Fox
“Hermione, did you bring Crookshanks with you?” Harry asked.
“No? Why?” She stopped helping Ron set up their picnic to see what Harry was doing.
Harry stared at the bush where he thought he saw his friend’s cat. He definitely saw a flash of orange fur.
Hermione cast felium revelio but there was no cat.
“See if it was a dog!” Ron called from the picnic blanket, his mouth half full of food.
“An orange dog, Ron?” Hermione rolled her eyes.
“It could be!” he insisted. “Lure it out with food!” He threw a partially eaten sausage toward them.
Hermione wanted to tell Ron not to feed the wild animals but it was too late.
An adorable, bright orange, little fox scurried out from under the bush to grab the sausage.
“That’s not a cat,” Hermione whispered, as if her voice at full volume would suddenly scare it off.
“Do you think we can keep it?” Harry asked.
Hermione shook her head. “Professor McGonnagal would kill us!”
Ron threw something else from the picnic basket at the bush. “She doesn’t have to know. It could be a Gryffindor secret.”
Yes. A Gryffindor secret.
The three of them watched the fox grab this second piece of food before disappearing again into the bush.
“Maybe Hagrid could take him?” Harry suggested. “Hagrid loves animals.”
“Maybe,” Hermione agreed.
If Harry and Ron hadn’t figured out by now that Ginny was an animagus, well, she wasn’t going to tell them.
The fox, definitely Ginny, ran out from the bush straight for their blanket. She scared Ron into dropping his bottle of butterbeer and made off with their whole dessert, running toward the castle.
“Should warn someone about the fox?” Ron cast a spell to cleaned the spilled drink.
Harry and Hermione were both laughing hysterically.
“What’s funny?” Ron asked.
Hermione shook her head. If Ginny didn’t tell him, she wouldn’t.
But Harry said, “it’s like the kids show ‘Swiper no swiping! Swiper no swiping!’”