Eight Months
It is at the very end of September that Harry and Fortuna get a completely unexpected and almost baffling assignment to London.
"We're allowed to leave the Covert?" clarifies the wizard captain, unable to believe his ears.
Captain Moreton, looking beyond weary, just sighs deeply: "You'll not spend the night at any other Covert and your route will stay well clear of any quarantined area. Indeed, you are not to even think of deviating from the course we'll give you. But yes, you'll go. It is a risk... but a calculated risk."
Celeritas and Salvius, who are both present and watchful, observe her as she paces tiredly to and fro, but they say nothing, the former's anxiety experiencedly contained, the latter's limited to nervous jerks of his striped body.
"The last dispatch I received bore confirmation of our worst fears," she says at last, reluctantly. "The Plague is everywhere. There is no hope of stopping it, not anymore. And there is no cure."
"Everywhere?" whispers Harry in horror.
"Dover, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough... the breeding grounds in Wales and Halifax; even Gibraltar... Everywhere the couriers went on their rounds; everywhere." Captain Moreton is grim, her tones clipped. "The Irish breeding grounds have been spared so far, God willing it'll last: all the eggs are being sent there, or to a more secret location, for safekeeping."
She pauses, then asks, with hope tinged by fear: "Fortuna is well, still?"
"Not a cough or a sneeze; she is perfectly hearty," answers Harry with unconcealed relief.
"God be thanked." She nods briskly and hands him his orders: "We've prepared our own eggs for transport, all the hardening ones at least: we cannot risk any hatchling by keeping them here, not when we have already five coughing dragons quarantined. You'll take them to London, and they'll be sorted from there. We'll keep the ones who aren't likely to hatch soon, in the hope that..."
She trails off instead of completing the sentence: hope doesn't come easily in the wake of news from the South, where more and more dragons are dying.
They have discovered with mingled relief and dismay that their isolated Covert has been spared the worst of it. Despite the awful coughing and weak lamentations of their five sick dragons, none here have died yet.
The horror stories about the ones who fell ill first, back during the winter, are hard to bear: their tongues became covered in white blisters until they could not taste anything any more, they stopped eating until they wasted away, they kept coughing and coughing until they simply couldn't breath anymore. The Longwings have the worst of it: every time they cough, they spray their acid as well. Nobody wants to think of what the acid build up due to repeated violent coughing might result into.
The reports from the South leave every aviator shivering and obsessively alert for any of the known symptoms: coughing and congestion, loss of appetite. The captains observe their partners with watchful anxiety; any dragon who starts to feel weak and lethargic is a cause for utter panic. Harry checks Fortuna over a dozen times a day, terrified to find the slightest sign of a sore throat, or a damning dullness of her scales, no matter how earnestly she reassures him that she feels perfectly fine.
"Let them know about the baths, too," Moreton instructs him as he's preparing to leave for London. "It might not be much, but it is something: and we have to do what we can."
The warmth from the baths underground has indeed been helping the suffering dragons. Despite their obvious discomfort, they are stronger than any they've heard of from other Coverts and the progression of symptoms seems slower than reported from elsewhere.
"Though of course, they're only Reapers and Parnassians so far... it is the Longwings and Regal Coppers that are the worst affected: those, we're losing fast," says the senior surgeon of the Covert, Warren. "But the heat can delay the worst, of that I'm confident. They might not be healthy, but they might well last a dozen years or so: it is hopeful news, for surely we'll find a cure before then."
For once, Harry isn't thrilled at the idea of flying; he does not voice his misgivings, however.
"Fortuna is as fast as the Greylings, but she's much bigger: she can carry all the eggs at once, with a little care for the storing and rigging," he explains to his friends and crew, looking unhappy but understanding. "It means risking only her, instead of a group of lightweights."
Ron looks thoughtful, thinking over options for safely carrying the precious cargo; Hermione's eyes widen with worry, but she also fidgets until Harry, made short by his anxiety, snaps: "What?"
"Can I come along?" she rushes out in one breath.
Harry blinks: "Huh, sure. No problem. Thought you didn't want to fly?"
Hermione shrugs. She's less than thrilled, he can see that, but after a bit of coaxing she admits that she sees this as an opportunity: if she can go to London, she can plead her case about the dragons' education: "The School is doing very well, here; but it's time to spread the word," she explains.
Harry doesn't say anything. He doesn't want to discourage her, but he doubts anyone will be willing to listen to her, under the current circumstances.
Dragon after dragon is falling ill; the usual remedies, that at first gave some relief, have lost all efficacy. Coughs barely soothed pick up virulence again and again, appetites vanish at alarming rates, the death count mounts.
Hermione's School cannot possibly be of concern right now.
Indeed, the aviators they meet in London, to whom they entrust the precious eggs, cannot bring themselves to discuss anything besides the Plague – or at most, the war. Cursing Napoleon's name in ever-creative ways is a popular past-time.
The quarantined London Covert is a desolate place. Fortuna has to be kept away, of course, but the Plague doesn't spread through humans, and there are too many people with nothing to do there, so they are given a bit of a tour.
It's terrible.
The dragons who have been ill the longest, with eyes dull and unseeing with exhaustion, are a painful spectacle, almost too much to bear; their captains, unshaven and dishevelled, in filthy linen, refusing to leave their companions even for a moment, are scarcely any better.
They are told of how the Longwings who are quartered in the sand-pits are holding up better, though they do not like it in the least; of how the smallest dragons lose coherency long before their deaths, and can only lay, panting and wheezing, unable to even speak.
The rasping, hollow cough that flecks the ground before them with blood will soon be making appearances in Harry's nightmares.
What is he going to do if Fortuna should get sick?
His stomach clenches at the mere thought.
Hermione, naturally, has no luck whatsoever with her attempts.
"I cannot blame them," she admits softly. The traces of sickness and desperation are everywhere: the sight has shaken her. "The war was bad enough, I imagine, but now this plague... no, it is only natural that no-one thinks of education in the face of this." She gives a desolate look around.
News from the continent are hardly comforting. Rumours of the ongoing defeat of Prussia and of different, unexpected techniques on Napoleon's part pile up. There is talk of a Chinese dragon in France and the worry of what an alliance between their worst enemy and the country of the greatest dragon breeders in the world would mean for England is further depressing everybody's spirit.
There are noises made about Fortuna taking up Channel duty. She's still deemed too young, but they are almost past the point of caring about her inexperience, much to Harry's alarm. His reaction garners disappointed glares and stiff rebukes.
The list of catastrophe is too long to contemplate with equanimity.
Despite the fear and grimness of the situation, they steal an hour for themselves and apparate to Charing Cross Road, looking for – they don't even know what. They cannot stay away, however: the curiosity, or the hope, or whatever it is, is too strong.
Harry contemplates a street that is vastly different from the one back home, dirtier and somewhat old-fashioned to his eyes, with paving stones instead of asphalt and carriages rumbling over it; his eyes linger on the lack of a certain famous pub: only a milliner's shop stands where the Leaky Cauldron should be and Harry can sense no trace of hidden magic at all.
A few quick spells of Hermione's confirm what they have long suspected: there is no Magical London alongside the muggle one, in this universe.
"So where did you go? And did you bring back anything we can booze with?" asks his fellow captain, James Foreman, whom Harry had befriended months ago in Edinburgh, with a feeble attempt at a grin.
Amicus, his Greyling, has started to cough just the day before – a sudden light bout quickly morphing into a full out fit that left him gasping. He hasn't stopped since and is already starting to spit blood now and then. Everybody knows what this means; nobody wants to say it out loud. Foreman, however, seems determined to strive for levity (even if he doesn't leave Amicus' side for a moment).
"Sorry, couldn't find anything good," answers Harry sadly.
He trudges back to the outskirts of the city in a sombre mood. There really is no magic in this world. No way for them to go home unless the Doctor returns, no way to escape before Fortuna falls sick... but also no way to help any of their suffering friends here.
Despite having suspected it all along, despite having given up hope long before, he finds that it is still a blow.
Then he catches sight of Fortuna, grooming herself like a huge, reptilian cat, and amends his thought. Maybe all the magic in this world has gone into making the dragons what they are... Harry can live with that.
Indeed, it sounds like a perfectly acceptable trade to him.
Just so long as she stays healthy.
His friends are also slightly disappointed, but they'd prepared themselves for this likely eventuality. Ron sums it up the best: "We'll just have to figure things out by ourselves," he says with a shrug.
It takes Harry a moment to realize he's talking of the mysterious disappearances: his mind is too focused on the Plague.
Hermione agrees; she seizes the chance of being in the capital and buys up books from every seller she has the time to check out. Not just for her School, either: "Without a Ministry for Magic enforcing the Statute of Secrecy, there's bound to be mentions of magical creatures, if any exist," she points out. "Maybe I'll find something that will help us find the missing people."
Ron sets to read with the determination he'd once put into defending Fiercebeak.
Harry would gladly help, but Fortuna's million-questions-per-line-he-reads attitude slows him down; he spends quite a lot of time trying to remember everything he ever learned in Care of Magical Creature and Defence Against the Dark Arts, to satisfy her everlasting fascination.
Hermione's School gains many more supporters in the following weeks. With the Covert isolated and dragons rather coddled, her lectures are one of the few things keeping them distracted; furthermore, a growing number of aviators has little to do with their days. Popularity sky-rockets.
Even the dragons who're starting to cough wish to continue taking lessons and protest bitterly against the quarantine, until she is allowed to hold a class for the sick and one for the healthy, in different parts of the Covert. They all insist on attending her lectures for as long as they have strength to do so.
Harry is openly proud of his best friend – and secretly relieved that she looks so much better. His worries from the beginning of this odd adventure are finally fading.
Ron, for his part, hugs her tightly the first time he catches sight of her with a heavy book-bag slung over her shoulder (people goggle at her lugging such tomes around everywhere at first, but then, they don't know about the weight-reducing charms she's been using since her third year at Hogwarts) and teases that she's finally back to herself. She isn't, not really – her paleness and the shadow under her eyes prove it – but she does feel infinitely better than half a year ago and tells them so with a smile.
Indeed, Harry is grateful he can find consolation in his friends' well-being and in Fortuna's miraculously continuing good health, because the rest of his situation affords him no respite.
His difficulties with his fellow aviators have abated, but not entirely ended; with his access to news now as curtailed as theirs, much of his clout in the Covert disappears and the big problem of his reluctance to fight in another war regains prominence.
Insults and taunts are frequent; threats of violence increasing. He feels like the weeks of his adolescence when he would walk into the Great Hall amidst hisses and insults, feeling the heavy disapprobation of his schoolmates on his very skin, or take hidden shortcuts to avoid being ambushed by the Slytherins: an experience he would have been happy never to repeat.
Some of it is stress for their dragon's illness, and likely envy that Fortuna is still well, but it certainly doesn't help that he is so openly disinclined to take up the slack of patrolling over the Channel. Any of them would be volunteering for the front lines, if they only could. The threat of a French invasion is an ever-looming danger and his lack of eagerness in defending the country weighs heavily against him.
A Captain Henry Howard, in particular, is a pain in the ass. Arrogant, disagreeable, brave to the point of stupidity, utterly convinced of his own superiority and far too smug about his father's and his father's dragon's famous exploits in Egypt, he reminds Harry unpleasantly of Malfoy. He supposes there are such snobs in any group.
Harry's feeble interest in the war, his lack of enthusiasm for fighting, rub Howard completely the wrong way. His sense of honour is highly developed and strongly intransigent, with himself no less than anyone else: he cannot abide Harry's behaviour. That Fortuna's skill in the air completely eclipses his Mirificus heightens his dislike of the wizard captain.
He seldom passes an opportunity to insult him, belittle his achievements or accuse him of treason.
Harry knows that Howard's digs are doing a lot of damage to his reputation. He also knows he can ill-afford to ignore the matter; but he's kind of used to being reviled at intervals and after so many instances during his past among wizards, he struggles to find enough incentive to bother countering the man's provocations, or setting the gossipmongers straight. Likely as not, they'll get over it eventually.
His crew, especially Barton and Berriman, take it harder than he does. He is not so insecure as to feel his courage truly called into questions; they, however, have no way of understanding and sharing his calm confidence.
Simply put, they can't figure him out. The doubts and reluctance he has a hard time concealing disappoint them – a rather natural reaction, he admits to himself. But what can he do? He has the delicacy to leave the voicing of his true opinion of the war for the precious, unchaperoned hours he spends with Ron and Hermione, but he can hardly bring himself to feign enthusiasm for something he positively dreads.
"You're the bravest man I've ever met," tells him Barton: "How can you possibly advocate so cowardly a behaviour?"
Harry can only shrug. You have to truly live through a war and see the aftermath, before you can understand that never again is the only stance you can fully support.
It wouldn't be so bad if the comments didn't hurt Fortuna. The lean dragon has sort of warmed to Barton and to the younger members of her crew – the runners and look-outs – although she still prefers it when Harry doesn't take his attention away from her to be "all serious and in-charge-y," as she pouts; that they are inclined to despise her Harry is a source of indignation and mortification both.
The only ray of light is that when Celeritas outright asks him about it – informing him they'll be deployed with Captain Winyard and Priscus, as soon as the young one is ready – and Harry replies, calmly and steadily, that he will do what is asked of him, regardless of his personal preference, the venerable dragon is satisfied.
"Enthusiasm is less essential than skill and courage, anyway," he comments indifferently, "and those, you have in spades."
His opinion carries a lot of weight and many aviators are settled by the confirmation, at least those who are inclined to like Harry. Unfortunately, the combination of wartime mentality and tempers frayed by boredom, helplessness and fear is the worst possible situation for a reluctant fighter to be a part of a military branch: Harry doubts his meal times will get less awkward any time soon.
At least his friends aren't facing the same problems.
Hermione is a much beloved teacher, even when she has to be stern, to keep her eager students in line. It is not an easy feat, to stare down a rambunctious pupil weighting twenty tons, who towers over her a good two meters; but she doesn't let herself be cowed. Midwingmen and ensigns (and a good number of captains) are awed and intimidated by her. The cadets are torn between worship and resentment for all the schoolwork that she piles on them.
Ron is still well-liked, even if he's withdrawn somewhat from his circle of friends. He seems determined to become an all-time expert on this world's folklore, all in the hope of finding something useful to track down the vanished people, or at least stop further disappearances.
Not that any more people have gone missing: the villagers are too wary, not to say fearful, of leaving the uncertain safety of their homes and close-by fields; but a lot of sheep and cattle and even a few dogs have vanished, much to their owners' irritation and mingled anxiety.
A climate of uneasiness and superstitious hardship reigns in the region.
Nobody walks around on their own; the men raise palisades around their fields and keep their sheep penned up, and drive rows of iron nails into the doors and under the windows, to ward off evil fairies; the mothers rub crosses onto their children's foreheads with garlic; the maidens pour fresh water over thresholds, to keep the carnivorous spirits away. "...For they hate fresh water," they explain seriously when Harry asks.
He does that a lot: asking people in the nearby affected villages what they've seen, what they've heard, what they think it's happening. It's a way to keep busy and out of the Covert somewhat legitimately. It's also the best way to gather information, even though it mostly results in whispered tales of fright and wonder, more and more fanciful with every eager recounting.
The magic users exchange loaded glances at the end of every reported story, but invariably, Hermione dismisses the proposed magical source as unlikely in the extreme.
"I have excluded most known magical creatures – all that should be living in this climate," she reminds them more than once.
"You can't be sure this world doesn't have more, or slightly different ones," retorts Ron. "Did you know, there are no brownies, here? None at all! Any faerie is a cruel or, at best, indifferent creature. They never get in touch with humans except to hurt them. Quite the difference, isn't it?"
Ron and Hermione end up bickering about it more often than not. Harry is generally too busy answering Fortuna's questions to take part in the discussions.
His dragon's movements are seriously restricted, to her vociferous disappointment: they don't want to risk any accidental contagion. It means going even so far as the other side of the lake is a lengthy proposition, because they have to walk; but there is enough to hear from the closest villages.
People still go to the market days, if nothing else – travelling in armed groups for safety – and then bring back a deluge of heated speculations, some trying to explain the mysterious happenings, some determined to deny them, some eagerly exaggerating the tale with horrifying details, some listing remedies and counters with unquestioned (but often not unchallenged) authority.
Everyone and their aunt has a different supernatural creature to offer to the speculation pool.
"Duergars, might be," agree the women, meaning the malicious Gray Dwarves of the Southern Uplands. "It started in the Lowlands, did it not? That's where they're from, those conning thieves," they point out, nodding gravely to each other.
"Brollachan!" spit the shepherds, crossing themselves. "Creatures of the night. Shapeless, aimless. Killers in the dark."
"Nuckelavee!" hiss the teenagers ominously, to scare the younger kids. "The Sea's own Devil!" And then they laugh; but the old folks take it seriously.
"I doot it's gaunnae get ye," threatens a granny to a gaggle of wide-eyed children. "Half dragon half man, an' manky all over – neither skin nor scales on its body! Take nae pains to run: it'll get ye anyway. The longest arms, sinewy and strong; the sharpest eyes, filled with blood. It's the Nuckelavee!"
The children scream in equal parts fear and delight at the tale, but the parents hug them closer, uneasily.
"Ridiculous," mutters Hermione, only to have the fiery old lady who, evidently, has excellent hearing, round on her, wild grey hair flying out of her head kerchief: "Haud yer wheesht, lassie! Amn't daft!"
She sounds so much like McGonagall in a snit that both Ron and Harry take a step back, eliciting a lot of sniggers.
"Think Auld Effie is touched in tha head, do ye? Think ye ken more aboot tha world? Dinnae teach yer Granny tae suck eggs, lassie!"
Hermione babbles her apologies; the children giggle and snicker and she waves her cane at them: "Ye be gone, ye wee scunners, or I'll gie ye a skelpit lug!"
They prudently make their retreat while the kids scamper.
"That couldn't be responsible for the Wastes, though, could it? And what about the invisible webs?" asks a still sceptical Hermione later. "Supposing it's even real."
All the areas where people or animals have disappeared, all the fields where the odd invisible webs can be felt, are starting to be called just that: 'the Wastes'. Harry finds it appropriate. Lost lands. At least until they manage to sort this mess out.
Ron shrugs. "Depends on the story, really, what it can do. I mean, it's just a children's tale. Not real."
"Might I remind you of a certain Tale of the Three Brothers?" interjects Harry and while he proceeds to narrate his favourite story to an eager Fortuna, the Nuckelavee goes onto the 'possible, but very, very unlikely' list on Hermione's notebook.
Said notebook is a beautiful, thick volume, bound in Ron's best water repellent leather cloth and filled with the more familiar parchment rather than with the paper that is common in these times. She's had to make her own, after all, with judicious use of magic, because the options available simply aren't convenient enough – and she can't contemplate going without the chance to take notes, as Harry jokes. She has a differently dyed one for keeping track of the school's syllabus and taking notes on what works and what doesn't in teaching dragons, too.
She often has it out while they question the villagers, to write down the varied contributions that keep flocking in.
"It's just the boobrie, my mum says," is a bossy kid's opinion and when they ask, all his friends babble over each other to explain – a giant bird, from the lochs up north, that feeds on cattle and bellows a cry more like a bull than a bird, with webbed feet and sharp teeth and black as the Earl of Hell's waistcoat!
They're certainly learning a lot of the local folklore, Harry reflects.
"A winged creature is a sensible hypothesis, though," points out Hermione. "The clusters of disappearances are far away from each other, after all..."
"Maybe they can apparate," suggests Ron.
"Or there are more than one, scattered all over," offers Harry.
"It's the Baobhan Sith, it is," say the village elders with forbidding glowers. "The White Dame. As treacherous as she's enchanting! You fall for her tricks and she'll suck the very blood out of you, leaving nothing but a pile of bones and desiccated skin behind."
"Except no-one's found any skin or bones left behind," counters Ron sensibly, and the old men glower some more.
"Can't be vampires," agrees Hermione absently. "Not at all the right feeding patterns and anyway, people disappeared during the day, too."
"They're ghouls, mark my work," tells them a frightened woman, red-haired and hunched, clasping a bevy of children close.
Ron narrows his eyes, considering the possibility, but Hermione shakes her head, muttering quietly: "That's not a ghoul's modus operandi, though."
"Make a note of it anyway," replies Ron as he always does.
Soon, her neat notebook holds dozens of pages of observations recorded in her tight script.
It is Ron who patiently compares what they hear from the people, or what he observes in the exploratory tours he's taken to make, with what they read. He can often be found scribbling furiously in between Hermione's neat lines; work is at an all-time low in any case, nobody cares much what he does with his time.
Progress is slow, but they painstakingly isolate what grains of factual truth there are in the flow of superstitious tales they're told.
And when it comes right down to it, it's the tales that do not fit with any of the folklore that stand out as creditworthy.
There's the invisible webs, for starters. Those are definitely real.
Nobody has any idea what they might be, but they are there. Hermione and Harry spend an entire weekend going over a field where they can feel them, these strange filaments caressing the skin: poking at them, feeling them harden or disintegrate under their fingers, trying to come up with ways of making them visible.
Unfortunately, Fortuna is seriously upset and cranky at being left behind and when Harry gets back to her side, he finds Barton in a stint because she and Mirificus, Captain Howard's Anglewing, have gone and fought – an actual dragon brawl, with tail lashing and bites and clawing at each other: Salvius had to subdue both of them (an act which he is recounting loudly, puffed up with pride) and Captain Moreton is still shouting herself hoarse at them (and then she starts in on a cowed and repentant Harry).
Fortuna and Mirificus despise each other utterly: now that they're forced in closer company by the increasing number of dragons being quarantined, their relationship is even more sour. In hindsight, leaving her alone to deal with the older dragon's taunts was not the best idea.
Furthermore, it means that Harry and Howard – and both their dragons – are all grounded and forced into the most boring training exercises and chores Celeritas can come up with as punishment.
So it's up to Ron and Hermione alone to investigate the most intriguing reports of all, those of odd lights at night.
People have a lot to say about fairy rings and spots where fairies dance, of course, but usually it's all about music: tunes that have no discernible source, fiddles or bagpipes playing in the dark, eerily beautiful voices coming from underneath a lake... that's what features in the common tales; light-shows, not so much.
The three of them are mapping out the appearances and are determined to check each and every one out: except now Harry won't get the chance to accompany his friends.
He grumbles and scowls and scolds, but Fortuna, while sorry that they're stuck with boring chores and repeated reprimands, is anything but repentant.
"He's a pig with wings," she says in a nasty tone. "He's always being mean! And he can't even read – and he's jealous of my flying. And he's stinky."
"Fortuna!" scolds Harry.
But she doesn't listen and keeps whining: "Why do I have to do all those training exercises with him, they're boring, and he's lousy and I don't want to have him around! He's tiresome and mean! Why do I have to stay with him? Come on, Harry, say I don't have to!" she cajoles sweetly.
Harry rolls his eyes and wonders when he became a parent to a twelve tonnes, scaly brat – and how did he manage to spoil her so?
At the end of October – on the tail end of their punishment detail and just a few days before what would be Halloween back home – Harry faces the greatest scare of his life in this world.
By now the number of healthy dragons has dwindled to scarily few, but Fortuna is still healthy, to his everlasting joy. They're on probation because of her fight with Mirificus, but because there are so few flight-able dragons anymore, she's sent around anyway.
They're about to return from a scouting jaunt to the coast, just delaying a little to savour the salty wind they don't get at the Covert; but Fortuna isn't enjoying it as much as she should.
Harry notices: of course he does. He is forever alert for any sign of illness, sometimes waking up in dread at night, just to check she's still alright. He notices at once that she's not as lively in her aerial stunts as usual, that she looks tired and perhaps a bit uncomfortable.
He notices, and he frets – not panic, not yet; there are many reasons she could be feeling under the weather, it isn't necessarily the worst. She insists that she is fine and he focuses on that, breathing steadily, speaking softly to ascertain just how unwell she feels, without panicking her. He has to stay calm.
But his nervousness is already morphing into anxiety, his fear grows with every mile she flies while staying somewhat quiet, which is just not her. This tiredness could very well be what he's been watching for so obsessively, what he's been fearing all along.
He can hardly bear to even think – let alone voice – the suspicions and worries mounting in him. What if she is...?
He tries his best to keep calm, to reassure himself – puts it down to their being a little out of shape, after all, they haven't flown much as of late; she doesn't complain of any soreness, no matter how much he asks, it might be just fatigue; perhaps it's just his anxiousness playing on his nerves...
Until Fortuna starts coughing.
There is a moment of blinding terror when he registers the first sneeze – exactly what he's been expecting (dreading) and hoping desperately would never happen – all the world goes white and buzzing as fear closes in on him because this is it, the Plague has caught up with her – it's like every other onset of the sickness he's witnessed and now it's her turn, God help them – his Fortuna is doomed.
He feels despair choking him.
She has to land hastily, her breath coming short. The light coughing of just a minute ago is already devolving into a full-blown fit. In a few hours, she'll be coughing up blood.
Harry thinks he might be yelling, or crying, but he isn't entirely sure; all he can think is no no no no no, because this is Fortuna and he can't lose her and she just can't be ill, she can't, she was perfectly healthy this morning, just a little under the weather, how can she be coughing so much now, what can he do, what can he do, he can't lose her, no no no...
Harry's magic surges in reaction to his fear, strong and wild, like it hasn't in years.
Later on, when he tries to explain it to his friends, he'll realize that what he's feeling at the moment isn't unlike running into a Dementor unexpectedly – and Harry can say this with full knowledge of the facts; but right now he cannot truly think with any coherency. He cannot even react, really: his magic does it for him.
All he is aware of is the great wave rushing up within him, then out, and how Fortuna wheezes, a little breathless, but the coughing is slowing down, blessedly, the muscles of her throat relaxing, her thundering heartbeat calming down, or maybe it's his own, and finally it all stops.
She regains enough breath to start reassuring him that she's fine, really, her throat is no longer sore and her mind isn't foggy anymore; Harry all but collapses against her, hugging her foreleg with all of his strength. Black spots dance before his eyes.
He doesn't know for sure what happened. He doesn't care. He's feeling light-headed anyway – whether from relief or magical exhaustion, he doesn't know. Both, likely.
But she's alright; she's telling him she's alright; she's even flying at her usual mad speed again. She's alright.
They make it back to the Covert, somehow, and a still panicked, groggy Harry insists the dragon surgeons look her over, then again, and again, until Warren starts yelling that he's an idiot, can't he see she's fine, he's the one who looks like death warmed over, he'd better go and see to himself, and leave them alone, as they have better things to do than cater to a healthy dragon, when there are so many sick ones.
Harry hears only one thing: healthy dragon.
The relief is so strong he almost faints.
It is Maria Berriman who carries him away and to the courtyard (she tries getting him to his room, but the idea of not seeing Fortuna right now is beyond what he can bear) and gets the tale out of him.
She's relieved that he "was mistaken" and the rest of the crew, babbling with relief, all agree that he's clearly over-wrought, they all are, aren't they, he must have seen what wasn't there, that's all – just something in her throat triggering her cough reflex, obviously, not at all the Plague.
"We're all terrified, but God willing, she's well and will remain so," Berriman consoles him, pushing a glass of red wine into his hand. He looks at it uncomprehendingly.
"Likely as not, she just choked on something," says Barton, a hand on his shoulder, not bothering to stifle his relieved grin.
But Harry knows it's not so.
Fortuna herself seems to realize it, because she is rather subdued, nowhere near as vocal as usual and wraps herself around Harry's small form quite tightly. They spend the night without losing touch of each other.
When he haltingly tells his friends, Hermione theorizes that his magic must have surged to protect his beloved dragon.
Ron nods along: "Like Mums healing their kids with accidental magic, yeah? It's rare, because mostly it's the child's own magic that reacts, but it happens."
"You've always had very strong accidental magic, Harry," the witch says affectionately. "I'm not entirely surprised this happened. Very glad, but not surprised."
The young dragon is mightily pleased by this idea – of course her Harry is so special – and also quite relieved, even as she is saddened that her friends keep falling ill because they don't all have such wonderful captains.
"But if they did have you, I wouldn't, and so I suppose it is for the best," she says with some confusion, but utter seriousness.
Harry snorts but strokes her gently, in that way of his, and she all but purrs in contentment.