A / N : Hagrid, as requested by Jacalyn Hyde and Expecting Rain. Let me know what you think, as always! (This, by the way, is set during Chamber of Secrets, when Lucius Malfoy and Cornelius Fudge show up and Hagrid is taken away to Azkaban.) Enjoy!
Rubeus Hagrid
He has never been afraid of monsters. After all, they aren't monsters. Not really. Not to him. They're just interesting creatures, misunderstood. They can't help their natures. There's nothing to fear from a monster, not if you understand this one basic fact. A beast doesn't know how to suppress its instincts. If you treat an animal with respect, you can have nothing to fear. Because an animal will never attack without reason – there is always a motive, be it hunger or fear or a need to protect its young.
No, creatures Hagrid has never feared. Beasts he has never considered monsters. But people . . . . now people are different.
The things that human beings can do to each other . . . they make him shudder. And no matter how hard he tries to understand . . . . he can't.
This where they sent him. To Azkaban, where the wild things are. Up at the top, dizzingly high, where the worst of the worst are kept. Because – whatever Fudge says about precautionary measures – the Ministry believes he set a dangerous creature on the students of Hogwarts. And that is a heinous crime, an inexplicable crime, a motiveless crime. The actions of a true monster.
What is a monster?
He considers this as he sits shivering in his cell. He is usually torn between anguished memories – the day his wand was snapped in two, for instance, or the day his father died. The rest of the time he is drowning in a black sea, and suffocating in the cold, and he doesn't have the time to notice anything else. But sometimes he finds his mind clears a little, and it is then, during these lucid spells, that he considers monsters.
What makes a monster?
Is it venom and bile?
(The poison that runs in a man's veins and makes him rotten to the core. Bad blood . . . )
Is it banshee screams and goblin laughter?
(The crazed exhultations of a woman who glories in evil and delights in despair.)
Is it brute force?
(The sound of fists striking stone and flesh, the desperate attempts made by the frozen to feel.)
Is it hooded, basilisk stares seen through iron bars?
Restless pacing and anguished howls . . .?
Or the sound in the night, like the thin, miserable cry of the augrey? A sound that conveys death and despair, the pitiful lamentation of the hopeless.
He shivers.
There is another monster, of course. One without enough human left in him to die. It's hard to believe that monster was human in the first place.
What makes a monster, he wonders.
And what, for that matter, makes a man?
A / N : An augrey, according to the wonderful Harry Potter Lexicon, is an Irish phoenix. It resembles a vulture and flies only during heavy rain. (Frequent flyer, then.) It also has a high cry traditionally regarded as a death omen but now known merely to foretell – you guessed it – more rain.
Also, if anyone is a little confused about what I was doing in the middle of this one (all the brackets) it's quite simple – Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, random incarcerated Death Eaters of your choice, and Voldemort. You see? ;)