Not your average science project...

The great slab of a man looked beseechingly across the table at her, his eyes big and dark, a hopeful smile tugging gently at the corners of his lips. His massive beard and hair seemed to constantly and imperceptibly shift around that wide, fatherly face. He was just beautiful, like some magnificent, large creature in its element. A resting rhino, or hippo perhaps. She shook herself and realised she had to answer him something… ah yes. They were negotiating.

"That sounds good to me, Hagrid. I'll give you info on where she's most likely to wander of an evening, and you let me assist you with some of the larger and more… interesting creatures you come across during your travels here in France?"

She had almost said dangerous. Which would have been fatal to her ends; that word might have shaken him out of his reverie and reminded him that she was still a student. She smiled encouragingly at him, and tried to affect just the right amounts of naivety and wisdom in her posture. He nodded absentmindedly, clearly already dreaming up "chance encounters" with his marvellous Madame Maxine, then seemed to focus back on her.

"Yer got a lot of gumption, saying it quite like tha'."

He drawled on;

"I can see a stout heart a mile away and I would have happily taken yer on as an apprentice anyway."

He leaned back, resting his hands on the edge of the table and gave her a stern look.

"All I asked was fer a few tips on how one might go about getting yer head mistress' attention, seein' that you already clearly have. But I wouldn't want yer to betray her privacy or nothin'."

She suddenly felt guilty about seeing this so business-like. She was overthinking things again. The consternation that crossed her face was definitely real, and while she shifted and crossed her legs, she gripped the hem of her uniform in anxiety. How to correct this? She so desperately wanted to see the incredible things this man had spoken about.

"Madame Maxine and I… well, we just have an understanding. I'm not treated special by her in any way. She recognises the wild in me, I suppose, and has made one or two subtle exceptions in my case. She really is lovely. Harsh, but lovely…"

The last part she more mused out loud than actually spoke. She rode the wave of honest emotions and landed smoothly on the shore of pretence;

"I think she is lonely though… and a friend would probably be good for her. But Ialso think she is resistant to making friends, and a few unseen nudges from those that care about her might remedy the situation."

That had been subtle manipulation, but she hoped Hagrid would hear a different form of subtlety in that. He was simple in some ways, but quite canny in others. It worked like a charm, though, the giant leaned forward conspiratorially and beamed at her.

"Yer got gumption allright! A good and loyal student yer are. A pity yer not in 'ogwarts. I know three friends there, always getting their noses in where they don't belong and playin' right heroes. Yer wouldn't have been lonely growing up there…"

He trailed off and looked at her knowingly, sadly. She recognised the pity in his dark, warm eyes and it made her a tiny bit angry, in spite of herself. She was a loner, and that did not mean lonely! She was about to retort something, when there was a knock at the door.

Home for the holidays...

Malastru opened the door and the hateful thing glided in. She forced herself not to shy away. By now she knew bitterly what to expect, but she couldn't have predicted the jarring clarity with which the details would return…

The sight of Daxl dragging his brutalised body toward her, the clear pain and anguish in his small, bright eyes, the expectation that she would go to him and make things right. Somehow she could sense how intensely he was immersed in his pain, how keenly he could feel his own insides scraping against gritty earth and deadening leaves. She could smell all the parts of him that were broken, the burnt fur and cooked fat, the sickeningly sweet smell of bile from far too high up in the intestine and the rich smell of infection that had set into his abdomen some hours ago. She wanted to scream in rage and bone-deep misery but forced herself to stay rooted to the spot. To remember and honour his enchanted existence.

Her beautiful, mischievous and sensory Daxl. All those hours had she followed him as a child, his sneaking form inquisitively assessing the forest floor. She had watched him endlessly with dark fascination. Him, voyeuristically smelling the secreted and excreted unmentionables that other animals left behind, taking immense shuddering pleasure in his own queer form of aromatherapy. She remembered with a swelling in her heart how he had allowed her to approach one day, and stroke his glossy grey fur as he writhed around in the aftermath of another pair of animals' mating spot, the scent of musk so fresh, even her blood rushed a little. How he rolled around in an ecstasy on the ground where it had happened; his warm, firm belly under her fingertips, then his sleek neck and how she had held her breath (terrified of those sharp little canines) when he had pushed his hot, wet nose frantically against her palm and then between her fingers only to flop back over on the ground, writhing and twittering and snorting softly in an agony to soak it all up.

And oh god, she had left him there to suffer his slow agonising death...

Her eyes burned with salty, unshed tears and her heart seemed to stutter with guilt all over again. But she would not fail him again today. There was no longer the horrifying screams of her demented, lovable "grandmother" pulling her away from his bright, innocent and desperate eyes.

And then there was no Daxl, he was gone. Even the Dementor's presence seemed to have diminished. There was only this man smiling with sick pleasure down at her, all too pleased to see how she had suffered in the presence of the monster, how she had survived it. Like he had somehow made her better, stronger, and she fucking hated him for it.

All grown up...

Later in life, Wilda would call upon a different set of memories in the presence of Dementors. At a muggle research centre in the UK she lectured on several ethological aspects of zoology. Her knowledge of creatures extended not only to the magical ones, partly owing to the fact that her rustic skills with a wand were somewhat lacking according to conventional magical community. She felt kinship with all non-humans and this included non-magical animals, and her understanding of them lent itself to great insights to animal behaviour. It was during this time that there was some unrest in the wizarding world, and after the muggle students filed out of the lecture venue, a Dementor came drifting in. It hovered up toward the ceiling as she gasped, and then came rushing down toward her. Even as she pulled out her wand and inhaled to chant, the memory was welling up like warm, golden honey behind her eyes…

… the smell of pine oil and the sensation of icy cold water clinging to her puckered skin. The old woman's gnarled fingernails and buckled finger joints occasionally digging into her back as she scrubbed Wilda with a dried root. Her voice come back clearly, scratchy and high pitched, and when she hummed it brought to mind the distorted purring of a sick cat they had once nursed back to health. The crazy old bat was telling her another story of her origins,

"Ja Wilda, your mother she was a huldra and so are you! Hmmm, uhmmm mmm! She dropped you of with me when you was child and told me she had killed the evil man who had forced the seed into her."

She finished scratching at Wilda's back and tugged her head violently back to attack the girl's filthy hair. Wilda stared up into the forest canopy, sighed and retorted,

"Last time you told me this story you said my father had been your son and that he was a good man. And I cannot be huldra, Lottie, I have no tail and my back is not hollow."

Still staring up into the canopy, the little girl waited for the admonition that would occasionally come after a direct contradiction of the old squib's insane stories. The last time she had heard this tirade, her huldra mother had been the evil one, and had put her infantile form inside a frog. Lottie had spat in the frogs mouth to kill it and then cut her out. But no wheezing admonishment came.

The tugging on her wild hair stopped and the crone's twisted, skinny fingers rested on her shoulders. The old woman seemed to be thinking, probably lost inside that maelstrom of half-memories and half-crazed imaginings that swirled around her addled mind. Further back into the woods, Wilda glimpsed the familiar, shy eyeshine of Daxl glancing over the unusual pair from afar. The minute the bath was done and Lottie was gone he would come curl up in the tub, lick up droplets of pine oil that wouldn't rinse out and just snort and chirp with happiness.

Wilda was starting to feel cramped; she was getting too big to fit in this tub, to be washed like a baby. There was a slight, light brown pixie sitting gingerly on the edge of the rusted wash tub, cupping small handfuls of water and letting them drip over the child's bent, scarred knees. It seemed fascinated with the alternate paths the water droplets took as they slid down hairy shins. Its massive eyes widened and narrowed constantly with wonder, tilting its head this way and that.

"Your father was a healer, he was good man. Well. Maybe you are not Huldra, but there is some magic in you, child."

The old bat sounded strangely lucid for once. The girl leaned all the way back and looked up into her grandmother's wrinkled, withered face; those murky brown eyes suddenly clear and full of warmth. It would be the last happy memory of her darkly wild and charmed childhood, the last moments of innocence she truly knew…

"Expecto Patronum!"

And from her wand the honey badger exploded, all bright light and sharp little teeth and savage claws. The Dementor fled. And as she packed up her lecturing materials and left the venue Wilda started to wonder if it was time to go back to the magical world…