Care of Magical Creatures
He had gone to see Hagrid the evening before the first lesson.
Not because Care of Magical Creatures required special preparation in the way that Runes and Arithmancy did — he knew the first-term content from the books, and knew Hagrid's approach to it, and the practical work with magical creatures was the kind of thing that benefited from being present and attentive rather than pre-studied. He went because there was something he wanted to raise before the lesson rather than after it.
Hagrid's hut had the particular warm smell of animals and something baking and the outdoors carried inside on large boots, and Hagrid himself had the quality he always had — the specific combination of enormous physical presence and the gentleness of someone who had never quite adjusted to the fact that most things found him frightening, and had dealt with this by being consistently kind until they stopped.
He accepted the offer of tea, which was the only correct response in Hagrid's hut, and waited until it had been poured and they were both sitting — Ron on the chair that was exactly the wrong size and Hagrid on the one that was exactly the right size — before raising it.
"I wanted to talk to you about the first lesson," he said. "The Hippogriffs."
Hagrid looked at him with the slightly cautious expression of someone who had been about to do a thing and was now receiving a comment on it before doing it. "What about them?"
"They're magnificent creatures," Ron said, and meant it. "And Buckbeak especially — I've read about him specifically from Percy, he's been at Hogwarts the longest. The issue I wanted to raise is the group size." He looked at Hagrid steadily. "Twenty-odd third-years all approaching at once is a lot of variables. Some of them are going to be nervous. Some of them are going to be overconfident, which is worse. Buckbeak is going to be doing twenty separate assessments in a short time, in front of a large audience."
Hagrid was quiet for a moment, looking at his tea.
"If you took us in smaller groups," Ron continued, "five or six at a time — the others could be watching the lesson materials or making notes on what they observe from a distance. The ones approaching would have more space. Buckbeak would have fewer simultaneous things to manage. The ones who are nervous would have longer to watch before it was their turn, which tends to help."
He stopped there. He had made the case. The rest was Hagrid's decision.
Hagrid looked at him with the expression of someone receiving a suggestion they were turning over carefully. "You've thought about this," he said.
"I want the lesson to go well," Ron said. "For everyone. Including Buckbeak."
Something in Hagrid's expression settled, the way it settled when something he cared about was being taken seriously by someone unexpected. "Small groups," he said slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, that could work." He paused. "I was going to have the whole class approach in a line."
"The line makes each student's approach less individual," Ron said. "The Hippogriff can't assess each person separately if they're standing three feet apart."
"Right," Hagrid said, and there was something in his voice that was thinking through the mechanics of it in real time. "Right, I see what you mean." He looked at Ron with the warm, direct attention he gave people he had decided were worth attending to. "You know a fair bit about Hippogriffs."
"I've been reading ahead," Ron said, which was the most accurate summary available.
He took a photograph of Hagrid in his hut on the way out —Hagrid with his enormous mug of tea, looking at the window with the expression of a man who had just changed a plan and was working out the better version.
The photograph would show the hut's interior and the light from the window and the general atmosphere of a space that was entirely what it was, with no pretensions about it. He liked it immediately.
The first Care of Magical Creatures lesson happened on a Thursday morning in the pale September light, with the class divided into groups of five that Hagrid had organised in advance.
The Hippogriffs stood in the paddock with the patient self-possession of creatures that had been assessed by humans many times and found the experience neither threatening nor particularly interesting. Buckbeak, at the near end, watched the approaching students with the flat, attentive eye of something that understood exactly what it was and had no anxieties about whether you agreed.
Ron was in the second group, which gave him the specific advantage of watching the first group go through it — Harry among them, stepping forward when Hagrid asked for a volunteer because Harry always stepped forward. He watched the approach with the attention of someone learning the Hippogriff at the same time as watching Harry learn it. The bow. The held stillness. The specific moment when Buckbeak made his decision and dipped his head.
Harry's expression when Buckbeak allowed him to step forward was the expression of someone who had trusted a thing and had the trust returned, and it had the quality of something that went beyond the immediate moment.
Ron took a photograph before he thought about taking it.
His own group went next. He bowed with the full attention of someone who had thought about what a bow communicated to a creature that read submission and respect as the same gesture — no hedging, no checking to see if anything had gone wrong, simply the complete offering of the gesture and the held stillness after. Buckbeak looked at him for a moment. Ron waited. Buckbeak dipped his head.
He stepped forward and ran a hand along the feathered neck with the care of someone being allowed to do something they found genuinely interesting. The specific reality of it — half-eagle, half-horse, entire unto itself, warm under the feathers — was the kind of thing that no amount of reading about had fully prepared him for.
"Good," Hagrid said, quietly, from the fence.
The third group went. The fourth. Each group smaller, each approach more considered than a line of twenty would have allowed.
Malfoy was in the fifth group.
He had spent the lesson at the observation fence with Crabbe and Goyle, commenting on proceedings at a volume calibrated for his immediate audience. The comments had the texture of someone performing confidence for people who already agreed with him — low-risk, low-content, more about the sound of his own certainty than anything it communicated. Ron had not looked at him. There was nothing there that required looking at.
Malfoy approached Buckbeak like someone who had decided in advance that the creature would be manageable and was performing that decision rather than actually implementing it.
His bow was shallow — the bow of someone going through a motion — and he came out of it too quickly, already reaching forward with the impatient confidence of someone who had decided the formality was unnecessary.
Buckbeak's head came up.
The shift happened fast — the Hippogriff's posture changing from assessed-and-accepted to something sharper, the wings lifting fractionally, the flat eye now fixed on Malfoy with the look of an animal that had given a signal and found it ignored.
Malfoy stopped.
He had gone quite still, which was the first sensible thing he had done in the approach, but the stillness had the quality of someone frozen by surprise rather than someone choosing to hold their ground, and his face had lost the performance entirely. What was there instead was simply fear, which was honest and which was the correct response to a Hippogriff that had just told you that you had made an error.
Hagrid was already moving.
He came around the fence with the specific speed of someone very large who moved faster than expected when it mattered, and he stepped between Malfoy and Buckbeak with the calm, practiced motion of someone who had been managing large magical creatures for twenty years and understood what the next three seconds required. He brought his hand up to Buckbeak's neck — the specific place, the specific pressure — and spoke to the Hippogriff in the low, unhurried tone he used when he needed a creature to hear that everything was being handled.
Buckbeak's wings settled.
The eye remained on Malfoy for a moment longer. Then Buckbeak turned his head away with the deliberate quality of something that had made a decision about what it thought and was implementing it, and began to walk toward the far fence with the calm, unhurried movement of a creature that had more interesting things to attend to.
Malfoy stepped back. Then stepped back again. His face was doing something that he was attempting to convert into disdain and hadn't quite managed yet.
"Right," Hagrid said, to the group in general, in the tone of someone who had handled something and was moving on. "That's what happens when the bow isn't finished properly. The greeting is a conversation. You don't walk away from a conversation before it's done." He looked at the group without looking at Malfoy specifically, which was a form of tact that was also a form of correction. "We'll take a moment and then the last group can go."
Malfoy said nothing. He moved back to the fence with Crabbe and Goyle, and whatever he was going to say about what had happened, he was saying it quietly.
Ron watched Hagrid settle Buckbeak with the patient attention of someone returning to a task, offering something from his pocket — a ferret, which Buckbeak took with the precise, unhurried motion of something that had decided the situation was resolved and was resuming normal operations.
He watched Hagrid's hands and how he moved around the creature - the confidence of someone who loved what they were working with, the ease of decades of practice - and thought that there was something worth learning in how Hagrid moved around things that could hurt him and chose, consistently, not to be afraid.
The fifth group went through without incident.
After the lesson, Ron stayed to help with the paddock. Hagrid was re-securing the gate with the specific thoroughness of someone who didn't leave things to chance when it came to what was on the other side of it.
"Worked better," Hagrid said, after a while. "The small groups. Like you said."
"It did," Ron agreed.
Hagrid looked at him. "The thing with Malfoy—"
"You handled it well," Ron said. "Before it became something."
Hagrid was quiet for a moment, with the expression of someone receiving a thing they hadn't expected. "I've had lessons go the other way," he said. "Taken a moment too long to move."
"You didn't today," Ron said.
Hagrid looked at Buckbeak, who had settled in the far corner of the paddock with the composed quality of something that had concluded its assessments for the morning and was done with people for a while. "He's a good animal," Hagrid said quietly. "People don't always give him a fair chance."
"They should," Ron said.
Hagrid was quiet for a moment, resting his elbows on the fence. 'I was worried,' he said. 'After Malfoy. That his father would make something of it. Lucius Malfoy's on the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. He's used that before.'
Ron considered this. 'Buckbeak didn't touch him,' he said. 'Malfoy startled him. That's all that happened. Hagrid was between them inside two seconds. There's nothing there to make something of.'
'No,' Hagrid said, slowly. 'There isn't, is there.' He looked at the paddock. 'Still. I'll be careful.'
'That's all you can do,' Ron said. 'Be careful, teach it well, and don't give them anything real to use.'
Hagrid nodded. He looked, if not entirely easy, then at least settled - the look of someone who had been carrying a worry and had just been reminded it wasn't inevitable.
He took a photograph of Buckbeak before he left — the Hippogriff in the late morning light at the far end of the paddock, wings half-spread in the warmth, the other Hippogriffs arranged behind him. It was a good photograph. He knew it before it developed.