A While Longer
Nothing had changed in the morning. When I exited the small cave, pulling myself out of the tunnel and into the light, everything was just as I had left it. I knelt on the snow, yanking the bookbag out after me and then staring at the dead Horntail. Her eyes were still open, great orange orbs clouded over in death and looking right at me.
I shivered – not just from the cold – as I threw a heating charm over me and approached the nest. I took a minute to sweep the snow aside from the edge of the stone, thankful that it must have stopped sometime in the night so as not to completely bury it, and checked the eggs. My heating rune had held throughout the night and the eggs were still warm to the touch and completely dry.
I checked each one individually, pulling them close to examine them for fractures or cold spots as Snape exited the tunnel and joined me. He huffed at me in annoyance, but I ignored him as I placed the grey egg back in the nest before grabbing another. I already knew his stance on the eggs, having received a very long lecture dusted with 'moronic' and 'you idiot' throughout the whole thing.
He wanted to leave the eggs to the elements, let the hatchlings die in their shells. It was a cruel thing to do, and I was a little ashamed that I had seriously considered it for a long moment. I had nothing to ensure their survival. If we weren't rescued soon and they hatched, I had nothing to feed them except the corpse of their mother which…I'm still not certain how I stand on that ethically. And then what do I do with them once they start to grow?
In the end, I had thrown down a heating rune and ignored Snape's hollering insults as I set about digging a cave.
My eyes trailed to the lump of snow just to the side of the nest and I felt my throat clog up in the thought of it. I turned quickly, focusing instead on the small grave I had dug the previous day. I used a scrap of fabric with a sticking charm to mark it, but I didn't need the bright red material to find it. Even with my eyes closed I would have known exactly where they were buried.
I almost hadn't noticed them at first. They were just three white lumps in a nest being covered in white snow. It wasn't until Snape's confused mumblings as he prodded one of them that I realized what they were.
There were three tiny white dragons, colored just as Snape was, lying there dead. I had touched one with a trembling finger and gasped at how cold it felt. The broken shell pieces were littered all around them and I suddenly understood why Death had referred to dragon body within the egg in plural form.
There had been four lives in that one egg, and I had only saved one. But had I really? I mean, the dragon's soul had already passed on, Death had told me so. Had I really saved it if Death had shoved another soul into the body? What was the body without the soul?
I had buried them next to the nest, as far into the ground as I could get without wasting too much of my depleted magical reserves. It turns out dying and coming back to life took quite the toll, and not just on the body.
I replaced the last grey egg back into the nest, making certain it was positioned within the rune and my eyes trailed back to the dead Horntail. It really was a grotesque sight.
"Why do you even bother?" Snape's voice drew my attention away from the corpse and I looked down at him, perched upon the edge of the stone nest.
"Shut up," I mumbled, brushing my hair out of my eyes and staring morosely at the eggs. "I don't want to hear it."
"Watch your mouth," he snapped at me, huffing slightly as he pulled himself onto the lip of the stone nest.
I shook my head, telling myself it was too early to start an argument and looked away from him, back to that red scrap of fabric. "Why four?" I asked suddenly and Snape turned to look at me.
"Why four what, Potter?" he huffed, his hot breaths creating bursts of fog in the cold air. "Try to use full sentences, I know it's taxing on your mind, but I must insist."
I glared at him, biting my lip and clenching my hands into fists. The pain from the tiny cuts helped ground me, and a voice that sounded very much like Hermione's was playing through my mind telling me to just breathe. "Why four dragons?" I spoke carefully, enunciating each word with as little inflection as possible.
"I count more than four," Snape turned to the nest before glancing at the dead brood mother.
"No, I meant, ugh –" I cut myself off in frustration. He was trying to get a rise out of me. Aunt Petunia loved doing the same thing, little snide comments that she knew would get a reaction. She had once forced me into dance lessons after a teacher made a comment about my extracurricular activities when I was younger and had taken great joy out of critiquing every pas and pirouette until I had wanted to cry. I had enjoyed dancing, at first…until I didn't. She loved that the most, forcing me to continue to go for years, even though I had begun to hate it.
I took a deep breath, exhaling sharply from my nose and forcing myself to calm. "Why did four dragons come out of one egg?"
Snape turned to where the other three bodies were buried. The red scrap fluttered in the wind, but stayed stuck to the ground. It had felt odd, burying them. They had looked exactly like Snape did, just…just dead. Dead like – no, I couldn't think on it. I felt the weight of the lump of snow behind me heavily, but I couldn't look at it. I hoped the snow buried it so thoroughly I never had to think of it again.
"Do I look like a dragon expert to you?" Snape commented disparagingly.
"Well, out of the two of us, which one is a dragon?" His head snapped around to face me so quickly I didn't even see him move. He was hissing again, the sibilant like growl that was both adorable and threatening.
"And who's fault is that?" He snapped, his teeth clicking with the force of it as he turned to crawl towards the eggs. Snape meant his words to hurt but it was hard to take him seriously as he stumbled into the stone nest on uncooperating limbs.
I sighed again, louder this time as I reached into the nest and helped him right himself. Once upright, I had to draw my hands back quickly or risk losing a finger, as he snapped his teeth at me. He certainly was ungrateful…but I suppose that was fair. Snape had let me hold him all last night and cry on him even though this colossal fuckup was all my doing.
"Look, can we just…not?" I asked, staring at my hands clasped in my lap.
Snape grunted in annoyance, but he didn't say anything else. I glanced back up, the dawning sunlight pouring over the white landscape like molten gold, sparkling thousands of tiny little stars over the snow, and then catching the surface of the golden egg, making it glow. My eyes stared at it in wonder as I watched the light play off its shell.
I reached out for it, my fingers nearly skimming the metal when there was a sharp pain on the side of my hand. "Did you just bite me?!" I shouted, cradling it to my chest as I turned it to see the small teeth marks in the side of my palm. "You did, you just bit me! You little shit!"
"Watch your mouth you ungrateful brat," Snape hissed, his head thrown back and neck frills displayed in hostility. Even his tail fins were fully erect.
"You. Bit. Me." I enunciated each word like it was its own sentence, waiving my lightly bleeding hand in his face. I kept it far enough away that even if he lunged, he wouldn't be able to get another bite in before I was able to retreat.
"You weren't listening!" He snapped back, his head lowering again and swaying side to side in that way I was beginning to recognize as a threat display.
"Listening to what?" I shouted back at him, pulling my hand back and prodding the wound with careful fingers. He hadn't really bitten me that hard, now that I had a chance to look at it. In fact, he barely even broke the surface of the skin. Most of the damage was probably caused from me jerking it away.
"That egg was a portkey! We don't know if it's still active," he hissed at me and I could see his frills slowly start to relax as I glanced back up at him. My cheeks flushed in embarrassment as I realized I hadn't really thought of that. What if it whisked me away again and this time I was alone, or worse…what if it splinched me like it did the Horntail?
"Oh," I mumbled, dropping my hands back into my lap as Snape finally stopped his growling. "Was it supposed to be a portkey?" I hadn't seen the other competitors once they had completed the task and I wondered if maybe mine had just malfunctioned. The withering glare Snape gave me had me guessing that no, the egg wasn't supposed to be.
"It was an illegal portkey," he stressed the word as if I was five and too dumb to understand.
That made sense, I suppose. Though how one went about getting an illegal portkey was beyond me. Maybe there was a shop down in Knockturn Alley you could order one from. Though, it was the champion egg, so the person who charmed it had to know what they were doing. But then, why did it splinch the Horntail? I've never heard of a portkey doing that before…so I asked.
"It wasn't meant for the dragon, Potter," Snape answered, still puffed up like an angry kitten. At my blank look he elaborated. "The portkey was probably made with the intention of transporting one girl…not in addition to twelve eggs, a full grown man, and a dragon. I'm surprised more of us didn't get ripped in half during transit."
Neither of us commented about the lump beneath the snow, but we both glanced at it. I remembered how he looked, lying there at Kings Cross Station, bleeding out on the pristine tiles. I never thought that maybe the damage wasn't done by a curse but by the portkey itself. Though I suppose he really wasn't missing anything…just ripped open.
The thought made me nauseas so I brought my attention back to the subject at hand. "Why bother attacking then, if there was a portkey to just whisk me away?"
His eyes slid to mine with a sharp glare, the kind he used in class when I was being especially dense. "You weren't exactly making a play for the golden egg, now were you?" I flushed at the question, remembering my earlier explanation on how I planned not to participate. "The assailants probably had to adjust their plans when you just decided to sit there while your time ran out. And so, here we are."
I glanced around, brushing my hair away from my face angrily. Of course even the attack was somehow my fault. "Who the fuck set a portkey to bring us here, anyways?" I waved my hands around to emphasize the vast empty wasteland. Snape hissed at me again and I knew he wanted to yell at me about my language, but I was just done. "Oh, get over it! What are you going to do, take points?"
"First, this location is most likely do to a malfunction. And secondly, when we get back, you get explain to all your idiotic Gryffindor friends why their points are in the negative," he growled at me, eyes narrowed.
"Oh, fuck you," I snapped as I brought my hands down to push myself standing. I grimaced as the wound met the rough stone and suddenly Snape was right in front of me, looking at the smear of blood my hand had left.
"Episkey," he said to me and my brows scrunched in confusion.
"Gesundheit?"
"No, you idiot," he snorted derisively, but I could feel a sliver of amusement deep down. "It's a minor healing spell. Eh-pis-kee," he enunciated slowly. "Use it!"
"Oh," I flushed again in embarrassment, grabbing my wand and then waving it over the wound while I repeated the word.
"No, no, not like that, what in Merlin's name…Potter?! Have you ever taken a single lesson in charms?" He snapped and hissed, his little wings waving as if he was trying to fly up to get a better view. There was a lot of low mumbling before he gave up and harrumphed loudly while making his way over to me. "Lift me up."
"What?" I blinked in surprise as I stared down at him.
"You heard me," Snape grumbled as his tail lashed behind him angrily. He looked like a startled cat and my amusement was chased away by the memory of his small teeth…his small, very sharp teeth.
I crouched back down hesitantly. "Is this a trick?"
"What? No!" he looked indignant at the words. "Do you want to know how to do the spell or not?"
I blinked at him, confused and a little off kilter. "You…want to teach me?"
"What kind of moronic question is that?" His words cut through me like they always did when he slung insults. "I'm a teacher, Potter! I teach!"
"Could've fooled me," I mumbled lowly, but I slid my wand back into the holster and bent down fully to lift him. Except once I was there, I didn't quite know what to do with my hands. And it seemed neither did Snape. We both just stood there looking at my splayed hands as we tried to figure out how this would work.
"Do you want me to…" I made an up gesture, imitating the hand position as if lifting a toddler. He growled harshly and I took that as hard no. "Alright then, you figure it out."
Snape glared at my hands for so long I thought they would catch fire just from his hostility. Finally, he moved, shuffling forward before one double clawed wing came up to grip the fabric of my sleeve as he pulled himself to stand on my palms. I stood back up, bringing him with me as he shuffled in my palms, trying to balance himself while being careful to avoid the many little cuts littering my hands.
Once I was fully upright, we both just stood there and stared as we tried to figure out how to go about positioning him so he could teach me the spell. "I think your shoulder would be best," Snape grunted out after a moment as if the words hurt to speak. This whole thing was probably mortifying for someone like him.
"Whatever you want," I mumbled back, rolling my eyes as I flicked my head to get my hair off my one shoulder and bringing my hands to it so he could position himself. It took a few minutes of maneuvering before Snape was satisfied with his perch while not impeding my movement. It felt not unlike when Hedwig and I would go on walks and she would rest on my shoulder, though I could tell he weighed even less.
"Okay…what now?" I asked, tilting my head to see him out of the corner of my eye. It really was a rather strange situation we found ourselves in.
"Your wand," Snape commented drolly. I felt myself flush as I snapped my wrist and my wand slapped into the palm of my hand. "Episkey is a level one healing spell for minor wounds such as cuts, bruises, broken fingers, toes, and noses," he began already in lecture mode as I stood there with the professor perched on my shoulder. And wasn't that an odd thought. "Its origin is Greek from the word episkevi which means repair. It is restricted by its ability to handle anything more than a minor wound, so don't bother trying it with anything serious. But any second year can cast it."
The 'so why can't you' wasn't said but heavily implied.
"Now," he continued, shifting about on my shoulder to lean more forward. His long tail wrapped around my bicep to stabilize his balance, but I hardly noticed. He really didn't weigh anything at all. "Bring your wand up into patreen and flick – what now?" He hissed at my confused grunt and bewildered expression.
I turned my head to be able to fully see him, while still being very careful to not actually touch him. It was hard to focus my eyes when he was that close. "Um…Patreen?"
"Are you fucking with me?" Snape's voice was low and calm, like he couldn't decide whether to be exasperated or infuriated so he settled himself on a simmer right between the two.
"Uh, no?" My cheeks were flushed again as bit my lip and turned away to look at anything else other than his patronizing glare, not that there was much to look at. My gaze settled on the little hole in the ground and I wished to retreat back inside and forget I had ever agreed to this lesson. I was also a little startled at the casual drop of the f-bomb, but I didn't want to bring it up with him already so close to snapping at me.
His head swayed from side to side as he tried to catch my eyes. "You're really not…are you? Do you ever do you summer homework? First years were required to write an entire essay on the seven starting positions of wand work!"
"Well how the hell am I supposed to know that?!" I threw my hands up in exasperation and felt a little satisfaction at dislodging him. And then I immediately felt guilty and helped to resettle him in his previous position. He had just been trying to help me.
"It was assigned!" Snape reiterated as his tail was wrapped once more around my bicep and I could feel the dual thumbs of his wing curl into my collar so he couldn't be knocked off balance so easily again.
"And tell me, how the hell am I supposed to do my summer schoolwork when Uncle Vernon always locks everything away?!" I yelled back, furious and embarrassed. Snape reared back and I bit my lip to fight off the sting of tears that I could feel welling up. "Just…just leave it okay? Assume I'm an idiot and explain it to me like I'm five!" I was completely mortified, and I turned my head so he couldn't see the tears threatening to spill.
There was a long silence from him and if I hadn't felt his slight weight on my shoulder, I would have thought myself alone. "I always thought the reason you refused to do the assigned theoretical potions work was to spite me." Snape admitted after a while, his voice soft like it had been last night.
"Well it wasn't!" I scrubbed angrily at my face, trying to play the movement as exasperation and ridding myself of the spilled tears before I looked back at him, but my sniffle gave me away. Thankfully he didn't say anything. In fact, I'm fairly certain he was just as uncomfortable as I was about the whole conversation.
"There's only so much I can do on the train, and your assignments take too long. You already hate me, so I focused on the assignments I could get done in time." I confessed, refusing to look at him. "This was just another one I couldn't get to."
"I don't hate you, Potter," Snape sighed the words heavily, like they were a physical weight he carried. "If you had explained your situation, something could have been worked out."
"Explain to who?" I threw my head back to stare at the clouded sky, ignoring Snape's automatic correction of 'whom'. I didn't feel like having a grammar lesson at the moment. "Who would've listened? You?" I asked incredulously, bowing my head once more and letting my hair shield my face from view.
"Did you try your head of house?" He asked, dancing around the fact that we both knew how he would have reacted if I had told him my situation back when second year started…after the disaster with the flying car and the Whomping Willow. No, he wouldn't have listed at all. "Or the Headmaster?"
I laughed hollowly, the sound far from joyous. "I tried speaking with McGonagall, she told me to talk to Dumbledore. But he didn't care." I remembered sitting in his office, mortified as he fingered through the assignments I had been unable to complete. When I tried to explain what happened he just smiled at me over his spectacles and told me I needed to try harder. Dumbledore wouldn't hear about anything to do with the Dursley's.
"Didn't –" Snape reared back, and even though I couldn't see it, I knew from the feel of his weight quickly shifting on my shoulder. "What do you mean he didn't care?"
"Did I stutter?" I replied sardonically.
There was an explosion of air from him and I could feel him trying to reign in his temper. Instead of answering, he moved to a different question. "Did your uncle do that every summer?" Snape asked carefully. "Lock your stuff away?"
"I don't want to talk about it anymore," I mumbled, sniffling again and hurriedly wiping my nose. I didn't want him to know that it wasn't just my stuff Uncle Vernon locked away. The memory of all those dead bolts and padlocks on my door made me shiver in fear. I still have nightmares of him locking me in my room and then forgetting about me. Starving behind that door as the summer months passed slowly and wasting away into nothing. Dying in that room with no one knowing.
Snape must have understood it was a touchy subject and for once he let it go instead of prying at it to get a response. "Hold loose, wrist facing in and slightly up," he began again, patiently explaining the patreen position to me. "Wand tip diagonally up at the one o'clock position. Bring it back just a bit and then slash quickly straight to the six o'clock position, turning your wrist in just slightly."
I followed his instructions carefully. Snape was surprisingly patient with me as he talked me through grip adjustments and wand placement. After a while he let me try on the smaller cuts along my lower legs and after a few tries I had the spell down. By noon all my wounds were sealed and even though I was tired from the magic use, I was grinning ear to ear in accomplishment.
Snape spent a solid hour going over the seven starting positions once all my scrapes and bruises were healed, the deep ache in my hip finally gone. He even taught me to cast with my left hand in order to heal the wounds on my dominant one. The backwards flick took some getting used to it, but once I had it figured out I realized there wasn't much difference in the casting at all. He only concluded the lesson once I was comfortable with each position with either hand.
When I lowered Snape back into the nest, he jumped half way himself and flapped his wings to flutter onto the stone. It wasn't graceful at all, and his landing was more of gentle crash, but it was a start. I could even sense a small sliver of smugness coming from Snape, but I didn't bring it to attention. This was too good a feeling to ruin by starting another fight.
My stomach growled loudly, the cramps startling the smile from my lips as I glanced at it. Snape was staring at it too as if it was a beast that would try and attack him. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten anything. I was too nervous to keep down more than toast on the first day of the competition and I had already expelled it during the battle.
Snape turned his head to the dead Horntail and I followed his gaze, groaning at the thought. "No," I denied, shaking my head quickly. "Absolutely not."
"We need to eat something," he turned back to me and I still shook my head at him. "Unless you brought something other than books in that bag of yours."
I groaned again because of course I didn't. "Can we just wait a while longer?" I asked, throwing myself onto the snow-covered ground next to the nest. "They should be here soon."
"Potter," Snape's tone was not quite chastising, but it was close. I shook my head again and crossed my arms on the lip of the stone and placed my head on them, letting my hair fall over my face to hide from him. "Harielle," he tried again, softer.
"Just a while longer," I begged, not lifting my head from the hollow of my arms. "Please, Snape…just a little while longer."
He sighed but conceded, thankfully. I could hear him getting comfortable near the eggs, probably settling within the heating rune to keep warm. Not that he needed it with how dragon biology worked, but I also knew that they liked the heat as well. The hotter the better.
I flicked my wrist and let my wand fall into my hand, raising it up to point at the sky. I sent up red sparks without even lifting my head, hearing it whizz and pop above us like fireworks before I tucked my arm back under.
I knew he thought it was futile, but Snape didn't say anything, instead he just laid himself down to take a nap. He also didn't say what we both were thinking.
What if nobody came?
