Harry had a very absurd dream.
He dreamed that Draco and the Slytherin players were all riding fire dragons in the match. The pitch was quite a spectacle, with fire-breathing dragons chasing the Gryffindor players all over the place.
Then he woke up and found Ron getting up too.
"Toilet?" Ron asked.
"Yeah," Harry replied. The two went to the Washroom together. On their way back, Harry stopped beside his bed and poured himself some water from the silver jug there.
Seeing Harry drinking, Ron naturally came over and had a sip too.
Then Ron suddenly pointed out the window. "Harry, look... that's..."
Harry had already seen it too.
Out on the distant Quidditch pitch, moonlight bathed the grass in a silvery glow. An animal was running across it.
Ron's eyesight was fairly good, and Harry's had been exceptionally good ever since Madam Pomfrey treated him last year. Both could therefore make out that it was Hermione's big cat, Crookshanks.
But Crookshanks was not what had caught their attention.
Although Ron disliked Crookshanks because he was Scabbers's killer-a claim even Hermione had provisionally accepted by now-Ron did not harbor any particularly strong animosity toward him.
Ron had told Hermione from the start that catching mice was a cat's nature, and the cat could not be blamed for it. He had been angry with Hermione more because of her insistence on denying it at the time and her dismissive attitude toward Scabbers's death.
Of course, a few other little things had piled up too, which was why neither had spoken to the other for over two months.
What had really caught their attention was where Crookshanks was running. Beside the woodland at the edge of the Quidditch pitch, an enormous black dog slowly emerged and crossed the lawn.
Once the dog