"Okay. Leftover cake for breakfast?"

"Sounds good!" He draws himself up to his full height and stretches, loudly cracking his joints.

If the cake is less delicious it's not by much. Mm, cake. She continues to be even more delighted by it than is reasonable.

And he's very delighted about her delight.

"Yeh ready?" he asks when she's done. The Dursleys haven't emerged from their bedroom.

"Can we go to the Dursleys' to get the rest of my stuff? The Dursleys didn't let me have much worth going back for but I managed to accumulate a collection of pretty rocks."

"—get it? An' put it where?"

"...Point."

"Yeh'll be back there ter get it before goin' ter Hogwarts, don't worry."

"Okay."

"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.

"How'd you get here?"

"Flew."

"Ooh, really?"

"Yeah—but we’ll go back in this. Not s'pposed ter use magic now I've got yeh."

"What? Why not?"

"We-ell... I'm not s'upposed ter use magic at all—long story—but I got special permission fer this."

"That's terrible, why not?"

"Oh, that's in the past, best not ter go there."

He settles in the boat.

"...Okay." She also gets into the boat.

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

"Mum's the word!"

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

Awesome.

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

She peers at it curiously.