At breakfast the next morning, Draco looked as though he had seen a ghost when he spotted Harry and Ron. Of course, given how common ghosts were in the wizarding world, Draco probably looked a little more shocked than that.
"Well, if it isn't Draco the Coward, Low-Down Snitch, Mama's Boy Malfoy!" The moment Ron spotted Draco, he put on a smug look. "Looks like you and Filch had a lovely time together?"
Ron undoubtedly had nerves of steel.
Though the Three-Headed Dog had nearly scared him into wetting himself the night before, by the time he got up the next morning, he already thought it had been a wonderfully exciting adventure.
Harry felt a little that way too, but he hadn't recovered quite as quickly as Ron. At least he wasn't already planning to find a chance to go back for another look and take a photo while he was at it.
Still, if it was just a matter of teasing Draco and watching him look as though he had swallowed a stinkbug, Harry was more than happy to join in.
Of course, what interested Harry more at that moment was the Trapdoor beneath the Three-Headed Dog's feet-or rather, whatever the dog was guarding.
He was sixty or seventy percent sure that whatever lay beneath it was the thing Hagrid had taken out of Gringotts. He quietly mentioned this to Ron, who also thought it was quite likely, though neither of them could think what it might be.
"What could make a Dark wizard willing to break into Gringotts to steal it? There's a dragon down there! Moving it to Hogwarts wasn't enough-they even had to find a Three-Headed Dog to guard it."
Ron muttered this with some misgivings.
Harry's attention, however, had been caught by something else. "A dragon? What kind of dragon?"
Harry had heard Hagrid mention that there was a dragon beneath Gringotts. At the time, Hagrid had been enthusiastically talking about wanting to keep a dragon, while Harry had been leafing through his new purchases, so he hadn't paid much attention.
"What kind? I'm not too sure. Some people say it's a Ukrainian Ironbelly, and others say it's a Hebridean Black Dragon." Ron wasn't certain about that.
Dragons were highly advanced magical creatures. Of all their first-year textbooks, only the one for potions class touched on them-dragon blood was an important ingredient in certain potions.
Very little of the stuff was used. There was no helping it; it was far too expensive.
Besides that, when Harry had first chosen his Wand-or been chosen by it, as Mr. Ollivander put it-he had heard that parts taken from dragons were used inside Wands.
There were also the gloves on the list of required school supplies, which had to be made of dragon hide or a similar material.
Quite a few dragon-related things had appeared around him, but Harry had yet to see a whole dragon, so naturally he was curious.
The two of them talked about dragons for so long that they forgot all about the Three-Headed Dog and whatever it was guarding.
On Saturday morning, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw played a practice Quidditch match.
Since it was a practice match, there were no Seekers. Harry went on as a substitute Chaser, while Ron played Keeper.
Wood didn't play, instead observing Harry and Ron's performance from the sidelines.
Although Gryffindor got thoroughly thrashed, Wood was still very pleased. All three new players-Katie Bell, Harry, and Ron-had performed very well. At least, for first- and second-years playing in their first match, Wood found their performance more than satisfactory.
Harry had enjoyed himself immensely too. Though he hadn't spent long on the pitch, he had still worked up quite a sweat and was brimming with excitement.
"George, is Harry your new Chaser? He's pretty good." Roger Davies, Ravenclaw's Chaser, came over to the twins. Though he was asking them the question, his eyes remained fixed on Harry.
Harry didn't particularly like Roger Davies, because he was a pretty boy.
If Harry's looks could be described as pretty, then Roger Davies was handsome, in a distinctly boyish way. He had sharply defined features and was tall and slender.
Of course, Harry didn't dislike him just because he was a pretty boy. A large part of it was also that he had snatched the Quaffle out of Harry's hands several times during that day's practice match.
Sure, Harry would be playing Seeker in official matches. Sure, he had been riding a battered practice broomstick. Sure, there were all sorts of reasons-but having the ball stolen from him was still maddening.
"I'm not George, I'm Fred!" With a thoroughly unoriginal response, the twin declared that Roger had mistaken him for his brother. "Harry's just our reserve. Since it's a practice match, we thought we'd let him get a feel for things beforehand."
After several lectures from Wood and Angelina, the twins had finally developed some awareness that they should keep information about the team to themselves.
"Really?" Roger Davies looked skeptical.
"Yes, I really am Fred!" Fred-or so they would assume-said earnestly.
Roger: "..." Is that what I was bloody asking?
Over the next few days, Harry and Ron's lives were fairly peaceful. The weekend in particular was quite enjoyable, since they had finished most of their homework early-the little that remained hadn't been finished that night after all.
Although they had lost the practice match, all the team members had expressed high praise for the two of them.
The one slight change was that Hermione and Neville, who had encountered the Three-Headed Dog with them, seemed to be deliberately distancing themselves.
It wasn't quite so obvious with Neville; he simply didn't gravitate toward them as much as before. Harry reckoned the Three-Headed Dog really had frightened him. Something like that probably wasn't so easy to forget.
With Hermione, it was much more obvious: she simply ignored them. Even when Harry and Ron went out of their way to talk to her, she brushed them off with a few noncommittal noises before quickly leaving.
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