Author's Note: A couple of warnings before you start this one shot. One is that it's a side fic to the AU story "The Unwinding Golden Thread" so if you haven't read part of that you'll be somewhat confused. Another is that this is NOT CANON to that story, meaning that this has never happened in that story and won't happen in that story.
"Do you think it's edible?"
It went to show quite a lot about Tom Riddle that when he found an infant dragon his first words weren't an exclamation of surprise, horror, or even pity, but instead was a question about whether or not he could eat it and live.
But desperate times called for desperate measures and things had progressed beyond even desperation.
They'd been on the road for weeks now, steadily headed towards London where Grindlewald was rumored to be holed up behind apparition wards, and between avoiding German infantry, other desperate English wizards, and everything in between they always seemed to be short of essentials like food and water.
How and why there was a dragon in the middle of the forest, far from any road or dragon's nest, was beyond Tom but he didn't particularly care. He just knew that it was wounded, it was still alive, and despite being an infant it was still large enough to feed the pair of them through the winter if they were frugal enough.
However, as Tom suspected, Evans was horrified by the suggestion.
"No, no bloody way!" Evans may have been tortured in a death camp, lost his glasses and gained the ability to see without them via Tom's expertise in potions, and lost his naiveté but apparently he was not far gone enough to consider eating it.
"It will be dead within a few days anyway, with that leg, it'd really be a mercy." Tom commented, eying the thing, he couldn't tell what breed it was at this age not being an expert but even as an infant it looked fairly dangerous. Its claws could gouge out an eye, if it got near your face, but luckily for them the thing was wounded and by the looks of it that dragon wasn't going anywhere.
"Death is not a mercy!" Evans cried but then held in whatever other lecture of morality he had left, knowing that whatever nerve Tom had just trampled Tom hadn't meant it, and he also knew that Tom wasn't wrong about this. As stubborn and idiotic as Evans tried to be he wasn't always an idiot, he couldn't fool himself at the end of things.
"It's… We can't do it." Evans finally finished lamely, lifting his arms as if to ask the world why it had come to this, and then dropping them to his side.
He was very tempted to ask why not, it wasn't as if it was cannibalism, there was no great taboo against eating dragons even baby dragons and if there was then they were on the brink of starvation on a daily basis. If death wasn't a mercy then Evans must recognize that they had to do everything in their power to live, if he could condone the killing of German dark wizards then he could eat a bloody dragon.
"Riddle, Tom, don't…" Evans trailed off, just looking at Tom, terror in his eyes as if this was about more than just a dragon.
As if the dragon was some line that they dare not cross, because if they did, then there would be no turning back from the madness of war. They would become what Evans had always feared he would end up being.
"Alright, fine, we won't eat it." Tom said with a sigh and he tried not to notice how relieved Evans looked by that, the boy had survived a death camp and he couldn't handle eating a dragon, what was his problem?
Tom made to keep walking then, to cut through the forest and find a decent place to set wards and make camp, but before he'd gone ten paces he'd noticed that Evans was still staring at the bloody dragon.
"I thought we weren't eating it, Evans." Tom said, drily, turning slowly around to stare Evans and the dragon dead in the face.
The dragon was making noises similar to a goat, an obnoxious shrieking that he'd never imagine could come from a dragon, and Evans couldn't seem to turn away.
"Evans? We're wasting daylight." Tom said, hidden in that was the comment that unless Evans wanted to be tortured by Germans again they'd best get moving.
"You said that it will die if we leave it here."
Tom turned to look at the dragon, small (for a dragon), injured, without a mother, its fate seemed more than certain, "Probably."
"We can't just leave it here." Evans finally said and there was that spark in his eyes, that shining light of nobility and justice that meant there would be no arguing with him, where he would claw through hell and back just to see this thought through.
And Tom knew that no matter what he said now, what he did, even if he tried to kill the dragon before Evans got any more ideas into his thick skull that dragon was going to live and Tom was going to end up keeping it alive.
But Tom wasn't about to go down without a fight.
"No."
"But…"
"No, remember how this conversation started? We have no food, we have no water, we can't feed a bloody dragon!"
Evans flushed, which was good because it meant he knew he was wrong, but that determined look didn't leave either which meant that even though he knew he was being a colossal idiot he'd still go through with it because he was that righteous and pigheaded.
"You said it's the leg right, we just fix the leg, and then we let it go."
Tom scoffed, giving up any idea of walking anywhere, and sat on a rock and set down his pack all while trying to ignore the goat-like shrieking of the dragon.
"We, Evans? You mean, me, as in 'Tom just fix its leg and then let it go." Tom corrected with a dark smile because they both remembered that Tom had been the only one to actually read and understand those books on healing.
Evans had enough power to fix things, when Tom became injured, but he lacked any true finesse and just threw magic into the wound. It worked, for the most part, but it would be best not to try it on a fire breathing creature because it hurt like a bitch.
"It's not like it will take you that much time…"
"Oh, he assumes, Evans I know nothing about dragons." Tom said raking a hand through his hair wondering just how they got into these situations. You'd think this sort of thing would have stopped happening after Hogwarts but every once in a while they ran into shrieking wounded baby dragons and faced moral dilemmas.
Evans looked shocked by the admission, confused, as if Tom knew everything. Which, well, Tom did know most things, he knew everything important, which was why he hadn't bothered to learn the intricacies of healing injured creatures.
"It can't be that different…" Evans started.
"Again, he assumes." Tom cut him off before he could gain any supposed moral high ground, "Dragon scales are known to be resilient to magic, they don't conduct magic if you want to be muggle about it, and so I imagine using healing spells on flesh wounds might be a bit tricky and require more thought than I'm ever willing to give this shrieking abomination."
"So you're just going to let it die?" Evans asked, throwing his hands in the air and looking as if he had just been struck.
Tom looked at him for a moment, this scarred and desperate young man, who always was trapped between youth and adulthood, never quite certain where he stood. Harry Evans was so desperate to live in a world without war and there were days when Tom thought he'd want nothing more than to give it to him.
"People, creatures, die Evans." Tom said softly staring at the creature, at the red gold of its eyes, listening to its terror and desperation as death clawed its way into its heart, "It's the sole dreaded end that we come to unless we are clever enough to avoid it. And even then, to save your own life you have to pay it in a pound of someone else's flesh. You know that."
For a moment Evans said nothing, just stood there, shivering looking forlorn and lost and almost dead. Then, he said in a voice that was equally soft, "Not this one, Tom, not this one."
They spent the night there, in a clearing that was barely secured and far too close to enemy lines for Tom's peace of mind, and Tom silently spent most of the night stitching together bone, muscle tissue, and flesh while Evans provided light.
By morning it was done, the dragon having flown away as soon as it was able, leaving Tom and Evans to stare silently after it.
They wouldn't mention the incident again.
Author's Note: Irrefutable proof that I actually am physically incapable of writing fluff. Based on the prompt by the 100th reviewer of "The Unwinding Golden Thread", Inveigler, who asked for a fic where Tom and Harry raise a baby dragon and then release it into the wild.
Thanks for reading and reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter