Into The Light (Golden Trio Era) {2}

Hagrid's Journey

"That's better. It helps with the stingin'. yeh know," "So are you going to tell us what's happened to you?" Harry asked impatiently. "Can', Harry. Top secret. More'n me job's worth ter tell yeh that." "Did the giants beat you up, Hagrid?" Hermione asked quietly. her eyes still inspecting his injuries. Hagrid lost his grip of the dragon stake and it slid onto his chest. "Giants?" questioned Hagrid, catching the steak and throwing it back on his face as Fang lapped for it. "who said anything abou' giants? Who yeh bin talkin' to? Who's told yeh what I've- Who's said I've bin- eh?" "We guessed," Hermione said apologetically, hanging her head. "Oh, yeh did, did yeh?" he squinted at them, making the uncovered eye looking remarkably like the one that is swollen shut. "It was kind of... obvious," said Ron, they nodded in agreement. Hagrid glared at them, then snorted, he threw the steak back onto the table and went for the tea kettle that whistled in the fireplace. "Never known kids like you four fer knowin more' more yeh oughta," he clammered, pouring recklessly into five of his ginormous mugs. "An' I'm not complimentin' yeh, neither. Nosy, some'd call it. Interferin'." But his beard twitched, giving away the smile it was hiding. "So you have been looking for giants?" Harry grinned while he sat down at the table, the others followed. Hagrid set tea in front of each of them, sat down himself, then slapped the meat back on his face. "Yeah, all righ'," he grunted, "I have." "And you found them?" said Hermione in a quiet voice that seemed awed. "Well, they're not that difficult ter find, ter be honest," he nodded. "Pretty big, see." "Where are they?" asked Ron. "Mountains," he answered vaguely. "So why don't Muggles- ?" "They do," Hagrid said darkly. "O'ny their deaths are always put down ter mountaineerin' accidents, aren' they?" "Come on, Hagrid, tell us what you've been up to!" said Ron. "Tell us about being attacked by the giants and Harry can tell you about being attacked by the dementors-" Hagrid choked on his mouthful of tea and dropped the steak at the same time. He sprayed the table with spit, tea, and blood, making Mikayla slide her chair back quickly. The steak thumped on the floor. "Whadda yeh mean, attacked by dementors?" growled Hagrid, beating on his chest and coughing. "Didn't you know?" Hermione questioned. "I don' know anything that's been happenin' since I left. I was on a secret mission, wasn' I, didn' wan' owls followin' me all over the place- ruddy dementors! Yeh're not serious?" "Yeah, I am, they turned up in Little Whinging and attacked my cousin and me, and then the Ministry of Magic expelled me-" "WHAT?" "-and I had to go to a hearing and everything, but tell us about the giants first." "You were expelled?" "Well he's not now, obviously, or he wouldn't be here." Mikayla said, reassuring him that the story wasn't that bad. "Tell us about your summer and I'll tell you about mine." Hagrid glared at him with his one open eye. "Oh, all righ'," Hagrid gave in and sighed.

He bent down and tugged the dragon steak out of Fang's jaws. "Oh, Hagrid, don't, it's not hygien-" Hermione began, Mikayla jumped up and stopped him from putting the steak back on his eye, pulling out a familiar potion. "What's that?" Hagrid asked pointing to the potion. Mikayla stay silent before Hermione spoke up, "Mikayla's invented a rather brilliant healing potion." Hagrid looked a little taken aback in disbelief, "You can start talking while I do this, it doesn't hurt." Hagrid nodded sheepishly as Mikayla began attending to his wounds.

Hagrid took another large swallow of his tea then said, "Well, we set off righ' after term ended-" "Madame Maxime went with you, then?" Hermione interrogated. "Yeah, tha's right, yeah, it was jus' the pair of us. An' I'll tell yeh this, she's not afraid of roughin' it, Olympe. Yeh know, she's a fine, well-dressed woman, an' knowin' where we was goin' I wondered 'ow she'd feel abou' clamberin' over boulders an' sleepin' in caves an' tha', bu' she never complained once." "You knew where you were going?" Harry asked. "How did you know where the giants were?" Mikayla questioned while she raised an eyebrow. "Well, Dumbledore knew, an' he told us," said Hagrid. "Are they hidden?" asked Ron. "Is it a secret, where they are?" "Not really," said Hagrid, shaking his head lightly. "It's jus' that mos' wizards aren' bothered where they are, s' long as it's a good long way away. But where they are's very difficult ter get ter, fer humans anyway, so we needed Dumbledore's instructions. Took us abou' a month ter get there —" "A month?" said Ron, looking baffled that a journey could take so long. "But- why couldn't you just grab a Portkey or something?" "We're bein' watched, Ron," he said grimly. "What d'you mean?" "Yeh don' understand," said Hagrid. "The Ministry's keepin' an eye on Dumbledore an' anyone they reckon's in league with him, an'-" "We know about that," said Harry quickly, keen to hear the rest of Hagrid's story. "We know about the Ministry watching Dumbledore—" "So you couldn't use magic to get there?" asked Ron, looking thunderstruck. "You had to act like Muggles all the way?" "Well, not exactly all the way," said Hagrid cagily. "We jus' had ter be careful, 'cause Olympe an' me, we stick out a bit-" Ron made a sort of compressed snorting noise and good a quick swig of tea to try and mask it. "-so we're not hard ter follow. We was pretendin' we was goin' on holiday together, so we got inter France an' we made like we was headin' fer where Olympe's school is, 'cause we knew we was bein' tailed by someone from the Ministry. We had to go slow, 'cause I'm not really s'posed ter use magic an' we knew the Ministry'd be lookin' fer a reason ter run us in. But we managed ter give the berk tailin' us the slip round abou' Dee-John-" "Ooooh, Dijon?" said Hermione excitedly. "I've been there on holiday, did you see- ?" Ron gave her a look and she stopped talking. "We chanced a bit o' magic after that, and it wasn' a bad journey. Ran inter a couple o' mad trolls on the Polish border, an' I had a sligh' disagreement with a vampire in a pub in Minsk, but apart from tha', couldn't' a bin smoother." "An' then we reached the place, an' we started trekkin' up through the mountains, lookin' fer signs of 'em..."

Hagrid told them how they had to lay off using magic as Giants don't really like wizards, he said that Dumbledore warned him that Voldemort's followers were probably doing the same thing, trying to recruit Giants, so they had to be careful drawing attention to themselves. Hagrid paused for a large drink of tea. "Go on!" said Harry impatiently. "Found 'em," said Hagrid simply. "Went over a ridge one nigh' an' there they was, spread ou' underneath us. Little fires burnin' below an' huge shadows... It was like watchin' bits o' the mountain movin'." "How big are they?" Mikayla asked in a quiet voice, rubbing the potion on Hagrid's eye gently. He told her they were about 20-25 feet tall. Hagrid answered Harry's next question telling them there was only seventy or eighty giants left before he went on saying how different it was from the past and how Dumbledore believed it was wizards fault for them edging closer to extinction.