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The attachment was not small by any standards, but not bigger than the hut it was adjoined to. I did not know who had conjured it. It can’t have been Hagrid, though I had noticed over the last day and a half, that he used much more magic than he let on.
His magic has its limitations though, and surely, no pink umbrella could’ve conjured such a sturdy addition.
A door and a window with walls clean and white. Hagrid had gruffly hauled a mattress through the door yesterday, plopping it on the bare boards.
The abundance of free space, presumably a gesture of generosity, was slightly intimidating. Too used to the crawl space, a den under an old sewing machine, or the rug by the fire. But it didn’t feel wrong to be so much…to have so much. But the expectation to be me—to really be me on my own terms was exciting and terrifying.
“Git up, Ollie, time fer breakfast.”
The big dog lumbered into my room to drool onto my face. Ah, at last a refreshing shower. Where I came from the masters held its houseelves to a higher standard of cleanliness and so without speaking I got to work scrubbing my face and ears, my sharp teeth, and feet outside at a spicket. Before I could ask him what he wanted, Hagrid handed me a plate covered in intangible breakfast items of his own design. He had started waking me later since the first time I automatically made breakfast and cleaned the kitchen before he had even gotten dressed.
I had been wearing shirt and pants since I arrived and it felt nice. I finally felt almost human, though at first I had thought the towel was meant for me to wear. Hagrid even found a pair of boots long enough for my toes. Hagrid knit me a pair of socks and a warm hat with flaps so “yer can hide yer ears if thas whacher want”.
The dog sat beside during breakfast. Beside his smell I found him comforting. We were sort of peas in a pod he and I—only his ears were much more fitting for him.
…
My boots rattled around my ankles as I jogged up toward the castle behind Hagrid. The day was chilly and the grass crunched with ice. Hagrid held at least fourteen large logs of wood bundled in his arms as he walked. Hauling wood was not my favorite, but maybe that was merely because I could barely carry three of the massive logs with my scrawny elf arms. There were times where I felt like I might just be a normal kid, but it was things like this, things normal boys would barely sweat over that put me most at odds with my body.
We left the logs by a small door where Hagrid eventually told me to stay and move the logs inside. I moved the logs in at a clipped pace, hoping for him to see how much I wanted to do what I needed to. I stacked them neatly by the door to the first huge woodstove.
…
I knew fires well—I had been tending the flame in the master’s house since I could stand, but at times I would neglect my own woodstove merely because I could. In my large room I curled up, holding with my long fingers, my long toes.
The headmistress had placed a new looking glass in my room on the opposite wall and sitting on the bed all I saw were my large eyes.
My mother used to tell me the boy who lived had green eyes, but they can’t have been this bright, this buoyant. His can’t have been neon saucers like this. Plus I didn’t want anyone to stare at me, but to glide over me, to see no abnormality where there was too much.
I wonder how Hagrid feels about the stares, but then again, he must be used to it.