Hermione falls to the ground with a loud thud that reverberates through all of her already bruised body. Though she can feel grass beneath her palms, the ground is hard, near frozen, and cold. She groans and forces her muscles to move, flexes and stretches each limb even if her body screams for her to just lie down and leave it be. But her assailant is close and she can't afford a second of respite. She pushes herself to crouch on all fours and freezes there, panting at the effort. Just when she starts to fear she might have broken something in the fall, a breeze distracts her from her train of thoughts. Because it isn't a breeze at all. It's air, but it's warm and moist, as if someone were breathing on her, a giant someone whose breath shakes her entire body. She slowly lifts her head and her heart jumps to her throat.
Giant nostrils are rhythmically yawning open and close, evidently responsible for the breath she was feeling on her face, attached to a giant head covered with slick black scales and obsidian horns. Forest green eyes blink lazily. The first lid made of pale white membrane closes first, and then a second lid made of black scales closes second, before they both open again and the vertical slits of the green pupils settle on her again. The dragon cocks its head to the side and snorts. The sheer force of it sends her slightly backwards. It's larger than any dragon she has ever seen. The head alone is bigger than her childhood bedroom. The body looms over her, higher than the Hogwarts Astronomy Tower. It shakes its wings leisurely, as if it were simply stretching, and Hermione swears she can feel the ground rattle beneath her.
She sits back on her haunches in slow deliberate movements without breaking eye contact and raises her palms slightly in front of her.
"Hello there," she murmures and the dragon cocks its head to the other side. "I'm Hermione," she continues, emboldened by the lack of flames. "You won't eat me. Will you, sweetheart?" It snorts again and she does her best not to flinch.
"How good of you to wait for me like a good little mudblood."
The voice comes from behind her and Hermione's heart starts racing again. She forgets to be slow, she forgets the eye contact, she forgets everything Charlie Weasley has ever taught her and jumps to her feet, calling forth Remus Lupin's training instead, and keeping an enemy at her back was never part of that training. She silently accioes her wand and it jumps from wherever it had landed on the grass to the palm of her right hand. The deatheater sneers at her and sends a green spell towards her.
She ducks and winces at the roar the dragon lets out when the spell catches its wing instead of her. She throws herself to the ground just in time to feel the heat of the flames scorch the air where she was previously standing. The lack of screaming lets her assume the Death Eater had the same instinct as she did. She turns to look at the giant angry dragon behind her, she turns back and looks at the murderous Death Eater getting back on his feet in front of her and makes a snap decision.
She gets on her feet and sprints around the giant bat-like wing. The membranes connecting each bone shine a pale grey in the pale sunlight and she sends a whispered apology to the dragon as she digs her fingers into them and starts climbing. It roars and moves its wings when it feels her, almost toppling her to the ground. She holds tight and breathes through her nose until it settles then climbs again. The scales are slippery against her sweaty palms and her feet are having trouble finding purchase, especially since she doesn't want to hurt it. But she holds fast and keeps climbing. More spells wheeze above her head, singeing some of her hair and the dragon roars again and shakes it wings once more, this time more violently. Hermione takes a deep breath, keeps her eyes on the back of the dragon still a few feet above her and sends a silent prayer to her magic before letting go of the wing. "Wingardium Leviosa!" she shrieks while waving her wand around her plummeting body. To her never ending relief, the falling sensation stops and is replaced by a soft floating feeling. She directs her wand slowly towards the back of the agitated dragon. As soon she deems herself close enough, she cancels the spell and lands with a thud on the thick scales.
By the time Hermione stows her wand safely in her arm holster, she is panting and heaving, and her clothes are sticking to her skin with sweat. She settles as comfortably as she can and gently pats the dragon's black scales.
"Please fly," she asks nicely in between breaths.
The dragon shakes its head and flattens its body against the ground as if to take a cat nap and Hermione despairs. The movement almost sends her flying to the ground when it dips its head first before lowering the rest of its body and her stomach lurches. With her heart at her throat, Hermione tightens her legs and grabs one of the horns adorning its spine. She makes the mistake of looking at the ground and finds it dizzyingly far, even with the dragon almost flat on its stomach. She looks back to the dragon and takes a grounding breath.
"Please," she says more firmly and strokes the scales under her palm. She can easily appreciate their beauty, even through her agitated state, their coal black colour, the way they absorbed all light, their pattern, their smoothness. "Please, fly."
A snort is her only answer. Delighted laughter filled the air. He had stopped sending spells at her when she was hidden behind the dragon's wing, afraid of the dragon's retaliating fire. But now, with the dragon positioned as it is, she makes an easy target.
"Silly mudblood," the Death Eater taunts her, "even the Dragon recognizes your filthy blood. Such a magnificent beast will never lower itself to answer your commands. I shall free it of your stain and set it free. Avada…"
He doesn't have time to finish the spell. The Dragon has raised its head half-way through his speech and by the time he starts casting the unspeakable curse, flames are shooting through its giant jaw straight at the dark wizard in front of it. Hermione had never seen such flames, neon green tinged with black. They burn the wizard to a crisp in mere seconds, filling the air with the smell of burnt flesh. The dragon then makes a quick meal of its victim and lies back down with a satisfied thump.
Hermione sits there, shell shocked. She has never seen someone burn alive before. She doubts she would ever forget it, not the deafening screams short lived as they were, not the cloyingly sweet smell of seared flesh, not the crashing of bones as the Dragon bit into it, not the rancid after smell than lingers in the air. She slowly exhales and lookes at the dragon beneath her. The horns that adorns its head and neck like deadly pikes of obsidian and the gleaming green eyes that are set on her, as if gauging her reaction. She smoothes a hand on the scales in a soothing gesture.
"Thank you," she breathes out, surprised at the steadiness of her own voice.
The Dragon blinks then started moving. Muscles ripple under her and she flattens herself on its back. It gets up on its hind legs and stretches its wings leisurely before taking flight. Wind slaps her face and ruffles her hair and it feels freeing. Tears gather at her eyes and slide to her temples, and Hermione doesn't know if they are from the wind or the events of the day catching up to her or both, but she relishes in the feeling. She strokes the Dragon once more and calls out to it.
"Take me to the Dragon Reserve please," she pleads and hopes it understands her.
The flight is short. She doesn't trust herself to let go of the horn and look at her watch but it couldn't have been longer than minutes before the Dragon reaches a castle unlike any Hermione has ever seen before. It's made of black stone, and stands tall and grim between a cluster of black mountains and the shore. Instead of towers, giant stone dragons soar towards the sky, countless of them all intertwined in a pattern impossible to build without magic. It is breathtaking. Hermione gapes at it until the wind dries her mouth to an uncomfortable point and she forces her jaw shut. She has no idea where she is, for she is sure she should have heard of such a building existing, unless it belonged to the private estate of some rich pureblood wizarding family, in which case she would be trespassing and should leave immediately. She gently pulls on the horn she was clutching to stir the Dragon away and it follows her readily enough.
"Not here, sweetheart," she says, her voice loud to counteract the wind. "The Dragon Reserve."
The Dragon circles the castle, giving her a full view of all the dragons that make up it architecture and comes to a halt again, its wings flapping rhythmically to keep them airborne.
"No, I mean the Dragon Reserve in Romania," Hermione says again.
And again, the Dragon circles the castle and comes back to a halt above it. Dread fills Hermione. Has she stolen a dragon? Is this its home and is she keeping it from its family?
"Is this your home?" she asks tentatively.
The Dragon flaps its wings and flies away. It's only a few minutes before it reaches the other side of the mountains where the dragon castle nestled. As they fly over them, Hermione realizes they are actually volcanoes. The dragon flies until it reaches a giant cave naturally carved among the obsidian over the years and lands in a bone rattling thud. It crawls inside the cave and flattens itself with a crunch. Hermione swallows at the sight of the ground littered with so many bones the black of the stone is no long to be seen. Some of the bones look decidedly human, others look like they belonged to animals, and some even look like they were once dragons, albeit much smaller than the one she is riding.
She slides down its wing and lands on her feet. She hisses at the electric zap that shoots through her left heel at the landing. She had been chasing a rogue Death Eater that had tried to steal a Dragon from the Dragon Reserve in Romania when a stray spell collided with Dragon fire and engulfed her and the Death Eater alike. She assumes she had instinctively disapparated in the middle of the explosion since she woke up in a damp clearing that looked nothing like summer in Romania. And it is a safe bet that she had probably suffered more injury than her adrenaline pumping body was letting her feel at first but it seems to be catching up with her. She needs to get back before Charlie starts getting worried. And she is afraid to look at her injuries without a healer present. But when she takes a step, her knees give out and she falls to the ground. The Dragon startles and lets out a pained roar echoing the pain shooting through her left ankle and her right shoulder.
Hermione crawls on all four, ignoring the brittle bones crunching beneath her jeans and her palms, and takes herself further down the cave away from the draft coming from its mouth. When she reaches the Dragon's flank, she flops back and props her back on it, sighing at the warmth it radiates and the way it loosens her muscles. The Dragon curls its giant tail around her and she swears she hears it purr which is enough to make her ignore the deadly spikes that make its tail a weapon of mass destruction all on its own. She turns her head to watch its eyes close lazily and soon enough, snores fill the cave. She smiles wanly, pats its scales softly and turns back to watch her ankle.
She takes a fortifying breath and starts peeling her jeans from her leg. She can see a bruise already spreading purple and blue beneath her skin. She gingerly takes her shoe off and bites her lip to stop from crying out. The Dragon tenses behind her and lets out a whine. She examines her swollen ankle and sighs. The bruise was so intense there it almost looked black. She takes out the purse she had stuck to her belly with a spell and forages inside until she finds the paste she needs. She spreads it as slowly and softly as she can and sighs at the cooling sensation. She then takes a bone that looks like it might have been a femur once and transfigures it into a makeshift splint then summons bandages from her bag and starts wrapping her ankle as tightly as possible. When she's done, she summons a mirror then starts taking her jacket off. Her jumper comes off next. She looks at the injury on her right shoulder and feels bile rush to her mouth; it's oozing blood and slimy greenish pus. She can't even remember when she has been hit there or what spell has caused it. She puts bandages on it and gets dressed as fast as possible, both because of the cold and because she can't bear the nauseating sight of it any longer. A healer will take care of it, she promises herself.
She tells her body to get up but it refuses to respond to her. She turns her head to the Dragon and finds it still deep in its sleep despite the strange sounds it was sometimes making. She looks at the rain that has started falling right outside the cave. Her lids grow heavy, her limbs feel like lead, and she can't find a single argument forcing her to move right this instant. So she cuddles up to the comfortable warmth of the Dragon and lets herself get lulled to sleep by its rhythmic breathing.