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Aurora Areli
EVERYBODY GOT UP LATE on Boxing Day. The Gryffindor common room was much quieter than it had been lately, many yawns punctuating the lazy conversations.
When Harry, Ron, Hermione and I met up there that morning, it was clear that Ron and Hermione seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement not to discuss their argument. In fact, they were being quite friendly with each other, though oddly formal. They blatantly ignored the odd looks Harry and I gave them.
We didn't waste much time in telling Hermione about the conversation Ron had overheard between Madame Maxime and Hagrid, but Hermione didn't seem to find the news that Hagrid was a half-giant nearly as shocking as Ron and I did.
"Well, I thought he must be," she said, shrugging. "I knew he couldn't be pure giant, because they're about twenty feet tall. But honestly, all this hysteria about giants. They can't all be horrible . . . it's the same sort of prejudice that people have towards werewolves . . . it's just bigotry, isn't it?"
Ron looked as though he wanted to give her a scathing reply, but probably decided he didn't want another row, because he contented himself with shaking his head disbelievingly while Hermione wasn't looking.
With only a short amount of time left of the holidays, it was time to think of the homework we had neglected during the first week. I already had some of my homework done, because I knew I didn't want to have to do it all at once, which probably added to my lack of motivation. Everybody seemed to be feeling rather flat, now that Christmas was over — everybody except Harry, who only seemed to be growing more nervous.
He had told me that he had tried to figure out the golden egg whenever he could be alone in his dormitory. He had apparently listened to the wailing noise over and over again to try and figure out what it meant, even asking it questions and shaking it to see if anything would happen. Harry even admitted to throwing the egg across the room at one point.
"I know it was stupid, stop smiling like that," Harry groaned, leaning back into the sofa burying his face in his hands in embarrassment.
"I'm not smiling like anything," I said, reaching forward to pull his hands away.
I was definitely lying.
In a way, I couldn't blame Harry for throwing the egg. He hadn't gotten anywhere with it, and February the twenty-fourth looked a lot closer from this side of Christmas. There was always the hint that Cedric gave, but Harry had complained that it was much too vague, and that if Cedric had really wanted to help, he would have been a lot more explicit.
"I flat-out told him that the first task was dragons," Harry said. "'Take a bath' . . . what kind of advice is that?"
"Maybe you could just try it?" I suggested. "The worst thing that would happen is that you took a bath with a golden egg. It's not that much of a loss?"
