It was a dragon.

Or, at least, it looked like it. It wasn't any kind of dragon Harry recognized—not from books, or Hagrid, or the damned tournament. It was… weird, really. It kind of looked like a Komodo dragon that walked upright, but it had a much longer neck and what looked like an eight-pack. It also had wings, which, obviously, the Komodo dragon lacked.

It had just stood up on its hind legs less than a kilometer away from the school, and its tail thrashed between the trees. Around the beast smaller versions of it were crawling all over the place—Harry could make out one grabbing a doe and slamming it into the air with its tail.

"Ollepheist." Ron murmured.

"What?" Harry said.

"Ollepheist. They were, um, native dragons in Scotland but they were driven away centuries ago. There are a couple in a Scandinavian reserve, I know, but I thought the rest of them went extinct."

"It doesn't look very extinct." Seamus said, tracking the path of a thrown bear with his telescope.

"No. It doesn't." Dean said. His voice was very quiet

"What is it—she?—doing?" Ron asked.

"I, I don't know."

Just then the door behind them slammed open.

"—isn't picking up the floo. We've sent an owl, of course, but—what are you doing here?" Professor McGonagall said, suddenly realizing that the astrology tower wasn't as empty as she had thought. Behind her Professor Flitwick's head popped up.

"There's—there's—there's a dragon!" Dean stuttered. "Right there!"

"Don't worry." She said. "You'll be perfectly safe within castle walls. Now get within castle walls." She said. The boys rushed to pack up their telescopes and get out of the woman's way, but they couldn't help but glance back up at the dragon as they did. It was silent, Harry noticed. All of the dragons he had met before couldn't shut up, but the Ollepheist hadn't made a single roar, and neither had any of her children.

"I'm waiting." Professor McGonagall said. They rushed faster.

"Why do you think it was quiet?" Harry asked as the boys stampeded down to tower stairs. Above them the door slammed shut, but that wasn't a surprise.

"What?" Seamus gasped. He hadn't taken well to the amount of running they were doing.

"Like, it wasn't roaring or anything." Harry said.

"Who cares?" Ron said. "That was so cool! I can't believe we weren't allowed to keep watching it!"

"Do you really think we're safe?" Dean asked. "Because it was really close, and it looked like it was walking closer."

"We'll be fine!" Ron dismissed. "Dumbledore's here, and he's one of the most powerful wizards ever to be born!"

"Well, then why's it back?" Harry asked. This had not happened last time, and that was not a good sign.

"I dunno. Will probably be in the paper tomorrow though, so you can find out then."

They finally made it to the common room, and burst in to find most of their housemates cramming themselves against the window. Ron's twin brothers were at the very front and apparently trying to do something, because those around them were trying to get them to hurry.

"Come on, how hard can it be?" A fifth year girl snapped.

"I'd like to see you try!" Fred or George replied. "Here, did you—yes, and then—no, no we need—exactly."

"But how about—wait, I see—and how about—with the—and then—aha!" The other twin said. The two leapt back and one pulled out his wand, shooting a spell that Harry didn't catch at the windowpane. The window blurred, and then suddenly the Ollepheist was right in front of them.

"What did you do?" Ron shouted.

"Well, ickle Ronnikens," Twin one started, "we found a window facing the forest and, in our infinite wisdom,"

"our unsurpassable genius,"

"our sheer brilliance,"

"we realized that we could make this window show that window!"

"How?!" Asked a second year.

"With"

"runes"

"of course!"

"You did that with only a week of classes?" Harry asked. Maybe Hermione had been right to be furious at he and Ron for not even considering the subject.

"Well," Twin two hedged.

"No." Twin one said.

"We kind of had to work ahead." Twin two finished.

"You're smart?" Ron gasped. If Harry didn't know any better (and he wasn't so sure he did), he was fairly sure that this was more surprising to Ron than the dragon.

"Of course!" That was twin one.

"You didn't think our pranks were easy to do?" Twin two gasped.

"You don't get to the headmaster eight times in one year for a prank anyone could do!" Twin one whined.

"We're fantastic!"

"Marvelous!"

"Stupendous!"

"And great!"

"You don't get as good as us by doing the bare minimum!"

"But you almost failed your test!" Ron said.

"Was that a unicorn?" A fourth year said. Most of the rest of the common room seemed to have decided to ignore them in favor of the happenings in the forbidden forest, but as far as Harry could tell not much had changed.

"So?" Twin one—okay, you know what? Twin one was now Fred and twin two was George. It's not like they would care if he flipped them.

"So! So! If you're so smart, why'd you fail!" Ron said.

"Have you ever tried to sit through those tests?" George said.

"Pages and pages of questions." Fred added.

"And boring ones too!"

"We know fifteen different potions to change hair color, you know."

"But a potion to prepare a bezoar? Forget it!"

"Unless it becomes relevant, of course."

"Of course."

"But—but—mum thinks you're failing!" Ron said. "You get punished every summer! Why would you willingly do that?"

"Silly willy Ronny." Fred said.

"If we do well mum'll try to make us work in the ministry!"

"Who would want that?"

"But—" Ron went to argue again, but Seamus interrupted.

"Not to get in the way of your family drama, but the dragon looks like it's about to fly." He said. Everyone's eyes snapped to the window, and sure enough there was the Ollepheist, batting her wings with her kin clasping onto her scales.

Below her Harry could just make out flashes of light—spells aimed straight at her stomach which were apparently sufficient enough to make her decide to leave.

"It's Dumbledore!" A fourth year shouted.

"And Flitwick, and I think I see McGonagall too." A sixth year said.

"I hope they're not hurting her!" Hermione gasped.

"Who cares?" Joshua said. "Just so long as it doesn't burn us alive."

"Um, Ollepheists don't blow fire." Neville said.

"Yes," Percy said. He looked… well, a bit pale but otherwise normal, and the former may have been because of the giant beast disturbingly close to the school. "They swallow their prey alive, and are known to bat around other creatures, but they actually show an aversion to cooked meat."

Harry (and many others) stared at him. How did he know about dragons?

"Um. Charlie would talk a lot about dragons." Percy said. "I guess some of it stuck."

It took nearly an hour for the dragon to fully disappear from sight. She wasn't particularly fast for one, the dozens of comparatively tiny clones likely not helping, and for another she was just so utterly massive—nearly twice the size of the dragon Harry had fought—that it could still be seen even when most other things would have already vanished from view, particularly in the quickly darkening sky.

The next morning, just as Ron had predicted, the Daily Prophet had a small piece on it. It was an odd article, though—it didn't mention that the dragon had been spotted in the Forbidden Forest, or why it returned, just that 'sufficiently powerful wizards' were ensuring it would soon leave the island's shores.

Immediately after breakfast Harry, as well as a good number of Ravenclaws, some other students he only vaguely recognized, and Hermione, all made their way to the library and had a silent but vicious fight over who got the books. Eventually some of the older students made their own temporary copies using some Madam Pince-approved spells and disappeared to their own tables, while the first couple of years simply crowded around the physical copies of the few books which referenced dragons.

The Ollepheists had been driven away years ago by Saint Patrick, an oddly pious wizard who had decided to drive away all snakes following the actions of the several dark wizards who had tried to take control after the Romans had left. According to historical record, several of those dark wizards were parselmouths and therefore St. Patrick was venerated for preventing them from having easy minions.

But why was it back?

None of the books explained that—some mentioned the Ollepheist's peaceful behavior compared to most other dragons, others talked about how its great size should never be treated as anything but a risk, but not one considered that they may come back once St. Patrick had driven them away.

Harry stayed in the library until well after lunch, going through nearly every book he could find in the hope that the event would be explained somewhere, predicted somehow.

It wasn't.

This… wasn't a good sign. Harry had honestly been planning on relying on his knowledge of what had happened before almost entirely. If things had already changed… if even his small insular section of the world was being affected…

-Cause and Effect—Figure out why an Ollepheist returned to the British Isles (750 XP)

The only reason he could think of right now, though, was the reason they had initially left—he really hoped his parseltongue abilities weren't somehow the cause; that was a secret he wanted to keep hidden.

Wait.

Why was St. Patrick driving dragons away to prevent parselmouths from using them?

If he could control dragons, he'd really have liked to know that during the Twiwizard Tournament.

But then, it wasn't like he could control snakes. People thought he could, of course, and it looked like Riddle was actually capable of it, but Harry had not really managed it himself—even when he'd managed to stop the snake during dueling club that was less controlling it and more it being nice enough to listen to him; it had not seemed nearly convinced by him… Harry was fairly sure if Snape hadn't dealt with it it would have ignored Harry after another couple seconds.

He should probably test that at some point.

But… not now.

Sunday passed in a blur of dragons, and then it was Monday and the event seemed to have faded in most people's minds—it was still talked about, yes, but preparing for class and going over essays one last time and practicing spells and, well, everything but the ollepheist starting to take precedence, as was usual for Hogwarts—if it wasn't an ongoing danger, then after a week or so even murder attempts stopped mattering.

Anyway, Harry had his own to-do list to get back to. The Ollepheist was important, sure, but he had another beast he needed to deal with first.