Harry finished reading and looked up at Ron, whose mouth was hanging open.

“How did she find out?” he whispered.

But that wasn’t what was bothering Harry.

“What d’you mean, ‘we all hate Hagrid’?” Harry spat at Malfoy. “What’s this rubbish about him”—he pointed at Crabbe—“getting a bad bite off a flobberworm? They haven’t even got teeth!”

Crabbe was sniggering, apparently very pleased with himself.

“Well, I think this should put an end to the oaf’s teaching career,” said Malfoy, his eyes glinting. “Half-giant . . . and there was me thinking he’d just swallowed a bottle of Skele-Gro when he was young . . . None of the mummies and daddies are going to like this at all . . . They’ll be worried he’ll eat their kids, ha, ha . . . ”

“You—”

“Are you paying attention over there?”

Professor Grubbly-Plank’s voice carried over to the boys; the girls were all clustered around the unicorn now, stroking it. Harry was so angry that the Daily Prophet article shook in his hands as he turned to stare unseeingly at the unicorn, whose many magical properties Professor Grubbly-Plank was now enumerating in a loud voice, so that the boys could hear too.

“I hope she stays, that woman!” said Parvati Patil when the lesson had ended and they were all heading back to the castle for lunch. “That’s more what I thought Care of Magical Creatures would be like . . . proper creatures like unicorns, not monsters . . . ”

“What about Hagrid?” Harry said angrily as they went up the steps.

“What about him?” said Parvati in a hard voice. “He can still be gamekeeper, can’t he?”

Parvati had been very cool toward Harry since the ball. He supposed that he ought to have paid her a bit more attention, but she seemed to have had a good time all the same. She was certainly telling anybody who would listen that she had made arrangements to meet the boy from Beauxbatons in Hogsmeade on the next weekend trip.

“That was a really good lesson,” said Hermione as they entered the Great Hall. “I didn’t know half the things Professor Grubbly-Plank told us about uni—”

“Look at this!” Harry snarled, and he shoved the Daily Prophet article under Hermione’s nose.

Hermione’s mouth fell open as she read. Her reaction was exactly the same as Ron’s.

“How did that horrible Skeeter woman find out? You don’t think Hagrid told her?”

“No,” said Harry, leading the way over to the Gryffindor table and throwing himself into a chair, furious. “He never even told us, did he? I reckon she was so mad he wouldn’t give her loads of horrible stuff about me, she went ferreting around to get him back.”

“Maybe she heard him telling Madame Maxime at the ball,” said Hermione quietly.

“We’d have seen her in the garden!” said Ron. “Anyway, she’s not supposed to come into school anymore, Hagrid said Dumbledore banned her . . . ”