Cultural Differences
"THRUST!" Dartian He commanded Harry.
Harry had been standing still for the last fifteen minutes, spear in hand, posed in the exact position he needed to be to make a firm strike on the target in front of him. It had been immensely tiring as he needed to tense all his muscles for the moment that his teacher gave him the command to move. In the last hour, he had been through several similar drills where his instructor would give him a position to stand in and what he would need to do for his next movement, then have him hold it for anywhere from two to five minutes before changing. He was given small pointers and adjustments to how he was standing or holding his spear, but mostly he was just standing still.
The last pose had been the most challenging, and it certainly seemed like Dartian was just seeing how long he could hold the position before breaking down. Sweat was dripping down his face and body as he held the spear in the pre-thrust position waiting for the command to proceed. The thing that made it the most difficult was Lyra's instruction happening on the other side of the training area of the building they were in. In stark contrast to his training, Ransom was drilling her without respite, forcing her on the offense and defense constantly with attacks, so she never got a moment of peace. Not even when she would get a small cut or a tear in her clothes would he stop his assault. If she actually got injured, Harry planned to rush to her defense, but after resisting the urge to constantly be by her side while playing quidditch, he continued to do that here.
Finally getting the command to attack from Dartian He, Harry plunged his spear into the target in front of him. Most of the sweat that had accumulated on his arms and face flew in the same direction as his thrust, splattering the target moments after the tip of the spear had sunk into the center of the post he had been aiming for. Harry let out a long breath he had been holding as he relaxed from the exercise.
Dartian stared at him, "This is not possible," he told Harry in a bewildered voice. "I've had adult students that such progress wasn't achieved in four months. You achieved it in a week. Is it because you have magic?"
Harry wasn't sure what to say; his teacher's tone was approaching the kind he didn't like from his aunt and uncle or Liz at the funfair. His expression seemed to show on his face.
"Don't get me wrong," Dartian said apologetically, "Your progress is incredible. I just want to know what you're doing that's different than other students I've taught. Is it just because you have magic?"
"I use my staff to practice," Harry explained, walking over to his things at the side of the room and picking it up. "I can make myself weak to focus on my flaws."
His teacher looked curiously at the staff, "Show me."
Harry reached over and scratched his teacher on his arm with the root side of the Lamassu fang. Immediately the man staggered and nearly fell to the ground. It looked like he had ten years added to his face as he righted himself. His hands shook as he looked at them and flexed his fingers slowly. Experimentally, he picked up Harry's spear and moved it quickly through the different forms adding some more artistic spins and thrusts to the routine. The whole thing wasn't nearly as precise as it had been the other times he had shown Harry his drills.
Harry explained, "It lasts for me around an hour. I can also make myself stronger, but it won't cancel the weakness."
"How does strength not cancel weakness?" his teacher asked in a confused tone.
Harry twisted his face in thought, "It's hard to explain…" he scratched his head as he tried to put his thoughts into words. "Taking away my strength doesn't take it all away. If it did, it would just leave me collapsed on the floor. The Lamassu fang takes away…" he stopped to think again. "Like if my body is like a spear," he picked up one of the spears that he had been training with, "the magic strips away everything until I'm like a blade of grass attached to the spearhead. If I strengthen myself from there, I'm still a blade of grass, just a strong one. When I train, I'm making the blade of grass stronger on my own, instead of using magic. Then when my strength returns I have a stronger core inside the rest of my power."
Dartian He took his words like they were coming from a sage, tried to flex his arms, and looked confused at the results. Harry's instructor continued to test and experiment with his newfound lack of strength, leading Harry through some other drills here and there. When the man's strength returned after an hour, he groaned as his body adjusted to the change.
"That was like three days after a workout, all hitting me at the same time," he commented as he stretched his arms and legs. "I feel stronger than I was before you weakened me."
"It sounds like you are cheating," Ransom had walked over to the two of them with Lyra, having stopped their training to watch Harry's. "Muggles should not even be seeing magic."
"So you admit that using magic is cheating?" Dartian raised an eyebrow at the other man. "That you give yourself an easy life every day?"
"It is not the same!" he replied fiercely. "I was born with this. Magic is mine. You are stealing it from us!"
Despite the verbal attack, Dartian remained calm, "I was asked to be here. Is it possible for you to teach Harry what he needs to know? I'm sure if you could, Mr. Brandt would not have asked for my services."
Showing great frustration, Ransom reached for his wand in his pocket, but before it had even been halfway removed, there was a speartip sitting on the top of his hand. The other end was held by Dartian He.
"I'm sure we can settle this like adults if you would like," he smiled calmly.
Augustus Stevens had escorted the children to their lessons and had been sitting in a corner of the room juggling balls, swords, beater's bats, and something that looked like a wrinkled leather basketball with sharp teeth on one side. For the first time since they arrived, he spoke up.
"I can set up some dueling wards!"
Ransom seemed to back off a little, "Not today… Keep away from our magic. When you finish with Mister Potter's instruction, make sure you never come back."
Dartian shrugged and turned to Harry, saying, "I think we can jump ahead a few lessons."
Both Harry and Lyra were physically exhausted as they left their training area. They walked slowly as Stevens kept his head on a swivel as he followed up behind them.
"I'd like to see which of them would win in a fight," Lyra told Harry enthusiastically.
"Dartian already won the first round," Harry told his sister with a smile.
"Fear, anger, anxiety," Stevens spoke from behind them. "These things cloud the mind. Keeping calm keeps you focused. Master He seems to know this well. Juggling and acrobatics always we're my favorites for keeping me calm and focused."
Harry and Lyra shared a look. Dartian seemed relaxed and focused in everything he did, while Ransom seemed to have a great deal of hostility. He was still a good teacher, but it made them both want to see a sparing match between the teachers even more, to see which way of doing things would be better.
They were almost through the village before a chill swept over them. While Harry and Lyra were quick to draw their wands, Stevens was already focused on the direction the chill came from. Down the street from them were three aurors, all with patronuses out but pushing against them, and towards Harry and Lyra was the dementor. It didn't seem to be attacking the patronuses of the aurors, as it had done with the ones belonging to Tristan and Remus Lupin, just moving consistently to push them back.
With a flourish of his wand, a silver peacock appeared in a shower of white sparks in front of Stevens. The air of despair vanished as the white light of the spectral bird washed over the street. The tail feathers of the bird moved as if they were being blown by a wind that wasn't there and all at once moved towards the dementor. A large pulse of magic from the guardian creature stopped the dementor where it was, but it seemed to radiate its darkness back to them in return. Harry felt pressure on all sides of him from the evil magic and was reminded of being shoved into the clothes dryer when he was a kid, just before his uncle sent him off to be sold to the evil men on the ship. His brain continued moving along that timeline but stopped when he remembered that was where he met Lyra.
Looking over at his sister, he saw she was experiencing some kind of mental trauma as well; he reached out and grabbed her hand. Warmth spread back into his body and jerked Lyra out of whatever was filling her thoughts as well. There was a sound similar to a growl that came from the dementor, and a writhing mass of smoke appeared in its bony hand, solidifying into one of the kissed prisoners that had come along with it.
The dementor's fingers clenched around the next, and the soulless man cried out, "Give us Black!"
"I don't have him!" Harry screamed. Then he slashed with his wand to send a large punch of magic at the creature.
The magic impacted the creature's hooded face, and for a moment, he saw something that resembled a skull underneath, with only solid bone where there might be eyes or a nose. It also was pushed back slightly as if it had just been slapped and it let out a small shriek. The momentary change in its concentration gave the aurors an opportunity to push harder and start to drive the dark creature back down the street and away from the town, dropping the prisoner it had been holding along the way.
Stevens dismissed his patronus and conjured metal wires of many colors that twisted around the fallen prisoner, turning him into some kind of modern art masterpiece, like some kind of strange cactus and holding him in place.
"Back to the castle, now!" He commanded the children as they immediately ran toward the gates of the castle.
Once they were back inside the walls, Stevens placed his hands on his sides, stretched his back, and groaned, "Bloody dementors."
"I hate that thing," Lyra shivered as Harry clung tightly to her for both of them.
"Go to the infirmary and get some chocolate," Stevens instructed them. "I will be right behind you after I check on the aurors that were coraling it."
Stevens headed back out to the town after the children were inside the castle, though as soon as they were gone, he cast another patronus, one that was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.
"Go to Lord Black," he instructed the diminutive guardian. "Tell him that Mister Potter's magic can affect a dementor. I'll give him a full debriefing later."
After they had had a large glass of hot chocolate in the infirmary, Stevens showed up with Símone Ides for their occlumency lesson. Their lesson from the last week had essentially been to build a box inside their own mind. It was a bit strange to do and Harry had tried to go through numerous constructions to see what fit best. While he had extensive experience being inside small rooms, none of them were places he wanted to return to, even for a quick chat.
Símone led them to an empty classroom where they began their work. She asked both of them to describe the rooms they had created before she examined them herself. They had ended up working together to try and create a space for both of them that wasn't tied to any of their past experiences. In the end, they just tried to make a room with stone walls and nothing else.
Harry ended up going first and Símone entered his mind and arrived at his Welcome Mat. She hadn't instructed him to do anything else with the room other than walls, a floor, and a ceiling; so the two of them were in a room completely devoid of light. Harry could hear his teacher moving around the room, not saying anything, but experimenting with her other senses. He could hear her scuffing her feet on the floor, knocking on the walls, sniffing the air, and making noises with her mouth for some reason.
"I'm going to create light now," she told Harry seconds before an orb of light in her hand illuminated the room.
Harry's eyes widened, "Is that wandless magic?"
She shook her head, "In here, your mind is the only thing that can impose limitations. It's your mind and your rules, so until you tell me that I can't conjure light in here, I can do whatever I want."
Harry focused hard on what was going on in his mindscape and the light in Símone's hand vanished from existence, plunging the room back into darkness. A moment later, her whole body began to glow like it was a bioluminescent jellyfish.
"Good," she smiled. "You're learning to impose your own rules in here. Now I told you that my Welcome Mat was completely fabricated and the reason for this is that if you don't, a skilled legilimens will be able to take an element of this room and use it to extract memories from you without even leaving the room."
She walked over to the wall and reached through it like it was water and pulled. Suddenly the wall seemed to be made of taffy and when she let it go, it snapped back into place and looked more like one of the walls at Hogwarts than the blank slate it had been before.
"How did you do that?" Harry asked.
"You built this room from a memory, I simply exposed the associated thoughts for both of us to see. When you continue to build your Welcome Mat, you will need to take any element you have and change it, just slightly so that there is no place in the entire world or anywhere in your memory that relates to it other than in this room. It can be as simple as changing how long the sound echoes on the stone by a fraction of a second or making a window give a reflection that changes the viewer's eye color. If an element of this room comes from an exact memory outside the room, it can be traced to the real thing."
Saying that, she hit her fist into the wall of the room and the entire construct shattered. Harry staggered under the blow as if had hit him in the chest, falling to his knees as memories flooded the empty void they were standing in, an enormous memory of the castle appearing and surrounding them. Harry did his best to pull all the memories into himself and surround them with a spiky shell to protect them, but he was dazed from his Welcome Mat being shattered so he was not able to fully construct his defenses.
"Always keep your defenses up outside your Welcome Mat, that way if it gets broken, you'll have them ready to fight back," she told Harry, and then pushed herself out of his mind.
He nearly fell out of his chair as he regained his bearings. Lyra grabbed him to keep him from falling over and he started to catch his breath as if he had just been through an extended workout.
"It was tough," he told his sister, breathlessly but didn't elaborate.
During her turn, Harry watched her carefully and noticed what must have been the exact moment that Símone shattered her construct. Beads of sweat immediately formed on her head and arms and her feet started sliding to the side as they didn't even support what little weight she was putting on them sitting down. Harry made sure to hold the chair tightly so she didn't fall over the moment the spell ended.
Stevens conjured glasses with water for them as soon as Lyra was done and Símone waited for them to finish their drink before continuing with the instruction.
"I won't be back for two weeks. During that time, you are to build a new Welcome Mat. Previously, I told you to build one that was plain and without detail. Now, I want you to do it with the most insane detail you can imagine. Make things that don't exist in nature, that you've never seen in the magical world. Create new colors, make new textures, and combine noises, tastes, and smells. Everything in your Mat needs to be unique to that room. I will pull on every carpet fiber and smash every window to see if it leads to a memory in your mind. You need to make sure that they don't."
"And keep practicing with Whispers. I very much want to see how far you can take that exercise."
Monday came with a big bag of mixed feelings. On one hand, they had their first World History class being taught by Professor Umbridge. However, on the other, she would be giving out the full syllabus which would allow them to test out of the class. Harry suffered no illusions about knowing anything about the history of the magical world, but hearing many of the upperclassmen talk, there was always the possibility of burning through enough study material from the course information to scrape by with the barest minimum knowledge not to have to return to the course after the tet.
They also had their first optional lecture in the afternoon, being held by Janaína Scamander. No one knew what she was going to teach them, so there was a heightened amount of interest among the entire student body. Headmaster Dumbledore had told them they could also use Monday afternoons to train for the big wizard Olympics, but they had yet to be told what any of the events would be.
Their schedules were a bit confusing, Lyra had started leading Harry to where Umbridge was holding their class only to find out that the room on her schedule was different than Harry's. After consulting some of their friends and other students, it seemed that there were at least six different locations for the class, even though they all had the same professor. Confused, but following the instructions on their schedules, Harry split off and followed another group of students that seemed to have the same location as he did. When he entered the classroom, the reason for the different rooms became immediately apparent. They were in an enormous amphitheater, large enough to hold all of the students in the school. There were small hallways all over the seating area that allowed the students to enter from different places, presumably, so they wouldn't all get jammed up in the same hallway and doorway. It must have been another teacher's idea as their history professor's main classroom was specifically designed not to be accommodating for anyone except those in the first few rows.
Harry managed to snag a seat near Rachel Nevitt who had grabbed a seat next to one of the Weasley twins. Where and who the other one was anyone's guess. She looked delighted at seeing Harry and started going into an animated story about finding a secret passage with a twisting slide that went between the seventh and fourth floors. The twin next to her whispered to her about a similar passage that was a trampoline between the third and fourth floors.
Harry spied Umbridge up on the stage with the same house elf as she had in her regular class, holding the teapot with both hands as she casually drank her tea, sitting behind the desk on the stage. On the wall behind her was a giant map of the world, showing just the topography and no borders for any country. Most of the students were quiet, having already been docked points in her regular classes for even talking above a whisper out of turn. The professor seemed to sense that she had cowed them and gave a small continuous smirk as she drank her tea.
When it appeared that no other students were going to show up, there was a sound of heavy doors closing inside each of the hallways leading out of the room and their professor pulled out a large scroll of paper and began to scan through it, checking off parts of it with a large red quill. It took her quite some time to get through the whole thing before she put both the quill and scroll into a drawer in the desk.
"Good morning and welcome students, to History of the Magical World," she smiled sweetly.
All of the pre-OWL students who had already taken her classes, rattled off, "Good Morning Professor Umbridge."
"Thank you," she smiled back. "For those older students, please follow the example set by the younger students next class. There are quite a few students in the older group and a few in the younger that decided not to spend this time with us. They will not be eligible for testing out of the course, they have lost ten points to their houses, and they have detention with me later tonight. Owls have already been sent to them, but I hope you will all stop them from losing points for your houses in the future."
There was a large amount of grumbling from different parts of the room along with anger being directed at those who had lost house points for them. Harry was pretty sure that he had seen everyone from Scamander heading out of The Great Hall to the class, but he couldn't be sure that all of them had made it. He knew he could see Lyra's hair from across the room, so at least there was that.
"As I've told all of you before," Umbdrige continued, "Your experience in History at Hogwarts has been abysmal and a joke. With the interschool competition coming next year, it is my job to make sure you know about the history of the magical world so we do not look like fools and muggles to the other visitors on these ancient grounds. While your other classes will be teaching the younger students the history of Secrecy and the British Ministry, this class will attempt to educate you about the other schools that will be attending the tournament. Does anyone else know a magical school in the world?"
"Salem Witch Academy!" one student called out.
"Five points from your house for not raising your hand!" the professor chastised the girl who had called out. All the same, she waved her wand and a small yellow appeared on the North East coast of the United States.
A few hands rose around the room, waiting to be called on. A few of them were and were awarded points, it was pretty clear to see that she had the same bias in here that she did in her normal classes. Harry had yet to be called on and she finally sighed and called on him. He gave them Khumbu where the yeti lived and was awarded a single point. By the time all of the students had been called on, there were lights all over the world map.
"There are witches and wizards all over the world, though the most distinguished are from right here in Hogwarts," Umbridge threw up a larger green light over Northern Scotland, near where Hogwarts must be.
The Weasley twin whispered down to Rachel, "All the magical schools are unplottable, so none of those lights are an exact location. Some of them are probably hundreds of miles off where those lights are. We know that Hogwarts is up in the Scottish Highlands, but for other schools, we just know their country and that's it. No one knows where the Russian school moved in the 1800s."
"It just moved?" Rachel asked him with wonder.
"Some say it just grew legs and walked away when the muggle leaders threatened to draft wizards into their armies," he replied.
They both looked back up to the professor as she continued, "The following schools have replied to their invitations that they will be attending." She waved her wand and many of the lights lit up in red. "Durmstrang Institute, Beauxbatons, Castleobruxo, Ilvermorny, Solomon Colloquium, Khumbu, Dreamtime Academy, Uagadou, Mahoutokoro, and Koldovstoretz."
Harry saw a hand raised, belonging to Cho Chang, when called on, she asked, "Not the Chinese?"
Umbridge shook her head, "They were quite rude with their response, informing us that this was a blatant attempt to steal their secrets and possibly their students."
Cho, along with a few other Chinese students in the room made a very audible sigh of relief.
Umbridge clapped her hands twice and around twenty house elves popped into the room carrying large stacks of paper. They slowly walked up the stairs of the amphitheater and hand-delivered each paper to each student while the professor had her teacup refilled and had a drink.
Rachel looked up at Harry and asked, "Why aren't they just using magic?" Harry shrugged.
When looked at for answers the Weasley twin also looked confused, and replied, "My family can't afford an elf, but everything I know about them says that they should be able to."
When Harry received his paper, he scanned it to see the course syllabus with each of the schools that would be attending the tournament written in along with various elements of their history under each section. There was no way he was learning all of this in time for a test, even if it was a month away. Unhappy noises from around the room seemed to share his thoughts.
"If you wish to test out of the class, the test will be next Sunday. It will require an EE on the test to successfully end your requirement for the course. Until then, we will we will start with the history of American wizards."
Umbridge began her lecture, by speaking about Americans as some of the most hypocritical people in the world. That nearly every single one of the original colonists was either a muggleborn or half-blood who had left England to explore the world was probably part of her distaste for them. She blamed the muggle insurrection on American magicals, who saw that the English were on the verge of ending slavery in 1772 and pushed their muggle counterparts to declare independence so they could keep their muggle slaves. All of her dates and facts seemed to line up and painted a very dim picture of the American magical community. She explained that they were ungrateful to the British Lords who had supported them in the past to settle the New World but knew they couldn't survive without help, so they continued to use servants they did not need to be grateful towards, like house elves and could treat in any way they wanted without repercussions. Most house-elves were also owned by the most wealthy and they needed a cheaper alternative to survive. She ended up going on a tangent that the muggleborns and half-bloods in British colonies that did not declare independence still demanded compensation for their muggle slaves when forced to free them in the decades following the American insurrection.
By the end of the class, she had told them about how when they eventually ended the practice of enslaving muggles, nearly a century later, they decided to also ban the bonding of house elves to families, severely limiting their capabilities. Despite their origins of coming from nearly entirely half-bloods and muggleborns, they also banned the intermarriage of magicals and muggles for nearly another hundred years. Muggleborns were given no choice on where they could attend school and muggle parents were watched by special teams of obliviators that, on multiple infractions violating secrecy rules, would erase their minds that they had any children and those children would be assigned new magical families to live with in their stead. There were gasps from around the room at that revelation, particularly from the muggleborns at the school. It didn't seem like anyone was aware of how the American magicals and their government MACUSA operated.
On the way to lunch, Harry found the first year in his house, Jasen, and asked him cautiously, "You said your mom was an obliviator…"
He looked a bit despondent, "I don't know… I don't think that's what she does. She just told me she enforces the Statute of Secrecy and keeps muggles from knowing about magic. I hope she doesn't erase children away from their parents." Instead of going to The Great Hall, he turned away and started to jog off, "I need to go send an owl."
All through lunch, the hall was buzzing with students talking about the World History lecture. At the professor's table, most of them shared looks of concern as Umbridge ate her meal without a care in the world and a smile on her face.
When lunch was over, most of the students slowly started to move back to the classroom they had been in before for Janaína Scamander's lecture. This time, Harry went with his sister and the two of them managed to find Hermione to sit with as she was showing a bit more enthusiasm than the other students.
"I had no idea the Americans were like that," she spoke with surprise but interest in learning more. "I haven't met a lot, but the tourists are occasionally annoying. I'm going to have to do a lot of studying before the test on Sunday."
"There is no way I'll pass," Lyra shrugged.
"I don't think I will either," Hermione replied, shocking both of them. "It's not about passing, it's about seeing what's on the test. It's about seeing what she expects us to learn this year that's not on the syllabus. After the last class, I think I'd still come to the class even if I did pass. I met her at the Olympics meeting over the summer, she's the only one who was making sure everyone knew we couldn't violate various laws and secrecy statutes."
It seemed weird that Hermione of all people seemed to like this woman who hated muggleborns and her more than the others, but he let it slide for now so as to not deflate her enthusiasm for learning.
They found a space to sit together near the front of the room. The map was gone and in its place was a large metal cage covered by a blue sheet. Also was a wooden podium half as big as the cage covered by a purple sheet. Janaína was sitting at the desk with her feet up and watching all the students file in. When it looked like everyone was seated, she stood up and approached the front of the stage.
"Welcome to the first lecture of the school year. I will probably give a few more myself here and there, most will be done by your regular professors who want to teach something outside their regular curriculum or attract more interest in their subject to lure in younger students to their electives in the third year of your classes. For your first lecture, I will be teaching all of you about dragons."
A wave of interested mutterings swept across the room. She smiled at the interested students seeking knowledge and then raised her hands gently for silence. She got it immediately.
"I grew up in Brazil and after I finished my schooling, I went to work with the ICW, the International Confederation of Wizards. My job is to work directly in enforcing the Statute of Secrecy as a paleontologist. Who here knows what that is?"
Many students, including Hermione, raised their hands immediately. She ended up being called on to answer.
"It means you look for fossils and remains of long-dead animals," she answered. Then she gasped and added on, "You find long-dead MAGICAL animals!"
"Exactly," Janaína replied, "five points to Ravenclaw. However, I research plants too, since many magical plants make fossils as well. I work around the world trying to uncover and remove evidence of long-dead magical plants and animals so that muggles do not discover some three-headed dinosaur or a fifty-foot-tall carnivorous plant with legs like an octopus."
Harry nodded. That made sense, many magical plants had weird structures. There was a big difference between mundane mandrakes and magical mandrakes. A dead magical mandrake would look nearly like a dead baby and it would be hard to cover that up from a muggle who may find it.
"For the next part of my lecture, I will need the help of my assistant, the brave adventurer Guryon Scamander!"
There was applause as her husband came onto the stage, wearing a thick leather coat that included gloves stitched onto the sleeves. He walked over to the cage and pulled off the cover to reveal a large log and various plants. However what was sitting on top of the fallen tree was a large lizard, nearly fifteen feet long including its tail. It was mostly bright red but had patches of yellow and blue around its body. It perked up at the cover being pulled from the enclosure and spread out wings from its back, hissing at Guryon.
"Calm down, girl," he said gently.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a roasted turkey and tossed it through the bars. The creature snapped it out of the air and proceeded to eat it whole. Its neck seemed to constrict as it swallowed the meal, and the whole room could hear the bones inside of the bird breaking as it was consumed.
When it had finished, it looked expectantly toward Guryon, who opened the cage, causing many students to start moving to the back of the room. He expertly handled the animal as it climbed onto his arms and shoulders, tail looping around his waist. When it was settled on the perch of the large man, Guryon snapped his fingers and pointed toward the ceiling. The creature opened its mouth and let spew a thirty-foot-long tongue of flame. There was a combination of gasps and screams at the display.
Janaína spoke up again, "This here is Daisy. She is a Blue-toed Amazonian Fire Spitter. But the question I have for all of you… Is she a dragon?"
Harry looked to Lyra and then to Hermione. Both seemed unsure. Sure, it was a flying lizard that breathed fire, but it didn't seem like a dragon. The ones that they had seen on the reserve were huge, terrifying, and hostile."
Someone else must have been thinking along the same lines and called out, "Is it a baby?"
Janaína shook her head, "She is fully grown."
Guryon snapped his fingers and pointed again in two places, the lizard spitting fire exactly where he was pointing as a result.
Hermione and Lyra whispered back and forth before Lyra told Harry, "They wouldn't be asking if the answer was obvious."
Janaína asked the room, "If you think this is a dragon, please stand up." Over half the room stood up. "Those sitting down are correct, this is not a dragon. Does anyone have any idea why it isn't a dragon?"
"It's too small?" someone called out.
"The smallest dragon in the world is only three feet tall fully grown," Janaína informed them.
"It's too friendly?" Lyra called out, also not bothering to raise her hand, getting a poke in the shoulder from Hermione.
"Yes, that is a signifying characteristic of a dragon. The only exception to this are the Ukranian Ironbellies that Newton Scamander managed to train, but has kept secret as to how," Janaína replied.
"However, the real determining factor is that Daisy here is a recent evolution. Her species first came into being about ten thousand years ago," she explained to the room.
There was a bit of silence before Hermione gasped out, "Dragons are dinosaurs?" Lyra punched her in the arm and then winced as she had hit her metal prosthetic.
"Exactly!" Guryon exclaimed as his wife whipped off the purple sheet covering the large podium she was standing next to.
Underneath was the skull of a large animal. At first, it resembled a large carnivorous dinosaur. However, the longer they all looked, the more it did not. It had spikes, horns, teeth, and other parts that did not resemble any dinosaur that anyone knew.
Janaína explained, "This is from my private collection. We've never found another like it so it was never catalogued completely. Without a living specimen, and as the bones are millions of years old, it often takes multiple findings to determine what magical traits a dragon like this may have had. I get to keep it on the condition that I have to give it back to the ICW if more like it are found."
After getting a drink of water, she asked, "I've always noticed that muggleborns will often know more about dinosaurs than most purebloods, so can one of you tell me what killed the dinosaurs?"
An older student was called on and told her, "An asteroid impact, which caused global climate change. The cold-blooded animals almost entirely died out as a result."
"And what is one of the defining characteristics of a dragon?" Janaína prompted them again.
Someone else spoke up out of turn, "They breathe fire!"
"Correct," she commended them. "It wasn't the fire breathing that kept them alive, but the ability to keep themselves warm in frozen conditions. The internal temperature of a dragon is hot enough to survive an ice age."
"What about Thor's Wyvern?" an older student asked.
"Heard about that one, did you?" Janaína smiled. "For those who don't know, there are more than just fire dragons. Thor's Wyvern is a Scandinavian dragon that has a large horn on its head that emits electricity. It's still being theorized as to how it managed to survive the ice age. There are also water dragons that simply went into hibernation and froze themselves for millions of years before waking up. Unfortunately, they have all been hunted to extinction as they were too large to keep hidden and were capable of destroying entire countries if left unchecked. There are also dragons of light that have been theorized to be able to fly in the upper atmosphere and were able to absorb enough heat from the sun from time to time above the cloud of ash from the asteroid impact to survive. There are also dragons of the dark which it is also unknown how they survived. They are the most intelligent and elusive of dragons and are only found in the wild, though they are smart enough to avoid both muggles and wizards so even the most intrepid magizoologists have never seen them."
Harry and Lyra shared a look and knew that both of them just added finding such a creature to their long-term plans.
The rest of the lecture involved details of just how dangerous dragons could be. While the majority of dragons' main trait was breathing fire, they differed heavily from region to region. Some had venom, while others had poisonous spines. Some could see well in the dark while others were completely blind and had sonar like a bat. The range of fire breathing differed heavily as well; the Swedish Short Snout could breathe fire so hot that it turned blue, while a Chinese Fireball spat a wad of flammable mucus that it ignited when leaving its mouth, exploding on impact and continuing to burn until the mucus was consumed by the fire.
When there was a little time left, Janaína opened the room to questions. Most of them were about the various dragons that she and Guryon had seen on their adventures, but one student's question, she turned back to the room.
"Excellent question. Do any of you know why nearly every dragon is named after the region it is from?" After a lengthy period of silence, she added, "Do any of you know what Dragon Slayer's Rights are?"
Harry perked up at that, after killing the basilisk the previous year, it was explained that because he and the others had killed the creature, they were entitled to anything that came from the corpse. Many other students were familiar with the term and raised their hands. An older Gryffindor was called on to explain the answer.
"So, the reason is that when every wizard who was able to, and many that weren't, started to try to run around slaying dragons, the International Confederation of Wizards decided that dragons would be the property of the ministries where they were from. Many other hostile magical creatures get the same treatment to stop people from overhunting them. There are exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, it stops poaching of many magical creatures because it is a crime to steal them from the country they belong to."
Harry raised his hand and asked, "What about creatures that aren't hostile?"
Janaína nodded, "Dragon Slayer's Rights are only given when a creature threatens others or the wizard needs to kill them to defend themselves. More docile magical creatures get hunted for sport or parts, but they don't gain legal ownership of the animal after they die as a result, as it was not necessary to kill the creature. More often than not, it was illegal to do in the first place."
"Has Guryon ever claimed something?" a bold older girl asked with a dreamy look on her face.
The large man stepped forward, with the giant, multicolored lizard he had been showing before now sleeping around his shoulders.
"I have. However, I have never actively pursued any creature to do so. I did so only when it was necessary to defend myself, my family, or others. I ensure that every part of the animals is used for education or charity once they are deceased, and a few can be viewed in local magical museums worldwide."
The question session trickled away from that point, and the students slowly filed out of the room. Hermione was talking a mile a minute about the implications of what they had heard.
"Dinosaurs! How did I not know about this? Dragons are magical dinosaurs? And a magical animal museum? There certainly isn't one in Diagon Alley!"
"It sounds interesting," Harry mused, "But who would want to see dead animals? Newt had said he was going to bring classes to the menagerie he has under his home this year. I want to do that!"
"Some animals you can't see alive anymore," Hermione countered. "The only place you can see them is in a museum."
Harry nodded as Lyra agreed, "That makes sense, though I'd still prefer the living kind."