The Hogwarts Romance
3.
Hagrid was busy replanting the frail artichoke reserves in the clearing near the Oldest Tree. There was cold night mist clinging to his body. He had taken off his shirt and his muscles could be seen working under the pale moon. Grawp could see it behind the bushes.
Fang raced along the overgrown paths that once led to the Herbology classrooms in 1678, the abnormal sounds of skrewt and human still ringing in his ears. There he saw Hagrid, a true half-giant.
He began to tell him, to tell him like a good dog should, about all the things he had just witnessed. Hagrid had stopped digging and was listening intently to the punctuated barks of his oldest confidant.
"What are you trying to tell me, Fang? What? The pumpkins are flooded again! No, not that...is it...is it my hut...no...the Malfoys...no...it's not...no it can't be...it....NO!"
In the split second of understanding, Hagrid let the spade go, as he let all the emotion in. The love that had been built so stoically, so relentlessly inside his bearded heart could not be fully taken away without the pain. The pain of ripping something that was, for so long, his. His skrewt, his Delilah...his One Love.
He clutched his throbbing head and began to, without knowing whether day was night or night was day, run frantically into the forest. Following the paths that no human feet had touched for centuries, breathing air that had only been touched by the ageing werewolves that, once a month, swung lazily through the trees, he desperately fought for something, some thought, some potion, that could free him from the cold reality of his situation. Crabbe had...oh, that boy, that monstrous boy and his Delilah! It was a myriad of things that clutched and wounded his heart – the betrayal, the thought of others touching her, the loss of love, the heavy words of No More. No More. No More...like a sad echo drifting on some distant wind.
He ran somewhere, he did not know where...and the voice, that ancient arachnid voice greeted him.
"Hagrid," it said from cavernous black depths. "I have heard."
"Yes..." it was all he could say. "Yes..."
As Half-Giant and Spider consummated their old alliance. Grawp watched on, sadly.
He watched his brother entangled in a web of passion. Grawp felt fear for him. Grawp felt his sadness, like a sibling bond, through blood and heart. A fat tear rolled one, two, three onto the fir-cones on the forest floor. Hagrid, he thought, oh what are you doing? I cry for you, he seemed to say, I cry for you, oh my brother.