Grawp

Chapter One: Of the demise of a rabbit

August Second, Morning.

Sunny and Clear. Seventy degrees.

Yesterday was a complete waste of time. Grawp showed no progress - his math skills seemed to be regressing (he forgot how to count beyond fifteen, and I had been hoping to progress onto subtraction and negative numbers!). English skills remain stable at least. He has progressed beyond two-word sentences, at times, which I view as a very positive accomplishment. His refusal to understand basic manners of the wizarding (and any human) world is disturbing. At times, his actions are extremely violent, but Hagrid assured me that he wouldn't hurt me (though Ron would most likely tell me never to trust Hagrid...) but I must - I did promise to do this. At least Hagrid let me magically bind him within ten feet of that boulder when I'm there. Let's just hope today turns out better.

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"Grawp, put the poor rabbit down!" Hermione cried futilely.

"No! No! NO!" Grawp chanted in between bites.

"Down!" she repeated, hoping it might make him stop.

Tugging the half-mangled body of the ex-rabbit from Grawp's grasp, Hermione had now been crying desperately for several minutes for Grawp to stop interrupting the day's lesson with a snack.

"You don't eat rabbits Grawp! In case you hadn't realized, I'm trying to teach you rabbit anatomy here."

Grawp finally dropped the rabbit into Hermione's hands, which she in turn quickly released, recoiling from the sticky, warm and wet blood that ran over her hands and stained the sleeves of her blue top. No use getting emotional and sad over the dead body right now, she thought mournfully to herself. Grawp didn't really understand empathy, sympathy and feeling sorry for dead animals. That would have to be another project. But for another day, most definitely.

Instead, Hermione huffed crossly at her delinquent student. "I'd like to see the day when I'll willingly let my students practice the art of savagely gnawing rabbits," she said.

"Hermy? Wat Grawp do wrong?" Grawp asked in confusion. Like a young child, had no grasp over the concept of irony, something Hermione quite often resorted to when exasperated, as she was most of the time.

While Hermione was muttering to herself, Grawp picked up the rabbit and placed it on the flat part of the big rock they used as a table for learning. Luckily, for the amount of blood running out into the pores of the rock, the only other object there was the pen. Until a few minutes ago, it had had a working hinged door.

To calm herself while recovering from the traumatic experience, Hermione got up and started walking around the clearing. As it was early evening now, the sun had begun to come closer to the horizon and the shadows were growing longer. The moss carpet was soft, the air was pleasant, and Hermione soon gathered herself together.

When she returned her gaze to Grawp, his innocent face and missing leg off the rabbit carcass revealed what he had been doing. Hermione sighed. Time to move on.

"Ok Grawp, guess what we'll learn now?"

"Wisard stuff?"

"Exactly! Very good!" Hermione said with an exaggerated smile plastered on her face. "We're going to look at magical creatures. Won't that be fun?"

"Ok" Grawp said, not really very excited. After all, since a giant was a magical creature, they did know about other magical creatures. For the purpose of a well-rounded education, however, Hermione had decided to teach this as well.

"Now Grawp, can you tell me what a centaur is? Cen-taur. Got that?"

"Stupid hors men! Grawp hate!"

"Now Grawp, remember that we don't judge people or creatures without sufficient information. I did explain the word sufficient? As in enough, or adequate for the situation."

"Hermy do. But hors men Grawp hate!" To demonstrate his point, Grawp uprooted a small tree and began bashing the surrounding trees ferociously. Hermione yelped and ran for cover while Grawp savagely beat the trees.

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That summer Dumbledore had decided to change his mind completely and let Harry decided where he wanted to be, since his mistake last year had cost Sirius. Harry had therefore decided to endure only three and a half weeks at the Dursleys (the Weasleys were visiting Charlie in Romania then). The time was entirely more bearable since the Dursleys had the threat from Moody and Tonks to keep them nervous.

When Harry had owled Hermione to ask if he could stay with her, she had responded that it wouldn't be possible because she was completely occupied with Grawp. With nothing else to do, Harry was forced to wait until he could go to the Burrow.

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"Harry, we've got to do something," Ron said for the third time that day. It was late afternoon, and after an engaging Quidditch match with Ginny, the twins, and Charlie, Harry and Ron had returned to Ron's messy room. "We've been writing to her for two and a half weeks and she hasn't answered a single owl! That giant is ruining her life. I mean, she even forgot your birthday three days ago!" He stopped for a moment, letting the words sink in (as if they hadn't already) and then went back to pacing around his bedroom, carefully stepping over his Chudley Cannon accessories and his school books, which were strewn all over the floor.

"So what do we do? Hermione's somewhere in a forest, somewhere close to her house, which is somewhere within three hours of platform 9 and ¾. What do we do?" Harry asked. Harry was sitting on Ron's bed, becoming more and more impatient with Ron who just kept repeating what he had said before.

"Well, we need to find her," Ron said (also for the third time that day).

"Er, Ron, I know that. But how do we find her? There's a lot of places with some forest within three hours of platform 9 and ¾. And even if we figure out where she is, how do we get her to leave Grawp?"

"Hmmm. We need to concentrate on finding her first though. Maybe there's a charm? I know! We should owl Hermione, she can tell us! She always knows that stuff."

"Great plan Ron," Harry responded sarcastically. "You know, there's only one problem. Hermione hasn't been answering our owls, right? That's why we're looking for her!"

"I forgot about that," Ron said, unperturbed. "Well, who knows any charms?"

"I know! Hermione left some of her library here last time, remember? They wouldn't fit in her school trunk, so Mrs. Weasley took the home from the Order of the Phoenix headquarters."

"Great idea! Now where did she put them?" The two started searching, and in the process, they were forced to start cleaning Ron's room.

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Hermione yawned, overcome with exhaustion. After waiting an hour for Grawp's rage to subside, she had taken a nap. Unfortunately, it had left her more tired than before.

"Grawp? Where are you?" Hermione said, rising from her hiding place and going out into the clearing.

"Grawp ere." Although the rabbit was not.

"Very good, you used a preposition in the right place!"

"Prepsotion? Wat that?"

"It's a... oh never mind. Anyway, we should practice our English now, don't you agree?" Hermione hoped to finish explaining the concept of tenses today, but as Grawp's sense of time was not fully developed, it was a challenge

"Grawp, listen! You had a rabbit three hours ago. HAD. You don't HAVE a rabbit. Why?"

"Where rabbit? Rabbit not is here." Grawp's look of utter confusion, mixed with impatience looked quite comical.

"Because," Hermione said slowly and patiently, "you ATE the rabbit. Not EAT. If you EAT the rabbit, rabbit here. You ATE the rabbit."

"New rabbit eat? Where. Rabbit good."

"There isn't a rabbit because you ATE the rabbit already."

"It's, Grawp ate rabbit? So no eat?"

"Exactly Grawp. Very good of you to figure that out."

"Hermy hapy. Grawp hapy!"

Hermione went over that concept a few more times before deciding to head back to her house and sleep. Ecstatic over results, she told Grawp to think more about tenses during the night. It was late now, and the forest was very still and silent. As Hermione started walking back to her house though, her voice could be heard reciting part two of a book Snape had given them to study over the summer. This was, after all, Hermione.

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