That afternoon, Harry and the other three went to visit Hagrid by the hunting grounds, as they had agreed from the start. They had originally planned to go the previous weekend, but it had rained for two days then, making it inconvenient to leave the Castle.
The weather was lovely today. For once, there had been no rain all day, making it just right for a visit.
Hagrid had recently been trying to breed a new magical creature, but his attempts kept failing. Harry and his friends were going to watch the fun and offer a few terrible suggestions along the way-though they were completely unaware of that themselves.
To their surprise, however, the door of Hagrid's Hut opened just as they arrived outside it.
Harry instantly pulled Ron and the others around to the other side of the hut, because the moment the door opened, he had caught a glimpse of pale purple.
There was only one person at school who liked wearing robes in such a flashy color: Gilderoy Lockhart.
Although two weeks had passed, Lockhart did not seem to have quite as much of an ulterior motive as Harry had previously suspected-he really did spend all his energy keeping his admirers happy. Harry felt he did not have enough energy left to do anything bad.
Still, Harry had no liking for him.
The man simply loved showing off too much, and he especially liked dragging Harry into it.
Every time he saw Harry, he would grab him and jabber away. Harry was thoroughly sick of it.
Worst of all, whenever this happened, Colin Creevey would miraculously appear out of nowhere, then snap away with his camera, which had supposedly been modified by older students-Harry strongly suspected the twin brothers-to take moving photographs.
Harry did not actually mind