I do not own nor possess any right over Harry Potter, all rights belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Chapter 8

Another couple of nights had passed nicely that Shimmer woke up early in the morning, yawning and stretching for a few seconds before checking his ever growing hoard of coins and precious jewellery. He did that every morning to be sure to find the same number than the day before, a safety to make sure that no thief were coming at night while he was asleep.

Satisfied with his hoard, he jumped on the window sill and looked at the blue sky slightly covered with some white clouds, promising a beautiful day ahead even if he wasn't very concerned by the weather as long as it didn't stopped him to fly. He jumped in the void before opening his long wings wide as he stared to glide down toward the fields to find his daily meal. He flew above a few fields, a small forest and quite a few different places but didn't managed to find anything even remotely interesting, the only good prey he saw being a squirrel than ran away as soon as Shimmer arrived.

After a whole hour trying to find food, he turned around quite hungry and grumpy as he saw the castle grow taller as he picked up speed. His flight took him above the school grounds and he noticed the giant man that he saw a few times already, carrying a large axe in one hand and an impressive quantity of logs on his shoulder, kept in place by his other arm. Shimmer tried to remain far from him as much as possible, he didn't know if the man was dangerous or not but his size made him quite intimidating and Shimmer was already wary of regular humans. His curiosity stirred by the giant bearded man, he started to follow him from above until they reached a very large hut that was actually not that big for the giant of a man that had his head almost reaching the top of the door.

But then he thought about something that could change everything about this giant. 'Do taller humans have more gold?' He wondered as until now all adults humans had more money than their youngsters, it actually made sense to him. And following this theory this giant could possibly have the most impressive hoard of the school. For what other reason could force him to live so far from other humans if not to protect his gold.

Flying around to lose altitude, Shimmer gently landed on the window sill of a closed window and started to look through it. Inside the hut the giant had carried the logs near a fireplace and was now starting to grossly cut down vegetables before putting them in a large bowl, making a big mix for a few minutes until he took the bowl and crushed everything inside with a large spoon. But even if it was interesting to see the giant cook it wasn't why Shimmer was here and he gazed through the whole room in search of coins or anything that could be precious only to be disappointed. There wasn't a single object even remotely interesting and not a single coin. Either the giant was the poorest human he ever saw or he hid his hoard with greater skills than him.

His eyes fixed again of the giant that was now preparing some large piece of meat, instantly reviving the hunger that he managed to forgot in his search for gold. There was so much meat being processed, either into a black cauldron over a fire or being cut in slices by the giant and the very crude but very sharp knife in his hand, the sight of all of this being enough for Shimmer to start drooling on the window as he had stuck his face closer in an attempt to reach for the meat.

But his presence didn't went unnoticed as the giant finally caught sight of him at his window and reacted in a way that the little dragon didn't expected.

"Aren't you a little cutie?" Said the giant with a smile almost as wide as his face, dropping the knife on the table before walking toward the window that he quickly opened.

Shimmer remained there, wary and cautious at this giant man even if the smile and happiness of the giant did great work to ease some of his fears. The opened giant's right hand before him did puzzled him a bit and he gave it a big sniff, looking for either coins or meat, only to be disappointed to find nothing.

"Come on, I won't hurt you." The giant said, insisting with his hand.

As there was literally no other place for him to walk around, he hopped on and tried to stand still, his tail circling the thick wrist for stability as his talons dug lightly in the giant's skin who didn't seemed to mind, as the massive hand moved backward and the giant's smile seemed to grow even more than what Shimmer thought possible.

"You're not very big aren't you? Come on, I think I know what you were looking at." Continued the giant as he let Shimmer get down on the table.

Without loosing a second, the giant reached for one of the slices of meat he was preparing and handed it over to Shimmer who eyed the piece eagerly, its size being big enough to make a good meal with only a single portion. He lunged upward quickly as the meat dangled above his head and bit hard into the meat, bringing it down as he started to tear it up and chewing on it.

"Hungry aren't you? Well luckily for you I have plenty enough for the both of us. I've been looking for you for quite a while now."

Shimmer was listening with only one ear, both focused on his meal and not understanding the words the giant said.

"Professor Dumbledore asked me to find you but its you who found me and I have to say that you're a bit smaller than I thought. Not a hatchling but not much bigger, a male judging by your beautiful spikes and nothing like that brat of a Malfoys says. He really didn't liked you biting his hand, but you and I know that you had a good reason." Chuckled the giant as he finished to prepare his meal and sat down in a very wide and comfortable looking armchair, bringing the bowl on his knees as he used a big fork to fish a big chunk of meat and a mush of vegetables.

They both continued to eat loudly, Shimmer tearing up his meat quite loudly as the giant slurped almost as loudly every time he took some of the liquid mush. Surprisingly, they also finished at the same time, the giant putting the bowl back on his table and Shimmer licking his chops as he felt fully satiated.

"Now, Minerva asked me to capture you and Snape want me to put poisoned traps, but you don't seems like a bad dragon to me. Oy! I almost forgot! My name's Hagrid, gatekeeper of Hogwarts. What am I going to call you?" Smiled the now named Hagrid.

Even if he couldn't understand everything, it wasn't the first time that he heard the word 'name' and he already knew its meaning thanks to Hermione.

"Shimmer." He said looking at Hagrid.

The giant froze for a few seconds, mouth agape and eyes opened like if he was crazy. His hands slowly went down and he took one extremely careful step toward Shimmer who started to feel a bit uncomfortable in front of the strange behaviour of the giant.

"Am I going nuts like Merlin or did you just talked?" Hagrid said very slowly.

"Shimmer."

"...Merlin... you can talk. Can you say anything else?" Hagrid asked now far quicker than before as almost as excited with a small smile on his face.

"Shimmer." Shimmer repeated.

"Hmm, maybe not. But I've never heard of a dragon being capable to speak at all. You have no idea how long I wanted to have a dragon, I'm sure I could ask Dumbledore to let me keep you but I don't think the other teachers would agree. Especially not Snape." Continued Hagrid who reached for Shimmer's head with his massive hand and started to pet him.

While he was a bit sceptical at first of the massive hand, he quickly melted into the petting and started to purr loudly as he nuzzled the rough skin above his head, surprising Hagrid even more than he already was.

"Well I'll have seen everything with you, a purring dragon! Ha!" Hagrid laughed boomed into the hut.

Satisfied with both the meat and the petting, Shimmer felt like it was time to go hunt for more coins for his hoard. He couldn't smell a single trace of gold in the hut between the numerous strong smells of either food or simply Hagrid's smell, meaning that there was either no gold at all or it was the most hidden treasure in the world. Leaving the comfort of the petting hand, he flew to the window in a flew flaps of his wings and got ready to leave.

"Shimmer wait!" Called Hagrid using his name.

Shimmer turned around for a second to see Hagrid handing him a small cube of meat. He looked at it a bit unsure and then at Hagrid.

"You can come back anytime." Said the giant with a smile as Shimmer grabbed the small piece of meat before flying away.

Hagrid watched him leave with a heavy heart, he would love to keep the little dragon in his hut but it was clear that he was too old for that and that he most likely had a nest somewhere around. He could only hope that the little dragon was trusting him enough to come back at some point. What he was certain of was that Shimmer was definitely not a bad dragon and had nothing to do with the bloodthirsty predator described by the young Malfoy heir.

Back in the airs, Shimmer was flying around the tower where Hermione lived in hope to get a few coins. He already passed twice in front of her closed window in an attempt to see if she was inside but it didn't appeared so. He finally landed on the window sill and looked through the glass of the empty room, looking for Hermione. Only having one last resort, he recoiled his head slightly before slamming it forward.

TUNK

He waited for a few seconds but, to his greatest displeasure, no one came. Annoyed, he hopped from the window and flew around the school again, looking for any open window. Sadly it seems the humans were learning and almost all the windows were closed, the few opened having people in their rooms.

Turning toward another direction, he was thinking about coming back later to Hermione's window when he noticed something in one court behind the castle. A few young humans were gathered in the grass and listening to a older woman that was talking about brooms. His eyes went from one human to another until his eyes stopped on the sight of one unmistakable head covered by bushy brown hair. Happy to have found Hermione, he remained in the sky above them as he saw the humans lifting a hand over their brooms and suddenly a few of them went up like pushed by an invisible wind. Sadly it appeared that Hermione couldn't order her broom to lift in the air.

That was already quite a surprise to see flying brooms but then the humans put the brooms between their legs and he could only wonder about what they would do like that until the baby faced boy from the train suddenly started to lifted up in the air. He always thought that humans were inferior since they couldn't fly but it seems they could fly with brooms, and he briefly wondered why he never saw any fly like that, before focusing again on the boy. He watched in amusement as the boy screamed as his broom took him in all directions, flying in complete chaos until he fell down and got his life saved by the spear of a statue that caught his robes, slowing down his fall. Shimmer had seen all sorts of flying creatures before but he was certain that none of them ever flew as badly as the boy before him that was being taken away by the older woman.

He wondered what was going to happened next when two boys took to the air with far greater skills than the first boy. He recognized them quickly, having seen both of them in the train with the first one being the one he bit because he was too loud and the other one was the boy with ginger her that had an appetizing looking rat.

The boy with ginger hair chased after the other one, flying higher and higher until Shimmer saw that they were coming directly toward him even if none of the boys seemed to noticed. He barely had the time to dive to his left that the first boy flew right next to him with the second one following not too long after. But now it was clear that both of them were well aware of his presence if the screams and scared faces were of any indication. And he would not let two humans that barely knew how to fly beat him into a flying skill race.

Flapping his wings as fast as possible, he dove behind the two boys that were now trying to reach the safety of the ground as fast as possible as the other students down there were trying to figure what was happening, none seeing the small frame of Shimmer hidden behind the boys. Even if he hated to admit it, the humans were very fast and he had to give his all to keep up with them. But as they got closer to the ground he noticed that they were going too fast and were probably going to crash painfully at this speed.

Preferring to keep his wings whole, he slowed down and abandoned the race. The same couldn't be said for the boys who were too focused on him and touched the ground harshly, projected forward and rolling on the ground until they stopped, groaning and holding themselves in a failed attempt to contain the pain. Shimmer just flew above all the humans, passing only a meter above their heads as almost all of them screamed and ducked as he passed.

Taking a bit more height to be safe, he looked down to see a pair of adults surround the two injured boys and taking them in the same direction as the first one of earlier, as the other students looked both at their injured friends or at him flying in circle. He remained there for a few minutes to watch them and he noticed that Hermione was looking at him intently and while he wasn't the best at human expressions, he thought he recognized something like concern. But for who he had no idea.

A bit tired after pushing himself against the boys and spending a good part of the day in the air, he finally left to return to his hoard where he knew he would take a good little nap. Although he didn't got any coin today, he was happy with how it went and couldn't wait to just relax.

Back at the broomstick training grounds, it was still in a bit of chaos. Students were loudly talking about the three injured students but mainly about the golden dragon that chased them. Many didn't really believed that there was really a dragon around the school but now there was no doubts left after they all saw him chase the boys.

The teachers were quite pissed when they learned why they were in the air in the first place. Draco Malfoy even tried to blame the dragon but Madam Hooch quickly shut him up when she told him that if he hadn't disobeyed her orders none of this would have happened, adding at the same time that if the dragon had wanted his blood he would already be covered in blood and not having a few bruised ribs because of his fall.

But in all this chaos, one didn't shared the same thoughts. Hermione couldn't help but be worried for Shimmer, not that she feared that he could have injured himself while flying, but because the teachers clearly said that they wanted to get rid of him for being a danger to the school. Permanently or not.

Thankfully she also knew that the headmaster shared her views on the dragon and that he would prefer sending him away rather than let Snape 'hex the annoying pest'.