In the days following Fred's epic proposal, many things happened. Harry was forced to say goodbye to Ignis as the dragon keepers had to take her back to the reserve. As he did so, Charlie had once again ordered him to write to the director of the preserve, so he had penned her a tentative letter inquiring about the possibility of visiting at some point in the near future. And Malfoy, well, Malfoy continued to be weird.

Instead of his usual direct confrontations and sneering insults, Malfoy just gave them smug looks and vague threats. Hermione thought that he was trying to psych Harry out and distract him from preparing for the Second Task, but Harry wasn't so certain. Luna also thought that he was up to something, but even she wasn't certain what.

Harry was stressed, however. No matter where he looked, he couldn't seem to find anything to help decode the egg. It was mid-December at this point, and the last thing he wanted was to be working on it through the break. Plus, if the Second Task was going to be anything like the First, he would need all the preparation time he could get. He remembered the hours he and Hermione had spent frantically practicing the summoning charm, and had vowed that for this task he wouldn't be scrambling at the last minute.

Hermione and Luna seemed to pick up on his stress, and they both showed their support in their own way. Hermione, who had been almost constantly asking questions about his Draconus Amicus status, had backed off and instead let him focus on research. Luna, on the other hand, had made sure that Harry took regular breaks.

One morning, when they were having breakfast at the Ravenclaw table, Hedwig and two other owls arrived for Harry. He had been expecting two pieces of mail at the most, so he was curious to see what the third one could be. He untied Hedwig's letter first, which turned out to be a very short note from Sirius.

Saturday, 2:00 behind the Shrieking Shack.

He passed the paper over to Hermione, and her eyes widened. She glanced at Luna before looking back to Harry, and he nodded. They needed to tell her.

"The Quibbler had a rather interesting article in it today." Luna said, seemingly randomly. "It was about Stubby Boardman."

"Who?" Harry asked.

"Well, most people know him as the lead singer of the Hobgoblins, but the evidence suggests that he's actually Sirius Black in disguise."

Harry choked on his toast.

"Luna, is there- is there a particular reason you wanted to talk about that article?" Hermione asked nervously.

"I enjoy the thought that even the most hardened of criminals might not be what they seem." Luna said serenely, and then Harry could breathe again. Luna knew. He didn't know how she knew, or how much, but she knew enough and she was okay with it. Not that he had been doubting her, but it was like a weight he didn't even know he had had been lifted off his shoulders.

"What do the other letters say?" Hermione asked.

Harry untied the letter from the nearer of the two owls, and it promptly flew away. He scanned it quickly. "Well, this one is a reply about my, er, job opportunity. I'm not sure about the other, though. You can take a look if you'd like."

The girl proceeded to do exactly that, but Harry was already occupied with the letter in his hands.

Dear Mr. Potter,

I was delighted to receive your letter. I have heard nothing but good things about you, and, of course, your ability to communicate with reptiles means you would be an invaluable resource to have on the reserve.

Therefore, on behalf of the National Romanian Dragon Reserve, I'd like to formally offer you a job as a freelance consultant. The attached form is a copy of an employment contract, and it has all the formal details regarding pay, hours, hazards, etc.

There is no pressure to accept or decline this offer immediately, as I understand it is a large commitment. Rather, I would like to propose something very similar to what you suggested in your inquiry. You would be welcome to visit the reserve over your Easter break as a sort of trial run, and decide after that if dragon keeping is something that you would be interested in.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to your response.

Thank you,

Jane Roland

Main Director

National Romanian Dragon Reserve

Harry was mildly surprised, but not completely shocked. Charlie and Fnord had both been confident that the director would jump at the opportunity to get a parselmouth on staff, but Harry had thought that there would be a meeting, or at least a few letters back and forth before an actual offer appeared.

He was torn from his musings on the matter from Hermione's exclamation of "Yes!" From beside him.

"Care to share?" He asked the witch.

She smiled, "Do you remember when Fnord mentioned the laws regarding your, er, situation? Well, since you've been researching the task, I decided to look into them. I sent in a request for the paperwork you need to gain exemption from the creatures laws that would normally apply."

"You were able to do that for me?" He quickly backtracked as her brow furrowed. "No, I mean, thank you for doing that. It's just that I'd've thought that the ministry would make me do every step, er, personally, I guess."

Hermione's face lit with understanding, "Well, you do have to actually fill out the paperwork yourself, but it turns out that anyone can request a copy of it. And there's not even a name required on the request, just a section for a return address. Also," She leaned forward and gestured for Harry and Luna to do the same, "It turns out that it's not the owning a dragon egg part that's illegal. Lots of people use them for potions ingredients. It's the hatching it successfully part that isn't allowed. But the ministry has to be able to prove that you have intention to hatch the egg, which is much more difficult that just catching you with the egg. And, because of that, you have until the end of calendar day that the egg hatches to actually submit the paperwork." She sat back in satisfaction.

Harry was amazed, "Are you serious? That sounds like a huge loophole."

Luna decided to chime in, "Oh, it is. But there's lots of stuff like that, particularly in creature laws. The only people who really care are magizoologists and some parts of the black market, so it probably won't change anytime soon."

Harry shook his head and took the paperwork from Hermione to thumb through it himself. The magical world would never cease to amaze him, in good and bad ways.

"Are you feeling alright, mate?" Dean asked in a mildly concerned tone.

"What? Er, yeah, I'm fine." Ron was startled from his exhaustion-induced haze and tried to smile at his roommate, but it was made rather difficult by his skull-splitting headache. From the look on Dean's face, his attempt at reassurance had failed. "Just a bit tired."

"Are you sure? Maybe you ought to consider visiting Pomphrey. I don't think you heard a word of what we were saying earlier, plus you're paler than Seamus's arsecheeks."

"Hey!" Seamus threw a gobstone at Dean, who just batted it away. "Leave my arse out of it, prick." He turned to Ron, "He's right though, abou' the first bit. You look like death warmed over."

"I'm fine, I just stayed up too late working on Herbology, that's all. I'm gonna head up to the dorm and take a nap, then I'll be fine."

His two roommates looked on doubtfully as Ron grabbed his things and made his way toward the stairs.

Seamus turned to Dean, "You know, I'd be more likely to believe 'im if he hadn't been sayin' that for the last month."

Ron barely made it to his bed before collapsing with a groan. The headaches had been worse than usual. At the start of the year, he'd been able to hide it pretty well. He had been more irritable than normal, and prone to blowing up over small things, but at least it had been manageable. Plus, back then the potions that Madame Pomphrey had prescribed were still helping at least a little bit. Over time, they lost their effectiveness, and anything stronger than a typical headache remedy was highly restricted. Still, he had managed to handle it pretty well at for the first couple months. Well, until Halloween, at least. He had gone off the deep end when Harry's name came out of the cup.

After about a week, he had calmed down and come to his senses, but the headaches had been coming more and more frequently at that point. It seemed like every time he found a free moment to try to apologize to his best friend, he would end up in agony. Still, he fought through as much as he could.

He had tried to warn Harry about the dragons in a round about way, but even that was hard. Plus, Hermione had eventually tired of playing owl between the two of them, and at that point he was so exhausted that it was all he could do to make it through a day.

All he had to do was make it to the break, and then he could rest. God, how he wanted to rest.

Harry packed his bag at the end of Potions, glad to be done with the lesson. Professor Snape had been even worse than usual, and, of course, Neville and Harry had taken the brunt of it. He resolved to catch the more nervous boy after dinner for a quick pep talk, as Harry strongly suspected that Neville had been on the brink of tears more than once. Maybe Luna would be willing to make him a good luck charm.

The dark-haired boy was pulled out of his thoughts by the sight waiting for him outside the room. Professor McGonagall was there, and she was looked the most irritated he had ever seen her. "Potter, you're with me."

His eyes widened, "Is this about the ball, Professor?"

"No, it's not about your Yule plans, Mr. Potter. You are not in any form of school-related trouble." He noticed that she hadn't specified non-school related trouble, and he gulped.

He opened his mouth to ask again, but then saw his classmates watching the scene with interest. He decided to wait until they had at least some semblance of privacy before asking any further questions, and followed his head of house in silence.

When they reached the outside of her office, she paused and looked at him. "Potter," She hesitated, "There theoretically may be two aurors waiting inside of my office to question you about a potentially dangerous and illegal object allegedly in your possession. If that theoretical scenario were to occur, I would theoretically be instructed to not tell you so that you wouldn't have time to prepare a cover story."

Harry's eyes widened, and she flashed him a very tight, very small smile. "Theoretically, Potter." Her eyes softened ever so slightly, and Harry nodded in understanding—someone had snitched about the egg. A flash of Malfoy's smirking face appeared in his mind, and he gritted his teeth. That's why the blond had been acting so strange.

The professor nodded back approvingly, and then she opened the door.

A/N: Okay, we're finally getting a little more serious here! I'm very excited to include a little more Neville and Ron in the future, though neither will end up as main characters. They'll be more along the lines of supporting.

On another note: Holy guacamole, if I'd known that the way to get reviews was to 'threaten' the pairing, maybe I'd've done it sooner. I read all of your reviews, and there were well over a hundred for chapter 8 alone. Thank you all so much for telling me what you think, especially those of you who explained your reasoning or why you wanted things a certain way. Based on your responses, I'm going to stay with the original pairing (yay!) and maybe do a different story for Hermione/Viktor after I finish this one. Or maybe I'll incorporate it into Hermione Throatslasher, but idk yet.

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I don't have anything else done yet. I was planning on getting ahead for next semester, but over the last couple weeks I've written almost nothing "cries in author". But, this means that there's still quite a bit of flexibility in the upcoming storyline, so I would love to hear any suggestions you may have in a review or a PM.

Also, should I have Harry actually skip the ball like he wants to, or should I force him to attend? I need to decide on that one really soon, so please let me know what you think!

And finally, to wrap up this long-ass note, I just wanted to let you guys know that I probably will be keeping the update schedule and posting at least something on Christmas. It depends on how much I get done before the 22nd, because my siblings are all coming home, but I think that I'll be able to keep the schedule. Probably. Hopefully.

Okay, that's all. Finally. See you next time!