'Right,' said Ron, who was twirling his wand nervously in his fingers. 'Er – aren't there – aren't there supposed to be werewolves in the Forest?' he added, as they took their usual places at the back of Lockhart's classroom.

Preferring not to answer that question, Harry said, 'There are good things in there, too. The centaurs are all right, and the unicorns.'

'Yes,' answered Amelia. 'Loup Garou, an old-world werewolf possibly the first type of werewolf ever. Unlike bitten werewolves, Loup Garou have their sanity in-tacked during the full moon and are unlikely to attack a human without good reasoning to do so. Their tribe is very old and lives deep within the forest. Dumbledore told me he had visited them before. Nice people.' Amelia said all of this as though she didn't just say six facts about them in one breath.

Ron had never been into the Forbidden Forest before. Harry had entered it only once, and had hoped never to do so again. Harry was sure that Amelia would never want to go back there after what happened in their first year, but to his surprise, she seemed rather happy about the idea.

Lockhart bounded into the room and the class stared at him. Every other teacher in the place was looking grimmer than usual, but Lockhart appeared nothing short of buoyant.

'Come now,' he cried, beaming around him, 'why all these long faces?'

People swapped exasperated looks, but nobody answered. Well almost nobody.

'About six people not including a cat have been turned to stone and the bloody jackass that did it is still on the loose,' Lockhart ignored Amelia.

'Don't you people realise,' said Lockhart, speaking slowly, as though they were all a bit dim, 'the danger has passed! The culprit has been taken away.'

'Says who?' said Dean Thomas loudly.

'My dear young man, the Minister of Magic wouldn't have taken Hagrid if he hadn't been one hundred per cent sure that he was guilty,' said Lockhart, in the tone of someone explaining that one and one made two.

'Oh, yes he would,' said Ron and Amelia, even more loudly than Dean.

'I flatter myself I know a touch more about Hagrid's arrest than you do, Mr Weasley,' said Lockhart in a self-satisfied tone.

Amelia blew a raspberry.

Ron started to say that he didn't think so, somehow, but stopped in mid-sentence when Harry kicked him hard under the desk.

'We weren't there, remember?' Harry muttered.

But Lockhart's disgusting cheeriness, his hints that he had always thought Hagrid was no good, his confidence that the whole business was now at an end, irritated Harry so much that he yearned to throw Gadding with Ghouls right in Lockhart's stupid face. Instead he contented himself with scrawling a note to Ron: 'Let's do it tonight.'

Ron read the message, swallowed hard and looked sideways at the empty seat usually filled by Hermione. The sight seemed to stiffen his resolve, and he nodded.