I'd apologize for this, but I just realized that it's been only a month and that I actually updated during the summer.

All in all, much more than I'd expected of myself!

Okay. So there's some trouble coming up - but a bunch of good stuff too. I've spent the last month plotting the rest of DK and (gasp) its sequel, along with vignettes and a crossover that needs to come somewhere in between.

Thanks for all the support, guys!

And tell me your thoughts on Hicmione.

It was cool out. My fingers rested in notches on something warm and pebbly. A huge heavy weight rested on my shoulder. I looked out over a medieval village, wooden houses gleaming under heavy snowfall, and looked up into the face of a humongous, red-bearded man smiling down at me.

The word that should be associated with him slipped my mind; it seemed too strange. I opened my mouth to ask, "Da-"

Something jerked me awake, and my head snapped up. The fleeting vision of a village buried in winter snow vanished; I inhaled too quickly and immediately started coughing. The … perfume, Harry had called it – from the Divination professor's fire stung and burned my throat.

"My dear?"

Hurriedly, I tried to bring to mind the contents of the lesson – but the only truly captivating part had been when she'd passed out star charts and introduced herself (which wasn't saying much), a woman draped in glass beads and gauze and shawls, as if she could possibly be cold. After that, my mind was a blank. It was hot in the tower room – so hot that I almost wanted to jump out the window into the freezing air. For some reason, this didn't seem like a strange desire to me, as worried as I was by it. It was extremely difficult to concentrate, a sentiment that Harry and Ron shared. Harry had spent most of his time staring out that selfsame window, and Ron's head bobbed up and down as he drifted off and woke again.

"Umm, yes?"

The bell was seconds away from ringing, and the Professor looked over at me hesitantly. "Boy? Stay after the lesson, please…I have something I wish to discuss with you."

I flashed a panicked look at Ron, who gave me a what-can-you-do look, and Harry, who just shrugged. "Whatever she says, don't take her seriously," he whispered.

Right on cue, the bell tolled, louder up here than anywhere else so far in the castle. The class moved to leave, and a girl with long dark hair looked at me curiously – Parvati Patil, Hermione had said. I tripped my way over to the front of the room, wondering how anyone needed so much clutter.

"My dear…" Trelawney's overlarge eyes were always disconcerting, and now, as she looked up at me from her chair, they filled with pained tears. With a dramatic sigh, she rubbed her temple. I suddenly remembered Harry complaining on the way up to the tower about her habit of predicting students' deaths, and her special interest in his. Was she about to give me an unwelcome clue to my future? Was this her way of being kind, or was she trying to intimidate me?

Old age, I begged Odin silently. That is, if Odin was still around. At least, I thought Ragnarok hadn't happened yet… Please let it be old age.

"Your future has already happened, child," Trelawney announced, as though expecting me to faint in shock. "But not to you… the Inner Eye is sensitive to such matters. I fear you are becoming detached… what was your dream about?"

I gaped at her blankly, still fighting through the haze of sleep and the sickening fire. What if it was poisoned?

"If this is about sleeping in class-"

"Oh, no, dear. The Universe knows there are far more important things than the mundane attendance of lessons and the completion of schoolwork. I am asking about your future."

It made no sense whatsoever. I blinked, and decided to play dumb. "Umm, dream?"

"Your aura, dear…" Her voice had become far more urgent, hushed. "You belong in the beyond…"

I wasn't sure what she meant by that, or quite how to respond. "Uh, if you mean Asgard, I don't think I'm quite ready…"

She shook her head impatiently. "Then. You were important then and you have. You will be important once again – but, then again, you are…"

She seemed to be distracted, staring into space, and then muttered to herself, "I must check the cards. Have a good day, child."

And with that, she waved me out of the room so quickly I slipped out the trapdoor and only caught myself after one or two rungs.

All the peace that seemed to have emanated from the dream I'd had was lost now; instead I was irritated and relieved to return to the comfort of the frigid corridor. A pane on the window was rattling and loose; I walked slowly over to it, breathing in the smell of coming snow. I closed my eyes, the wind brushing my hair back off my face…

Of course, it would be much colder, much windier, much purer, up there in the sky…

My stomach twisted, reminding me of the lunch I was supposed to be at, and I started slowly down the spiral stair.

.

"You know what? I'll teach you wizards' chess. Make up for that." Ron, although speaking to me, didn't seem to be paying me as much attention as his pie, which he was devouring with indecent speed.

Next to me, Harry snorted. "That's not much of a consolation prize."

I stared into my goblet, snapping my head up at this. "Why? It's bad?"

"Oh, it will be bad," Hermione's voice told me as she plopped onto the bench on my other side. "Ron has been taking pride in ruining people at chess for years."

"What's chess?"

Hermione, for once, didn't explain, but Ron's face split into a frightening grin. "I hope you're not afraid of losing, Hiccup."

"You will lose," Harry clarified. "Ron's never gone up against someone better. It's just a thing you have to accept."

"Oh, I'm used to losing," I assured them. "But will someone please explain what chess is?"

.

So Ron taught me chess.

It was, apparently, a board game. (As opposed to a kicking-shoving-biting sort of game, which wizards delicately avoided mention of. I was sure they had at least one, though.)

And it was also, apparently, a favored pastime of the Gryffindors to watch Ron destroy whoever his newest victim was. Hermione and Harry, though keenly interested in my "lessons" (which mostly consisted of Ron tearing me to shreds and offering basic advice occasionally, but Harry had assured me that his lessons had been the same), both seemed a little put off by the talking, living chess pieces. I welcomed every bit of help they could give me. They bickered and fought amongst themselves, but I, unlike the others, could see that they had actual good reasons. One wrong move on my part – and they'd had close to a century of experience – risked their getting a beating, depending on how violent Ron's pieces were feeling (often, very) and how much damage I'd done earlier in the game.

Hermione had taken to instructing me during the games, although Ron laughed at her (Hermione, surprisingly, had never once won a game of chess). I, however, greatly appreciated her help. The pieces, though shaped differently and possessing different properties, were difficult to remember. (This was rather exaggerated by how ridiculous I found it. The king was virtually powerless, but if he was taken, the game was lost. Unlike real life, he couldn't fight with his foot soldiers and there was no line of succession. And of all the pieces to make perfect, it had to be the queen?)

This was not so much of a stumbling block for me as it was for Hermione, who seemed at a complete loss. "You told me you remember all the fact things about dragons," she hissed. "What they're called; what they do; for God's sake, you managed to tell me half of the Viking tribes in the Barbaric Archipelago! Why in the world can't you remember chess pieces?"

As much as I wanted to be the one who could hold his own against Ron, chess just didn't seem as important as other things I'd inherently memorized. Measurements and dragon facts were basic and applicable; on a daily basis I needed to draw from them. Chess was just a game.

But it was a game that became very important to me. I wasn't sure why I wanted to beat Ron so much. It was the only thing he was truly good at – or, more importantly, one of the only things he was better at than Harry (who took every inevitable defeat with surprising good humor, although he hadn't given up hope.) I didn't want to take that away from him, but as I had no way to participate in classes, I had nothing at all to my name.

Nothing.

Ron would always have a place at Hogwarts as Harry Potter's best friend, not to mention his own attributes. In addition to stories of what Harry had accomplished, Ron's parts stood out as well. I barely had a place at all. My position in my own village, not to mention this stone jungle of a school, was uncertain, especially now that I was gone, but there still remained the change from desperately seeking attention to keeping secrets in the space of a day and from hiccup to Hero in the space of two weeks.

Chess was a challenge for me, but I needed it. Hermione also was a frequent loser at chess, a fact which she despised. It wasn't uncommon to see her and Ron engaged in an unfriendly game with Harry cheering them both on (or, more likely, staring off into space.)

On one such day, I plopped down in a chair next to their game in front of the fire and propped my chin up on my wrist. I could tell without even looking at the board that Hermione was losing – her eyebrows were tightly contracted and she didn't even look up to say hello.

I glanced at the board. As always, Ron's pieces were black, and his opponent's were white. Hermione only had a few remaining to her army: the queen, the king, a bishop, and a trio of pawns. Ron, on the other hand, had his entire arsenal except for a single knight Hermione worried with her fingers, much to its disgust.

"Watch what you're doing there, miss! You'll get my armor all oily!"

Hermione didn't respond, but tentatively moved a pawn forward. Ron's lips slowly curved upward, and quickly, a rook from the opposite side of the board and took her one remaining bishop, the rook screaming obscenities in his victory.

Hermione finally looked up at me, and I shrugged. It was clear to both of us that Hermione was going to lose the game, and Ron confirmed this when Hermione lifted the bishop out of place and pushed her king a square forward.

"Check!"

Although I looked, I couldn't spot the threat. Leaning back in my chair, I withdrew the tiny Horntail and placed her on my chest, sleepily puffing smoke. She, although still nameless, had offered a welcome sense of home to Hogwarts. Harry, who'd I assumed would be slightly mad once he found out I'd swiped his dragon, had laughed and told me I was more than welcome to it.

Since then, she'd been accompanying me to classes, to meals, everywhere I went. Not only was she good company, but she terrified Malfoy and took to roosting on my shoulder whenever she saw him go by.

I had a weird feeling that I could do better – much better – than this puny dragon in terms of intimidation, but I could never quite place my finger on it. Whatever it was would strike terror into the hearts of the Slytherins, I was sure.

It was Ron's turn, but Hermione was still trying to see what he'd do. He'd barely put a finger on his knight when the little dragon perked up. Before I could stop her, she'd sprung into the air and landed rather unsteadily – on the chessboard.

I winced, and she sent screaming pieces tumbling in all directions. With one swipe of her long, needled tail, she swept Ron's opposing forces onto the floor, and pushed Hermione's down with a wing. Blindingly fast, she snatched up Hermione's king and chomped down hard enough for him to cry out.

"STOP!" I jumped to my feet.

Ron and Hermione, staring at their game in horror, turned to look at me. The dragon stopped, too, and looked up with wide eyes.

"Put him down. Down. I mean it! Down…I'm serious. You're not sleeping with me tonight. You can't just go around eating people. Yeah! Just because they aren't big doesn't mean they're not…you know, real. Now put the king down. You're hurting him."

She, staring at me as innocently as she possibly could, did so, creaking open her jaws deliberately slowly and letting him drop out. The poor little stone king, coated in miniature dragon saliva, brushed himself off in horror and fled to the side of the table, jumping down to join his forces.

The Horntail remained unconcerned, using a blast of fire to clean the marble dust from her claws and simultaneously burn a hole in the table.

"Oh, come on," I moaned, scooping her up and re-confining her to my pocket, clamping a hand down on her struggling. "You're lucky they're magic, or they'd never get that out!"

Hermione and Harry had watched this with something between amusement and alarm, while Ron was singly dismayed. "The poor chess pieces," he whispered, picking them up from the floor. "I'm sorry," he told them, and shot me a look. "I didn't know dragons were going to crash our game!"

Suddenly slightly defensive, I glared at him. "I didn't know she was going to do that either," I said, at the same time as Hermione snapped, "It was just defending me!"

And that was what gave me the idea for her name. "You're right." She'd been nameless for a long time, but Hermione's term had translated in my head. "I'm gonna call her Verja." It was Norse for defender (although Hermione told me that my "Norse" was "Old Norse" now.) I'd meant to call her that – "defender" – but when I'd opened my mouth, the word popped out, two thousand years out of date.

Hermione looked surprised at this, but Ron hissed, "Fine, whatever. Just don't let it out when we play anymore, all right?"

I scowled at him. "I'm not in control of her. I don't boss her around. I'm sorry she did that, but I can't say it won't happen again."

In fact, I rather hoped it would. Out of the three of them, Ron was the one I found it hardest to get along with. At first, I'd thought we would understand each other, with similar sarcastic styles of speaking, previous feelings of unworthiness (although I vaguely thought I'd come to a peace with my bad reputation back home) and even experience with directing our friends in battle. I'd thought that chess would make us as close as I was to Harry, if not Hermione.

Instead, it seemed that it was only aggravating our differences.

Hermione put an end to the altercation quickly. "I hope it does. That was the first time in three and a half years I haven't lost at chess."

.

On Monday night, we did detention.

Since Saturday and my lack of frozenness had revealed me to Harry and Ron, Hermione had issued a mandate: I was to wear a cloak whenever I saw someone else wearing one. And because they always seemed to be freezing in the castle (maybe it had something to do with magic) Sunday had passed in a miserable haze of heat.

Hermione and I went down to the dungeons together after bidding Harry and Ron goodbye, both of which were still slightly stunned at Hermione's second detention ever and gossiping like housewives about whether or not I was ruining her. We were surprised but not too surprised to find Neville waiting at the door as well.

He glumly informed us that he, too, was being punished, though not for the cauldron incident. (Although it was his fault.) He, unsurprisingly, had managed to acquire a string of zeroes that Snape couldn't fail to remark upon.

The door, much to shivering Hermione's and Neville's relief, opened at precisely nine o'clock. Scarcely had we stepped over the threshold into a potions room that smelled far worse than usual did Snape appear, sneering and malevolent as always.

"You'll be sorting Tentacula leaves for the sixth years," he said, gesturing toward two large wooden vats of slime. "The serrations must be intact. If it is rotted too much to be of use, a simple Vanishing Charm will suffice. You have-" he checked his watch nonchalantly – "until midnight. Should you leave it unfinished, you'll return tomorrow and every night after until you complete it."

Neville let out a shaky breath. As though in afterthought, Snape held out one imperious hand. "Wands, please." Neville struggled to remove his from his pocket, and Hermione handed hers over with a sigh of defeat. Snape turned to me, teeth bared in a smile. I crossed my arms. "I almost forgot," he hissed delicately. "Mr. Haddock must have left his at home."

Although Hermione had explained the whole "surname" thing to me, I still got a shiver every time someone addressed me as "Haddock." It was absurd to call someone by their clan name, but they used it for formalities and people they really hated.

For Snape, I qualified as both: one by my status as somewhat a student, and the other simply by existing near Harry Potter.

As soon as he was gone, Neville, who'd been trembling the entire time Snape was in the room, let out a sigh. Hermione was hissing in almost the same tone as Snape, "Vanishing Charm! N.E.W.T level – as if we'd possibly be able to do that, even if he hadn't taken our wands! And he can't possibly punish us for not disposing of the waste properly…" angrily, Hermione stormed around the room, dragging a barrel over.

I alone heard the door lock.

For all that Hermione had been teaching me, I couldn't tell the difference between a rotten or usable anything, much less leaves coated with slime that I was used to seeing dry. I rolled up my sleeves to help but eventually ended up getting in the way, lingering behind them awkwardly while she and Neville resigned themselves to the task.

They didn't talk very much, just grimaced and snorted in disgust. Finally, to break the silence, I asked, "So…do you think he locked the door by magic?"

This surprised them both. Neville's arm shook so much that he dropped a handful of the slippery leaves into the wrong bucket, disappearing with a sad ploft. Hermione looked up sharply, ignoring Neville as he groaned and peered into the dark slime.

"Locked? He can't have locked…" hurriedly, she jumped up, wiped her hands on her robes, and ran to the door.

She grabbed at the handle and yanked. Nothing happened. She looked up at me, panicked, and I grabbed her shoulder.

"Hermione! Hey – calm down! Calm down. It's okay."

"He took our wands…" she moaned, holding her forehead in her hand.

Neville had come to join us, and I was thinking fast as he asked, "What do we do? He can't just…leave us down here…can he?"

Neither Hermione nor I answered. Hermione twisted her hands anxiously and stared unseeingly, with wide eyes, and I tried to reassure her.

"Look, this is not the worst situation either of us have ever been in. Everything's gonna be fine."

She gave me a nervous smile, but I could tell she didn't really believe me.

I half-knelt on the ground, peering at the keyhole. "He probably didn't use magic," I said over my shoulder. "It's unnecessary. You guys wouldn't have been able to break out either way."

"Why, though?" Hermione's usual confidence had disappeared along with her wand. "He would have wanted to do this. Make us helpless."

The answer required no thought, but Hermione wasn't thinking straight anyway. "He locked us in here. He knows that none of us can do magic without wands, and me not at all. Why would he lock it by magic? He gets more satisfaction knowing that we can't help ourselves anyway."

Hermione had flopped to the floor, head in her hands. Neville joined her, too, looking miserable. I kept looking at the lock…

It was probably a bolt. The castle was really old – not as old as my time, but too old to use a key. There was a simple way to unlock the door from the outside while keeping us barred from the inside.

The door was thick, and wooden. I moved over a little, trying to see through the gap between door and doorframe. If I had tools, I might – no, I would definitely – be able to break it.

I had no tools…

But I did have a dragon.

Slowly, I reached into my pocket, wondering how hot Horntail fire was. Verja was asleep, curled up in an innocuous ball and breathing quickly. The similarity to another dragon species – another small one – struck me, but I didn't have time to think about it.

"You guys…finish the sorting. I'll take care of this."

Hermione must have understood the seriousness of the request, because I heard her pick herself up and go back to the vat. Small squelching sounds followed. A moment later, Neville joined her.

Carefully, I prodded Verja's belly with the tip of my finger. She woke at once, squawking her displeasure and glaring at me with slitted pupils.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, girl. I wanna be asleep too. You're gonna have to help me out here, though, because otherwise we'll both be up all night."

Verja stared at me, took in my stubborn face, and spat a cloud of sparks into my palm. I gasped quickly, but the pain went away fast. She hadn't really been trying to hurt me – it was payback for waking her up.

I lifted her to the door and asked, "Can I have a little light?"

Unlike Night Fury fire, hers didn't explode. Verja took a few deep, steadying breaths, and began to exhale, each time her tongue of flame extending and becoming hotter and hotter.

The light flared and flickered, and with it I squinted into the darkness of the doorframe. That was definitely a bolt, I confirmed. Now all I had to do was melt it without setting either the wood or the stone on fire.

I sat back on my ankle, assessing the situation. Verja, hoping her work was done, scampered up my arm and made to burrow down my shirt. "Uh, no. You're not done yet. Not by a long shot. You've got some destroying to do."

And she did. The first two or three flames didn't have much of an effect, although I had to applaud her expert aim. The third and fourth started to turn the bolt into a glowing red blob.

The best part was that Verja didn't seem to have a shot limit. Her fuel, I reasoned, could even be unlimited, due to the fact that she was, you know, magical.

And finally, the metal started dripping. A dragon this tiny with this much fire could be used in forges everywhere – not Terrors, who were about twenty times her size and somehow far stupider – but Verja was invaluable.

The drops rolled down the sides of the door, but instead of lighting it on fire simply burned deep scorches into either side. Some drops plopped directly down onto the stone floor, splashing up onto my leg, shoe, and the hem of my cloak.

At last, the bolt was weak enough to pull. My leg was aching after the awkward positioning for so long and almost buckled when I got up, but I managed to grab the door handle and wrench it open.

The rest of the bolt splattered onto the floor and I jumped back, not wanting it to weld and stick to my leg. If that got in the spring there would be no way to fix it.

But the door was open. Deliciously cool dungeon air wafted in, and the candles guttered. Hermione glanced up, mouth open, and smiled widely. She looked down at her vat – there was a skimming of Tentacula leaves along the bottom still, and Neville had at least a third left, but Hermione got up and stretched.

"Well, I think we're done for tonight," she said brightly, rubbing feeling back into her neck. I was stiff, too, but definitely wasn't going to nurse my aches and pains in front of her. Neville glanced down nervously and said, "Are you sure we shouldn't just…"

"He shouldn't have locked us in here," Hermione told him firmly. "When he gets in tomorrow and finds his lock melted, he's going to be angrier about that than if we didn't finish. I'm not coming back tomorrow."

Unsure but trusting, Neville followed us out of the room. I had been more than prepared to break into Snape's office with Verja and get their wands back, but we were pleasantly surprised to find them propped in the notice-thing that the teachers used to put scrolls of important messages outside the classrooms when they didn't need to interrupt the lessons.

Hermione's tension almost completely dissolved as her wand and she were reunited, and as we began the trek to the upper floors, she was even smiling.

"Give me your cloak," she said suddenly, and I looked down at her, bewildered. "But I thought I wasn't supposed to-"

"Well, we're not supposed to be out. It's past curfew anyway, no one's going to see you, and I'm freezing. You obviously don't need it."

Grinning, I undid the clasp and held it out to her. She shrugged it on over her own and sighed in gratitude. "You made it all nice and warm."

"I do what I can."

It wasn't until we reached the Gryffindor common room that I spoke again. Hermione had stopped for a moment by the fire, holding slightly blue-tinged fingers out to the flame. Only hours before, Harry and Ron had been sitting there, discussing –

"You know, I reckon Harry and Ron were right about one thing," I told her as she returned my cloak to me ruefully at the bottom of the girls' staircase.

She smiled slowly. "What's that?"

"I am ruining you."

She paused to consider this, and then assured me, "Oh, but I like it." And before either of us could do anything else, she reached out blindingly quickly, kissed me on the cheek, and ran up the stairs.