Hiccups of Fate
I: Hiccups
Arrowsbane
"The bond between friends cannot be broken by chance; no interval of time or space can destroy it. Not even death can part true friends." - John Cassian.
Shaky steps take him ever closer to the large winged beast that is his opponent – she is crouched over her nest, large wings unfurled with great yellow eyes fixed threateningly upon him.
"Stay away from me," say her glare and thrashing (and very spiky) tail, and Harry swallows dryly, wishing he has more than a tiny stick (Wand, his mind corrects) to defend himself with. Somehow it feels as if a full set of armor and impenetrable force-field wouldn't do much in the way of saving his life – and he has neither.
Somewhere in his brain, he recognizes that he really should be making an attempt to snag the shiny golden egg sitting in the Horntails' nest. It's a shame, whispers the little voice inside his head, that such a magnificent creature is chained like so. She should be soaring effortlessly above the clouds.
The image of a much older landscape, dotted with wooden houses and small villages, seen from the sky winds its way into his mind and he stops for a second. How strange. The Horntail eyes him grouchily from her make-shift nest, and for a single second their eyes connect. Fourteen-year-old piss-scared wizard and fire-breathing queen of the skies share the same thought: Wizards are idiots.
It's as he is eyeing the Horntail (and any idea of summoning his broom went out the window once he got a good look at the size of her wings) that the strangest idea occurs to him.
Almost as if on autopilot he drifts forwards, wand held limply at his side. He ignores Bagman's rambling and the noise from the crowd and looks the Horntail straight in the eye, before deliberately raising his wand arm… and throwing his wand away.
The Horntail stops growling. In fact, it stops all threatening behavior point blank, tilting its head as it stares inquisitively at him. Harry takes a deep, steadying breath and steps forward, reaching out a hand toward the large dragon. There is a lull, in which time loses meaning to him and light and sound fade away – there is only the boy and the dragon.
It feels as if his heart is beating so fast that it will burst from his chest when his palm makes contact with cool and soft scales and the dragons breath washes over his body in a slow and warm caress. Wizard and Dragon stand there together in complete peace for what feels like hours.
And then a crack pierces the air.
They look down in unison just in time to see one of the eggs in the nest crack open to reveal a dark scaled body with big green eyes. The Hatchling is no bigger than a corgi as it attempts to stand on unsteady feet and stumbles as it moves toward him. The Horntail makes no attempt to stop it, and so he crouches down to greet it.
Another second, and the hatchling pushes its head into his hand, huffing deeply.
Two souls resonate in a bust of light and sound, a bond echoing back through the ages – a bond formed in countless places and times; a thousand lives flash by in the blink of an eye as their stories write and rewrite themselves anew. Again and again they have lived, again and again they have found each other. Time stands still as the two minds meet once more and the bond locks into place - their souls becoming one being yet again.
"Hello again," whispers a voice in his mind.
"Hello," Harry replies, feeling the most unsure that he ever has, and yet the most certain he ever could be about his identity. Lifetimes overlap in his head, and most are shoved to the side as the dominant one asserts itself – the first life, the life in which it all began. A young boy born into the Viking Tribe of Berk who dared to dream, and befriended the most dangerous creature of their time.
("Oh," he thinks to himself absent-mindedly, as memories of mapping the world fill his head. "I suppose that's why I loved flying so much.")
For a second twin pairs of green eyes stare at each other in silence, ignoring the shouts and startled cries around them as they take in the wonder of a re-established bond. There is a beat, and then:
"You're a girl." Harry says gleefully, more than eager to tease his old friend.
"Shut up," the newly-female voice of Toothless hisses inside his head. She sneezes, and sparks fly.
Harry reaches out a hand to his dearest friend and she scampers forwards until they are pressed against each other. Lifting her into his arms, he straightens his back and stands. She wraps her tail around his arm and burrows her face into his shirt, eyes closed as she inhales his new scent and adjusts to it. It is a short walk across the arena to retrieve his wand and conjure a bag into being, which he tucks the golden egg into – doing his best not to lose his balance, knowing Toothless will be furious if he drops her.
"Mr Potter," says a gruff voice from beside him, and both boy and dragonette turn their heads to look at the approaching Keeper – shadowed by a redhead that Harry recognizes as Ron's older brother.
"Give me the hatchling." Both boy and dragon turn to look at each other and then back to the Dragon Keeper, both adopting a droll, deadpan expression that clearly says something along the lines of 'Evidently you are insane, and therefore I shall forgive you for this offense, pitiful worm… once.' Toothless spits a tiny, pint-sized plasma blast at his feet and laughs in that strange chuffing way of hers when it connects with the tips of his shoes and he jumps around trying to put the fire out.
"Tannlaus," he says, finding himself slipping back into Old Norse as easily as breathing, "be nice."
The tiny night-fury-to-be (because right now she's really more of a dark-tiny-bundle-of-cuteness-and-death) grumbles and rolls her eyes, before flapping her ears in the direction of Charlie Weasley and offering him something that could pass for an apology… if one spoke dragon, that is. Hiccup-Harry sighs because he knows he won't get anything better from his lifetimes-old friend.
He hefts the conjured bag higher onto his shoulder and tucks his arms more firmly around the tiny body of his flight-partner and stubbornly strides out of the arena and toward the medic's tent so Pomfrey can fuss over him.
The school nurse bustles over, clucking loudly about 'Dragons of all things', only to stop at the sight of Toothless clutched to the teen's chest. She blinks, staring at the tiny dragonette, who stubbornly stares back unblinkingly. Madam Pomfrey sighs and seems to deflate.
"Only you," she says, shaking her head. "Only you Mr Potter." She motions for him to enter the tent and he happily complies, feeling Toothless tuck her head under his chin and coo softly, her breath is soft and warm against his skin.
He prys her tiny form away from him and sets her down on a cot next to the bag, which she wiggles into – highly intrigued by the shiny object (and he absent mindedly realizes that she most certainly will be keeping it), and allows Madam Pomfrey to check him over without protest.
From her seat on the cot, Toohless purrs, looking up at him with large green eyes that see into his soul and he smiles.
They are together once more, and he will not allow it to be any other way.
Ron comes crawling back with a pathetic attempt for an apology, but he has no patience for false friendships. In other lives, he may have forgiven the transgressions but the childhood of this lifetime, while much easier than some he had lived in the dark ages, was filled with a coldness that hardened him – To compare his fleeting friendship with Ron to the bond he has with Toothless would be akin to comparing a candle to the raging power of a star, and he isn't even going to begin to try.
The Ministry is not pleased to hear that a dragon will be living at Hogwarts, but Hiccup-Harry will not be swayed.
Seriously. Three warning letters, two visits from an official, an article in the Daily Prophet (and how in the name of Asgard did Rita Skeeter get that photo of him sleeping on the sofa with Toothless on his stomach?) plus several dozen howlers later, and Harry is set to blow. It results in a spectacularly explosive (in Toothless' humble opinion) in the Great Hall one lunch time.
"You cannot have a dangerous creature in a school," Percy Weasley shouts loudly, filling in once again for his boss – the elusive Mr Crouch.
"Well then, you lot shouldn't have brought them here!" Harry-Hiccup snaps back over his shoulder, storming out of the Hall, Toothless still perched on his shoulder and glowering at the redhead.
"You will relinquish that hatchling to the proper authority at once!" Percy insists. Harry-Hiccup (more Hiccup than Harry at this point) gives him the middle finger as he walks away.
"Potter! Potter!" The redhead's shouts echo down the corridor and Toothless chuffs, her tail swishing happily as she rubs her head against his.
Yeah, the Ministry can go to Hel. He wouldn't give Toothless up for all the gold in Midgard.
He misses the Yule Ball in its entirety, a deliberate defiance on his part which upsets more than one very important person, and earning him the ire of the majority of the school body who now think of him as a petulant child – although nobody dares say that with the fast-growing night fury around.
(She's going through the equivalent of puberty at the moment - her growth accelerated as she catches up to him and it's making her more than a little testy, having already earned a bit of a reputation for spitting tiny plasma blasts at people who don't whisper quietly enough.)
He's never really been one for dancing anyway, two left feet.
In February, more than a few valuable paintings and objects of historical note end up destroyed in the debacle that is the Headmaster and staff attempting to capture Toothless in order to put her at the bottom of the lake.
She does not make it easy for him, is not willing to comply at all and when Harry-Hiccup walks into the Great Hall, it is just in time to be knocked on his arse as the dragonette (now the size of a large hound, for she has outstripped Hargid's boar hound Fang in size), barrels into him and twists around him in a clear example of civil disobedience.
Needless to say, he is not pleased and the shouting match that occurs, results in another hostage being used.
When he breaks the surface of the Black lake, Ginny is overjoyed to have been the thing he would miss most… He on the other hand, is more than a little disgusted. She is a child, and his physical form aside – it is just plain wrong.
He drags her out of the freezing water and is more than happy to pass her off into Madam Pomfrey's care, escaping to the corner of the platform where Toothless waits for him. The almost-fully-grown night fury wraps herself tightly around him and coos (growls whenever Ginny tries to get close enough, and full out snaps when a water-beetle that Victor Krum pulls from Hermione's hair flits too close) softly to him, warming him with her internal fire.
Hermione tears herself apart during the winter of '94 as she passes back and forth between her two best friends, trying to mend the gap. It is only when she seems to collapse in on herself – unable to deal with the strain and reduced to spending her nights staring at the fire with listless eyes that Harry notices what she has done to herself.
With sad eyes, and a comforting embrace he tells her to rebuild her friendship with Ron – she protests as best she can, but eventually he manages to explain things to her. He cannot be what she needs him to be. Cannot be the pseudo-younger brother, because he has almost a thousand years' worth of memories living inside his soul.
And he is not planning on staying.
She falls into his arms when he tells her this, and cries herself to sleep. Toothless watches them from the couch, eyes glittering in the dying firelight and Harry sighs.
"I'm sorry." He thinks, and summons a House Elf to take her to her bed. That night, he sleeps in the Common Room, curled into his dragons' side. The next morning, he sits alone at the House table and watches as Hermione quietly sits next to Ron.
It hurts, but it is nothing he has not felt before. Toothless croons from her spot next to him – half on the bench, half on the floor and he smiles before passing her an entire plate of fish (prepared especially for her) which she snaps up in seconds.
Some months later, he finds himself sitting outside in the early spring sunshine as he thinks over the events that have taken place.
He has been patient. He has been polite.
He's played along with this farce for long enough. They only said that he had to compete, not that he has to win. And now… the third and final task is approaching.
It's almost time, he decides as he watches the dragon (now the size of a small pony) snooze on a grassy knoll, tiny snores floating away on the breeze. Only a few short weeks until they can soar through the sky once more.
Leaving before the final task may well lose him his magic. He knows that he didn't enter into the contract, and so there is still a chance that not participating may not strip him of his gifts, but for the freedom he craves – it would be worth it.
Besides, who needs magic when you have a Dragon.
AN
Wft? I have no idea where this came from. Clearly I need my sanity reassessed… and tea. Oh gods, I need tea.
Excuse any mistakes, this was mostly written in the dentist's office – Mom and I had back-to-back appointments, and thus much time was spent in the waiting room.
Excuse the slow updates for Highwayman - I have been ill recently, it is slowly coming together. Also, it should be noted that ALL my notes and outlines are STILL on my other laptop and I havent got access to them. I should be uploading other oneshots soon to get them done and dusted. Hopefully I will have a new chapter for both Highwayman and The North Wind up soon.
Also - yes, Toothless hatched from an egg laid by a Hungarian Horntail, but was still a Night Fury. It's magic Darlings, weirder things have happened - ie, Gilderoy Lockhart became a teacher.
And... yes, this was meant to be a standalone... but I have now been talked into doing more. So Wanderlust and Cloudburst are currently being outlined.
EDIT: To the strange Guest Review with the request for a "neo night furry", please look elsewhere for I feel the need to enact the Fandom Rule of YKNMK - ie, Your Kink is Not My Kink and I can't fulfill your request. In fact, to be completely honest, it rather disturbs me.