The three of them tried desperately to catch Hagrid's eye across the crowd, hoping for some explanation, but Hagrid was too thoroughly preoccupied with fussing over the great hulking man beside him to notice anything else happening around them.
"Hello there, Grawp—"
Bryan smiled as he greeted Hagrid's brother directly, sizing him up with a relaxed, entirely unbothered curiosity, as though meeting a full-grown giant on the front steps of Hogwarts were simply another unremarkable part of his evening.
Hagrid had clearly gone to considerable, painstaking trouble to make his half-brother—a full-blooded giant look somewhat less frightening for the occasion. He'd shaved Grawp's cheeks smooth, not so much as a single whisker was left anywhere along the jaw, and cropped his coarse hair into a neat, close-cut style.
To help the young witches and wizards accept him a little more easily, Hagrid had scrounged up an actual school robe from somewhere and draped it over Grawp's shoulders—though on a frame that size, the robe looked considerably more like a tent pitched over him.
"Remember, Grawp? I told yeh already—this here's Professor Watson!"
Grawp only stared at Bryan with open, unmistakable dread, his whole massive body was going tense, and Hagrid, anxious at the lack of response, jabbed him hard in the side with one elbow.
"Say hello now. Mind yer manners, like we practised!"
Whatever genuine pain Hagrid's poke actually caused, it was clearly sufficient to twist Grawp's rough, blunt face into a visible grimace. He grunted twice, low and rumbling, in Hagrid's general direction rather than toward Bryan.
"I don't think you need to rush things quite so much, Hagrid—"
Dumbledore stepped forward as well, his own smile remaining kind and grandfatherly throughout, entirely unbothered by the tension rippling through the crowd behind him.
"He's come a long way already since he first moved into the Forbidden Forest, by all accounts. I daresay Grawp will learn to get along properly with people soon enough."
"Oh—thank you, Professor Dumbledore!"
Hagrid said, gratitude was flooding his voice.
"I've been trying to teach him all sorts o' things, little bits at a time. And he's comin' along wonderfully, really he is!"
Having spent the entire preceding stretch of the evening thoroughly terrified that Grawp might embarrass him somehow and cost him this precious, hard-won chance to bring his brother properly into the castle, Hagrid finally allowed himself to relax his shoulders slightly and, in doing so, finally noticed, for the first time since emerging from his hut, how everyone gathered around them was actually reacting to the whole scene.
The staff had all gone strangely silent, and the young students had backed well away across the lawn; a good number had already fled entirely into the safety of the entrance hall behind them.
"Hey now, no need ter worry Grawp's goin' ter hurt anyone, you lot!"
Hagrid called out across the widening gap.
"I've been trainin' him fer months now—he knows he's not ter hurt nobody in the castle, not one bit. Isn't that right, Grawp? Yeh promised me yeh'd behave, remember?"
"…Won't hurt—"
Grawp mumbled reluctantly, after a long, effortful pause, though the words still came out sounding rather like the deep, rumbling snoring of Crabbe and Goyle.
"See, there yeh go!"
Hagrid seemed to consider this settled the entire matter conclusively, and beamed out at the young witches and wizards with open, hopeful pride.
No one responded to the beaming. The assembled students only stared blankly back at Grawp, and more than a few of them wore expressions of open, unconcealed disgust on their faces.
Objectively speaking, this Grawp who was plainly some close relation of Hagrid's—wasn't quite as physically overwhelming and terrifying in build as Hagrid himself, standing side by side for comparison.
But his facial features were considerably uglier and blunter than his brother's, his round, entirely bald head and his back, thick as a stone wall, giving off an impression far more savage and untamed than anything Hagrid's own, good-natured face had ever shown.
Nor did it help matters that Grawp's dull, glassy eyes and the row of yellowed, uneven teeth bared briefly in something meant as a grin did anything at all to endear him to the watching crowd.
Hagrid looked, standing there, equal parts embarrassed and genuinely helpless, alone at the centre of the widening circle, still gripping Grawp's wrist, looking for all the world as though he'd been abruptly abandoned by everyone.
"H-hello there—"
Harry didn't know, even as he did it, where he'd found the nerve. Even though Grawp's sheer size and menace made Harry genuinely uneasy too, standing this close, he simply couldn't bear to watch Hagrid left facing this alone, with not one other person standing beside him.
Under the openly shocked stares of the surrounding crowd, he stumbled forward a few steps, walking toward Hagrid and Grawp though he made sure, even in the moment of his own courage, to keep a careful, sensible distance from those enormous hands.
"Hello, Grawp. I'm Harry—Harry Potter. We—welcome to Hogwarts—"
Harry felt as though he'd spent every last scrap of his available courage just getting those few words out properly under the weight of Grawp's bewildered, uncomprehending gaze on him.
Harry's small, bold act startled Professor McGonagall half out of her wits—her hand flew back to her chest but once she'd recovered from the shock, she, along with Dumbledore and Bryan, all looked toward Harry with matching expressions of relief, and something that looked distinctly like pride besides.
"Well then—perhaps the rest of you, Gryffindors—"
Professor McGonagall stepped forward, drawing a breath before addressing her House.
"Perhaps you might all learn something from Mr. Potter's fearless courage just now—and from his warmth toward a guest who has come a very long way to be here tonight."
Put on the spot like that, in front of the entire school, Gryffindor House did stir with visible discomfort but only Hermione actually stepped forward in response.
Hermione seemed rather ashamed, in that moment, that she hadn't been the very first to step up herself, especially given that Professor Watson had specifically, personally asked her to help liaise with this exact visiting delegation only days before.
"I'm Hermione Granger—"
Hermione said, holding her own breath, under Hagrid's grateful gaze, addressing Grawp with as much steadiness as she could manage.
This seemed to baffle Grawp thoroughly, his brow were creasing with the effort of processing two introductions in quick series.
He looked back and forth, several times, between Hagrid and the two small figures now standing in front of him, scratching hard at his own bald scalp with one hand and then, slowly, something like understanding flickered through his murky, glassy eyes.
"…Friends."
It was, without any question, a success.
Bryan smiled warmly and clapped his hands together a few times in approving applause.
.....
"This is absurd. I can't even bear to watch this."
Pansy Parkinson of Slytherin hissed furiously into Draco's ear, her arms were crossed tight over her chest.
"I really don't understand any of it. Dumbledore letting Hagrid loose in this school in the first place was foolish enough—but why on earth does Professor Watson insist on dragging in all these filthy monsters as well, on top of everything else?"
Pansy's muttered remarks won a few quiet nods of agreement from several students standing nearby, but Draco himself said nothing in response.
He was watching, thoughtfully, as Grawp clumsily extended one massive finger to touch the trembling, outstretched hands of Potter and Granger in turn.
"Ah—if I'm not mistaken, some more friends have just arrived to join us—"
Professor Watson's calm words sent a fresh shiver through the young witches and wizards, all of whom turned anxiously, almost in unison, toward wherever his gaze had settled next.
Meanwhile, Hagrid, having weathered what was clearly the most agonising, drawn-out stretch of the entire evening, broke into a broad, delighted grin and clapped Grawp firmly on one shoulder.
"Well done, lad! Yeh did brilliant!"
Then, glancing down and catching the withering, distinctly unimpressed looks Harry and Hermione were now giving him for the complete lack of advance warning, Hagrid shrank his own head down guiltily between his shoulders.
"Now don' look at me like that, you two—I'll explain everythin' properly, I promise yeh that."
Once again, the next arrival came from the direction of the Forbidden Forest.
A number of figures emerged one after another from the darkening treeline, some of them were remarkably tall against the pale moonlight, sending even more of the already nervous young students retreating steadily back toward the safety of the entrance hall.
"I imagine it took no small effort to talk Bane round to any of this, Bryan?"
A faint evening breeze stirred Dumbledore's long, silvery beard as he asked the question, taking full advantage of the fact that everyone else's attention was currently fixed elsewhere on the approaching figures. His tone carried evident, genuine interest.
"Actually, it wasn't especially complicated, in the end—"
Bryan answered softly, pitching his voice for Dumbledore alone.
"Bane knows perfectly well that he still owes Hogwarts a considerable debt from prior dealings. I mean—he took in an entire band of Druids without so much as asking anyone's permission first, and let Cliodna wander freely across Hogwarts grounds besides, for however long that arrangement lasted before it all came apart.
And given that Professor Rahansen who comes from that very same stock himself is genuinely willing to let the children of their own people come study at Hogwarts and become part of the wider wizarding world, Bane hardly has solid grounds left to be quite so stubborn about a comparatively smaller request like this one.
And besides—"
Bryan paused, and something distinctly colder crept into his tone beneath the surface calm.
"With the Great Confrontation looming increasingly over the entire wizarding world, the goblins, the giants, the werewolves—all of them have had to pick a side eventually.
The centaurs want to stay entirely above it all and yet they still, quite happily, enjoy the peace and protection that comes from living right next door to Hogwarts.
I'm not so easy to take advantage of."
Dumbledore looked faintly startled, the corner of his mouth were twitching once or twice.
By the time the visitors from the forest had crossed roughly half the remaining distance across the grounds, even the sharper-eyed students among the assembled crowd could finally make out clearly who they actually were.
"It's Professor Rahansen—he's brought some children with him—oh, and the others are—!"
'Centaurs!'
Centaurs living somewhere within the depths of the Forbidden Forest was hardly news to anyone at Hogwarts anymore; plenty of students had glimpsed them at a distance before, usually during unsupervised nighttime wanderings or supervised Care of Magical Creatures excursions.
But centaurs actually walking directly onto the open Hogwarts grounds themselves, in full view of the entire school—that was something entirely new. Something even the staff, standing there watching, had genuinely never witnessed before in all their combined years at the castle.
"I've brought them along as promised, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Watson—"
Firenze stopped before the two men, let out a long breath, and stepped smoothly aside, revealing the children who'd been walking behind him—the smallest was no bigger than an incoming first-year student, the oldest looked almost fully grown into adulthood—now fully exposed to everyone's gaze.
"If I'm not mistaken, you'd be Roya?"
Bryan asked, his smile warm and welcoming, addressing a small, visibly nervous cute girl standing near the front of the group.
"Hello, Professor Watson—"
The little girl nodded shyly toward Bryan. Everything around her here was so strange and entirely new to her that she couldn't quite stop her wide eyes from darting constantly around.
"Welcome to Hogwarts, to study here, and to live among us."
Dumbledore looked with equal, genuine kindness on this whole small group of children with their clear, unclouded eyes, and smiled at each of them in turn.
"And in keeping with your agreement with Elder Bane, I've also brought our foal—"
The centaur walking alongside Firenze wore a considerably grimmer expression throughout this entire exchange.
After all, the centaurs, as a tribe, had not exactly volunteered for this magnificent cultural exchange out of any particular goodness of heart or genuine curiosity—they had no interest in wizards' magic, nor any especial wish to freely share their knowledge with them in return.
And so, in the end, the centaur tribe had sent only a single foal to represent them in this whole arrangement. A filly.
"Good evening, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Watson—"
The little filly, nudged forward by Magorian standing behind her, pawed twice at the dirt with one hoof, and lowered her head uneasily.
"I'm Polly—"
————————————
For More Chapters; [email protected]/FicFrenzy