"Miss Yakumo, may I have a word?"

"You may." Ran said, turning around. "How can I help you, headmaster?"

It was the morning after breakfast, and Dumbledore had managed to catch Ran Before she disappeared to wherever Ran does when nobody can find her.

"If you have a moment to spare, I wish to talk to you about one of your recent classes. I have been led to understand that you had given the students a… I suppose you could call it a history practical."

"Would you be referring to the first lesson of term?" Ran said, cocking her head.

Dumbledore decided to stop beating about the bush. "Miss Ran, was it strictly necessary to show the students the bombing of Hiroshima?"

Ran pretended to think for a moment. "...I can't think of any reason why not."

"The heads of house have come complaining to me that some students have been having nightmares, they apparently would have brought the complaints to you, but you have been characteristically hard to reach."

Ran nodded, ignoring the latter half of the complaint in favour of the first. "I'd imagine so, it was quite a horrible event, I'd be worried if they reacted any other way to being shown such a sight."

"That only reinforces the question of 'why', I understand you were trying to show them the potential of muggle technology, but why show them such a traumatic event, especially if you knew it was going to cause distress." Dumbledore said, slightly more firmly.

Ran took a moment to stare into the middle distance, before giving a sigh, and giving Dumbledore a tired look that made him feel every century the Fox had lived. "Were you there Dumbledore?"

Dumbledore blinked at the question, but Ran wasn't finished.

"Did you follow the bombs decent with your own eyes? Been blinded by the glare, seared by the heat? Feel every cell in your body cry out in agony as the radiation poisoned you inside and out? To lay dying in the rubble in the sudden oppressive silence of tens of thousands of lives snuffed out in a single moment? An act of unjustifiable violence committed not out of necessity, but curiocity, the same thing that led you to be standing there in the first place?"

"And did you know of how many times since that that single atrocity has nearly been repeated, on a global scale no less? October fifth nineteen-sixty, radar equipment in Greenland miss flagged a moonrise as a soviet missile strike, however the presence of Nikita Khrushchev in New York at the time of the alert threw some doubts on the authenticity. October twenty fifth nineteen-sixty two, a bear climbing a fence at the Duluth Sector Direction Center was mistaken for a saboteur and set off alarms across the entire region, however the Volk Field air base was faulty and played nuclear klaxons instead, the planes were on the runway before the mistake was found. Ninth of November nineteen-sixty five, during a multi state power failure in America's northeast, a circut failure in several nuclear bomb detectors caused them to regester them as a nuclear strike, despite thier purpose being to distinguish the two. And these were only a few, countless times that the world nearly ended, had not cooler heads prevailed."

In fact Dumbledore hadn't heard of most of those, even though he made at least a reasonable effort to keep up with muggle news.

"I'm not expecting the students to cower in fear for the rest of their lives from the bomb, children are resilliant after all." Ran said. "But if I can impart to at least some of these sheltered wizards the horrors of war, and maybe take a wider interest in the world around them, then I feel it will be worth a few sleepless nights."

Dumbledore couldn't help but stare, this was possibly the deepest he had ever seen into the reserved fox youkai's psyche, from her usual composed nature, it would be hard to imagine she had such deep trauma under the surface.

Nevertheless Dumbledore still had some questions. "While I think I can understand your reasoning, I do question teaching it to a class of Wizards and witches. Barring Muggleborns, they have little to do with the Muggle world, they do not participate in Muggle Politics, nor will they fight in muggle wars, unless there is a magical component."

To this Ran's normal persona reasserts itself as she rolls her eyes. "Please, despite how much wizard's love to pretend otherwise, they do exist on this planet just like everybody else, they will not be spared nuclear fallout out of ignorance of global events and politics. At the very least I hope that my lessons will convince them to pull their heads out of the sand and join everybody else in the real world."

"I suppose there is wisdom in that." Dumbledore said. "That said, please avoid showing off such sights to the younger students if you would. If you must share such events with the students, leave it to the upper years, sixth and seventh years for preference, fifth years at the absolute lowest. Any younger and I'm worried for the mental health of the students. If we get too many complaints I'm afraid the school board might get involved. They were somewhat against a nonhuman teacher in the first place, and I'm afraid they might use it as an excuse to suspend your lessons."

Ran gave a respectful bow. "Very well, I will restrain myself in the future."

"If I might make a suggestion, perhaps the moon landings will be more palatable to younger audiences? A demonstration of muggle technology that would be somewhat less harrowing." Dumbledore suggests.

"I will take it under consideration." Ran said.


"Class dismissed, everyone except Potter may go, I need a word."

Hailey cocks her head and pouts as everybody else gets up to leave, an act unnoticed by Snape as he had started grading papers.

After everybody else had left, Snape beckons Hailey over.

"Anything wrong professor?" Hailey asked once she was in front of his desk.

Snape, still not looking up from the papers, said. "While I am loath to break this unspoken treaty we seem to have, I feel I would be failing my duties to the school if I did not make at least a token effort to reprimand you for your blatant disregard for school rules."

"Whatever do you mean Professor." Hailey said, feigning innocence.

"I am of course referring to your lack of uniform." Snape said.

"But I'm still wearing my robe though." Hailey said, tilting her head.

"That is debatable." Snape said. "I admit I have been somewhat Lineint with you over the last Semester, I had noticed you shortening your robe in small increments, but I did not consider it worth my time disciplining you over robe length, otherwise I would have half the girls in school sitting in detentions. However I feel my tolerance has gone to your head. There is only so much you can remove from a robe before it ceases to be one. If that was not enough, you have even removed your sleeves."

"Well technically, I am still wearing them." Hailey said, lifting her arms to show them off. She had tailored them in the popular Gensokyo fashion, which is detached, and instead secured to the upper arm.

"Yes, and while I commend your needlework." Snape drawled, despite seemingly still too engrossed in his markings to look up to check said needlework. "It does not change the fact that what you are wearing is a 'vest'. Go change it at once."

"And what if I don't want to?" Hailey said teasingly.

"Then I shall be forced to inform Miss Yakumo of your disregard of my instructions." Snape said coolly.

Hailey Froze.

Snape then finally looked up from his grading to look Hailey in the eye. "I am not stupid, Miss Potter. I am fully aware that threatening you with detention or house points is a meaningless exercise. Thanks to Dumbledore's arrangement with your guardian, I do not have the authority to give you detentions, and you are too self centred to care about house points. So rather then trying to futilely control your behaviour myself I'd much rather hand you off to somebody who can. I have been informed by Madam Hootch that you are being bribed by Miss Yakumo with a trip to a muggle theme park should she, and I quote 'not hear too many complaints about your behaviour'."

Leaving the somewhat dumbfounded Hailey, to return to grading, he added. "I expect to see you back in uniform by dinner."

Sophie watched amused as Hailey grumbled all the way back to the common room.


"…Ok, let's leave the fact of how shifty that guy was for now." Sophie said diplomatically. "But you can't honestly be considering raising a dragon in a wooden hut with a thatch roof… next to a forest… on the grounds of a school."

"Well… I know it sounds a bit barmy when you put it like that." Hagrid admitted, Under the stares of Sophie and Lily (Hailey was having a staring contest with the hatchling in question). "But I've done me research, I know how to look after it. I've also raised plenty of critters like this, I'm plenty confident I can manage the little tyke."

"Little yeah, but for how long?" Sophie countered. "Plus he's not like that three headed dog of yours, this thing can fly!"

"Who told you about Fluffy?" Hagrid said defensively.

"Hagrid. Dumbledore stood up, in a room full of teenagers, and told them not to go there, half the school has seen the dog already." Sophie said blankly. "That said, I only assumed it was yours, so thanks for confirming that."

"Hagrid." This time Lily piped up, surprising both Sophie and Hagrid. "I know this means a lot to you, but Dragon rearing is Illegal, and if you get caught with one on school grounds, not only will you get in trouble, but so will Dumbledore."

"What do you mean?" Hagrid said, suddenly nervous.

"Dumbledore is the headmaster, and is therefore responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the student body, not only that, but he clearly has a lot of faith in you. Anything you do can and will reflect on him in some way or another." Lily said

Hagrid was dumbstruck, "I… I never thought about it like that, figured it would just be me in trouble…" He then looked at the Dragon hatchling, who was still locked gazes with Hailey. "But I can't just abandon her can I? I'm basically her mum." Hagrid said.

"Talk to Dumbledore then." This time it was Sophie who spoke up. "Be honest with him, maybe he can make some arrangements for you to hold onto it for a while, or at the very least get him sent to a reserve or something."

Hagrid nodded, although he seemed to deflate a little bit. "I suppose you are…"

Thump

The three turned to see the Dragon Hatchling on its back in a clear sign of submission.

"How did you get her to do that then?" Hagrid said to Hailey, incredulous.

Hailey grinned. "I'm good with animals."

"More like it was cowed by the superior predator." Sophie muttered to Lily, who gave a tiny nod.


Authors Notes:

As usual, sorry for the delay, life stuff happened for a while, nothing serious, just some visiting relatives, family friends, and a nasty flu (not Covid, just a flu)

I honestly struggled with this chapter, as I have said, not a lot happens first year, and trying to find enough filler to put out one more Slices of life chapter before I start the climax was difficult. That said my sense of narrative flow demanded another filler because I feel otherwise the climax would arrive too abruptly. So here I was, stuck with the consequence of throwing out the 'whats Fluffy Guarding' main plot. I was sitting on the first two parts for quite some time, trying to think of a third. I was only untill I went to listen to the audiobook for philosophers stone to look for inspiration, that I saw the chapter titles, and realised "God dammit I forgot the bloody dragon!". After that, it only took a bit of brainstorming, and a lot of procrastination, and then I had this chapter.

So no, in case anyone was wondering, I did not take this long because of those other stories and spinnoffs I mentioned in the last authors notes, I have barely touched those (apart from proofreading) since the last chapter of this story, mostly out of guilt for this chapter taking so long, now that this is out, I might see about publishing a few of the chapters of those ones, perhaps later today, or maybe tomorrow.

See you, hopefully sooner.