Toothless yawns wide and Hiccup follows. It's a good yawn which cracks his jaw, one which signals a good night's rest and energy to take on the new day. Toothless follows it up by stretching every claw, every limb, his wings, his tail before rolling over on his side and letting out a deep sigh.

The Alpha state which had so excited the wizard called 'Danny' is tiring to keep up. Hiccup had to barricade the door of their small and temporary lair to keep the man out. After that, Toothless had to shut the window in the man's face while Hiccup was already fast asleep as the wizard tried to climb in. They both flew hard and fast yesterday, and there's a twinge of pain still in the membrane of his right wing.

"Is it noon?" Hiccup asks rhetorically. One of those human expressions Toothless doesn't care about. It has something to do with the orb in the sky and it makes his rider fling the blankets aside.

After the battle, there were injuries among the teachers, questions to be answered and students to calm. Hiccup had spent the rest of the day talking, talking, talking until his voice grew hoarse. Toothless spent his day keeping away from Danny, who wanted to prod him with his stick and measure things with silver instruments while making excited noises. Toothless resorted to hiding out in a bathroom where only female humans were allowed, and although Rose had appreciated it, there were some students who walked in, took one look at the Night Fury perched upon two stalls and made an about-turn.

"Why didn't you wake me? Usually you're up and at them at dawn!" Hiccup accuses as he washes himself, hops around the room before dressing. Toothless blows a raspberry at him and turns over once more. He's got to pee and he's hungry, but there's a patch of sunlight falling right across his face and it's the perfect temperature to ignore humans and their accusations for a little while longer.

"I was supposed to meet with Harry and Danny at breakfast but now look- ack!"

Toothless uses his tail to swipe his rider off of his feet and push him up against the Night Fury. He swats the human down with his wing until Hiccup topples over and lands spread-eagled besides the dragon. Toothless makes sure that part of his tail catches the fragile human's head, with their thin necks they're prone to head injuries. The Night Fury croons, rolls over on his belly and puts a paw over Hiccup's chest to keep him there. Now the patch of sunlight warms Hiccup. There's too much noise this early- err- late- in the morning. The black dragon has been beaten back and although Toothless is sure that their paths will cross again - inevitable - for now they've won.

"Toothless," Hiccup whines. He makes a futile attempt to push the dragon's paw off of him but finally relents and squints against the bright sunlight streaming across his face. In this light the few freckles Hiccup carries stand out more and Toothless snorts in laughter. Humans have their own camouflage, like the patterns on his own hide.

"We should name that dragon," Hiccup decides, his gaze turned upwards. "The Omega dragon is too long. And impersonal. He's been inside my head, Toothless."

So Hiccup keeps repeating. Toothless heard the same summons but wasn't compelled to act on it immediately. He's been under enough influence from higher beings, now he is the higher being and rules over his life. As long as he has a rider to work his missing tailfin, that is. But he doubts he'll leave Hiccup for the rest of his natural life.

For some reason, Hiccup was quite shaken from hearing a summons in dragontongue. Toothless doesn't understand, but he helps in the only ways he knows - eliminating distractions and/or annoying wizards, letting the formidable mind of his rider settle, here, in the sunlight, before Hiccup runs off again to talk in that strange language and come back all unsettled.

"Yay or nay, Toothless. Dagr. Ugh, nay, too much like Dagur. Skadi. No, she's female. And I think this dragon is male. Lofn? ... I'll come around to that."

Toothless shakes his head at the names. Some of them sound familiar, the characters in the stories the Vikings tell each other at campfires. Gobber is one of those who tells the children about Thor and Loki, about Skrymir's deceit and the start of this entire world. He also talks about how it'll all end, when Fenrir the giant wolf shows up.

Hiccup's mind drifts in this same direction.

"Sun-eater," he says and Toothless lifts his paw from Hiccup's chest in a clear indication that that's a much more fitting name than 'Omega dragon'. That's a description what it is, not who it is. "Gonna let me run off now?" Hiccup asks as he works himself to his elbows. Toothless grumbles and gets to his feet as well. There are some lingering aches in his muscles that will disappear in a few hours but right now he's a bit sore so he walks gingerly towards the door. Hiccup scrambles to his feet and opens it for him. The doors leading outside, Toothless can open himself. His rider takes his face in his hands and rubs circles into his cheeks with his thumbs.

"I'll get you some breakfa- lunch after I'm done with Harry and Danny, alright?"

Toothless nuzzles into Hiccup's hand and steps into the frigid winter air. He's gonna visit the large, kind man called Hagrid who doesn't speak a word Toothless understands, but he doles out fish and knitted pink sweaters and therefore Toothless likes him.

They're gonna be flying out later today, maybe tomorrow, Toothless knows. He's heard the summons, and there's not a force in the world that will keep Hiccup from visiting Berk.

XXX

Maybe it's the growling sounds coming from Hiccup's stomach, but the small guy is fierce. He offers little explanation why the Omega dragon fled all of a sudden, where it came from, what it wanted. He insists on one thing only.

"He told me to get to Berk. How to get to Berk."

"But dragons can't talk," Danny objects for the third time. Hiccup throws his hands up into the air, throwing the man a dirty look in the same gesture.

"You yourself explained dragontongue to me! This was dragontongue - proper dragontongue, and I understood it perfectly. Also, normal dragons do say things, you just got to learn to pick up on it."

Harry cuts into this discussion before it picks up steam and turn into another lecture from Hiccup how these modern wizards don't understand nor appreciate dragonkind. He circles the area on the map in front of them where Berk is supposed to be. They're inside an old classroom and the nostalgia is becoming cloying. He'd used this classroom to practice for the Triwizard tournament before McGonagall gave him permission to use hers.

"I'm fine with going to Berk, I'm just not fine with you going alone. That dragon was strong."

Hiccup gestures outside, where Toothless usually roams. "Did you not see my dragon? He injured that … Sun-eater! Also, it didn't sound like it wants to do us any harm. It wants to show us something. I think." He adds "I hope," under his breath. His gaze turns firm as he looks from Danny to Harry and back. "We know how to handle ourselves. We've done this before, and we'll do it again."

"You can handle yourself against a dragon which literally travels in time. You really think you can go up against the dragon which put an entire archipelago behind an impenetrable shield which would take at least twenty-five skilled wizards and witches to put up and maintain." Danny's objection turns Hiccup's resolution into a decision. He's going.

"We won't have to go up against it," Hiccup says. "We were invited."

The way he says it makes the next words on Harry's tongue die a sudden death. Hiccup speaks English thanks to a spell, but he's still a being from a thousand years in the past, raised on an isolated island. There was much more emphasis on hospitality in the past, especially in cultures where getting turned away at the door might mean certain death.

"Do dragons have honor?" he muses out loud. Hiccup smiles.

"They do hold grudges."

Harry takes a moment to think. Danny seizes that silence to start in on question number one of his long list of 'if an Alpha is a state of being, how where why whatfor explain from the beginning and skip no details'.

"Here's what we're gonna do," Harry interrupts in the middle of Danny's sentence. "Toothless is not going anywhere, Danny," he soothes the ruffled feathers of the other wizard when he glares at Harry.

"What if the Omega dragon kidnaps them?" Danny challenges.

"Here's what we're gonna do," Harry repeats at a louder volume. "You show us how to get through the shield. We wait outside and if you don't come back after, say, one hour, then we come after you."

"The area is ten days of flight wide. If Berk is the center, it'll take five days." Hiccup circles the area on his map. If Hermione gets her hands on this hand-drawn map, she'd turn it over to an archaeologist within a heartbeat and Hiccup would never see it again. As far as Harry's concerned, it's a look inside the dragon rider's mind. The coastlines he's painstakingly drawn seem to be accurate, even if they carry names likes 'fishboat island' and 'itchy armpit'. These two are explorers, used to being out on their own.

"We give you two hours inside to orient yourself, you come back outside and tell us how long you think you'll be gone," Harry says.

Hiccup gets up from the chair and holds out his hand for Harry to shake. "Deal," he says, grasping Harry's forearm instead of going for the shake, but he lets go after a second. "Now I've got to go feed a hungry dragon. And myself."

Danny leaves next, grumbling about being denied to do research and Aurors thinking they run the show and stubborn Vikings, leaving Harry to roll up the map and stuff their notes back into folders. It's so similar to cleaning up homework that it brings back actual pangs of pain as he remembers those long nights of revision right before their OWLs.

Hogwarts hasn't changed. Every year he gives a guest lecture during History of Magic to talk about Voldemort, about the war, about the way muggleborn wizards and witches were treated during those dark years. He's glad to see that every year the revulsion on the faces of the students grow when he talks about the blood purity the Deah Eaters revered.

But every time he comes back he's hit with first and foremost the smell of Hogwarts. It awakens random memories inside of him whenever he tastes the metal of a suit of armor on his tongue, the fires burning in the hallways leave him with phantom shivers of the coldest winter he lived through.

Sure, some of the portraits have changed, the books are new, but the students still use quills and parchment, they still complain about the workload and argue about their love lives.

"It suits you," says a familiar voice coming from the doorway of the classroom. Harry looks up and grins wide.

"Neville!"

"Harry!"

The two men embrace each other before Harry goes back to cleaning up the debris of their short meeting.

"What suits me?" he asks.

"Being at the front of a classroom. Professor Potter, teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. That's what suits you better than Auror Potter."

Harry sobers up and all reminiscence of the pleasant days at the lake flee at the mention of the dark arts. "We've been over this, Neville," he says impatiently. "I haven't learned enough to become anyone's teacher. These kids need someone like... like Moody, not 'Potter who stumbled into things way over his head and made it out alive somehow'."

Neville helps pack away the notes and huffs. "You ran Dumbledore's Army. You defeated the darkest wizard of our time. If anyone is qualified, it's you. But you choose to continue the fight, became an Auror, but I still don't understand why. Hermione and Ron don't understand why, I don't even think you know."

Harry keeps his head down low and doesn't respond at once, even though he wants to snap at Neville that it's not his concern whether or not Harry likes his job. It's been a long and hard road to become an Auror. Tonks hadn't been kidding about the stealth exams he had to endure. But McGonagall helped him, Hermione pulled him through the difficult spellwork and Ginny practiced endlessly alongside him. He was not going to tell anyone that, after he'd passed all of the numerous exams and gotten his assignments, he realized something during his fifth solo mission.

He is done. Tired of tracking down what remains of Voldemort's army, catching the ones who tortured muggles, saving people, hunting things. He's had to endure that from age eleven up to the day he literally died at the tender age of seventeen.

But he isn't going to let down all those who'd helped him become an Auror. So he trudges on, becoming good at his job because he's a natural at it. The visions of himself running a broom-shop, of trying out as Seeker for the Chudley Cannons even though they had no hope of winning, of, yes, becoming the DADA-teacher at Hogwarts, he puts those away under lock and key and begins the search for the next Death Eater to escape during the battle of Hogwarts.

"I do it because, because..." You have that protective streak. "Because there are still dark wizards out there."

Neville's hand lands on Harry's shoulder. "There will always be dark wizards. Let others catch them, you've done enough."

Harry doesn't look Neville in the eye. "Even if if I wanted to, the job's gone," he says. Neville smiles.

"I think that if the 'famous Harry Potter' wants a job at Hogwarts, McGonagall will create one for you. Or maybe the next headmaster. She's retiring next year."

This time Harry makes eye contact with Neville. "Really? Who's gonna be the next one?"

"C'mon, we'll catch each other up during lunch. Three Broomsticks? My treat!"

Harry deposits the notes and map into the empty office he's claimed as his own and follows Neville out into the grounds. Even the grass smells the same. He never wants to leave.

XXX

In Hiccup's lifetime he's helped rebuilt many huts. The harsh winds and endless winters do a number on the stone - but it was mostly dragons that burnt down their hard-won foothold on the islands. When they made peace, huts stayed upright longer and longer, the occasional incident with Monstrous Nightmares notwithstanding. He's seen docks rot away in the salty sea, ropes snap when they finally give in during a storm. Berk is a verb, not a noun, always in progress, to build, replace, expand.

Age has not been kind to this process.

With no humans to keep the huts upright they've all devolved into rubble. Toothless lands in what used to be the square and Hiccup slides off his dragon, his heart somewhere at the bottom of his stomach. It physically hurts to look at the remains of his village. When did the last Viking leave? When was the last time someone grabbed a bucket from the well to water their dragon, what happened to the yaks they tended? How long until decay began to set in?

Grass and moss have eaten away the square and the only evidence that there was ever a village here is some loose rubble and small mounds of grass surrounding the square. Everything wooden - the bridges and walkways, the arches and dragon mounts - has disintegrated with zero evidence of ever having existed. Hiccup starts walking towards what would've been the Great Hall and Toothless follows closely, whining at this vivid reminder that everybody they've ever known have been dead for a thousand years.

"It's okay, Toothless, we get to go home. Soon." His voice is thick but he walks on, stepping on what he knows to be the path, letting his memory guide him. It's not like the grass growing over the stones will tell him where to go.

The Great Hall is a bit better preserved. Hiccup sees one or two stone steps leading up to the heap. Grey stones lie in a square, the thatched roof has scattered by now. Hiccup walks on top of the rubble, counting his steps under his breath and trying to picture the Great Hall in his mind's eye. He turns right, and he stands in front of the pedestal containing the Book of Dragons. Hiccup drops to his knees and begins to dig.

Wordlessly Toothless aids him, the Night Fury's claws much more efficient at dislodging the rocks than Hiccup's human hands. Together they drill through the outer layers until Hiccup has an idea. He stops frantically digging into the collapsed walls of what had once been part of his home village and turns to his dragon.

"Could you shout at the stones and find-" he stops himself from talking and reaches for the saddlebags. The map he uses is parchment, maybe, just maybe- he's not even sure why he's looking for the Book of Dragons in the first place. He knows every line written in there, he's added a lot himself, in fact. He holds up the map for Toothless to shout at so the Night Fury knows what he's looking for. His dragon shouts, learns the sound he should expect, sticks his head in the hole they've dug and roars his echolocation. Toothless raises his head and shakes it, squeezing his eyes shut. He tries again, angling his head a little. Six tries later and still no success. Hiccup starts digging again.

Maybe he's looking for evidence that Berk had been real, had existed, had made an impact somehow. Everything he's worked for - still works for - and all he has to show for it is rubble and rot.

It wouldn't make sense for the Book of Dragons to still be on its pedestal. Somebody must've taken it with them when they left Berk, books are too valuable to leave behind. Maybe they destroyed it to stop it from getting into the hands of any dragon hunters.

Thin drops of blood well up to the surface of his hands as the cuts from the stones push through the dirt coating his hands.

There has to be something Hiccup recognizes from his village, some timeless piece, something which has endured, like gold or gronckle iron or a stone. A slab. Toothless' bed.

"C'mon!" Hiccup yells and Toothless scrambles backwards, startled. He's quick to run after the one-legged Viking. Hiccup tries not to look at the huts of his friends and runs by Astrid's old hut with a pang in his heart but he's got to get proof that this Berk is his Berk. He scrambles up the hill leading towards his hut, the chief's hut. Where he'd spent many eternal nights, doodling ideas for contraptions, working the small smithy to hone his skills, where he'd burnt his father's bed because while he'd inherited the hut and it would be foolish to waste resources on building a new one, he was not going to sleep in the bed with his father's indentation still visible in the yak hides he slept on.

Astrid had been about to move in with him and Hiccup's pace slows a little. What if he finds her memorial runestone? What if it tells him how she died, where she died?

… What if he finds his own?

The shadows seem to darken a little and he's glad to have Toothless following in his footsteps. The dragon is as observant as ever and he nudges Hiccup's hand, prompting Hiccup to halt in his tracks and turn around. He bumps his forehead against that of Toothless and takes a deep breath. He's alive, his dragon is alive, and they are so close to going home he tastes Snotlout's stench on his tongue. There's no force on this planet, Omega or not, that's going to hold him back from returning here and making sure that no one will find the village like this.

"A thousand years in the future, Berk will still be here," Hiccup murmurs. A promise. An oath. Toothless licks his face from chin to forehead and Hiccup protests, wiping his face. But then the Night Fury rumbles his own agreement - it's just in his nature to ruin solemn moments.

The urgency to find the slab Toothless slept on had diminished somewhat but still Hiccup walks up to his hut. The layout of the place had been expanded, he notes as he spots the lines of eroded stone forming several squares. Like with the other huts there's nothing but stone, maybe some rusted metal here and there - that's an anvil. There's still an anvil in his house and it makes Hiccup smile.

"Burn the ground, Toothless," he instructs as he steps aside, placing himself at a safe distance. The slab can withstand great heat and rough handling - Toothless sprays it every night with plasma hot enough to ignite grass two feet from the blast. It's the reason Hiccup got the slab in the first place. He can fry an egg on it if he wants to - and he's done so in the past when he was too lazy to find a skillet.

The Night Fury inhales and spits, scattering the brittle stones everywhere and no doubt angering innumerable archeologists if they would ever find out about this sacrilege. He blasts a few more times, carving out the packed earth. There's a small basement underneath the hut, Hiccup knows, although by now it's been filled with debris. The stones from the hearth still form a loose oval but Toothless' next blast scatters those as well.

Toothless' slab had been on the first floor, so when the hut collapsed, it should be at the upper edge.

The Night Fury is at his blast limit though, so Hiccup steps forward and begins shifting debris, looking for the telltale gleam of black. There's only earth and grey stone and Hiccup wishes he'd brought a shovel along. Toothless is decent at moving the stones but right now he needs a Gronckle. He works until Toothless has recharged his plasma.

"Again," Hiccup commands, climbing out of the small hole Toothless' efforts has created. Six more rapid-fire blasts follow and uncovers so many more rocks. Hiccup starts working once more, throwing stone after stone over the edge of the hole, willing the slab to show up. The future owes him that much, a look at his past, at the village he knows and loves, the village he's defended so many times. He wonders what made them all leave. A territorial dragon? Hunters? A Screaming Death? Or had they all moved away because the ground was no longer fertile. A plague, perhaps, sweeping the archipelago and wiping all evidence that there had been a tribe where humans and dragons co-existed from the map.

He remembers the time Astrid fell sick with the Scourge of Odin and tries to put her sickly green face out of his mind. If that disease had shown up after centuries of laying dormant, it can do so once more.

"Again."

Toothless blasts the edges of the hut, widening the hole instead of deepening it. That's the key, it turns out. Hiccup whoops when he sees the telltale thick, black slab poke out from underneath the stones. Toothless warbles his joy and noses the stones covering the slab away until it's entirely free.

It took three Vikings to carry it up the stairs and into the bedroom so Hiccup doesn't try to move it, he just examines it, sitting back on his haunches.

This means that this village is Berk, that he has lived and died in this world and left no mark. The Omega dragon has sequestered off this piece of the world in order for the dragons to thrive, but Berk and its humans got left behind somehow.

"But we're going to change that," Hiccup says out loud. Now that he knows what's going to come, he can do something about it. Toothless opens his mouth and roars, leans forward and nuzzles into Hiccup's hair. "Hey!" He turns around and hugs his dragon, glad to feel the heat radiating off of him. He looks back at the slab one last time, to make sure that it is- wait.

Hiccup crawls unto the slab and wipes away the dirt and pebbles. There are runes carved into the stone. It's not just Toothless' bed, it's a runestone. Maybe it tells about what has happened to Berk!

Frantically he wipes the entire slab clean with his hands, his tunic. He uses his knife to whip pebbles from the deep grooves and Toothless tries to help as well, picking gravel from the grooves with the tip of his claws. Hiccup doesn't stop until all of the fading runes have been cleaned and he sits back to read the inscription. He's always been a voracious reader, whenever he gets his hands on a book he reads through it in a day, an evening.

But this time his eyes stop moving after the first three words.

Hér liggja Tandeloos.

Hiccup reaches beside him, finds the dry scales and the rough hide and he turns his back to the stupid slab, hugging Toothless so tight the dragon squirms under the assault.

"I'm sorry," Hiccup whispers. Tootless croons a question and Hiccup slowly lets go, watching his dragon through a misty veil. "It's your grave."

There's a hole in his gut and he wishes for Astrid to round the corner of the rotten square and inform him that it'd been a terrible attack, but now they are going to rebuild. He wants his mother to punch her way up through the buried basement and cough and sit up and be so glad that he's survived for so long.

But all he'll find in this future are runestones for the humans and graves for the dragons, burial mounds and rubble. Berk has been destroyed and even though he knows that in his reality, his past, his village thrives, right here is indisputable proof that everything and everyone that he knows will one day walk through the doors of Valhalla and leave this mortal Midgard behind.

He doesn't read the rest of the runestone. He's standing on top of the bones of his best friend and he wants out before Toothless' blasts unearth something he really doesn't want to see.

"Let's go, Toothless," he says, letting his hands linger on the warm ear flaps, the very definition of alive, as he walks up to the saddle.

He knows where to find Sun-eater now. If it isn't in the square or at his (former?) house, there's only one more place to look. He hops up on Toothless and it takes all of six beats of the Night Fury's wing before they land inside the pit of rubble of what used to be the dragon training academy.

He senses Sun-eater land behind them before he sees it. It's a vantablack shape against the backdrop of ocean and clouded sky, with its purple eyes trained on them both. Hiccup dismounts slowly, still not sure whether he trusts the dragon. If it's untrustworthy, it's so much better to be on the back of a dragon.

But Toothless doesn't growl, he merely looks. He's not friendly, but neutral. That's good enough for Hiccup.

"Hi," he says.

Sun-eater has licked its wounds in the meantime. There are patches of shiny scales where Toothless' blasts had landed, nearly invisible against the blackness of its form, but from this up close they're visible.

Most dragons roar, squawk or chirp in reply to a friendly greeting (or they attack, but that is another subset of dragons). Sun-eater's reply drives Hiccup to his knees with the intensity.

"Hellorider there's somuch to tell this is Alpha need Alpha this remains Berk if you stayhere youneed to stay need Alpha you need to go make Berkthrive where didyou come from."

Hiccup cries out and grabs his head, the voice pounding through it like a headache. It's not so much words that are used in dragontongue, not like Hiccup uses it. It's a language of pictures and emotions, strung together to get across meaning. They flit across his mind's eye and press their ideas into his brain, crowding out the ones already occupying it.

Toothless jumps in front of Hiccup and snarls at Sun-eater.

"No no, Toothless, it's alright!" Hiccup says, one hand stretched towards his dragon as if he can command him from a distance, the other pressed over his eyes, squeezing the skin of his forehead. It takes a few moments for his head to stop ringing. He reaches out for Toothless and finds the scales under his questing hand. The entire being rumbles with protective anger and Hiccup clumsily pats the dragon before he deems it safe to remove his hand.

Sun-eater cocks its head and before it can say anything else Hiccup interrupts.

"Please don't shout. It hurts my... everything. It's not like I'm a hundred feet away. Also, slow down. I'm only human."

A much better tolerable sentence follows, although it still makes his ears ring and his eyes water. This time the images Sun-eater sends his way don't all overlap each other but he makes out distinct ones, although they flit by faster than his conscious mind follows, so it's like the images move.

It goes lick, Hiccup, Alpha-powered Toothless, ocean, several islands in quick succession, an eroding mountain getting worn down to a hill.

If Hiccup had to put it into words, he'd come up with "Hello rider, where did you and an Alpha come from? Alpha's haven't been around for a long, long time."

"You're not the only one that wants an Alpha. But Toothless is not a Bewildebeast, not really an Alpha species. The wizards, the seidr-people, they made a mistake and brought us here from the past. They were going to send us back but something, you, stops us. Why?"

The next set of images all convey a single thing. Fire and ice. Brown leaves, lush green ones. A Nadder and a fish. Next come a long line of white dragons, each of them a different shade of white and all of them as regal as the Bewildebeast Hiccup had met. The line breaks and then there's he black Omega dragon occupying the space where there should be a white one.

Gronckles need a counterweight, a Night Fury needs fins, and an Omega needs an Alpha to balance him out. And this one hasn't been able to find one for centuries, maybe longer. Until now, when he found an Alpha hiding among those pesky stick-wielding humans.

It's Hiccup's turn to feel protective. "You're not taking Toothless away from me," he snaps at once, sidling closer to his dragon. Toothless in turn curls his tail around Hiccup and bunches up like a cat, raising his hackles and wings.

"I'm not," assures the dragon through a quick shake of the head and the image of an eel. Toothless relaxes a bit, and Hiccup with him. He has no idea if Sun-eater can lie. It's intelligent enough for it.

what do you want with us?"

The images are too fast for Hiccup's conscious mind to follow but he's starting to get the hang of translating the pictures into sentences his spell-addled brain can interpret and slice into a voice instead of it getting pressed into his soul. It still feels like he's standing at the mouth of Berk's horn of calling.

"I need an Alpha, even an untrained one" - Bewildebeast white bleeding into Night Fury blue image- order to travel back to the place where two were lost. I will bring one back" - the vortex, overlaying the Forbidden Forest- "before repairing the damage you created." Berk, in all its glory, Vikings living and dying in the huts until the last one leaves and it decays, stone crumbling under the pressure of time.

Toothless whines at the sight of the gored body of the Bewildebeast as it flies past. Hiccup has to swallow to digest what the dragon wants of them. But then the third last image makes his thoughts stutter to a halt.

"Damage?" he asks.

The response is a gaggle of humans wielding sticks, wearing pointy hats.

"Your seidr-practitioners began to take my flock of dragons. So I hid them. They're mine."

Sun-eater snarls and Hiccup throws up his hands to placate the dragon. "Hey, relax, I'm sure they meant well." He thinks for a second. "Or they tried to make dragon hide gloves. Either way - I'm sorry for what they did, but I'm not with them."

There's a new image that Sun-eater shows him. It's hard to see what exactly it is. It looks a bit like the inside of a storm, no, a waterspout. There are clouds broiling and lightning jumps from one side to the other with no discernible pattern. But somehow amidst the fluff of the clouds there are jagged cracks superimposed over the waterspout, staying in place even as the direction inside the spout changes. There are dozens of cracks, some small, some large. It's hard to make out any scale with no horizon and nothing to measure against.

"A dragon has fallen through every crack, drawn to you because you are not in the time you are supposed to be in."

"And whose fault is that?" Hiccup quips before he can stop himself. Rhetorical questions are out of Sun-eater's repertoire because the same image of the wizards gets fed to him. Hiccup shakes his head.

"They would've let me go back ages ago. But you've kept me here." Before the dragon can reply Hiccup continues. "But if we help you, somehow, will you allow the wizards to send us, and I mean my entire flock, back?"

"I will take you back myself," Sun-eater assures him. "I will take you to the day after they ripped you from Berk. Because you must go back."

Let it never be said that Hiccup passed up an opportunity to learn. "Why?" he asks simply as if he were a four-year old child.

The large dragon stretches its wings and swings its head around, indicating the pile of rubble they're standing on. All that remains of the dragon training academy is moss and stone, not even a runestone to commemorate all that has happened here. The chain dome has rusted away into nothing under the harsh winters and salty winds over the endless sea.

"This is what happens to Berk if you remain here, in this time where you do not belong."

The harsh cold of winter seems to become a bit warmer and Toothless' ear flaps perk up.

"You mean... Change the fate of my village? I can challenge the Nornir?"

Even a dragon as large as Sun-eater can smile a toothy smile. It's frightening to behold but Hiccup understands the mirth behind it. "Yes, your goddesses of fate haven't decided the final destiny of Berk."

Hiccup looks down at the moss covering rough rock. Things don't have to end up like this. Maybe in a thousand years this island will have cars on its own, driving alongside dragons.

"I will help you," he says, looking up sharply into those glowing purple eyes. "But I can't heal a Bewildebeast on my own. I'm gonna need some help."

XXX

Minutes of emergency Wizengamot meeting on Januari 5th, 2019.

Participants: all members of the former committee regarding Timeturners, headed by Sir Tabogan.

Topic: permission for time travel.

Case presenter: Hiccup Haddock the third from the Hairy clan, alongside his tamed dragon named Toothless (species: Night Fury. Classification: unknown). Special permission was given by Sir Tabogan for the dragon to be present - see form 12-PB attached to these minutes.

Harry James Potter, Danny Cormac Leary and Clarence Clearwater respectively represent the Auror office, the Department of Mysteries and Department of Control of

Hogwarts and Berk

Mr. Haddock explains the reason for the recent dragon attack on Hogwarts (no injuries reported). 'Sun-eater'(species: Omega dragon. Classification: XXXXXX) is looking for a companion and thought it'd found one in Mr. Toothless. Mr. Haddock and Mr. Toothless have traveled to the hometown of Mr. Haddock, Berk (location: area around Bear Island, Norway) to 'hear the dragon out'. See attached a map of this area.

The Wizengamot accepts these facts to be true.

Alpha and Omega

Mr. Leary cuts in to explain the difference between the type of Alpha dragon Mr. Toothless is and the type of Alpha dragon a 'Bewildebeast' is (species: unknown. Classification: unknown). He explains that an Omega needs an Alpha to function and that the Omega dragon species is the source of Timeturners. The Wizengamot asks for clarification regarding these statements. The transcript of this discussion is attached from page 13 through 119.

The Wizengamot breaks for lunch.

Dragontongue

Mr. Haddock explains that he can talk to this and other dragons using 'dragontongue', a linguistic ability similar to Parseltongue. Before the Wizengamot can ask for clarification Mr. Haddock presents his main point.

Reasons why the Wizengamot should permit Mr. Haddock and Mr. Toothless to bring along a small team to the past to rescue one of two eligible Alphas and bring it back to the present as presented by Mr. Haddock

a) The Omega dragon species needs an Alpha;

b) The Bewildebeast Alpha can do much good for the dragon population of the Northern hemisphere - 'it is the king of all dragons';

c) The Omega dragon will bring Mr. Haddock and Mr. Toothless back to their proper time;

d) The Bewildebeast Alpha deserves to be rescued instead of dying on a beach at the hands of a man who thinks he can own a dragon using nothing but fear and chains;

e) No more dragons from history will fall through cracks in time and terrorize the students of Hogwarts;

f) 'Seriously, next time it's gonna be a Screaming Death that pops up';

g) They have been here long enough, it is time to go back;

h) Both Mr. Haddock and Mr. Toothless have a chance to fight the Nornir (Norse gods controlling the fates of men) and make sure that Berk survives for a thousand years;

i) Mr. Haddock has sworn an oath that he will make that happen but he needs to be back home to ensure it;

j) The Omega dragon has shown Mr. Haddock that there are cracks in the foundation of time because of the displacement brought on by the Department of Mysteries. These cracks might widen and start swallowing up pieces of history, people, and things if not brought back into balance by both

a. Taking Mr. Haddock and Mr. Toothless back to their proper time and place

b. Allowing the Omega dragon to connect with an Alpha dragon;

k) It is the right thing to do.

Decision

After convening for four hours the Wizengamot decides to grant Mr. Haddock and Mr. Toothless permission under the following conditions:

1) The Alpha remains within the sealed-off archipelago;

2) The Omega dragon creates seven (7) Timeturners for the wizarding community;

3) The Omega dragon keeps his seal on the archipelago but will allow three (3) dragonologists inside for study;

4) Mr. Haddock and Mr. Toothless go back to their own time after the mission and remain there for the rest of their natural lives;

5) If possible, Mr. Haddock takes the dragons that have appeared thus far with him.

Note:

This decision of the Wizengamot disregards articles one through ten of the International Time-travel Law, est. 1456 and can not be used for any amendments to this law in court. Under article 87 this is the sole exception to this law, colloquially described as 'time travel to repair time'.

XXX

An Auror, a Healer, a dragonologist, a rider and a Night Fury walk into Berk. The Auror asks "so where's the Omega dragon?" The Night Fury sniffs the air and leads them into the overgrown square, where the large vantablack dragon lays with its head tucked under its wing. It's not as imposing when it's dozing but the second the purple eyes show up, Harry squeezes his broom extra hard. He glances sideways at Hannah to make sure she's alright with staring down a deadly reptile.

"You're taking my wife a thousand years into the past, Harry," Neville had said before they had all grabbed the Portkey. "Look after her." It was more a command than a request, but it's one Harry is more than willing to oblige. Hogwarts needs its matron back, and he doesn't need another reason to be able to spot Thestrals.

"It says hello," Hiccup states, wincing a little. He gets back up on Toothless and the others mount their brooms. While Harry would've preferred Hookfang to come along - dragon versus dragon end a lot better if you have two dragons on your side - but Charlie is not as experienced on Hookfang as he should be. Not enough to fly out into chaos. Without another word the Omega dragon launches into the air.

"Wait!" Hiccup instructs in a loud voice, hands out flat with the palm down. "He needs to create a … door."

From this up close the sound of the vortex is terrifying, rattling Harry's teeth. The grassy mounds caught up in the vortex assemble themselves into huts before they start decaying again, following this cycle over and over. There are shades of people in there, blurred by the rapid passage of time. Vikings, and Harry's sure that Hiccup would be able to recognize them if they hold still long enough. A thousand years is nothing. How old is the Omega dragon?

"You sure we can survive in there?" he yells. Maybe the vortex will strip the flesh from their bones. The relatively safe method of Apparating can be deadly on its own, let alone traveling through an unknown magical construct designed for and used by dragons whose hides can repel the deadliest of curses.

Hiccup stays silent for an awfully long time before he shouts back. The sound should become tangible, or at the least visible as wavy lines in the air. Reality makes a jump to the left and it sets Harry's carefully harnessed Auror instincts ablaze. This is Danger.

"Pretty sure!" Hiccup replies. Toothless' ear flaps are pressed to his skull.

"Silencio!" Harry tries, but such a tiny spell is useless in the face of actual, reality-warping dragon magic. The spell, which should be invisible, comes out as a white bubble. It floats in the air for a few seconds before it pops.

Hiccup leans forward and Toothless tenses, wings spreading out. Harry grabs his broomstick and watches the others do the same. He's gonna go deaf in a minute if this keeps up. The unpleasant buzz of unfamiliar magic presses up against his own but he pushes off the ground when Hiccup yells "now!"

The vortex is a full-grown entity above them, multicolored lines crawling over each other like worms in the stomach of a bird. Maybe it'll suck out their magic, just like it did with the Silencio spell. But Harry's made his choice. He tries not to think about getting eaten as they plunge through, Hiccup first.

The second they cross the threshold the sound stops. They're inside a cloud. A fluffy blue one, whirling all around them in all directions.

"Stay close to the dragon!" Hiccup warns. "If you fall behind..." He doesn't need to finish the warning, the grimace on his face says enough. Harry sticks close to Toothless, with Hannah on the other side of the Night Fury. The dragon coasts on invisible thermals.

So this is what it's like to be inside a Timeturner. He vividly remembers the jolt of wrong when Hermione took him to the past, but that feeling is multiplied many times over the longer they travel.

The Omega dragon leads the way, turning left and right at times. In front of them the clouds always open up just wide enough to let them through and behind them they collapse into themselves, showing their passing but nothing more. The clouds are lit from within but even so occasionally a lightning bolt passes them by. The first one makes Hannah jump but she stays seated. A blue box whizzes past, too fast to make out any details.

In the distance? In the past? … In front of them there's another vortex. Harry steels himself for the thrumming sound to return as they pour out of the portal and into war.