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"...And we saw a hag who could swallow swords and a group of Veela who did this dance with fiery hoops and..." Hermione was telling Ron and Harry all about her trip to Bulgaria over the summer, which included a trip to a circus type event.  They were, of course, on the Hogwarts Express, returning for their fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  She turned around to face Ron, the sunlight from the large window caught something around her neck and nearly blinded poor Ron.

"Ow!" he said closing his eyes quickly "What is that thing?"

"A Carestone." Hermione said, reaching up to touch the highly polished white circle. Viktor gave it to me.  It's supposed to turn bright red if the person giving it to you truly loves you..."  Hermione Granger saw Ron Weasley's eyes open again, wider than before as he looked at her, eager to hear the outcome of it.  Harry even looked up from the postcard he had been staring at for at least an hour to see what she had to say.

Hermione turned a particularly tickled shade of pink, but quickly shook it off.  "The most it got was kind of mauve..."

Ron's expression fell.  He'd been hoping to hear that it had turned bloody so that he could chide his very easily embarrassed friend.

"...Viktor seemed kind of disappointed, so I put it on a chain to show him how much I liked it.  It's rather pretty, my mum thought it was opal...Oh! And we saw a man selling werewolf cubs.  It made me think of Hagrid.  Speaking of Hagrid, has he sent you an owl lately, Harry?"

"Yeah, he sent me one a few nights ago, actually, said he had some big news for us and a surprise.  I suppose we'll get to ask him about it when we arrive."  Harry pushed his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose as they'd fallen from the glancing down he'd been doing for the majority of the trip.

"I wonder what it could be..." Hermione

"Not another dragon, I hope." Ron well remembered Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback and was in no hurry to go through that entire ordeal again.

"I doubt it's another dragon, I don't think Hagrid would get another one." Rubeus Hagrid had been one of Harry's first true friends.  He'd been the one to bring him away from the Dursleys and put him on his way to Hogwarts.

"It's probably an 'interesting creature,' though." Harry conceded.  

Hagrid was a giant of a man with a very large heart and a huge love of what he called 'interesting creatures' which meant anything from purely innocent unicorn to sensitive and dangerous hippograffs.  He was often getting into hot water with the Ministry of Magic by keeping outlawed creatures as pets.

"What have you got there, Harry?" Hermione asked the question she'd been itching to since they boarded the train and Harry had become almost sullen.

"A postcard from Cho Chang.  I sent her a letter telling her how sorry I was about Cedric and everything.  She sent me a postcard back, wishing me a happy birthday.  I'm not sure what that means."

Neither Ron nor Hermione could give Harry an answer.  They knew that the events of last year had taken their toll on Harry who had begun to wonder if he was truly cursed with the misfortune of having horrible things happen wherever we went.

He'd asked Hermione that very question he'd sent via owl and she'd considered returning her answer in a Howler, thinking it was entirely foolish to think that way.  

He was Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.  He'd been the one to knock You-Know-Who off of his pillar and therefore couldn't possibly be a damning figure.  She had said these things and mentioned that she wouldn't be surprised if there was a card of him in a Chocolate Frog box someplace.  

Harry had appreciated her confidence and kind words, but he wasn't entirely convinced that things wouldn't have been better for everyone else if he'd never come to Hogwarts.

Just then, the door to the compartment they were sitting in slid open and Ginny Weasley stepped in.

"Ron, Your Mother must have put these in my bag by mistake." She laid a container of Bertie Bott's All Flavour Beans on the seat next to Ron.

"I think she meant them for you, Gin."

"Kindly tell her that I don't want them." Ginny said sharply and turned around as quickly as she'd come in.

"What was that all about? Hermione raised her eyebrows at the recent events.

Ron sighed.  "You're so lucky you didn't come to stay with us this summer, Hermione.  Mum caught Ginny sending owls back and forth with a Third Year from Ravenclaw.  She nearly had kittens over it."

"Goodness." Hermione shook her head slightly "There's nothing really wrong with having a friend, though, what was the problem?"

"He was telling her to sneak off to visit him and how to use the Floo Powder to get directly to his house.  Mum says she's too young for that sort of thing and put a charm on all the windows so that they scream if you open them now."

"Yes, I quite agree, too young, especially with a Third Year..." Hermione trailed off, she knew what was coming when Ron cut her off.

"But Viktor Krum is four years older than you."

So she knew how to reply.

"Yes, but I wasn't sneaking around to see him.  My parents are a bit confused by the whole thing, but they didn't tell me I couldn't see him."

Ron had to admit she had a point there and so he dropped it and turned his attention to Harry.

"Ask Harry, he was there for the tail end of it.  By then, of course, it was quiet 'cause Ginny had stopped speaking to Mum altogether.  For the first few days you'd have thought the Braden Banshee was living in our house."

Harry nodded.  He'd witnessed the ire of Mrs. Weasley before, but never quite to the extent he had during his stay.  The battle lines had been clearly drawn on the matter.  Even Mr. Weasley had nearly been hexed with boils when he tried to comfort his youngest child by telling her that if it was meant to be, it would be.

"Who is this boy?" Hermione wondered if she'd ever encountered him before.

"Patrick Paulk.  That's not even the worst of it.  Mum sent him a Howler telling him to stay away from Ginny or she'd send an owl to his parents.  Gin is so embarrassed. She thinks he'll never speak to her again."

"Poor Ginny," Hermione thought, even if she did agree that Mrs. Weasley had a right to be angry.  "Oh, speaking of hexes, has anyone seen Malfoy and his two flunkies?"

Neither Harry nor Ron had so much as laid eyes on Draco Malfoy or his two neckless goons Crabbe and Goyle since the last time they'd been on this train and had left the three of them covered in hex marks in a crumpled heap, but they knew all too soon they'd be seeing the three of them with a vengeance.

"I wonder who is going to be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year." Ron thought aloud.

"You didn't hear?" Hermione seemed almost shocked.

"Hear what?" Harry finally decided to participate in the conversation.

"Viktor told me he heard Snape had the job and they've brought in a new Potions teacher."

Harry wasn't sure, but he thought that he had felt the distinct chill of fear dance down his spine.  "You're joking..." he insisted.

Ron groaned.  "We will surely die."

"Maybe it won't be so bad." Hermione tried to be an optimist "Maybe his disposition will have improved since this is the job he's wanted all along."

"Maybe he'll defend us against himself and go up in a cloud of smoke." Ron mused.

"Honestly." Hermione sighed "You'll never get anywhere if you think the worst and besides, it was only a rumour, it might not even be true."

Ron had no reason to doubt that the rumour was true, though.  Professor Snape had had set his cap for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position for years now and perhaps he'd proved himself to Dumbledore enough to get it this year.  Ron really didn't want to admit it, but Snape had a way of not being quite as evil as they always assumed.

By the time the train reached its destination they had always changed into their robes and looked like perfectly presentable Hogwarts students as opposed to the regular teenagers they had appeared to be before.

Ron's neatly cut hair was the deep colour of new copper and complimented his hair complexion very nicely.  Hermione could be described in one word: Cinnamon.  Her spice coloured hair hung down in long, almost unmanageable tresses that bounced when she walked and tangled in the wind.  Her eyes were perhaps her best, if only good, feature.  They were the same interesting colour as her hair and reflected a wizened state of being.  Ron said that came from all of the books she read, scanning them for information that she locked away in the steel trap she called a mind.  Harry also had untamable hair, but it wasn't nearly as long as Hermione's and didn't curl at all, but rather gun down, covered his forehead and sometimes stuck out in odd places. He had very curious eyes that couldn't possibly show all that he had seen in his short life.  He also had the scar that everyone knew him for, but that couldn't really be called a distinguishing mark as he'd learned over the summer that Zonko's had taken to carrying do-it-yourself kits designed to resemble the scars and markings of famous witches and wizards everywhere.  He'd also heard a rumour that some boy near Bristol had taken to impersonating him in order to gain free butterbeer.

It didn't really matter, Harry wasn't just the scar, just as Ron wasn't just another red-haired Weasley and Hermione wasn't just an amount of memorized facts.

They emptied out onto the station platform and looked for the familiar figure of Hagrid, which was sure to be perfectly prominent as Hagrid was at least twice as tall as a normal man and several times as wide.  

Ron quickly pointed him out, ushering First Years to the front of the line that would walk to the boats that would take them directly to Hogwarts.  

"Hagrid!" Harry called out and caught the giant's eye.

"Harry...'an Ron...'an Hermione. Good ter see ya."

"What was the news you had for us?" Hermione broke in.  She wasted no time getting to the point.

"Oh, right.  Yer see, I..." Hagrid began, but was immediately distracted by two First Year boys who were shoving one another. "Hey! Yer'll not be doin' that now. Come along now. Evry'one foller me."

Ron, Hermione and Harry went to join the other Fifth Year students in the procession.  Neville Longbottom had shot up at least three inches.  Pansy Parkinson was wearing a pair of ridiculous pomegranate barrettes that she said were mushrooms from the Black Forest.

"They came out of her back garden at home." Ron rolled his eyes and said as Pansy bragged about how this particular variety of mushroom makes you most desirable to the one you want.  Everyone knew she'd been carrying a torch for Draco Malfoy for longer than they'd been at Hogwarts.  Coincidentally, Hermione noted that they hadn't seen hide nor hair of Malfoy or his entourage yet.

It wasn't until they heard a shrill shriek come out of Pansy that they saw the person they generally thought of when the subject of sworn enemies rolled around.

"Draco! You didn't return any of my owls! You naughty boy! I should be very angry with you!" Pansy spoke in bursts of exclamations.

Draco Malfoy had never been particularly sunny looking, but now he looked even more withdrawn.  His face was paler than usual, but his eyes didn't look as beady as they did on average.  They seemed rather glazed over, as if he could see everything around him, but it didn't matter at all compared to whatever was going on inside of his head.  He dismissed Pansy's attention by simply turning his head and finding another spot in line.  He looked positively solemn, something they'd never seen from him.  Hermione had seen him bitter, sullen and smolderingly angry combined with downright cruel, but she'd never seen him appear to be so quiet, without even the slightest hint of plotting something.

Crabbe and Goyle moved when he did and looked as normal as they ever had; intimidating and thick.  It seemed that only Malfoy had changed and now he appeared smaller, not quite involved enough to be brooding.  Hermione couldn't help but feel that he was still threatening, but it seemed to be different from the threatening that had been before, the insults, the petty hexes, the tattling to Snape and McGonagall.

Their attention soon changed in unison to Neville Longbottom, who leaned over to whisper.  "I heard that he spent the summer learning all about the Dark Arts and it did something to him."

Harry remembered the way that Dark wizards always seemed to look different after they stepped onto the Dark side than they did before.  He thought of Sirius Black, his godfather, a man convicted to Azkaban for being a supporter of the Darkest of all Dark Wizards who had managed to escape the Dementors, creatures that could suck the soul right out of a person.  He thought about the change he'd noticed from the smiling man in his parents' wedding photographs to the hardened, hopeless man on the Daily Prophet's pages.  Malfoy did indeed fit Harry's idea of what a Dark wizard would look like, though he'd done that before this summer.  

"I heard he has been ill all summer and has just been allowed to go out today." That comment came from a dark-haired Hufflepuff Fourth Year.  "Look at the circles under his eyes."

Harry, Ron and Hermione could indeed see the pale grey crescents that accented Draco's eyes.  It looked as if he'd been staring at something for too long, something that made his vision blurry.  He looked the way Ron did before end of term finals, from all of the hours without sleep.

"Maybe that's why he was ill," Neville prodded in "from all of the Dark stuff."

"How was your summer, Neville?" Hermione changed the subject.

"It was great." Neville stated. "My grandmother got called away to a Gathering so I spent it with my Aunt Julep.  They aren't nearly as scary as my grandmother.  My Aunt even showed me how to calm down and not get so nervous. She's going to be taking over Potions this year and she said she'll try to put in a word for me with Snape. Did you know they were friends in school? You'd never know it to look at her, though. She said he was much nicer before You-Know-Who got really strong...just didn't know how to make friends well....It's a good thing too that she'll be there to help me, because I don't want to be the only Squib in my family. I'm going to study and apply myself this year and see if I can't get better...because they wouldn't have taken me if I didn't have the potential in me..." Neville continued rambling on until Ron interrupted him.

"So it is true?" Ron felt a gnawing pain in the pit of his stomach. "Snape is Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"That's what my aunt said...I got so nervous when she told me that I fainted, but maybe it won't be so bad...."

Harry smirked that the image of the boggart as Snape wearing a vulture atop his hat and carrying a red handbag, which was still fresh in his memory even though it had been at least two years before that Professor Lupin had showed them how to confuse a boggart.

Harry thought about Professor Lupin, one of the authors of his Marauder's Map, someone who had known his father and who just happened to be a werewolf.

For some reason this made him think of the Dursleys on Privet Drive, who would die of pure shock over a quarter of the things Harry had seen in five years.

The first order of business once they reached Hogwarts was Sorting.  Some of the First Years looked so nervous that Harry feared they'd be sick.  Not a way to start a feast at all.

Hermione was busy looking around the room for the Ravenclaw that could possibly be Patrick Paulk.

"That one, scruffy hair." Ron nodded towards a boy at the Ravenclaw table with a sallow complexion and corn coloured hair to match.  It was almost as if he'd been reading her mind.

Professor Dumbledore had made several announcements before dinner.  One of them was that Professor Snape was the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, the another was that Julep Longbottom, a whip-thin woman with hair that curled in long spirals would be teaching Potions.  There was of course the usual notice that the Dark Forest was off limits to students and that students found out of bed would be duly punished.  It wasn't until halfway through his lamb chop that Harry noticed Hagrid wasn't at the head table.  Surely he was still teaching Care of Magical Creatures, Dumbledore would have said something if he wasn't, but still, there was a prominently empty chair at the head table.

"I wonder where he is." Hermione had noticed too.  "Should we go and see him after dinner?"

Ron had no qualms so long as he could finish his pineapple pudding and so together they all set out towards Hagrid's cabin once the First Years had been led to the common rooms of their respective Houses.

Hermione was the first to notice that something seemed different, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it until Ron pointed out that there were flowers growing outside of the small house.

Someone had neatly planted marigolds on either side of the door into Hagrid's cabin and neatly stacked rocks around them.

Harry knocked on the door and within a moment Hagrid greeted them.

"I wos wonderin' if yer'd stop by tonigh'."

They could all see that something was indeed very different from the way Hagrid's cabin had been at the end of last year.  It seemed much cleaner, organised and brighter.

Hagrid pointed towards a china teapot and told them to help themselves to peppermint tea if they wanted.  None of them had ever seen true cups and saucers in Hagrid's home before and certainly never peppermint tea.

"How was your summer Hagrid?" Hermione wanted to know.

"Twer just fine, Hermione, an' yers?"

"I visited Viktor in Bulgaria...You told Harry you had a surprise for us..."  

Ron and Harry were both enjoying their tea too much to care that Hermione was cutting straight to the point again.

"Yeah, I gos' some big news.  I gos' married."

Hermione was sure she heard the sound of Ron choking on his own tongue as he suffered not to spit out his tea.

"You did what?" Hermione wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly.

"I gos' married. A month ago next week an' I jus' know yer'll love her."

Harry was the first to offer congratulations.  "That's great.  I'm sorry I missed it."

"I wanted ter invite ye' all but it weren't nothin' fancy an' I dinnit want to interrupt yer summer..."

"Hagrid, congratulations, I'm so happy for you." Hermione piped in as did Ron.

"Where is she?" Hermione looked around, it was obvious someone had completely redone Hagrid's home but she saw no sign of his wife.

"She terk Fang out fer a walk, she'll be back soon. I told her all abouts ye."

Ron noticed that was something else that was missing, the slobbering boarhound.

"How did you meet her?" Hermione asked.

"I found 'er," Hagrid said as if she were a stray unicorn.

"Where?"

"Diagon Alley, somehow she got there 'n didn't know how. Scared out her wits she was."

Hermione began to say that was impossible.  You couldn't find Diagon Alley unless you knew where to look, but she changed her mind, not wanting to hurt Hagrid's feelings or accuse this woman of being something she wasn't.

"So she's a Muggle?"

"Yeah, I brought her back here for Professor Dumbledore to put a Memory Charm on her so she'd forget Diagon Alley, but she was so nice and didn't seem like the type to go screaming to the Muggle papers that Professor Dumbledore said she could stay if she wanted and I wanted and so she did.

None of them could imagine the series of events Hagrid had described.  Certainly Albus Dumbledore wouldn't mind letting her stay at all, but Hermione was the first to point out that people like Professor Snape must have thrown a fit.

"They were't mos' welcomin' people in der world, tha's right, but she jus' charmed the devil outta them.  Scrubbed some floors fer Mr. Filch and took kippers to Mrs. Norris and he was sold on her after that.  An' she kin grow anythin', grew them mary-golds out front for Professor Snape and he's gos' no problem with her now."

Harry, Ron and Hermione were anxious to meet this miracle worker.

Just then the door swung open and Fang came trotting in and dripped slobber on Hermione's robe.

"Now Fang, that's not very polite, is it?" a crisp voice asked as it came from a woman walking through the door, banging her feet on the steps outside to shake mud from them.

"Betsy, this is Harry an' Ron an' Hermione." Hagrid stood up and extended an arm towards them.

Betsy looked nothing like the haggish person Hermione had been chiding herself for conjuring in her mind.

She was taller than the average woman, but dwarfed in size next to Hagrid.  Her hair was a lighter shade of red than Ron's and perhaps had more brown to it and her blue eyes were shockingly blue.  She had a sprinkle of freckles across her nose and smiled pleasantly.

"It is so nice to meet you, all of you.  Rubeus has told me many wonderful things about you three." She extended her hand to each of them in turn and offered them cake to go with their tea.

It was a soft spongy type of cake, a far cry from the treacle baked goods Hagrid usually prepared.

Hermione wanted to know where Betsy was from and if she had a last name.

"Killin, near Loch Tay...yes, it's Riddle, but I just go by Betsy, closest I will ever be to being Madonna."

"Who?" Ron asked.  He didn't care who she was or where she came from, the cake was delicious.

"Honestly, Ron." Hermione sighed and ignored his menacing shrug in her direction.

Before they left, after hearing with a bit more detail how Betsy and Hagrid had met and how she came to decide to stay at Hogwarts, Hagrid remembered he'd been unable to send Harry's birthday present via owl because all of the school owls had been preoccupied with some sort of official Hogwarts business.

Harry opened the carefully wrapped parcel to discover a blank journal with his name carefully tooled on the front cover in dainty gold letters.

He hugged Hagrid around the middle as best as he could and thanked him.  Hagrid had always been kind to him without any ulterior motive and that made Harry feel particularly warm to think about.

On their way back to the castle Hermione was not convinced "I don't understand how she could have found Diagon Alley by herself and how could they have just gotten married like that. There's something wrong here."

"What's wrong with it? It's not impossible that she found it, I'm sure Muggles have stumbled onto it loads of times before and Hagrid seems really happy and that cake was good." Ron put in his two cents.

"I agree," said Harry.  It was good to see his friend happy.  He'd seen a red flag pop up when she said her last name was Riddle, which was, of course, the birth name of Lord Voldemort, but he had soothed his mind by noting that Riddle was a very common Muggle name.  Besides, he had much bigger things to worry about.  Tomorrow was the first day of classes and he was sure Snape had something hideously difficult planned.