2:45 PM

Bam bam bam bam...

If there was one thing in all the world that Taryn loved most of all - more than magical beasts, rodeos, and the unexplored wild put together - it was basketball. Not the game itself, persay, but the feeling that it gave her. The freedom. The power. With this ball in her hands, she was on top of the world.

That was why the gymnasium in ol' Muffy was such a godsend, especially this year. Hogwarts was cool and all, but if she'd been stuck in a foreign school where half the population seemed to live in Muggle-proof caves with no basketball, even the Tournament  might not have been worth it. Plus, since she was the only one using it right now, no one minded if she cranked the basket up to its ridiculous maximum height of almost 15 feet, where no normal player could reach but Taryn could finally get a challenge.

Her sneakers shrieked in time with the rhythmic thudding of the ball as she dribbled up from half court, charging at the basket. Her mind's eye populated the field with other players - half-giants all, both opponents and friends - for her to dart around, weaving left and right across the court. A path opened up at the perfect moment, leading straight to the goal. She charged and leaped, limbs stretching to their full length, arching through a forest of waving limbs and...

"Slaaaam dunk!"

Victorious laughter echoed through the stadium as both Taryn and the ball dropped back to the court floor. Even if her opponents were only pictures in her mind, success felt damn good. It took a few minutes for her to come down from the euphoria and, when she finally did, she realized that she was no longer the only half-giant in the room.

Hagrid had scrolls of lesson plans in mind for the semester, and with how he and Bai tended to disagree and live subjects vs. dead ones, he was quite ready to get the issue out of the way with her, even if it was going to happen repeatedly that year. He knew she was planning to do seminars while she was at Hogwarts, and he wanted them to tie into his classes and assignments. He didn't have to give into her for her ideas of what students should be taught, but he thought it better to work together than apart.

But in his trek to find the tiny professor on the Salem blimp, he found a giant court where Taryn Dickenson was bouncing a ball around. He walked closer until he was at the edge of the court, watching the girl enjoy herself as she ran around the court, and through her own imagination, (he assumed.)

Finally, she jumped up and hung on the basket and yelled "Slaaaam dunk!", before she landed on the ground, looked around, and looked straight at him.

Now the large giant wasn't completely ignorant to the sport, after sneaking around during two different wars, and having to sneak through the muggle world as well as the wizarding one, you caught a glimpse of a few things, although that didn't mean you completely understood anything. But he thought he was at least a little knowledgeable about a few things.

The Creatures professor pointed a large finger at the basket as his deep voice drawled, "Ain't that thing a little high for uh... " his hand returned to squeeze his beard, "somethingball..." he hesitantly directed is beetle black eyes at the other girl as he waited for a response.

Professor Hagrid! Taryn's already-bright mood livened considerably, a welcoming grin stretching across her face. She'd only a few classes with him so far, plus the small mob she'd accidentally gathered in the Forbidden Forest the other day, but this was the first time she'd ever gotten to speak with him one-on-one. Today was looking better and better.

"Howdy Professor!" She beamed and jogged a bit to retrieve her ball. She looped back around to meet him, still bursting with energy that might have been dangerous in a more confined space. "Sure, regulation's only ten-foot, but I can make that without even stretching so it's no fun if there's nobody around. Jacked up this high gets it just about right for..."

Wait a minute. Tayrn's mind doubled back to the end of Hagrid's question. 'Something-ball'? Her eyes went wide as dinner plates, staring up at his politely interested but less-than-comprehending face. "You don't know basketball?!" Tarnation! Didn't British wizards get television? There had to be some kind of league on this side of the pond!

"No joke? You gotta be kiddin', this is the best sport ever! Especially for people like...people who're damn tall!"

Hagrid gave a scruff smile from under his overgrown but well-groomed beard as Taryn happily ran around to him and smiled. She still seemed quite cheery despite the little episode they had had in the Forbidden Forest, kids could be so whimsical and carefree. He nodded as she went on to explain how high the basket was suppose to be but then she stopped mid-sentence.

He gave a pitiful cringe of shame when the witch suddenly looked at him like he'd never heard of Quidditch. "Naw, lass," he confessed. "I've seen a court or two, watched a few games from some city streets, but it ain't somethin' I've ever took part in," he shrugged towards the basket, "You catch a glimpse of games muggles play when ye' go into hiding, but it isn't really a wizarding thing over here."

The half-giant then gave a heavy and deep sigh, "Not a lot of tall people left 'round, I guess." Maybe it's something he could let Grawp try out in his spare time.

"Well that just ain't gonna do." Taryn frowned, tucked the basketball under her arm, and seized Hagrid's wrist with both hands, pulling him out onto the court. "C'mon! I'll show you the ropes. You've gotta give this a try."

Teaching a teacher, she realized half-way to the center of the court, was going to be weird. Teaching this teacher, the subject of her bedtime stories since the age of eight, was going to be even weirder, but she couldn't let that stop her. He was a half-giant, and this was basketball, the only sport in the world tailor-made for their kind that didn't involve wrestling giant animals. With that in mind, Taryn dragged Hagrid to the head of the free-throw line, turned to him with a huff, and slapped the ball between her hands.

"Right, so! Goal of the game's kinda like Quodpot, 'cept without the exploding part. So I guess that's more like the Quaffle part of Quidditch. Anyway, end goal: put this ball through that hoop." She gave a half-turn and took a quick shot as an example. The ball bounced off the back-board, rang a circle around the metal hoop and fell through, where she was waiting to catch it.

"But!" She held the ball up with both hands. "You can't just carry the ball around. That's called traveling, and it's a foul. You have to keep the ball moving at all times, mostly by dribbling, like this." She picked up the familiar rhythm of the motion almost instantly, steering it towards her towering teacher with a few long steps. "And when you're playing with a team, you pass it. That's where the best teamwork comes in."

She stopped, pulled the ball in, and shot it at Hagrid with the sort of fast, solid chest-pass that had knocked her teammates on their butts in the past. Her hands now free, she grinned and thumbed at her nose. "With me so far? Any questions?" She stretched her arms behind her back, popping a crick in her shoulders as she peered up at their goal. "Stuck on the ground, you can see where the height comes in handy for once. Even in the Muggle leagues you get some tall buggers, but I ain't met anybody who could match me yet. 'Cept you."

Once the ball was thrown at him, Hagrid hugged it to his chest with his massive forearm and then rolled it into his large grip. His black eyes hesitantly focused on Taryn before he dropped the ball to the floor and then let it bounce back into his palm, when he grabbed it, dropped it, and caught it again, doing what he perceived to be dribbling. It felt more like bouncing a ball against something than any specific technique, but maybe he wasn't doing it right?

"No bludgers, no explosions, no heights--I just sit here an' bounce it?" he questioned, before taking a step forward as he continued to bounce and grab the ball with more and more confidence as he moved towards the net. It felt awkward and strange, but it was a little bit amusing for the half-giant, "Like this?"

"Definitely no heights." Taryn gave a nauseous groan. Heights. Flying. Falling. Nooo thank you. "No explosions or bludgers either, but yeh sure as heck can't just sit there. Otherwise, the other team's gonna do this."

She dodged in between one of Hagrid's slow bounces and swept the ball out of the air, swiveling on the ball of her foot to face him again when her momentum carried her past. "It's a fast-moving game, lots of runnin', shoootin' and passin'. So catching the ball like what you were doing's not gonna cut it. 'Sides, you're liable to get a foul called. Here, it's like this..."

She trotted back to him, held the ball on the fingertips of her left hand and guided it under Hagrid's right palm. The enormous hand turned out heavier than she'd expected, to an almost startling extent. She'd intended to guide his fingertips into the proper position for dribbling, but the sheer size of his hand compared to hers gave her pause.

"This is just so cool," she gushed, letting the excitement burst out. "I've never met anybody with bigger hands than me, anybody!" Granted, her fingers were proportionally longer, giving her hand a more stretch-oval shape than his thick and powerful squares, but it was a rare day when a normal person's hand could even compare to the size of her palm.

Still supporting his fingers, she beamed up at Hagrid. "Say, when'd you stop growing, as a kid? Mama'd thought I'd stopped, since I ain't had a growth spurt in while, but lookin' at you I figure I gotta have another foot or two in me. Unless Canadian giants 'r shorter than European ones." She screwed up her face a bit at that. She liked getting as tall as she could. It was almost like a game in and of itself. "They're probably not, right?"

Hagrid dully watched Taryn has he took the ball from her with ease, unsure of how he was suppose to react from that. It wasn't like a quaffle that you just kept at your side and flew around with, and so he wasn't sure how to "defend" it. He furrowed his thick brows and hummed in contemplation as the girl explained how to properly play the sport again. When she walked over to try and show him how to hold the ball, he was hopeful that he might learn how to better himself with the sport, but then the girl got distracted.

"Oh um," Rubeus Hagrid had never actually given that much thought before. He'd live and conversed with giants so much that he never really thought about how large they were in comparison to other giants around the world. He'd even travel with a few giants while traveling, but never really noted their heights as much as he noted their violent or ferocious tendencies. It seemed to vary from group to group without so many populating the world now.

"Oh nah, not sure, never paid too much attention," he gave a shrug and pressed his lips together with a helpless expression, "I'm a bit of a runt so I tend to always be lookin' up at 'em. Even Grawp, er, my brother, is a runt an' he's got a good four feet on me, but most giants dwarf me by eight or more feet."

"Sometimes, half giants especially, we jus' come out a little short, not that it's a bad thing mind, so long as you aren't livin' with giants." But then a genuine smile appeared on Hagrid's face as he nodded at the witch, "Ah, but yer lucky! You don' need to grow no more, you're good where you're at. Perfect height I say." And it was true, Hagrid wouldn't wish for another foot more or less for himself. As a half-giant, it was easy to get comfortable at one height, and growing spurts were very noticeable and inconvenient in the wizarding world.

"Obviously you're body will even out a bit more," he added, "Maybe around a foot left to go to even it all out. I was about your height as a second year though." Then his attention was drawn back to the basketball balanced between both their large palms, like some sort of portkey.

"So this how I don't get fouled? Hold it like this?" he shook his head at the ball, swaying his beard as well, "Am a much better hunter than an athlete, am afraid."

Taryn's eyes widened. "Your brother's full giant? Wow! I hadn't heard that part." Granted, Mom might not have even known. Hagrid was famous for his role in the last wizarding war, but nobody gave giants much credit for anything beyond thuggery. "My little sister's full human. Her name's Minnie. Guess it's probably the same difference between us, 'cept I'm the one looking down..."

His reassurances about her height brought an unexpected but pleased blush to her smile. There weren't many people who'd say her height was perfect. It was mostly just Mom, an acknowledged weirdo (she'd been the one to sleep with Durkus, after all), and Davey, who worried that she'd get a poor body image without positive reinforcement. It was nice to be complemented by someone outside the family.

"Ah, no worries. You've gotta be a bit of an athlete to be a hunter, after all." She turned her focus back to the ball, settling Hagrid's hand so that his fingers barely brushed the bumpy surface. " Thing is, you wanna keep the ball moving at all times. No carryin' it around here -- that's for NFL. Plus, the more you move, the harder it is for the opponent to steal. They can't touch you, see? It ain't a full-contact sport. But they can snatch a ball with no problem if you're too slow, so you gotta watch out.

"The trick's in a light touch. Even when you pick it up, you don't wanna squeeze too hard. Think of it like a...like a snake's egg." It was the first thing to pop into Taryn's mind, and she was struck by how true it felt. After the last two months carrying her precious egg around, moving it from nest to nest as it grew and turning it over each night so no one side got too warm, it was easy to imagine her basketball touch being the same as the light embrace she'd needed to protect the egg's soft walls.

She glanced up at Hagrid to make sure he understood the parallel. He was bound to have some experience like it. Caring for critters was his job, after all. "Okay, got it right? I'm gonna let go then. Give it a try."

Hagrid gave a doubtful mumbling hum as Taryn positioned the ball at the tips of his large hesitant fingers. He didn't think he'd get the hang of this at all and thought the 'NFL' must be a strange mockery of sports if all people did was run around with a ball all day, "What's tha? National Federation of Laggards?" he asked in a curious and doubtful tone. He thought it was more likely that the 'F' stood for a sport and the 'L' stood for 'League,' but running around with a ball all day didn't sound terribly sporty.

Then the secret was revealed to him--treat the orange bumpy ball as a snake egg, "Oh ha! That's it then?" Once Taryn let go the ball fell from his hand and Hagrid began to bounce the ball from his fingertips, gently bouncing the ball with the firm flexing of his fingertips as his gaze dreamily rose to the sky, "In Australia I roamed with a party that recovered a Matchback's egg from a few poachers, ain't a snake but just as fragile--" he modded smiled at Taryn as he kept bouncing the ball.

"I got ta'  hatch it though, at a reserve, spent a month or so with it 'fore they set it off on its own--wasn't a great month for my beard though, everyone called me Blackbeard[1] all month!"

He half giant grunted as he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to the side contently, "Grawp had a good laugh though, lotsa help when we had to find a mother for the baby," Hagrid then shifted his hefty weight from one foot to another as he bounced the basketball to his other hand as he stroked his beard, "But yeah he's full giant, fought in th' Battle of Hogwarts too yannow," Hagrid gave a proud smile before the ball hit his toe and bounced off his foot again and towards Taryn.

Hagrid sadly watched the ball roll away before he patted a hand against his stomach and looked back up at the Salem witch, "Minnie sounds cute though, she a little thing? Play basketball too?"

1.	for his burning beard

"Nah, nah, it's the football league -- our kinda football, not soccer. Kinda like, whatchamacallit, rug-a-be." Taryn waved the conversation on without pause after that. Outside of Super Bowl parties, which were a hell of fun, she'd never much cared for the sport one way or another.

Hagrid's story of the Matchback and Australia made Taryn laugh out loud. It wasn't just the nickname and the image that it invoked, no, that was only the catalyst that set off a delighted eruption that built from the moment she recognized the creature's name. A Matchback! Golly, he had gotten some good teaching experience under his belt since the War wrapped up.

"That sounds amazing. Wish I could've been there to -- whoop!" The ball bounced towards her, and she chased after it, sweeping it from the ground with one long swipe. "Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it. Just takes a bit of practice is all. Dribble and footwork go together like flame and a salamander."

As an example, she scissored her feet back and forth mid-dribble, bounced the ball between her legs, and popped back up-right with a grin. "Oh yeah, Minnie's tiny. She ain't even four feet yet, and when we go out in crowds, she sits on my shoulder like a little bird. It's the cutest thing.

"But your brother, Grawp, a full giant! That's just...wow. I heard most of 'em from over here got wiped out durin' the war. And he was there, on the right side during the fight and everything. You never hear about the giants on the good guys' side..." She trailed off, the thought striking a cord with an old memory, something she'd tucked away a long time ago. The grin slipped off her face, and she turned the ball over in her hands as though its bumps were the most fascinating thing in the world.

"Y'know...When I was little, I went to this Muggle school, and every day at recess we'd play this fantasy game. Everybody'd make up characters like elves and fairies -- the Muggle idea of 'em, not how they really are -- and then we'd trade off, some people bein' good an' some bad. For a long time, I played a bad guy, 'cause I could pick folks up all scary-like. Then one day I put my foot down. I wanted to play a hero, and I wanted the hero to be giant. And they...They told me, 'Don't be stupid. There ain't no such thing as giant heroes."

She scowled. It wasn't an expression she was used to. It made her cheeks hurt. She gave a quarter-turn and shot at the fifteen-foot basket, right over Hagrid's head. The ball arched almost high enough to reach the ceiling, curved at just the right angle, and swished through the basket, nothing but net.

"Shows them, huh?" Taryn pushed a grin back onto her face, retrieving the ball and bounce-passing it back to Hagrid. "Your bro sounds like an awesome guy. You must be proud."

Hagrid knew what football was, or soccer? That game people played with their feet, but at Taryn's mention of "their" kind of football he got confused. Why would two different sports have the same name? Rugby was something he was much more familiar with and that he had taken a part of on his own (who didn't know about wrestling over a ball?). "Okay I thin I got it..."  he said with a hesitant husk, but he probably didn't.

When the began to laugh, however, it did bring a smile to his face and he happily caught the ball with a hand and hugged it towards his chest. "Yeah am real proud of him," Hagrid beamed as he spun the ball in his palm,  "Giants ain't normally friendly though, so's understandable to be afraid, t'ink they're bad guys." The large man shook his head at that and then nodded towards Taryn.

"Bad guys, good guys--heroes an' villain--don't  never let yourself get caught up in that, lass. The world is full of all kinds of shades, and being violent, big, little, nice, don't mean a thing if your heart ain't right." He tried bouncing the ball back to Taryn as she had bounced it towards him, hoping he was passing it well enough, but he was afraid he might've bounced it too hard.

"A Slytherin can be a hero," the gruffy man's thought immediately went to Snape, "And any Gryffindor can be a villain," the mousy and small malicious boy that was Peter Pettigrew popped into his head, though he then realized the girl might not be aware of Houes and the stereotypical personalities they foster, "Er, house stereotypes."he finished off.

"Normal people can be jus' as bad as the scary-looking ones, or worse. Anyone can be anything they wanna be," Hagrid then raised his heavy shoulders, shrugging helplessly and innocently. That was frankly the truth of the situation. Of the world.