I don't own Harry Potter…were you at all surprised by that? X_x This is just a random thought that kind of morphed into a moment. And there really isn't much of a real discernable point to the whole thing, but I enjoyed writing it so there. *blows raspberry* ^-^;; It's just one of those odd Sunday morning rambling things that stuck in my head. (Hey, at least it has an end. I can't even remember the last time I finished something, it had to have been a couple of months ago…X_x) And incidently, this was something that I wrote at least two months ago. I put it up, and then pulled it down because I thought Charlie might be OOC. In rereading it tonight though, I decided that Charlie doesn't have that much of a character in the books to make OOC, so whose to say my version of him can't be IC. *shrugs*
*****
It's got to almost be three in the morning, and instead of sleeping in my nice comfortable bunk back at the station, I'm sitting here on the edge of Dragon's beak cliff contemplating the things that have happened in the last year. Morgana, one of the oldest dragons on the preserve, is lying beside me and I can see her pale scales reflecting in the moonlight. Technically, she should be in her pen in the dragon barn, but I've known her since I was sixteen. A simple pen would never hold her, and I have no desire to running tattling on her. The others back at the station have never understood, and I'm almost beginning to think, will never understand.
To them, working here on the Preserve is exciting, exhilarating. Some of them honestly love being with and around dragons, but others I think are only here for the adrenaline rush and the cheap thrills. They all are hard workers, some probably work even harder than I do, and they do a good job.
But they will never understand these creatures the way I do. How could they when I can't even get them to open their minds to the possibility? To them, dragons are just some big kind of dangerous animal. To them, dragons have simplified thoughts, feeling, hurts and wants. I've had coworkers compare them to everything from their pet dogs to stubborn milk cows. As if because they can not communicate the way we can, they must therefore be stupid and backward.
"How? How do I make them understand, Morgana? I've been at this for how many years now? I don't think they'll ever truly understand what it is that I'm trying to tell them."
: Dragonling, we've had this conversation before. : Her mind voice is the same as always, a bit dry, a bit affectionate, and maybe just a bit concerned over me.
"Humor me. There are just times when I want to give up. I'm frustrated. I can't do any more to help out you lot than I can do anything to keep my family safe back home."
: Hmmm, you do realize that it is not your job to do either, do you not?:
"What?" I blink at her rather stupidly. Usually, she reassures me and tells me to be patient and that things will eventually work themselves out. Why the change now? She snorts out a couple of chuckles and I glare at her. "How is it not my responsibility to do something?"
: You think it's your responsibility because what? You can hear us? That holds no bearing. It is a choice of yours to see if you can help us, Dragonling. Some of us here might think you had an obligation to help us out, to free us from your kind and give us our autonomy back. :
"Don't I have that obligation? This…er…gift, comes with responsibilities. Am I just supposed to be able to hear you and not do anything to try and clear the misconceptions about your intelligence, your depth of being?" I slump against her confused and frustrated.
: You misunderstand me. I don't doubt your integrity, fledgling. But the things you want for us? Autonomy, understanding, freedom. Not all dragons are ready for that. While you do not labor under the misconception that we are no better than the sheep we eat, you do labor under the misconception that we are all perfect creatures simply due to the fact that we are Dragons. :
I gape at her, and her slitted eyes crinkle, her jaws pulling up in a dragon grin. "Don't you want your freedom?"
: Of course. : She responds simply.
"You're not making any sense." I flat out tell her. But then, she's always been a bit vague. It only took her four years to get around to telling me her name.
: I am making perfect sense. : She whaps me lightly upside the head with her tail, and I mock glare at her. : There was a reason humans enslaved us, fledgling. My kind thought humans stupid. Dumb like the cattle we ate. You think your coworkers labor under a grossly false misconception, theirs is nothing compared to what some of my fellow dragons thought of you. :
"You thought we were dumb cattle?" I try and hide a grin, but she sees it anyway and rolls her yellow eyes with an exasperated puff of smoke.
: Yes, and obviously we misjudged you lot. But it's more than simple misunderstandings that got us here. :
"The Princess stealing? Peasant eating? Pillaging the country side?" I ask, suspecting that those are the things she's getting at.
: Exactly. Those are just a few of the practices we engaged in. And maybe enslavement and being painted as nothing more than animals is a bit of a harsh punishment for the wrong practices of a few, but from this we're learning and becoming better as a whole, I think. We are not all perfect. There are evil ones, stubborn ones, stupid ones among us just as there are among your kind.:
Er…maybe it's not as black and white as I was making it out to be. But all the same… "I dunno." I whisper a bit hesitantly. Just because I have the reasoning behind their enslavement…it doesn't make it right.
: Of course it isn't right. : I glare at her as I realize she's been eavesdropping on my thoughts. She looks back at me unconcerned. : That is why we have you. Your gift does come with responsibilities; they just aren't the ones you think. You can't expect your kind to change their beliefs about us overnight. But you are changing how my kind sees the human world. You teach the fledglings that humans are just as intelligent as they are by talking to them, and you teach the older adolescents how to deal with humans with the least amount of trouble and injury to themselves and to the humans. :
"I do?" I ask quizzically as I gingerly tap on the bandage covering my arm. Norbert took exception to the idea of going back into his pen today when he'd rather sun on the rocks. I tried to reason with him, but it was hard. Particularly when I didn't see the reason for it myself. But I'm only a lowly dragon worker. Granted, a damn good lowly dragon worker, but it's not like I have the ear of the head of Dragon preservation and protection department. I've tried, but no one really ever listens past the point where I tell them that I can hear dragons in my head. I think they see me as a well meaning, but slightly off my rocker, kid. I think that even if I had all the proof in the world, they still wouldn't believe me. Which was one of the harder lessons I've learned doing this, people believe what they want to believe.
: Yes, :she chuckles at the look of bewilderment on my face, : you teach them patience with what they can not change. You teach them subtlety when you deal with the other humans. They learn how to wait for the right opportunities to get the things they want, and they learn that harming other thinking creatures comes with consequences. They learned these things before, but they learn them now with more understanding and with fewer painful punishments. :
"Subtlety to wait until you can get what you want…What have you been hiding from me?" I ask as I consider her words. The one thing on every dragons' mind here it seems is freedom. That is what they all want. I have the younger ones screaming the desire in my head every time I have to try and explain why they have to do the things the Preserve thinks they should do.
: You think my pen is the only pen that can not hold a dragon? There is a trick we can perform to get out, and when the council deems one of the younger ones ready, we teach it to them and explain the rules. :
"Council?" I reply a bit dazed. They've been coming and going freely? For how long? "Why don't you all just leave altogether? If you can get out, why stay?"
: Free food? :
"Morgana…"
: Our young ones are here. Our magic doesn't extend to the nurseries. They're made out of something that we can not penetrate. That is why the mothers get so hysterical on you, you know. And most do leave, but they do it in such a way that you humans do not know we're doing so. But it is a nice safe place to grow up young ones and for the elderly to retire to. Freedom to come and go as we please is something we have to sacrifice for safety. :
"Magic?" I ask weakly. They can do magic? "And how do they leave?"
: Yes magic, dragonling. You humans always seem to think you're the only ones who do it. There are giants, and veela and centaurs and unicorns who all use magic as well. Some even do it better than you humans. As for how we leave, honestly fledgling, we do live longer than a mere forty years. I've been alive for over two hundred years. :
Two…two hundred years?!
Morgana reaches over and pats me on the back comfortingly with her tail. : The dragons who "die" are merely casting the illusion of death for you humans to see as they make good their escape. Elsbeth was very touched by the funeral you held for her up here on the cliff. :
I'm torn at the moment between being very, very angry at them all for tricking me…and being happy that all the dragon friends that I previously thought dead, are in reality out alive and most likely happy.
: Will you tell your superiors what I have told you?: She gives me a measuring glance and I scoff.
"Those insufferable wankers? Please, like they would believe me. And even if I could get them to believe that you managed to escape somehow, I still wouldn't do it. You have a right to look for your own happiness."
: As do you fledgling, I told the Council this was the right decision. They've had quite the time trying to decide if they trusted you or not. The Tournament gave them the final push. Convincing those four mothers to leave their real eggs behind and pretend that those duds were theirs did a lot I think. Particularly when Alison informed us that she would have lost three hatchlings if she'd allowed the real eggs to be taken. :
"I suppose…" I say as I lean against her, scratching the rough spots on her pale scales.
: Worried about your family? :
"Yes." I answer, knowing that this worry is the one that is really keeping me up tonight. Not that I don't appreciate learning all of these things about the dragons I live with, but I know that for the most part, they're safe…My family? With You-know-who back, and the death eaters about…I remember what it was like before Harry Potter. I remember how scared and rabbit frightened everyone was. I remember the safe houses, and the lonely Christmases spent with just Bill at Hogwarts, wondering if our parents or our brothers were still alive and well.
: They worry for you too. :
"I know, my mom was at me last summer and again this Christmas to change jobs. I think she's still disappointed that I didn't become a Seeker for one of the Quidittch teams or that I didn't decide to work in the Ministry. But you know, even if I didn't have this gift, I wouldn't be happy doing those things. There's no challenge in them, nothing to keep my interest."
: No death defying stunts to be had… :
"I am not an adrenaline junkie! Besides, if I were the Seeker business would have satisfied me."
: I know that Dragonling, I was merely teasing you. You are not an adrenaline junkie, but you do like to have things constantly changing. You like to feel as if you're making a difference and that you are serving a purpose.:
Don't we all? But then again, I suppose she does have a point. I spent so many years feeling helpless and burdensome. Bill and I would stay up late at night sometimes talking about it. Our entire lives have been anything but normal, with Dad in the ministry and into everything muggle…he might as well have painted a huge target on our house that said "muggle lovers here, attack now!". We didn't even know people lived another way until we were in our teens. I suppose it's not too much of a leap to see that we'd take a less conservative view of the world, our place in it, and how we want it to be.
"I feel guilty about making my mom worry over my safety." I finally confess after a moment. "I want her to be happy for me, but I don't want to take the path that she wants me take. And I worry about them. The world is a much more dangerous place nowadays."
: Oh, I doubt that. : Morgana interrupts,her mind voice wry.
"Of course it's more dangerous! You-know-who has come back. It's going to be just like it was when I was younger."
: Hmm, maybe, but that doesn't make the world any more or any less dangerous a place. The danger has always been there, you just don't realize it until it comes in such an obvious guise. You live with the danger of death every day of your life, but you only fear it when it attacks as a person? Dragons raise their fledglings with the idea that they're imparting all their knowledge of survival. Your mother, whether she realizes it or not, did the same. And all fledglings must leave the nest sometimes. It is easier for some than for others to realize that they've equipped their young ones to the best of their abilities and that the fate of their children is no longer, nor really was ever, in their talons. Safety and security are privileges; they are not inherent rights, fledgling. :
"I still worry about them, and they are still going to worry about me." I tell her, feeling rather sleepy as I curl up beside her.
: Of course you worry, you love them. Why don't you try telling them that when you go home for your vacation this summer instead of holding table battles with your older brother, hmm? :
"Well, now there's a thought." I acknowledge as she wraps her tail up beside me. "Thanks Morgana."
: Sleep well. :
-The End