It's hatching. It being the Norweigan Ridgeback, a dragon that Hagrid is in possession of, illegally I might add. Ron wanted to skip Herbology (our last class for the day) to see it hatch, but Hermione was dead set against it.
"Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?" Ron persuaded.
"He's right Mione! Plus, it could count as an educational experience, if you're interested in pursuing a career dealing with Magical Creatures." Ron beamed at my support.
"See? Thank you Lyla."
"Plus, we're with Hagrid, what could go wrong?" I then realized what I said when Hermione stared incredulously at me.
"What could go wrong? WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!"
"You can stop helping Lyla! Hermione, erase that, ignore Lyla she's an idiot-"
"Excuse me?!"
"Remember, educational experience?" Ron attempted to soothe Hermione, ignoring me.
"No! You want to know what could go wrong, I'll tell you what could go wrong! We will miss our class, not only making us lose points, but the teacher could notice and there's no one to cover for us! Then they'll come looking for us and if they catch us with Hagrid doing illegal activities, he could go to Azkhaban and we could get expelled and then we won't be able to get a job! The interviewers will view our record, and they will say 'How could we ever hire someone who was expelled from their school and caught in illegal activities?' And then we will end up jobless, and without a way to make money we will end up homeless and starving, having to resort to selling drugs to get money. But then the police will find us and we will go to jail! Is that what you want to happen? Do you want to go to jail? DO YOU?!" She cried out at us, while the three of us stared at her, open-mouthed.
"So you're saying is, that if we do skip this class, we will end up selling drugs and going to a muggle prison?" Ron clarified.
"Yes." Hermione said, still hysterical.
"How the heck does that even make sense?!" I cried out. The entire Gryffindor table stared at me.
"She was just wondering how some students could possibly find Snape attractive." Harry covered up awkwardly. The entire table made disgusted expressions before going back to what they were doing.
"Would you please shut up?" Harry hissed at us, before he stared at something. We followed his gaze to see Malfoy, who had frozen a few feet away from us. He had a disturbed and slightly amused expression on his face, before it was wiped away with a smug smirk. We all exchanged worried looks, as I prayed to any and every god that Malfoy had somehow not heard about Hagrid's dragon. Unfortunately though, life is not THAT kind.
{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}
Hagrid opened the door, flushed with excitement.
"It's nearly out!"
We all hurried inside to see the egg, lying the middle of the table with deep cracks in it. It was shifting slightly, probably from the dragon, while odd clicking noises came from it. All of a sudden, the egg split open and the dragon belly flopped onto the table. It was black and scaly, with gigantic spiny wings. There were stubs for horns on the top of it's head and a long snout. It watched us with its glowing orange eyes. We watched in awe and intrigue as it sneezed, sparks coming out of its nose like fireworks.
"Wicked." I mumbled.
"Ain't he beautiful?" Hagrid said, tears pooling in his eyes. He reached out a hand to pet the baby dragon, only for it to snap its jaws at him, revealing its tiny jagged teeth.
"Oh bless him, he knows his mommy!"
"Lord help this dragon." Ron commented, causing Hermione to elbow him sharply.
"Hagrid-exactly how fast do Norweigan Ridgebacks grow?" Hermione asked, trying to mask the worry in her voice. Hagrid never got the chance to answer, instead he leapt to his feet, all colour and happiness on his face drained away instantly.
"What's wrong Hagrid?" Harry questioned, hurrying to the window where Hagrid was, the rest of us hot on his heels.
"Someone was lookin' through the gap in the curtains-a kid-he's runnin' back up ter the school."
My eyes widened. There was no mistaking that platinum, Barbie-blonde, gelled up hair. Malfoy had seen the dragon.
"Well we're screwed."
{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}
The little blonde prat continued to have a smug smirk on his face the entire week, which served to only unease the others, and enrage me. The only place where Malfoy couldn't taunt us, and I couldn't kill him, was Hagrid's hut.
"Hagrid you have to let him go!" I urged. "Malfoy knows!"
"Just set him free." Harry pleaded.
"I can't!" Hagrid choked back tears. "He's too little. He'd die."
"Little?" Ron snorted. The dragon had grown three times its size just this week! The walls were singed from where it had blown fire, chicken feathers and bottles of brandy littered the floor. Hagrid had been too busy taking care of the dragon, that he hadn't been doing his gamekeeper duties, and some people were starting to get suspicious. Ron and I had heard Professor McGonagall talking to Madame Sinstra about it in the halls.
"Have you noticed that Hagrid's been spending more time in his hut lately?" McGonagall had asked.
"Perhaps he's sick." Madame Sinstra suggested.
"But he would've gone to Pomona then, surely! And she said that she hasn't heard from him either!"
We left quickly after that, grabbing Harry and Hermione before running here.
"I've decided to call him Norbert. He really knows me now, watch. Norbert! Norbert, where's mummy?" The dragon stared at Hagrid blankly. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ron whisper something to Harry, who stifled a laugh before elbowing him slightly.
"Hagrid, I'm telling you, give it two weeks and Norbert's going to be the size of your house! That is, if Malfoy doesn't go to Dumbledore first." Harry warned him.
"Hagrid, if you set Norbert free, there's a better chance he'll live, rather than keep him here and have Malfoy bring Dumbledore and have Norbert locked away, or worse, killed!" Hermione cried. Hagrid bit his lip, his eyes misting over.
"I -I know I can't keep him forever, but I can't jus' dump him, I can't." Hagrid protested. Hagrid was right, but what were we supposed to do? I sighed, and looked to the others for ideas until I got one.
"Charlie!" I exclaimed to Ron.
"Oh Merlin, you're losing it too!" He moaned.
"I'm Ron. Remember, RON." I slapped him on the shoulder.
"No that's not what she's talking about." Harry said, catching onto my train of thought.
"Your brother, Charlie, who works with Dragons in Romania, remember?" I explained.
"Good idea! We can send Norbert to Charlie, he'll take care of him until he's able to release him in the wild!" Exclaimed Hermione.
"Brilliant." Ron beamed.
"How 'bout it Hagrid?" Harry asked him eagerly. It took a bit of convincing, but eventually, Hagrid consented. Ron sent an owl to Charlie to ask him if it was okay, but in the meantime, we would have to help Hagrid care for Norbert. It wasn't easy, and it would take two of us to try and temper the dragon. During one of our visits, Ron was given the task to feed Norbert, and I was somehow supposed to hold the dragon down in place so he didn't eat Ron instead.
"I can't believe I'm doing this." Ron said for the 300th time, staring disgustedly at the dead rat in his hand.
"Just shut up and toss the thing in his mouth already." I snapped at him. My arms were growing tired from holding the dragon back, and my hair was singed slightly from when Norbert blasted fire at me because I wasn't holding him properly.
"Fine, fine! Haven't you ever heard of patience?"
I glared fiercely at him and he shut up immediately. He held the rat by its tail, holding it down for Norbert to eat, but the dragon just stared at him.
"Oh, so you're not hungry NOW?! Too bad, you're going to eat it whether you like it or not!" Ron snapped at the dazed looking dragon.
"You're going to be a great parent someday." He only smiled sarcastically at me, and started waving the rat in his face, trying to entice the dragon.
"Oh just come o-BLOODY HELL!" All of a sudden the dragon leapt up out of the crate, snatching the rat and biting Ron's hand in the process. My arms had weakened in surprise, and allowed the dragon to leap onto Ron. It's teeth were stuck in Ron's hand, dangling while Ron jumped around, clutching his hand and crying in pain. I jumped up, running got him and trying to pry off the little devil.
"J-just hold still will you-ugh!"
That blasted dragon was trying to claw at me, pricks of pain shot through my arms and bits of my robe fell to the ground. Finally, I was able to rip Norbert off Ron, practically dropping him back in his crate. Ron's hand was covered in blood, made by the small gash and teeth marks that littered his hand. I snatched a cloth on Hagrid's table, and wrapped it around Ron's hand, trying to stem the bleeding.
"Christ, that looks awful." I cringed at the large amount of blood that was soaking through the white cloth.
"Just take a look at yourself!" He remarked, wincing at the pain. I looked down to see the front of my robe in tatters, large scratches going down my arms.
"We're going to have to see Madame Pomfrey." I said grimly.
"Are you mad?! Yeah, that'll be a fun conversation. Oh hi Madame Pomfrey, yes, my hand is currently mangled and yes, Lyla does look like she fought with a shredder and lost, but there's a perfectly good explanation, we fell down the BLOODY STAIRS!" He cried out hysterically. I eyed him warily.
"Well we wouldn't have used that excuse." I muttered, a bit miffed. He opened his mouth, about to retort, before Hagrid burst in.
"Wha' 'append in 'ere?" He asked us.
"Your little beast attacked us!" Ron glared at Norbert who just titled his head, looking at him innocently.
'I'm coming for you' Ron mouthed, while miming slitting his throat, ignorant to the wide-eyed look I was giving him. Hagrid ignored us, running to Norbert and picking him up, cooing at him.
"Well ya shouldn't o' scared 'im!" He scolded us.
Ron and I could only stare at him, as if to say, are you kidding me?
{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}
We arrived late to the common room that evening, and told Harry and Hermione what happened.
"You're going to have to replace that cloth, look at that, blood's dripping everywhere, you're making a mess!" She cried out, running upstairs to grab a replacement.
"Oh my mistake." Ron said snarkily. I shook off my robes, taking my wand out and muttering "reparo." The shredded garnet mended itself back together in no time.
"Much quicker than hand stitching it back together." I remarked.
"I've really got to learn that spell." Harry's eyes were still wide and fixed on the robes. I grinned at him.
"It just takes practice, maybe after this whole dragon thing and the situation with the stone, I'll teach you."
"I'd like that." He flashed me a warm smile.
"Just-don't explode anything. Again."
"One time! And that was only because Ron lied and told me the wrong spell!" He turned to glare at Ron, but his glare quickly melted at the scene in front of him. Hermione removed the blood-soaked cloth, and was now wrapping a new one around it.
"Just got to apply light pressure-sorry am I hurting you?" She asked Ron gently.
"No-no that's fine. Thanks." He replied back, equally as soft and they exchanged this weird doe-eyed look. Both Harry and I exchanged curious glances.
"As touching as this is-"
"And weird!"
"Shush Lyla-they make a cute couple but um-"
"We are not a couple!" They remarked angrily at the same time.
"Oh come on, we see the hatred-filled glares you two give each other, the longing gazes filled with the lust to kill one another-if that's not love I don't know what it is." Harry grinned slyly.
"You DON'T know what it is." Hermione snapped at him, her cheeks ablaze. Ron punched Harry in the arm, unfortunately with his bad hand.
"SON OF A-" Hermione slapped her hand over Ron's mouth while Harry practically collapsed into laughter.
"Smooth." I deadpanned.
"Where did you learn that ungodly phrase?" Hermione demanded. Ron pointed at me and 'Mione snapped her head towards me with an accusing gaze.
I threw my hands up in surrender.
"What?! He taught me British cuss words first!" I shouted.
"Honestly! You two are-"
Hermione was cut off by Harry waving a letter in our faces.
"Hey, three stooges listen up!" He ignored our glares, "Charlie wrote back!" We eagerly read the letter together, it was a little hard though, as everyone was pushing and shoving, trying to get a glimpse of the letter. It ended up with me sitting piggy-back style on Harry, while Ron and Hermione stood hunched over beside him.
"It shouldn't be too hard." I said once we'd finished. "You have the invisibility cloak right? And no one will be around anyways except Filch and his demon cat."
"Except the cloak could barely cover the three of us when we snuck out to see the mirror! How's it supposed to cover four of us, AND a dragon?!" Harry exclaimed.
"Oh no, oh nononono! I am not going anywhere near that godforsaken beast!" Ron shouted. "Not after it basically mauled my hand!"
"First of all, SHHHHH!" I ignored his glare. "Secondly, it was just a scratch, calm down." I knew it was more than that, but I just loved getting him all riled up. Harry looked like it physically pained him to hold back his laughter, while Hermione smirked, watching us with mild amusement. Ron was opening and closing his mouth-much like a goldfish.
"You know-you kinda look like a goldfish when you do that." Harry and Hermione made noises of agreement.
"I don't care what I bloody look like, I'm not a fish! And besides that, LOOK AT THIS!" He shoved his hand in my face and I inched back, disgusted at the oozing gash.
"Does this look like just a scratch to you? DOES IT?!"
"Okay, calm down hothead. But Harry, he does have a point. He can't go with his hand like that, I mean, it's probably infected by now anyway." Hermione said casually.
"Wait-what?!"
"Ron, have you seen the puss over there, it's definitely infected. Yeah, you might want to go to Madame Pomfrey for that." She winced.
"Lyla, you go too, those scratches look pretty deep and they're starting to bleed, plus, you know Ronald is a terrible liar."
"Am not!"
"Oh please, you'd probably tell her you fell down the stairs!"
Ron shut up immediately and I nearly died of laughter, because that was what Ron had said earlier in Hagrid's Hut.
"So tweedle dee and tweedle dumb aren't going? Great, so Hermione, meet me over here at exactly 11 o'clock, that should give us enough time to get Norbert, and bring him up the tower to Charlie." Harry said.
"Hey!" Ron and I exclaimed.
"Why are you upset, you get to be tweedle dee." Harry told me.
"Oh. Okay." I shrugged.
"Uh-hey!"
"Oh shut up!" Harry and I remarked at the same time.
{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}
Hermione was right about Ron's hand, because by the next morning, it was swollen like a balloon and turned an ugly shade of green. I took him to the hospital wing, also getting my scratches disinfected, just in case. Madame Pomfrey was a little sceptical about what could have caused this, but I managed to somewhat convince her that we were cleaning Filch's storage room when a cursed object attacked us. Malfoy stopped by earlier to taunt us, but after I yelled out for Madame Pomfrey, he was out of there before he could say one more word. Unfortunately, Ron had to stay under observation at the hospital wing, but I was staying with him while Harry and Hermione went to go deliver Norbert. It was a little riskier now because Malfoy had found out about our plans, but at least he didn't know about the invisibility cloak. Ron and I were playing chess in order to keep our minds off our the situation our friends were in.
"You know-with what's happening lately, we've never had time to really talk or do what normal 11 year olds do." Ron said, taking away my bishop with his knight.
"Yeah...but because it's not something that normal 11 year olds do, it's kind of exciting right? I mean, people may not know it, but we're helping them, and that feels..pretty good." I said, moving my pawn forwards as a distraction.
"True. I-I just don't want anyone to get hurt. I mean, look what happened just with the baby mongrel-I mean dragon. If Snape finds out we're onto him, there will be worse consequences than just getting a few scratches or a bitten hand." He paled slightly at that thought, before he captured my rook, seeing through my poor attempt.
"You know you're terrible at this game." Ron remarked, giving me Cheshire Cat grin.
"I know, shut up!" I sighed. "I guess I'm just better at doing this in real life."
"Meaning?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Well chess is a game of patience and strategy correct? The objective is to seize the king, it doesn't matter how many pieces you take, in the end it's only about that one piece, somewhat like a battle."
"Are you trying to tell me that you have a double life where you are a warrior-princess?" The dry humour was evident in his tone.
"No-I just mean that in the situation itself, it's much easier for me because the pressure helps me think-it forces me to think on my feet, and that's usually how I get my best work." I explained.
"Interesting. So you're talking about how your instincts kick in when you're forced into an unexpected situation. Hmm. So if I...LEAPT AT YOU LIKE THIS, WOULD YOU FINISH THE GAME?!" He suddenly jumped me, but I shoved him back on his bed.
"Nice try, just next time don't announce what you do before you do it." I rolled my eyes, ignoring his large grin.
We continued to play in silence, the clicking of the pieces against the board made an almost rhythmic, soothing sound, giving me slight courage to ask the question that I still had not found an answer to.
"Ron, what do you know about demigods?"
"Hmm? Oh, well um, I don't know as much as a History of Magic textbook, you might want to check out those." He suggested quickly, too quickly.
"Ron, what are you not telling me?" I narrowed my eyes at him. He sighed, before motioning me closer.
"Okay, I do know somethings, but you can't talk about it to anyone alright?" He whispered into my ear, and I nodded.
"In order to work with dragons, Charlie had to take a Care of Magical Creatures class. And the professor who taught this class, didn't really agree with the teaching material, and would teach them about dangerous creatures, creatures that weren't exactly supposed to be taught to third years. He taught my brother's class about demigods once-talked about how they were classified as dangerous and how we were no longer in contact with them because of something WE did-not them. It was a cliché story really, power hungry wizard approaches the 12 Olympians, begging to become a God. He wanted to wipe out muggles, muggle-borns, and even half-bloods! He thought that because pure-bloods had more concentrated wizard blood, that they were more powerful. The gods saw through this however, and refused. The wizard, Damien Bagshot, thought he needed to show them his idea. He went on a killing spree that lasted 3 days and eliminated many innocent people. Finally the aurors caught him, but the gods were angry that the Wizards let this happen, even more angry that some people actually believed in Bagshot's ideals. THEY were the one's to cut off all ties with us, but we tell the younger generations the opposite, so they stay away from them." Ron said gravely.
"Wow." I breathed.
"That's not all. Turns out, Wizards were created, even Merlin himself, by the Roman goddess Trivia, or commonly known as her Greek form, Hecate. After the ties between the gods and wizards were cut, Trivia was shamed because of how her children-us-turned out. She doesn't keep in contact with us anymore-as per agreement-but she still keeps the barrier's up from preventing muggles from discovering us. Such as, the barrier around Hogwarts, the one around Diagonal Ally, et cetera et cetera. And the house elves-"
"House elves?"
"Little elves that help cook and clean."
"Ah. Continue."
"Anyways- the house elves put a portion of our food in the fire, as a sacrifice to Trivia."
"But I thought Wizards didn't exactly like the Gods, and vice versa, why would we still do this for each other?"
"Because she is still our holy creator, and we are still her children. We may not-get along with the others, but we are always loyal to Trivia."
"Wow. Okay, thanks. So-your brother Charlie told you this?"
"No. I found his old essay's and papers and read through them from time to time because it was interesting. But mum caught me once-and she was very angry when she saw what that Professor was assigning. It's always dangerous to have ideals that don't agree with the Ministry's, it's like announcing your a death eater!"
"Wh-"
"The followers of He who must not be named."
"Thank you. But what ever happened to the professor?"
"He was fired immediately and no one's ever heard from him since." He stared at me, trying to convey the seriousness of the topic at hand.
"Lyla, promise me you'll stop with this fascination all of a sudden. It's dangerous, and I'd rather you not get hurt. We've been separated for at least a millennia, try and keep it that way alright?"
I nodded.
"I promise."
{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}
They continued to play chess, the tension removed when Ron beat Lyla for the 7th time, and he never noticed that Lyla's fingers were crossed under the table