Written for the QLFC Season 6, Round 7

Team: Wigtown Wanderers

Position: Seeker

Position Prompt: Green Lantern (2011)

Word Count: 2362

Beta(s): Aya Diefair, DinoDina

Chapter 25: The Blood of an Englishman

"Goddammit, he's at it again."

Andreea didn't glance up at the sound of Alex's mutter. It wasn't worth it; she already knew what he'd be referring to. Instead, her head bowed over her clipboard and stump of a lead pencil in hand, she scribbled away at the chart. It was so dark that she could barely make out the white paper, let alone the printed words listed in chicken-scratch scrawl. Not that she needed to read it. Years of practice meant that she was more than familiar with the procedure.

Name.

Species.

Time of day.

The list of observations undertaken at that particular time of day – behaviours, mobility, visible degree of aggression. If the beast appeared discomforted, or lethargic. If they were blowing smoke or, worse, had proceeded to stutter sparks and fire into the cold night air, vivid orange plumes into the darkness that was broken only by the muffled green lanterns spread about the camp.

Dragons were unpredictable at best. They demanded regular updates of their status, and especially so for juveniles. The adolescent Fireball in the pen before her, a male and riled for reasons that she couldn't comprehend any better than the rest of the handlers, needed close observation even more so.

Sighing to herself, squinting as she jotted down a final note, Andreea glanced up at the pen. Within, despite the green-tinged shadows so typical of after-hours camp, she could make out the brilliant red and gold scaling of the Fireball as it twisted and writhed in whatever had caused its latest fit of disgruntlement. It was a glorious creature, befitting it's pseudonym 'the Liondragon' even at such a young age for the crested mane fanning around its neck, and Andreea would never grow tired of gazing upon it. It was simply a shame that it had to be so goddamn unruly.

"What's wrong with you?" she murmured, more to herself than to Alex, tapping the blunt tip of her pencil upon the clipboard. "If you could only tell us what's bothering you…"

"It's not the diet," Alex said, though he too sounded more as though he was speaking to himself than to Andreea. "I swear, it's not the bloody diet. I would know."

He would, too. If anyone on camp knew the basic needs of a Chinese Fireball it was Alexandrou Goga. He'd been working with them for years. It was part of the reason the young male's constant discontent was so bothersome.

"Maybe we sourced the pigs wrong," Andreea said. "If we got them from a local region –"

"No," Alex said immediately. "I know for a fact that they'll only eat the Alpine breed. There's nothing wrong with the type of pig we're feeding it."

"Maybe if we cooked it then?"

"What kind of a dragon wants its food already cooked?"

Andreea shrugged. She wasn't an expert on Fireballs like Alex, but she'd been working with dragons herself for nearly five years. A generalist was about the loosest title that could be assigned to her, but it was the one the fit the most accurately. Andreea knew how to take obs, knew what to look out for, but the finer details required the specialists.

Unfortunately, when it came to the Fireball, even the specialists didn't know where to turn.

Three years. Three whole years the Fireball had been at the sanctuary, tucked into the depths of Romania in the most diverse and well-funded residence for dragons in Europe. Three years, and ever since the Fireball had hatched it had been a problem. Never happy, unable to mix with the other males for risk of starting a fight, spouting torrents of flame into the air every other night in an announcement of his distress as soon as he was old enough to produce it at all.

There was clearly something wrong, but Andreea didn't know what it was. Neither did Alex, or the sanctuary director, or the plethora of other specialists that had been called in to take a look at him. It was frustrating, to say the least. Unendingly frustrating.

It was the third time that week Andreea had been on duty to take obs for the Fireball male. Eyeing the beast where he prowled around the walls of his enclosure, head low and swaying as though following a scent and tail lashing like a whip, she could only shake her head. He was a problem, yes, but worse than the issue of what that problem was arose that of how to deal with it. The Fireball wouldn't let anyone near it, and being the size that it was…

If he gets much bigger, stunning hexes won't work for him anymore. Usually, the dragons were coached to a degree that they weren't so much tame but bowed their head to the ministrations of the sanctuary veterinarians. But the Fireball – he didn't like that. He didn't like it at all.

The prowling, the aggression, the agitation that Andreea's own obs had proven were vaguely cyclical… if she didn't know better, all of it would sum up to one very specific diagnosis, but that possibility was ludicrous. Why, it would almost be like considering –

"What's going on?"

Snapping her attention from the Fireball, Andreea swung her gaze over her shoulder. At her side, dragged from peering down at the dragon himself, Alex immediately turned as well. Andreea didn't need to look at him to know he immediately scowled. Alex didn't like the new recruit. No more than Andreea did herself.

Charlie Weasley was a study. A confusing, amicable, chatty study that bordered upon cocky. He was a big man, broad, and knew how to work. He was good with the dragons, pulled his own weight, and wasn't shy about interacting with the other dragonkeepers right off the bat. Even when most of those dragonkeepers didn't interact back, he didn't appear fazed.

Weasley was an outsider. A Englishman. Never in the history of the sanctuary had they had an Englishman work with them. It somehow felt almost like a taboo. Andreea couldn't help but hate it, if more for tradition than anything else. It wasn't because Weasley's Romanian was stitled and painfully accented to the point that she cringed every time he spoke. It wasn't because of his chattiness either, though he did speak far, far to much. It was because, well…

"What're you doing here, Weasley?" Alex asked. Or grumbled, more correctly. Alex really, really didn't like Weasley.

Whether Weasley was just dumb or deliberately ignorant, he didn't appear fazed by Alex's open aggression. He only smiled, the expression bright and warm, visible in the sickly green glow of the single lantern hanging from the watchtower. He took a final step up onto the platform, striding towards the both of them, and planted himself between them as though he was entirely entitled to be there.

"I finished up over with the Opaleye early," Weasley said, folding his arms across his chest as he peered over the edge of the watchtower railing. "I figured I might just swing by."

"You finished early," Andreea said slowly, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. "There's always more work to be done, Weasley."

Again, far from fazed, Weasley flashed her a smile. "That's what I thought too, but Gheorghe let me off the hook early."

Probably to get rid of you, Andreea thought to herself. She shifted in place, edging a little along the railing to put just a tad more distance between herself and Weasley. She couldn't quite put her finger on what she disliked so much about him, but –

"He's playing up again?" Weasley said, nodding down at the Fireball where the male had just taken another pass just below them. "It's a full moon, right? Wasn't that what happened last time?"

That. That was what annoyed her most of all. Weasley knew things. Somehow, he just knew them. It was as though he wasn't even trying, as though he instinctively understood what was going on even without the years of experience to back his claims, or the theoretical knowledge in place of that experience. Weasley was a generalist, just as Andreea was; he shouldn't just know things.

"Yes," Alex said shortly.

"He had that salted ham for dinner, didn't he?" Weasley asked.

How the bloody hell does he even know that? Andreea gave a mental shake of her head, jotting down another note as the Fireball barked a sharp cry into the night air before releasing another plume of vibrant orange flame.

"Yes," Alex said again, a little more sharply.

"Huh." Weasley hummed to himself. "I thought that might work."

It hadn't even been Weasley's idea. In the entire week he'd been at the Sanctuary – a week. Only a week – he hadn't had the chance to work with the Fireball. He wasn't qualified to make such suggestions, nor did he have the credentials to know such things. How the hell did he know?

It must be the English blood, Andreea thought to herself. Something about foreigners… we shouldn't have hired him.

"I've had a thought about this, actually," Weasley said.

Almost twitching, Andreea eyed him sidelong and saw Alex do the same. She hoped that her own stare didn't resemble a glare quite as much as Alex's did. "What?" Alex said so harshly that, had he directed the order to Andreea, she would have zipped her mouth shut immediately.

"Just that…" Weasley trailed off for a second. He pursed his lips, cocking his head so that the green-tinged shadows smeared and danced across his face, then gestured towards where the Fireball had paused, rocking back on his haunches and glaring at something Andreea couldn't see across his pen. "Don't you think his behaviours are sort of telling?"

Alex stared at him. Andreea stared too. She tapped her pencil again, fingers squeezing in a twitch of agitation, and opened her mouth to speak.

"He's clearly territorial," Weasley continued before she could get a word in. "Way more than most males would be at his age. His eating habits change with the moon, and so does his level of aggression. He's big for his age, too, and that barking sound? That's not normal for males, is it?"

"What would you know about normal for Chinese Fireballs?" Alex asked. It wasn't a denial of Weasley's suggestion, but it it certainly wasn't lenient enough to recognise it as valid observations. Which they were, Andreea knew. She'd been making those very observations herself.

Weasley shrugged. "I've read things."

"Read things," Alex echoed flatly.

"Yeah. And not just about Fireballs, too. If you cross-compare species, the behaviours that the Fireball's showing is kind of indicative, isn't it? Like that."

He gestured across the pen, and Andreea watched as the Fireball sunk back further on his haunches, front limbs curling to his chest, and tipped his head back. He uttered another sharp bark, released a stream of fire, before lurching back onto all-fours and returning to his pacing. The trail of smoke floating in his wake breathed of his disgruntlement.

"Not all Fireballs do that," Weasley said. "Very few, actually. But don't the Opaleyes do the same? I just saw an old girl pull back into her Perch like that three days ago."

Andreea pursed her lips. She'd thought the same herself, but… but…

"Right," Alex said, drawing the word out. "A girl. Thus irrelevant."

"Not really," Weasley said.

"Males and females have different behavioural traits, Weasley, so even with cross-species comparisons you can't consider –"

"What if he was a female?"

Weasley's utterance drew Alex up short. His surprise even washed his glare aside. "What?"

Weasley gestured across the pen once more where the Fireball was swinging her head in exaggerated sweeps, blowing dust from the floor around her in plumes mirroring the smoke trailing from her nostrils. "If you put a female in an enclosure this small, and fed her only dead meat, and had her mixing only with other males, then wouldn't she be pretty angry too?"

Andreea stared. Alex stared too. He blinked, a muscle in his face twitching, and when he spoke it was in a stutter. "It's a bloody male, Weasley. In case you haven't noticed, there's certain physical characteristics of a dragon's body that make it a –"

"I'm just saying," Weasley said, holding up his hands in placation. "Just because he looks like a boy doesn't mean he necessarily thinks he is – does it?"

It didn't really make sense. Not to Andreea, and clearly not to Alex, either. But then, Weasley clearly thought differently. He acted differently, said things differently, and made different assumptions. His English blood; that was what Andreea attributed it to. His foolish English blood that, somehow, corresponded to her own ideas on the matter.

I did think the behaviours were reminiscent, but…

"It's just a thought," Weasley said, lowering his hands and folding his arms back across his chest. He shrugged again. "Maybe give it a go and see how it works?"

He left after that. After watching the Fireball a little longer and ignoring – or persiting in his obliviousness to – Alex's renewed glare, Weasley left them. His footsteps thunked heavily down the steps, muffling with distance, but even when he'd disappeared, Andreea stared after his retreating figure. Only slowly did she turn back to Alex.

He was staring at her, and she met his gaze with a resigned one of her own. "It's stupid," she said slowly. "I know it is, but do you think…?"

Alex sighed, his glare finally fading. He dropped his head for a moment, eyes closing as though wearied by the situation, before nodding. "It is stupid," he said. "But I'm prepared to try just about anything now."

It wouldn't work. Surely, it wouldn't. Providing a male dragon with female environment, relations, and diet, shouldn't work to improve its health and wellbeing. Dragons didn't think like that. But it was worth a shot. And after all, Weasley was –

Well, he was an Englishman, but he was strangely intuitive when it came to dragons. Andreea would admit that much at least. Maybe, just maybe, he was onto something.