Hagrid was standing outside his hut, one hand on the collar of his enormous black boarhound, Fang. There were several open wooden crates on the ground at his feet, and Fang was whimpering and straining at his collar, apparently keen to investigate the contents more closely. As they drew nearer, an odd rattling noise reached their ears, punctuated by what sounded like minor explosions.
“Mornin’!” Hagrid said, grinning at Harry, Ron, and Hermione. “Be’er wait fer the Slytherins, they won’ want ter miss this—Blast-Ended Skrewts!”
“Come again?” said Ron.
Hagrid pointed down into the crates.
“Eurgh!” squealed Lavender Brown, jumping backward. “Eurgh” just about summed up the Blast-Ended Skrewts in Harry’s opinion. They looked like deformed, shell less lobsters, horribly pale and slimy looking, with legs sticking out in very odd places and no visible heads. There were about a hundred of them in each crate, each about six inches long, crawling over one another, bumping blindly into the sides of the boxes. They were giving off a very powerful smell of rotting fish. Every now and then, sparks would fly out of the end of a skrewt, and with a small phut, it would be propelled forward several inches.
“On’y jus’ hatched,” said Hagrid proudly, “so yeh’ll be able ter raise ’em yerselves! Thought we’d make a bit of a project of it!”
“And why would we want to raise them?” said a cold voice.
The Slytherins had arrived. The speaker was Draco Malfoy. Crabbe and Goyle were chuckling appreciatively at his words.
Hagrid looked stumped at the question.
“I mean, what do they do?” asked Malfoy. “What is the point of them?”
Hagrid opened his mouth, apparently thinking hard; there was a few seconds’ pause, then he said roughly, “Tha’s next lesson, Malfoy. Yer jus’ feedin’ ’em today. Now, yeh’ll wan’ ter try ’em on a few diff’rent things—I’ve never had ’em before, not sure what they’ll go fer—I got ant eggs an’ frog livers an’ a bit o’ grass snake—just try ’em out with a bit of each.”
“First pus and now this,” muttered Seamus.
Nothing but deep affection for Hagrid could have made Harry, Ron, and Hermione pick up squelchy handfuls of frog liver and lower them into the crates to tempt the Blast-Ended Skrewts. Harry couldn’t suppress the suspicion that the whole thing was entirely pointless, because the skrewts didn’t seem to have mouths.
“Ouch!” yelled Dean Thomas after about ten minutes. “It got me.” Hagrid hurried over to him, looking anxious.
“Its end exploded!” said Dean angrily, showing Hagrid a burn on his hand.
“Ah, yeah, that can happen when they blast off,” said Hagrid, nodding.
“Eurgh!” said Lavender Brown again. “Eurgh, Hagrid, what’s that pointy thing on it?”
“Ah, some of ’em have got stings,” said Hagrid enthusiastically (Lavender quickly withdrew her hand from the box). “I reckon they’re the males… The females’ve got sorta sucker things on their bellies… I think they might be ter suck blood.”
“Well, I can certainly see why we’re trying to keep them alive,” said Malfoy sarcastically. “Who wouldn’t want pets that can burn, sting, and bite all at once?”
“Just because they’re not very pretty, it doesn’t mean they’re not useful,” Hermione snapped. “Dragon blood’s amazingly magical, but you wouldn’t want a dragon for a pet, would you?”
Harry and Ron grinned at Hagrid, who gave them a furtive smile from behind his bushy beard. Hagrid would have liked nothing better than a pet dragon, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione knew only too well—he had owned one for a brief period during their first year, a vicious Norwegian Ridgeback by the name of Norbert. Hagrid simply loved monstrous creatures, the more lethal, the better.
“Well, at least the skrewts are small,” said Ron as they made their way back up to the castle for lunch an hour later.
“They are now,” said Hermione in an exasperated voice, “but once Hagrid’s found out what they eat, I expect they’ll be six feet long.”
“Well, that won’t matter if they turn out to cure seasickness or something, will it?” said Ron, grinning slyly at her.
“You know perfectly well I only said that to shut Malfoy up,” said Hermione. “As a matter of fact I think he’s right. The best thing to do would be to stamp on the lot of them before they start attacking us all.”
They sat down at the Gryffindor table and helped themselves to lamb chops and potatoes. Hermione began to eat so fast that Harry and Ron stared at her.
“Er—is this the new stand on elf rights?” said Ron. “You’re going to make yourself puke instead?”
“No,” said Hermione, with as much dignity as she could muster with her mouth bulging with sprouts. “I just want to get to the library.”
“What?” said Ron in disbelief. “Hermione—it’s the first day back! We haven’t even got homework yet!”
Hermione shrugged and continued to shovel down her food as though she had not eaten for days. Then she leapt to her feet, said, “See you at dinner!” and departed at high speed.
When the bell rang to signal the start of afternoon lessons, Harry and Ron set off for North Tower where, at the top of a tightly spiraling staircase, a silver stepladder led to a circular trapdoor in the ceiling, and the room where Professor Trelawney lived.
The familiar sweet perfume spreading from the fire met their nostrils as they emerged at the top of the stepladder. As ever, the curtains were all closed; the circular room was bathed in a dim reddish light cast by the many lamps, which were all draped with scarves and shawls. Harry and Ron walked through the mass of occupied chintz chairs and poufs that cluttered the room, and sat down at the same small circular table.
“Good day,” said the misty voice of Professor Trelawney right behind Harry, making him jump.
A very thin woman with enormous glasses that made her eyes appear far too large for her face, Professor Trelawney was peering down at Harry with the tragic expression she always wore whenever she saw him. The usual large amount of beads, chains, and bangles glittered upon her person in the firelight.
“You are preoccupied, my dear,” she said mournfully to Harry. “My inner eye sees past your brave face to the troubled soul within. And I regret to say that your worries are not baseless. I see difficult times ahead for you, alas… most difficult… I fear the thing you dread will indeed come to pass… and perhaps sooner than you think…”
Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. Ron rolled his eyes at Harry, who looked stonily back. Professor Trelawney swept past them and seated herself in a large winged armchair before the fire, facing the class. Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, who deeply admired Professor Trelawney, were sitting on poufs very close to her.
“My dears, it is time for us to consider the stars,” she said. “The movements of the planets and the mysterious portents they reveal only to those who understand the steps of the celestial dance. Human destiny may be deciphered by the planetary rays, which intermingle…”
But Harry’s thoughts had drifted. The perfumed fire always made him feel sleepy and dull witted, and Professor Trelawney’s rambling talks on fortune telling never held him exactly spellbound—though he couldn’t help thinking about what she had just said to him. “I fear the thing you dread will indeed come to pass…”
But Hermione was right, Harry thought irritably, Professor Trelawney really was an old fraud. He wasn’t dreading anything at the moment at all… well, unless you counted his fears that Sirius had been caught… but what did Professor Trelawney know? He had long since come to the conclusion that her brand of fortunetelling was really no more than lucky guesswork and a spooky manner.
Except, of course, for that time at the end of last term, when she had made the prediction about Voldemort rising again… and Dumbledore himself had said that he thought that trance had been genuine, when Harry had described it to him.