Outline 8

Working Title: Born of Fire

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter series is the sole property of JK ROWLING and a select number of Publishing Houses worldwide hold a limited amount of rights to its usage. I do not own nor do I make any profit from the writing and publishing of this story. The characters here-in are still hers. The idea behind the story is my own and as such is mine to do with as I please. Also, this chapter has not been beta-read, so I apologize ahead of time for any grammar and/or spelling mistakes.

Summary: Every single being that Draco knew were dragons. To be born of the most fearsome and respected species of the Great Reptiles was an honor and a blessing. It just so happened that Draco somehow decided he wanted to be a special snowflake anyway. Centuries of tradition was overrated anyway.

See end for Author's Note.

Prologue: Born of Fire (or How Draco Screwed Up Centuries of Dragon Traditions in One Day)

Every single being that Draco knew were dragons, from his mother to his extended family three times removed: without exceptions. His family simply didn't hold with such nonsense as wyverns or the many breeds of serpents that slithered across the Earth on their underbellies.

His mother- heir of the sun temple- was a beast of a dragonness that was always in Hybrid form bathed in onyx scales dipped in silver at the tips of her large wings and horns which had been present on her Flesh and Bone form for as long as Draco could remember. She had been hatched in the fire of three elders and it was said it would take just as much to kill her.

His grandfather- Cygnus- hailed from a line of Europeans dragons. His fire was so strong that he maintained the longest term of his base form of Scales and Fire- currently approaching a full century as a Fire Born. Of all of the Great Reptiles, the Dragons reproduced the least, partly due to their long life cycles: Draco, being the only fledgling of nearly two decades, had great expectations to uphold amongst the Fire Breathers.

Draco had everything he wanted, but he also had a secret and his greatest fear was that his family would discover it. He didn't think he could bear it if anyone found out about his strangeness: that he felt the heat of fire or he couldn't stomach raw meat and had to cook it like he was nothing more than a hatchling. Draco paled to think what his family would say if he was a fleshy born to a Great Reptile. Draco knew that there were types of Serpents who could not take form, too, but he had never met one. These types of Great Reptiles were another reason he kept his strangeness hidden; his family didn't want him mixing with a Reptile like that, the disgraces that they were to the Great Fire of the sky.

When Draco woke up on the rather blustery day our story starts, there was nothing about the large white giants floating amongst the heavens to suggest that this would be no ordinary day. Yet to the contrary this would turn out to be anything but. Draco whistled an old dragon ballad to himself and his mother's wings flapped in agitation as she burned yet another parchment to ash in her hands.

None of them noticed the absence of Cygnus' looming hide at the far end of the open chamber.

After the sun had reached its peak, Draco dragged himself away from the tome, grabbed a red fruit from the pile nearest him and parted with a small bow to his mother. "A little late for fruits, Draco," his mother said as she continued pacing.

"It is not to eat."

She tossed yet another parchment into the air above her head and it too caught fire. "I see."

Effectively dismissed, Draco left the chamber and began the descent down the massive staircase leading out of the temple he called home.

It was at the gates that he first took notice of his surroundings and what was so unusual about them. For one, the boisterous market that ran from first to last light was abandoned. The stalls held no wares and the aisles held no dragons. For a moment, Draco didn't realize why the gusts of wind sounded like the roar of a great dragon- then he recognized the absolute silence of his surroundings. There wasn't a single living being to be found on the Eastern side of the Temple Grounds, even the birds that normally swarmed to his side the moment he exited the Gate were absent. There was a golden flash of light at the far corner of the market but when he looked again, there was no one in sight. What could be the cause of such an event? It must be a slow reoccuring festival of some kind. As for the flash of gold, it couldn't have been his grandfather. It must have been a trick of the light. Draco gave himself a little shake and put the vacant market out of his mind. As he wandered into the edge of the Temple sector he thought of nothing except the lesson plan awaiting him at the library and hoped that it would be all theory.

But as he reached the large metal complex that housed the scholars of the city, lessons were driven out of his mind by something else. As he meandered his way past the invisible barriers that made up much of the walls, he couldn't help noticing that the barrier didn't seem to reflect its surroundings as it should. Not even Sol. Draco wasn't sure what would cause the clear material to act such a way- his teacher had tried to explain its creation to no result. He supposed that it was something explained by this science business.

He whistled a cant to himself and his eyes fell on the barrier nearest him. His reflection stared back at himself. Draco was surprised to see that he didn't look like himself at all; why, his hair had come out of its high ended braid, and his ceremonial paint that denoted him a fledgeling was cracked and broken on his cheeks. That was impossible! Never mind his braid it would only take a moment's time to redo it but the paint had been charmed in a ceremony nearly a dozen summers ago and could not be removed except by his own fire. But when Draco looked back he could not see his reflection at all. He was obviously stressed about his coming of age ceremony- yes, that was it.. The breeze whistled through the metal structure and a few minutes later, Draco arrived upstairs, his mind back on his lesson.

Draco always spent his lessons at the center of the library to avoid the easy distraction of gazing out the barrier at scholars in the courtyard. The library itself filled the top two floors of the building with enough bookshelves that it was often called 'The Labyrinth'. Had he set anywhere else, he might have found it harder to concentrate on his lesson that afternoon. He didn't see the whisp of images ghosting across the reflection of the barrier; phantoms of dragons and the occasional serpent that ordinarily populated the library at this time of day. Draco, however, had a perfectly normal, phantom-free morning. He read through five different tomes. He made a few passing marks about a translation rune and read a bit more. He was in a very good mood waiting for his teacher's arrival until he noticed how late it was. It wasn't unusual for his teacher to get immersed in something- he was a third generation scholar- but Draco felt no need to spend an entire evening simply translating an extinct dragon tongue to his own dialect. Too many of the ancients used extended metaphors and riddles when their words were recorded and it resulted in a nightmare to translate as many of its original meaning had not lasted the test of time.

So entranced was he with his reading he'd forgotten all about the missing population until he had passed through the market once again. At sundown the dragons would set up large bonfires from the market all the way to the serpent quarters at the treeline. He eyes the wide stone circle that marked the bonfire that rested in front of the Temple- the largest of the fires. It, too, was empty. He didn't know why, but this made him uneasy. The ground was blackened here too, yet he could feel the heat. It was on his way around, running a few tricky translations through his head that he got the heavy scent of blood. Blood and the roar of the wind forming words.

"Come this way... Feel the fire... feel the heat..."

Draco stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the empty patch of earth as if he expected the fire to leap up suddenly, but realized how foolish that was.

There was no other bonfire to be seen and he, for one, could not yet breathe fire. Yet sure as the sky was darkening, he could feel the heat upon his skin.

He reached his hand out, stepped closer to the empty space, flinched at the increasingly warm sensation, and had almost pulled his hand back when he changed his mind. He stretched his hand out farther and stroked the phantom flames, thinking... The wind roared around him sounding like a thousand voices, all urging him forward. This in itself wasn't such an usual event. He was sure that there were lots of similar occurrences when dragons had done odd things. Come to think of it, he was pretty sure he had heard of a couple in his time surround themselves in fire. He'd never seen it, but was sure it had happened. But never outside of solar festivals. Nor without an actual fire. There was no point in wondering; Draco was the youngest dragon by half a century and there were bound to be things he did not know. It wasn't anyone's fault- there was just some things only experience taught... but all the same, the phantom flame...

He found it a lot harder to concentrate on his inner musings as the heat blazed and the wind physically pushed him forward without preamble that he stumbled straight into the center of the bare bonfire circle.

"Great Heavens," he gasped, as the heat transfered into visible flames and began dancing. It was a few seconds before Draco realized the the flames weren't a reddish-yellow at all. It was braided with greens and blues with a splattered white and a slip of red. Contrary to any fire he had seen before, this fire held almost a life to it as it swirled around him and it reached high into the heavens until Draco wasn't even sure he remembered what it looked like.

"Don't worry, son of fire, for nothing could hurt you here! Rejoice, for you have been born at alast. Even the humans should be celebrating, this joyous, legendary day!"

And the fire seemed to physically hug him before it disappeared into the heavens.

Draco stood rooted to the spot. He could still feel the fire. Instead of surrounding him it warmed him from the inside, thrumming like a second heartbeat. He was rattled. This sensation had been described to him for as long as he could remember- the weight of finding your own fire that signalled the start of a dragon's coming of age. He stumbled out of the circle and set off up the long staircase leading up to the temple, hoping he was imagining things, which he had rarely hoped before, because imagination was the prerogative of the weak who could not face reality and was unbecoming of a dragon.

As he climbed into the atrium of the Sun Temple, the first thing he saw- and it didn't improve his mood- was his mother. She was now wrapped in her ceremonial robes with her wings spread behind her imposingly. He knew immediately that something had changed; her normally storm grey eyes shown a jet black- the color of her own dragon fire.

"Mother."

His mother didn't move. She just leveled him with her intense gaze. This was not normal behavior for her, was it? Draco wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he modified his stance to match the somberity of his mother's own physical standing. He was determined to keep any oddity from his mother completely.

She stared unblinkingly at him, looking him over with a scrutiny that Draco was hard pressed not to fidgit. That, at least, he knew was not tolerated by any of his family. Draco tried to act normally. When it came to the point where he was sure his mother had seen everything- whatever that may entail- and was simply waiting for Draco to own up to his mistakes she turned and began a measured gait into the temple.

"You will follow me." her voice rose as one with the wind as she turned a corner a ways off. Draco quickly followed and with no more than five strides he had caught up with her considerably more sedate pace. They walked for some time then. The wind followed them, the fire within him thrummed its own heartbeat and his mother began to speak with the voice of the wind:

"As you know, every dragon must find their fire before they can grow their adult wings. Although this normally happens at a preordained time and hardly ever outside the gaze of Sol, your fire has been blessed to you despite all of this. I am unable to explain why things have deviated from their normal pattern." His mother allowed herself a knowing look to impart from her gaze and onto him. "I am not your mother."
Draco's footsteps paused a beat before he again followed. "If you're not my mother-"

"I am your guide. This is merely the being you are most trusting of at this time. The next time we speak, I am sure to take another form."

Draco had nothing to follow that with. Sure, he had questions, but did he really want to know the answers to them? Like was all of this real? Had he ever left the temple grounds that day? Had he awoken at all? "Trust and believe," his mother's voice returned, yet again with an undercurrent hiss of the wind, "this is very much real. Can you not feel the fire that resides at your core? The day might seem strange simply because you yourself are an odd sort. That much is obvious."

Draco stood frozen at the entryway to the center chamber. An odd sort, she had called him. Said it was obvious! The mysterious emptiness of the dragon quarters? The barren bonfires? And the whisper, the whisper of the wind; even now he could hear it, practically feel it. "How can I be odd? My dragon blood runs back as far as the earliest records and even further still!"

"Aye, that they do."

"My mother is a dragonness. My grandfather an Elder who has held his form for more than a century!"

"Aye," she said sharply. "What of it?"

"What of it?" Draco said, alarmed. This was not the normal reaction he received upon speaking his lineage. "Oddness.. The barren quarters.. The cold bonfires..."

She arched a single eyebrow as if to say "so?"

"It seems as if... that... you are saying.. I'm responsible for... all of it."

The guide wearing the skin of his mother pursed her lips. Draco wondered if he dared to point out that she acted terribly similar to his mother and that it would be a huge relief to him if she- in fact- was his mother playing some horrid joke on him. He decided he didn't dare. Instead he said, as carefully as he could, "This couldn't possible be the coming of age. I am still a season too young."

"You are," the guide said stiffly.

"You see now? You've made a mistake."

"Never. No, by Sol, I'd say I'm here right on time."

"But," began Draco, his heart sinking horribly, "you just said-"

"That you're a season too young for your coming of age, but this is precisely when you should receive your fire thus I am right on time. Never has a guide been anything but punctual and I should not be the one to start."

He didn't say another word on the subject as they exited the other side of the chamber and went further still. While his guide continued on, Draco crept to the arched windows carved into the stone wall and peered out to the Western mountains. The fog that normally clung to the heavily forested rocky giants had lifted. It almost looked like the beams of small fires pierced the darkness. Was he imagining things? Could his strangeness finally be catching up with him? If it was... if it got out that he couldn't act like a proper dragon- well, he didn't think he could bear it.

When Draco reached his chamber, for that's where his guide had led him, he got into bed. The guide had placated him with the knowledge that everyone missing would return by the time he had awoken; she had then disappeared into flame. Draco, however, lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if he had no hope of hiding from his mysterious guide, there was no reason for his family to know. No one had been out and about to even see the fire escapade earlier and that meant there was something more important to be tended to. He couldn't see how anyone would need to know he had even received his fire early- he yawned and turned over- it wouldn't change anything...

How very wrong he was.

Draco might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but outside on the market grounds, a layer seemed to be pulled back from the dragon quarters. Bonfires sprung to life all around the marketplace and clear down to the treeline border in the far east. People appeared as if in the blink of an eye, the majority of which were gathered at the bonfire nearest the Sun Temple. This bonfire had remained barren since the fledgling had left it some minutes prior. Closest to the charred earth stood two figures larger than those that surrounded them by the Gate. One was a woman of considerable height. She was tall, scaled along her neck, arms, and stomach; large dragon wings sprouted from her back that were bathed bronze and onyx and horns that curled from opposite sides of her crown a little higher than her ears. These were scaled at the bottoms but not their tip, but the onyx-colored scales blended in perfectly with her dark hair that was pulled in an assortment of loose braids with strands of honey-colored scales blended in perfectly with her strands of honey-colored cloth interwoven. Her name was Narcissa of the third dynasty of Black house.

Narcissa Black didn't seem to realize that there had ceased to be a fledgeling enveloped in the greatest flames of their kind before her. She was busy foraging through her memories, looking for anything that could have prepared her. But the bigger figure next to her that took the form of an adult dragon nearly four times her height even when crouched down as he was now remained silent. His entire form was covered in onyx scales with fiery red on his tale and around his eyes. His name was Cygnus Black. He rumbled low in his throat before words formed with almost a sibilant hiss, "Your son is strong."

He turned to regard Narcissa, but her focus was elsewhere. Instead of rejoicing at a rather unusual turn of events, she looked to be becoming even more distraught. Her eyes darkened to a coal black from time to time from its base grey mist form. She looked distinctly ruffled.

"How do we continue from here?" she asked.

"That might be best determined by the council of Elders."

"None of them even left their centre to come and witness his Fire Summons," said Narcissa.

"I bore witness. Through me the others too will see the strength of your son and determine our next move. I must have heard the sound of at least a dozen celebrations getting under way. You should join in the festivities."

"The fools would celebrate," she said impatiently. "You'd think they'd be more cautious. The last three fledglings too received their fire before dying in the night. Starting their raucous uprising will only serve to make my grief stronger come sunrise."

"They are not to blame," said Cygnus gently. "We've had little to celebrate for fifty years."

"I know that," said Narcissa irritably. "I have lost the most in such times. It's not as if I stand to lose a son tonight. Even if he should survive to greet Sol, the Elders are sure to want to keep an eye on him until he at least partly takes his form."

She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Cygnus here, as though hoping he was going to voice his own opinion, but he didn't, so she simply went on. "Convenient it would be if he simply rose with his form as you; even a partial form like mine would perhaps disperse any remaining interest the Elders would have."

"Perhaps," Cygnus allowed. "If his choice of flame is any indication, he should arisen tomorrow with at the very least his wings. I would be surprised if we had to wait, but then again he did receive his flame early."

"Another reason we should stave off on the festivities. Has such a thing ever happened before?"

"I must have seen a dozen Fire Ceremonies with my own eyes. Between the entire council, we have seen a hundred more. In our time, it has no precedent. But the scholars hold records generations older. There might be news within their library."

"It sounds to me like I've given birth to a fire-breathing headache."

A deep chuckle rumbled from Cygnus, shaking the ground where he rested. "Rest yourself; he is almost of age."

"And without a dragon to court. There is no one of proper age within our ranks. We'll have to seek a betrothal from beyond the Western Mountains."

Cygnus rose from his crouch, stretched his neck high above the temple walls and regarded the darkening sky as the moon peeked over the small stretch of mountain to the South. "There are dragons to the East as well. It has been quite some time since we have joined with the ancient bloodlines. Perhaps now..."

"The journey East past the waters would be too long of a trip for him on new wings. The creatures of Flesh and Bone hunt our kind in those lands."

"But the fire burns hottest there. It would be a suitable match."

"So it would," Narcissa said before she opened her wings and flew to reach Cygnus' line of vision once again. "But he is still my fledgling. The decision still remains with me."

"Rest easy, Narcissa. The Elders do not wish to take possession of your son. He is strong to choose the most chaotic fire for his ceremony and to be gifted with flame before he is of age. He also happens to be the last fledgeling born to us if he, too, dies. Our survival now depends on his awakening at sunrise."

"He is just a fledgling."

"He is a dragon. The last dragon of our clan."

The sounds of cheers and merriment in the market overcame their silence. Roars of victory and bursts of flame were spread out between the old ballads and chants of dragons. By the night's end, a few more were sure to be created about the sleeping dragon somewhere within the temple. "Eat, Narcissa. Drink. Be merry. There is time enough for unpleasantness when your son awakens."

"You mean if he awakens."

Cygnus' mouth widened to show gleaming rows of fangs in a show of dragon humor. "Look to the heavens. A time of change approaches. Trust me, celebrated mother, he will awaken."

With that, Cygnus flapped his wings once, twice, and shot into the sky, a golden flame amongst the stars. Narcissa looked to the heavens then and almost fell from her place above the ground. The sky was aflame with stars and none blazed brighter than a red star; the star of battle, conflict, and change.

"Mars is bright tonight," Narcissa said.

A time of change approaches.

Author's Note: Alright so the explanation of this existing is actually very simple. I was doing a writing exercise where you were to pretty much copy the writing style of a favorite author (and my choice was obvious, really). This is what came of that. Since then, I haven't really done much with this besides go through it every few months or so and become mildly impressed that I came up with the idea in the first place. Since I really have no idea what to do with it- and really have no overwhelming urge to add more to it, I'm going to simple leave it here for your simple enjoyment.

Happy October everyone :)