TTTTTTTTTTT

All of the characters except for my own handful of originals, as well as locations, names, titles etc. are and remain the property of JKR and I hope you like it.

Principles such as Splicing are mine as well as all unique books, histories, titles, traditions and spells. I give users permission to use them, but only if you reference me in your work.

Review please whether you like it or not. Tell me what you do and do not like and why! I do love having my ego stroked with 'Wow, great!' etc. but it's not as useful for my process as having some real examples and effects. If any of you would like to PM me a review or opinions or just talk about my story, please do so.

TTTTTTTTTTT

Chapter 23: The Need to Feed and Hide

The incident with the dragon egg fouled Harry's mood all day until he fell into bed mentally exhausted. Nidhogg was back, coiled next to a hot water bottle that had been placed halfway down the bed.

'Who put this here?' He asked.

Seamus shrugged. 'The house elves I imagine, they really do think of everything. Me Ma's elf died before I was born and dad's none too fond of them, so we never got another one.'

Harry who was too tired to think any more climbed into bed and got under the covers.

'Warm is good.' Nidhogg said, taking his customary place on Harry's chest.

'Mmm..' Harry said, yawning widely.

'You smell like scale food. You see Great-Two-Legs?'

Harry nodded. 'Yeah, Hagrid has a dragon egg he's trying to make hatch.'

Nidhogg suddenly tensed and let out a great loud hiss that broke and turned into a screech which Harry smothered by pulling the covers over the snake's head.

'What the bloody hell was that?' Ron shouted from behind the drapes at the same time that Seamus shouted something that he would have received detention for in class.

Heart pounding, Harry shoved Nidhogg under the covers and pulled his curtains open.

'I don't know. It sounded like it was coming from the hall.'

'No way, it was in here!' Ron shouted.

Dean snored and turned over in his sleep as Seamus jumped out of bed and ran through the door, wand in hand. Nidhogg squirmed against Harry angryily.

'It's probably the old hot water pipes because of the cold weather.' Harry said, trying to act casually as he lay back down and pulled the curtains around the bed.

He waited five minutes until Seamus came back and he heard the sounds of snoring before pulling Nidhogg out.

'What was that about?' He asked in his softest voice possible.

'Egg of great one has much power. I want it.'

'One day you'll stop talking in riddles, Nidhogg.'

'When I'm bigger.'

'Odd that you mention that, actually. I've learned a new spell that might have some promise for the future.'

Nidhogg's eyes flashed bright in the morning light coming through the window. 'Dragon. Yesss…'

Harry's brow furrowed. 'You want to… eat it?'

Nidhogg nodded.

'Why?' genuinely confused.

'Great power to be had for the eating of it.'

'Right, that's not weird at all. How does that work?' Harry put his glasses on and stared at the tiny confusing beast.

'Don't know. It powerful, more than me. I eat it, make me powerful.'

That made an odd kind of sense given a few of the things Harry had been learning about magic. It was very cyclical in that power could be transferred between objects, creatures and people. 'You're serious aren't you? You really want the egg?'

Nidhogg nodded.

Well I'll never stop someone I love from having whatever they want. Harry thought, bitterly remembering all the times he'd been refused sweets and new trainers when Dudley had anything his fat heart wanted. 'Then it sounds like we'll be stopping by Hagrid's again pretty soon then.'

Nidhogg's tiny forked tongue flickered out and his eyes shone even brighter. 'It will be breaking soon and it is more powerful before that happens. Be quick to go and take me with you, will need safe place when eated.'

'Eaten.' Harry said as sleep started to overwhelm him again. 'Not eated.'

The decision to do whatever he needed to do for Nidhogg was one of the easiest he'd ever needed to make.

TTTTTTTTTTT

He rose the next day tense and anxious to the point that he missed McGonagall's instructions for transfiguring a guinea pig into a horned toad and lost five house points when the rodent exploded across his desk.

He spent the second class of the day exploring in search of a suitable place to hide Nidhogg and the egg. Finding nowhere suitable, he skipped lunch and went to the library to look for any reference to snakes and transferral of power until Tina-Marie and Fay arrived, looking concerned.

'Harry, what's going on with you today?' Tina-Marie asked.

'Nothing, just… tired.' Harry lied, throwing a heavy book back on to one of the levitating trays that returned the tomes to their places.

'You're a terrible liar, Harry Potter.' Fay said, smiling. 'Do you know why Seamus was going on about dragons living in the walls this morning?'

Harry's insides clenched. 'He's just being stupid, hearing things in his sleep. Last night I think there was a hiss of steam or something from the bathrooms and he went a bit crazy.'

Tina-Marie laughed, 'He was born crazy, I think.'

'It's an old castle, it makes weird noises all the time. Just the other day a ghost wandered through our dorm at two in the morning ringing a bell and shouting "Bring out your dead", scared us all half to death.'

Harry laughed, relaxing a little. 'I was just looking for a bit of peace and quiet, you know? Somewhere without hordes of ghosts and students looking to hide from detention.'

Fay nodded. 'Where have you tried?'

'Pretty much everywhere, really.'

'Well have you been to the third floor?' Tina-Marie asked.

'No,' Harry said, 'there was the notice that it's out of bounds.'

'Yeah, that's just because there aren't enough kids here this year to justify there being every room in this massive place inhabited.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well ours is likely to be the smallest year in the history of Hogwarts, or so Percy was saying the other day. Tina-Marie said, 'We were all born when the war against You-Know-Who was at its worst and apparently people weren't having many kids that year. Percy's year is huge: he says there are twenty Gryffindors, sixteen Ravenclaws, twenty-seven Slytherins and thirty Hufflepuffs. He says that it took them hours to sort them all on his first day. Take that with the fact that there's a new school in Cornwall just opened and it makes sense that they're just not using parts of this old place. Apparently Percy's oldest brother Bill's year was massive: more than a hundred and fifty students.'

Harry nodded, amazed by how much the quiet and unassuming girl with the dark brown hair and mahogany brown eyes had learned that he was completely ignorant of. 'I guess it's worth a look.' He said, thinking.

'It is, it's brilliant up there!' Fay said, jumping on the spot. 'We went up there with Fred and George, you know, Ron's brothers? They're using the first classroom up there as a club house with a few friends. We can go up there and relax whenever they're not using it. Want to see?'

Harry nodded again and jumped to his feet. 'Yeah, sure!'

They left the library and headed toward the grand staircase as if going back to their common room, but halted halfway up on a landing.

'You have to wait here for that staircase to move.' Tina-Marie said, pointing to one of the wandering steps.

It took almost five minutes, but when the stairs moved it connected them to another set leading to a heavy oaken door bearing an "entrance forbidden" sign. With a furtive glance around, Fay pushed through the door and pulled Harry in after. Tina-Marie closed the door behind them and the world fell into complete darkness.

'Lumos.' Fay said immediately, a pinpoint of gleaming silvery light appearing at the end of her wand.

As the light grew, it revealed a long hallway that looked just like most of those on the second and fourth floors, except that every inch was covered with thick layers of dust and hung with cobwebs. Footsteps in the dust led from where they stood to a classroom less than ten feet away on the right.

'Quite a find, huh?' Tina-Maire said excitedly, her voice magnified and echoing back on them by the empty space.

'Amazing.'

Tina-Marie lit her own wand then walked over to the door, tapped it and said 'alohamora.' The lock clicked and swung open with a creak.

'What was that?' Harry asked, lighting his own wand.

'A-loh-ha-mor-a,' Tina-Marie said, 'the twins taught it us when we followed them here. It opens all non-magic locks and can, if you're strong enough even get through some of those. They have it so well practiced they reckon the only things they can't open are ones locked by Flitwick and Dumbledore himself.'

'Cool, I'll have to try that.'

'You should,' Fay said, 'it's really useful. We've taken to unlocking Hermione's cases and trunk when she's asleep and blaming it on the house elves. She's not happy.'

'You shouldn't be mean to Hermione, I know she's high strung and a pain in the arse, but she does mean well.'

The girls didn't reply as they walked into the classroom. Inside was bright, well lit and festooned with deep couches and beanbags. On the chimney breast there was a larger-than-life-size poster of Professor Snape speared with dozens of darts, arrows and one actual spear which projected from his right eye.

'Nice place, huh?' Fay said, falling into a beanbag.

Harry nodded and explored the room. There were games, snacks, books and spell materials everywhere. He saw a tall pile of barely legible old parchments, the ink faded until it was barely legible.

'What's this?' He asked, lifting one page so old that it looked as if it might fall apart at any moment.

'They're old notes on spells that Lukas Barthorne and Sabrina Cowell, the sixth-year Ravenclaws lifted from the library. They were due to be sent to the vaults where they'd be lost forever. They're not in English and they're so faded that no one can read them, so a few people are putting in a few hours to see if they're worth bothering with.' Tina-Marie said after taking the crumbling parchment from him. 'So don't touch.'

The girls fell into deep couches and Harry kept exploring, realising that there was far too much stuff in the room than could have been gathered in the eight weeks they'd been at school.

'What else is on this floor?' He asked, investigating a pile of crystal goblets emblazoned with the snake of Slytherin house.

'No idea, we only came up here for the first time last week, I don't know if the others have been exploring more.' Fay said, taking out quill and parchment.

She had a book in her hand and Harry had to crane his neck to read the title Basic Charms: A Quick-Fire Guide.

'What's that?' He asked.

'Just a little thing that George gave me, it helps out with the homework essays. It's from America where they don't start wizarding school until fifteen. Most of them learn the basic of magic at home until then.'

'How stupid.'

'That's what I was thinking. What's the point of not learning magic properly until you're almost grown up?'

Harry shrugged and remembered the point of him coming with the girls in the first place.

'Tell you what,' he said, 'I'm going to have a quick look round outside.'

'No worries, don't go far, we've got class in twenty.' Tina-Marie said as he was already heading out of the door.

Harry lit his wand as the door clicked shut behind him and shone the ball of light down the hallway. The statues and gaps where suits of armour should have stood cast eerie shadows all around him. After taking no more than a dozen steps, he noticed tracks in the dust picked out by the light of his wand, so light and fine that normally they'd be invisible. He reached down and touched one, a clear boot print. Moving his light back and forth he saw that it didn't look right. Looking up, toward the other prints, he saw that the print at his feet disappeared.

It's been hidden with magic. He thought as the situation dawned on him. What're they hiding up here?

Standing, he walked on down the corridor, his shoes leaving black prints next to the barely visible ones. He followed the ghostly prints, listening hard for any sound.

The corridor was utterly black except for the light from his wand, but it mirrored the layout on the floors above and below. He rounded a corner and the footprints abruptly stopped.

Pausing, he backtracked and found that the prints moved to a door and beyond. The door was tall and old, black with age like most of the doors at Hogwarts. He tried the handle but it wouldn't budge. There was no keyhole.

He tried to force the door, dropping his wand into his back pocket and bearing his weight down on the handle. It didn't even budge. Retrieving his wand he tapped the handle and said, as softly as he could, 'alohamora.'

The handle wiggled a little and clicked. This time it moved easily, the mechanism sliding open. As he pulled the door he became aware of booming air, like a great bellows blowing out and sucking in time. He pulled the door open and directed his light inside.

What it revealed made his breath catch in his throat.

A dog, easily twice the height of even Hagrid and covered in sleek black fur stood illuminated in the wandlight. It was proportionately much thicker in the shoulders than a normal dog and the size was needed to support three massive heads, each with bright yellow eyes and slaver dripping from teeth the length of Harry's forearm.

Harry realised he was holding his breath and filled his lungs at the same moment that the great eyes, bigger than basketballs turned and stared at him. It was in a huge room half the size of the great hall, with a vast pile of pelts and cloth in one corner and a ten-foot wide bowl in another. It took a step toward Harry, its teeth bared in a snarl so deep he could feel it vibrate in his chest. Vast cords of muscle shifted under its skin as it moved and Harry noticed it sidestepped a small hatch mounted into the floor of the room.

The middle head sniffed at the air then reared back and barked.

The sound was so huge and amplified by the room that Harry fell back clutching his ears. His wand clattered to the floor and its light vanished as another head barked and he was plunged into darkness. He scrambled to his feet, instinctively dodging to one side to avoid a potential lunge and searched for his wand.

Phantom lights danced over his vision as the massive booming of the dog's heads continued. An explosion of sound, the breaking of stone and wood rocked the air around him and he fell backward as dust and grit fell on him, tinkling against his glasses as he landed hard on his backside.

The lights in his mind grew brighter, illuminating the wall that was giving way under the weight of the beast. He imagined its jaws biting, breaking and ripping. He saw it snap the great door in two and pull the rest down with a great, heavy paw.

But the light continued to grow, brighter behind him as his hands found purchase on the ground and he started to rise.

There was a scream behind him and he was lifted back to his feet by thin but strong arms. Turning around he saw Fay, her face pale and fear contorting her mouth. 'Let's get out of here!' she cried, pulling him with her. When he hesitated, she tried to drag him but he paused long enough to grab his wand from the ground, by which time the dog had one whole head through a hole in the wall.

Together they ran terrified, their wandlights bobbing in the darkness. Harry saw monstrous shapes rising out from behind statues and under archways, but forced himself to carry on.

They bolted back inside the classroom and fell through the door, Fay landing hard on top of Harry and driving the wind out of him.

Tina-Marie screamed. 'What happened?' she asked as she pulled Fay off Harry.

'There was a… a dog, some kind of monster.'

Harry rolled over and sucked in a deep breath. 'Something massive, three heads. Guarding a door in the floor.' He coughed and dry-heaved, glad his stomach was empty.

Fay moved over to the door, opened it a crack and listened. 'Nothing, I think it's given up.' She said after a moment.

'What is something like that doing in the school?' Harry asked, getting to his feet.

'It was a cerberus,' Fay said, 'I don't even know how it's here, let alone why.'

'We should tell the teachers.' Said Tina-Marie, her face full of fear.

'Don't be stupid!' Harry snapped, rounding on her. 'We go telling the teachers that we've been wandering around a place that's forbidden and we'll be in massive trouble. We'd probably even get expelled.' The cold anger flared in him again and his wand twitched in his hand like it was restrained from some long-practiced action.

'O-okay.' She said, looking down.

'Don't be like that Harry, she's just scared.' Fay pushed past him and hugged Tina-Marie who looked to be on the edge of tears.

'Fine.' Harry growled, 'But we mention this to no one, okay?'

Both of the girls nodded.

'Then let's get out of here.' Harry turned and pulled the door open, heading back to the stairs. His wandlight revealed that he was white with dust from the floors and falling bricks. I'll have to change without being seen. He thought, as they emerged onto the staircase to find the one they wanted already in position. The three bolted up to Gryffindor tower, past the portrait of the Fat Lady and-

- straight into Headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

TTTTTTTTTTT

Read and review please, don't pull any punches

CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK IS ALWAYS WELCOME