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There was a flash and a bang and then Hagrid wasn’t in Hogwarts anymore.
He wasn’t even sure if he was still in Britain. Given that he was staring down an eight-foot, green-scaled beasty with large spikes and piercing eyes, the kind of which he’d never seen before, it was a well-founded doubt.
“Tyranitar!” the beasty roared and lashed out at him.
So naturally, Hagrid reached out and grabbed the wee thing and brought it into a soothing head-lock. The beasty struggled some, but Hagrid had wrestled many great creatures in his life and weathered it unfazed.
“There’s a good lad, now settle down,” Hagrid told the beasty and gave it a firm pat on the head. When it snapped at him, he chuckled and patted it again. “What a beauty yeh are, isn’t that right? No need ter be afraid, I’m not goin' ter hurt yeh.”
“Tyranitar..?”
“Never seen such a one like yer. Mighty fine beasty yer are, mighty fine.” Hagrid kept talking to the beasty, and after a while, the struggling stopped and so did the attacks, much to his delight.
“Now, what ter do with yeh…” And, maybe just as important, how to get back home?
~~~
Professor Samuel Oak followed the trail of the rampaging Tyranitar with trepidation. Thankfully, the Pokemon hadn’t run towards Pallet town, but the fact that it managed to escape was bad enough. He clutched the Pokeballs he’d taken with him. A few of them were empty, as a last-ditch option if the Tyranitar was still unwilling to come with him. It was much too big to be roaming these parts of Kanto, and while Oak wasn’t keen on catching the wild Pokemon without further reason, he couldn’t ignore that, either.
He stopped mid-stride when he heard a rumbling sound further into the woods. His eyes widened and he snuck forward, recognising the purring sound after a few confused moments.
What he found in the little clearing was even more surprising than anything he’d imagined. Not only was the Tyranitar purring, it was doing it while being belly-scratched by a literal giant of a man. With his thick, long hair and tangled beard, the stranger looked like a brute if it wasn’t for the besotted expression on his face. Oak gaped at them both, long enough for the Tyranitar to look up and growl.
“Now, now, nothin' of that again,” the giant stranger boomed… and booped the snout of the growling Pokemon.
Miraculously, the usually ill-tempered Tyranitar didn’t try to bite the man’s fingers off. Instead, it went all doe-eyed and wriggled for more rubs.
“What the heck,” Oak said, his voice garnering the attention of the giant. The man stood up, at which point Professor Oak noticed that he was easily taller than the Tyranitar.
Which, by the by, stood up as well with a mightily dark expression.
“And who are yer?” the giant man asked, his dark, black eyes on Oak, who suddenly felt very out of his league.
Oak swallowed as he looked all the way up to face the looming giant. “I-I-I’m Professor Oak,” he managed to say, trying to sound as confident as possible, which, right now, wasn’t much.
Suffice to say, he did not expect the giant to suddenly break out into a wide smile, the skin around his dark beetle eyes crinkling in a manner that spoke of many a smile in his past.
“A professor, are yeh? Glad ter hear that! I'm Professor Hagrid. What school d'you teach in? I got a bit lost, yeh see. I'm from Hogwarts!” the giant - Hagrid - boomed and took Oak’s hand in his, shaking it quite rigorously.
Oak was mostly sure that this Hagrid didn’t mean to nearly dislocate his arm. Mostly. “Ah, no, I’m not that kind of professor,” he said and rubbed his shoulder with a slight grimace. “I’m a Pokemon Professor, actually.”
Hagrid looked at him with a puzzled expression, pulling the Tyranitar back when it tried to maul Oak. “And what’s a Pokemon?”
“Oh, my,” Oak said faintly. “Maybe you should come with me.”
~~~
Oak stood at the fence, his arms crossed and a smile on his face. Lance obviously didn’t share his confidence - the man was grimacing and wincing every so often as he watched Hagrid wrestle a fully-grown Onix. Lance had brought the Pokemon to him because it had caused a lot of problems on the Victory Road. For some reason, it showed an extreme amount of aggression.
Hagrid, the gentle giant that Oak had taken in a few months back, wasn’t fazed by that at all and deftly pinned the big rock snake to the ground whenever it tried to headbutt him.
“Who is that?” Lance asked, absolutely gobsmacked. Oak laughed, knowing all too well how Lance felt. He’d been there, too, after all.
Oak hadn’t even planned to let Hagrid stay. It had just sort of… happened. He’d taken him to his laboratory and the surrounding pens, partially because of curiosity, but mostly because the Tyranitar had been surprisingly docile around the giant man. After some prodding questions, however, it had become increasingly obvious how little Hagrid knew about Kanto. Or about Pokemon. Or any other region Oak knew and described to him. Galar had held some similarities to this Britain that Hagrid claimed was his home country, which had no Pokemon at all, but many different ‘creatures’, as Hagrid called them.
Before Oak knew it, Hagrid had befriended a number of the Pokemon living with him, from the big and strong ones like the Tyranitar to the smallest little things like Raupy. Oak let him sleep over for a night, and another night, and a whole week, watching Hagrid dishing out tough love and gentle coddling both.
After that, Oak stopped finding the right time to send Hagrid off. And Hagrid, while homesick, stopped asking for things like magical schools and floo powder.
Now, he was pretty much living here. “That’s Hagrid, my assistant,” Oak said, not without some pride in his voice. “One of the best tamers I’ve seen yet.”
Lance gave him an incredulous look. “He just knocked the Onix over its head.”
“It’s working, isn’t it?”
They both turned back to the spectacle and watched as Hagrid gave the Onix a few hearty pats. The Pokemon looked very confused and a bit dazed from being knocked around so much, but it had stopped its attacks for now.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” Lance shook his head. “He’s not even using a Pokemon.”
Oak snorted softly. “He doesn’t have any.”
“...what?”
“Doesn’t like Pokeballs,” Oak continued and shrugged. “I offered to teach him how to use them, but he says he prefers to just befriend them instead. And it works. Don’t ask me how, but I haven’t met a Pokemon who hasn’t eventually fallen in love with this man.”
Lance opened his mouth, but then he closed it again. After a moment of watching the Onix tentatively leaning in for more pats, he tried again. “Where in the world did you even find him?”
On the field, Hagrid let out a booming laugh. The skin around his dark beetle eyes crinkled, which made it easy to ignore his impossible size and his wild hair and beard. It was a joyous sound and Oak noticed how Lance’s shoulders relaxed a bit. Hagrid might have a way with Pokemon that was as unlikely as his size, but the giant wasn’t bad with humans either.
“In the woods, actually,” Oak finally replied. It was Lance’s time to snort, but the man was smiling now, too. “Can you imagine Bruno meeting him?”
“I will never tell Bruno about Hagrid,” Lance said. “He’ll want to challenge him, and I don’t actually want to know how he’ll react if he loses to your assistant. Please don’t ask him over.”
“No promises.” Oak turned away from the pen, letting Hagrid do his magic. He’d learned to trust him and his unconventional methods. In a few weeks’ time, they might be able to bring the Onix back to its home. “Let’s go back inside. I wanted to show you something…”
Lance looked back for a moment longer, but he eventually followed Oak with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“And no stealing my assistant,” Oak added sternly.
Lance smirked. “No promises, Professor.”