The Hatching
I slept entirely through the first egg hatching, and the second as well. In truth, I didn't awake until the third dragon was partly out of the shell. I probably would have slept through that as well if the chirping hadn't awoken me.
It was an odd sound – musical almost – but not birdlike in the least. It sounded more like a cat chittering through an electrostatic loud speaker, the kind my primary school would make announcements through every day.
At first, I couldn't place what had woken me. I lay there, blinking the sleep from my eyes as I looked around our little cave. My gaze tracked to Snape first, as it had every morning since that day he left me crying alone on the icy ground. I knew now that he would never leave me, but I still couldn't seem to stop that instinctual need to make certain he was still here.
He was right where he should be, curled in the small basin he'd dug for himself at the foot of my elevated bed slab carved into the icy wall. The gentle drip-drip was a background noise that had driven me nearly mad in the first weeks until something in my mind seemed to adjust and then suddenly it was a white noise, barely there and easily forgotten.
My eyes drew to the first source, the water trickling up from the center of the pool to keep it from overflowing. Little droplets catching the blue and white lights that floated gently in the air, dimmer now than they would be during the day – a simple adjustment to lumos that Snape had taught me – and then the water connected with the much smaller pool of hovering water with a gentle plop.
I had created it after the incident with the bathing pool. With the constant runoff from the cave containing the eggs, the pool had the tendency to overflow, a discovery made when I awoke lying in water an inch deep. That day I had tried to banish the extra water and instead I banished all the water by accident. I worked instead on carving a shelf out of the wall to sleep off the ground and ignored Snape's dark chuckling at my embarrassment.
It was not a mistake I made again.
The inside of the floating orb glowed a yellow so pale it was nearly white, another spell – this one of my own creation – suspending some of Snape's captured fire right in the middle. It burned hot enough to evaporate the water closest to the center to keep it from overfilling while also providing more light inside the otherwise dark cave. Snape had been flummoxed when he returned that night, staring at the water-sun in baffled amazement and then grumbling in annoyance when I explained how I had gone about combining spells to create it.
"That shouldn't have worked," he had hissed at me, tail swaying behind his growing but still small body. Earlier that day I had asked him to breathe flame for an experiment. He had humored me, but only because my request had amused him. "How did that work?"
I had laughed at him and shrugged in reply. He refused to talk to me for the rest of the night.
My eyes were drawn to the second source of the dripping, another suspended pool on the opposite side of the cave. This one was dripping down, collecting the water that still melted from the ceiling despite the multiple preservation and cooling runes I had carved into the ice. There was a smaller red flame inside, hot enough to keep the water near the center warm and pure, but not nearly so hot as to burn any of it off. I used it for drinking, pretending it was tea when I was feeling particularly homesick.
There was nothing unusual about either water orb, the constant drip nearly covered by the gentle trickling of the tiny river that cleanly divided the cave floor in half. The sounds had stopped waking me weeks ago.
I only saw the movement out of the corner of my eye. It came from the second smaller cave. I only saw it because I was lying down. The entryway had been expanded to allow me to crawl through so I could check the eggs before bed every night. But the cave itself was still quite small in order to contain as much heat as possible. It was just large enough for me to sit if I pressed my back to the wall, knees to the nest, and ducked my head into my chest.
Something small and brown was moving near the eggs.
At first I thought it to be some sort of small mammal that had snuck in while we were sleeping, searching for food. Terrified for the safety of the unhatched dragons, I threw off the robes that I used as a blanket and rushed over to the nest. Ignoring the burning cold on my bare feet and Snape's spluttering from beneath the cast aside fabric, I launched myself so quickly through the small hole that I slid nearly all the way inside and partially onto the nest.
I was just pulling my legs through, wand at the ready, before I realized there was no intruder, there was no threat at all. Instead, two pairs of bright yellow eyes gazed up at me, surrounded by broken egg shells and bits of red fabric that they had torn from my champion's coat.
"Oh my god!" I shouted, unable to contain myself. I was suddenly both extremely excited and absolutely terrified. Before now, the eggs were a thing in the background, always on the verge of hatching. But now there were actual living creatures sitting before me and I had never been so scared.
Give me a life threatening challenge any day, but being responsible for another's well being and I was suddenly and completely out of my depth.
"Snape," I called, my eyes still fastened upon the yellow ones. "Snape!" My head tilted towards my shoulder so I could shout behind me without taking my eyes off of the newly hatched dragons. "Severus!"
"Silence, girl!" Snape shouted back at me and I could hear his talons scraping across the ice floor. "Cease your yammering and tell me what is wrong."
What was wrong? Everything…absolutely everything was wrong. Oh Merlin, there was going to eleven baby dragons soon. Eleven! How was I supposed to take care of eleven? I could barely take care of myself – couldn't really, if Snape was the one being asked.
"They're hatching!" I shouted back, transfixed as an egg started rocking back and forth before toppling over.
I felt a tugging sensation near my hip as Snape joined me in the nesting cave and crawled up my side. There wasn't enough room for him to take his usual perch on my shoulder, so instead he clung to my side like a monkey...or a parasite.
They were larger than Snape, but still smaller than I remember Norbert – now Norberta – being. The one nearest to me was a light brown, like watered down tea, while the other, perhaps a little larger was a smoky grey.
Snape had just fully settled to hanging off my right side when the third egg cracked and a clawed foot broke through the crumbling shell.
"Oh my god!" I exclaimed again as a fourth egg started shifting in the nest. "Oh my god, they're hatching!"
"So you have said," Snape commented drolly. His clawed thumbs dug into the exposed flesh of my arm when I started to reach into the nest. "What do you think you are doing?"
"Uh…" I turned to look down at him, hand still extended and brows pinched together. "Helping?"
His purple and green eyes narrowed as his nostrils flared. "You cannot be serious," Snape hissed as I just blinked at him. "Everyone knows you never assist in a hatching!"
I blinked again, confusion and embarrassment coloring my face as my hand slowly lowered back into my lap. "Why not?" I felt like an idiot just voicing the question. The look Snape gave me only reinforced that feeling.
"Out of all the classes you enjoy rambling on about during all hours of the day, I figured you would know as it is covered in the third year's Care of Magical Creatures course," Snape couldn't have sounded more annoyed if he had tried.
After a long moment of my continued silence, he sighed and elaborated. "For any creature or being that lays eggs," his voice took that tone he used when he was going into a lecture, "you will get two types. Viable: eggs with a living embryo that will grow and hatch; and nonviable: eggs that have a nonliving embryo that will never grow or hatch. These nonviable eggs serve the purpose of protecting the viable ones from other creatures that would prey on the nest. They also supply nutrients and food for the newly hatched young."
I finally pulled my eyes away from the pale dragon that was now peaking out of the broken bits of shell to turn to my professor. His eyes were on the nest, but his gaze seemed far away as he began his lesson.
"But what does that have to do with helping them hatch?" I asked, fighting the urge to wither under his heated gaze as he glared at me for the interruption.
"Not all of the viable eggs will hatch either," he continued after he was done glaring at me. "There might be some that have some sort of deformity, sickness, or a weakness of some kind. Perhaps the genetics just didn't mix right. Whatever the reason, if the hatchling cannot emerge from the egg itself, it was never meant too."
I frowned at him as another tiny clawed foot burst out of the third egg. "Then why shouldn't I help. If I can give them the best chance possible –"
"But you wouldn't be," Snape interrupted me, voice harsh. "You would only be prolonging the inevitable. Instead of a quiet and peaceful death, you would be subjecting it nothing but a short life filled with struggle and pain."
His tone turned soft and I was reminded of what Death had told me, when it still wore my mother's face. "Their souls were collected the moment the first cracks appeared. It was kinder that way."
Kinder, it hadsaid, and now I was starting to see why. Perhaps Death was right, perhaps Snape was too. But I still felt conflicted. Snape seemed to understand, his small thumb claws pinching the back of my arm to grab my attention. "They will be hungry," he intoned gently, pinching again when my gaze returned to the nest. "Hari, they're going to need food."
I shifted uncertainly before nodding my head. Easing Snape down, I started to slide my legs back through to the main part of the cave before I stopped. "You'll stay here?" I asked him, sounding more uncertain than I intended. "I mean, in case something happens?"
"I'll stay," Snape replied. I could tell he was humoring me, but somehow it still helped. I slid the rest of the way out and went to the kitchen area, a shelf carved into the ice just like my bed, and started to pull down slabs of cooked meat. I flicked my wand to slice them into small chunks, another spell Snape had taught me that I somehow didn't know.
I was beginning to think that the gaps in my education were intentional. There was no way that the holes in my learning could mean anything else. Second years had better understanding of spell work, according to Snape at least.
I knew he was starting to get suspicious, every time something came up that he thought I should already know. His face became pinched, head tilting side to side and eyes narrowing. He had yet to say anything about it, probably putting together the bread crumbs that was my life and drawing his own conclusions. Snape would talk once he started to understand more of what was going on, ir if he had questions.
It was very Slytherin of him.
There were three fully hatched dragons and a fourth on the way when I returned with the chunks of meat. The pale one, smaller than the first two, was staring at Snape, head swaying from side to side. The first two were grumbling at each other, snapping playfully and flicking their tails.
The moment I settled back into the nesting cave and they smelled the meat, all three pairs of eyes turned to me. Their gazes were sharp and focused, much more focused than I had expected of creatures so newly hatched. Carefully, I reached forward, palm splayed flat with a small piece of cooked meat resting on the center. I kept my fingers together and tilted down to keep them away from curious teeth as I held it out to them.
I was still hesitant about the idea of essentially feeding their own mother to them, but I rationalized it away quickly. We simply had no other food, and I figured that since they never knew her, there would be no sentimental attachment to their dead brood mother.
Did dragons even do sentiment?
Snape watched me as I watched them. Yellow eyes were focused solely on the meat presented to them. The grey one moved first, snaking forward quickly and then falling back as the brown one snapped at it. They hissed at each other, before the grey one moved forward once more, this time much more hesitantly. The brown let it.
The tip of its grey nose, wet from the fluid inside the egg, tapped the side of my hand before darting away quickly even though I hadn't moved. It tried again, poking my hand with its soft nose and then watching me for a reaction. When none came, it finally darted forward and snatched the piece of meat so quickly that if I had blinked I would have missed it.
The grey one swallowed it quickly, refusing to share even though the brown had started to nuzzle against its cheek. I placed another chunk of cooked meat on my palm before they could start fighting.
I stayed with them all day and into most of the night as one egg and then another hatched, feeding them and removing the broken bits of shell from the red jacket that cushioned the nest. Snape retired before the last few eggs had hatched, grumbling something about idiot children…I wasn't really listening.
The last egg rocked and cracked and rocked some more, but didn't break. After long hours of waiting, it stilled and didn't move again.
I raised my hand, tentative and cautious, remembering what Snape had told me earlier, but he had been wrong about some of the eggs not being viable. Before the sun had started to dip below the horizon, all the dragon eggs had shown some sign of movement. Glancing over my shoulder, I peeked out of the nesting cave and took in the sight of my bed shelf.
The ruined scraps of dragon hide were roughly hemmed together through magic to cushion me when I slept. Professor Snape's teaching robe was bundled against the wall near the foot of the bed, but of Snape I could not see. He was more than likely sleeping. He did love his routine.
I took comfort that if I could not see him, then he could not see me. Reaching forward, I poked the egg with my finger, tapping my nail against it when I felt no reaction. There was a quiet squeak, and then silence once more.
I knew what Snape had meant, remembered what Death had said to me. It would be kinder. It would be…but it wasn't fair.
I reached forward again, this time with both hands, and pulled the mostly intact egg to my chest. My fingers pressed where the cracks had started to form and though I was trying to be careful, I still felt the hard shell of the egg start to give. It would be so easy to just press a little too hard and make a hole large enough for the hatchling inside to at least work with.
I wouldn't be helping the dragon hatch, just assisting it a little. Surely that would be alright.
I knew, even as glanced back to the bed once more, I knew what I was doing was going directly against what Snape had told me, and even still I couldn't just not do anything. I bent my index finger, pressing my nail against the cracked edge that had given under the pressure of my fingers and pushed. It punctured through the egg easily, easier than I had expected, and I felt the liquid inside gush out onto my hand and into my lap. It was surprisingly warm.
Hooking my finger in the hole, I pressed my fingertip to the inside of the shell and pulled until a larger sharp piece broke away. The hole was nearly two inches in length…I hoped it was enough.
The egg started to shift once more and I placed it back into the nest, pushing one of the dragons aside that had lain in the small gap left behind when I had first removed it. The sleeping hatchling hissed at me, but didn't bother to open its eyes as it resettled and fell back asleep. I doubt it would have been able to do much even fully awake, its stomach ballooned to a size nearly larger than the dragon itself.
Time passed slowly as the last egg shifted, rocked, cracked, and shifted some more. It would go still after a while, and if it wasn't for the nearly silent squeaking from inside I would have thought the dragon had passed. Near dawn, the shell finally separated and a dark red body tumbled out.
It was malformed and oddly shaped. I counted three wings and two heads. As it struggled to stand I realized that perhaps Snape was right. Maybe it would have been kinder to let it die in the shell. Sniffling, I wiped my cheeks of the salty wetness that started to trail from my eyes. I would need to wake Snape…I was ashamed to realize that I didn't know what to do.
The two heads pulled away from each other, and the chest moved oddly as a fourth wing appeared from underneath the misshapen hatchling. A foot caught one of the wings, curling and twitching as it pushed at the appendage. I reached down, intending to stop it from hurting itself and then recoiling when the pelvic area seemed to separate.
Horrified, I watched with wide eyes as the left and right sides began to fall away from each other and then I blinked in shock. I couldn't believe what it was I was seeing. Each side had two wings, two legs, and one head.
Twins, I was staring at twins.
A barking laugh was pulled from my chest in disbelief and I watched the two dark red dragons flinch at the sound. They were tiny, even smaller than Snape when he hatched. The two dragons were so small, in fact, that both of them could curl fully onto one of my palms without trouble.
I worried at their size, even as I got up to get them food. I had helped them from the egg, not fully…but enough to know that if Snape had seen, he would have heavily disapproved. Only time would tell which one of us was right.
