A/N: Many thanks to brownlark42 for beta'ing this story!

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Chapter 3

September 2006

"Hey, Charlie! Got an assignment for you," Charlie Weasley's boss, Miles Ironwood, called him over. Charlie Weasley was finished for the day at the reserve and had been intending on having a hot shower and a cold drink. Not necessarily in that order. It had been a rough day, one in which he'd almost been injured very badly. Luckily he was able to dodge out of the way at the last moment, only getting singed a bit on one side.

"Yeah, boss?" he asked and rubbed the back of his neck. He was almost dead on his feet, but he was a solid worker and known for not turning down assignments.

"We've heard the complaint a few times," Miles began, handing Charlie a small stack of parchment, "but it wasn't until the Romanian Ministry contacted us that I figured it was time to take it seriously."

"What complaint is that?" Charlie looked through the parchment, quickly reading the Romanian words without issue and furrowing his brow. "A cooking school?"

"Yeah, that was my thought too," his boss said. "No dragon is hoarding books from a cooking school, it's laughable. But apparently, a few years ago there was a credible sighting in the area. Even destroyed part of the school. The Ministry covered it up, but didn't contact us as they assumed the dragon had moved on."

"Wait, that was back in 1999? There's been a dragon hanging around there for seven years?" Charlie looked back through the correspondence tallying up the dates.

Miles shrugged. "That's just it, we don't know for sure. After that first time, the only sightings have been by Muggles at night. So the Ministry has called them hoaxes. But they got this new department head who has decided that years of reports is enough to look into."

"Wait, are they asking if any of our dragons have a hoard of books?" he waved the most recent letter.

Miles chuckled. "Yeah, they are. Funny, isn't it? Damned bureaucrats wouldn't know the front from the arse end of a dragon. As if a dragon hoards anything that isn't shiny."

"And the Ministry knows our dragons don't have hoards, right?" Charlie asked, peering up at his boss. What a mess that would be, a dragon sanctuary, each one of them with a hoard. No, they kept their dragons busy, well-fed, and happy enough that they didn't feel the need to collect anything. Hoards were exclusively for wild dragons, and there weren't that many wild dragons left.

"It was really this one that caught my eye," Miles said, digging through his desk for one last piece of parchment. Charlie took it and read it over.

"A university library? Are they sure it's a dragon?" he asked, thoroughly confused.

"The scorch marks on the side of the building are in a distinct pattern that only dragons make. The fire burned hot and hard enough to melt the stone entirely. Normal fires aren't that hot, but of course you know that." Charlie nodded along.

"Alright, I'll look into it. Where exactly is all of this happening?"

The first thing he did the following morning was Apparate to Scoala Culinara Balan and the village where it all began. Peering at the small valley ringed by mountains, Charlie nodded. It was remote enough that he could see a dragon settling nearby. The mountains in this part of Romania were riddled with caves, the perfect spot for a dragon. It would take him ages to hike the entire area to find what he was looking for, but Charlie was a patient man.

He wandered through the town first, looking for signs that a dragon had been nearby. He didn't find any until he circled the backside of the cooking school. There, clear as day, was a dragon footprint behind the treeline. Charlie had to clear away leaves and other forest debris to get a good look at the old footprint. It was half on stone, half on the dirt, so it was hard to tell what kind of dragon it belonged to.

It at least gave him a starting point for his hunt. He looked through the village once more, trying to determine if there were any other signs, but he didn't find any. Not even at the small satellite university on the far side of the village, which according to their correspondence was most recently hit by the dragon who hoarded books. The idea still made him chuckle every time. He didn't think that the dragon was actually hoarding books, but perhaps it was using them as fuel of some kind? Dragons were smart. He knew that from his decades of working with them.

It was mid-afternoon before he was ready to actually begin looking in the mountains. The footprint could be a red-herring, but it was the only lead he had. Charlie picked a path through the undergrowth and started heading up. Some wizards chose to ride brooms for aerial surveys, but he found ground work to be safer when dealing with—literally flighty—wild dragons. Plus, he was hoping to find the cave first. He had developed his own methodology for searching mountain forests, involving defined areas that were bounded by trails and rivers. He covered miles, but ended the day having found nothing. He Apparated back to the village and the room he had booked there. Finding the footprint had made him hopeful, but a day of fruitless searching disappointed him.

He didn't mind the assignment, but he really would prefer to be working with dragons instead of just searching for one that may or may not be here.

Three months passed and Charlie was ready to tear his hair out. It had never taken him this long to track down a dragon. The most difficult assignment he'd ever been on was when a dragon poacher had hatched three eggs, each a different species, but lost control of the dragons as juveniles. They had escaped into the Mongolian wilderness, fleeing in opposite directions, and Charlie had found them all within six weeks. He was the best at what he did.

In the months he had been in the village, the dragon had hit the university twice and the cooking school once more. The villagers were starting to talk about cancelling the winter fair out of fear that the bandit would expand its interest beyond books. Charlie had not seen hide or hair of the damned thing, nor had he found another track. He was starting to think it might be years old at this point, but he knew the dragon was nearby. He just had to find it.

Each day he went out, starting where he had left off and following trails, climbing cliff faces, scaling up and down the mountains that circled the village. He searched areas he had searched before. He occasionally found damage in the forest—torn up trees or overturned rocks—but nothing with the characteristic dragon char, scales, or footprints. He never found a trace of the damned dragon itself. Maybe the dragon didn't live nearby? Maybe it was in a completely different mountain range and just flying in for a literary vacation?

The thought had occurred to him more than once, but that's not really how dragons worked. They generally stuck to an area they felt safe in. This dragon had been in the area for at least seven years, and Charlie was guessing that it felt very safe, very comfortable here. So why couldn't he find it?

He tried not to let his frustration bleed through as he was searching, but sometimes it boiled up and needed release. It didn't help that as far as he was aware, there weren't any other wizards in the village. Charlie didn't have a problem with Muggles, but sometimes just talking over a problem would help him solve it and he had nobody to help. He had made it back to the reserve last month to talk things over with Miles again, but with the attacks still happening, there was no reason to call off the search.

On a whim, he decided to go back to that original footprint. There was a deep December chill in the air and there was snow on the ground. The snow was patchy in the village but could easily be up to a meter or more upslope. It was probably going to take snowshoes or cross country skis, but Charlie was starting to feel a little desperate. He'd never failed an assignment like this before and was unwilling to fail now. He looked straight up from where the footprint was, squinting against the glittering light that reflected off the snow. When the sun went behind a cloud, he was sure he saw something in the mountain above him. There wasn't a trail that led in that direction, and he might have to break out the climbing gear, ice picks, and crampons. But he had a hunch and he was going to follow it.

It took all of the morning and most of the afternoon, but finally he reached the anomaly in the mountainside. He was sweaty and getting chilled, but breathed a sigh of satisfaction. He was right. It was the opening of a cave, with clear signs of a dragon living in it. The snow had been cleared away at the entrance, as if it had been melted, and shedded scales were all over the place. Unstrapping his snowshoes, he picked up a scale and peered at it in the sunlight. A Chinese Fireball. That was interesting. If it was wild, it must have traveled a very long way. More likely it was domesticated at some point and either escaped or was let go once it became too big.

He looked for other signs before entering the cave itself. He needed to know what he was walking into. It was unlikely that the dragon was injured, but if there was some old injury it was nursing, it would be very aggressive.

Examining the footprints closely, he thought that there might be a chance that the dragon was injured in some way. He wouldn't know for sure, without observing it, but judging from the prints he was seeing, there was an awkwardness to its gait. He listened to see if he could hear the dragon breathing inside the cave, but the wind was whistling around the mountain and Charlie couldn't hear anything else.

He took one more pass around the outside of the cave and found nothing he hadn't already examined. It was time to go inside to see what exactly he was dealing with. He drew his wand and hoped it wasn't an angry, injured dragon spoiling for a fight.

Once he was in the cave and his eyes had adjusted to the light, his jaw dropped. Then he laughed. Great, big, full belly laughs bubbled up out of him as he lit his wand to get a good look at what he was seeing.

Apparently, dragons did hoard books. At least, this one did. The cave was almost full to bursting with books. They were piled and stacked on every bit of space. It did seem they were far enough back to not get ruined by rain or snow, which was smart, even for a dragon. Why books? It still didn't make any sense to Charlie.

He still couldn't help but let loose a chuckle as he made his way further into the cave. The dragon wasn't in. Or if it was, it was buried under the books, because Charlie couldn't see any evidence of the distinctive red hide.

He heard her before he saw her. The distinctive sound of dragon hide sliding across stone alerted him to her presence and he whirled around to see an absolutely gorgeous female Chinese Fireball shuffling into the entrance of the cave.

She stopped short when she spotted Charlie.

"Hey, girl," Charlie said in his quiet, taming-dragons-voice. "I'm not here to hurt you," he assured her.

She hissed at him; a warning. No fire left her mouth, but he could see it at the back of her throat, gathered there, waiting.

He held his hands up and slipped toward the side of the cave. A person invading a dragon hoard didn't often make it out alive, but this wasn't Charlie's first time dealing with a wild dragon. Or having been caught in a dragon hoard, however unusual this hoard was.

She shuffled further into the cave. At odds with her beauty, she moved awkwardly, Charlie thought. He looked her over to see if there was an obvious injury, but he couldn't find one. She looked healthy.

"It's alright, Longmu," Charlie said as he continued to move down the side of the cave wall, toward the entrance. Longmu was a figure from Chinese mythology who raised five infant dragons. It seemed to fit as a name for the beautiful specimen in front of him.

The dragon moved closer, her large snout getting almost uncomfortably close to Charlie. He held his breath, his wand still tucked away and hoped that the dragon wasn't about to try to eat him. Unless he was grievously injured, he knew a few ways around being eaten, but it inevitably left the dragon dead or severely injured and he hated having to hurt one of these precious creatures.

"See, I'm not so bad," Charlie said holding his hands up for the dragon to sniff. She took a deep inhale, almost pulling Charlie off of his feet. Then she shuffled a bit closer.

He took a risk and placed his hand on Longmu's snout. Instead of pulling away, she leaned into his hand.

"Hey, are you lonely?" Charlie asked softly, running both hands across her snout and up toward her ears.

The dragon blinked at him slowly, allowing his touches, and Charlie suddenly felt very sad. This poor thing was out here all alone, away from her kind in all respects. She didn't even hoard like a proper dragon. It made him irrationally furious at whoever had abandoned her. With her behavior, and given how docile she seemed to be, it was clear that she was a domesticated dragon. He vowed to do everything in his power to bring her back to the reserve to get the attention and love she deserved.