Orli finished reading and looked up at Ron and Harry. Both had their mouths hanging open, shocked and furious.
"Well, I reckon that puts an end to the oaf's teaching career," Malfoy said, his eyes glittering with malice. "Half-giant... I always thought he'd just had a bottle of Skele-Gro when he was little... The parents won't stand for this... They'll be worried he might eat their children, ha ha..."
"You—" Harry looked ready to punch him.
"Are you paying attention?" Professor Grubbly-Plank's voice cut through the tension, and everyone fell silent.
At lunchtime, they all craned their necks toward the staff table, but Hagrid was nowhere to be seen. So that evening, after dinner, the three of them left the castle once more, trudging across the snow-covered grounds toward Hagrid's hut. They knocked on the door and heard Fang's deep barking from within.
"Hagrid, it's us!" Harry shouted, pounding on the door. "Open up!"
There was no answer. They could hear Fang scratching at the door and whining softly, but the door remained firmly shut. They hammered away for over ten minutes. Ron even tried knocking on a window, but there was still no response—all the curtains were drawn tight.
"Why is he hiding from us?" Hermione asked as they finally gave up and headed back toward the school. "He can't possibly think we care that he's half-giant?"
But it seemed Hagrid did care very much indeed. For an entire week, there wasn't a trace of him. He didn't appear at the staff table during meals, and they never saw him performing his duties as gamekeeper around the grounds. Professor Grubbly-Plank continued substituting for Care of Magical Creatures. Malfoy seized every opportunity to make gloating, spiteful remarks—most of them nasty digs at Hagrid.
To avoid hexing him and losing Gryffindor points, the four of them simply walked to the very edge of the grounds, almost down to the Black Lake.
As they passed the Durmstrang ship moored on the water, they saw Viktor Krum emerge from the cabin onto the deck wearing nothing but swimming trunks. He looked impressively muscled as he nimbly climbed onto the ship's rail, spread his arms wide, and dove into the water with a tremendous splash.
"He's mad!" Harry said, watching Krum's dark head bobbing in the middle of the lake. "It's January—it must be absolutely freezing!"
"It's much colder where he comes from," Hermione replied. "I imagine he finds it quite warm here, actually."
"Yeah, but there's a giant squid in there," Ron said, though his tone held no concern whatsoever—if anything, he sounded almost hopeful something might happen. Hermione caught his tone and frowned.
"He's really quite nice, you know," Hermione said. "Even though he's from Durmstrang, he's nothing like what you two think. He told me he much prefers it here."
Ron said nothing. Ever since the Yule Ball, he hadn't mentioned Viktor Krum once. After Christmas, Orli had spotted a tiny arm beneath one of the cauldrons in their Potions hideaway—it looked suspiciously like it had been snapped off Ron's miniature Krum figurine in Bulgarian Quidditch robes. As for the fate of the rest of the model, Orli feared it had met a rather grisly end. But now wasn't the time to worry about that.
"Harry, you still haven't been to the prefects' bathroom, have you?" Orli asked.
"What? Oh..." Harry stammered.
"If someone isn't just showing off his muscles in the dead of winter..." Orli pointed toward the lake, "then I'm betting the second task has something to do with water. You'd better try Cedric's suggestion sooner rather than later."
~~~~❃❃~~~~~~~~❃❃~~~~
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