It'd been six months.
He'd spent most of those months sulking, hiding in the woods like he was seventeen again, on the run and fearing for his life. Only this time, it was less righteous and more emo. Harry at fourteen would be horrified at himself. Harry at nineteen didn't really care about how hermit-like he'd become.
The woods were away from the other dragons, who tended to den together in the hottest part of the day and had a habit of corralling Harry into denning with them. Toothless was usually the culprit, forcibly dragging him from the woods and shoving him in the center with the rest of the babies.
Harry couldn't deal with so many bodies so close together.
The fucking shithead could suck his fucking ass for sending his to this goddamn cuddle town, he thought he'd escaped that when he left Hogwarts.
Part of the reason why he'd made his home in the woods was to get away from Toothless, who'd taken to harassing him whenever Harry braved the main area, insisting on teaching Harry on how to spit his fire properly.
Dragons live for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. Harry, at nineteen, was practically a baby and as such wasn't expected to be able to control the fire he constantly spat out to keep it from overwhelming him. He'd once set the Main Hall on fire, an achievement that no other dragon had achieved before. Now, it was a biweekly event, and Harry was quite certain that most of the bets were on him setting it on fire again- something that would never happen as he was never ever going back there. He wasn't about to put people at risk.
The memory struck him with the force of a nuclear bomb.
Ron was silent and grim, his wand in never ending motion. Hermione was beside him and Harry on his other side, dealing out death with an easy flick of a wand. Ron was the tank, Hermione dealt with the ones that escaped Ron's heavy handed spells.
Harry shielded them both.
One crack in his defenses would mean the end of them all.
One spell skimmed along the floor, underneath the edges of his Protego, heading straight for Ron, who didn't know, who couldn't protect himself…
Harry spotted it seconds too late, but was quickly distracted by a familiar green light heading for Hermione, levitating a rock in front of the spell and ducking when it exploded. He didn't warn Ron.
Ron, who'd found out for himself what that spell that crept along the floor did.
Harry stumbled backwards, knocking himself into a tree, eyes opened as wide as possible.
He needed a fucking drink.
Harry dragged in a long breath, and spat out a huge fireball into the snow. Harry wasn't able to turn to his main methods of finding relief- alcohol, death defying stunts, illegal dueling.
He'd give Draco's left nut for a bottle of vodka.
This memory was as gin-soaked as the rest.
Draco Malfoy met Harry in the Three Broomsticks, well put together as ever. Both of them ordered firewhiskey.
"What's your excuse?" Draco asked curiously. He was nursing his whiskey was Harry was steadily chugging his. The faster he got to incoherency the better. "Astoria thinks I'm with Theo."
Harry set down his empty glass. "Today's the anniversary."
"Of what," Draco sneered, "How long it's been since Voldemort knocked us all on our asses again?" He snorted and took a decent sized swallow.
Harry smiled, sly.
Draco nearly spat out his drink. "You...sure. You're fucking buying."
Harry snickered.
He sighed and started looking for dinner. A squirrel darted by and Harry pursued it.
It'd been two years since Hiccup and Toothless brought Harry to the village.
Three weeks later, a stranger came to the village.
He was tall. Blonde with braids cleverly twisted in his hair, beads swinging with every step that he took. He looked like the cover of one of Lavender's romance books that she brought out to the common room to read, all of them giggling at the prose.
In fact, Harry'd be willing to write some prose of his own, you know, if he was human.
This was before Harry was close to enough to smell how the man reeked of the same kind of power that Loki did. That completely killed his theoretical erection.
Fuck.
