You began to study, which Dorcas found ridiculous as you never studied for anything. Your story was that you and Hagrid had simply been discussing magical creatures often, and you were intent on learning more (which was actually true).
You accumulated books on werewolves. Madam Pince, the librarian, agreed to lend out the books as long as you kept your disaster secret, as all staff now knew. You worried Pringle would have his eye on you.
Werewolves were, luckily, an interesting topic. They acquired lycanthropy by being bitten by another werewolf; there was no cure. The Ministry of Magic had a concerning amount of laws against them. You couldn't imagine why they made life so difficult for people who could not help what they were!
Most days were spent like that, and once you had found as much information as you could on werewolves, you turned to other magical creatures that interested you for something to take up your time that wasn't sneaking off.
Halloween came and went. Each night that the full moon was out you kept an eye on the forest, but you never saw the wolf man come or go. You thought that you would've missed Christmas, too, if it weren't for everyone leaving.
The week after Halloween, Hagrid asked you to bring the rest of the girls down the following friday, which you happily did. He invited you all to help him in decorating the Great Hall, since his responsibilities were the trees and decor while Pringle and the house elves took care of the rest of the school.
That Saturday, the first week of December, you woke up early to help. Shockingly, Hagrid had already set up the three pine trees around the room. Two on either wall and one, the largest, behind the teachers table.
"Hagrid, how did you manage that?" Asked Alice, staring at the easily twenty foot tall trees. Hagrid, who was littered with tiny scratches and smelled strongly of the woods, brushed it off as a minor task.
"Yeh know the levitation' spell, don't yeh?" He asked, pointing to barrels set up around each tree. "Decorate however yeh want, I'll go and get the rest out of storage."
"The rest?" Dorcas asked, following Lily to one of the trees. "How much more could there be?"
"(Y/n), could yeh lend a hand?"
You went with Hagrid, wondering why he would need help with a few straggling lightbulbs when he had hefted three whole trees into the castle. He took you to a broom closet outside of the Great Hall, very near the room you had been in during the sorting, and handed you a heavy chest whose lid was partially opened and glittering ominously.
"I'll get the heavier 'un," he said as you struggled to hold the box. That man was incredibly strong, you were coming to realize, even stronger than he looked.
Lugging the chest as he walked with you, the silence was making you uncomfortable. You broke it with a question that popped into mind.
"Hagrid," you began. "Why don't you use magic?"
Hagrid sucked in a breath, his black eyes looking down at you from behind his bushy brown beard. "Whaddya mean?"
"It would be a lot easier if you used magic, I mean," you said, not realizing anything was wrong. "You wouldn't have to work so hard."
"Suppose not," he grumbled, opening the large doors to reveal Mary and Alice paired up on the tree near the Slytherin table and Dorcas and Lily at the one nearest Gryffindor. "But I'm not allowed."
"Oh," you said, "Why?"
"I, eh," Hagrid glanced between the pairs of girls before lowering closer to your level. "Don' tell anyone, but I got expelled a long time ago."
YOU ARE READING
Deep In The Woods
Fanfiction•Marauders Era Reader Insert•Book One• (Y/n) (L/n) had had two defining moments of her life by the age of eleven. The first was the day her parents died, leaving her as a baby in the care of her uncle, Phobus Haytham. The second was the day that Pho...
