I took the stairs three steps at the time as I descended and marveled at being able to do it again, back home, as I got older my sense of balance had slowly gotten worse, to the point that I felt I had to take it a bit slower. It was nice to be up to speed again without it feeling like the world was starting to tilt a bit to much. And as a bonus, Felicitania, my brand new pain in the ass, was struggling to keep up. Thats a good point of being a guy, you can outrun your problems, paticularly if they happen to be of the female persuasion. I pointedly ignored the notion that I was running away from a girl, it wasn't really running away anyway, I was escaping, artfully avoiding a pursuer. But really, I wasn't running away, I was running towards. In a slightly haphazard and not altogether direct way mayhaps, but no one ever said I can take the scenic rout.
"Having a bit of trouble there, Tugwood!" I taunted loudly as I left her behind. Aaaah, oh I feel just fabulous. Youth really was wasted on the young. I looked back again and saw that Tugwood had managed to pick up the pace. Damn, perhaps I shouldn't have taunted her. I'd forgotten that spite is the prime motivator for girls! I needed to lose her or she'd follow me all the way to Hagrid's. I smirked. And I knew just how to do it.
Instead of continuing down I darted off the stairs into a second-floor corridor and ran like hell towards a corner. Once past it, and once I was sure I was alone, I called for Paddy.
The little elf promptly appeared as he always did, standing rigidly with one hand behind his back and the other by his waist. "You called, sir?" He drawled in a dry tone of voice.
"To Hagrid's place Paddy, if you will," I told him and held out my hand.
"As you will sir." He responded and grasped my hand and suddenly I was roughly showed through something the size of a drinking straw and surviving. Never pleasant, but you'd be surprised what one can get used to. And then I was standing in front of Hagrid's place.
"Will there be anything else, sir?" The trusty house-elf asked in that dry tone that I'd drilled into him over the course of many hours.
I grinned down at the elf "That will be all, Paddy. Thank you. You may go."
He dipped in a shallow bow. "Very good sir." He said before vanishing again with a soft pop of displaced air.
I'm so damn proud of him I could just squeal! Well, the day was looking up. I'd given miss pushy the slip and I was in for some feel-good time with my main man! "Hagrid!" I called out as I walked towards his place to alert him to my coming, just in case he might be doing something I didn't want to be seeing. I liked the guy, but not in that way.
In the books, Hagrids home was described as an ill-constructed small wooden cabin sitting squarely at the edge of the forbidden forest. In the movies, it was an oddly shaped stone house that resembled the number eight if you looked at it from above. The reality was a bit different. And was proud to say I was the cause of it. When I got here it had been a small wooden shack, much like it had been described in the books. Now though it was a decently big stone cabin with a black shingled roof in good repair. It had a well-maintained garden, if a small one, in the front, mostly for some herbs and bushes, and a larger one in the back for vegetables.
Hmm, he wasn't answering. "Hagrid!" I called again and waited for an answer. When none came I started to move around the house. "Hey, Hagrid! You here!"
"Drew! Hahaha! Yer just in time! I'm over in the patch!" A booming voice finally answered me. I have to say, of all the surprising things about Hagrid, and they are many, his voice was what startled me the most when I first heard it. There isn't anything back home that can compare to the deep rumbling bass of the half-giants voice. You don't just hear Hagrid, you feel him, right down to your very bones. It should be scary, but there is always such warmth infused in his voice that you just forget how… big it is.
If the voices James Earl Jones and Peter Cullen, when they did Mufasa and Optimus Prime, had a child it would be the voice of Rubeus Hagrid. One might want to sprinkle some Liam Neeson in there as well for that extra vibrant edge. I don't know how Olympe could have resisted it, I'm straight as an arrow and I get a bit wet from hearing it! She should have melted trough the damn floor if she had any taste. Then again, she is French, so I suppose that answers that.
I smiled as I rounded the corner and spotted the man of the hour. Hagrid – it wasn't just his voice and his heart that was big. The big lug stood almost 12 feet tall and as wide as a barn door, and contrary to what one might believe, none of it was fat. All credit to Robbie Coltrane, the man managed to catch the spirit of Hagrid very well, very well indeed. But Hagrid did not look like Santa Claus's younger lumberjack brother. He didn't have a big jiggling belly or a big bulbous red nose. One had to remember that he actually worked for a living. That is to say, he didn't sit still and letting his ass grow all that much. His features were surprisingly sharp, almost like they were hewn from stone then polished down vigorously to soften down all the edges a bit. His beard was far shorter than the one he had in the movie, though still large full and a bit wild, much like the wild bush of hair sitting on the top of his head like some wild animal that still took to grooming himself now and again. I was secure enough in my hetrosexuality to say that I found him handsome in a rugged sort of way.
Spoiler: Hagrid He had this large brown many pocketed rawhide coat on that looked really badass and I was fairly sure he'd made it himself. Which made it even better! I doubted many wizarding shops carried giant-sized clothes.
I looked over at what he was doing before giving him a smile. "How's it going, big guy?"
"Goin' right good, thank yeh." He responded and gave me a gentle slap on the back with his dustbin lid sized hand, well gentle for Hagrid anyway, I just about managed to stop myself from staggering forward.
I gave him a return slap on the arm before turning to the vegetable patch. "So you're doing the carrots today right, they ready?"
"Ready and cookin', was just about to get 'em out of the ground when yah showed up." He told me and he peered out over the patch. It was a pretty big spot, sectioned up into four parts. One part for carrots, another for cabbage, a third for pumpkins and the last currently lay fallow.
"Well, don't let me stop you," I said brightly and gestured to the waiting carrots. "Go get 'em, big guy."
Hagrid chuckled (which sounded awesome!), before turning his attention to the patch. He squared his shoulders and raised one hand towards the patch and scrunched up his face in concentration. He then extended his index finger and rotated his hand and then gave a sharp little jerk upwards with a grunt.
Every carrot in the patch yanked themselves out of the ground simultaneously! He gestured again and they flew through the air and fell into a large wicker basket that sat waiting beside the half-giant man.
I clapped my hands appreciatively while Hagrid rubbed at the back of his head bashfully. "Nicely done. Solid control and you didn't miss one. I'd say you've got it, Hagrid."
"Aw, it ain't nuttin'. Couldn't have dun it without yah helpin' me." Hagrid demurred humbly, but he was smiling widely never the less.
"Hey, I just showed you how to do it. You're the one that has to put in the effort to get somewhere, Hagrid. And now here we are." I told him and gave him a supportive slap on the arm.
Seeing as I wanted to get into his good graces when I first got here, not that it's all that hard, I'd looked into his little situation. Back home I remember that his sentence prohibited him from owning a wand or practicing magic, it was that last part I was interested in because it seemed passing strange. There was hardly a way to live in the wizarding world without practicing some sort of magic, even if it was just brewing potions. As it turns out he was just prohibited from owning or using a wand, which on the face of it meant much the same thing. But there were no wizarding laws that prohibited anyone from using magic, mostly because it was patently impossible for someone to just stop. As Harry showed with Aunt Marge, accidental magic didn't go away because you grow up, and there were various half-breeds like Hagrid (though not necessarily of giant ancestry) that did magic as naturally as breathing. It just wasn't possible to legislate against it.
So there wasn't any bar to Hagrid learning to cast spells without a wand. It had taken some effort to convince him of that, and to get him to believe that he could do it. He'd gotten a bit misinformed about exactly who could do wandless magic, something that I'd found was prevalent throughout the rather insular British wizarding world. Hagrid thought erroneously that only powerful wizards like Dumbledore could possibly do such a thing.
Utterly ridiculous of course, which I told him; if that was the case then Africa was full of Dumbledore level wizards seeing as they didn't use wands down there outside of certain situations. What those were wasn't spelled out, but it hadly mattered. It had been a bit touch and go for the first month or so while I taught him how to achieve the proper focus to begin, but after he managed his first spell, a simple light spell, things got going. I'd felt ten feet high when I'd seen that light go off behind his eyes when he realized that a world he thought lost to him, beyond rare stolen moments when no-one was looking, was still open to him. Those are the moments worth living for, I think. Moments of true value. We'd been buds since, and I never had cause to regret it. Well, unless he tried to bake something for me. Beware the rock cakes, flee should you see them. Or smell them!
"Eh, I just did what yeh told me – evertin' is trainin' and rightly so." He told me warmly and gave me another pat on the back.
"You can do wandless magic!" A familiar voice interrupted incredulously.
I groaned internally, and externally, and turned and looked behind me. Hagrid did the same. And there was Felicitania… of course. Looking rather shocked too. Great, now she had something else to annoy me about, I really didn't need this. How did she find me anyway? There was no way she could have possibly followed me. I teleported here for Christ's sake. It didn't get more untraceable then that.
"Well, who do we 'ave 'ere?" Asked Hagrid.
I rubbed at the bridge of my nose. "My brand spankin' new pain in the ass," I muttered.
Felicitania apparently heard me because she snapped out of her stupor and glared at me, hands on her hips. "Rude!"
"Yes you are, thank you for confirming it, Tugwood." I snarked at her, making her frown a me some more. I was fine with that.
"Now Drew, yer ain't supposed to speak to a lady like that." Hagrid admonished me.
"I'm not sure she's a lady," I muttered darkly.
Hagrid gave me a disappointed look that made me feel like dirt.
"Sorry…" I grunted.
Really, what did I do to deserve this?