Work Text
Myrtle hated Herbology.
It wasn’t that she found the subject boring, or that she disliked Professor Beery – quite the opposite, in fact – but the whole ‘getting your hands dirty’ business was something she was ill-accustomed to, and that was to say nothing of her allergies.
If she had thought Wizarding plants might produce less pollen, she was sorely mistaken – her first lesson had seen her leaving the greenhouse with a bright red nose and streaming, pink eyes.
She approached Greenhouse One for her second lesson warily, lagging behind her cohort – not that she was particularly missed, mind. It had only taken a few days for Olive Hornby to rediscover the old insults of Myrtle’s bullies from the Muggle world, and her bursting into tears upon being called a ‘fat crybaby’ had done nothing to help her standing in Ravenclaw.
With a baleful sigh, she picked up the pace from a crawl to a reluctant trudge, and reached the greenhouse just as a beaming Professor Beery opened the door.
“Come in, come in!” he urged, ushering them all inside. The Gryffindors whom they shared the class with entered eagerly, while the Ravenclaws were more reluctant – Myrtle was the last inside, and Beery closed the door behind her, offering a sympathetic smile before moving away to start the lesson.
“Hello, everyone! Now that we’ve all had a taste of how Herbology works, I was thinking we might do some paired work with the Puffapods. Everyone, partner up, now!”
Myrtle’s heart sank at the phrase ‘paired work,’ and she watched helplessly as the rest of the class sorted themselves into pairs – having made no friends thus far, Myrtle was left as the odd one out.
“Ah, uneven number of you this year, is it? Not to worry, Miss Warren; you can work with-”
Knock-knock-knock.
Professor Beery broke off at the rather loud rapping against the greenhouse door, and bustled off to let the knocker in with a curious look on his face. The door swung open to reveal the most enormous boy Myrtle had ever seen – he was as wide as the door-frame, and had to bend at the knees to see inside the room.
“Sorry ‘m late, Professor – had a bit of a mix-up with my timetable,” he said contritely.
“Not to worry, lad, not to worry – you must be Hagrid, yes?” Beery asked. The boy nodded, and Beery stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, it’s quite alright – Albus told me there’d been some problems with your trip to the station. Well, that solves our little dilemma quite nicely – Warren, you can partner with Hagrid here!”
With that, Professor Beery turned on his heel and began delivering a lecture on Puffapods – Myrtle listened with half an ear, more preoccupied with watching Hagrid struggling to fit through the door frame.
She did not think she had ever been so terrified by a person – she scarcely even came up to his elbows, for chrissakes!
He came to stand next to her, and Beery continued his lecture – Myrtle, who was already beginning to lose feeling in her face from the pollen, felt rather as though she was in hell. When Beery clapped his hands and told them to get started, she hurried off to go fetch two trowels, wiping her nose on the back of her hand as she went.
“Poor, snotty Myrtle, having to work with a freak like that – why don’t you cry about it, Myrtle? It’s done you wonders so far.”
Myrtle’s spine stiffened at Olive’s teasing, and she turned around to face her with a trowel in each hand, feeling utterly ridiculous with her watery eyes and irritated nose but struck with the irrational urge to defend both herself and Hagrid.
“Shut up, Olive –
you’re
the freak, not Hagrid,” she retorted, before immediately ruining the effect with a congested sniffle. She hurried away before Olive could return fire, coming to stand by the planter Hagrid had wandered off to.
“Oh, thank yeh,” Hagrid mumbled as Myrtle handed him a trowel – it looked like a spoon in his great mitts. “What’s yer name? I heard the Professor say Warren, but…”
“Myrtle. I’m Myrtle Warren. What’s your first name?” she asked in turn, feeling something tightly coiled within her relax some at the questioning – no-one else had bothered with introductions, preferring to transition straight into mocking her.
“Rubeus, but yeh can call me Hagrid – I don’t much like Rubeus,” he admitted. Myrtle nodded, before letting out a sneeze and covering her face with her hands. “Are yeh alrigh’, Myrtle?” he asked, frowning minutely.
“No – the greenhouses are awful for my allergies,” she complained, before sneezing once again.
“Oh, I’m allergic to cats – Dad packed me summat for it, let me just…” he trailed off, rooting through the pockets of his robes. “Ah! There it is.”
He procured a tub of what looked like petroleum jelly, and held it out for her. Hesitantly, she took it and twisted off the lid, revealing a viscous, turquoise jelly within.
“Just dab a little under yer nose – yeh’ll clear right up, promise.”
Feeling certain that this had to be some sort of prank at her expense, she nonetheless scooped some of the jelly with her pinky finger and rubbed it underneath her nose. She gasped at the strange, tingly sensation which it caused, and then again with wonder as, in only a matter of seconds, the feeling returned to her face, and the irritation in her nose died down to a manageable level.
“Wow! That was- thank you, Hagrid,” she mumbled, feeling extremely off-kilter – nice things like this just didn’t happen to her, and being treated like a normal person had given her something of a headrush.
“No worries – now, er, what’re we s’pposed to be doin’, exactly?”
Myrtle frowned, having banked on Hagrid being a better listener than she was – evidently, they were both in the same boat when it came to paying attention to Professors.
“Uh, we take the Puffapods, and… I don’t know, sorry.”
Hagrid held his trowel uncertainly, looking askance at the pair next to them for a moment – who appeared similarly lost on what to do – before digging into the dirt and unearthing a whole Puffapod plant.
“Oh, Mr. Hagrid, that’s not-” Beery began, before the plant let out a screech and all the purple pods which sprouted from it exploded in a cloud of lilac smoke.
Hagrid staggered backwards and knocked over Olive Hornby and her planter as he went, causing the whole class to shout in alarm while Myrtle, who had caught a large blast of the smoke, suddenly felt extremely light-headed.
She swayed on her feet, and the last thing she heard before she went tumbling to the ground was a distressed cry of ‘Myrtle!’ from Hagrid.