The Potion Princess

The Detention With Hagrid

She makes it through one more detention (one more hellish detention, where she writes in her neatest print and the words cut their way deeper into her skin, deep enough so they're never going to go away) before Snape intervenes. Umbridge let her go as a favor to him, and according to her, a curtesy to Audra's parents, who she had met at one of the Minister's Christmas parties. Audra didn't care, so long as she never had to touch that horrible quill again.

Umbridge sends her to help Hagrid for the day, spouting off something about how physical labor would do a girl like her good and spending the day with the great oaf would help to teach her a lesson. Audra's almost positive that Snape suggested it, especially when she makes it down to Hagrid's hut and finds that he doesn't have anything for her to do.

"You, er, you don't have to do anything." He said, leaning heavily on the rake he was currently using. Hagrid reached up to swipe at the sweat rolling down his face and only succeeded in spreading more dirt around. "I'll sign whatever paper you've got that says you were here, and then you can be on your way."

"I can help, Hagrid." She didn't mind doing work around here. Audra had always liked Care of Magical Creatures, even if Hagrid's version of the class was more than a little unorthodox. "What are you working on?"

"Well, you can't help, truthfully. Not with that hand of yours. Risk of infections and all that." Audra didn't really think he should be warning her about infections, not when he still had an open cut on his face that was spontaneously deciding to ooze blood. His face was all different shades, none of them healthy- greens and purples and the dark red of dried blood. "Evil woman, that Umbridge."

"You're telling me." Audra settled on top of the fence, trying to ignore the pain coming from her had. It's always there, now. Harry said it should be gone by tomorrow. "Hagrid, have you been to a Healer yet?"

"Eh?" He looked over at her sharply, so startled that he almost dropped the rake.

"For your face? Those look nasty."

"Oh, no." He smiled at her, revealing his missing front teeth. "Too busy, Pomfrey is, and besides, I've gotten used to my home remedies. I'm game keeper. Injuries just come with the territory."

Audra could tell he was lying, but she didn't press him. It was none of her business, even if it did seem like Hagrid had gotten involved in a secret boxing ring and was continually losing. Still, they did look nasty, and the risk of infection for an open wound was high. "Let me fix it." She jumped off the fence and walked over to him, wand in hand. "I'm supposed to be helping you down here. Let me do something useful." He hesitated, but she could see his mouth twitch up in a smile even underneath the beard, and knew he was bending. "Please? It's been a while since I've been able to feel like I was fixing anything."

Which is how they ended up sitting in his kitchen, Fang's head in her lap and an open bottle of bourbon on the table between them. (Molly would have my head if she knew, but seeing as you're off age, he had said, and then poured them both large glasses.) It had only taken her a second to mend the cuts on his face and take the swelling out of his bruises, but there was nothing she could have done for the fractured jaw. And then Hagrid had said that it had been such a long time since he's had company, what with Harry, ron, and Hermione running their illegal meetings (here, Audra choked on her drink and he hit her on the back so hard she was knocked into the table), that he might as well just treat her like a guest.

"You're doing a good thing, Audra." Hagrid was slurring his words, slightly, waving his glass in a way that made it seem like he was gesturing for a toast. Audra clinked her glass against his just for the fun of it, leaning back and laughing, and he nodded appreciatively. "I mean it. Don't think anyone's told you yet, but you're being a hero, that's what you are. Might not always feel like it, but you are. All of you kids are."

"It never feels like it." She stares at him, desperate for him to reassure her that she really is making the right choice, but his earnest expression is too earnest for her to handle. "It's hard to tell the right thing anymore. There's so many secrets and lies and sacrifice for the greater good," she says, reciting what Dumbledore had told her the last time they had met, when she told him of the prisoners that were being tortured as they spoke and he told her they could not afford to rescue them. "Maybe there is no right thing. Maybe it's just about surviving. And this choice, this helps Harry, and it protects the Weasley's, and its the only thing I could think of doing that protects the twins."

"Only right," He slurs, looking out at something towards the forest. There is nothing there, but from the look on his face, Audra knows that he is picturing something. Or someone. "Only right that you'd protect the Weasleys, protect the ones you call your own. Family's something important Audra. Once you find the people you belong with, you protect them, no matter the cost."

"And my real family, Hagrid?" Audra said, finally voicing the thing she had been too scared to say. The thing she kept quiet because she was worried that her friends would look down on her for worrying about them, for caring about them, even as they work to murder and torture all the ones she cares about. Not everyone I care about, she thought desperately, feeling the ever present feeling of tears rise in her eyes again. Not mom, not dad, not Vance. Not Draco and Emmeline and Pansy, as horrible as they can all be. "Who's protecting them?"

"They made their choices, Audra." She wasn't looking at him, but Audra could still make out his expression in the glass in front of her- sad and upset and looking like he wants to help but doesn't know how. "You tried, that's all you can do."

"I killed them, Hagrid." She pours herself another glass, and throws it back in one gulp, feeling the pleasant rush of numbness coiling up in her stomach. "The moment I joined the Order, I might as well have killed them with my own two hands. Because as soon as he finds out I've been working against him -and he will- they're dead."

Hagrid doesn't answer her.

There aren't any right choices anymore. Audra's starting to thing there aren't any right answers, either, nothing to make this better. Not even from him.