Interlude for a Longer Piece

'Yeh're too hard on the kids, Argus," Rubeus Hagrid sat down on the narrow bed, extracting an indignant meow from the cat he dislodged. He squirmed around a bit until he was arranged upon the filthy blanket to his satisfaction. Once finished, he beamed around at the dank room which held the bed, himself, the indignant cat, and an unattractive man of about eighty with large, bulging eyes. Hagrid rubbed his hands together.

"I don't have time for this, Rubeus," Argus Filch, the unattractive man who owned the dingy, squallid room, protested. "It's almost midnight now. Who knows what those miscreants are getting up to in my school."

Hagrid shook his head lugubriously. "Yeh see, love, this is just what I mean. I tell yeh, the students aren't out ter get yeh. They're just young and adventurous." He pulled the other man down beside him in an untidy sprawl of limbs. "Yeh remember how adventurous we used ter be, don't yeh, Argus?" His voice dropped to a husky murmur.

Filch looked irritated. "Have you been drinking, Rubeus?"

Hagrid gave him a blank, innocent gaze. And hiccoughed.

Filch sighed. "I really do need to patrol the corridors, Rubeus. Do you know what I found outside my office last night? A newt." Hagrid nodded slowly. "A three-foot newt! Some…" Filch gesticulated wildly as he searched for a suitably vitriolic epithet. "Some repugnant little wand-waver left a monster in front of my door! How they even found my quarters when…" he trailed off as Hagrid tried to fold himself up into a corner of the bed, a difficult task when he was twice the width of the bed, his eyes suspiciously bright.

"I thought yeh'd like Puppy," he sniffled mournfully.

Filch stared at the other man as if he'd grown a second head. "You? You left that… thing at my door? Whatever for?" Filch demanded.

Hagrid stared up at him with big, watery eyes. "It was meant as an anniversary present," he declared solemnly. "Yeh din't like it, did yeh? Oh, I shouldn't 'a done that."

Filch grimaced and put an arm gingerly around the other man. Hagrid gave a great sniff and patted Filch on the back, who wheezed as the wind was knocked out of him.

"Really," Filch said in a soft, slightly suffocated voice, "I loved it. Just put it-uh, Puppy-in one of Severus' tanks this morning." Hagrid beamed at him. "I'll fetch… Puppy tomorrow. I'm sure he and Mrs. Norris will get along just fine."

Filch carefully avoided meeting the large, yellow eyes of Mrs. Norris which clearly said that they would do no such thing.
Hagrid chuckled. "Honestly, Argus, how yeh think yeh can figure out students' fiendish plots if yeh can't even tell the sex of a newt is beyond me."

Hagrid stood, brushing off a few spiders that had fallen onto his coat from the ceiling.

"Well, I've got ter be goin'. Got a surprise for yeh when yer prowlin's done, lover." With that and a suggestive wink, Rubeus Hagrid conducted his girth out of the room.

Filch picked up a spider that Hagrid had dropped onto his pillow.

"You'd think that, being the caretaker for this blasted school, I'd be able to keep a nice, tidy room for myself. But do I get any time for myself? No, it's always, 'Oh Argus, could you just stop by my office and sweep up after my phoenix?' 'Argus, clean up that hippocampus dung, would you?' 'Argus, come around to my hut for a quick one.'"

Filch looked around his room and sighed. "No one appreciates me."