Vox Corpis [Harmione]

Chapter 55

After a fair bit of the late morning spent lobbing ideas back and forth on how they were to spend their day at Hogwarts (since anything academically productive was banned from even being discussed), the quartet ended up wandering the castle. It was the only thing they could settle on without someone being excluded.

But as it happened, just meandering through the school ended up being rather informative. They were able to do an improvised roll-call of the teachers and students who were staying over the Christmas holiday at Hogwarts. That was useful information. After everything Harry and Hermione had been through, they began to look at everything for how it could be considered useful information. Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Pomfrey were already confirmed presences within the familiar walls, but after walking around the halls they were able to add Snape, Flitwick, Hagrid, and Sprout to the list of professors spending their holiday at the school. Naturally, some were more welcome sights than others, but even knowing that Snape was there could end up being useful. Most of the professors they saw were passing figures, more apt to be in their private rooms or socializing with one another if not expected to be teaching, but the four friends did spend a couple of hours at Hagrid's visiting and bringing him to speed on everything that had happened in the past few days. The enormous groundskeeper was almost apoplectic about what had happened to Harry's family and he was downright aggrieved for the Grangers having to leave their homes for their own safety, but beyond that it was nice to sit down and chat with Hagrid.

Of the other students staying the Christmas holiday at Hogwarts, their own house seemed to be scantily represented, though that small number looked to be representative of the trend in each of the houses for each of the years. Whereas last Christmas most everyone had stayed at school because of the tournament, this year's Christmas crowd was dismally small. The corridors were largely empty, but it made keeping track of whom among their same house, same year was spending the holiday at Hogwarts much easier.

Of course, Hermione's roommate Lavender was there, and her decision to stay the Christmas holiday at the school became a lot clearer when it turned out Oliver Wood was at Hogwarts, too. Ginny, who had kept her ear pressed to the rumor mill far more than the trio, did say that the pair seemed to be getting pretty serious. Serious enough for both to sacrifice Christmas with their families so they could be together. Passing the library they spotted Ravenclaw Anthony Goldstein catching up on some recreational reading, and at lunch they saw Hannah Abbot sitting with some fellow Hufflepuffs, though Hufflepuffs in the year ahead of their own. Kevin Whitly waved at them once in the hallways, possibly on his way to the bath if the bundle under his arm should prove to be a towel and robe. No one was happy to see that Draco Malfoy was also at Hogwarts for the Christmas holiday, but on the upside there was no sign of his mentally challenged henchmen Crabbe and Goyle. That would have to make the Slytherin snob more bearable.

After lunch, while Ron and Ginny were unpacking their things, Harry and Hermione went up to the owlery to visit Hedwig, who was very happy to see Harry and gave his ear an affectionate nibble. The snowy owl even gave Hermione a little nip on the finger when Hermione reached out to stroke her soft breast feathers.

A stop at Dumbledore's office yielded no further information about the Death Eaters who had attacked the Dursleys and killed Dudley, and in fact the headmaster confessed he was skeptical that anything would be found. From all indications, the Death Eaters who left the Dursley house and family in such ruins had been too mindful of themselves to leave behind anything that might allow the ministry to track them back to their lord. There was still the possibility something would turn up that had escaped notice before, but Dumbledore didn't peg too much hope on that. Needless to say, Dumbledore had not been encouraged by the continued lack of fruitful reports from the Aurors on the site of the attack. It was disheartening, but not wholly unexpected. Voldemort had evaded capture for eleven years before he was bested by a special baby, and it was fair to assume that that incident had taught him a lesson or two on caution. Voldemort wasn't dangerous because he was stupid.