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"There, there," said Slughorn, waving his wand so that the huge pile of earth rose up and then fell, with a muffled sort of crash, onto the dead spider, forming a smooth mound. "Lets get inside and have a drink. Get on his other side, Harry. . . . That's it. ...
Up you come, Hagrid . . . Well done ..." They deposited Hagrid in a chair at the table. Fang, who had been skulking in his basket during the burial, now came padding softly across to them and put his heavy head into Harry's lap as usual. Slughorn uncorked one of the bottles of wine he had brought.
"I have had it all tested for poison," he assured Harry, pouring most of the first bottle into one of Hagrid's bucket-sized mugs and handing it to Hagrid. "Had a house-elf taste every bottle after what happened to your poor friend Rupert." Harry saw, in his mind's eye, the expression on Hermione's face if she ever heard about this abuse of houseelves, and decided never to mention it to her.
"One for Harry . . ." said Slughorn, dividing a second bottle between two mugs, ". . .
and one for me. Well" — he raised his mug high — "to Aragog." "Aragog," said Harry and Hagrid together. Both Slughorn and Hagrid drank deeply.
Harry, however, with the way ahead illuminated for him by Felix Felicis, knew that he must not drink, so he merely pretended to take a gulp and then set the mug back on the table before him.
"I had him from an egg, yeh know," said Hagrid morosely. "'Tiny little thing he was when he hatched. 'Bout the size of a Pekingese" "Sweet," said Slughorn.
"Used ter keep him in a cupboard up at the school until . . . well..."
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