The Ice Shelf

"The she-bitch is back," Snape's dry comment drew my attention away from the seal hide I was curing. It was strung up between a rack of dragon bone and tied with strips of tendon I had turned into string and rope. I found that though it was easier to tan a hide with magic, it still took quite a lot time and a bit of patience.

I hummed in acknowledgement but didn't turn from my task as I finished the last layer of the spell. If I did it right, the hide would finish tanning by dawn…but only if I completed the spell properly.

Once I was watched the lattice work of woven runes settle over the splayed hide, I tucked my wand away and turned to him. He was basking in the sun near the ice hole I used for fishing, idly gnawing on a rib bone of the massive seal. There was very little meat left on it, and though Severus' jaws couldn't open far enough to fully bite it, he seemed determined to continue to try. He was probably trying to crack it open to get to the bone marrow, something the other dragons had no issue with; their maws were large enough to swallow a cat whole while his could maybe swallow a mouse…maybe, if he dislocated the lower mandible. He really was a tiny thing.

The twins shuffled closer to him, trying to get at the bone, but Snape's low rumbling had them flinching back. I still couldn't tell them apart, so had been calling them Castor and Pollux, the twin star constellation from the Greek myth Gemini. With their inquisitive nature and mischievous tendencies, they reminded me greatly of another pair of redheaded twins. And like the redheaded twins, which one was Castor, and which one was Pollux changed every day. I was seeing a lot of people I knew within the dragons personalities.

Except Loki, the evil bronze little shit.

"Honestly," I grumbled, following the white dragon's line of sight to the sparse cropping of large glaciers in the distance. A massive form loomed near the largest piece of protruding ice, and I wouldn't have been able to make out her form if Severus hadn't pointed her out first. "Do you have to call her the 'she-bitch'?"

"It is a term both correct in technicality and logistically," he replied. "The wolf is both a she and a bitch."

"It's derogatory," I grumbled, dipping my hands into the heated water bowl and rinsing the blood from my skin.

"It's the accurate definition of the term."

"Whatever," I mumbled, turning my attention the slumbering whelps. According to the dragon book, they were past the stage of hatchlings, now large enough to breathe their own fire and fly a short distance. "I'll leave some of the castoffs a little way from camp."

A light rumble emanated from Snape's chest as he tried to get his small teeth around the thick girth of the rib. "If you keep feeding her, she'll keep coming back."

I flicked water at him before I dried my hands, ignoring his annoyed hiss as I stood to face the wolf in the distance. I could make out her silhouette near the massive structures of ice. She looked thinner than the last time I saw her. "She must have given birth," I commented idly as I toed one of the twins away with my boot. The last thing I needed was to break up another fight. Severus may have been smaller, but he won every fight against the others he was involved in…even against the bronze.

"Stop feeding the strays," Snape reprimanded, but his heart wasn't in it as he returned his attention back to the rib. It splintered open with a loud crack and he warbled and chirruped in satisfaction as he slurped up the marrow.

"If I stopped feeding the strays, all of you would starve," I replied as one of the twins – maybe Castor – feinted to Snape's tail, drawing his attention long enough for the other to snatch one of the broken pieces he had been working on.

Severus shrieked in outrage as the twins retreated with their prize, but he didn't pursue. Instead he huddled over the larger piece he still had and started to work on it once more with his eyes fixed on the two red whelps. When Ophelia started to show interest as well, perking her black head up from the pile of sleeping whelps, Severus roared a threat and all interest by the others were lost.

In the distance, I saw the she-wolf fade back into the tundra, deterred by the angry shrieking. She would be back, when it was dark out and she could safely get close enough to steal the meat I left out for her. I made a mental note to leave an organ – maybe the liver or the spleen – with the pile of castoff meat and fat I had no use for. If she whelped pups, she could do with the extra nutrition.

Romulus and Solar started to quarrel with each other, but I left them to it, knowing that they would never harm the other. Those two were near inseparable and reminded me greatly of my favorite defense professor, Remus, and my dog-father. Once reunited, those two had been inseparable too.

Solar, the smoky grey, was almost as mischievous as the twins, though his particular brand of mayhem usually took a sharp turn towards bullish behavior. If it weren't for the light brown always at his side, I feared one of the other dragons would have tried to take a bite out of him.

It was no wonder those two reminded me of Remus and Sirius.

I always thought there was something deeper to their relationship than childhood friendship, but I never worked up the courage to ask. I wondered if I would ever have the chance now, but I banished the thought quickly. I didn't want to think about the life I would probably never return too.

I stopped keeping track of the days. The tally marks in the back of the grey book stopped getting longer, the sparks were no longer sent up into the sky, and I stopped counting every full moon only to realize it meant another month had passed.

Romulus and Freya, the light brown and light grey, were my favorites. I tried not to play favorites, but it was hard when they had to contend with the asshole bronze, I had started calling Satan, the Anti-Christ, Demon Dragon, and Little Shit. In the end, I called him Loki and tried not to show favorites instead.

It was difficult, naming them. Severus kept saying it was a waste of time and energy. I knew that they would leave me once they were old enough to take care of themselves, but the dragon book said that that could be at least two years from now – I didn't want to think of still being here in two years – and I couldn't keep calling them by their color. Snape disagreed, but he disagreed with nearly everything, so I ignored him.

They had very distinct personalities, and many of the dragons reminded me of someone back home. I toyed with the thought of calling them the names of those the reminded me of, but just thinking the names of my friends and family and recalling their faces was too difficult to bear.

The naming was delayed further as I was unable to figure out their gender. I still wasn't able to identify the sex of a dragon and it was only Severus who was able to tell. He could do it by just looking and I tried not to be annoyed. I had to try harder to hide my aggravation when he told me several of the dragons had a penchant for changing their genders.

I was learning a lot about dragons and the raising of said creatures. I had no idea that any beast or creature could change their base sex at will, and the bit a found in the book was a small blurb in a footnote regarding mating practices of different species. Severus had even attempted it when we found out, though he tried to hide the fact.

When I confronted him about it, giggling between words as he failed to become female, he had snapped and snarled in embarrassment while declaring he was experimenting for the purpose of furthering his knowledge. After I got over my amusement, and running through names I would call him if he did become female – I had settled on Hecate but didn't tell him that – we tested it further until we came to the conclusion that Snow Dragons were one of the exceptions.

The small reference in the footnote declared that Dracorexidae, the six limbed dragons, were also incapable of gender transmogrification. It was unknown if the wingless Asian dragons or sea dragons were also able to change their gender at will. It appeared that having the ability to change gender at will was singular to the Wyvernidae family – excluding the Arctic Snowflake and Himalayan Cloudjumper, who were also the only two dragon sub-species that gave live birth.

Snape was still grumbling in discontent at the dragon whelps that he had cowed with his roar as I seated myself next to him. I reached out with sure fingers and drew them from his nose, between his horns, and down the ridge of his spine, flattening the erect fins. His grumble turned more into a warble as I repeated the motion and his eye lids became heavy in relaxation.

His hide was warm beneath my fingertips, scales soft and pliable as I stroked down to his hips. He relaxed more with each pass of my fingers until Severus finally untucked from his aggressive posturing and let his hind legs flop to the side as he fully lay back into the snow. The rib, larger than he was long, was held tightly in his thumb claws as his teeth scraped along the bone.

My nails caught on the branched horns, and he shook his head in annoyance before I continued down his neck and along his back. Recently, the two largest horns along his skull split near the end and I had worried about it for days as he confessed to feeling a tenderness in the area.

When I first checked out 'Dangerous Dragons: A Directory for the Determined and Disciplined by Dalton Douglas' from the library, I had been intimidated by the thickness of the tome. Now I was annoyed that it hadn't been thicker. The section on Snow Dragons didn't even warrant a chapter and consisted of only two pages, half of which was illustrations.

I had nearly given up finding an answer within the tome before I realized it lay within the illustration itself. Of all the dragon species in the book, only the Arctic Snowflake displayed what appeared to be antler styled horns. When I showed the picture to Severus and said he must have antlers, he went into a very detailed lecture on the difference between antlers and horns. As he was born with them and doubted that they would molt off and regrow, he declared them pronged horns instead. And as a potions master, apparently there was a major difference.

They still looked like antlers to me, but I didn't comment on it further. Severus could and would argue over almost anything. Sometimes it was better to just let him think he won by saying nothing.

Once his grumbling fully stopped, I leaned over and pulled the fishing line out of the hole in the ice and sighed in disappointment when there was no fish at the end. We weren't hurting for food; I had pulled two full grown seals – twice as large as myself – from the ice shelf with my magic just the other day, but I knew we needed to set up a steady food supply with how quickly the dragons were growing.

If I could get at least a dozen or so fish a day, and supplement with seals or something, we would be able to live comfortably.

"We're going to have to go down to the waterline and try and set up a few lines down there or something," I sighed in annoyance as I flopped backwards onto the ground. I didn't want to dig anymore holes near camp and risk destabilizing the ice we were resting on, and the one hole was clearly not enough.

Now that I wasn't actively casting magic, I was starting to get cold again and I waved my hand to cast a heating charm over myself. Once I had mastered a simple spell, casting with a wand was unnecessary. I saw Snape's side eye look whenever I did so, but he hadn't brought it up yet and I was hesitant to do so. Knowing him, it would be proceeded by an hour-long lecture if I was unlucky, something I was actively trying to avoid. And I thought his detentions were bad.

Huffing a sigh, I relaxed back into the snow and I tilting my head to the side to take in my tent. It was made out of fur and hide from the wolves, seals, and one small whale we caught nearly a moon ago. It took some extra lessons from Snape, but I had expansion, duplication, and extension charms down to an art form now. I had even been able to expand Hermione's messenger bag enough that it could now store a near infinite number of things. My only main issue with it was that I had to remember what I put in it, or else I couldn't summon it back out.

I'm quite certain I've put things in there that will be lost for eternity simply because I forgot about it.

"What's wrong with your line right here?" He asked, before hissing in annoyance as I reached over and tugged his tail. "Cease that immediately."

I chuckled softly, rolling onto my side and humming in contentment as a warm body of heat settled behind me. A flash of blue confirmed that Neve had decided to join me away from the group. They had been having difficulty with a few of the other dragons, Ophelia especially – who reminded me oddly of Draco with her standoffish behavior and upturned snout like she was constantly smelling something bad.

Neve, with their gentle nature and desire to stay out of conflict even if meant being pushed aside reminded me of Neville. They were also one of the few that was constantly swapping genders based upon who they were with and what action they were partaking in at given moment. Severus got annoyed informing me of when Neve switched as they did it multiple times within a day, so he stopped doing so altogether.

A wing settled upon my hip and the moment I saw Severus start to rise, dorsal fins extending with a deep rumble in his chest, I reached out and pulled the struggling white dragon to my chest. He hissed and grumbled but settled down after a moment when I refused to release him.

"We should go tomorrow, it'll take a half day at least to travel there and back," I replied, settling him more firmly against me, tucking his smaller form beneath my chin and relaxing into the frozen ground with each second that passed.

The heat he gave off was glorious, and the gentle push pull of his breath nearly lulled me to sleep. With each inhale, his delicate ribs would expand against the palm of my hand and I would curl my fingers to tickle his chest and belly. He would never admit it and would deny it entirely if I brought it up, but I knew he loved to be cuddled and petted.

The poor dungeon bat…he was probably more touch starved than I was. In the years that I had known him, I don't think I had ever seen Snape engage in any physical contact with anyone aside from the few times he would grab a student to forcefully guide them, and the few times he had grabbed me in a fit of rage. He never hurt me, he never hurt anyone, but his physical interactions with others was always coming from a place of hostility. I wondered when the last time he had touched or been touched with any kind of affection.

I got the distinct impression from his comments and that tiny little spark in my chest whenever he was feeling something deeply – and he did, a surprising amount and quite frequently – that his childhood had possibly been worse than mine. And his Hogwarts years had probably not been much better. Despite what he thought, I could take a hint from the many side comments he made about my father and his friends.

When we got home – if we got home – I was going to have some words with Sirius and Remus.

But the comfort went both ways. Like him, before I went to Hogwarts, I hadn't had many good personal interactions. It took a long time to realize that Hermione's physical attentions on fixing my hair were a sign of fondness and affection, and not anything like Aunt Petunia's attempt to tame my hair with harsh fingers and darkly laced words.

Hermione had been patient with me, tucking my hair behind my ears or braiding it up when it got in the way, and one day I forgot that fingers reaching for the loose strands could mean pain and instead I started to lean into it. She had hummed and smiled as she leaned over my shoulder to check my homework but didn't comment. Just thinking about everything she did for me brought tears to my eyes.

Like my best friend, I displayed a level of patience I didn't know I had. It started with small touches, tapping and tugging playfully to get Severus used to my presence. Then when he finally stopped resisting my attentions, I started to linger with each touch. Now I could pull him to my chest, hug him close, or yank on his tail in good fun without him doing more than hissing in annoyance. The accomplishment made something warm bloom in my chest and a smile tug at my lips.

In the end, we had a silent agreement. Snape would let me swaddle, cuddle, pet, and generally be a nuisance, but only if I never ever mentioned his feeble and barely existent attempts at resisting.

"Must I repeat myself?" Was his only reply.

"This line isn't catching enough fish," I answered, rolling back onto my back and taking him with me. Neve settled closer, resting their head on my shoulder, and then retreating to rest it on my leg instead when Snape bared his sharp little teeth at them.

The ice shelf we settled our camp upon was still two miles away from the water. The broken ice chunks and shifting glaciers too dangerous to settle any closer. I missed the ice cave, being able to bury ourselves safely beneath the ice and snow. The tent felt too exposed, too open, but even with nearly fifteen feet of ice between us and the water, I dare not dig into it. I had watched from the safety of the shelf as ice cracked in huge chunks and crashed against others with each push of the waves.

Apparently being buried alive and crushed were phobias of mine. The deep endless abyss was another.

I tried going for a swim when we first dug a hole in the ice for fishing. I cast a bubble head charm, weaved heating runes around myself, ignored Snape's derisive and dubious remarks for my safety, and dived into the water. I was looking for kelp, or seaweed, or anything other than meat to eat. My diet had never been so protein based before and I knew my digestion would appreciate something else.

I had felt the cold even through the heating runes, and the darkness of the water seemed to stretch on forever. I panicked nearly immediately. Fear struck me quickly and almost lethally as I turned to swim back through the hole. The panic that followed as I hit ice again and again was nearly my undoing.

Severus was the one that saved me. He must have felt my terror as he dived into the water after me and led me to the hole. Once I was back on the surface, I took great gasping breaths, though I was never without the whole time I was beneath.

I haven't been back in the water since. I bathe in a shallow pool that goes no deeper than my knees a dozen yards or so from camp. Severus had to reheat the water every time we were going to use it as it would refreeze soon after it was left unattended. Many of the dragons would join me, begging for attention and scratches on their itchy hides that were shedding and molting from their growth. It was the one time that Snape couldn't reprimand them for their affection as he was always absent the moment I started to disrobe.

It was comical almost. I had stopped caring about my modesty months ago, and I knew he had seen me in various states of undress since we first came here. I also knew that if we ever returned to Hogwarts and Dumbledore somehow was able to fix this colossal fuckup, that I would never be able to look at my potions professor again without being completely mortified.

But that was a problem for a long distant future…a future that may never come.

The dragon whelps didn't share my fear of the deep abyss that was lying beneath the ice. Selene, the pale silver that was middling in size to her siblings, loved the water, and could hold her breath for nearly an hour. I feared she would get lost and become trapped like I almost had, bashing at the ice and drowning in the cold dark abyss.

In the end I shrunk the hole to make the circumference too small for her to squeeze through in order to deter her from swimming. It worked for the camp, but whenever I went down to the waterline, there was no stopping her from diving into the waves.

She was a cheerful little thing. Selene always had an upbeat little chirp for me every morning and warbled a little tone when it was time for bed. She seemed to get along with all of her siblings, even the little shit Loki, and her blue speckled eyes and faraway gaze made me miss Luna every time she cuddled with me.

Not many of the dragons were physically affectionate with me. Those that were, did so cautiously as Severus seemed to have a possessive streak larger than his little body could contain. I tried not to think about it too hard, and tried harder not to reprimand him when his possessiveness became nearly hostile. Snape was always ashamed and humiliated afterwards, and he refused to talk to me for days when I had questioned him about it once.

"Food?" Neve asked as I dropped the line back into the water and sat up, cradling Severus' small form like a baby so as not to drop him.

That was another thing the book on dragons didn't cover. What exactly did one do when they discovered dragons could speak? Though, I suppose I was using the term lightly. They warbled and chirruped, chittered, rumbled, clicked, and made a variety of other noises in order to communicate. Snape said they were speaking, and if I listened hard enough – if they spoke slowly enough – I could pick out a few words here and there. It was almost like parseltongue, but not.

I knew that my ability to understand the dragons came from the soul shard that I held. Severus came to the same conclusion, but he refused to speak of it again after he made his first observation. Perhaps my ability to speak to snakes had come from Voldemort. I asked Snape about it once, but when he reacted with a threat display and hostile discomfort at the name, I never asked – or spoke his name – again.

They didn't speak as Snape did, but most of the time I was able to at least get the gist of what they were trying to convey.

"No," I replied, tapping Neve gently on the nose as they lifted their head. "No food. You already ate. You're getting too fat."

Neve clicked a question I couldn't understand and Severus answered back before Neve blinked and resettled themselves in my lap. I raised an eyebrow, but my once professor only rolled his eyes and pulled himself up to perch upon my shoulders.

"Food?" Roan asked, waddling closer. His belly was ballooned around his last meal and it dragged on the ground with each step.

"No," I grumbled, balling snow up in my fist and tossing it at him. It broke apart before it reached the pale gold dragon, but Roan snorted and flinched back as if struck. "Oh, stop being dramatic, you're not hurt and you're not hungry. Go back to sleep."

"Sleep," Guinevere replied. She followed the word with some grumblings and a hiss that I could only parse the basic understanding of general annoyance, but Roan listened to the bright red dragon and settled back down into the snow.

Ignoring Neve's grumbling of irritation as I pushed their head from my lap, I stood and began to settle camp down for the night. I extinguished the fire, set up the wards to repel anything not already within, activated the perimeter alarm, and set up a secondary repelling ward around the hanging skin to keep the whelps away from it while it cured, and began guiding the lethargic dragons to their beds.

After I herded the last dragon – excluding Loki who insisted on doing things in his own time and would probably wander into the tent in the early hours – I gathered the leftover scraps, a liver, and what was left of a spleen. I floated them out a ways from camp, passed the wards, and ignored Snape's disapproving glare as I came back.

Everything needed to eat, and a lone mother wolf wouldn't be able to hunt much. The dragons were now too big and too dangerous to be prey, and I hoped that if I kept the she-wolf fed, she would leave us be. I also didn't like the thought of her starving and her pups dying either, but that was not the argument I presented to Snape whenever he questioned my reasoning. Having a heart was not a good excuse for anything, according to the dungeon bat of Hogwarts.

"Shut it," I mumbled as I climbed into my cot and pulled the wolf fur up to my ears even though he hadn't said anything. His expression said enough. Severus only huffed a smoke ring at me and settled on my pillow.

The dragon whelps were too large to sleep with me on my small bed, but a few still tried. The dark brown dragon, Hera, would sometimes score the prime position across my legs, the twins would try for my back and stomach, but Snape never allowed it for long. Every night I fell asleep with dragons in my bed, but I only woke with one.

The next morning was no different, though Guinevere did still have her head propped upon the bed. Her bright red scales were dotted with subtle fragments of pale gold and I reached out a finger to trail along the patterning. They were nearly metallic and seemed to reflect the light with each breath she took. She blinked her bright orange eyes open and licked her muzzle as she chirruped her morning greeting.

I tried to return the sound, but my vocal cords weren't able to quite replicate it. Her eyes squinted and a warbling click echoed from her throat. I got the distinct impression she was laughing at me.

Getting the group ready for travel was a bit like trying to get toddlers ready for school. First I had to feed them, and then I had to separate them as Loki and Ophelia always tried to bully in for seconds by stealing someone else's. Roan ate the fastest, going in for another bite before he even swallowed the first. The food would pouch into his cheeks and gave him the distinct resemblance of a squirrel. He also tried to go for seconds, but instead of bullying his siblings, he chose to beg extras from me.

I usually gave in, but only when Snape wasn't looking. I knew he knew, but as long as he didn't see, I had plausible deniability.

Hera, Guinevere, Selene, and Neve would usually eat together as to deter their other siblings from theft. The twins, Castor and Pollux, would both try to discreetly steal from any of the inattentive – with a surprising amount of success – while Freya would stand guard and stop any she saw who would try to bully, steal, or beg. As she was the largest of her siblings, she was able to enforce this with quite a bit of success…but only if she saw it first. She was like a large grey gargoyle, standing sentinel over those still eating and keeping the peace through sheer will and fear.

Once fed, most wanted to have their daily scrub with the brush I had made out of the whale's mouth bristles. It was firm enough to scrape the molting scales and hide off while it also had enough give to not be painful. Severus had once likened it to an amazing scratching sensation. He would arch his back and make a pulsating rumbling noise that sounded quite like a purr when I used the brush on him. Snape vehemently refused to believe he did any such thing and denied it at every opportunity.

Occasionally, even Loki found himself amiable to a quick scrub. Sometimes, he was even polite about it, and didn't try to bite me at all.

Once the scrubbing was completed and all those that wished for a quick scratch down had received one, then I had to pack. After I packed, and rechecked that I had everything I thought I packed, did we finally leave. The struggle was real, and looking after so many young dragons left me scatterbrained on the best of days. I was constantly forgetting things, and the last time I had headed down to the water line, I had forgotten the sled…it had made transporting the seals a more difficult task and I had to learn how to float two large and heavy objects at the same time.

Snape had been amused…I had not.

I would float the sled behind me, the dragon whelps now too large to ride unless done one at a time – something that they fought over constantly and delayed us further – and we would make the two mile trek to the sea. The closer we got, the thinner the ice became. The thinner the ice, the more it started to shift and the slower I walked to ensure that I didn't slip beneath to drown in the dark abyss below.

We arrived just after midday, having to stop twice to break up a fight between the dragons. The first was between Ophelia and the twins over the sled. The second between Loki and Roan. I didn't see what was the cause of the fight, but Severus ended it with a fierce little shriek and a bloom of purple flame.

They hissed and grumbled for the rest of the trip, but they didn't reengage and the other dragons kept to themselves. Freya walked in the middle of the group, occasionally taking flight to join those in the air, and her presence deterred the others from causing mischief.

There was a large shape near the broken ice, and I stared at it quizzically as we got closer. Snape tilted his head this way and that, peering through one eye and then the other, before he hummed in surprise.

"What is it?" I asked as he shuffled across my shoulders to lay around the back of my neck.

"It looks like a whale," he replied as Loki and Ophelia took flight and flew ahead. I rolled my eyes at them, but didn't try to call them back. It wasn't like they would listen to me anyways.

"Are you sure? It looks quite large."

"Whales are large," Severus huffed and I bit my lip to fight back my automatic reply to his snark. I wasn't certain if it would be something rude, or something inappropriate. Probably a mix a both. It was better if I didn't say anything at all.

We stopped before the ice started to crack and break from the moving water, and I set up a temporary camp. If it was a whale, harvesting it would take some time and we would probably have to spend the night out on the thin ice. I wasn't comfortable doing so, but it was the practical thing to do so I ground my teeth together and endured it.

The whale was larger than I even thought possible. What had washed up on the ice shelf was at least five times larger than the horntail had been…and what was left of it was probably only half. The entire lower part was missing…and it looked like whatever had killed it had done so with one clean bite.

"What could possibly have a bite radius that big?" I questioned softly as I made a full loop around the dead beast. "It has to be larger than the giant squid!"

"Much larger," Severus replied, flapping his wings and pushing my hair into my open mouth as he launched himself from my shoulder to get an aerial view.

I sent him a side glare as I pulled my hair back and tied it into a low braid. "What could be that large? A shark?"

He landed upon the upturned fin and tilted his head. "Have you ever known a shark to be that large?"

"Have you ever known a wolf to be as large as the ones we killed?" I responded. This was something I was used to, the back and forth between Severus and I, and I was preparing my next witty remark when Snape spoke next.

"We shouldn't linger," he said instead of engaging in our usual pattern.

I frowned at him as he fluttered down to resettle upon my shoulders. It would take us two days at least to harvest all that we could use, and I told him as much.

"Best get started," he replied, tilting his head to watch as Loki ripped off a large chunk from the open wound, set it aflame, and devoured it. "This is a recent kill, I don't want to be here if whatever killed it comes back."

I set my hand against the thick skin of the whale, covering my nose at the heavy smell of fish. The scent of rot hadn't settled over it yet, and the gaping open wound at the bottom half was still leaking blood sluggishly. He was right. The whale had died not that long ago. Decomposition was slower to come in the cold, but it always came. This corpse hadn't started to decay at all. It was killed no more than a day ago, if not hours.

I worked well after sundown, using magic to peel the skin back as whole as I could keep it. I hadn't even removed the remaining organs or separated the meat from bones before I finally had to call it a day.

The dragons settled around the tiny fire I had floating in the air, hot enough to give off heat but far away enough from the ground to not degrade the ice any further. I laid out some seal hide to sleep on, making room and begrudgingly accepted being crowded as the dragons joined me on the furred ground, before I pulled the wolf fur over myself. I had expanded the fur blanket, and only grumbled lowly when I felt drafts of cold air as the dragon whelps nosed their way underneath.

Once they had all settled down, I reached into the bag I had been using as a pillow and pulled out the little grey book. Severus hissed when he saw it, dorsal and tail fins fluttering.

"You can't be serious," he growled, purple and green eyes glowing in the dark.

"Would you rather I read 'Standard Book of Spells, Grade Four' or maybe 'Ancient Runes Made Easy' again…for the hundredth time?" I replied dryly as I propped myself up and opened it to the first page.

"What about 'Magic Drafts and Potions'?" He requested and I fought hard not to roll my eyes and sigh. Of course, I should have expected it. Snape always requested the potions book.

"Not again, we read that just the other night."

"Anything is better than that," he hissed, glaring at the book as if he could set it on fire if he stared at it hard enough.

"You haven't even read it yet," I countered, thumbing past the forward and index until I got to the first chapter. "It's the only book I haven't read recently, and we could all use something new."

"All?" Severus questioned, head rearing back and nearly falling from the book bag that he had been climbing up. I slid my eyes over to him, fighting the smile that was pulling at my lips I realized he had intended to read over my shoulder. Hypocrite. "You intend to read this out loud?!"

"Of course," I failed to keep the amusement out of my voice as I shuffled further down on the furs and flipped my hair off my neck and over the bag. "Like I said, we could all do with something new."

"They are children!" He huffed, puffing up his tiny chest and extending his fins to make him appear larger. He went from the size of a cat to the size of a slightly larger cat…which was to say he didn't appear threatening at all. "Just because you cannot understand them doesn't mean they can't understand you."

"Look, it's story time, if you have a problem with what I am reading, then go somewhere else," as I predicted, he didn't move. Despite his words and hostility, he had been settling himself down to rest the entire time he had been arguing with me. I hummed in satisfaction as he glared at me and I flicked a fairy light above my head so I could read.

"Chapter One: The Market. Jennifer was not the adventurous sort. She was content in her little life in the small hamlet of Westshire, helping her father on the farm and taking care of her siblings after their mother had passed suddenly during the winter. But that all changed one sunny day when she took the sheep to market…"

I slept well that night, tired from the use of magic and warm from the many dragons that slept with me…and the several that chose to sleep on me. Severus hadn't woken happy – he rarely did if ever – and he had sprung up with an angry hiss as he chased one twin and then the other away as they tried to curl up against my chest where he had been laying.

Freya broke up the fight, snarling at the twins, and then Severus himself when he refused to settle. The three rows of dorsal fins stood erect as he spun around and bared sharp teeth at her, but I stepped in and scooped him up before he could do something foolish like take on a dragon nearly three times his size. He grumbled and complained, insulted me and my parentage several times, but he let himself be carried away.

The dragons had gotten bored of the whale carcass well before high noon and instead they played upon the shifting chunks of ice, chasing Selene as she dived deep under the ocean waves and shrieking in outrage as she burst from below to surprise them. The whale was still leaking blood sluggishly back into the water as I severed off large sections of meat to add it to the sled. The handy expansion charm making it appear as if I only had a small load packed upon it.

"We'll have to stay another night," I sighed in annoyance as Severus turned his gaze from the frolicking dragons. "I barely got started on the bones."

"Do we need the bones?" He asked from his perch upon the sled. "We already have an excess of dragon, seal, and wolf bones. What could we possibly use the whale bone for?"

"I don't know," I grumbled, reaching my arms up to stretch out my spine. "Maybe for something later in the future? They're certainly large enough to frame a house. Do you think we should build a house? The tent isn't going to last forever."

"You're becoming a hoarder," he replied with a soft rumble, yawning widely and displaying his tiny but incredibly sharp teeth. He was trying to change the topic. We were both uncomfortable with the idea of settling down permanently. We knew that rescue wasn't coming, and had accepted it long ago, but the thought of actually making a life here…that was something else entirely. It made it seem too real. "We can't possibly use all this. Just leave it for the scavengers."

"Ugh, fine. Let's get back. If we leave now, we could pack up and make it back to camp before sundown. We might even have the time for a chapter or two before bed," I finally consented, masking my smile by turning my head away at Snape's snort of disgust. He could put up whatever front he wanted, Hera and Neve weren't the only dragons who were disappointed when I stopped after chapter three. Oh, he tried to hide it, but I saw his false start of protest when I had closed the book last night.

I was still smiling and fighting the urge to laugh as I brought my focus to the dragons who were darting in and out of the waves. I raised my hands to cup them around my mouth and shouted at them. "Come on! We're leaving!"

Neve responded first, their blue hide nearly invisible in the water until they took flight. They flew over with strong and sure strokes of their wings, Guinevere and Hera following close behind. It took nearly an hour to get the others together, Selene the last to be coaxed out of the water.

I spared a glance at what remained of the whale carcass, stripped of skin and meat, and stroking cold fingers down the neck one of twins. I still couldn't tell which one, but I believe this one might have been Pollux. The other was perched on the massive rib bones that stood taller than a two-story house.

"Let's go!" I called out to him and smiled as he flapped his wings and glided down onto the ice near the massive skull.

I turned away, flicking my wand to get the sled to follow as I started on my way back to camp. We probably wouldn't make it back before dark with all the delays that the dragons caused, but at least it shouldn't be too late by the time we got there.

Severus shrieked and spread his wings high as Ophelia tried to bully him off the sled and I shooed the black dragon away from him before he decided to settle the conflict with fire, of which his burned drastically hotter than any other. A loud crack drew my attention before I could get her fully off the sled and I turned just in time to see the ice explode apart and something large burst from underneath, massive jaws closing around the trailing twin and dragging him beneath the waves.