As much as we like to think of ourselves as individuals, we were not. We were one being with five perspectives, and sometimes, that worked to our advantage.
Hagrid once asked us how we coordinated ourselves. The truth is, we don't. We're always coordinated by default. It works like this:
Imagine a colorful light glowing in the center of our shared mindspace. This light is the will and memories of the singular collective — the sum total of the five of us. Whatever image this light projected was what we were thinking about. Now, imagine that this light was split by a prism, with differently colored versions of that image going to different heads. Each head saw a different version of the image, with some features highlighted or obscured by how the prism splits the colors. In each head, they adjusted the light with their lenses, their perspectives on life, focusing on different features. With their senses, they added more colors to the image they received, further refining it into something unique. And then, when all was said and done, we reflected the light back to where the prism merged our light into a single whole: the collective.
This happened instantly and continuously for every thought we had. Split, shape, add, reflect, mix, repeat. When we were trying to be individuals, we slacked on the mixing step, which resulted in mismatched images and distinct thoughts for the five of us. But when we're trying to unify, when action trumps individuality...
The plan appeared in our head almost instantly, created, modified, and reviewed by five different perspectives at the same time, but ultimately generated by one mind working in harmony with itself. At that moment, staring at the small, abused dragon, we were almost an I once again, and I was furious.
One, we couldn't leave the dragon here. It deserved to be free of the pain.
Two, we needed out of the bank, but our secret was basically going up in flames as we spoke. If the dragon didn't burn the goblin and wizard with the noisemakers, they'd see us and our secret would only get out faster.
Three, there was no way out for us that didn't involve waiting or smashing through the building above us.
Four, whatever was going to happen here, somebody would find out we existed.
And five, we smelled tasty treasure nearby. As much as we wanted it, the goblins would obviously be mad about us even being down here near it.
While some of those things were a tad less important than others, we considered them all. The situation as a whole needed proper attention. So, despite our fury, we waited. The dragon may have been hurt, but that was no reason to charge in to free it. Humans and goblins were quite squishy, after all. If we charged in, we might just step on them, and then we'd have to lick the gore off our feet.
No, that would be troublesome.
We didn't have to wait long. The wizard and the goblin moved along, both very much unwilling to stay near a mere, single dragon very long. Facing the smaller dragon as they were, they hadn't noticed us yet. Instead, they shuffled sideways towards another stretch of track and another waiting minecart. We forced ourselves to wait until we were out of our considerable fireballing range.
As soon as they were out of sight, we moved. We closed in on the dragon, which recoiled at the sight of us and curled away defensively. It was a small, gangly thing, with arms and legs thinner and bonier than ours. While it was only three-fifths our size, it probably weighed a tenth as much, judging by how it moved. We could have smashed its bones easily.
Instead, we grabbed its head to lift it up and hold it still. Yellow and blue reached their necks under our arms and nipped at the chains around its neck with their teeth. The chain links broke away with ease.
Then we pulled back, giving the dragon space. It shuffled around a bit, experimenting with its sudden freedom. As the realization dawned on it, it looked up to the light far above. For a second, its gaze darted back to us. Thanksss.
You're welcome, Green hissed back, before realizing that none of the rest of us could directly understand what they'd just said — the rest of us had only heard untranslated parseltongue — and now finally understood how weird it sounded to everyone else. Can you climb?
The pale dragon's eyes shot back up, this time mapping a route to climb. Yesss. It trudged forwards, grabbing onto the rock face nearby. It started to climb, and though it was slow at first, as the dragon loosened up its muscles, its pace accelerated.
We started climbing as well, but as we noticed the broken cart track above us. If we'd fallen a little differently, we would have landed here. An idea came to us, born from that revelation; we climbed up a little higher, then launched ourselves off the wall. Our body crashed into the center of the stone circle the other dragon had been chained in, smashing the floor. We flailed a bit, cutting stone with claws and smashing the rock with our tail. From each of our heads, we breathed massive jets of white-hot flame, lightly liquefying the surface of small patches of stone and scorching the rest. Lastly, we shredded the chain that had held the other dragon.
It only took a few seconds to make it look like there'd been a fight, and to better sell the lie, we shot flames at each other, coating our scales in soot, and nipped at each other to scratch our scales. Sure, it was a last-minute idea, but if we'd accidentally freed the dragon after falling right in front of where it slept and fighting a bit, that wouldn't look nearly as bad.
Green was a bit smug as we resumed our climb. Following the same trail that the pale dragon had taken, it didn't take much effort to catch up to it. Hell, at the slow pace it was climbing, we could have easily passed it.
We didn't, though. Our initial rage, having faded to a dull roar, slid to the back of our minds to make way for more practical thoughts. Namely, how the hell we were supposed to get out of here — both physically, if crashing through the building wasn't an option, and without violating the statute of secrecy. And unfortunately, we found the idea of simply waiting down here for Dumbledore undesirable.
An aside, one of the first things they taught us at Hogwarts was about the Statute of Secrecy, and more importantly, the common magics used to hide the existence of magic from muggles. They also taught us how to exploit said magics where they'd been put in place. Relevant to us and our current situation was the Haze — something we only just remembered the name of now even though we'd sort of been aware of from the beginning of this whole dragon thing. Basically, it was a very subtle spell that covered the whole globe that made it harder for non-magical people to see flying objects that contained magic. The higher the magical source, be it object, person, or creature, the harder it was to see even if you were looking right at it — which compounded the visual difficulties imposed by distance.
The Haze had been why we'd dropped from the sky earlier today, rather than landing. But now that we were underground, smack dab in the middle of London, the Haze wasn't going to help us in the slightest. Basically, that left us but two options: leave Gringotts and fly away, risking the statute, or leave Gringotts and wait in the alley for Dumbledore.
Option two sounded like a great idea.
Hah, as if.
None of us were keen on waiting around and letting wizards take shots at us, especially not after the other dragon came out and scared them to death first. And we're fairly certain that even though Green can talk to the dragon, he's nowhere near convincing enough to keep the dragon from flying off on its own.
And since one dragon's already going to cause a mess, what more is a second one going to do?
We climbed onwards, staying just behind the rescued dragon. We had to make it to the top, but we also needed our companion to emerge first — that way, it wouldn't be our fault.
A familiar rolling and clanking sound caught our ears. We turned a few heads just in time to see a minecart with a goblin and a wizard on it. Yellow's eyes went wide, and in a panicked voice, he incanted, "ARRESTO MOMENTUM!"
The cart slowed, stopped, and then bounced back a little before coming to a full stop as if it had hit a giant sheet of rubber. The occupants tumbled forwards but thankfully didn't fall out of the cart.
The hooded wizard had his wand in his hand a second later and was aiming it right at us. We could smell the nervousness and adrenaline coming off him, a very animalistic fear, despite his seemingly calm demeanor. His goblin companion was much more visibly agitated at the sight of us.
"The track's out ahead. Don't fall to your death, okay?" Message delivered and lives saved, Yellow silently signaled for us to keep climbing. The other dragon hadn't gotten that much further ahead, so we quickly caught back up to it.
The light coming from above was growing brighter with every foot we climbed. And rather than slowing down with fatigue, our draconic companion was invigorated by the light at the end of the vertical tunnel, so to speak. It slowly picked up speed, climbing faster as it became surer of its footing. We matched pace.
In the back of our collective mind, we silently prayed that Dumbledore would be waiting there for us. Hopefully, he'd be there by the time we made it to the top.
Hedwig was a clever owl. She knew this, both from her own experience and the repeated compliments of her now quite numerous owners. But no amount of cleverness could help any owl track down a human that could move so swiftly and so erratically over long distances. The magic that had been cast on her as a owlet made that a non-issue. No, what made Hedwig so clever was what she could glean from what she could perceive, and that spell was much like any other sense.
That mystical sense of distance itched. Her masters had told her to first find Dumbledore if he came to the bank, and to wait for him there. Thus, her talons itched if she attempted to lift them off her perch and stopped itching if she stayed grounded. At the same time, the feathers on her forehead and between her wings on her back both itched as well, the former on a spot that always pointed towards Dumbledore and the latter with an intensity that she could translate to distance. Judging by how intently the spell was trying to urge her onwards, Dumbledore was still at Hogwarts, Hedwig divined.
She fluttered her wings irritably, drawing the annoyed gaze of a goblin below. The foul sneer he shot her way, on top of her own frustration, sorely tempted Hedwig to relieve herself upon her desk. She'd never do that — obviously, she was far too civilized a bird to do such a crass thing — but the idea nevertheless amused her and made the wait a little bit more bearable.
A super high-pitched shriek filled the air. Below, goblin ears twitched and gazes turned towards the hallway that lead to the minecarts. The humans in the bank didn't react to the sound, save for one scruffy, scarred man who clutched his ears in pain, but even they noticed the change in atmosphere.
The sound cut off a moment later, much to the snowy owl's relief. As she settled in to wait for Dumbledore, she suddenly noticed that the navigation spell was pulling her in a completely different direction and that her target was now much closer. Hooting in relief, Hedwig spread her wings and dive-bombed the way her magic was guiding her.
Unfortunately, a closed door was all that remained between her and her masters' headmaster. With reckless abandon, she threw herself at the glass, scratching at it with her talons for as long as her momentum allowed, then righted herself before she could tumble to the floor. She swooped around and struck again, then a third time before the door finally opened.
Hedwig paid no heed to the goblin, flying right past him in order to land on old wizard's shoulders. She screeched urgently, though at a politely soft volume, directly into the man's ear.
"Hedwig?" Dumbledore remarked. "Did the boys send you?"
"Hoo!" she agreed. She nipped at his ear and tugged forwards, urging him to move.
"Are the boys down below?" Dumbledore asked.
Again, Hedwig hooted in agreement. And again, she urged him forwards.
"And I've already explained," the goblin grumbled, "you are not allowed in the caverns unless you have financial business with Gringotts Bank! The wards redirecting your apparition should have been hint enough!"
"A moment, Mr. Nagrak... Hedwig, how are they?"
Hedwig, being a rather clever owl, flared her wings, adjusted her body to expose the surprising length of her legs from under her feathers, craned her head back, and let out the deepest screech she could muster. Dumbledore, being a rather clever human, understood immediately. "Oh dear. Expecto Patronum. Boys, Hedwig told me of your situation. Stay where you are. And... five Amplifying Charms on Red should be sufficient to call out from any depth."
The phoenix patronus nodded once, then soared away on ethereal wings, passing through the walls as if they were nothing but air.
Dumbledore turned back to Nagrak. At a significantly more sedate speed, as if he weren't quite flustered, Dumbledore softly intoned, "My apologies, Mr. Nagrak. You see, one of my students is down in your caverns, and given his rather unique circumstances, I suspect that you'll see the fiscal necessity of escorting me down below to retrieve him soon enough. In fact..." Dumbledore held up five fingers, then lowered one.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Upon reaching the count of five, the earth shook. A voice boomed from everywhere at once. It had such an intensity that it drowned out everything else, made people's eyes go blurry, and deafened the ears to such an extent that it was more easily understood by the rattling of one's skull than the vibrations the eardrums.
"𝕎𝔼'ℝ𝔼 ℂ𝕆𝕄𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕌ℙ! 𝔸𝕃𝕃 𝕊𝕀𝕏 𝕆𝔽 𝕌𝕊!"
Like a foghorn in an echo chamber, an analogy very near the truth, the sound reverberated on and on. As the sound bounced up and down the caverns below Gringotts, the bank shook again and again and again, each iteration blurring more and more into the next until it faded into a dull roar, then naught but the ringing of ears and a fading rumble that tickled the feet.
Out of the corner of her eye, Hedwig saw Dumbledore's mouth move but heard no sound. At least, not at first. A tap of his wand and proper, reasonable sound returned, and with it, blissful quiet.
At least until the high-pitched alarms started again. If the language of owls included cussing, she would have at that moment.
"Note to self... experiment with less destructive applications of exponential self-cast spell-stacking," the professor muttered. He shook his head a little. Pointing his wand at the goblin, he restored his hearing. "I think, when my multi-ton, accidental-earthquake-inducing students are involved, the survival of the bank building itself is an appropriate case of 'financial business,' wouldn't you agree?"
The goblin, already pale, nodded vigorously. The goblin, owl, and wizard promptly hurried from the office and into the chaos of the rest of the bank. Unbeknownst to the latter two, the same thought passed through their heads at exactly the same moment: who was the sixth?
"Ow ow ow! Let's never do that again!" Yellow hissed. None of us could hear a thing, but we didn't need sound to understand one another.
"AGREED," the rest of us said. Though we couldn't hear it, we could feel the rasp of Red's destroyed voice. We could also feel his vocal cords slowly knitting themselves back together, a distinctly alien sensation. We hoped Dumbledore got the message because that was one thing we wouldn't — and for the time being, couldn't — try again.
The dragon above us had put on even more speed now that it too had recovered. No doubt it was just as eager to avoid being in the blast radius as we were unwilling to set off another sound bomb.
At least Professor Dumbledore was up there. That was one less thing to worry about, even if we were currently disobeying him by climbing up. While Blue and Yellow justified our disobedience with the argument that the other dragon might cause excessive damage if we didn't climb with it to keep it out of trouble, Red, Green, and Grey simply didn't care about that. They just wanted out of this hole.
Hopefully, nobody would get hurt by us releasing the other dragon. Now that we'd had a moment to calm down, we see that we may have been a bit rash. Don't get us wrong; we'd do it again in a heartbeat, the goblins still pissed us off, and we're not going to chain this dragon back up, but we do acknowledge that perhaps this wasn't the best idea.
Grey started rehearsing our lie. The rest of us kept climbing.
"Albus!"
"Professor Dumbledore!"
The two calls occurred almost simultaneously. The individuals seeking his attention glanced at each other as they converged on him and recognized one another. Bowing to Kingsley Shacklebolt's authority as an auror, Remus Lupin allowed the officer to speak first.
"What's going on here, Albus?" the auror inquired. "The bloody hell was that?"
"Perhaps the most potent sonorous charm I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing," the headmaster replied. His wand was drawn and, to the other two men, he seemed inordinately focused on the grated floor before them. The goblins scurrying around them didn't seem to interest the old wizard in the slightest.
"A sonorous charm? Albus, I saw goblins with blood flowing from their ears," Kingsley stated. "Maybe it was just a sonorous, but I doubt the goblins are going to see it that way."
"Shack, you can't seriously be implying that...?" Remus questioned, only to trail off and glance meaningfully at his surroundings.
"I doubt it will come to that," Albus remarked, not breaking eye contact with the floor. If anything, his stare intensified. On his shoulder, the snowy owl picked up the same subtle sensations and fluttered her wings eagerly. "But, as it stands, I think we have a more pressing issue..."
He took a step back, then another, and then suddenly spun on a dime and broke out into a surprisingly panicked sprint. As he passed between Kingsley and Remus, Albus flicked his wand out to magically yank them back with him.
It was not a moment too soon. The floor shook, and then a massive, scaly, white head erupted through the grated floor. Cries of "Dragon!" echoed through the bank, but the beast's cacophony nearly drowned them all out.
Kingsley and Remus both snapped their wand-arms to attention and shuffled back, frantically trying to get away without turning their backs to the firebreather. The headmaster's reaction was, by contrast, far more subdued.
"A sixth, indeed." He too raised his wand to defend himself from the — comparatively small —Ukrainian ironbelly. Only, a hissing noise from below caused the dragon to pause, incline its head, and then gaze up to the skylight above. In an instant, it lost all interest in the edible people around it, its attention wholly focused on the sky. It let out a sound like a squawk, a hiss, and roar all at once. Its claws reached up, crashing through the glass.
Dumbledore flicked his wand, emitting a wave of force to protect the trio from falling debris. But beyond that, he made no move to stop the dragon, unlike Kingsley, who fired off an ineffective stunner at the dragon. Instead, the headmaster's gaze focused on the rain of debris still coming down while his magic warded people from injury.
Above them, the dragon paused for a moment, breathed deeply, and then spread its wings. With a thunderous clap of displaced air, the behemoth took to the sky.
"Kingsley, I do believe we're going to need the obliviators."
"And dragon tamers," Remus added.
"Tell me about it." Without another word, Kingsley Shacklebolt vanished with a crack.
"A dragon," Remus remarked after a moment's silence. "Not how I expected today to go. Glad I ran into you, Professor. It's good to see you."
"And you as well, Professor." Remus smiled at Albus's reminder of his new title. "But I'm afraid we're not quite done."
Remus followed Albus's gaze back to the hole. The sound of breaking rock and heavy breathing was the only warning they had before five heads, each one larger than the other dragon's, squeezed through the hole.
"Professsssor Dumbledore! Hedwig! Brilliant!"
The professor's eyes bored into each of us in turn before quickly moving to the next. It felt, for a moment, as if he were casting judgment upon us and had, one-by-one, deemed us a disappointment. A knot formed in our stomach, and in that instant, we wanted nothing more than to climb back down into the hole.
Then the moment was over and Professor Dumbledore was once more merely our headmaster. "Hello, boys." On his shoulder, Hedwig hooted her greeting as well.
"Sorry about all this. Our stone broke when-"
Dumbledore raised his hand, cutting off our explanation. "We can discuss what happened later, Yellow. For now, if you would allow me?" He held up his wand.
We, like all dragons and giants, had a layer of magic just inside our skin that reinforced our bodies. It's what let us fly, let us heft our mass around, and, most relevant to the situation at hand, gave us our magical resistance. But, that resistance was controlled by our magic and, indirectly, our intent. The form stoned had worked as well as it had because we were the ones activating it, implicitly giving it permission to affect us. Even Dumbledore, as powerful as he was, struggled to affect us when we actively resisted him.
Instead, we nodded, granting him permission to cast upon us. A wave of familiar energies, invisible yet not undetectable, rippled out of his wand and across our body. The spell snapped into place, only for us to drop as our suddenly much smaller body was too small to reach the ledge we'd been holding onto.
We flared our wings — which unexpectedly hadn't vanished with our transformation — and flapped back up to the now much larger hole. It was like flying through watery jelly; our much smaller and much weaker wings found the air almost thick. Each flap felt like ten normal ones and propelled us a fraction of the distance.
Imagine our surprise when we found Dumbledore standing with an outstretched hand, palm up, and discovered that we could fit inside said palm. We landed there, if for no other reason than the novelty of being that tiny.
"Sorry for the mess, Professor," Yellow squeaked. His voice came out quiet and absurdly high-pitched. Red snickered at that, only to clamp down on his mouth with our claws when his voice came out adorably squeaky as well.
"I'd say it is alright," Dumbledore remarked, even as he flicked his wand and set the debris to repairing itself, "but I feel that the goblins might disagree. Hedwig?"
Our owl hooted questioningly.
"Be a dear and take the boys back to Hogwarts for me, wouldn't you? I'd fly there without stopping if I were you."
In one smooth movement, Hedwig took wing and snagged our tiny body from the headmaster's hands. With our body no bigger than a mouse, Hedwig's talons gripped us terrifyingly tightly. For the first time in our life as a dragon, we flew under someone else's power.
Let us tell you, it's nowhere near as fun. In fact, it's not fun in the slightest.
We had just enough time to see the angry, spear-wielding goblins approaching Dumbledore before Hedwig carried us out of the bank. We hoped he'd be alright. We hoped we hadn't caused him too much trouble. But to be entirely honest, we doubted it, and that fact hurt more than our bleeding ears.