Harry Potter 1 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

HP 1 - Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NORBERT THE NORWEGIAN RIDGEBACK
Q uirrell, however, must have been braver than they’d thought. In the weeks
that  followed  he  did  seem  to  be  getting  paler  and  thinner,  but  it  didn’t  look  as
though he’d cracked yet.
           Every  time  they  passed  the  third-floor  corridor,  Harry,  Ron,  and
Hermione  would  press  their  ears  to  the  door  to  check  that  Fluffy  was  still
growling  inside.  Snape  was  sweeping  about  in  his  usual  bad  temper,  which
surely meant that the Stone was still safe. Whenever Harry passed Quirrell these
days  he  gave  him  an  encouraging  sort  of  smile,  and  Ron  had  started  telling
people off for laughing at Quirrell’s stutter.
           Hermione,  however,  had  more  on  her  mind  than  the  Sorcerer’s  Stone.
She had started drawing up study schedules and color coding all her notes. Harry
and Ron wouldn’t have minded, but she kept nagging them to do the same.
“Hermione, the exams are ages away.”
“Ten weeks,” Hermione snapped. “That’s not ages, that’s like a second to
Nicolas Flamel.”
           “But  we’re  not  six  hundred  years  old,”  Ron  reminded  her.  “Anyway,
what are you studying for, you already know it’s an A.”
“What am I studying for? Are you crazy? You realize we need to pass
these exams to get into the second year? They’re very important, I should have
started studying a month ago, I don’t know what’s gotten into me.…”
Unfortunately, the teachers seemed to be thinking along the same lines as
Hermione.  They  piled  so  much  homework  on  them  that  the  Easter  holidays
weren’t  nearly  as  much  fun  as  the  Christmas  ones.  It  was  hard  to  relax  with
Hermione  next  to  you  reciting  the  twelve  uses  of  dragon’s  blood  or  practicing
wand movements. Moaning and yawning, Harry and Ron spent most of their free
time in the library with her, trying to get through all their extra work.
“I’ll never remember this,” Ron burst out one afternoon, throwing down
his quill and looking longingly out of the library window. It was the first really
fine  day  they’d  had  in  months.  The  sky  was  a  clear,  forget-me-not  blue,  and
there was a feeling in the air of summer coming.
Harry, who was looking up “Dittany” in One Thousand Magical Herbs
and Fungi, didn’t look up until he heard Ron say, “Hagrid! What are you doing

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in the library?”
Hagrid shuffled into view, hiding something behind his back. He looked
very out of place in his moleskin overcoat.
           “Jus’  lookin’,”  he  said,  in  a  shifty  voice  that  got  their  interest  at  once.
“An’  what’re  you  lot  up  ter?”  He  looked  suddenly  suspicious.  “Yer  not  still
lookin’ fer Nicolas Flamel, are yeh?”
“Oh, we found out who he is ages ago,” said Ron impressively. “And we
know what that dog’s guarding, it’s a Sorcerer’s St—”
“Shhhh!” Hagrid looked around quickly to see if anyone was listening.
“Don’ go shoutin’ about it, what’s the matter with yeh?”
“There are a few things we wanted to ask you, as a matter of fact,” said
Harry, “about what’s guarding the Stone apart from Fluffy —”
“SHHHH!” said Hagrid again. “Listen — come an’ see me later, I’m not
promisin’  I’ll  tell  yeh  anythin’,  mind,  but  don’  go  rabbitin’  about  it  in  here,
students aren’ s’pposed ter know. They’ll think I’ve told yeh —”
“See you later, then,” said Harry.
Hagrid shuffled off.
“What was he hiding behind his back?” said Hermione thoughtfully.
“Do you think it had anything to do with the Stone?”
“I’m going to see what section he was in,” said Ron, who’d had enough
of  working.  He  came  back  a  minute  later  with  a  pile  of  books  in  his  arms  and
slammed them down on the table.
“Dragons!” he whispered. “Hagrid was looking up stuff about dragons!
Look  at  these:  Dragon  Species  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland;  From  Egg  to
Inferno, A Dragon Keeper’s Guide.”
“Hagrid’s always wanted a dragon, he told me so the first time I ever met
him, “ said Harry.
“But it’s against our laws,” said Ron. “Dragon breeding was outlawed by
the  Warlocks’  Convention  of  1709,  everyone  knows  that.  It’s  hard  to  stop
Muggles  from  noticing  us  if  we’re  keeping  dragons  in  the  back  garden  —
anyway,  you  can’t  tame  dragons,  it’s  dangerous.  You  should  see  the  burns
Charlie’s got off wild ones in Romania.”
“But there aren’t wild dragons in Britain?” said Harry.
“Of course there are,” said Ron. “Common Welsh Green and Hebridean
Blacks.  The  Ministry  of  Magic  has  a  job  hushing  them  up,  I  can  tell  you.  Our
kind have to keep putting spells on Muggles who’ve spotted them, to make them
forget.”
“So what on earth’s Hagrid up to?” said Hermione.

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When they knocked on the door of the gamekeeper’s hut an hour later, they
were surprised to see that all the curtains were closed. Hagrid called “Who is it?”
before he let them in, and then shut the door quickly behind them.
It was stifling hot inside. Even though it was such a warm day, there was
a  blazing  fire  in  the  grate.  Hagrid  made  them  tea  and  offered  them  stoat
sandwiches, which they refused.
“So — yeh wanted to ask me somethin’?”
“Yes,” said Harry. There was no point beating around the bush. “We were
wondering if you could tell us what’s guarding the Sorcerer’s Stone apart from
Fluffy.”
Hagrid frowned at him.
“O’ course I can’t,“ he said. “Number one, I don’ know meself. Number
two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn’ tell yeh if I could. That Stone’s
here fer a good reason. It was almost stolen outta Gringotts — I s’ppose yeh’ve
worked that out an’ all? Beats me how yeh even know abou’ Fluffy.”
“Oh, come on, Hagrid, you might not want to tell us, but you do know,
you  know  everything  that  goes  on  round  here,”  said  Hermione  in  a  warm,
flattering voice. Hagrid’s beard twitched and they could tell he was smiling. “We
only  wondered  who  had  done  the  guarding,  really.”  Hermione  went  on.  “We
wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you.”
           Hagrid’s  chest  swelled  at  these  last  words.  Harry  and  Ron  beamed  at
Hermione.
           “Well,  I  don’  s’pose  it  could  hurt  ter  tell  yeh  that…let’s  see…he
borrowed  Fluffy  from  me…then  some  o’  the  teachers  did  enchantments…
Professor Sprout — Professor Flitwick — Professor McGonagall —” he ticked
them  off  on  his  fingers,  “Professor  Quirrell  —  an’  Dumbledore  himself  did
somethin’,  o’  course.  Hang  on,  I’ve  forgotten  someone.  Oh  yeah,  Professor
Snape.”
“Snape?”
“Yeah — yer not still on abou’ that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect
the Stone, he’s not about ter steal it.”
           Harry  knew  Ron  and  Hermione  were  thinking  the  same  as  he  was.  If
Snape  had  been  in  on  protecting  the  Stone,  it  must  have  been  easy  to  find  out
how the other teachers had guarded it. He probably knew everything — except,
it seemed, Quirrell’s spell and how to get past Fluffy.
           “You’re  the  only  one  who  knows  how  to  get  past  Fluffy.  aren’t  you,
Hagrid?” said Harry anxiously. “And you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you? Not
even one of the teachers?”
“Not a soul knows except me an’ Dumbledore,” said Hagrid proudly.

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“Well, that’s something,” Harry muttered to the others. “Hagrid, can we
have a window open? I’m boiling.”
“Can’t, Harry, sorry,” said Hagrid. Harry noticed him glance at the fire.
Harry looked at it, too.
“Hagrid — what’s that?”
But he already knew what it was. In the very heart of the fire, underneath
the kettle, was a huge, black egg.
“Ah,” said Hagrid, fiddling nervously with his beard, “That’s — er…”
“Where did you get it, Hagrid?” said Ron, crouching over the fire to get a
closer look at the egg. “It must’ve cost you a fortune.”
“Won it,” said Hagrid. “Las’ night. I was down in the village havin’ a few
drinks an’ got into a game o’ cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter
get rid of it, ter be honest.”
“But what are you going to do with it when it’s hatched?” said Hermione.
           “Well,  I’ve  bin  doin’  some  readin’,”  said  Hagrid,  pulling  a  large  book
from  under  his  pillow.  “Got  this  outta  the  library  —  Dragon  Breeding  for
Pleasure and Profit — it’s a bit outta date, o’ course, but it’s all in here. Keep the
egg  in  the  fire,  ‘cause  their  mothers  breathe  on  I  em,  see,  an’  when  it  hatches,
feed it on a bucket o’ brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An’ see
here  —  how  ter  recognize  diff’rent  eggs  —  what  I  got  there’s  a  Norwegian
Ridgeback. They’re rare, them.”
He looked very pleased with himself, but Hermione didn’t.
“Hagrid, you live in a wooden house,” she said.
But Hagrid wasn’t listening. He was humming merrily as he stoked the
fire.
So  now  they  had  something  else  to  worry  about:  what  might  happen  to
Hagrid if anyone found out he was hiding an illegal dragon in his hut.
“Wonder what it’s like to have a peaceful life,” Ron sighed, as evening
after evening they  struggled through all  the extra homework  they were getting.
Hermione  had  now  started  making  study  schedules  for  Harry  and  Ron,  too.  It
was driving them nuts.
           Then,  one  breakfast  time,  Hedwig  brought  Harry  another  note  from
Hagrid. He had written only two words: It’s hatching.
Ron wanted to skip Herbology and go straight down to the hut. Hermione
wouldn’t hear of it.
“Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon
hatching?”
           “We’ve  got  lessons,  we’ll  get  into  trouble,  and  that’s  nothing  to  what

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Hagrid’s going to be in when someone finds out what he’s doing—”
“Shut up!” Harry whispered.
Malfoy was only a few feet away and he had stopped dead to listen. How
much had he heard? Harry didn’t like the look on Malfoy’s face at all.
           Ron  and  Hermione  argued  all  the  way  to  Herbology  and  in  the  end,
Hermione  agreed  to  run  down  to  Hagrid’s  with  the  other  two  during  morning
break. When the bell sounded from the castle at the end of their lesson, the three
of  them  dropped  their  trowels  at  once  and  hurried  through  the  grounds  to  the
edge of the forest. Hagrid greeted them, looking flushed and excited.
“It’s nearly out.” He ushered them inside.
The egg was lying on the table. There were deep cracks in it. Something
was moving inside; a funny clicking noise was coming from it.
They all drew their chairs up to the table and watched with bated breath.
All at once there was a scraping noise and the egg split open. The baby
dragon flopped onto the table. It wasn’t exactly pretty; Harry thought it looked
like  a  crumpled,  black  umbrella.  Its  spiny  wings  were  huge  compared  to  its
skinny  jet  body,  it  had  a  long  snout  with  wide  nostrils,  the  stubs  of  horns  and
bulging, orange eyes.
It sneezed. A couple of sparks flew out of its snout.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Hagrid murmured. He reached out a hand to stroke
the dragon’s head. It snapped at his fingers, showing pointed fangs.
“Bless him, look, he knows his mommy!” said Hagrid.
           “Hagrid,”  said  Hermione,  “how  fast  do  Norwegian  Ridgebacks  grow,
exactly?”
Hagrid was about to answer when the color suddenly drained from his
face — he leapt to his feet and ran to the window.
“What’s the matter?”
           “Someone  was  lookin’  through  the  gap  in  the  curtains  —  it’s  a  kid  —
he’s runnin’ back up ter the school.”
Harry bolted to the door and looked out. Even at a distance there was no
mistaking him.
Malfoy had seen the dragon.
Something  about  the  smile  lurking  on  Malfoy’s  face  during  the  next  week
made  Harry,  Ron,  and  Hermione  very  nervous.  They  spent  most  of  their  free
time in Hagrid’s darkened hut, trying to reason with him.
“Just let him go,” Harry urged. “Set him free.”
“I can’t,” said Hagrid. “He’s too little. He’d die.”
They looked at the dragon. It had grown three times in length in just a

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week.  Smoke  kept  furling  out  of  its  nostrils.  Hagrid  hadn’t  been  doing  his
gamekeeping  duties  because  the  dragon  was  keeping  him  so  busy.  There  were
empty brandy bottles and chicken feathers all over the floor.
           “I’ve  decided  to  call  him  Norbert,”  said  Hagrid,  looking  at  the  dragon
with  misty  eyes.  “He  really  knows  me  now,  watch.  Norbert!  Norbert!  Where’s
Mommy?”
“He’s lost his marbles,” Ron muttered in Harry’s ear.
“Hagrid,” said Harry loudly, “give it two weeks and Norbert’s going to
be as long as your house. Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment.”
Hagrid bit his lip.
“I — I know I can’t keep him forever, but I can’t jus’ dump him, I can’t.”
Harry suddenly turned to Ron. “Charlie.” he said.
“You’re losing it, too,” said Ron. “I’m Ron, remember?”
“No — Charlie — your brother, Charlie. In Romania. Studying dragons.
We  could  send  Norbert  to  him.  Charlie  can  take  care  of  him  and  then  put  him
back in the wild!”
“Brilliant!” said Ron. “How about it, Hagrid?”
And in the end, Hagrid agreed that they could send an owl to Charlie to
ask him.
The  following  week  dragged  by.  Wednesday  night  found  Hermione  and
Harry  sitting  alone  in  the  common  room,  long  after  everyone  else  had  gone  to
bed. The clock on the wall had just chimed midnight when the portrait hole burst
open.  Ron  appeared  out  of  nowhere  as  he  pulled  off  Harry’s  invisibility  cloak.
He  had  been  down  at  Hagrid’s  hut,  helping  him  feed  Norbert,  who  was  now
eating dead rats by the crate.
           “It  bit  me!”  he  said,  showing  them  his  hand,  which  was  wrapped  in  a
bloody handkerchief. “I’m not going to be able to hold a quill for a week. I tell
you,  that  dragon’s  the  most  horrible  animal  I’ve  ever  met,  but  the  way  Hagrid
goes on about it, you’d think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit. When it bit me he
told me off for frightening it. And when I left, he was singing it a lullaby.”
There was a tap on the dark window.
“It’s Hedwig!” said Harry, hurrying to let her in. “She’ll have Charlie’s
answer!”
The three of them put their heads together to read the note.
Dear Ron,
How  are  you?  Thanks  for  the  letter  —  I’d  be  glad  to  take  the  Norwegian

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Ridgeback, but it won’t be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to
send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week.
Trouble is, they mustn’t be seen carrying an illegal dragon.
Could  you  get  the  Ridgeback  up  the  tallest  tower  at  midnight  on  Saturday?
They can meet you there and take him away while it’s still dark.
Send me an answer as soon as possible.
Love,
Charlie
They looked at one another.
           “We’ve  got  the  invisibility  cloak,”  said  Harry.  “It  shouldn’t  be  too
difficult – I think the cloaks big enough to cover two of us and Norbert.”
           It  was  a  mark  of  how  bad  the  last  week  had  been  that  the  other  two
agreed with him. Anything to get rid of Norbert — and Malfoy.
There  was  a  hitch.  By  the  next  morning,  Ron’s  bitten  hand  had  swollen  to
twice  its  usual  size.  He  didn’t  know  whether  it  was  safe  to  go  to  Madam
Pomfrey — would she recognize a dragon bite? By the afternoon, though, he had
no  choice.  The  cut  had  turned  a  nasty  shade  of  green.  It  looked  as  if  Norbert’s
fangs were poisonous.
Harry and Hermione rushed up to the hospital wing at the end of the day
to find Ron in a terrible state in bed.
“It’s not just my hand,” he whispered, “although that feels like it’s about
to fall off. Malfoy told Madam Pomfrey he wanted to borrow one of my books
so he could come and have a good laugh at me. He kept threatening to tell her
what really bit me — I’ve told her it was a dog, but I don’t think she believes me
— I shouldn’t have hit him at the Quidditch match, that’s why he’s doing this.”
Harry and Hermione tried to calm Ron down.
“It’ll all be over at midnight on Saturday,” said Hermione, but this didn’t
soothe Ron at all. On the contrary, he sat bolt upright and broke into a sweat.
“Midnight on Saturday!” he said in a hoarse voice. “Oh no oh no — I’ve
just remembered — Charlie’s letter was in that book Malfoy took, he’s going to
know we’re getting rid of Norbert.”
           Harry  and  Hermione  didn’t  get  a  chance  to  answer.  Madam  Pomfrey
came over at that moment and made them leave, saying Ron needed sleep.
“It’s too late to change the plan now,” Harry told Hermione. “We haven’t got
time to send Charlie another owl, and this could be our only chance to get rid of

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Norbert.  We’ll  have  to  risk  it.  And  we  have  got  the  invisibility  cloak,  Malfoy
doesn’t know about that.”
           They  found  Fang,  the  boarhound,  sitting  outside  with  a  bandaged  tail
when they went to tell Hagrid, who opened a window to talk to them.
“I won’t let you in,” he puffed. “Norbert’s at a tricky stage — nothin’ I
can’t handle.”
           When  they  told  him  about  Charlie’s  letter,  his  eyes  filled  with  tears,
although that might have been because Norbert had just bitten him on the leg.
“Aargh! It’s all right, he only got my boot — jus’ playin’ — he’s only a
baby, after all.”
The baby banged its tail on the wall, making the windows rattle. Harry
and Hermione walked back to the castle feeling Saturday couldn’t come quickly
enough.
They  would  have  felt  sorry  for  Hagrid  when  the  time  came  for  him  to  say
good-bye to Norbert if they hadn’t been so worried about what they had to do. It
was a very dark, cloudy night, and they were a bit late arriving at Hagrid’s hut
because they’d had to wait for Peeves to get out of their way in the entrance hall,
where he’d been playing tennis against the wall. Hagrid had Norbert packed and
ready in a large crate.
“He’s got lots o’ rats an’ some brandy fer the journey,” said Hagrid in a
muffled voice. “An’ I’ve packed his teddy bear in case he gets lonely.”
           From  inside  the  crate  came  ripping  noises  that  sounded  to  Harry  as
though the teddy was having his head torn off.
“Bye-bye, Norbert!” Hagrid sobbed, as Harry and Hermione covered the
crate with the invisibility cloak and stepped underneath it themselves. “Mommy
will never forget you!”
           How  they  managed  to  get  the  crate  back  up  to  the  castle,  they  never
knew. Midnight ticked nearer as they heaved Norbert up the marble staircase in
the entrance hall and along the dark corridors. UP another staircase, then another
– even one of Harry’s shortcuts didn’t make the work much easier.
           “Nearly  there!”  Harry  panted  as  they  reached  the  corridor  beneath  the
tallest tower.
           Then  a  sudden  movement  ahead  of  them  made  them  almost  drop  the
crate. Forgetting that they were already invisible, they shrank into the shadows,
staring  at  the  dark  outlines  of  two  people  grappling  with  each  other  ten  feet
away. A lamp flared.
Professor McGonagall, in a tartan bathrobe and a hair net, had Malfoy by
the ear.

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“Detention!” she shouted. “And twenty points from Slytherin! Wandering
around in the middle of the night, how dare you —”
“You don’t understand, Professor. Harry Potter’s coming — he’s got a
dragon!”
“What utter rubbish! How dare you tell such lies! Come on — I shall see
Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!”
The steep spiral staircase up to the top of the tower seemed the easiest
thing in the world after that. Not until they’d stepped out into the cold night air
did they throw off the cloak, glad to be able to breathe properly again. Hermione
did a sort of jig.
“Malfoy’s got detention! I could sing!”
“Don’t,” Harry advised her.
           Chuckling  about  Malfoy,  they  waited,  Norbert  thrashing  about  in  his
crate. About ten minutes later, four broomsticks came swooping down out of the
darkness.
Charlie’s friends were a cheery lot. They showed Harry and Hermione
the harness they’d rigged up, so they could suspend Norbert between them. They
all  helped  buckle  Norbert  safely  into  it  and  then  Harry  and  Hermione  shook
hands with the others and thanked them very much.
At last, Norbert was going…going…gone.
They slipped back down the spiral staircase, their hearts as light as their
hands, now that Norbert was off them. No more dragon — Malfoy in detention
— what could spoil their happiness?
The answer to that was waiting at the foot of the stairs. As they stepped
into the corridor, Filch’s face loomed suddenly out of the darkness.
“Well, well, well,” he whispered, “we are in trouble.”
They’d left the invisibility cloak on top of the tower.

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