A/N: Written for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Challenge, Ancient Runes assignment #7 – write about a strong character, with the compulsory prompt: brave (trait).

Grawp and Hagger

Grawp is not brave. He is foolish. Uncaring is foolishness and he doesn't care if he gets hurt…or dies.

He doesn't care as he dives into the fight against his race, against the giants he'd once lived with – because they'd ridiculed him before, they'd hurt him before…and now they've hurt his Hagger who's cared so nicely for him as well.

Hagger brings cold steak to put on sore spots. Hagger brings nice pretty strings to tie around his cuts. Hagger brings a soft touch, and stories: lots of stories. Lots of laughs as well. He likes Hagger, and now that he has Hagger to compare, he doesn't like those other giants.

And now they've hurt his Hagger. So they will pay.

Grawp charges at them. He has no magic and the giants have no magic either, but that's fine with them. Magic isn't how they fight. Magic is how Hagger can fight if he's alive, but he was just crushed by a wave of creatures and maybe he isn't. Maybe his head has been ripped off like their old leader. Maybe he's been trampled and stomped into the ground like all the weak babies. Maybe he is still groaning under the mass but Grawp isn't strong enough to heave them all away.

He'll try anyway. Because he's a giant. Because he's Grawp. Because Hagger is his brother, his family, and Hagger cares.

Spells help soften the way. Those men with robes and sticks are helping too. Friends of Hagger's, though they are strangers to him. He lets them help. Their spells are like rocks upon the other giants and he is spared of them. He throws himself like a particularly large boulder and finally he drives one down.

Blood pounds in his ears, and his heart. He does tear through the giants, and when he spares the time to look back he's surprised. Maybe it's the help. Maybe it's his anger for their treatment of Hagger that makes him strong. Maybe it's Hagger himself, rising from the tide he'd fallen under. Still alive.

Grawp is relieved. Grawp is happy, and he rampage calms as Hagger slips his sight again. Hagger is alive, so the creatures don't need to be ripped limb for limb and trampled beneath the forest, the giants who bar his way first and foremost.

But he still fights. The reason he was fighting before Hagger fell. He likes Hagger, and fights for whatever Hagger loves.

Hagger loves that big building and the others – creature and man – fighting to defend it.