAGON! Aye—that's right—I picked up a dragon! An' it refuses to leave!"
---
please vote and keep reading...
patr*** ilham20