MAGIANIMA // Hermione Granger

Anything At All

Two golden coated unicorn foals trotted around Atlas, nudging at her hands, stomach, anywhere they could reach just to grab her attention, but the girl was occupied glaring at Hagrid, the half-giant with his head bowed and large hands wringing together as he thought up an excuse for his avoidant behaviour. Atlas sighed and ran a hand through her hair exasperatedly, offering the two foals a few pats before advancing on the man and sitting beside him on his stairs. They let a few moments of silence flit between them, simply admiring the two young beasts.

"I'm sorry I avoided yeh...I knew yeh didn' hate me. I jus' needed some time to me'self is all."

"It's alright Hagrid," Atlas nodded, placing a hand on his shoulder - which required quite the deal of stretching. "I was just a little upset because I thought you thought I hated you and that's rather insulting actually," she chuckled and Hagrid grunted in understanding, still wringing his hands together. "Because, you know...we're sort of the same aren't we? People say bad stuff about us because of our blood...because of who we're related to."

"Yeh...yeh're right, always are," Hagrid smiled, placing a hand on her head so heavily she almost sunk through the cabin stairs, they even creaked in resistance, but Atlas took it in her stride. She'd had many encounters with Hagrid and his accidental strength just as he had with hers in her Dire-wolf form, Frog. In fact, she'd once sent him flying into one of his prize-winning pumpkins just before a Halloween Feast. Of course, she'd been beyond apologetic but he'd waved it off and patted her back, subsequently sending her into another prize-winning pumpkin. Let's just say Hagrid won no awards that year but the memories were reward enough.

A bell tolled from within one of the towers of Hogwarts and soon, students poured from the courtyard, Gryffindors and Slytherins making their way down the bank to meet Hagrid and start their first lesson of Care of Magical Creatures with him as their professor again. Atlas could hear the whispers from where she stood, right by a shaking Hagrid who had resorted to wringing his hands out once again. She reached up and punched his shoulder lightly, grinning when he turned to look down at her.

"You'll do great, Hagrid!"

"Tah, Atlas..." He whispered back through a gruff tone and Atlas saluted, jogging over to where she saw her trio approaching, muttering greetings to a few of her fellow housemates and smirking at Parvati in particular when she noticed Lavender grab the girls hand. That earned a flustered look and Atlas simply laughed, catching the eye of Neville moments later, the words of Madam Pince echoing through her mind. 

Right, she needed to remind the boy to take his books back. She'd do it after the lesson. It was a half-day today so this would be their final class before dinner. Atlas's final class before the trial the following day. At that thought, she gave an involuntary shudder.

"You alright?" Atlas nodded, slapping her hand against Harry's in greeting and turning to do the same with Ron, she simply grinned at Hermione and then tore her gaze away before her mind wandered to their moment the night before last. 

It was a moment she had been trying desperately to distract herself from because otherwise, she'd be doing more than melting holes in the floor of Snape's class after a failed potion and definitely more than singing Seamus's eyebrows off in a DADA exercise. In short, she'd been tragically occupied by the memory for a while and it wasn't doing her any favours. Not practically any way, it served as great background entertainment when Divination got too boring.

"Yeah, you? Didn't see you at Lunch," Harry smiled.

"I've been preparing Hagrid, he's been really nervous," Atlas said, running a hand through her hair as she glanced back to the man, flashed him a smile and sent him two reassuring thumbs up that he reciprocated half-heartedly, his smile falling short and his hands shaking so badly, from a distance, it simply looked like he was holding up two fists.