Chapter Thirteen of 'Casualties of Politics'- Creatures of Fire

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Chapter Thirteen—Creatures of Fire

“It’s strange how Mr. Flint suddenly decided that he needed to quit the Quidditch team.”

“Really strange,” Harry agreed with a smile that bared his teeth.

Quirrell stared at him as Harry let the door fall of the office shut behind him. That feeling of water immediately pressed on Harry’s nerves. He ignored it as best he could. He had started to feel it in some other places, like when he was talking with Theo in the kitchens or if he was walking through a corridor and passed another person. That meant it probably wasn’t some strange spell Quirrell had cast and Harry didn’t have to worry that it would manifest as a weapon for Quirrell to use against him.

He would figure out what it was someday. For now, there was no great hurry.

“Why did you use the Imperius Curse on him?” Quirrell asked, apparently tired of pretending.

“I had to be sure it worked,” Harry said. “No way am I testing it for the first time when my life might depend on it.” Or Theo’s life. Or Felix’s life. Although Felix would probably be horrified if Harry ever used the curse to save him and then Felix figured out what he’d used to do it.

Quirrell tapped his wand against his teeth. “And you did something to Flint that you can hear about the reversal of easily.”

“Yes.” Harry didn’t intend to tell Quirrell that he had deliberately made it so that Flint would only concentrate on his marks for a month and then go back to the Quidditch team. Let Quirrell think the spell had slipped and Harry didn’t have that much control. It was probably the best thing for him to think, all around.

Quirrell made a vaguely dissatisfied sound, but seemed to decide he should let it go. “We will not be having our ordinary spell practice today, Mr. Potter,” he said, and reached for a book sitting on the desk behind him. He tossed it to Harry, who caught it with an instinctive gust of wind. Quirrell stared at him with a blank face that didn’t tell Harry what he thought of Harry’s use of air. “I have discovered a book on how dangerous elemental mages were, and some of their history. You will read it.”

“And take notes?”

“You should certainly take notes, for your own future use. I will take the book back in a month.”

“All right,” Harry said, and started to sit down on the floor in one of the corners. It wasn’t up to Quirrell to provide him with a seat.

Quirrell made a sharp sound with his tongue, a little like a hiss—Harry started, but there didn’t seem to be words there, to his relief—and summoned one of the desks that stood against the wall. “You’ll sit here,” he said, sending a chair skidding after it. “And I have the parchment and quill and ink for you as well.”

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said. He didn’t usually bother with the title anymore, but Quirrell was being more generous than he needed to be, so Harry could be, too.

“Potter.”

Harry looked up. Quirrell was standing in front of Harry with his arms crossed and his gaze heavy with meaning. “Yes, sir?”

“You should keep in mind that no matter how dangerous that book might make you think you are, I am a thousand times more dangerous,” Quirrell whispered, and Harry didn’t think he was imagining the way the shadows moved behind him for a moment. “Any adult wizard who already knows what you are can resist you.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said. That made sense, he supposed. Quirrell wanted to continue this role of being “mentor” to Harry, but he wanted to keep Harry under control, too.

Well, that was all right. Harry hadn’t been able to find that much about elemental magic in the library outside vague stories and legends. The books seemed to agree that people like him were dangerous, but not why.

Other than the possibility of lighting someone’s hair on fire with a thought, of course.

Harry dug into the book, ignoring the fact that a lot of the words and sentences were long and he would probably have to read them more than once. A month should be enough time. He would take the information, the way he had all the other information that Quirrell had offered him, and use it to survive. Maybe one day he would use it to get what he wanted other than survival, but right now, along with Theo’s and Felix’s safety, that was all he wanted.

*

Lord Voldemort watched the Potter boy taking notes with a quill that dripped, and forewent the temptation to correct the child’s handwriting. That, at least, was nothing to do with him.

Yes, in a way, this information would make Potter potentially more dangerous. But it would also render him grateful, and thus easier to control. And there was nothing in the book he could learn that Lord Voldemort did not also know.

He turned to his own book, which involved legends of the Mirror of Erised, and listened to the scratching of Potter’s quill. It was almost peaceful.

*

Harry snapped the cover of his journal shut as Felix slid into the seat beside him. He’d been taking notes on Flint’s behavior and the rumors that were circulating about him quitting the Quidditch team, and that wasn’t something he wanted Felix seeing.

Even if he couldn’t, per the enchantments on the journal. Harry certainly trusted Theo, but it was taking him a while to trust the journal.

“We overheard Snape talking about the Philosopher’s Stone and Voldemort,” Felix whispered.

“Who’s we?” Felix had Ron following him around the most often, but Dean Thomas, too, and Seamus, and even Hermione was starting to join in more often now that she seemed to have achieved more of a balance between “having friends” and “having a captive audience for lectures about marks.”

“Me and Ron and Hermione. And doesn’t this prove it? Snape must be the reason that Dumbledore set up that trap Mum and Dad were talking about! The one that’s meant to lure Voldemort to the Philosopher’s Stone!”

Harry thought that one of the stupidest decisions the Potters could have made was to tell Felix about that in a letter. Why would they want him to know about it? Did they really think that Felix could survive a confrontation with Voldemort? Did they think he could somehow contribute to the Stone’s protection when Dumbledore was the one who had come up with this plan and was a lot stronger than Felix?

Maybe they did think Felix could defeat him. He did once before.

“Okay, Felix, but think about this. Did you see the person Snape was talking to?”

“No, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“How do you know that he wasn’t talking to some other professor who knows about this? Dumbledore announced it to all the teachers. So Professor McGonagall has to know about it, and Quirrell, and Flitwick, and Sprout.”

“But why would he be talking about Voldemort with that person?” Felix insisted. “The other professors don’t know everything!”

“I thought you said they did. I thought Mum and Dad—” it was hard to force the words past his lips, but Harry managed “—said that the other professors were helping to protect the Stone from Voldemort, so they had to know.”

Felix frowned and shook his head. “I just don’t think someone would be talking about it with another person that openly unless they wanted to get the Stone for Voldemort.”

Harry sighed. “Look, I don’t like Snape. He treats you terribly, and Ron and Hermione and Neville terribly, too.” He paused, but Felix was nodding and didn’t say anything about the way that Snape had treated Harry terribly, even though Harry was the only one of them who’d actually had detention with Snape. Harry sat on that resentment and continued. “But I have to think that if he was working for Voldemort, then Dumbledore would know. It just seems impossible that he wouldn’t.”

“Does that mean that you don’t want to help us protect the Stone?”

“How can you help protect it, for fuck’s sake?” Harry snapped, losing the battle against his temper. He heard someone gasp from the side and thought it was probably Patil, who had Opinions about language like that in the common room. He didn’t care. “Dumbledore already has all these people working on it and something really powerful concealing it. What can you do?”

Felix glanced around and seemed to notice the people in the common room staring at them. He cleared his throat and at least raised a Privacy Charm around them, which was more than he’d done so far. Harry folded his arms and stared at him.

“Look, no one knows exactly what happened that night,” Felix said, lowering his voice even with the charm in place. “But we know it was terrible. We know it scarred Mum and Dad. They’ll never talk about it, even with me.”

The son they actually like, Harry’s brain supplied.

“But we know I defeated Voldemort somehow. Knocked him right out of his body, if what Professor Dumbledore says is true. So that means I must be able to do it again, right?”

“No. Just because McLaggen caught the Snitch in the game with Slytherin doesn’t mean he caught it with Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, does it?”

“This is a lot more complicated than that, Harry!” Felix put his hand on Harry’s arm. “Come on, please? Just help me?”

“Help you with what?”

“I know that you’re still meeting up with Nott, somehow,” Felix said, which was perceptive enough that Harry just ended up blinking at him. “Try to subtly ask him about any rumors that are going around the Slytherin common room, okay? If Snape is in league with Voldemort. If anyone’s heard anything about Voldemort coming back. Please?”

“You are mental.”

“Please, Harry. This is all I’m asking. It’s not a big thing, all right? And—” Felix lowered his voice “—maybe this will show Mum and Dad that you can be useful in the fight against Voldemort, too, and they won’t send you away again.”

Something splintered in the back of Harry’s mind, and for a moment, he was struggling wildly against his own magic, which surged to the front of his brain and wanted to create a fire that would burn Felix.

No! No! I won’t be like them! I won’t just hurt or kill people who haven’t done anything!

Harry wrestled the magic under control and took a deep breath and said, “If they send me away again when they know what it was like for me there, then I’ll hate them.”

Felix’s eyes widened. Then he said, “Oh, Merlin, I’m an idiot.”

For implying that I would deserve to be sent away?

Felix chattered on. “I keep forgetting that you didn’t grow up the same way I did, with the same explanations about how certain things are just more important than others. They—Mum and Dad really did hope that you would be a political asset, Harry. That really is the reason they sent you away. Not because they wanted you to suffer. Because the suffering of Muggleborns coming into our world and wizards and witches who fear Muggles and Muggles who get caught up in magical wars is so much worse.” His eyes were wide and earnest.

Harry bit his tongue to the point that pain flooded his mouth and stopped him from saying anything.

“Mum and Dad are used to thinking like that. Just—in terms of usefulness and pragmatism and the greater good.” Felix leaned closer. “It doesn’t mean that they love you any less. It’s just that they have to send you where you’ll be useful. And they would keep you in the magical world if they see that you can be more useful that way than in the Muggle world.”

Useful. I have to prove I’m useful. I was a baby when they—

Harry was going to explode. He really was. And then he would be sitting on a smoldering couch next to the charred skeleton of the Boy-Who-Lived, and he would have no way to explain that one.

“I’m going for a walk,” he snapped at Felix, and snatched up his journal and tucked it away in a robe pocket. His fingers were sparkling and glinting as though he was wearing some kind of bright polish. He knew it was little tendrils of fire darting between them, and had no idea how to stop it.

“But then it might look to Mum and Dad like you don’t want to protect the Stone.”

“I already don’t matter to them, this isn’t going to change anything,” Harry flung over his shoulder, and left the common room at almost a run, his skin stretched tight and hot around bones that felt as if they would fly apart any second.

He had to get somewhere—he had to go—

He pounded down more staircases than he could count, and ones which usually would have delayed him in getting outside, but today they all seemed to cooperate and spin around where he needed them to go the instant he needed them. Maybe Hogwarts sensed how close to flying apart he was and wanted to get him out of the castle, too, Harry thought dimly.

He ran through the entrance hall into the open, and towards the lake. He could feel the call of all that water, but right now, he didn’t want to manipulate it or anything else he could have done.

He flung himself into the air when he was still a short distance from the lake, and dived straight into it.

The shock of the cold went through him like a piercing arrow, one that wounded the pain and anger until they couldn’t survive. Harry gasped and flailed back to the surface, tossing his head back. The water gripped him, a balm that seemed to speak in a low, soothing murmur he couldn’t make out the words of, and cooled the fire.

Harry tilted his head back and closed his eyes. When he lifted his hands in front of him, there were no tendrils of fire flickering around them. He sighed out.

“Felix!”

Harry tightened his shoulders. This was obviously someone who had mistaken him for his brother. He turned around with a polite smile on his lips, shaking his head. “Sorry, I’m Harry,” he said. At least it ought to make the person go away soon.

Hagrid, the big man who had led the first-years into Hogwarts on the night of the Sorting, blinked at him, and then smiled tentatively. “Hey, Harry, maybe you can still help? I have a—well, a secret, and I need some help with it.”

Harry was at least sure that this would have nothing to do with Voldemort or the Potters or the Philosopher’s Stone, so he shrugged and said, “Sure, if I can. But you know that I have some curse on me that makes most animals not like me, so I don’t know if I can help you with gamekeeper duties.”

Hagrid chuckled uneasily. “Well, maybe not, but I could still use the help, and I don’t know—I can’t tell Professor Dumbledore.”

A little more intrigued now, Harry stood up, drew his wand and cast a “Drying Charm” that was really just a wind of hot air blowing around his clothes while he aimlessly waved his wand. “All right. Let’s go. Your hut’s just over here, right?” He walked in the direction he thought it was with Hagrid trotting behind him.

*

Harry stared at the huge black egg rocking on the table with his mouth slightly open. A dragon egg.

“He’s just a baby,” Hagrid whispered, his hands worked together until Harry could see the knuckles standing out like small hills from the corner of his eye. “But he can’t hatch. I think he’s caught in the egg, but m-my hands are too big…”

Harry reached out, not sure what slow force was pulling his hands and telling him it would be all right—not when Hagrid’s dog Fang was cowering in the corner of the hut, not when he knew that owls had so much hatred for him that the dragon would probably bite off his fingers and burn him.

But somehow, he knew that it would be all right. He knew exactly where to pull on the egg, and how to do it in such a way that the halves of the shell came apart and the small dragon sprawled on the table, fluttering its wings and heaving in a great breath.

Harry stared down at it, and it lifted its head and turned to look at him.

Not it. Her. The truth slammed into Harry’s mind with a force like the Hogwarts Express.

“Look at ‘im, the little thing!” Hagrid crooned, and reminded Harry that he wasn’t alone with the dragon. He blinked and managed to force his mind back into the present.

“Her,” Harry murmured. “I think it has something to do with the size and the number of teeth, see?” In reality, he was making that up. He hadn’t studied magical creatures in any depth after his initial reading about Parselmouths and the reason he was probably getting the reaction he did from owls and the others. But he couldn’t not correct Hagrid. The little dragon was female. He knew it.

“Oh, really?” Hagrid peered down doubtfully, then chuckled. “Well, I don’t know all that much about ‘em.”

Then why do you have a dragon’s egg? Harry wanted to ask, but he doubted Hagrid would want to tell the story. He reached out a hand, ignoring the way that Hagrid started to say something.

The little dragon curled herself up and grabbed his hand with her forepaws. She crooned at him, and Harry heard the soft sound of words churning through her breathing and hisses, like the murmurs of the lake suddenly making sense.

“Big place. Nice creature. Big place. Hungry. HUNGRY!”

“I think she’s hungry, Hagrid,” Harry said, feeling a smile pull at his mouth. The little dragon was completely curled around his hand by now, climbing to arrange herself along his forearm like some kind of giant, living tattoo. Harry stroked her black scales in wonder. They shimmered with heat, and when she sneezed, sparks flew out of her nose, but he knew with absolute certainty that she wouldn’t hurt him, and not just because he had the kind of elemental magic that could resist the dragon’s fire. She liked him.

At least some people do.

It hadn’t occurred to Harry that his being a Parselmouth might make him as attractive to reptiles as it made him hateful to other creatures. He had thought snakes would like him, but he’d never intended to run into one of them, so it didn’t matter.

But now…

He thought he could take the way Fang whimpered when Harry glanced in his direction and the cats in the Gryffindor common room fled from his presence and owls clicked their beaks at him like they were thinking about rending him apart. If it meant that creatures like this little dragon, who was so much cooler, would like him.

“Hey, Harry, be careful, be careful now!” Hagrid was reaching for something standing near the hearth, which smelled like blood. Harry sniffed at the smell of alcohol also coming from it and stiffened, remembering some of the nights that Uncle Vernon would drink and what he called Harry would get worse. “She’s great, but you’ve got to be careful with them things.”

The dragon hissed at Hagrid. “Hungry. Big creature bring the food. Other creature talk to me. Talk to me. Talk to me.” She rammed her head up under Harry’s chin, which snapped Harry’s head back and left dizzy little lights spinning in front of his eyes.

“Whoa!” Hagrid set down the bucket quickly. “Yer all right, Harry?”

Harry nodded and swallowed. “She’s getting hungry, I think,” he said. He was a little stunned how much the dragon’s vocabulary in Parseltongue sounded like it was improving just from the time she’d hatched. She was getting smarter a lot quicker than a human baby would, he thought.

“Chicken blood and brandy, that’s what she needs,” Hagrid said happily, and poured the bucket into a large wooden bowl sitting next to the table. He heaved the thing onto the table in the next instant, and the dragon scrambled to the edge of Harry’s arm to dart her tongue out and start drinking. Her claws remained clenched into Harry’s arm and her tail locked onto his shoulder. She was so brilliant.

And dangerous. Harry glanced at the wooden walls around them. “Hagrid, how are you going to keep her here? She’ll burn your house down.”

“Nah, she won’t! Just a little creature like her? Of course she won’t.” Hagrid was practically crooning at the dragon himself now as she devoured her meal, hissing in contentment. “I was going to call her Norbert, I mean, when I thought she was a boy, but I’ll call her Norberta. Beautiful name for a beautiful creature!”

Harry took a deep breath and reached up to unwind Norberta’s tail from his shoulder. She swallowed the last bit of chicken blood with brandy and immediately reversed herself, hanging onto him with all four paws and staring at him.

“Talk to me. Talk to me. Talk to me. I know you can talk. Sleepy. Stay with me. Creature makes nice bed.” She snuggled herself closer, and now her tail was not only back around Harry’s shoulder, her claws were hooked in his shirt. Harry had no clue how to get her off without tearing it.

“She’s going to sleep,” Harry said. “Can you take her off, Hagrid?”

Hagrid nodded, and between them, they got Norberta disentangled from him. She wasn’t pleased about it. She flailed in Hagrid’s grip and bit him with teeth that only drew a chuckle from him and reached for Harry with her neck and her tail and her forelegs all at once. “Talk to me! Where are you going, creature that talks?”

Hagrid finally got Norberta plopped in what looked to be a dog bed made out of stone and filled with moss. Norberta was snarling and reaching for Harry, but she literally went to sleep between one gesture and another. Harry stepped back, his skin tingling, and it was hard as hell to take his eyes from the baby dragon.

But he had to. He took a deep breath and turned around. “Hagrid, you didn’t answer me. What are you going to do about this being a wooden house?”

“She wouldn’t do anything to it, the little—girl!” Hagrid said, and petted the curve of Norberta’s spine. She made hard little punching motions with her talons and shredded half the moss in the bottom of the bed. “Look at her, sleeping like a baby!”

“She might not mean to do anything,” Harry pointed out. “But all she has to do is breathe hard enough, and the house is gone.”

Hagrid looked unconvinced.

“Where did you get her?” Harry asked, deciding to change the subject. Maybe Hagrid would be more likely to agree when Norberta had grown up and burned Hagrid and some of the furniture a bit.

“Funniest thing, really,” Hagrid said, and smiled as he let his hand drift over Norberta’s hot scales. If it hurt, he didn’t show any sign of it. “There was a traveling folklorist, down at the Hog’s Head. Pub in Hogsmeade,” he added, when he looked up and probably saw the look of confusion on Harry’s face. “Wanted to hear a couple of legends about the school, and he said he’d give me this old egg that he didn’t know how to hatch for them. So I told him a couple of legends, and got Norberta here.” He looked down at her again with the goofiest smile Harry had ever seen on anyone’s face.

“Traveling folklorist,” Harry repeated flatly. “What kinds of legends did he want to hear about?”

“Oh, legends about the kinds of artifacts kept in the school, things like that,” Hagrid said blandly. “He knew Professor Dumbledore tells me lots of things that he doesn’t anyone else, with me having been here so long.” He puffed his chest out a bit.

Probably including the Philosopher’s Stone, or whatever else they’re using to protect it, Harry thought crossly. But yelling at Hagrid would only make him back away or clam up. Right now, he seemed perfectly comfortable around Harry, but it wouldn’t take long for him to remember how many animals reacted to him and start distrusting him.

“Oh, okay,” Harry said, and gave Norberta one more lingering look as he went towards the door. “I’ll come back later, if that’s all right? So I can spend some time with her?”

Hagrid smiled at him, a smile that seemed almost ready to crack his skull in two. “That’d be grand, Harry. Maybe you can take care of her a few times while I have gamekeeping duties in the forest?”

“Sure,” Harry said. He really should have disagreed or told Hagrid he wouldn’t. But spending time with an animal who liked him was too great a temptation.

He trotted back up to the castle, and thought about how he might tell the Potters he’d found a creature who liked him. So, you want to make sure I can have a pet the way Felix has Hedwig, right? How about a baby dragon?

Harry snorted to himself. At least thinking about the Potters like this, in a ridiculous scenario, made it easier to get past what Felix had said in the common room. He wouldn’t forget it. He wouldn’t forgive it. But he wouldn’t brood on it all the time, either.

He had to survive. Mindless anger wouldn’t help that.

*

“And you’re sure that you’re fine, Marcus?”

“Shut the fuck up, Pucey.”

Theo hid his smile in his porridge as he listened to the conversation from down the table. Flint had woken up that morning utterly confused as to why he was surrounded by Arithmancy and Ancient Runes books and determined to get back on the Quidditch team. At least it was before the game with Hufflepuff.

And at least it proved that Harry’s little experiment with the Imperius Curse had indeed worked.

Theo looked up. Harry met his gaze from across the Great Hall. He had taken to spending more time here in the mornings, maybe because the owls now avoided him rather than coming up to him constantly.

Theo wanted to know why that was. He wanted to know more about why owls had avoided him in the first place, why even Nightshade had been so unhappy carrying letters to Harry. He wanted to know everything about Harry, and he didn’t know why this particular secret was one that Harry hadn’t told him.

But right now, he knew the most important thing. The Imperius Curse worked. And Easter holidays were fast coming up.

Now, they just had to make sure that Harry got access to the Figgs. And that they didn’t order Theo to stay here for the holiday.

Well, that last is simple, really, Theo thought, as he reached for scrambled eggs. He would just write to the Figgs and tell them how much he wanted to stay at Hogwarts, and they would order him “home” to keep him from getting anything he wanted. Some people were so easy to manipulate.

He glanced over at Harry again, and noticed how Harry had his head turned so that he was looking at his brother.

The sooner Harry learns that lesson, the better.

*

Severus gritted his teeth as he stalked out towards Hagrid’s hut. It was ridiculous that the gamekeeper had managed to acquire a dragon egg and had apparently hatched it and was keeping the beast in his hut. At least Draco had had the good sense to come to him instead of trying to deal with the matter himself.

As it was, this would be taken care of quietly. Hagrid would not go to Azkaban for dragon breeding or smuggling, the dragon would be deposited at a sanctuary in Romania appropriate for its species, and Draco would be encouraged to bring anything else disturbing to Severus in the future.

Severus knocked briskly on the door but didn’t give Hagrid a chance to respond. He simply stepped inside, knocking late March snow from his robes, and looked up.

Hagrid was frozen guiltily in the act of pouring blood into a bowl for a dragon almost as long as his table. And standing next to him was the Potter boy, the one who bothered Mr. Nott in class, staring at Severus with hard eyes.

Severus told himself that he was having strange fancies if he was afraid of those eyes. He still regularly spoke with Lily, after all, and she didn’t look at him like that. The way that he had turned over the prophecy to the Dark Lord, and the way the Potters had chosen to handle that, were—complicated. But her eyes did not frighten Severus.

Neither did this boy’s.

“Potter!” he snapped. “I should have known you would be involved in this. Rule-breaking again? You will have detention until Easter—no, through Easter and after, detention every night for two hours—if the Headmaster is good, it will continue into next year—”

The air next to Potter flared. Something dark unfolded around him, and Severus for an instant was staring at a black, swaying serpent with Potter’s green eyes. It struck at him before he could even lift his wand.

A cool breeze seemed to flow over him. Severus turned his head and realized that the door of the gamekeeper’s hut was behind him, letting in the wind. He sneered and slammed it shut.

Then he spun back around to Hagrid. Hagrid still looked guilty, but there was obviously no dragon on his table. And there was no sign of the Potter boy.

Severus sighed to himself in irritation. Draco had been exaggerating, then. Or mistaken. Severus would have to remember in the future that Draco was a less than reliable witness when it came to the gamekeeper. It was probably that rubbish about blood purity Lucius filled the boy’s head with.

“Professor Snape,” said Hagrid, rubbing what looked like blood off his hands onto a cloth. Probably making some disgusting treat for his boarhound, then. “I d—didn’t expect to see you here—”

“I heard odd rumors, Rubeus,” said Severus sharply. “I trust that you are not harboring any illegal creatures in here? Or not any more illegal than usual, at least,” he had to add, seeing the way Hagrid’s eyes darted back and forth.

“N-no. Not any more than usual.”

Severus nodded sharply and turned on his heel. Then this was not his problem. And it was not as if Hagrid could have hidden a creature as disruptive and quick-growing as a dragon in his hut. Perhaps even Hagrid could have worked out that a fire-breathing dragon in a wooden house was hardly a good idea.

Perhaps.

Severus rubbed his head, which tingled with something like irritation to an old wound. But no, he was sure that he had seen nothing that would indicate a dragon.

He would have to have a talk with Mr. Malfoy about coming to Severus based on half-seen glimpses through window curtains.

*

Harry stood holding Norberta in his arms near the edge of the grounds. Hagrid had agreed, after Harry had flung the Imperius Curse at Snape and made him ignore what he was seeing and forget about what he had seen, that it was time for Norberta to go because she wasn’t safe. Apparently, Ron’s older brother Charlie was a Dragon-Keeper, and he could send some people to pick her up.

Not that Harry wouldn’t miss her. Not that Hagrid wouldn’t. In fact, he missed her so much already that he hadn’t even been able to be here when the Dragon-Keepers came to take Norberta away. But it was time for her to go.

“You can talk to me. I know it.”

Harry looked slowly down at Norberta. She was standing with her claws braced on his belly, but he felt no fear she would disembowel him, even though he knew she easily could. And he could cradle her like this, even though he shouldn’t have been able to. It was as if his magic had reached out and made her lighter.

Not your magic. Your Parseltongue.

Harry took a deep breath and let it out again. The Dragon-Keepers weren’t here yet. He said softly, “Yes, I can.”

Norberta gave a happy sneeze that blew sparks onto Harry’s skin, where they just sat, glowing, not hurting him. Harry stared at them in wonder, a soft squeeze gripping his heart. He—

He wished he didn’t have to hide his Parseltongue. At that moment, he wished it so much.

But he had to do what he must, so he’d survive. And he shuddered at the thought that even Theo might recoil if he found out about Harry’s Parseltongue. Yeah, the elemental magic was one thing. But Voldemort had been a Parselmouth. That was his most feared ability, because of the connection to Salazar Slytherin and because people were apparently really scared of the snakes he could command, according to the history books Harry had read. If there was anything more to it than that, he didn’t know.

But he couldn’t survive if he saw rejection in Theo’s eyes. That was all there was to it.

“Why did you never talk to me before?” Norberta’s brilliant eyes met his, and Harry smoothed a hand down her neck and over the small spines there.

“Because people don’t like it. Human people,” he added, because the word in Parseltongue had a broader meaning. “I didn’t know what Hagrid would think. I have to hide.”

“That’s stupid that they do not like it.” Norberta butted her head into his chin, but Harry managed to move a little so that she didn’t hurt him the way she had when she was a hatchling. “But it is good that you hide. Serpents hide. True hunters hide. Someday, you can spring out and kill them, the way a good predator should.”

Harry half-smiled. “Maybe I will.”

“I know you will.” Norberta sounded confident.

The swish of brooms came from overhead. Harry looked up and saw six people flying towards them. He took a deep breath and ran his hand over Norberta’s head again. “Can you be good on the flight to the dragon sanctuary for me?”

“You should come with me. You would not need to hide then. The other dragons would love you.”

Harry half-laughed. Two offers in three months to run away with someone, first Quirrell and now her.

Such a contrast to the way that the Potters wanted to run away from me.

But he subdued the thought. “I’m human, and I need to stay around humans,” he explained gently. The Dragon-Keepers were almost near enough to hear his Parseltongue now. “But perhaps I’ll come and see you someday.”

“You will.”

The Dragon-Keepers landed on the grass in front of Harry, staring at him. Harry stared back, concerned that they might have heard him speaking Parseltongue after all, and then realized that they didn’t seem to be scared. Instead, their eyes were wide with…

Awe?

“She just lets you hold her?” whispered one of the Keepers, swiping a hand through red hair. This must be Charlie Weasley.

Harry nodded. “She probably got pretty used to me over the past few weeks, since I was helping Hagrid take care of her,” he said, and held Norberta out. She hissed and wriggled discontentedly.

He realized a second later that the Dragon-Keepers didn’t want to touch her. Instead, they indicated a crate that was strung between the brooms. Harry bent down and arranged Norberta so she could enter it, as gently as he could.

She licked his face with a flaming hot tongue that didn’t leave behind any burns. “I will miss you.”

Harry had to. His head was inside the crate with her, and he was pretty sure none of them would hear if he kept it low. They probably wouldn’t even know what someone speaking Parseltongue sounded like. “I’ll miss you. Goodbye. Grow strong and eat lots of prey.”

Norberta tried to cling to him, but Harry stepped back and nodded to the Dragon-Keepers as he shut the door of the crate. “She’ll be fine now, I think.”

“Good on you, mate,” Charlie said, and gave Harry a friendly punch in the shoulder that he barely managed not to flinch away from. “Let me know if you ever want to be a Dragon-Keeper, okay? I’ll put in a recommendation for you.”

Harry smiled. He couldn’t say anything about the future right now, except that it involved fighting for Theo and keeping secrets and not going back to the Dursleys, but that was a good distant dream, maybe. “Thanks, Charlie.”

Charlie waved, and the Dragon-Keepers arranged themselves on either side of the crate and gathered up the chains that would support it.

Harry watched them fly away, and breathed out slowly. Then he turned and walked back to the castle through the gathering April dusk, aware that part of him would have given anything to be flying beside Norberta through the clouds, on the way to Romania.

Goodbye.