The rest of the night passed by relatively quickly. When the pair returned to Gryffindor Tower, the fat lady just raised her eyebrow at them, but didn't comment. There was minimal comment about the length of their trek from their friends, for which they were both grateful. Before long, they were all heading up to their respective dormitories and to the realm of dreams. Harry endured an almost constant stream of teasing from Sirius that night when he told the man about the ball and who his date was. Harry barely reacted to any of Sirius's comments, much to the man's chagrin, but that didn't deter him from his quest.
Harry woke up the next morning in high spirits. After completing his morning jog, instead of heading directly into the castle to work out in the Room of Requirement, he stopped by Hagrid's hut to see if the friendly half-giant was up for some tea. Harry enjoyed catching up with his friend. Hagrid had jokingly asked him if he had managed to snag a date for the dance yet and was surprised when Harry told him that he had. Hagrid commended him on his good taste when Harry revealed who his date was to be.
The two spent half an hour catching up on each other's lives. Hagrid told him that Grawp had moved out of the forest. He was now living in a cave in some nearby mountains. Hagrid assured him that his half brother was catching onto English very quickly now and was capable of simple conversation. Harry talked a bit about his HA classes and some of the problems that had cropped up, especially with Ron. Hagrid assured him that Ron would come around eventually. Harry could only hope that he was right.
After a short time, Harry excused himself and jogged back up to the castle. He headed directly to the Room of Requirement to put in his morning workout. After he finished up, he headed into the shower to clean himself up. He hoped that he wasn't too late to stop down in the Great Hall to eat a quick breakfast before they stopped serving. But if nothing else he knew he could always stop by the kitchens to pick something up. He was surprised when he came out of the shower room to find a red-haired witch sitting on a bench waiting for him.
"Hey Harry, I figured you'd be in here," she called out to him upon noticing his appearance.
Harry was glad that he had dressed fully before exiting the shower room. He wasn't used to having company. "Hey Gin. What brings you here?" he asked her curiously.
"When you didn't show up to breakfast, I figured you were running a little late on your workout routine, so I brought you some toast," she said, producing said toast wrapped up in a napkin.
"Thanks," he said, shooting her a bright smile. "I was worried that I might have missed breakfast." He walked toward her and gratefully accepted the stack of toast.
"Any time," she replied easily. "So how come you didn't make it to breakfast on time? You're not usually late. Did you sleep in?"
Harry swallowed his bite before replying, "No, I didn't sleep in at all. I stopped by Hagrid's after my jog. I thought about skipping the rest of my workout to go to breakfast, but I figured I could always swing by the kitchens if I did end up missing out."
"That was nice of you," she told him as he continued to devour his breakfast. "Hagrid absolutely adores you… talks about you all the time."
Harry turned startled green eyes toward Ginny. His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed another bite. "Really?"
"Uh huh," she replied. "I know it means the world to him when you visit him. Ron and Hermione too," she added as an afterthought.
"Huh," Harry remarked eloquently. "You know Hagrid is the first friend I ever had. He rescued me from the Dursleys the summer before my first year."
"What do you mean rescued?" Ginny interrupted with a dangerous glint in her eye.
Harry sat down beside her, his toast already devoured. "When letters began arriving from Hogwarts, the Dursleys never let me read them. They always destroyed them, usually in the fire, as soon as they came. Every day the amount of letters that came would increase. It drove my uncle crazy, literally. He boarded up the mail slot on our front door and bolted all the windows shut to prevent any from being delivered, but they always found a way into the house.
"He finally lost it one day and drove us all halfway across the country to escape the torrent of letters, but they followed everywhere we went. We finally ended up in this shack on an island in the middle of nowhere. It was freezing cold and in the middle of a bad storm, and the shack did little to protect us from the elements. I stayed awake that night because I was too cold to sleep, and I counted down to midnight, because the next day was my birthday. Shortly after the clock struck twelve, Hagrid knocked the door in."
"I bet your relatives loved that," she piped in with a giggle.
He smiled at her, grateful for her lightheartedness. "Of course. Uncle Vernon didn't know whether to be angry or frightened, so he fluctuated between threatening him and cowering in a corner of the room. Hagrid brought me a birthday cake, the first cake I'd ever gotten. And when Dudley tried to eat it, Hagrid gave him a pig's tail."
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