Oleandra slipped and skidded on the slick grass that blanketed the slope leading from the castle down to Professor Hagrid's hut. In the distance, the twin Bell Towers chimed, marking the start of fourth period— she had made it to Care of Magical Creatures just in time!
"Good news, ev'ryone!" Professor Hagrid called out to his class, beaming at Oleandra as she arrived. "The ministry finally accepted me request fer a class two special breedin' licence, so yeh can finally get ter work!"
The announcement was accompanied by a chorus of groans, but Professor Hagrid continued speaking, undeterred. The man seemed driven, if nothing else…
"This here's a list o' acceptable hybrids," Professor Hagrid continued, slapping the piece of parchment stapled onto the wall of his house. "So, i'll jus leave tha' righ' here fer yeh ter read..."
The group of students— mostly comprised of Slytherins— gingerly made their way across the pumpkin patch to read the notice posted on the hut's wall. The soil was strewn with piles of Hippogriff manure, which Professor Hagrid had spread around in generous quantities to nourish the cucurbits destined for the Hallowe'en Feast…
"I don't suppose there's any room for flexibility, is there?" Oleandra asked Professor Hagrid as she scanned the list of permissible hybrids. "Seems rather… tame, don't you think?"
None of the crossbreeds on the approved list exceeded a double 'X' danger rating.
In fact, most required a Flobberworm— an 'X'-rated creature— as one of the two parents, which truly went to show just how reluctant the Ministry was to grant exceptions to the Ban on Experimental Breeding of 1965.
To put things into perspective, Flobberworms are so harmless that just touching them too much was enough to kill them. By comparison, Doxies— whose greatest threat to humanity was their droppings, which could only be accidentally ingested by the truly brain-damaged— were rated triple 'X,'— just like the mighty Cornish Pixies, who had got the best of the great Gilderoy Lockhart, once upon a time.
"I thought so too," sighed Professor Hagrid. "But it's the most the Ministry was willing ter give me, even after I mentioned yeh were one o' me students…"
"You used my name to convince them!?" said Oleandra, aghast.
To be clear, none of this hybridisation business was her idea— it was all Professor Hagrid's! After having spent an entire year caring for Blast-Ended Skrewts and almost having been torn to shreds by Lethifold hybrid, Oleandra wasn't especially fond of crossbreeds. The only reason she even entertained the idea of creating a Lethifold hybrid was to even the footing with her stalker of a Dusk-Elf!
"I told 'em, 'the hero o' the ministry is in me class, an' she needs me knowhow ter help Harry beat You-Know-Who!'" said Professor Hagrid proudly. "They gave me the licence not long after that."
After that, Oleandra spent the rest of the class rounding up Flobberworms and trying to coax them into mating with various 'X' or double 'X' rated creatures, and even some mundane farm animals.
"Oi, Nott, let go o' tha' rooster!" roared Professor Hagrid, just as the class was about to end. "And yeh, Malfoy, drop that toad! Don't think I don't know what yer up ter! Trying ter make another monster under me nose!?"
Powerful hybrids didn't necessarily originate from quadruple or quintuple 'X'-rated parents. Basilisks, just like the one Harry had killed, came from humble origins: their kind would hatch from an ordinary snake egg incubated by a rooster— as opposed to Cockatrices, which would hatch from a rooster's egg incubated by a toad.
(The difficult part wasn't convincing the rooster to sit on the egg, but rather to lay one!)
"We were just playing around, Sir," said Theo innocently. "Weren't we, Draco?"
Oleandra looked up from her Flobberworm, which was either playing dead or had already shuffled off this mortal coil from excessive handling. Either way, it was stubbornly refusing to mate.
"It's no big deal," said Malfoy malevolently. "Besides, we've yet to learn something useful from this dumb class, so it's not as if anything was going to happen."
Given that Voldemort had once framed Hagrid and his pet Acromantula for the murder of Myrtle Warren, which he had committed as the Heir of Slytherin, Professor Hagrid was understandably furious at even a mock attempt to create another creature that possessed such dangerous Mystic Eyes.
"And with Aragog in such a state!" howled Professor Hagrid. "Are yeh tryin' ter kill 'im before his time!?"
A shocked silence fell over the class— they had never seen Professor Hagrid bawling like a little baby before. It was strange, seeing this gigantic hulking man racked by sobs like this…
"Er…" said Mandy Brocklehurst, raising her hand. "Are we supposed to know who that is?"
Since Oleandra had never been to the Acromantulas' lair, she had never had the pleasure of meeting the giant spiders that lived in the depths of the Forbidden Forest. But if she had, she would have learned that all spiders flee in terror before Basilisks— right before she would have got eaten alive.
"What are yeh lot starin' at?" bellowed Professor Hagrid, just as the fifth bell began ringing. "Class dismissed!"
Oleandra supposed it might be a bad time to ask Professor Hagrid whether he'd kept samples of Cloak the Lethifold's tissues for her own hybridisation experiments, so she returned with the others to the castle for her last class of the day, double Potions.
The class went about as well as she could have expected.
Daphne was still the best Potioneer by far, followed closely by Harry, which was rather vexing, as it seemed like the skills that he'd demonstrated over the past two weeks hadn't just been a series of flukes.
Judging from the praises Professor Slughorn lavished onto him, it really seemed like he'd inherited his talent for brewing potions from his mother— it's just that his talent hadn't been allowed to shine before, back when Professor Snape had been the Potions teacher… or so Oleandra was told.
…
Exhausted from a long day of learning, Oleandra went straight to bed after dinner and her evening bath, falling asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow.
But when she opened her eyes again…
"Oh good, you're alive," said the mysterious young boy from the past, whose face was inches from hers. "…hang on, where did my coat go!? I could have sworn…"