Disclaimer: I could name a looong list of people who owns Harry Potter more than me! I won't though...

Author's note: I really don't have anything much to say at this point... Read and enjoy!

The Ridgebit Dragon Sanctuary, Romania. May 20th 2002

Charlie was strolling around in the reserve peacefully while thinking. The situation the day before had shaken him up a bit. A meeting in the evening had made two things clear to him; no one had been aware that a witch was living nearby, and Eva had been the one to uphold the safety charms surrounding the Sanctuary. He was on his way to fix the last part.

A noise very much resembling the call of a Chinese Fireball alerted him and made him stop when he was close to spot he would raise the shields from. He knew he was in Cherry's territory but he hadn't seen her or anything that should make her cautious. He changed his course once again remembering the lost witch from yesterday. He couldn't imagine what would happen if some muggle hikers stumbled across one of his dragons, but it probably wouldn't be pretty. He increased his pace and jogged into the small opening in front of the cave where Cherry was keeping her eggs. The witch from the day before was standing in front of her, still as a statue, her eyes fixed on the red dragon hissing at her.

"I'm not going to do anything," the witch said quietly in English as she slowly stepped backwards, and without being aware of it, towards Charlie. "I'm just going to leave you alone so you can stay here in peace. You probably have a good reason for reacting so fiercely, right? You probably even have some eggs in that cave behind you." She kept her tone low and soft, holding her hands up in a friendly gesture, showing that she was unarmed, as she neared Charlie one step at the time. "I think it's a clever place to hide your eggs. Only one way in, and you're watching it closely, aren't you? My big, precious scarlet beauty. I bet all of your babies are going to be as beautiful as you."

The dragon calmed down when the witch got closer to the edge of the clearing. Charlie couldn't help but wonder how she had gotten so close without the dragon snapping her head of. The witch let her hands drop when her back hit a tree.

"Right, I'll be off then Scarlet Beauty. I hope I'll see you around. I would love to see your babies when they hatch." She turned and almost yelped when she noticed Charlie's waiting figure.

"Relax Cherry, I've got her," he called to the dragon who seemed to calm a bit down while still eyeing the intruders suspiciously. "And you little Missy are coming with me." He grabbed her arm and led her back to the trail he had left for her sake. "What were you thinking, walking up to a dragon like that? You could have gotten killed? Or something could have happened to Cherry's eggs!"

"I'm sorry I got you worried," she said coolly when he quieted. "But as you yourself saw, nothing happened. To me or Cherry's eggs." She said Cherry's name as if tasting the word, savouring the way it rolled of her tongue. "I was looking for one of you."

"What do you want? I was going to reinforce our shields so no one wanders in here accidentally again. There's no reason to complain."

"I want to take you offer."

"My offer?" Charlie tried to remember what offer he had made to her. He also tried to remember what about her that seemed so damn familiar.

"I want to work with the dragons."

Oh – that offer. "What made you change your mind? I thought you said you had obligations elsewhere. Sheep to herd and stuff like that." Charlie withdrew his wand when they arrived at the small cabinet holding their items. "What changed?"

"My obligations died."

"Your sheep died?" Charlie turned and looked at the witch that suddenly had a hollow sound to her voice.

"I actually don't know what happened to the sheep." Charlie frowned at the blank look on the witch's face.

"Listen..."

"Tatiana." No, her name wasn't Tatiana. It didn't feel right... Anyway!

"I'm Charlie Weasley. Listen Tatiana, we don't want people here who isn't behind it 100 percent! Our mortality rate is way to high for that!" He looked at her impatiently. If she was going to back out she had to do it now, so he could kick her out before he cast the spells. And she had to hurry, so he didn't have to worry about dragons accidentally escaping or strangers accidentally walking in and getting eaten. That would be quite a hassle.

"I don't care about mortality rate. I want to do this." Her face and tone of voice were determined, but he had to push her. Normally he would put a new worker through some tests, but he didn't have the time and they really needed an extra hand. She was a capable witch, he had noticed that day before, she would be a nice reinforcement.

"I don't appreciate cowboys or suicidal dragon tamers! If you plan on getting yourself killed, I advice you to go cast yourself of the nearest cliff and not bring my friends in danger." Her eyes flashed for a moment, and Charlie thought he detected some hurt behind all the anger.

"I have nothing to live for at the moment." Her jaw was clenched and her shoulders stiff from withheld emotions. "But that doesn't mean I don't want to live. I want to help with what you're doing here. All I ever wanted to do was to help, and I still do! Want to help... I want to help the helpless, and no matter how fierce and dangerous those dragons are, they aren't invulnerable – especially with magic involved - I saw that yesterday. I'm here because I want to help the dragons."

Charlie couldn't help the small smile to form on his face. "That's the kind of answer I was looking for."

Tatiana frowned at him before her tense stance seemed to relax. "Does that mean I'm hired?"

"You're hired. Although I have to take it up with the rest when we return to the farmhouse."

"Perfect! What are we doing?" Charlie raised his wand the smile slipping of his face. Work wasn't a smiling matter, and this work was important.

"We're going to reinforce our safety wards. If some random witch can just enter the Sanctuary, we've done something wrong somewhere."

"Right!" The witch withdrew her own wand from her back pocket where he had seen it stick up earlier. "How big an area are we talking about?"

"About 100 km²." He was a bit unnerved by the determined looked on Tatiana's face and they way she just nodded when she heard how big and area they were covering.

"I can do that." She raised her wand and closed her eyes. "Repello Muggletum." Charlie felt the magic run from the small witch beside him and his eyes widened. "Cave Inimicum." Cave Inimicum? He didn't know that one... "Muffliato." Why would she cast that? "Protego Totalum." That made sense. He looked at her seeing if she had anything to add to her collection of protection spells. "Anything you'd like to add?"

"I think you've got it pretty much covered." Charlie shook his head. "You cast the muggle-repelling charm and protego totalum, which were the ones I was about to cast."

"Fine. What to do now then?"

xXx

"So those are dragon eggs?" Tatiana regarded the pale grey eggs in front of her. They looked old. Like fossils or something.

"Si, bella." She looked over her shoulder at the Italian wizard who she had been assigned to when Charlie had brought her back to the place they lived. "They are Antipodean Opaleye eggs. We got them from Australia. The mother died in an accident soon after she lay them so they split the eggs up and sent them out to different reserves. We got two because we have very good prior results in artificial incubation. They will be very beautiful when they hatch. I have great expectations to little Julio and Julia here." She nodded absent-mindedly. Something about Australia seemed awfully familiar. The memory slipped her attempts to reveal it, hiding in some faraway corner of her mind, out of her reach. It was like an itch begging to be scratch on that spot between and a bit below your shoulder blades which was completely out of reach, no matter how hard you tried.

Sometimes she really wished she could remember anything from before Stefan found her in the woods. She wanted to know what had happened, how she had ended up here, in the Romanian forests so far from... Well - everything.

Right now she wished for her memories to return more than ever.

"What are we going to do about them?"

"Nothing." She turned to face the man – wizard... Internal sigh – Paolo. "I just wanted you to see them before we start doing what was planned. Cleaning the stable." A sneer flashed over her face. She had always hated mucking out in the sheep's small stable, she couldn't imagine a dragon to be cleaner than a sheep. She sighed and followed the taller man as he went to the end of the big room and slid a big door open. It smelled like... dung...

"How do we do this?" She looked at the wizard and drew her wand mirroring his movement.

"We do what we do best," he winked at her and made a suggestive roll with his hips. "Or in my case, what I do second best." Tatiana rolled her eyes. "We do magic." He lifted his wand and pointed at the stall in the corner. "Scourgify!" The amount of hay and dragon shit decreased, but it didn't vanish as Tatiana had expected.

"I hope you do the thing you do best a lot better than this." She gave Paolo an unimpressed lift of her eyebrows and leaned against the door to another stall.

"Oh?" He turned to her with a challenging look. "The bambina thinks she can do better?"

"Don't call me bambina, as you can see I'm nowhere close to being a child." She straightened and gave him a hard look. "And despite my urge to tell you "bloody hell, I could do that better in my sleep", I'll settle for; "yes, I believe my abilities are greater than yours at this"." She turned to the stall behind her and pointed her wand at it's dirty inside. "Scourgify." She gave him a triumphant smile when she turned her back to the spotless stall. "Want to check for yourself?"

He stepped next to her and glanced inside the stall. "Well signorina, you've only proved one thing."

"And what is that?"

"That witches should keep at witches jobs."

"Do you like you face as it is, because I suddenly feel like hexing it-"

"Sorry, sorry, sorry my vindictive little witch." He gave her a big grin while holding his hands defensively in front of him. "I'll go fetch some clean hay if you continue the cleaning. If we work together, we'll be done in record time!"

She gave him a glance so cold it could freeze hot cocoa, but he just smiled and started to skip out of the stable while whistling merrily to himself, so she sighed and started hexing the other stalls.

"How's it going Bella?"

"My name isn't Bella," she said before raising her wand and cleaning out the last stall without saying the spell aloud. It felt good to be done.

"Ah, but you are bella!" She shook her head but the small smile revealed her amusement. She regarded the wizard as he started to divide the huge pile of hay he had floating in the air, and sent the smaller piles flying into the big empty stalls.

"Tell me about the dragons. The Opaleye, how does it look? And what do you use these stalls for? Don't the dragons live outside?"

Paolo flashed her a grin. "The Antipodean Opaleye is my favourite type of dragon. It has this beautiful pearly skin and it's eyes are all the colours in the world and without pupils. The eggs are very deceiving." Tatiana smiled at his enthusiasm. "We use the stalls for when the dragons are sedated and in for their yearly check-up. Ethan, our healer, is very good with animals and witches and wizards." He made a grimace. "He isn't very good with potions though. We should go find some books for you. We have tons of literature on dragons and other magical creatures. I'm sure you'll find it interesting." Tatiana nodded vigorously more amused than confused by Paolo's quick shift in conversation.

Paolo made the last of the floating hay fly into the last stalls with a flick of his wrist and gestured for Tatiana to follow him. She hurried to his side and bit her lip with excitement. She didn't really understand why but the thought of books made her heart hammer in her chest and her palms perspire. It felt amazing though! She winced when the sharp light outside hit her eyes. When she looked up to figure out where Paolo went, she found him to be right beside her staring up in the air with a big grin.

"Oi!" Tatiana looked up and gaped. A person on a broom was floating in the air above the pair. "You done already Paolo? How's that possible? Your charms are pure rubbish!"

"I couldn't do it without a bit of help. But Terence, don't make me look bad in front of the ladies per favore!" The blond wizard on the broom descended suddenly and very fast. Tatiana gasped quietly when he landed elegantly and stepped of his broom. He looked like he hadn't noticed the smaller witch beside his colleague.

"You brought your new girlfriend to work?" Tatiana noticed his familiar British accent when he gave Paolo an incredulous look. He had noticed her after all. "Charlie's gonna rip your throat out!" The last part was added with a big grin.

"She's not my girlfriend – yet," Paolo said with a wink at Tatiana who in turn rolled her eyes. "She's the witch from yesterday. She came back and Charlie hired her."

"I feel cheated from an amazing fight." The blond's smile inflated before returning even in an even bigger state. "I'm kidding. I'm Terence Higgs." He walked over to Tatiana and shook her hand.

"Tatiana."

He didn't seem affected by the lack of a last name, he just let that big warm grin wash over her. "It's nice to have a female present at last."

"Beth's a female too, you know." Paolo injected with a glint in his eyes.

"You're right! I tend to forget that..." Tatiana wondered if the androgynous person from the day before was this Beth. It sounded likely.

"The books Paolo!"

"Yeah, sorry my friend. I promised the lady I would show her to the books." Paolo gave Terence a pat on his shoulder before he started walking towards one of the smaller buildings. Tatiana gave the blond wizard a nod before walking after the Italian. "In here, Bella, we keep all of the books we use for work or in relation to work." Paolo held the door and let Tatiana step in in front of him.

"There's a lot," she whispered with awe in her voice. She had only had a couple of different books back on the farm. A sappy romance and a predictable criminal story.

She knew both books by heart.

"No, not really. But we have almost everything written about dragons. We even have something that you can't find anywhere else." He pulled out a book from the bookcase to the right. "Charlie wrote this." Tatiana took the book and weighed it in her hand. "If you stay here I'll go make some lunch for all the workers that aren't as efficient as the two of us."

He left her after flashing a big smile and winking and Tatiana took a moment to enjoy the silence. She then slid to the floor and opened the book.

Still not much to say... Too tired... Don't worry though – I'll probably babble on happily next chapter...