Written for The Houses Competition
Head of House Hufflepuff
Category: Additional
Prompt: Studying dragons
Requirement: Must include Draco Malfoy and Luna Lovegood within the story
Word count: 1,584
Beta: Aya Diefair
There were many fascinating creatures to be found in the world, Luna knew. She could see what others could not, after all. She saw the Nargles floating around people and knew that one day she may find a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. But there was never a more fascinating creature as a human. She could spend hours watching how humans determinedly held themselves above creature status and yet displayed so many creature traits.
Luna Lovegood watched and learned, assigning creatures to the different people and personalities she discovered. The Nargles helped her a little bit, giggling and dancing in various patterns around certain personalities. It was how she realized that the creature humans most related to was the dragon. Highly intelligent and vicious, the dragon was a creature feared and revered by wizard-kind. The dragon also showed many of the same personality traits as the humans that couldn't quite keep themselves away from the dangerous creature.
The first time she realised this similarity was when she saw a dragon for the first time. The Triwizard Tournament had been brought to Hogwarts and the first task involved four dragons. As soon as she laid eyes on the Swedish Short-Snout, she knew that if she were a dragon that was the kind she would be.
She watched in fascination as the dragon version of herself stomped around the arena, trying to destroy the intruder that had entered her nest. She watched as Cedric Diggory and the Swedish Short-Snout both tried to outsmart each other with Cedric only just coming out the winner. She didn't cheer when Cedric claimed the golden egg. She simply sat back and let her thoughts take her away until the next dragon was brought out.
Her eyes landed on the Welsh Green and immediately skimmed over to where the Gryffindors were sitting, trying to find one Neville Longbottom. For that was who the dragon reminded her of. The dragon tried to blend into the rocks surrounding her and found she couldn't. There were no green grasses to retreat into and make safe from hunters. She saw the panic in the dragon's eyes and knew that this would not be an easy fight for the Beauxbatons champion.
The Chinese Fireball had her looking to her side and gazing contemplatively at her housemate Cho Chang. The golden spikes on the dragon were reflected by Cho's golden skin as they shared the same ancestral home. The waves of protective desire Luna could feel from the dragon within the arena were the same to what she occasionally felt from Cho when she discovered a Ravenclaw in trouble.
A loud roar brought her out of her musings and she realised that Victor Krum had dealt with his dragon and the next one was being brought in. She held her breath as she gazed at the Hungarian Horntail and recognised the boy that was about to enter and fight. Harry Potter was about to face off against a dragon very similar to himself. Luna grinned as Harry summoned his broom and took flight, forcing the Hungarian Horntail to break her chain and follow him.
There was no better battle ground for those two than the place they felt the most comfortable – the sky. The eggs lay in the middle of the arena unprotected as the Horntail hunted down the one who had entered, tunnelling in on the need to destroy the invader and forgetting everything else. It was so similar to when she caught glimpses of Harry Potter doing the exact same thing as he struggled to figure out whatever was happening within the school that year.
Luna hummed to herself as she wandered back up to the castle when the First Task was over. She let her body sway back and forth in an imitation of the dance the Nargles were performing around her. Her housemates were either heading to the Great Hall for food or to their common room and Luna followed neither group. Instead, she headed off to the library, she had some research to do.
The library turned out to be very quiet that day, most other students were busy replaying the battles they had witnessed or relaxing after they had tensely watched their friends risk their lives. Luna quickly made her way to the creature shelves and pulled down all the books she could find on various different dragon species.
There were ten in all; the Antipodean Opaleye, Chinese Fireball, Welsh Green, Hebridean Black, Hungarian Horntail, Norwegian Ridgeback, Peruvian Vipertooth, Romanian Longhorn, Swedish Short-Snout and the Ukrainian Ironbelly. She had thus far found human instances of four of these species. Now all she had to do was find examples of the other types. It was fascinating study, reading about the dragons and seeing the little things in them that she could see in the humans around her.
As soon as she read the intro on the Antipodean Opaleye, her mind flashed to the many times she had seen Draco Malfoy puff himself up importantly around the school. The boy had a high opinion of himself and it was true that the Malfoy line tended to produce attractive human beings. Draco would often only attack if he felt he had been slighted in some way (even if that way was a lesser wizard sneezing in his general vicinity), reflecting the attitude that the Antipodean Opaleye had.
A detailed drawing of a Hebridean Black transformed into the stern Potions Professor, Severus Snape. The wings of the dragon resembled that of a bat, just as Professor Snape's cloak did when he swept down a hallway. The dragon had an aggressive nature and anyone who had been in one of Professor Snape's classes knew that if you made one mistake you would hear about it, either in softly spoken words shooting with deadly accuracy or in the bodily pain of scrubbing cauldrons until they were spotless.
Luna grinned as she recalled a story her friend Ginny Weasley had told her about her brother's antics in his first year. Apparently, Ronald Weasley, along with Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, had found the groundskeeper Hagrid in possession of a baby dragon. That dragon had been a Norwegian Ridgeback and as she read the description for the Norwegian Ridgeback, Luna couldn't help but draw parallels between it and the youngest male Weasley. It was well known that Ronald had a temper that he found hard to control and that had, in fact, been shown recently if the rumours were to be believed.
For although Ronald and Harry Potter were the best of friends, it would seem as though they had for the moment split apart due to Harry Potter being chosen as the second Hogwarts champion. According to Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Norwegian Ridgeback was exceptionally violent towards its own kind, fitting the current argument between Ronald and Harry perfectly.
Once again her mind went to one of her own housemates as she read the description on the Peruvian Vipertooth. Small but deadly described Padma Patil to the T, especially when she had her sister to back her up. Padma knew how to use her words as venom and employed such tactics when she deemed it necessary to put someone in their place.
There were only two more species of dragons that Luna had to find a human counterpart for and she grinned as she flipped the page. As always, the similarities between human and creature made her giddy. This was what she enjoyed, far more than trying to understand the necessity of beauty products and matching jewellery.
The fierce Susan Bones came to mind as Luna read all about the Romanian Longhorn. While others may dismiss Susan as a Hufflepuff, Luna knew that Susan was one of the toughest people in Hogwarts. Her aunt was Amelia Bones, the Head of the D.M.L.E. and if that didn't toughen someone up, the whole school thinking you were weak and constantly underestimating you would probably aid immensely.
Luna stared at the last page and the description of the final dragon. All the others had come to her almost immediately and yet the Ukrainian Ironbelly was a mystery to her. She stared at the description, pulled down more books specifically about the Ukrainian Ironbelly and still could not link it to anyone she knew. With a heavy sigh she closed the book and started putting away the stack that had grown while she read.
The lack of a human counterpart for the final species of dragon would bother Luna for another two and a half years. Every so often she would find herself racking her brain to find someone that resembled the Ukrainian Ironbelly without success. It wasn't until she heard the dark voice echoing through the Hogwarts halls and saw the nightmare that the wizarding world had been trying to fight for so very long that she found it.
The Dark Lord Voldemort was the one she had been trying to find. He was the human Ukrainian Ironbelly. Her mind finally at peace, Luna grinned and started humming in between ducking and firing, fighting back the tide of Lord Voldemort's army as the battle continued.
Later, when the war was over and the dead had all been found and placed inside the Great Hall, Luna Lovegood leant against her father and told him all about the dragons she had found and studied. He listened carefully and nodded, the both of them drowning out the visual of so many people losing their lives in the study of dragons.