A/N: There were probably seven different versions of this chapter and I'm still not 100% happy with it, but here you go. Let me know your thoughts on this chapter.
Blue and Green held their heads up high. Not out of pride or anything like that, but because they were keeping the books they were reading above the gore the rest of us were making. A whole family of deer, stag, doe, and fawn, had fallen to our claws and teeth. And while Blue and Green wouldn't have minded eating, those parts of us were more interested in reading the tomes we'd borrowed from the library.
It had been five days since our talk with Dumbledore, and the first skirmishes of what looked to be a protracted goblin rebellion had started. According to the Daily Prophet, because of our interaction with him as we climbed out, the Goblins blamed Dumbledore for our damage and the loss of the other dragon. The ministry, while they didn't blame Dumbledore directly, weren't at all happy with him either.
Thus, the choice to leave the school ended up being about more than just food. People were coming and going from the school all the time, and the last thing we wanted was for them to see our scaly hide flying there and back. And so, we packed up our stuff, gotten our trunk charmed unbreakable, expanded, and waterproof, and had left to go camping out in the Scottish wilds.
We'd discussed this with Dumbledore. It had been our idea, but since we could take care of ourselves for food and just about nothing could actually hurt us, he'd let us go with next to no fuss. He'd insisted that he should place some more potent tracking and monitoring charms on us, and their presence against out magic was a constant, mild comfort to us as well as the headmaster. He and he alone knew where we were.
We hadn't just left Hogwarts, though. What we hadn't brought with us, we'd stored safely down in the chamber of secrets. And, before we had left, we'd quickly raided the library for spells that could help us while we were out in the wilderness.
We'd not found much within our skill range, but we'd found three so far that proved useful. One was the muggle-repelling charm, which Blue had picked up really quickly. The next was a water-repelling charm to keep us dry from the morning dew; the water itself didn't bother us, but it made cleaning off the dirt and debris from us rolling in our sleep much easier. And lastly, there was the targeting charm.
As an inferior precursor to the summoning charm, it didn't bring objects to you; instead, it pointed your wand (or in our case, our tongues) to an object of your choice. Easily thwarted by even minimal magical defenses, it wasn't terribly practical in the modern wizarding world. Out in the wild, though, it made hunting trivial. We just had to want large animals, scrap metal that nobody would miss, or the like, and our magic yanked us towards the food.
We weren't perfect at it yet. We'd only found the spell the day before yesterday in our pile of borrowed books. And yet, our stomachs were almost full to bursting with scrap iron and deer meat. With how successful at gathering food we'd been, we wondered if we'd even need Hogwarts to feed us anymore. We're sure the Hogwarts vaults would be happy about that.
Yellow paused his eating to pick some bone fragments out of his teeth. He wondered if we should venture back to Diagon Alley. We did have our money from our vault, and we did need to go shopping pretty soon before the term started. September 1st was approaching quickly.
Red was, unsurprisingly, all for that idea, despite being literally one of the people who'd turned the alley into the border of an active combat zone. Well, active might have been a bit of an overstatement — the only people reported as being hurt (and not even killed) were a trio of ministry officials that had tried and failed to defuse the situation.
Blue just wanted more books. Green warned against going anywhere near the bank, but otherwise didn't object. Grey did want to waltz right up to the bank and poke our heads in; "morbid curiosity," he explained, although we all could tell that that explanation was only part of his feelings. What the rest were, we couldn't yet put into words, but for once, only Yellow objected to them.
"I can't believe I have to be the voice of reason on this. That's Blue's job." Our empathetic brother sighed. "We should not go poking the hornet's nest."
Green was the first swayed by reason. He swallowed his hunk of venison and then spoke, "Yellow isss right. We'd be bloody fools to mess around with it."
"I'M BRAVE, NOT FOOLISH!" Red bellowed. His voice was still a little rougher than usual from the bank incident. He didn't say more on the matter, but we understood.
Grey slurped up the doe's intestines. In the back of our mind, he gave a mental shrug. He, and thus we, knew that the idea of deliberately antagonizing the goblins was a bad one in the first place, and wasn't bothered by being outvoted. He resigned himself to satisfying his curiosity with us simply being on the same street as the bank.
From our bag, Blue pulled a little of the scrap metal we'd saved from an abandoned tractor we'd eaten earlier that morning. He nibbled on it a bit after enlarging it, taking tiny tastes and savoring the flavor. His eyes continued reading, his mind only passively aware of our ongoing discussion. With no objections, he hadn't bothered to speak up.
With that, our plan for the day was set.
Having found the owl sky-lanes again, with Hedwig's help, our trip to London was very swift, taking an hour rather than a day. Having tested our muggle-repelling charm in a small Scottish village north of Glasgow while hunting, we were more confident in landing publicly. So, rather than skydiving in, we glided down to very nearly the rooftops of buildings and then transformed just before striking them. We plopped to the ground in an alleyway, dusted ourselves off, and then made our way to Diagon Alley.
It was clear that the alley had seen better days. The very few people that were still there were nervously hurrying about, obviously not wanting to linger more than they had to, and almost universally had their wands drawn. Then there were armored and heavily armed goblins by the dozen outside Gringotts, and while none crossed some invisible threshold, they raised their blades and visibly threatened anyone who approached the bank directly.
We kept our head down and swallowed our guilt.
As we reached the tail end of a thankfully uneventful shopping trip, including the agonizingly slow purchase of five new wands, we briefly considered trying to visit Hermione's place again. This time, we also considered sending Hedwig ahead of us to check before we caught the Knight Bus. Ultimately, however, we decided against it. The whole goblin fiasco was still fresh on our minds, and between that and the general awkwardness of just dropping in unannounced, Grey's pessimism won out.
School was right around the corner, anyway. We'd see our best mates soon enough.
Instead, we decided to kill a little more time while we were in the city. Lacking muggle money and not willing to venture anywhere near Gringotts, the five of couldn't do much in the Muggle world. Instead, we decided that since we were done with our practical shopping, we'd just explore the area.
For our first stop, we bought a couple dozen sandwiches at the Leaky Cauldron for a light snack (much to Tom's amazement). The flight, while our fastest time yet, had still been long and we were hungry again. While eating at the pub, we simply watched and listened to the people around us. We found it relaxing to just eat silently with our thoughts.
By the fourth time Tom came back with more sandwiches (each a full meal in their own right), he asked, "Where the blazes are you keepin' it all, lad?"
We swallowed the latest bite. "Got an appetite bigger than an Ironbelly Dragon," was our entirely honest collective reply, although Yellow tweaked it to sound like a joke.
"Oi, Tom," one of the wizards a few seats down hollered. He'd been watching us eat, as had several other witches and wizards in the pub. "Weren't you thninkin' o' makin' one of them muggle eatin' challenges?" The wizard slammed his pint down. "Call it Potter's Ironbelly challenge!"
A witch on the other end of the bar whooped happily. "Gotta tell sissy 'bout this. She's been awfully hungry ever since I dared her to eat that bag of holding, you know? It'd be just her kind of challenge."
Other wizards and witches at the bar broke out in excited chatter. Apparently, the idea was quite popular — or at least, it was something fun for them to think about given the otherwise uneasy circumstances. It took the barkeep a moment to quiet the small crowd down, but once he did, Tom gestured to us. "I suppose I must. Harry, you mind if I name it after you?"
"YES!" Red bellowed before the rest of us could restrain him.
"I mean, sure. Go for it," Yellow appended.
In total agreement with Green and Red, Grey imitated Yellow's way of speaking and continued, only switching our pronoun usage. "But you're going to have to let me try my hand at it too. I'm pretty sure I could—"
A small belch chose that moment to work its way up from our belly — and not from our food stomach. A small flame and a shower of metal sparks escaped our lips, giving us the aftertaste of that tractor we'd eaten a little while back.
"—eat a dragon these days," Grey finished.
Tom, along with several other pub patrons, chuckled. "You sure you haven't already?"
We just took another bite of our latest sandwich, grinning.
The attention of the crowd faded from us shortly after that, but internally, our attention was still focused on Grey. "You planned that, didn't you?' Yellow mused.
Grey felt mildly proud but otherwise didn't reply. Somehow, he had, and we all knew it.
Having spent a rather concerning amount of coin eating at the Leaky Cauldron, and then eating a few more knuts directly, we set out to properly explore wizarding London. To our delight, Diagon Alley wasn't the only wizarding street in the area. Horizont, Vertic, and Diurn Alleys — along with Knockturn — collectively encircled a large area of purely magical London. And, in the middle of it all, was Carkitt Market. Plus, aside from Diagon, none of the others were nearly as affected by the issue with Gringotts. It was quiet, but not nearly as tense of an atmosphere.
Vertic and Diurn Alleys were the first we visited. And while they were beautiful, sunny, wide-open streets, they were also more clearly residential, with apartments atop shops that sold more mundane things, like clothes and groceries. Having no idea where we wanted to live when we grew up, we filed those two streets away in the back of our minds as possible options. That depended on us being able to stay human for a long enough time; but as much as we liked the idea of becoming human again, we were also really liking being a five-headed dragon. Even Grey, the miserable lump, was warming up to it.
Horizont Alley and Carkitt Market were like extensions of Diagon Alley. The stores were similar enough, but had a few things Diagon didn't. For instance, in Horizont Alley, there was a shop called Pilliwinkle's Playthings, a toy store. We'd never actually been in a toy store before, and so we'd figured now was as good a time as any.
The sheer amount of colors and patterns nearly overwhelmed us. In contrast to the dull forests we'd been sleeping in the last few days, and even in contrast to the alley just outside, Pilliwinkle's was an explosion of color and light.
The smells were amazing too. There was so much magic here that we were practically drooling at the thought of all of these toys. We wanted to play with them and eat them like candy. We wanted to be little kids!
'It's a shame,' Yellow suddenly thought as our shared eyes wandered over the mountains of toys. 'I can suddenly understand Dudley's greediness so much more.' Inside our minds, Blue and Green imagined themselves nodding in agreement.
Grey, however, sulked. 'it's vernon and petunia's fault.'
'WE'RE NOT WITH THEM RIGHT NOW! WE COULD BUY SOME TOYS IF WE WANTED!' Red roared into our skulls. Despite the obviousness of Red's derail attempt, Grey let his train of thought crash and burn.
Barely an instant later, our collective had unanimously decided that we wanted toys, heedless of any comparison to the lump of lard that was our cousin. The problem, as Green pointed out, was, 'We ssshouldn't ssspend too much money. With the bank closssed, we can't get more.'
That may have dampened the mood a little bit, but it hadn't killed it. We hurried about the store, looking at box after box of toys and trinkets, puppets and plushies, and all sorts of knick-knacks. Eventually, we found what we wanted.
It was a plushie dragon, animated to walk around, flap its wings, and breathe cloth "fire" on whatever it wanted. But what really sold us on it was its striking resemblance to Green; it could have been modeled after him! And so Little-Green, our honorary sixth head, went into our bag.
We didn't know why we walked into Knockturn Alley. We weren't thinking.
That was a lie, of course. If anyone asked, that was what Grey would tell them. But in truth, we were always thinking and were always aware of what we were thinking. When we had five different people with five different personalities all looking at each other's thoughts, we knew well before we walked into that place why we were doing it.
It smelled good.
We'd been able to taste and smell magic since we'd transformed. Every spell had its own flavor and scent, but none were as appealing as dark magic. It was of the same delicious quality as fancy chocolate or skillfully-cooked steak, but it was a flavor we had no words to describe it with other than mouthwatering. In comparison to the toy store, this dark place was far more delicious-smelling.
We were under no delusions, though. This was a dangerous part of the city, even for someone as dangerous as us. Plus, we were unlikely to find something to actually eat unless we paid for it. At this point, after all we'd spent already, our purse strings were tied shut. But, even if we couldn't buy a bite to eat, we could still explore.
We were being stupid. We knew we were being stupid. And if Ron or Hermione ever knew, they'd yell at us for being stupid for such a shallow reason.
We proceeded with being stupid anyway.
As we approached the alley, Green muttered a spell. The shell of magic rippled as he transfigured it into a new form. Unlike the difficulty of true human transfiguration, temporarily altering the shell that made us look human was much easier, once you knew the trick to not popping it. Even Crabbe and Goyle could probably do it.
The form we adopted was that of a teenager a few years older and a few inches taller. Minus the scar and with blue eyes and combed, blond hair, our face could have passed as Dudley's slim older brother.
Once inside the alleyway, the dark magic clung to us like a thick miasma. The sky above was unusually greyed out, as if even color was being choked away from it. Were we still human, the atmosphere would have been overwhelming, like a foul stench that seemed determined to make you smell it.
Now, though, it was like the air was trying to intimidate us by threatening to feed us food — and not even poisoned or spoiled food at that. We licked our lips. Greed and gluttony writhed within us, their metaphorical maws snapping at everyone and everything we saw. Couldn't we just pig out here, we wondered? No, of course not, but daydreaming was part of the reason we were here.
There were people milling about, including obviously unsavory types. We knew we were the last to judge a book by its cover, but there was a woman we passed with a necklace of human finger bones. It was just a tad difficult to call that wholesome.
As we looked and, more importantly, smelled about, we slowly realized that very few of the people here were human. Oh, sure, most of them were mostly human, but not all and not all the way. Men with goat horns, woman with snake skin, an old man who smelled far too strongly of the sea, and a little girl that smelled pungently of something ancient and powerful walking next to a man who smelled of unicorns, dark magic, and musk — they were some of the people we remembered the most, and yet countless more wandered the alley.
Not all of them smelled dark either, at least not by how we'd come to associate the scents. Some were neutral, or even light, but were instead also not human. In fact, only the full-blooded humans that passed us by seemed to exude a pure miasma of delicious darkness; everyone else was a much more complex mix in scents, both in magic and in blood.
We'd never smelled such variety before. Yellow and Red wondered why. Blue, Green, and Grey, pooling their thoughts together, came up with a plausible explanation.
Malfoy.
Well, Lucius Malfoy and his ilk, not his prat of a son. While he might have been the first example we thought of, he was a good one. He and his son were pure-blooded bigots, supporters of Voldemort, and were influential in the Ministry. And, most importantly, they were the sort to skulk around in Knockturn Alley to sell off dark artifacts. He'd definitely be the sort of person to use his influence to confine the less "pure" to a dank, dark alley full of shady stores and shadier characters.
We didn't know if we were right, but it felt as if we were on the right track. We resolved to research it later; now that we were thinking about it, Green realized we had frighteningly little understanding of the laws that applied to us, or of wizarding law in general. We set the thought aside for now, but resolved to research it over the next school year.
Our willpower being a little weaker than we'd anticipated, our resolve broke and we eventually wound up dipping into a pub in order to grab another bite to eat. To our surprise, this place was, somehow, even more dark and grimy than the Leaky Cauldron. The walls were blacked with slime, the windows were nearly opaque, the air was dank with musty scents, and the magic in the air threatened to choke us, even with its pleasant scent.
The food, by contrast, was quite good.
In the time it took us to eat the tiny, human-sized portion of surprisingly good bangers and mash, we'd deduced that the place we'd stepped into didn't exactly cater to humans all that frequently. We wagered by the smell of the place that no pure human had stepped into this place for weeks. And yet, the pub was packed and the people were lively — perhaps even more than outside.
"Oh my, you're a new face. And not a bad-looking one either, handsome."
We glanced to the side. Sitting in the formerly empty chair to our left and leaning towards us with a rather flirtatious grin was a woman with a distinctly reptilian face. A line of small spikes made up her eyebrows, while her "hair" was a neat bed of colorful feathers. Her skin was made of countless tiny scales that were about the color of a Mediterranean tan, but with a pink sheen when the light caught them right. She was quite pretty.
Without really thinking about it, Yellow and Grey took joint control over our mouth. "New in more ways than one. Hah..."
She leaned in a bit closer, giving us a look down her ample cleavage. Her forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air. "Oh? How so?"
"I've been practicing my transfiguration. I'm a tad big, you see..."
Meanwhile, Blue groaned internally. 'Ugh. You're flirting. I thought they were the hormonal ones.' He mentally jabbed a talon in Green and Red's direction, both of whom were quite enthralled by the kobold-like woman. If they'd been in charge of our human mouth at that moment, we'd have been drooling.
'her pheromones are laced with magic,' Grey remarked, his voice unusually upbeat.
'We're playing along,' Yellow added, grinning.
This seemed to break Green out of his entrancement, though Red was still totally enthralled. Suddenly suspicious, he dove into our senses with an analytical mindset. And though he didn't find anything immediately, his hyper-awareness brought the kobold-like woman into sharper focus.
All of this happened within the span of a second, and Grey and Yellow didn't miss a beat when she spoke next.
"I like big," she replied. Her fingers brushed against ours. "How big are you talking?"
"Hmm... I suppose I have been compared to a basilisk before," Grey answered, giving the technical truth. The rest of us blushed deeply, and seeing this, he went for embarrassment suicide. "It's quite petrifying." The mental gymnastics he went through to come up with that line and deliver it were quite remarkable, but the rest of us felt as if we'd just been stabbed through the gut with how hard we cringed.
Unaware of our inner turmoil, her hand moved down to our thigh. "Oh, really? That's a rather bold boast." Her hand slid closer to our groin. "I wonder if you can back it up," she husked.
Her left hand slid down and in. She gave us a squeeze.
Truth be told, we knew academically that she shouldn't have been doing that. But, as far as our actual feelings went, our thoughts were like this:
Blue was academically amused; this was quite the novel experience and he understood that she'd assumed we were an adult, but he didn't take any physical pleasure from her touch. Red, by contrast, was a hair's breadth from melting into a lustful puddle of teenage hormones as his imagination ran wild. Yellow felt quite good, almost to the point of being cocky, as his previous embarrassment faded. Grey, while still negative overall, was content — mostly about his "victory" at our expense rather than the actual, tactile results of his words.
Only Green disagreed with us, and not because he disliked being molested by a grown woman. Quite the opposite, actually. But, as much as he liked what her hand was doing, he disliked what her other hand was doing even more.
"Care to—GAH!" she cried out as both of our hands suddenly grabbed both of hers, forcing them up and away. Dangling from her right hand was our coin pouch, cut from its string by a small blade stuck to her thumb. We weren't too worried about the blade; it was the money we cared for.
"Petty thievesss ssshould leave treasssures that aren't theirsss alone," Green hissed. He, in full control of our arms, squeezed hard enough that the woman's bones audibly protested. She herself was dead silent though, and in the reflections in her terrified eyes, we could see the glow of our fire in the back of our human body's throat.
In one move, Green plucked our pouch back and released both of her hands.
She bolted, vanishing into the crowd within a second.
We tucked the coin pouch deep into our robes. Then, as if nothing had happened, we resumed eating, though Green watched her closely out of the corner of our eyes. Pervert and thief she may have been, but we had food to eat.
While Consensus drove our body to mechanically eat, we were left to processed what in Merlin's name had just happened. We'd guessed she was acting, and we'd been playing along, but the confirmation of it and the failed thievery both stung anyway. Only Green was truly annoyed; the rest were just confused.
The rest of the pubgoers hadn't even noticed, or if they did, they didn't care. We got the suspicion that scenes like that were rather common here. Finishing our latest meal as if nothing had happened, we settled our tab and headed back out.
Though much warier, a little confused, and a bit annoyed still, we continued our exploration of Knockturn alley. We figured we might as well get our mind off it for now.
Despite being a street in a rather orderly area of London, the alley curved and wound like a coiled serpent. We were sure at one point it had entirely doubled back and crossed over itself, but there was never an intersection and all the buildings were still new. And yet, when we looked back over our shoulder, we could always just barely see the intersection with Diagon Alley. It was never at an angle suitable for a good look, but it was there.
We weren't sure why that was, but we had our suspicions.
Still, magically winding and lengthy as Knockturn may have been, it gave us time to think and sort our feelings. It also gave us time to get hungry again, not that we'd ever been full since this morning. But, even more guarded with our dwindling money, than before, our dreams of more food were resigned to stay as just that: dreams.
Suddenly, a bony hand shot out and snagged our wrist, jerking us to the side and snapping us from our thoughts. The woman, no, the hag, grinned at us with crooked teeth. 'If it weren't for her smell,' Blue mused academically, 'I really would have sworn she was just an ugly witch.'
"Spare a few coins, dearie?" She asked.
Of the five of us, Blue was the one with the current majority our bodily control. We were here to learn and explore, so we'd handed control to him, with the condition that the others were ready to take charge if something went wrong yet again. It was Grey who snatched back control.
"I'm sorry," he spoke, mimicking a mix of Yellow and Green's tones. The hag froze as we spoke, unable to break eye contact. "I'm hungry too, and my coin pouch is distressingly light today."
A flicker of something obviously magical passed between us and the hag, but it was too fleeting for us to be sure of what that feeling was exactly. A subtle shift in the scents in the air gave us a clue; it wasn't a new scent, but rather a sudden lack of a scent. Something had been undone.
All of that took time to describe, but in truth, we noticed this only in the brief between the moment Grey finished speaking and when she reacted.
The hag's grip released and her arm jerked back. "My apologies, my lords." She took a step back, then tried to take another, only to back against the slimy brick of the alley wall.
Lords? What did she mean by that?
"I'm no lord." Grey's tone was dismissive, but he placed extra emphasis on the last word.
'Are you trying to hint at what we are?!' Green hissed internally. We'd already risked our nature once today. Almost exactly as he thought, the hag flinched. We noticed that easily; it was a particularly pronounced full-body flinch.
Her expression darkened. "Teeth of swords, savage fire, many eyes with voracious desire," muttered the hag softly, such that only we could hear. Wariness tinged her tone. "More than law can make a lord, say the wyrms atop their hoards." And then, without another word, she bolted towards Diagon Alley with surprising swiftness, vanishing into the crowd before we had time to react.
Some of that crowd was looking at us, eyes even more suspicious than normal. We decided it was now time to get out of there, and quickly.
We hadn't run, but that was surely the fastest we'd ever walked. Only once we were back out in Diagon Alley proper did we stop to really process what the bloody hell had just happened.
Blue, Yellow, and Green all reached the same conclusion at almost exactly the same time. 'She knew we're a dragon,' Blue stated.
'And ssshe knew there are more than one of usss in here. You sssaw her react,' Green added.
'We do not know that for sure,' Yellow retorted. 'Could be a coincidence, but I'd also consider it a safe bet.'
'BUT HOW DID SHE KNOW?!'
For that, we had no answer, though smell was a plausible candidate since we did the same to everyone else. Once term started, Blue and Green would definitely research it. But, for now, we agreed it was definitely time to leave London. The fewer people that knew about us, the fewer could connect us to the Gringotts incident, and we'd gotten lucky twice today. Our luck probably wouldn't let us get away a third time.
Going to Knockturn Alley really had been a stupid idea, we reaffirmed to ourselves, though not for the reason we'd first thought.
By the time we got back to the northern end of Scotland, it was well beyond sundown. Hedwig had perched in a crook of our necks as usual and guided us home. Between the shortcuts of the owl sky-lanes and our frequent trips down the length of the United Kingdom, our wings had grown strong. Only a gentle, warm ache filled our shoulders by the time we returned to our campground, a polite request to descend soon rather than an agonizing need to land and rest. It meant we had enough strength to find dinner for ourselves, especially after the short rest we took to stash our newly acquired stuff away.
With the aid of the targeting charm, we soon had our dinner: a lone doe that had wandered too far from the others. We laid down and began to eat, all except for Green. He pulled off the doe's head and held it up to himself.
"A lord of what?" Green spontaneously asked, his mind wandering back. The disembodied head didn't answer.
"the hag was probably just trying to get us to not eat her," Grey replied, despite the question not being posed to him. He paused to work a shard of bone out from between his teeth. The shard popped free and he laid down upon the ground. "not like we're actually lords of anything."
Blue swallowed. "She kind of implied it, but you could argue that we're the lords of dragons, by virtue of being as smart as five people instead of almost as smart as one." He ripped off another chunk for himself with our claws. "Or by mass alone. Don't we out-mass an Ironbelly by an order of magnitude now?"
"WE ARE ALSO MADE OF PRECIOUS METALS!" Red boasted. Despite his eternal enthusiasm, he took care not to move his head too much, lest the green plushie balanced on his snout fall to the dirt. "THAT IS PRETTY LORDLY, I THINK! IT FITS THE 'HOARD' THING TOO!"
"empty title. useless. boy-who-live-to-become-the-lord-of-dragons. just beasts. just another way for wizards to turn on us," came Grey's dark mutterings; with the excitement of the day over, he'd spiraled back into the darkest pits of our shared minds. He had a point, though. Our fame probably worked against us when the school found out about our parseltongue. Claiming to be the lord of anything, even if it seemed like a reasonable conclusion on the surface, was probably a waste of time at best — and a way to invite all sorts of trouble at worst. Dragons especially were not the best thing to claim to be a lord of, if we were being honest. A king of monsters would be just another beast to most wizards.
Green popped the deer's head into his mouth, biting into brain matter with a satisfying crunch, the discussion now just as dead as it. The rest of the deer carcass didn't last long, despite us eating slowly to savor its flavors. It had been quite an impressive specimen when it had been alive, and it tasted just as good.
High above, the stars twinkled and the crescent moon shone. The occasional owl hooted, including Hedwig after her own successful hunt. A gentle breeze blew through the trees, bringing to us the scents of the forest and the faintest hints of human settlement.
There was nothing special about this spot. There was nothing magical. It was only the arbitrary location where a five-headed dragon caught and ate their prey — it wasn't even our camp. There was no ministry, no laws, no school, no people, no perverted kobold pickpockets, no creepy hags, no lordships and politics, and no boy-who-lived nonsense. It was just five brothers, our lovely owl, our new plush companion, and our dinners, all alone together under the stars.
Right then, that was magic enough for us.