Chapter 4

Introductions

It was a short walk to the next enclosure. The trail was dusty and muddy in equal measure but the surrounding foliage and the odd glimpse through the trees to the river and lake beyond were stunning.

Draco walked briskly and Hermione had to walk at quite a pace to keep up with him. The silence was just becoming awkward, when he spoke again.

"Mavis is a Welsh Green," he looked over at Hermione. "A common breed, non-aggressive, well non-aggressive on the dragon scale."

"I'd be aggressive if you'd called me Mavis," Hermione replied without thinking and then realised what she'd said. She looked over at Draco and bit her lip. "Sorry, I was just joking…"

Draco looked amused rather than annoyed but as he made no comment, Hermione decided to go back to professional mode, just to be on the safe side. She felt that it wouldn't take very much for Draco to change back to being remote and un-cooperative.

"There is quite a lot of preparation needed before I can start to paint. Would you be available for a couple of sit-down meetings in the next day or so?"

"What sort of preparation?" Draco looked less than enthusiastic at the prospect.

"Well, after I've seen all the dragons we need to decide on environments – either painted from life or abstract. I will sketch some basic compositions and we can then make some decisions before the detailed drawings are submitted…."

"I'm happy for you to make those decisions. I didn't want this to take up excessive amounts of time," Draco interrupted her, taking the wind out of her sails.

"I will need your input," Hermione felt her temper rise slightly at his dismissive attitude.

"You should decide all this with the W.N.R.O.," Draco sighed loudly.

Before Hermione could answer, they rounded a corner and another fence greeted them. This enclosure was narrower with trees and rocks to one side. But the height of this fence was a least double the previous one. Hermione stretched her neck upwards to see the top of it.

"Welsh Greens are far more inclined to fly than other breeds," Draco explained without her asking. "They don't fly long distances but they are short flight experts." His voice was back to normal, his stand-offish attitude gone in a flash.

Hermione decided that their previous discussion should be shelved for now. She would tackle one problem at a time. She peered into the enclosure, straining to see the dragon.

"Given how huge they are, I have awful trouble actually seeing them," she said.

She felt Draco move closer, his face almost next to hers. He smelt really nice and she gave him a sideways glance. He'd grown into his good looks; his hair was still white blonde but it now fell nicely across his eyes. Eyes that were still his most attractive feature, deep grey with long lashes. Love him, like him or loathe him, there was no denying he was very easy on the eye. He was pointing into the enclosure so she stopped her mind wondering off and re-focused on what he was saying.

"She's seen you though," he said. "Look behind the tallest tree, by the red rock."

Hermione followed his gaze and the first thing she saw was a huge, scaly eye staring back at her.

"Oh!" she exclaimed.

Draco pointed again. "Look at the back of the rock – they have great tails – a proper arrow at the end."

Hermione followed his direction again and the rest of the dragon came into focus, her body curled around behind the rock and the huge tail poking from behind it.

"They are amazing," Hermione admitted and she was genuinely awestruck – far more than she thought she would be.

"They're beautiful, responsive, perceptive creatures," Draco responded. "People think they are just huge flying, fire breathing machines and they couldn't be more wrong!"

Hermione could hear the awe in his voice again, the genuine passion. How weird that Draco's cold, hard exterior had this huge wave of emotion and love for the dragons running under it. He was a different person when he was near to the dragons. It was obviously people that he had trouble communicating with!

Obviously not happy that their attention had wondered, Mavis took this precise moment to stand up, roar and rise suddenly into the air. Hermione gave a little cry out and stepped backwards, straight into Draco, who also cried out as she stepped heavily on his toe.

"Sorry!" Hermione only half-heartedly apologised because she couldn't take her eyes off the dragon who was circling her enclosure, high above their heads. "Won't she just fly over the top of the fence?"

"She could if she really wanted to but she won't. Mavis likes her home comforts – she has no inclination to break free. She was born here – I reared her from birth." Draco said while opening the gate to the enclosure.

Hermione looked around nervously, remembering Clem's words about always two trainers when approaching dragons.

"Draco…," she said but he didn't hear her and was half way across the enclosure. She watched as he put his fingers between his lips and gave a piercing whistle. In response, Mavis ducked her head and after a moment appeared to nose dive towards the ground. Draco didn't move and the dragon slowed her descent before gently landing near to him.

He whistled again and she lowered her body to the ground, gently flapping her huge wings. Draco was approaching her slowly, making strange clicking noises and Hermione watched half terrified, half fascinated. She heard movement behind her and turned to see Clem and Pippa arriving.

"Everything okay?" Clem asked and Hermione nodded, not really wanting to question Draco's decision to enter the enclosure alone. "Great, stay here and we'll be back shortly."

Clem and Pippa joined Draco in the enclosure. The three of them had their sticks raised and it soon became apparent that what could at first appear an aggressive gesture was actually the three of them giving the dragon instructions.

As they moved around her and lowered and raised their sticks, Mavis lifted her wings, lowered them, stood up, lay down. It was dog training on a gigantic scale!

After about 10 minutes, they gave Mavis a treat bucket and came back to join Hermione.

"What did you think?" Pippa asked as she took off her gloves.

"It was training? You were giving her instructions?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, exactly that. She understands certain movements and responds. It isn't that we want or expect her to perform tricks or anything but it stimulates her brain and keeps her active. It helps keep us familiar to her and build a bond."

The next enclosure was dark with overhanging trees and lots of caves. Clem explained that they didn't need to enter this enclosure so they would just try and call Humphrey, a Hungarian Horntail to see if he would say 'hello'.

It took all of Hermione's willpower to not pass comment on either the dragon's ridiculously cute name or Clem describing him as saying 'hello'. She still wasn't sure how Draco would take it but she was secretly very amused by how these leather clad, fearless wizards had sweet names for these fearsome creatures and how they spoke about them like pets.

She also remembered that it was a Hungarian Horntail that Harry had fought in the Triwizard Cup and she didn't have any huge desire for Humphrey to come too close to say hello!

She was in luck because, other than a brief glimpse of him from one of the caves, he didn't respond to any encouragement to come out.

She had three more dragons to see – a Swedish Short Snout, a Chinese Fireball and an Opaleye. It had been a long day and she was happy when Draco informed her that they would visit the Opaleye tomorrow when they were going to look at some locations for the paintings.

Bernard – the Short Snout was a far more co-operative than Humphrey, more than willing to emerge from his pile of rocks to show off. Hermione could understand him showing off as he was a beautiful shade of silver with glimmers of blue and was smaller and more agile than the other dragons. He was very interested in his audience and even came really close up to the fence, bending over to sniff them.

Final stop was the Chinese Fireball – suitably called Rory. Hermione almost approved of this name, almost! His enclosure was built into the side of the cliffs and they had to walk down quite a twisty, steep path to get to it.

"Rory is mine," Pippa said as they made their way down the cliff. Hermione looked over at her and Pippa shrugged. "I mean, not officially," she grinned. "It's just that I found him when he was abandoned by his mother."

"Oh! Does that happen often?"

"No, it's very rare and the babies don't cope well with it at all, we usually lose them," Pippa sighed. "But Rory was almost three years old when we found him and we managed to raise him here."

They had reached the enclosure which was impressive, large caves cut into the cliffs, huge trees and a huge net stretched over the entire thing.

Draco pulled at the netting. "At the risk of stating the obvious with him being a Fireball, this is here because Rory breathes balls of fire," he said. "If we have the usual fencing, it bends and also it's harder to dodge the fireballs."

Hermione looked at him. "Dodge the fireballs?!"

"He doesn't do it often, don't worry."

Rory had emerged from the back of his enclosure and was staring at them curiously. He looked like one of those dancing dragons that were used for festivals at Chinese New Year, deep red with a chunky spikes.

"He's going to make a great painting," Hermione observed. "He's fabulous."

As they drove back to the main building Hermione felt more positive about how the experience would go – the dragons would make magnificent subjects to paint and the whole area was wildly picturesque so she was sure she would find some backdrops to do the animals justice.

She glanced over at Draco and wondered how easy he was going to be to handle? She had a feeling the dragons were going to be the easy part!