Hey, so I will leave a few notes for you all. First, I should have done this before but disclaimer: I do not own any of the properties of JK Rowling's Harry Potter nor Dreamwork's How To Train Your Dragon. I am merely playing in their sandboxes yet any new spells or items are created by me.

Also, I should inform you that when I first started this I already had a few chapters written, but as the story progressed, I found it difficult to write chapters weekly. Hence, I am writing these chapters as I release each chapter so there will be long gaps between chapters. Please excuse these gaps inbetween chapters. Furthermore, there will be no quotes from the next chapter butvI will give a brief overview of the next chapter.

Now, let's continue.

Chapter 6: The Staff, In Preparation

A long time ago, off the coast of Scotland, there was an archipelago. It was dubbed the Barbaric Archipelago. Aptly named so, as its human inhabitants were vicious, bloodthirsty muggle Vikings, who sought out war in a quest for glory. Yet, they did not fight each other. They fought against a more powerful enemy. The children of their fire god, Loki, and the demons who crept out of Hel, or so they were called by them. Those Vikings fought…

Dragons.

Dragons of various species: some with skin as tough as stone, some who shot razor-sharp spikes from their tails, some who had two heads, some who set themselves on fire and one of the most powerful, most dangerous and most mysterious dragons of them all.

These Vikings fought the dragons, who raided their villages, burned their houses, stole their food and killed their people. Those who fought a dragon toe to toe and triumphed over them were showered with honor, fame and glory. And those who could not or did not were either scorned, exiled or executed.

Three hundred years after the Vikings landed on the Barbaric Archipelago, an emerald-eyed boy was born on one of the islands. The muggle son of the chief, he was named Hiccup, for he was weak and feeble, unable to hold a sword without trembling.

One night, Hiccup managed to shoot down, immobilize and ground the rarest dragon of them all: A Night Fury. A beast that has never been seen before, never successfully killed and that has never missed a target.

But instead of killing the beast, Hiccup healed and fed the Night Fury. And the Night Fury, in return, allowed the boy to ride on his back as he flew.

Thus, the two beings created a strong bond with each other.

However, their secret was discovered and both Hiccup and his Night Fury were captured.

The Vikings were disgusted and embarrassed that the heir to the chiefdom of their village made friends with their hated enemy. They found forcefully through Hiccup that they could use dragons to find the nest of the dragons. So, they set sail to Heimdall's Gate, where the it was rumored to be the location of the nest, with the Night Fury bound, so they would destroy the nest and end the scourge forever.

Hiccup, as the chief's son, was sentenced to exile. However, the children of Hiccup's age were curious as to how Hiccup could ride dragons. Hence, he quickly taught them how to ride their own dragons and, thrilled and grateful for experiencing the freedom of flight, the teens flew Hiccup to the Heimdall's Gate so they may save his Night Fury.

…

Outside of the castle, the soothing summer sunlight shone throughout the grounds; the fragrant summer breeze blew tranquilly across the grounds. It quietly rustled the grass and the leaves of the numerous trees that clumped together in the Forest and sent great ripples across mirror surface of the Black Lake. Only soothing sounds and noises floated along the breeze, a perfect lullaby for anybody desiring peace. The weather that surrounded the Hogwarts Castle was the epitome of serenity and peacefulness.

However, the occupants of the castle were not influenced by the weather in the slightest.

Many of them were busy preparing for the summer school student that had arrived abruptly and without warning, dropping out of the air on them. Literally. The Hogwarts staff, the teaching personnel specifically, were not prepared, trained nor equipped to teach during the summer holidays. Not all the teachers were able to have a hand at the preparations; only the teachers who had witnessed the phenomenon had decided stay and teach; the other teaching personnel left either because their subjects weren't needed, there was an excess of staff or they had plans that could not be changed.

Unfortunately, there were the complications to the planning, scheduling and the preparation of the lessons and examinations as they had the undesirable task of cramming three-years' worth of study, coursework, theory, assessments and test into one or two months.

The pressure was even higher for McGonagall and Flitwick, the Transfiguration and Charms teachers respectively. Heightened emphasis was placed on their subjects, as they all knew that it was essential that this student had the knowledge to control his magic, as they had witnessed magic that surpassed any they had seen for a fourteen year-old wizard and that defied, not only the expectations of the staff, but also the current logic and reasoning of the laws of magic.

Dumbledore had an especially loaded schedule; not only did he oversee the management of this temporary summer school, but he had to deal with the constant and continuous stream of owls that were delivered to him from the Ministry. For every owl he responded to, another occupies its place (though, fortunately two do not come at the same time.)

The letters started to stream in Dumbledore's office two days following Hiccup's arrival at Hogwarts; the day after his arrival, a large group of Ministry officials arrived at Hogwarts. The sensors at the Ministry had detected an enormous, unprecedented release of energy inside of the Hogwarts grounds and had gone to investigate. The group consisted of Unspeakables from the Department of Mysteries and other Ministry officials, the Unspeakables being specialized in time magic and were assigned this task, as the energy signature of time magic matched that of was detected.

Dumbledore greeted the delegation at the entrance (alerted by the portrait of Former Headmaster, Everhart) along with his Deputy and his Potions Master (Hagrid did not come as he felt that his presence would not help and Pomfrey would never leave her patient alone) as they entered the entrance and permitted a portion of them to enter as soon as he had heard the reason for them coming; to investigate the time magic explosion that was reported to occur in the grounds. The remainder of the delegation were guided by McGonagall and Snape towards the area were the event had taken place. Dumbledore then expressed his confusion of why the Ministry hasn't sent anyone to investigate sooner.

The group that broke off with Dumbledore explained that the readings given by sensors in the Ministry continuously fluctuated and the employees in the Ministry had difficulty pinpointing the location of the energy surge and the extent of the surge had varied greatly between readings. Only in that morning had accurate results of the location, enormity and type of the energy eruption had been recorded; once the results had been processed, the Ministry then swiftly sent the officials to the school.

Dumbledore, then detailed the events that occurred the previous night, with : he described how an area of the night sky began to fracture, similar to that of a mirror; how an unfamiliar, massive surge of energy invisibly began to flow from the fracture in fractured area of the sky without chaos, yet with enough power for a selection of the remaining staff to detect; the sudden torrent and flood of energy, and how it overpowered the combined magic of the staff; the colors and hues of the energy and how it slowly dissipated harmlessly across the grounds.

The Headmaster brought the delegation to the hospital wing, where Hiccup was situated, whilst they were having their discussion. Shock and amazement seized a hold onto the group of Ministry officials; it was virtually impossible for a fourteen-year-old boy to be able to time travel successfully before the invention of Time Turners, which was further increased upon the discovery that he time travelled nearly a millennium into the future, that the source of magic originated from his body.

Furthermore, the boy was able to apparate an estimated distance of a thousand kilometers, which is around the range of intercontinental Apparition (which few wizards and witches are able to accomplish), into the grounds of Hogwarts, where it is so heavily and powerfully enchanted, that only the current Headmaster or Headmistress of the school is able to lift the enchantments. Why, the power to dismantle the Anti-Apparition ward alone was impressive and massive.

Moreover, the boy had did not age at an accelerated time frame but at a regular speed similar to a maturing wizarding child, which was astonishing as many witches or wizards (who time travelled beyond the five-hour limit) have suffered catastrophic harm; one of the most irreversibly dangerous is accelerated aging, often the amount of time the witch or wizard in question has travelled through time.

A famous example of this was the case of Eloise Mintumble, who was trapped in the past for a period five in the year 1402. When she was finally retrieved, her body aged five centuries as it returned to her present and was irreparably damaged.

Other serious consequences that had been caused by travelling beyond the five–hour limit are time fracturing/ warping (where a portion of the body has been warped in shape similar to the crystalline shape of a crystal), and time phasing (a portion of the body simultaneously embodies various states in relation to age – for example, an arm is simultaneously in its newborn state or its elderly state). These two dangerous side effects and injuries often require the removal of the entire affected area.

The Ministry officials immediately decided to move Hiccup (not that they knew what his name was) to St. Mungo's in order to heal his injuries and to question him about his reasons and methods of time travelling. Another reason that they feared a wizard of his power and talent and believed that it was best to contain him. Dumbledore, however, swiftly objected and brought the delegation outside the hospital, as their upcoming argument might disturb Hiccup.

Once outside, Dumbledore voiced his arguments: the boy wasn't a test animal that they could experiment on and interrogate, like a criminal; the first priority was to send him back, should it be possible without major harm occurring to him; and should the first plan was not possible for the time being, then educating him should be the next priority, as they had discovered that Hiccup was the one who time travelled by himself, without any sort of help and such power must be controlled and used wisely.

The argument continued for some time before the Ministry workers conceded and sent an owl to St. Mungo's, requesting for a group of Healers (specialized in spell damage and time magic) to go to Hogwarts. A few hours passed, then the Healers arrived via the Floo Network; swiftly, they arrived at the hospital wing and went to work on Hiccup's leg, assisted by Madam Pomfrey.

Whilst the Healers got to work on the time warped stump, Dumbledore brought the delegation down to the grounds in order that they may meet up with the other Ministry workers and compare the results. Those who examined the grounds stated that the energy that surged all over the grounds had, thankfully, degraded stably and won't cause unnecessary consequences as far as they were concerned.

However, the rest of the delegation were shocked to discover that the time traveler had travelled approximately one thousand years into the future; such an extraordinarily long amount of time should have caused an enormous should have caused the expelled energy to dissipate in an erratic manner and thus create an enormous disturbance in time.

Going back to the incident of Madam Mintumble, the Tuesday that followed her recovery from the past had lasted for approximately days and the Thursday following it only lasted for the duration of a few hours. Such an alarming situation caused an overload of work for the Ministry of Magic and its Office of Misinformation to cover up.

Dumbledore then posed the question whether they were able to send Hiccup back to his time. Unfortunately, the answer was a no. Too many factors and many countless unknown influences (big or minute) could spell catastrophe: they could send him to the wrong era, they could send him forwards rather than backwards, they could create a time loop or even paradoxes and even if they could send him back to the correct era successfully, there is the possibility that the boy could de-age by one thousand years. Furthermore, it is unwise to break the laws of time further and possibly induce even more enormous disturbances in time.

Dumbledore returned to the hospital wing to check up on Hiccup after the conversation with the other Ministry workers. The healing process took hours, but the time warping had been reversed. The Healer commented how fortunate that the time fracturing was minimal, and it was weak enough to be reversed.

Sadly however, the time fracturing has made it impossible to regrow Hiccup's lost limb (though they managed to heal the end of the stump) and the Healers would create a discrete prosthetic for Hiccup, as incurable disabilities were looked down upon in the Wizarding community. The Healers were not sure as to when the prosthetic would be ready; yet, as they had already made some measurements, as soon as they have received the remaining required measurements, they would be able to create and send the prosthetic in a couple of days.

Finally, the delegation left (much to the relief of the Hogwarts Staff) but not before informing Dumbledore that many owls would be sent to him, requesting answers of how he would organize the education of the boy, where his living arrangements would be and other questions.

A few days after the visit, Dumbledore received wonderful news; a wizarding family in Dumbledore's contacts, that originated in America but has now moved to England, had sent a letter informing the Headmaster that they had agreed to adopt Hiccup. Dumbledore told them of all the information about Hiccup: the fact that he time travelled, the fact that he has a Night Fury for a pet, all of it. Yet, the family's decision to take him in did not change. The Haynes were on a holiday in the United States and would not be back for around a month and they were happy to allow Hiccup to be educated for the duration of the month.

All in all, it was an extremely stressful week and there was no vent for the staff to release their stress.

Except for one.

The reason why the group of Ministry workers did not know of the Night Fury's existence was this: when the delegation of Ministry officials was coming, Hagrid was busy carrying the unconscious Night Fury away from the hospital, whilst Flitwick and Sprout were busy preventing the portraits from squealing "NIGHT FURY! NIGHT FURY!" as they brought Toothless towards an unoccupied classroom, in the opposite direction of the hospital ward.

Toothless provided a much-required distraction for the staff and granted a moment to thankfully relax. The staff had to bring an enormous basket of fish up to the hospital wing every afternoon, clean up the inevitable mess, and take him out for a walk, for Toothless to exercise. These chores should have been even more stress-inducing, however, due to Toothless' disguised , adorable personality and appearance (as they had lovingly dubbed him) those chores (the word being used very loosely) became enjoyable.

In fact, (except for Dumbledore and Pomfrey) the teaching staff even squabbled with who had the privilege of spending time with Tooth when the job was first offered, with McGonagall winning the honor of feeding Tooth. As she was the first one to begin creating a trust with the Night Fury, she was tasked with feeding him. However, the other teachers had another job with equally relaxing effects: fixing the saddle and the prosthetic.

Using the original saddle as the base, (the dragon fire has caused unrepairable damage) the staff had carefully recreated the saddle. The assembly was the easy bit; the hard part was finding the measurements (as parts of the saddle were singed away), how the saddle was structured and layered and how to attach it to Toothless without causing discomfort.

It was particularly amusing when it came time to fit the saddle onto Toothless one afternoon walk. It took much time and much effort to convince Toothless to leave Hiccup for one or two hour(s) but they managed it, Pomfrey staying behind with Hiccup as usual. Toothless was approached with the newly made saddle, now covered with Flame-Freeze Charms, by McGonagall. However, Toothless h had interpreted this gesture as an initiation of tag and kept running away from her. Being a Night Fury, it was a walk though the park (flying itself is too complicated to use as a metaphor for simplicity) to avoid McGonagall as she chased him.

Pretty soon, every staff member (including Dumbledore) was worn out whilst attempting to catch Toothless, even when it came to pin him down with low power spells; the teachers were sprawled across the ground, with only Dumbledore and McGonagall managing to sit upright (Snape had melted into a pool of exhaustion and was flitting between consciousness and unconsciousness). Meanwhile, Toothless was bounding along happily around the group, prancing and warbling at them in a mocking way.

When staff requested that Hagrid was to catch Toothless, the Night Fury retained his smug demeanor. However, his pride immediately evaporated, and desperation filled every crevice in his body, as he sought to evade the towering giant's charging form.

Hagrid was delighted to get a chance to embrace Toothless and show him some of his affection towards him, so much so that his face greatly resembled a childish face of a child delighted to chase the family cat. To Toothless, it looked even more horrifying than coming face to face the Red Death.

Toothless' frame was built to be sleek, agile and fast; furthermore, determination (along with desperation) motivated the dragon to escape Hagrid. Yet, though Hagrid was enormous, and his humungous frame and weight hindered his agility and speed, his lengthy legs enable to cover large distances with every stride and his determination to catch Toothless far exceeded that of the Night Fury's determination. The two left trails all over the grounds with lots of grass pulled out of the ground and strewn all over.

The rest of the staff sat on a nearby hill, watching the spectacle whilst resting their knackered bodies; they thought it best to stay out of the way rather than help again as there was a greater danger of them being trampled to death by the Night Fury and the Keeper of the Keys. Additionally, it was possible for them to be a hinderance rather than an asset. They opted instead to watch the race and even after a while, requested popcorn from one of the house elves to snack on as they watched.

The chase finally finished as Toothless raced towards the Black Lake and he misplaced his footing causing his to slightly buckle and stumble for a moment. That cost him dearly. As he regained his footing and swiveled to run in a direction opposite the lake, he found an enormous, bristly missile tackle him into the lake, creating waves that would make a tsunami cower in terror.

As the staff arrived towards the splash site, they had to hold their laughter in as the sight of the half-giant waded out of the lake with a traumatized Toothless cradled in his arms. Whether it was from the fact that he got tackled by a half-giant or the fact that he was utterly drenched they did not know. Their struggle against bursting out laughing increased further as the expression on Hagrid's face remained as though he had received all the treasures of the world; he remained blissfully ignorant of the fact that the trauma in Toothless was steadily being replaced with fury and anger.

Hagrid looked at Toothless as if he were the most adorable baby in the world and said, "you are the cutest thing in the world." With that Toothless snapped, his claws slashed repeatedly at Hagrid's face and his paws smacked frequently his head. Hagrid (as we all know) is a half-giant, who has increased durability; this meant that Toothless' claws only left shallow scratches on his face and his paw strikes (which could concuss a fully-grown man) only felt like a firm yet light smack. The rest of the staff sniggered quietly as their resolve to stop laughing out loud weakened; it was hilarious to see how a Night Fury (one of the deadliest species of dragon, nay, beast to ever exist) could act so similarly to a household cat. Even McGonagall had to stifle a small giggle as even she saw the similarities.

Once Toothless tried himself out attempting to beat the crap of Hagrid and Hagrid lowered him down, he grumpily allowed the saddle to be attached to him. He was quite uncomfortable having the saddle attaching itself magically onto him; once the saddle was on though, Toothless relaxed and his irritated demeanor faded away as he felt the familiar feeling of leather strapped around his back. The staff did not attach the tail prosthetic though as for the life of them, they could figure out how it operated and the one that came with Toothless originally, had melted into a mess of blackened, pointed wires, cogs and springs.

There were many other memorable moments during the time between Hiccup's arrival at Hogwarts and his awaken. One of the funniest happened during the day Hiccup's prosthetic arrived, five days after the Ministry delegation visit. It had a spring in the leg and was light yet durable and the prosthetic fit snuggly on the end of the stump of Hiccup's leg. There was a bit apprehension on how Toothless would react to the new leg; yet again, Toothless surprised them all. Once the prosthetic was attached, Toothless approached it with slight caution and gave it a few sniffs. It was peculiar to Toothless, but he knew it was better nothing. So, he walked away with a small shrug on his shoulders.

The staff then went down for their customary afternoon walk with Toothless. McGonagall was often the one to walk right next to Toothless, both perfectly comfortable with each other's presence. She was always the one who fed Toothless, she lost her fear of Toothless right after the fish test the day he woke up. The others managed to lose the majority of apprehension and fear towards the Night Fury, although it still lingered lightly at the back of their head.

McGonagall was also the only one to give Toothless a scratch, as the dragon felt that she was able to scratch at just at the right pressure and at the right area. She wasn't as skilled as Hiccup (as he was able to scratch him perfectly, almost telepathically knowing where to go) but she was a good substitute. Oh, how he wished he would just wake up. Everyone had their hand in scratching Toothless but none were as good as McGonagall nor as bad as Hagrid.

It wasn't from a lack of enthusiasm; no, it was from an excess of enthusiasm that caused Hagrid to scratch Toothless very vigorously. Combine that with Hagrid's forearm-sized fingers and increased strength and you got a scratch that feels like it is attempting to simultaneously crush your neck whilst ripping it in half. Toothless almost instantly backed away the moment Hagrid started scratching and swiped at his dustbin-sized hand away with his paws.

Whilst hissing like a cat. To say Hagrid was getting emotional over his repeated rejections to his advances towards would be the understatement of the century; still, that did not embitter him towards McGonagall. In fact, he was happy that McGonagall was beginning to bond with the Night Fury.

Anyway, as they were all walking along (with Toothless prancing happily around the group) the Night Fury suddenly stopped and bonded towards McGonagall, hoping for another chin scratch. He was not disappointed as McGonagall automatically reached under his head and began to scratch, with Toothless cooing in response. After a minute or two, Toothless backed away. Then he pounced, pinning McGonagall down on the ground as the group gasped in shock. Emerald eyes stared in McGonagall's steely yet shocked eyes for a single moment.

Then, Toothless' large head swooped down on McGonagall and started to bathe her licking all over her with his putrid saliva. McGonagall's cries of "Stop!... Stop!... Stop!..." were constantly interrupted as she had to close her mouth a few times in order to prevent dragon slobber from entering her mouth.

Soon she managed to get Toothless off and she looked a real mess: her tight bun had loosened and strands of her hair were plastered to her face, her robes looked shiny and slimy with drops of saliva dripping slowly down and the folds in her robes were slowly peeling away from each other.

The rest of the staff, who were previously paralyzed at seeing Toothless pin McGonagall, started to giggle and snicker at the state of her, though to their credit the sound was muffled. Even Toothless was warbling in a manner similar to laughter. Not surprisingly though, Severus Snape did not bother to stifle his laughter and was howling at the sight of McGonagall, with tears streaming down his face. However, his laughter was abruptly silenced for a moment, before a loud and horrid hacking sound filled the air.

McGonagall, having enough of Snape's mocking laughter, gathered a small blob of slobber off herself and flung at Snape. The glob of saliva flew towards Snape, hitting him smack in the face and entering his vulnerably open mouth. Snape fell onto his hands, hacking and spitting in a effort to remove the saliva from his mouth.

The rest of the staff had reached their limit and couldn't take it anymore; they burst into laughter at the sight of two of their strictest colleagues being coated in slobber or hacking their guts out trying to get the saliva out of their mouth. Flitwick and Sprout slowly fell to their knees and rolled on their backs, with tears cascading down their face. Dumbledore himself too laughed at his two staff members and he had to place his hands on his knees in order to remaining standing.

Soon, his laughter left him enough for him to walk up to his teachers, take out his wand and wave it at his employees. The dragon saliva vanished off McGonagall and out of Snape's mouth, although, there was nothing he could do about the smell of McGonagall's clothes or the taste lingering in Snape's mouth.

The two started bickering at each other but Dumbledore stepped in swiftly in order to prevent the conflict from escalating into a full-blown duel. The two managed to stop arguing but gave each other the stink-eye all the up the castle. Toothless watched the scene and warbled in laughter yet his presence was ignored due to the ungracious sight of McGonagall and Snape.

Little did the staff know it at the time, but that was the first time each of them were relaxed and had laughed in a long time.

Next Chapter Title: That Wizard, Realizing