Blue

by Bernice

Blue
Snape/Hagrid
Gen
Unbetaed. Let me know if I've made any booboos?
I wrote this on my arm on the way home. I lost the original ending as it rained. This ending isn't as good, but it's all I could remember.



Hagrid felt the walls crowd around him, nothing could scare him now, not even prison walls, and in a way they were almost as firm and comforting as swaddling cloth, holding him like the enormous arms of a mother he remembered as clear as yesterday. "Elephants never forget" the children had teased, when he was still in school and although he wasn't as smart as the others, he never forgot what the teachers said, and he never forgot the other children's teasing. But he also never forgot what his father had said about being gentle. Be gentle, be kind, be jolly, because you'll never be normal. You'll never be small, or fragile, or delicate, and now he thought, he'd never leave these walls.

The walls crowded around him like the Dementors that held out their arms of bone and ragged cloth, gesturing to him like an ethereal lover, pleading with him to remember, to give them sustenance, to give up his soul, but he hoarded it, hoarded his memories and let them starve. There were few creatures that Hagrid could feel no pity for, but as he had always hid away and hoarded all the hatreds and petty grievances of his life so no one would ever see them, he could feel free to squander them on these monsters. And those, he would call monster. As he'd never call a basilisk or acromantula monster. As others called him monster.

In his cell in Azkaban, rotting again for something he hadn't done, punished for being big, punished for being kind, like he'd been when he'd been a child and like he'd always be as a child-like adult, Hagrid sat and called others monster.

But he smiled, he smiled right at them, his teeth a flash of white in the blackness of the cell, and the Dementors wailed and gasped, sounds he assumed meant they were angry, as they were denied a feast. He knew they'd looked forward to his visit, so much good humour, so much jolly fat man, so much to feed on, but they starved. He starved them and just a little bit, he almost pitied them, but he couldn't quite bring himself to think they were just misunderstood creatures, and he'd never adopt one and keep it in his blanket box.

"Ha, yeh nasty beasties!" he teased them. "Yeh can squawk all yeh want but ye'll get nothin' from me!"



He took another tiny sip from the tiny vial he'd hidden in his beard and held it up in a gesture of cheers. He couldn't stretch out, or lay down, or stand up, the walls were too close, but that didn't mean he'd forget his manners and he gave his silent thanks to Severus, even though the Professor wasn't there.

The black and grey walls, built to be dark and dingy, slimy with artificially encouraged algae, started to turn a lovely blue. A pale blue… and Hagrid tried to place it, it was darker than the sky, but lighter than cornflowers. He thought of cornflowers and slowly the blue paled, and he watched the scene change to a beautiful field, late summer, grass as high as his knees, butterflies, blue, a thousand shades of blue, danced over cornflowers. Blue and fat and cheerful and unnaturally blue. He knew there were names for all the different blues but he just called them all blue. Hagrid loved blue, all shades of blue, black blues and duck egg blues and the slimmest strands of blue he saw in the steel of Professor McGonagall's hair and the brilliant watery blues he saw in Professor Dumbledore's eyes. In fact, there were no colours Hagrid really didn't like, but right now, he felt like blue and he wanted to see the cornflowers bob and curtsy in the soft warm wind that sent them dancing. So they did.

The potion flowed through his veins and he sighed in deep relief, happy, so blissfully happy, blue and calm and quite cheerful, smashed up into his tiny blue box, angry starving blue Dementors just beyond his field of vision. And if he just sipped, if he just made it last, he had enough blue happiness to last him a very long time. He had a very large beard and a very skilled friend.

"Take this. Hide it. Take a sip when you need it."

"Thank you, Professor."

"What? That's it? Aren't you going to ask me what it is?"

"No, Sir."

"It could be anything! I could be trying to poison you! It's this blind trust that got you into this difficulty in the first place! This is why you keep getting into so much trouble, Hagrid, because you just blindly trust people. Are you just going to take this and not question it?"

"Yes."

So he'd hidden the tiny vial in his beard, fumbled with a cork that was way too small for his fingers, taken a sip when the pressing misery had become too much and slipped away into blue.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hagrid couldn't find much blue.

He wandered the grounds of Hogwarts, in and out of the forest, but this time of year there was nothing blue. He found… something… he wasn't sure what it was, but it was yellow and lumpy and twisted into the most peculiar shapes, so he used his knife to slice off what he thought was a blossom and added it to his bunch. It was interesting, and he poked at it for a while and wondered if anyone would think it was beautiful, but he wasn't really the best judge of that. He knew interesting, and he knew good, even if he didn't really know beautiful, blossom and hunted around until he found something a little bit slimy and a little bit spotty, but it had the most interesting smell so he took a single blossom of that, too, and added it to his bunch. He couldn't find anything useful and he couldn't find anything blue, but at least it was interesting. And maybe someone who was a better judge of these things than he was, would even find his bunch of… things… quite pretty. He hoped so.

And by the end of the afternoon, he'd even found a single cornflower, but it wasn't their season and the blossom was green instead of blue and a not nearly as soft yet spiky as a cornflower should be, but he took it anyway, and wrapped the whole lot up with a bit of twine he kept handy in his pocket.

Once he'd reached the door, though, his certainty left him and he started to question just what on earth it was he was doing. Wouldn't the Professor prefer something useful? Something he could put in a potion? Or money to cover the cost of the potion in the vial or even a box of Hagrid's home made fudge. Everyone loved Hagrid's home made fudge. Or at least, Hagrid thought, once it had glued their jaws together, they were unable to complain about it.

He rearranged his bunch of things fretfully, and shuffled about, and was just going to leave when the door opened and Snape glared at him from within. "What?"

"Er, I er," Hagrid said. "Brought yeh…"

"Something utterly pointless, I assume?"

"Er, yeh, I er."

Snape merely spun on his heel, and spray of black cloth, Dementor grim and Azkaban dark, and disappeared back into the dingy, grimy dungeon class room, moss growing naturally thick on the wall by the sink.

Hagrid shuffled around again before following Snape into the classroom, and jiggled nervously from foot to foot.

Snape stared at him for a sideways moment, one eye a black slit of distrust, and Hagrid realised that Snape had nothing to put Hagrid's bunch of… things in. No one brought Snape bunches of anything, and this was an area where Snape was completely unprepared.

"Er…" Hagrid floundered, looking for a solution, but Snape had picked up a small cauldron and walked to the moss covered wall, filling it from a tap. Not with magic, no wand, just the tap that had been installed to soothe the first year muggle borns, to give them something they could understand, something that someone who wasn't allowed to use a wand could use without being embarrassed.

Snape put the cauldron of water on label table and Hagrid put his bunch of things into it and thought that this had been a big mistake.

"I was tryin' teh… teh thank yeh."

Snape merely raised an eye brow.

"Fer the blue."

"The blue?" Snape quirked his head to the side curiously.

Waving one hand helplessly, Hagrid said, "The blue. I wanted teh… Yeh know?" How could Hagrid explain how grateful he was for the gift, for the blue, for the belief. How could he find words, in his huge, unforgetting, uneducated head that he could use to impress upon Snape just how much that gift had meant?

But Snape answered him simply.

"Yes."

And when Hagrid smiled, his teeth a flash of white against the blackness of his beard, Snape twisted his head again, ducking down with a curtain of hair that hid his face, the strands, in the dim candle light, reflecting blue.