"Okay."

He draws himself up to his full height and stretches, loudly cracking his joints. "Yeh ready?"

He nods.

"Come on, then."

Hagrid steps out onto the rock. The sky's quite clear now and the sea gleams in the sunlight. The boat Uncle Vernon hired is still there, with a lot of water in the bottom after the storm.

Victor follows him.

He settles in the boat, and—

"Seems a shame ter row, though," he says, giving Victor a sideways look. "If I was ter—er—speed things up a bit, would yeh mind not mentionin' it at Hogwarts?"

"I won't get you in trouble, I promise," he says seriously.

Hagrid pulls out the pink umbrella again, taps it twice on the side of the boat, and they speed off toward land.

Victor sits quietly.

"Summat on yer mind?"

...he blinks up at him. "Um..."

"It's all right if yeh don't wanna talk, jus' thought I should ask."

"I'm worried that I won't do well in magic school," he says.

That's not quite the biggest problem on his mind, but it's in the neighbourhood. And he doesn't want to say that he's pretty sure Uncle Vernon will turn him out of the house over this.

"Ah, yeh'll be a thumpin' good'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be?"

He smiles hesitantly. "Okay."

He beams, then opens his newspaper, the Daily Prophet, and starts reading it.

Victor sits quietly in a less depressing way.

"Ministry o' Magic messin' things up as usual," he mutters, turning the page. 

There's a Ministry of Magic...? He doesn't quite feel brave enough to ask.

He doesn't say anything else to himself for the rest of the trip, and eventually the boat bumps gently into the harbor wall. Hagrid folds up his newspaper and clambers up the stone steps onto the street.

Victor follows him. Quietly.

They make their way to the station, but on the way Hagrid points at a parking meter with delight and says, "See that, Victor? Things these muggles dream up, eh?"

...He blinks at the parking meter. It's a parking meter.

"An' that, eh?" he says, pointing at a wall clock. "Muggles invented those."

"I didn't know that."