The Last Dragonlord
Chapter One: Tasks
Harry felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach when he first saw the Hungarian Horntail. Perspiration dotted his brow and his eyes were wide with fear. The beast was massive; it covered the whole space of his vision and every inch of it was vicious.
The dragon, a she-dragon apparently, was standing protectively over a clutch of eggs, one of which was the gleaming-gold egg that was his prize. Harry stepped forward nervously, wetting his lips and swallowing roughly. His throat was unbearably dry, so swallowing just made him choke.
She must have heard his cough because in the next moment, her beady yellow eyes were gleaming and focused on him. If he hadn't locked his knees earlier, Harry knew he would be on the ground, quivering. She locked gazes with him and he stared right back.
Silence pressed around him. All he could hear was a thudding beat and feel the movements of his chest. Nothing mattered but matching the dragon's eyes with his own. Harry could have stood there forever, staring at her, but she broke the contact by twisting her head to the sky and roaring fire.
Even from his distance, Harry could feel the burning heat of the flames as they rocketed up in a swirl of yellow, orange and red. His legs shook and a jolt of fear ran through him once more. Remembering himself, Harry raised his wand, shaking slightly as the dragon looked at him again. Her eyes did not meet his this time and, no longer hypnotized, he opened his mouth, the Summoning Charm at his lips.
Before he could utter a word, she attacked. Another stream of fire burst out of her mouth, her neck extending as if she was blowing a gust of wind. The fire came at him, screaming.
With a strangled yelp, Harry darted out of the way of the inferno coming straight at him. The dragon stopped that burst and turned her head to shoot another. Just before the flames escaped her mouth, Harry moved again. This time he looked back at the deadly fire, just to see it unfurl towards the closest stand of people.
Harry felt a burning deep within his belly that came out in a roaring, "NOO! Don't hurt them!"
The dragon's head snapped around so fast, Harry could have sworn that she got whiplash. Involuntarily, Harry felt himself stumble back as the dragon's gaze met his own. Then she did something he never, ever expected.
"Did you just speak to me?" a loud and grating feminine voice asked. Somehow, he didn't know how, Harry knew that the dragon had just asked him that.
Harry nodded dumbly, staring straight at the dragon. Her gleaming bronze horns shone in the sunlight and her eyes looked through his very soul. "You – you can talk?"
"So can you," she replied, bending her head down until it was closer to him. "You are speaking my tongue… how is this?"
Harry's body froze and it felt as if all the breath had been sucked out of him. "I have no idea," he murmured quietly, when his lips had unfrozen.
His mind was racing, memories of talking snakes and being ostracised as the presumed Heir of Slytherin flashing briefly through his head. His eyes flicked to the right and left. He was in the middle of an arena, standing in front of a quiet dragon, talking to it. And the timer was still going.
The task flashed in his mind and Harry's head whipped back to the dragon as he remembered. Finish the task and then figure out what the hell is going on. Right.
"Er, could I please get that golden egg from your nest? It isn't a real egg and I sort of need it to finish the task," Harry asked, pointing to the pile of eggs behind the dragon.
The Hungarian Horntail's long neck twisted around to gaze at her nest, examining the cement-coloured eggs. She sniffed carefully at the golden egg and snorted out a cloud of ash. Between two long and deadly sharp claws, she pinched the egg and held it out for Harry. The young wizard took it, the large egg heavy in his arms.
"Thanks," Harry said gratefully.
The dragon inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement before staring at him again. A silence stretched for a few seconds between them and would have gone on if not for the sudden cacophony of cheers that sounded from around them.
Harry jumped. He had again forgotten that he was surrounded by people and that he was even in this task. After looking around at the people, Harry sheepishly looked back at the dragon, clutching the egg as if it was a life line.
"I should probably go to the gate," Harry said reluctantly, seeing as how he would soon be herded out anyway.
"Very well, young warlock," the dragon said, drawing back to her full height. She gazed down at him imperiously. "But I have no doubt that we will meet again, Dragonlord."
Harry's heart skipped a beat. "Sorry, what…?" he started to ask. But before he could complete his question or even hear an answer, hands grabbed him and pulled him out of the enclosure.
The hands, which belonged to McGonagall, hustled him out of the arena as dragon keepers surged past him towards the dragon. He vaguely heard people talking to him but it was if he was walking through a thick fog. His mind was on the dragon, the talking dragon, and what she had called him before he left. Dragonlord.
Harry was steered to the hospital tent and pushed down onto a bed by Madam Pomfrey. He heard her usual muttering and complaining as she waved her wand over him. The teenager tuned her out, too familiar with her behaviour. But when she began to apply a potion to his shoulder, where he didn't even have a scratch, Harry began to question her sanity.
"Dragons!" she exclaimed, "Last year Dementors, this year dragons, what are they going to bring into this school next?" Harry raised an eyebrow when she began talking about some sort of cut that he had on his shoulder. He eyed it speculatively but couldn't see a thing.
"Now just sit quietly for a minute – sit! And then you can go and get your score," the nurse said just before leaving the tent. He stared after her incredulously. Yes, that's it. Pomfrey was insane.
Before he could go get help for the nurse who had clearly gone round the bend, Ron and Hermione tumbled inside. He was ambushed by a cloud of bushy brown hair as a vice-grip surrounded him. His female friend backed away, showing wide, red eyes and fingernail marks on her face.
"Harry, you were brilliant!" she exclaimed. "You were amazing! You really were!"
It was only then that Harry saw the red hair and white face of his other best friend. Ron, who hadn't spoken to him in months, stood there shame-faced and looked a bit sick.
"Harry," he said, very seriously, "whoever put your name in that goblet – I – I reckon they're trying to do you in!"
Harry gave Ron a cold look. "Caught on, have you? Took you long enough." He stared his friend down, eyes hard.
Ron shuffled his feet, shamefaced.
"Harry-"
"It's okay, forget it."
"No," said Ron, "I shouldn't've –"
"Forget it," he repeated, shrugging a shoulder.
The two friends shared a smile and Hermione burst into tears, running off after hugging them both. Harry exchanged bewildered looks with Ron before going to receive his scores.
As the two of them wandered out of the tent, Ron started chattering about the task, giving a whole play-by-play of the other champions' trials. They watched with baited breath as the judges gave his results and despite Karkaroff's biased score, Harry ended up in first place, tied with Krum.
"Of course, they took off points for your shoulder, but really, you were the best of 'em all," Ron commented as he steered Harry back up to the castle.
The latter stared in askance at his best friend. Apparently, Madam Pomfrey's lunacy was contagious; Harry decided that he really needed to talk to Ron and Hermione.
It wasn't until the next day that Harry got a chance to speak with his friends, however, between the aftermath of the task and the party the Gryffindors threw that evening. As soon as classes were over, he dragged the two of them to the library and found a secluded spot within the stacks.
"What's going on Harry?" Hermione pounced as they sat down.
Harry took a deep breath and plunged in. "Something odd is going on," he started earnestly, "and I know this sounds mad, but I think I talked to the dragon."
Hermione's brows were furrowed and Ron looked amused. "You're having us on, right mate?" the latter asked.
"No," Harry said flatly, "I talked to the dragon and she understood me. She even gave me the egg when I asked her for it."
Ron and Hermione exchanged looks. "What are you talking about, Harry?" Hermione asked carefully.
"I'm talking about the Hungarian Horntail picking up the golden egg with her claws and dropping it into my hands," Harry said slowly. "Please tell me that you saw that?"
"We didn't," Ron spoke up. "I was watching you the whole time and I definitely didn't see that."
Harry cursed mildly and rubbed his aching forehead. "Well that explains why no one was staring at me when I got out of there. What did you see?" Harry asked, looking at Ron wearily.
"I dunno," Ron mused for a second, frowning. "It all happened so quickly. One minute, you were standing there, facing the dragon and in the next, you had the egg."
Hermione chewed her lip, thinking furiously as she spoke, "Come to think of it, Harry, I can't remember anything specific. It's like, I know you flew your broom and I can remember the dragon's tail scratching your shoulder, but everything else is a blur."
"D'you think we were hit with a Confundus Charm?" asked Ron.
"Maybe?" The bespectacled wizard ran a nervous hand through his untidy hair, almost knocking his glasses askew.
Hermione shook her wild mane of hair. "It's supposed to be a ridiculously difficult charm," she pointed out, "and you have to cast it on people one at a time. There's no way someone could have done that!"
Harry sighed. "Well, they did," he said flatly, "because I know what I heard. That dragon talked."
All three of them sighed as one and Harry accompanied the sound with a thunkas he hit his head on the table top.
"How is this possible?" Hermione asked rhetorically. The boys looked at her and she huffed. "Humans can't communicate with dragons, it's a fact! I found it while we were searching for a spell that would help Harry."
Harry let his head fall to the desk again. "Apparently I just accomplished the impossible," he said, the words muffled by the table. "Again."
"Well, at least there is one good thing," Hermione offered weakly, once a silence fell uncomfortably on them.
"What's that, Hermione?" Harry groused, his voice muffled.
"No one thinks you're the Heir of Slytherin?" Ron piped up, grinning cheekily.
Harry glared balefully at him, his chin propped up on the desk still.
"Sort of," Hermione agreed hesitantly. "At least this way, certain people won't be able to tell other people that you can speak to dragons."
"Hermione," Harry started, half-glaring, half-frowning at his other best friend, "what are you talking about?" Ron nodded, as if to agree with Harry.
The bushy-haired witch sighed, muttering about hopeless, thick-headed boys. "I mean," she said in a much-put-upon tone, "that, at least this way, Malfoy can't go off tattling to Rita Skeeter about you!"
Looks of comprehension dawned on both boys' faces. The group fell into a silence again, processing the information.
"There's more," Harry said quietly, as he remembered the last few things the dragon had said. "Just before McGonagall pulled me out of the stadium, the dragon called me a 'Dragonlord', whatever that is."
Hermione bit her lip, "I've never heard of a 'Dragon Lord'," she admitted, "but maybe I can find something in the library about it. It could explain how you spoke to the dragon."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, "and I could try asking Charlie. You know, to see if he's ever heard about someone talking to dragons before…"
Harry smiled at his friends' eagerness to help him. "Thanks," he said gratefully, straightening his spine. "I could try Hagrid too. He loves dragons so much; he might actually know something that could help us."
"Don't worry Harry," Hermione said firmly. "I'm sure we'll be able to find some answers."
They didn't. Harry and Ron talked to Hagrid and Charlie but even the dragon enthusiasts said that talking to dragons was impossible. Hermione scoured the whole library and arrived at the same conclusion. In addition, she was only able to find vague references to ancient curses that could have Confundus-like effects on such a large scale. The teenagers just couldn't figure out how anything like that could have been used during the Task when they couldn't even find a solid reference to such a spell.
Eventually they had to give up, as there were no new leads and the events at Hogwarts distracted them. The upcoming ball had the whole school fraught with excitement, and in Harry's case, nausea. Harry, however, didn't put the matter out of his mind completely. He couldn't. It was like a nagging presence in his brain that tugged when he least expected it, as if something was calling him.
It wasn't until late one evening, just a week before the end of term, that the call came stronger than before.
"Harry… Harry Potter… Harry…" a deep voice called, echoing and ominous in his mind.
Startled out of a deep sleep, Harry sat up, ears straining to locate the voice. It wasn't in the dormitory; the only bodies there belonged to his slumbering friends. Unable to fall back asleep with the voice still calling, the teenager crawled from the warm sheets and shivered as his feet touched the icy floor.
With his Invisibility Cloak in hand, Harry tiptoed out of Gryffindor Tower, following the echoing calls of the voice. As he went down the staircases, the voice got louder. At the front door to the castle, Harry hesitated, biting his lip. The feeling the creeping sense of curiosity, however, urged him forward.
The voice led him out to the grounds. Harry shivered in the winter air, snow caking to his boots and dampening the edges of his cloak. As the call echoed louder, Harry crossed the boundary of the Forbidden Forest. His wand pressed against the palm of his hand as it lit the way and a shudder ran down his spine that wasn't from the cold.
The snow crunched under his feet and all he could see in the stillness was his own cloudy breath. The voice nearly shook his head with its volume when he crossed a fallen tree to find himself in an open clearing. He wasn't alone.
In the middle stood a gigantic dragon, its legs thicker than Hagrid. Its body was so big, its sides brushed up against the barks of trees on either side of the clearing. Harry's breath caught in his throat and his knees quivered. Even though he had talked to one dragon recently, he hadn't quite expected to be in front of another dragon quite so soon, especially one as large and menacing-looking as this one.
"Greetings, young warlock," the dragon said, its razor sharp teeth gleaming in the moonlight. "Thank you for coming when I called."
"Th-that was you?" Harry stuttered when he found his tongue again, more ungainly than he could remember it being.
"Yes," he said. Even though the dragon's voice wasn't much different from the Horntail's, Harry had a strong feeling that this one was male. The dragon's head lowered until a beady dark eye was staring straight at the wizard. "You are a curiosity, as Lirrhena said."
"Lirrhena?" Harry repeated dumbly, still in too much shock to respond intelligently.
"The young female you met some weeks ago," the dragon clarified, although he really shouldn't have had to. Really, how many dragons had Harry met recently?
"Oh, right," Harry agreed. "Er, just before I left, she called me a Dragonlord. What does that mean?"
The dragon smirked and leaned forward. "It means you are one of a kind, Harry Potter. The Dragonlords were humans that could speak with dragons of long ago," he said. "They were a noble people and shared a deep bond with my kind." The dragon let out a sigh of smoke, which flew into the wizard's mouth. Harry coughed through a mouthful of ash. "It has been centuries since the last of the Dragonlords died…." Here, his beady eye locked with the wizard's. "…or so we thought."
"You mean," Harry stammered, "you think that I'm one of these-these Dragonlords?" His expression was a mask of incredulity. "How is that possible?"
"I'm afraid I do not know, young warlock. The secrets of the Dragonlords died long ago," the dragon said regretfully. "They were shared between the Dragonlords and the Great Dragons alone."
Harry looked hopelessly up at the dragon. "What d'you mean? Who are the 'Great Dragons'?" he asked.
"A Great Dragon is a race of dragon more powerful and more ancient than either of us could imagine. They were beings of pure magic, said to have been immortal and so powerful that they could cast spells and weave enchantments over entire cities," the dragon explained.
"What happened to them?" Harry asked quietly when the dragon's voice trailed off in sadness.
"They perished," the dragon said. "Humans hunted them near to extinction, as the legend goes, until only a few remained. They were isolated and alone, not daring to leave the untamed lands they had claimed for fear that the humans would find them. When the forests shrunk and disappeared, and the wizards moved the rest of us to their sanctuaries, it was clear that the Great Dragons were lost."
His voice trailed off, heavy with the horror and grief he felt. Harry's heart strained in his chest and beat furiously.
"They are no more," the dragon spoke, breaking the thick silence. "All but a lone dragon egg rumoured to be the last of the Great Dragons."
"How?" Harry blurted out. The dragon eyed him and he gulped. "You said they died out hundreds of years ago, so how can an egg still be alive?"
The dragon readjusted itself, causing the earth to shake a little under Harry's feet. "It is for the same reason that we know suspect this to be a Great Dragon's egg," he explained. "Most clutches hatch at most a year after being laid. This one has yet to hatch in the fifty years it has been at our reserve."
Harry gulped.
"Our lore says that the egg of a Great Dragon can live for a thousand years without hatching. It says that there is a ritual that a Dragonlord must complete for the dragon to emerge. As the egg began to fade, we lost hope, but now that you have appeared, perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps you can help return the Great Dragons to the world."
Oh Merlin. "Er, I'd be happy to help," Harry said, his voice cracking. "What's the ritual?"
"That is where I cannot help, Dragonlord," the dragon said in his deep voice. "That is one of the many secrets kept between a Great Dragon and a Dragonlord."
"Of course," Harry muttered. He ran his hands through his hair, leaving it looking like a porcupine's backside.
"I understand the burden you must bear, young Dragonlord," said the dragon wisely, "but you are our only hope. I will aid you in your quest and ensure the egg's safety until such time that you have the answers you seek."
"Thanks. Wouldn't hurt to try, I suppose," Harry offered weakly. "There has to be something, somewhere."
"We can only hope," the dragon intoned. "Be sure to find the answer quickly. If it is not hatched by the summer solstice, our elders believe the egg will die."
Harry grimaced. A time limit for an impossible task. Perfect. "I'll get right on it," Harry said.
"Very well," the dragon said, stretching his wings to their gigantic length. "I will take my leave. If you need to contact me, young Dragonlord, just Call for me. My name is Yraaahhgill."
"Er, right. Thanks," Harry said uncertainly. "How exactly do I -"
The dragon lifted off the ground, cutting him off, the giant wings beating a heavy gust of wind that blew dirt and leaves into Harry's face. The wizard hid his face in his sleeve until the deluge stopped, only to find the dragon soaring away into the distance, as tiny as a snitch on the horizon.
"Perfect," he muttered under his breath with a huff. "Just perfect.
Yawning, the wizard stumbled off into the undergrowth, hoping that he remembered his way back to the castle. Fine thing it would be to get himself lost in the Forbidden Forest after running off like an idiot to meet a dragon.
Revised: Jan 29, 2017
A/N: I've been working on this piece for a few weeks, churning out words as inspiration hits. Please don't feel that I've abandoned IOTaDoB, because I haven't! I'm simply funneling some extra muse into this as well. I hope you all enjoy it! Please review and tell me what you think!