November 24, 1994

"You have a plan?"

"You know I do."

"But you're not going to tell me."

"Nope," Ivy said with a grin. "It's a surprise."

"I trust you," Harry replied. "I hate it, but I trust you."

"It'll be fine."

"Just try not to traumatize anyone?"

Ivy just grinned wider as she scampered off to wherever she was meeting her friends.

Harry sighed. Time to watch some dragons, he supposed.

Cedric paced back and forth in the tent, not quite being able to help himself. He felt he had a right to feel at least a little nervous, and sitting still was doing absolutely nothing to help with that.

He mentally rehearsed the steps he was planning on taking in his confrontation with the dragon. And a dragon? Really? It all seemed a bit unnecessary, but whatever. He would live. Ivy would hardly let him do otherwise.

So caught up was he in his thoughts that he nearly walked right into Marcus Flint.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, once his brain processed the fact that it was a little strange for Flint to be in the Champions' Tent.

"Security," Flint deadpanned.

Strangely, or perhaps not, Cedric felt a little better.

Marcus locked eyes with Viktor Krum. Ordinarily, he'd be pleased to talk with such a talented Quidditch star, but he was on a mission right now.

They continued staring at each other for some time, before Krum finally asked, "Are you one of Ivy's?"

Marcus huffed a small laugh under his breath and nodded.

"I zink I also am?" Krum said.

Marcus couldn't help but chuckle a bit at that. "She has that effect on people, yeah."

Krum snorted. "Da."

"You're acceptable," Marcus said after a moment.

Krum nodded in acknowledgement, forming their alliance with silent confirmation.

"Am I late?" Oliver said, bursting in through the doorway.

"You know, I don't remember there being this many adults here last time," Harry mused as he watched the stands fill up.

"Let's just assume anything different from your own experience is most likely for the best," Lucius said with a drawl.

Harry snorted.

"I mean, he's not wrong," Remus said, gazing down at the pit that was soon to play host to both dragons and students. What a terrible combination.

Thankfully they didn't have to wait long. In a notable difference from Harry's own experience, Ivy had drawn the Chinese Fireball and was, therefore, the second Champion to face their dragon.

Watching her walk calmly out into the pit, Harry couldn't help but think she was probably more excited about meeting a dragon than anything. She certainly didn't appear nervous. Harry supposed he was nervous enough for the both of them.

A nesting mother dragon is a fearsome thing indeed. Every sense is finely tuned and engaged in the noble task of protecting their young, both eggs and newly hatched dragons.

A small, squishy human was therefore initially taken as a potential threat. But then the small, squishy human began speaking, and the babble was, quite frankly, adorable.

The mother dragon sniffed the adorable little hatchling, and, finding no noticeable parental scent, decided that that simply wouldn't do. This cute little babbling human obviously needed protecting. She would be a good mother for this little hatchling.

Charlie watched Ivy with a mix of awe and horror. Of course she would tryspeaking to a mind the fact that it was unknown whether or not dragons could even understand Parseltongue.

Unbelievable.

Well, actually no. It was believable, but that somehow made it worse.

"Is shecooing?" Chad asked, sounding about as horrified as Charlie felt.

It didn't look like Ivy was cooing, but honestly, he had no idea what she was saying. Parseltongue and all that.

"It sure looks like it," Matt replied. Wait…

Charlie looked at where they were pointing.

"What do you meanthe dragon is cooing?" he asked, but once he saw it he couldn't unsee it.

Sure enough, there was a nesting Chinese Fireball looking at Ivy like she was an adorable baby.

"Uh, I think your little sister just got adopted by a dragon," Chad said, eyes not leaving the dragon. It really was nearly impossible to look away…

"Well, I think she's always wanted a dragon," Charlie mused.

"So what, she imprinted on the dragon or something?" Matt asked, also unable to tear his gaze away from the scene unfolding in front of them.

"Who imprinted on who though?" Chad mumbled.

There was a pained whine that Charlie could just barely make out.

Oh. That was coming from him.

"Well, uh, it could be worse?" Chad added, entirely unhelpfully.

"Yeah, the dragon could've decided Ivy's her new baby and whisk her back to Romania," Charlie said sarcastically before paling and uttering a string of curses in Russian since those were far superior to the English ones.

"You okay there?" Matt asked.

"Peverell's going to kill me," Charlie replied.

"I can't believe she's speaking to the dragon," Harry mumbled, head going to his hands.

Luna patted him sympathetically on the back.

"It seems to be going well enough," Barty interjected.

"Dragons don't speak Parseltongue," Luna said.

"Then what is happening down there?" Sirius asked.

"And how do you know that?" Remus added.

"Oh, Harry tried to speak to dragons. It didn't work."

"We really don't need to revisit that particular memory," Harry muttered. He could feel the questioning gazes and just knew that Luna was mouthing "later" to them. Which was fine. A problem for later. The problemright nowwas that Ivy, sweet, chaotic Ivy, was trying to talk to a dragon, who seemed to be not at all bothered by it, which made this at least superior to Harry's own ill-advised attempts a universe ago, but Ivy was talking to a dragon and there was no way this was going to end well…

Ivy'd be fine.

But this was not going to end well for Harry.

"Do you think we have room for a dragon?" he muttered to Luna.

Luna laughed.

He was entirely serious.

And Luna definitely knew that.

§And really it'ss jusst sso nisce to ssee a dragon thiss closse becausse Dad doessn't let me becuasse out housse doessn't have sspace but I think there'ss enough room if you wanted to come by for a vissit. And you can bring your babiess. I've never sseen a baby dragon before but I'm ssure they'll be beautiful. I'm ssupossed to get the golden egg from your nesst though. It'ss not a real egg, don't worry. It'ss just a fake egg they put in there. I'll be very careful though, I promisse.§

Oh look at that, the cute little human hatchling is climbing into the nest. What a good little hatchling. Oh, and she is being so careful with the others. What a good sibling she'll make. And pulling out an egg… No, the smell is wrong. What is that? That's not an egg.

Oh, what a clever tiny squishy human, finding the false egg. And she seems to like it. It's shiny. It's good for little hatchlings to play with shiny things. Helps develop good instincts.

Why are the other humans coming?

Oh, little squishy human is leaving the nest.

Better scent the little hatchling. So squishy, and not a single scale.

huff*

Well, small little human hatchling wasn't alone anymore. She had a good mother dragon now, and soon she would have siblings. She would have someone to watch out for her and make up for her lack of scales. And wings. And fire.

Harry wanted nothing more than to slip down in his seat and hide forever. Harry might not be the expert on dragons that Charlie was, or even that Ivy probably was at this point, but he knew mothering behavior when he saw it.

His child was being adopted by a dragon.

And had already been adopted by a basilisk.

And had herself adopted a hippogriff, a wolf, a snake…

People were giving cautious, curious looks his way, but Harry didn't care. Somehow, someway, he was going to have to deal with a dragon, he just knew it.

"Well, she didn't use a broom," Luna mused.

Harry couldn't help but snort.

No, Ivy had definitely not done that.

"Well?" Cedric asked. "How did it go?"

"I think she liked me," Ivy said, beaming.

"What do you mean she liked you? Thedragon?" Cedric was mildly horrified both at Ivy's statement and the fact that it didn't surprise him nearly as much as it probably should have.

"Well done," Flint said.

"Thanks," Ivy replied.

"And all the eggs are okay?"

"Da, da. I cast charm like you said."

Ivy nodded. "That's good."

Viktor chuckled. "All eggs are safe. Happy?"

"Very," Ivy said with a grin.

"So vhat is zis about you talking to a dragon?"

"I think she liked me. She sniffed me and kind of nuzzled me right before I left. Kind of like a dragon hug, I guess."

"Only you, I zink, vould get hug from dragon."

Ivy sighed. "Best. Day. Ever."

"Could you maybenotscare me like that next time?" Draco demanded.

"What? I said I had a plan. And it worked. You saw that it worked."

"I didn't know your plan was to try and sweet talk a dragon before climbing into its nest with itright there."

"Well, I thought it went well."

"This is going to be like the basilisk, isn't it."

"I told her she could come visit."

"Please tell me you didn't…"

"And bring her babies."

"No…"

"I think they'll be adorable."

"Ivy…"

Ivy snorted. "It's far too easy to rile you up, I hope you know that."

Draco let out a sigh of relief. "Oh good. I thought you were serious."

"Oh, I was."

"No…"

"Well personally I thought your score should have been higher, but you did score higher than Cedric and Delacour, so there's that, I guess," Pansy said.

"I did?"

Pansy gave Ivy a disbelieving look. "Of course you didn't even pay attention to the score. You were too busy giving us all heart attacks bytalking to a bloody dragon."

Ivy rolled her eyes. "It worked, didn't it?"

"Did you know it was going to work?" Tracey asked skeptically.

"So, er, fun fact," Ivy began.

The other girls groaned.

"Dragons don't actually understand Parseltongue."

"I can't take much more of this," Millie said, throwing herself face-first onto her pillow.

"Which, of course, I didn't know, but it's close enough to the sounds dragons make, so I guess their language or whatever, that it definitely recognized that I wastryingto speak, so…"

"So what, a dragon just looks at you attempting to speak and goes, oh what a cute little baby dragon that looks nothing like a dragon," Pansy said, gesturing wildly with her hands the entire time.

"Probably," came the surprise response from Daphne.

"What?" she asked when the others all turned towards her. "It makes sense, doesn't it? A nesting dragon, a small little thing trying to speak, all those protective mothering instincts? She probably determined that Ivy wasn't a threat and then decided she needed protecting."

Pansy groaned.

"So I got adopted by a dragon?" Ivy asked with an awed tone.

"Not sure you need to look so gleeful about it," Tracey said with a snort.

"What are the chances I'm going to have a dragon show up at my house in the near future?"

"Do you want the pleasant answer or the truthful one?" Charlie asked in way of reply.

Peverell sighed. Deeply, and at great length. Charlie could only commiserate.

"Just lay it out for me," Peverell said finally.

"Well, the theory so far is that they sort of, er, imprinted on each other, I guess you could say? Or at least, a certain Chinese Fireball dragon is now a proud mother of one small human?"

"And showing up at my house?"

"I'd say there's a good chance."

"Any idea as to when?"

"Well, uh, this isn't exactly something that's happened before. Dragons have been known, on very rare occasions, to take in other species as their own, in a way. Protect the young, up to a point. But never with a person. So…"

"Uncharted territory here?"

"Basically, yeah."

"And if I do have dragons show up at my house?"

"Well, I'd say your backyard is big enough, if you can direct them to an appropriate hunting ground."

By the look on Peverell's face, that wasn't quite the response he was looking for.

"Or, you know, you could try to move them?"

Peverell mumbled something about riding dragons and Charlie wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to know or not.

At least he didn't appear to be facing his imminent death. Peverell looked more resigned than angry, which was good.

A few days later he would receive a short letter from Percy, the contents of which would read:

Dear Charlie,

If the dragon becomes a persistent issue, please deal with it. And try to get Ivy to name it something other than another animal's name. I'll begin outlining plans for a dragon sanctuary in Britain for Peverell should that be the route he chooses to take.

Sincerely,

Percy