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"Or was it only Crookshanks? Harry squinted, pressing his nose flat against the glass. Crookshanks seemed to have come to a halt. Harry was sure he could see something else moving in the shadow of the trees too.
And just then, it emerged — a gigantic, shaggy black dog, moving stealthily across the lawn, Crookshanks trotting at its side."
–Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
"Ron!" Harry hissed. "Ron! Wake up!"
"Huh?"
Harry heard the bedsprings creak as Ron rolled over in his four-poster, but he resisted the urge to glance over. Instead, he flattened his forehead against the window until his glasses nearly touched the pane, training his gaze on the cat and dog as they crept across Hogwarts' moonlit lawn toward the castle. "I need you to tell me if you can see something!"
As Ron mumbled a confused reply, the enormous dog veered abruptly to the right; Crookshanks kept pace by its side, bushy tail high in the air. Where were they going?
Harry scrambled onto the windowsill and leaned as far as he could to the left, looking diagonally downward to keep his eyes on the animals as they approached. They were prowling in a circle around the base of Gryffindor Tower, moving purposefully toward some spot that Harry could not guess. Harry could barely make out the figure of the black dog in the deep shadows of the castle, but with a Seeker's focus, he kept his gaze on the quivering silhouette of Crookshanks' bottlebrush tail until it passed out of his line of sight.
Harry climbed down from the window ledge and sank to the floor.
Where were the dog and Crookshanks going? What could this possibly mean?
He now felt with certainty that this was the same creature he'd seen in the stands during his disastrous Quidditch match against Hufflepuff. How many gigantic black dogs could possibly stalk the Hogwarts grounds? If Crookshanks could see the dog, too...if it wasn't a grim spectre at all, but only an unluckily large stray...then Professor Trelawney was wrong, Harry thought with faint relief. He had never been in danger at all...
But this didn't add up. Harry's stomach squirmed uncomfortably as he thought of the great, doglike shape he'd seen on Magnolia Crescent last August. Surely, a dog that lived on the Hogwarts grounds couldn't summer in Little Whinging — even setting the physical distance aside, Harry could not recall any such stray having ever been seen there in his twelve years living on Privet Drive. The neighbors would never have tolerated it. And Stan and Ernie hadn't seen the dog at all when they'd pulled up with the Knight Bus a few moments later... No, it was only Harry who had seen the strange, bearlike dog, following him all year, appearing just as catastrophe approached...
Harry, and now Crookshanks. Could cats see death omens? Unfogging the Future hadn't suggested so, but then again, Harry hadn't exactly read the textbook thoroughly...
And what were the dog and Crookshanks up to, anyway?
Ron was snoring again, but to Harry, sleep felt very far away. One thing seemed certain: if that dog turned up again at the Quidditch final tomorrow, and another disaster struck — dementors, nasty weather, even just a bad fall — Gryffindor would lose the match. Harry's team would lose the cup to Malfoy's, Wood would never achieve his dream, and, just as in first year, the loss would be entirely Harry's fault...
"Lumos," Harry whispered. Sleep wasn't coming, anyway. With a burst of resolve, he thought of his Invisibility Cloak, still hidden — unguarded — beneath the statue of the one-eyed witch.
Before he got on a broom tomorrow, Harry needed to know for certain whether or not he was truly marked for death. Pulling the Invisibility Cloak over his head, he slipped on his trainers, snuck past Ron's bed, and started out into the night.
It would have been easier if Lupin hadn't confiscated the Marauder's Map a few weeks before, but after sneaking past the security trolls snoring outside of the Fat Lady's portrait and narrowly escaping a close call with Filch — Harry hid behind a suit of armor, thankful that Mrs. Norris was nowhere in sight — he managed to tiptoe out of the castle's oaken doors, Invisibility Cloak in hand, and make his way out onto the grounds. The waxing moon was bright in the cloudless sky, bathing the grounds in silvery light. The night was bright enough that Harry did not need to cast a spell to be able to see.
The dog and Crookshanks had been headed around the back of Gryffindor Tower. Harry decided to start in that direction first, hoping that the animal pair hadn't switched directions in the half hour or so that it had taken for him to make his way outside. He hadn't thought about what he'd do if he couldn't find them again. It would hardly improve his flying to stay out all night searching...
A flash of doubt almost sent Harry back toward his room, but his determination to finally get an answer was stronger. He stayed the course, walking to the base of Gryffindor tower and — keeping about twenty feet back — starting in a wide circle around it, orienting toward the lake. His eyes darted about, searching for the quiver of a bottlebrush tail.
There! Harry's stomach lurched in trepidation. Once he spotted Crookshanks, it was quick work to locate the silhouette of the bearlike dog beside him. They skulked through the night, keeping close to the stone wall, blanketing themselves in shadow. Both animals fixed their eyes on the seam where the castle wall met the ground.
Omen or stray? From this distance, it was difficult to tell. Trying not to make a sound, Harry crept forward under the Cloak, squinting in the darkness.
The animals' behavior was odd. As Harry observed him, Crookshanks darted to a new spot about ten feet along the wall, then another, then another. At this last location, he paused to peer intently into a crack in the stone, swiping his paw with a strange focus.
The dog — which had stayed put, watching Crookshanks, throughout this unusual search —slunk forward. Crookshanks slipped back just as the dog took his place, sniffing intently at the base of the stone.
After a few moments, the dog paused its snuffling, and Crookshanks came forward to meow in its ear. The dog signaled with its head, and Crookshanks ran forward again, examining yet more fissures in the castle wall.
Harry watched in bemusement as Crookshanks and the dog repeated this process twice more, completing their circuit of Gryffindor Tower and moving on to examine the corner where the tower met the wall. If two humans had been behaving in this way, Uncle Vernon would have said that they were casing the place. Were Crookshanks and the dog looking for something, at the base of the castle?
...Could they be searching for a way in?
That made no sense, considering the dog's enormous size and Crookshanks's demonstrated ability to use the front door. But Harry was not yet convinced that this was an ordinary dog. If this really were the Grim, sent to prophesy Harry's doom, could it be scouting for a way to get to him? Perhaps spectral dogs could creep about like ghosts — perhaps Hogwarts had been enchanted to keep out malicious omens, the way that the front doors had been taught to recognize Sirius Black, and the dog was searching for a crack in the protections...
Walking as silently as he could, Harry snuck closer, squinting to see every detail. Once more, Crookshanks seemed to stand guard as the dog sniffed intently at a crevice between two stones. Harry racked his brain for possible clues. Were there any pawprints on the ground? Was that real black fur, or merely a shadowy illusion?
Abruptly, the dog stiffened.
After a moment, it straightened up — abandoning its examination of the castle wall — and sniffed the air. Harry froze. The dog whipped its head around, eyes roaming back and forth across the spot where Harry was standing.
It couldn't see him, but it could smell him.
The dog let out a low growl, and Harry was seized by a thrill of fear. The dog's body came up to his shoulders, and its yellow teeth — at least an inch long — were bared menacingly in his direction. Beside it, Crookshanks stalked forward, hissing.
Harry readied his hand on his wand.
The dog searched the night as Harry waited with bated breath, its narrowed eyes darting quickly from point to point. It sniffed the air again, then fixed its gaze directly on the place where Harry stood, invisible. A threatening rumble emanated from its chest.
As the dog sprung forward — to pounce? to run? — Harry tore off the Cloak, wand out. "Petrificus totalus!" he called.
At point-blank range, Harry's aim was true, but the dog reacted quickly. It flattened itself to the ground and rolled away from Harry, ducking the spell and coming back up to its feet, ready for another attack. It turned toward Harry, snarling — he raised his wand again—
The dog stopped cold.
Harry's hand was clenched tightly around his wand, but he hesitated. He and the dog — the portent that prowled his imagination; the lurking harbinger of death, of doom, that had haunted him all year — stared at one another beneath the silvery moon.
Harry searched its face. A strange intelligence gleamed in its gray eyes.
"Are you really a dog?" Harry breathed.
At first, it did not move. Then, warily, the dog settled back onto its haunches. Sitting up, it matched Harry for height. It tilted its head to the right, like a professor asking a question, and gazed intently at Harry's face.
"I saw you," Harry said, heart pounding against his ribs. "At the Quidditch match. You were in the stands." The dog watched him, unblinking. "But you were in Little Whinging, too, last summer." Crookshanks slunk over to the dog and wound itself around his legs, but the dog did not react. "That doesn't make sense."
A light breeze whistled through the Hogwarts turrets. Harry glanced toward the sound and away — and when he turned back to the dog, it remained motionless as a tombstone. Only the cat purring against its side and the wind rustling in its black fur suggested that the dog could be a living thing, that it might be a part of the world.
"My Divination professor said she saw a Grim in my teacup," he told the dog. "She says if I see a great black dog, it's a sign that I'm going to die. And when I saw you on Magnolia Crescent, I nearly got run over by the Knight Bus. When you came to the Quidditch match, the dementors showed up and I fell off my broom." Harry swallowed, trying to steady his voice. "Nobody else has seen you at all. Ron and Hermione haven't — it's just me." He squared his shoulders. "So, I want to know. Are you really a dog? Or am I going to die?"
The dog straightened its head, looking at Harry with a thoughtful expression. Then, moving gingerly, it bent to the ground and rolled onto its back. After a moment, it tilted its head backwards to meet Harry's eyes again, upside-down. It whined.
See that, Dudley, Aunt Marge had once said over tea. Ripper had been growling, and one of the smaller dogs had turned over to show its belly, four paws pointed toward the sky. The little fellow is saying that he doesn't mean any harm. A proper dog would fight back, of course, but this runty one has no choice but to try for a peace offering.
A peace offering. Harry took a deep breath, not breaking eye contact with the dog, and nodded.
Slowly, the dog rolled back over onto its paws. It stayed in a crouch, shrinking into itself as best it could (which, considering its enormous size, was not very much). Eyeing Harry cautiously, it began to pad slowly toward him.
Harry tensed, trying to keep still. When it came up to him, the dog paused for a moment, then softly thumped the back of Harry's hand with its forehead.
Solid.
The dog, still crouching to make itself small, looked up at Harry with calm, questioning eyes. Harry hesitated, then reached out carefully to pat it on the head. The black fur felt rough, matted — and reassuringly corporeal. He scratched the dog behind the ears. It wagged its tail.
"Huh," said Harry, letting out a burst of breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "...Just a dog, then?"
The dog gave a quiet bark and began to wag its tail at a more playful pace. Harry laughed in relief, then wrinkled his nose. "You smell terrible," he told the dog. The dog whined again, ducking its head shamefacedly, but Harry felt much better — even when Petrified, he had never heard of a ghost starting to smell.
Suddenly exhausted with relief, Harry walked over to the stone wall of the castle and sat against it; the dog followed and laid down beside him. "So, Hermione was right? Divination is bunk after all?" he asked. "I feel a little stupid now."
The dog stuck out its tongue in a canine grin. Harry patted it absentmindedly as he looked out across the grounds. In the distance, the tall Quidditch hoops glinted in the moonlight.
"It's really lucky you're not an omen," Harry told the dog, "Because Fred and George said that Wood was ready to drown himself in the shower when we lost the Hufflepuff game. You might have doomed half the Quidditch team." The dog wagged its tail again and made a wheezing sound, almost as though it were laughing. "Think that's funny, do you?" Harry said, shaking his head. "The Quidditch final is tomorrow, you know. We can't afford anything to go wrong if we're going to win Gryffindor the cup."
The dog quirked its head, looking up at him with interest. Harry frowned. Up close, it seemed embarrassingly obvious that the dog was just a stray — and in a stray poor shape, at that. Its matted fur was dirty and tangled with burs. Harry noticed, too, that despite its large size, the dog was unnervingly skinny; as he ran his hand along its back, he could feel the sharp ridge of its spine and the stiff protrusion of ribs beneath its skin.
"Are you hungry?" he asked the dog. It paused, looking at him, and then let out a quiet bark. "Do you always come out at night? I have the Quidditch game tomorrow, but I might be able to sneak out again before the end of term and bring you some food."
The dog sat up and tilted its head, as if in consideration. It examined Harry's face. "I'm not supposed to leave the castle after dark," he told it, "but I have an Invisibility Cloak, so it wouldn't be too much trouble—"
A sudden yowl split the night. Crookshanks — who had long since lost interest in Harry and the dog, strutting away to continue his creeping search along the castle wall — was hissing and spitting about forty feet away, swiping at something along the ground.
The dog leapt to its feet, running toward Crookshanks with alarming speed. It pounced — chasing what, Harry couldn't fathom — then growled in frustration, pressing its nose down again to examine the lawn.
After a few moments of frantic sniffing, the dog took off along the castle wall, Crookshanks keeping pace at its side. They raced around a corner and out of sight.
The next morning, Harry awoke bleary-eyed but energized, unburdened by the knot of dread that had plagued him all year. He was short on sleep, and relied on adrenaline to get him through the match. But it was worth it. Feeling more confident than he had all year, Harry played his best game, outmaneuvering Malfoy and catching the Snitch with ease. And as he was swept up in the tide of victory — surrounded by his beaming friends, overwhelmed by hugs and thumps on the back and the thrill of lifting the Quidditch Cup into the air — he noticed the slim silhouette of a bearlike dog, tail wagging in encouragement, hidden in the empty seats at the back of the stands.