Harry Potter and the Dragon

IV

Hagrid Gets Rocked

Hagrid's eyes were so full of trees, and his ears so crowded with bird songs, that he was positively drunk by his surroundings. He loved the woods as much as he loved Harry, but ironically, it was because of him that he couldn't live in such a dangerous place. The half-giant didn't care, though. Maybe when his foster boy was older and got married, maybe he'd dare to build a little hut, with wooden tiles and a stone fireplace, plus a big barn to keep all his creatures safe. He devoted himself to the task of mentally designing the perfect barn, but after some time he had to come back to reality, when he noticed that Beaky had taken a path he didn't think it was the right one. Clearly, the hippogriff was more talented traveling by air than land.

"Damn it, Beaky, where 'ave yeh taken us?"

After Hagrid said that line, Beaky stopped dead in his tracks. He was not to be blamed without displaying his utter discomfort. The stubborn beast, whose pride came from his eagle half and his touchy side from the sanguine nature of the horses, was deeply crossed and absolutely refused to keep on walking. Hagrid tried to apologize but it was of no use. Though generally kind, the half-giant began to lose his temper. He decided to try a different way of convincing Beaky to go on so he dismounted him, but as soon as his feet had touched the ground, the hippogriff turned tail and ran away as fast as he could in an unknown direction.

Hagrid was very strong but not a very good runner. Soon he got tired and couldn't tell where he had come from or where had Beaky gone. Grudgingly, he sat on a tree root, thinking about how disappointed would Harry be when he knew his guardian hadn't made it to the fair, had lost his magnificent creature, and couldn't find his way through a regular forest. Bu' hey! Hagrid thought. This is a fores' an' I know I'm able ter get outta here!

So, and since the sun had gone to bed some time ago, the half-giant rose decided to find a clearing from where to spot the moon and tell north from south. Having he just done so, he felt something past him zooming. Then he heard a vibrating thud in a nearby tree trunk and realized it was an arrow. Centaurs. Wild ones, I bet. Damn it.

"Who are you, creature with two legs?" a deep menacing voice echoed through the forest.

"Asks who?" Hagrid said harshly, trying to sound intimidating.

Before the deep voice was audible again, Hagrid heard the noise of an alarming number of hooves coming closer, blackened by darkness. Well, if there're a hundred hooves it means they're on'y twen'y-five. Tha's a relief... he found himself thinking. Then he knew something was wrong, when he realized he had never been acid before.

"How dare you not to answer my question? How dare you speak to me in such an arrogant manner? What are you doing in our forest, intruder?" snapped the same rough male voice.

"I los' me way. Me -" he doubted a moment "- me horse 'scaped. I'm on me own."

"Of course, you surely thought one of us would do finely for a ride, didn't you?" asked another presence in caustic tones.

"Well, ter be 'onest, I know a lot abou' monsters. And believe me, ridin' an emotional beast is one o' the mos' stupid mistakes anyone can commit. They overreac', think 'cause they know a li'l about the road they can lead when, as a matter o' fact, instead o' two brains workin' together yer 'ave one fightin' the other, an' in spite yeh're the master an' they're the brutes they're not fit ter follow simple rules. Nah, nex' time I'll breed somethin' smarter, yeah. So thank yeh very much, but I'd rather walk."

Hagrid felt silent, the confident thought that the centaurs would feel reassured by his words barely blossoming in his brain, when a deafening scream, produced by an uncertain but surely large number of throats, shot through the air as if suddenly a gigantic, chaotic fiend had been born.

Devoid of any further idea and therefore acting sensibly, Hagrid launched himself into a race in which north was not better than south and nowhere was the best. He could see the human-torsoed horses sprinting here and there, he could sense many arrows shooting past him, some stabbing his limbs, others bouncing off his hard mole-skin coat. Then, a hoof hit him in the back of the knee and he fell, and the ground gave way to allow him fall even more, and soon he was sliding down a steep wall of earth till he collided with something that didn't feel like part of the forest. It was a gate, made of iron bars.

Hagrid tried to force it open and strangely didn't need to push hard. The gate closed on its own accord just in the moment a group of six or seven centaurs had charged against it. Hagrid tried to stand up to take shelter from an obviously upcoming rain of arrows but, unable to walk, he had to crawl till he found a bush.

Eventually, the centaurs gave up and left. Checking he had no mortal wounds, and that his favorite coat had somehow lost a great deal of mole-skin patches, Hagrid looked around. His generalized pain subsided a little for he was distracted with a magnificent sight.

A towering manor dominated the landscape with such grandiosity, that the half-giant couldn't help thinking how it would look in daylight since in the dark it was simply breathtaking. Summoning all of his strength, he set off limping to the building's entrance, walking down a bridge that, in his opinion, was unnecessarily long for having no river below.

When he got to the front doors they simply sprang open. "Hello!" Hagrid called. "Lis'en, I need some help!" he said after a moment in spite there was no response. His injuries began to plague him again, so he decided to step in concluding that nobody would have opened the doors if he wasn't welcomed.

Taking no notice of the surroundings, he sat down on the floor and started to extract broken pieces of arrow from his wounds. He screamed in pain from time to time, his howls bouncing off the high, cold walls, and a ceiling surely was somewhere above. "It seems this place's bin burn'd... I can smell the soot..." he said to himself between yelps and yawns. "Mus' be derelic'. Well, better ter spend the nigh' here than with the herd o' Beelzebub..."

Lost in thought, Hagrid was completely unaware that he was being closely watched.

On a table by the wall stood a clock and a candlestick. The clock was ticking as quietly as possible because he didn't want his existence acknowledged by the stranger. He hated having intruders in the manor; for he agreed with his Master very much that the scum belonged anywhere and everywhere but that august and refined residence. Realizing that the nosy humanoid was slowly dozing off, he decided to show up by activating his alarm device in order to prevent the scoundrel from sleeping.

The candlestick flickered his little flames to catch the clock's attention. Knowing he was being flagrantly ignored and seeing that the traveler had not stirred, he dared to speak a little bit louder. "My dear Mr. Snape, could you turn that appalling noise off, please? Soon everyone will be attracted, and that's not what we want..."

"I'm sorry, but it wasn't me who set the alarm. It was our Master."

"And why would Master have set the alarm at this hour of the night? And what's more... How?" the candlestick asked shrewdly.

"I'm not into Master's private concerns. I'm a wise servant who knows his place, and who knows very well that -" he placated the bells for his next words to sound even clearer. "- that this vagrant will be eaten alive as soon as he's discovered, and it is not that I care about him, quite the contrary. It's just that Master then starts complaining about stomach ache, and who's the one supposed to brew the potion? Me, of course, for I'm the only one here that has hands, as well as brains I must add -"

"Unbelievable! 'Tis summat I'd never seen before! Livin' stuff! Wha' an int'restin' discov'ry! Harry'll forgive me after all!"

Both the clock and the candlestick jumped in astonishment. Before he could tell a second, Snape was lifted from the table and found himself a little too close to a face that looked far too wild for having such a curious pair of eyes, as bright as a child's. "Let me down, you primitive scumbag! Let me down before I pierce your brutish eyes! Put me back on -!"

"I'm sorry, didn' mean ter disturb yeh..." said Hagrid as he put the clock back on the table. Better ter be tac'ful he thought, the centaurs' and Beaky's episode still fresh in his mind.

"My dear man, you look utterly bashed," spoke the candlestick. "It's obvious that you need some rest. Why don't you come inside? We can see to your injuries, and maybe we can persuade the kitchen personnel to prepare you a light meal, a snack, something you can have before departing?"

"Well, I don' wan' ter be a nuisance..." said Hagrid humbly.

"Not at all!" said the candlestick through a reassuring smile.

"Yes, you are!" said the clock sulkily. "And I suggest you to leave this place before you get really injured!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry sir, but I seem to have forgotten the basic rules of etiquette. Let me introduce myself. My name is Lupin, and this is Snape. We are in charge of this manor." The candlestick bowed reverently and the clocked glared.

"How d'yeh do. I'm Hagrid, creature-tamer," said Hagrid as gracefully as he could.

"A creature-tamer? Ha ha ha! That's exactly what we need, isn't it, Snape? Ha ha ha!" laughed Lupin, whose body, made of silver and wax, comprised three candle-holders in the shape of a wolf head, holding one long candle each. Then, he jumped from the table to the floor and, leaping forward, motioned Hagrid to come with him to the drawing room.

Snape the clock skipped a few seconds in indignation. But he followed suit just the same. "This is no good, no good at all..." he uttered between clenched, yellowish teeth. As he arrived to the drawing room, his hands froze in number eleven and six. Lupin had let the oaf to sit on the Master's gigantic rug! The embers, in clear alliance with the candlestick since they had an element in common, had turned into a fan of flaming tongues that danced happily in the fireplace, dyeing a golden tone of orange every surface around.

Overflowing with rage, the clock advanced one tick per step towards the scandalous scene in front of him. He didn't get too far since half a minute later, a racing wheeled tray and a wastebasket ran over him in their haste to assist the stranger.

"Look! I see Mrs. Weasley and her kids have arrived!" said Lupin grinning.

"Would you like some tea, sir?" said a nice looking teapot with a sweet intonation. Hagrid complied, and before he could outstretch his arm, a playful cup had already jumped to his hand.

"Hi, I'm glad to serve a stranger for a change, y'know? What's your name?" asked the teacup, which was white, had a maroon 'R' in the front, and a pattern of red stripes in its rim.

"Ron! This gentleman's a guest, don't bother him with importunate questions!" the teapot scolded in a motherly fashion.

"'Tis okay, me name's Hagrid, and I'm a creature-tamer!" answered Hagrid happily, thinking Harry wasn't going to believe a thing when he told him all he had seen, and foretelling he would probably be accused of trading the skrewt for a barrel of firewisky.

"A creature-tamer? Dobby is very proud to meet such an important person, sir!" the wastebasket said through a mouth that could not be seen.

"Ha ha ha" Hagrid blushed. "Actually, I'm just -"

BANG!!!!!!!!!!!!

A deafening, characteristic blast of a door being opened with furious energy annihilated any other noise, movement, or thought in the drawing room. The fire that had sprouted from the ashes returned to its original state in that very moment. The animated household objects stood so still, that Hagrid fleetingly thought that they looked a bit too stiff for being stuff. That idea shrank to an atom size and abruptly evaporated just when he caught sight of what he had believed existed only in the infernal regions underneath.

A dragon, at least ten-feet long, was moving quite fast towards him, and before he could even take a breath, Hagrid was pinned to the floor with a strength that made him feel half-dwarf instead of half-giant. Then, the fabulous animal looked away, closed his eyes as if trying to suppress his fury, and panted with a voice that seemed too human to be produced by a snout:

"The only reason I'm not roasting you right now, you... thing, is because you're lying on my favorite rug, and I'd be really sad if it singed... WHOOO THE HELL ARE YOU??? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY MANOR??? HOW DID YOU COME IN??? WHY DIDN'T YOU LEAVE??? DID YOU COME TO LOOK AT ME??? DID YOU COME TO STARE AT THE MONSTER??? DID YOU COME TO STEAL MY POSSESSIONS??? WHO SENT YOU??? WHERE ARE YOU FROM??? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT??? WHAT??? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY??? SPEEEAK!!! SPEEEAK, YOU SHITTY PIECE OF SCUM!!! LISTEN TO ME, YOU BASTARD!!! I'M GOING TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU, UNDERSTAND??? I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU PAY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE, UNDERSTAND??? NOR YOU, NOR ANY FUCKING PEASANT'S ALLOWED TO ENTER MY PROPERTY!!! YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT??? WHAT DID YOU THINK??? DID YOU THINK I'M FOND OF STRANGERS??? THAT I LIKE VISITORS??? DOES THIS PLACE LOOK LIKE AN INN TO YOU??? DO I LOOK LIKE A WAITER??? LIKE A FUCKING BAR-TENDER??? WHAT??? D'YOU THINK YOU HAVE TO TIP ME??? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT, YOU WANNA TIP ME??? DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE A NOTE IN THE BOOK OF COMPLAINTS??? OR DO YOU WANT TO TALK TO THE LANDLORD??? WELL, I HAPPEN TO BE THE BOSS AROUND HERE!!! AND SIR, BELIEVE ME, YOU'LL CERTAINLY HAVE ACCOMODATION FOR TONIGHT!!! YEAH!!! I HAVE VERY NICE LODGINGS THAT'LL DO!!! YOU CAN REST YOUR FUCKING BONES THERE, SO TOMORROW I CAN EASILY PICK THE MEAT FROM THEM!!! DID YOU HEAR ME??? DID YOU HEAR WHAT I JUST SAID??? ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME??? ARE YOU PAYING ANY ATTENTION??? DO YOU LIKE WHAT I HAVE IN STORE FOR YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH??? WELL, I HOPE YOU DO, 'CAUSE THERE'S NO WAY OF ESCAPING!!! I SWEAR UPON MY MOTHER'S SOUL, THAT BY TOMORROW YOU WON'T BE NOTHING BUT A CARCASS, AND I'LL HAVE FUN AS I HAVEN'T HAD IN YEARS!!! DID YOU HEAR ME, YOU FUCKING DOG??? DID YOU HEAR ME, BRUTE??? WHAT??? WANNA GO AND WARN YOUR FRIENDS??? DO YOU HAVE ANY FRIEND AROUND HERE??? DID YOU COME IN HERE ALONE??? WAS THERE SOMEONE WITH YOU??? ARE THEY PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK, THOSE FUCKING PERVERTS??? HOW DID YOU BREAK INTO MY MANOR??? WHY DID YOU COME HERE, DID YOU COME HERE TO SELL COOKIES??? OR MAYBE YOU WANNA DISCUSS GOD, IS IT??? WELL, YOU'LL BE TALKING TO HIM TOMORROW, GO TELL HIM THAT IT'S ALL - HIS - FAULT!!! THAT'S ALL - HIS - FAULT YOU DIED!!! 'CAUSE HE SHOULDN'T HAVE CREATED YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! TELL HIM, IF THAT BASTARD REALLY EXISTS, THAT HE SHOULD BE MORE SELECTIVE WITH THE SHIT HE THROWS TO THIS FUCKING, ROTTEN WORLD!!!!!!! THIS WORLD'S FUCKED!!!!!!! AND YOU'RE FUCKED!!!!!! YEAH, YOU'RE FUCKED!!!!!!!!"

And with no further comment, the dragon dragged poor Hagrid to the tower and locked him there.