One fine day towards the end of July, the post clattered to the doormat.

"Get the post," Uncle Vernon grumbled.

Harry was already headed that way when his uncle asked, absently snacking on the empty milk carton, and swallowed it down with a gulp before picking up the letters.

There was one for Dudley – probably a late birthday card of some sort – and two or three others, but at the bottom of the pile was one with an address in green ink.

Harry Potter

The Cupboard Under The Stairs

4, Privet Drive

Little Winging

Surrey.

Tilting his head, Harry looked for a long moment at the very first letter he'd ever received.

Then he headed back to the breakfast table, stuffing the letter under the door of his cupboard on the way past, and handed the other letters out to their recipients.

The green-inked letter was the first time he'd ever got something addressed to him, and he was going to savour it.

It was mid-morning by the time the young drake finally managed to retire to his lair and examine the green-inked letter.

Whatever it was written on seemed to be quite thick, and felt different to the more normal paper he was used to. It also smelled a bit more strongly than paper did, but maybe that was just the way it was made – so Harry ignored that, and opened the letter up to see what it said.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,

Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

At this point Harry frowned, wondering what most of those words meant. He'd heard of witchcraft and wizardry, or at least of witches and wizards, usually in the same books which had dragons in them. But this sounded like it wasn't a story-book thing but a real thing?

Except that Merlin was definitely a story person, and what was a Sorc? He didn't have a clue what a Mugwump was, either…

On the whole, so far the letter was very confusing. So Harry read on.

Dear Mr. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Well, it was certainly a letter that was meant for him, but he didn't remember doing any tests to be accepted into any schools with that sort of name. There had been the Eleven-Plus, which he'd done earlier that year, but Aunt Petunia had insisted that she wasn't going to pay to send him to a Grammar School after Dudley had failed and so had made sure he wasn't going to one of those.

Harry wasn't sure she understood how a Grammar School worked. But maybe this odd Hogwarts school had picked him because of that?

Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.

And that was just odd. The list was certainly there, folded up underneath the main letter, but what did the bit about an owl mean?

A quick look at the equipment list did mention an owl, but that was a kind of pet and it was an option. Maybe they had an owl shortage? But if they did, Harry didn't think it would make any kind of sense for them to ask for owl donations from students.

Shrugging his wings, he skipped the signature and read through the list of required equipment.

The uniform seemed simple enough at first, robes and a pointed hat were a bit strange but he'd heard of sillier things in school uniforms, but the gloves made him stop and stare at the paper for a moment.

Dragon hide gloves?

Harry wondered if that meant this was actually a dragon school. It made a lot more sense that they'd be sending him a letter specifically because he was a dragon, but maybe it meant he'd done something wrong?

Last time he'd molted he'd been unsure what to do with it, and after some experimentation and plenty of mistakes the best he'd managed was to make a rain hat that covered his glasses. If he'd been supposed to save the bits that went over his paws, and he hadn't, maybe that would mean he'd be in trouble before even going there?

But that couldn't be right, could it? Molts happened because he needed to have a growth spurt, and all the old bits of molt skin were too small for him now. So maybe it was more complicated than that?

Muttering under his breath about this strange list of what he needed for school, Harry read down the list of course books – memorizing them and making a note of checking the local library later – and then the other equipment sounded even stranger.

Pewter? Well, pewter was sort of nice-tasting, if difficult to get hold of – the only place he'd managed to get any was some old toys Aunt Marge had given Dudley which Aunt Petunia had thrown out once Dudley had managed to break them all. But if this was a real school, especially if it was a real dragon school, then how did they stop the students from eating the cauldrons?

Maybe it was like pencils and pens, where you weren't supposed to eat them until they were no longer useful?

And the last bit of the letter said that students could bring a pet – an owl, or a cat, or a toad.

Harry sat down, thinking about that.

Well, owls were apparently running out anyway, so it wasn't a good idea to catch one of those if there was a shortage. And cats might be a bit better, but that one lady's cats kept freaking out whenever they saw him.

Harry briefly wondered how long it was since he'd actually met her – it felt like years! - but shrugged that off, and pondered briefly whether he should try and find a toad in the garden before deciding against it.

Now he'd finished it, a lot of it didn't really make much sense. Maybe it was some of that junk mail that Uncle Vernon kept talking about, which was always a bit of an odd name for it to Harry because he was fairly sure it was Americans who called letters mail and British people said post. That was why they had postboxes.

The next day, another letter arrived for Harry addressed in the same green ink.

Just as he had the first day, he put it in his cupboard on the way past, and as soon as he got some free time he was lying on his back with his tail halfway up the wall as he compared them.

Much to his surprise – and disappointment – the second letter explained no more than the first. In fact, the second letter explained exactly as much as the first had, being identical in every way.

Harry shrugged, put it with the first, and went about his day.

On the third day, the post arrived when Aunt Petunia was closer to the door. She picked up the letters, gasped, and hurried to show them to Uncle Vernon.

The two adults exchanged worried looks out of all proportion to how important simple junk mail was, in Harry's opinion – then tried to hide them away from him when he craned his neck to look.

"Stop it!" Aunt Petunia ordered. "Vernon, make him stop it!"

"I just want to see if it's another one of those letters," Harry explained politely, as Uncle Vernon completely failed to push Harry away. "I've read two already, they're exactly the same and they seem quite silly."

"You've read one?" Uncle Vernon demanded. "How did you get your hands on one of those… those… freakish letters?"

"I got the post," Harry pointed out, quite reasonably as far as he was concerned. "It's a pity, really, it's the first time there's been a letter addressed to me and it's all total nonsense. Something about a school that's taking donations of owls and wants me to bring pewter along or something, but they didn't give an address or a phone number."

He held out his paw. "If you want I'll put them down in my cupboard? That way they'll be out of the way, at least."

Harry had to demonstrate that he did indeed have two opened letters – and point out the things about them which just seemed ridiculous – but ultimately his case was made, and Aunt Petunia somewhat reluctantly surrendered the three letters that had arrived that day to his care.

That made a total of five, though about half of them were still in their envelopes, and Harry sighed a little as he looked at his new collection.

They were nice, and they were certainly his, but he did wish they made a bit more sense.

On the fourth day, there were ten letters on the doormat.

They all ended up in Harry's cupboard again, but Harry also spent half an hour helping Uncle Vernon hold up planks while his uncle hammered nails into the door. The planks blocked the letterbox off, which seemed a little bit extreme to the ten-year-old drake, but he had to admit that it was just getting annoying by now.

Surely it had to cost more to send all these letters than anyone could get back? And what did they think he was doing with the letters, exactly?

Harry's tail lashed back and forth as he contemplated exactly what the mysterious letter-sender could be thinking. Maybe they thought the letters were being used for firewood?

Then he nearly tripped his cousin up as Dudley ran up the stairs, and got sent to his cupboard again. Harry passed the time by opening another three envelopes and trying to see if he could do origami with them.

Despite Harry's vague mixture of anticipation and worry about the subject, no letters made their way through the letterbox on the fifth day.

The whole household had been up early enough for it, on tenterhooks to see if the plank plan would work, but by the time Harry began breakfast – an hour later than normal – they had all decided that Uncle Vernon's unorthodox plan had worked.

Humming a tune he'd overheard on the television through his cupboard door, Harry cracked the first egg into the frying pan.

A rolled-up letter came out, instead of a white and a yolk, and fell into the pan with a faint sizzle. Frowning, Harry fetched it out – not fearing the hot oil, because dragons didn't seem to have much truck with being uncomfortable because of being hot – and put it to the side before cracking the second egg.

A letter tumbled out of that one as well, and Harry looked properly at it this time. Sure enough, it was addressed in emerald green ink.

"Aunt Petunia?" he called.

"What is it?" his aunt asked, walking into the kitchen. "I told you, two eggs each for Dudders and Vernon, and..."

She paused, staring at the empty eggshells, the lack of eggs in the frying pan, and the rolled-up letters.

Harry took the opportunity to crack a third egg, from the box of twelve, and a letter came out of that one as well.

"Oh," Aunt Petunia said.

As she watched, Harry cracked egg after egg – going through the entire dozen – and got nothing but rolled-up letters.

"Should I do extra bacon and toast instead?" he asked.

"Yes, of course you should," she told him. "Vernon! Vernon, they did something!"

Harry listened with half an ear to the conversation, most of the rest of his attention on salvaging the already late breakfast. To save time, he ate while he was making it – both the eggshells, and the letters, which tasted really quite good.

He'd actually intended to only have one, but it tasted a lot better than paper usually did, and Harry ate eight of them before catching himself so he would have a few to add to his as-yet-tiny hoard.

Maybe that was why they were able to keep students from nibbling on things like cauldrons or pets? If paper there tasted this much better than normal paper, then it would be the way he'd make sure.

On day six, a few days before Harry's birthday, nothing happened on the letter front all morning.

There still weren't any eggs – Aunt Petunia had refused to get any more – and so breakfast was large slices of toast with bacon and sausages instead. After that Dudley had vanished upstairs to play on his specially imported games console from Japan, and Harry spent most of the morning tidying the living room.

Aunt Petunia had told him to do it without the vacuum cleaner to avoid disturbing Dudley, which was fair enough, and he was nearly finished scrubbing the carpets when a letter flew down the chimney.

And then another.

Harry stepped back a little warily, taking care not to knock over the soap bucket, and a flood of hundreds of letters came cascading out the fireplace – propelled with great force, some of them floating in the air and others crashing into the sofas or armchairs and falling to the ground.

When the deluge finally stopped, Harry rolled his eyes and snorted something he'd heard one of the kids at school call him. Then he began picking up the letters, twenty at a time, and moving them into his cupboard.

He'd feel a lot better about these letters if they didn't keep making life harder for him.

Some hours later, as he bedded down on an inch-high layer of parchment, Harry was feeling a bit more mellow towards the strange letters that had tried to literally flood into the house. Maybe it was the taste, or maybe it was how they did improve the comfort of his sleeping arrangements, but Harry felt like lying on top of all these things that were his was somehow… right.

Maybe this was what dragons actually hoarded? Harry knew that some dragons in the stories hoarded gold, though others didn't hoard anything at all, but the dragons in the stories were all a long time ago and gold wasn't used for money any more. It was all paper now, at least the valuable things were – some money was coins but they weren't worth as much.

And if dragons hoarded gold in the olden days even if it wasn't coins – and Harry definitely remembered there being shiny non-coin things in hoards in books – then maybe dragons these days hoarded paper even if it wasn't banknotes.

The next morning the chimney had been boarded up as well. Harry frowned at the sight, and asked Uncle Vernon whether maybe letters would come around the side of the door instead, and that prompted another half hour of hammering as Uncle Vernon boarded up all the sides of both the front door and the back door as well.

Fortunately Aunt Petunia had gone shopping the day before, so they had quite a lot of food in the fridge and in the cupboards, and for a wonder the day passed relatively normally – which meant that Harry's aunt and uncle relaxed a bit as no letters came through the pipes or out from under the wallpaper, and Dudley even asked Harry to come and play on the Super Nintendo with him.

Well, it was more like demanded, because Dudley wanted to play a two-player game, but Harry would take what he could get. At least it was one where you had to work with the other player.

When he woke up on Tuesday, Harry's tail flicked a little from side to side as he wondered whether he'd get anything for his birthday the next day.

It was sometimes a bit of a matter of chance whether he did at all. In the past Harry had been quite upset about that, but he'd learned to think philosophically, and really when you thought about it a lot of the things Dudley got were things Harry didn't want to get anyway.

Lying on his papery hoard, he wondered whether maybe it would be nice to get some books. Books, or storybooks anyway, were something he enjoyed which he knew Dudley didn't like… and maybe that was because he was a dragon who hoarded paper, like he'd decided the previous day?

As he thought about that and other deep thoughts, there was an almighty crash from upstairs accompanied by a shriek from Aunt Petunia.

"Pet?" Uncle Vernon called, loud enough for everyone in the house to hear. "What happened?"

Another crash and a slithering noise came from overhead, the latter progressing quickly down the stairs, and Harry got up and out of his cupboard to behold a truly massive pile of letters on the landing.

"The loft!" Aunt Petunia said, trying to put the words together. "I was going to go up into the loft and – absolutely filled with letters! They fell out!"

Harry began carting the letters back to his cupboard in big pawsful, wondering how many he could fit in before he'd have to start eating them instead.

Late that night, as the clock crept towards midnight, Harry slept on his new bed.

Lounging atop a pile of possessions, even such strange possessions in such an unusual situation, had made him feel terribly right. Perhaps it was just that he was doing something that dragons traditionally did, but then again he'd never felt the need to use his fire breath – it was awfully dangerous, and while he could do it… it just felt like a tool, something he could do. While his new bed felt entirely different.

Consequently, his slumber was deep and even – his tail curled around under his wing, half-rolled over onto his side, his neck and all his other body parts bent a trifle awkwardly to fit, but he was long used to that by now and it hadn't even made it hard for him to drop off to sleep.

In the sitting room, the clock ticked, and then all three hands lined up – midnight.

And there was a thunderous knock at the door.

Harry shifted slightly, tucking his head under his wing, and continued dreaming a dream about his old Primary schoolteacher running a charity book sale to raise funds for replacement owls.

AN:

If you don't know magic is a thing, the Hogwarts letter looks like it makes absolutely no sense. Even if you think magic is a thing, a lot of the specifics are still quite odd.

And if you're a dragon who can eat pewter? It looks like a dinner order.

Dragon-Harry design notes:

Black scales, a few less-black markings including the dark-brown lightning bolt scar on his forehead. Eyes are mostly unchanged, though slightly slit.

No need for glasses but wears them anyway because he's used to it. They rest on his ears, which don't look a lot like ears and which he normally holds still anyway to support the glasses; surprise him enough and they'll poing right off as his ears go up.

Stands a little under five feet tall if on his hind legs with his neck slightly curved, but usually walks on all fours with his tail held up to avoid tripping anyone.

Wingspan about 7 feet when fully spread, wings are quite 'deep'. Any Muggle aerodynamicist would say he couldn't fly with those wings anyway, but that he might be able to glide; Harry can fly himself quite casually, though he can only carry so much weight.

Wings can hold things, but it's fiddly and it's large things only. Forepaws however are fully prehensile and dextrous, and he can write quite well for an eleven-year-old.

Tail has no fins or spade on it and tapers to a point.

No separate fins, just the main wing pair. Wings are supported by alar phalanges with the outer ones longer, and insert about at the point level with his hind legs (essentially the 3.5 red dragon from the Draconomicon).