Dragon pottah

by Dextrode

A

1. 0-1,9

This is a Harry Potter and Shadowrun crossover, or to be more accurate it is a fusion of the settings. A third setting is also part of the mix, but it will be revealed when the characters find out about it in-story.

Spoiler: Organizational Note

Anyway, here goes! Hope you enjoy.

1 Enter the Dragon

1.1 In which an outsized lizard happens

1.1.1 An eventful trip

There are places in the world where reality isn't quite so real — though, perhaps it might be more accurate to say where it's a bit more real than usual — places where the fabric of the world bunches up like a poorly set table cloth and the dimensions are seen a bit edge-on instead of flat. In the ancient past, such sites were sought out, and upon them structures were built to harness and enhance them .

Most had been forgotten over the long millennia, buried by the dust of ages and lost to the ravages of time. Some, however, remained visible to this day, great rings of earth and stone rediscovered by Man and marked out for curious sorts to puzzle over. Perhaps the most famous such device lay on the Salisbury Plain, a ring of stone plinths laid out to exacting specifications known to the modern world as Stonehenge, but it is one of many that litter the globe, most vastly more potent.

Long before the squabbles between Rome and Carthage, the lore of the rings faded from living memory, and the arts required for their use faded likewise. The ancient structures were tools with which the greatest of magics could be cast, hoarding power in the wrinkles of the world for later use. But without the knowledge to use them, the rings lay dormant, unused yet operational, faithfully storing the power and lifeblood of the world in preparation for some future masterwork, some great purpose, yet to be imagined.

In the village of Avebury — built within one of those ancient works of earth and stone — on the evening of the summer solstice in the year 1988, a small family called Dursley had stopped on their way home from visiting Vernon Dursley's sister in Bristol, taking advantage of the late afternoon sunlight to explore the millennia-old edifice, more for a respite from the cramped confines of the family auto than any particular interest in the stones themselves. The luxury saloon would have been a sizeable vehicle for most, but it was decidedly undersized for Vernon, who found the bucket seats pinched his sides fiercely, and it promised to soon be too small for Vernon's young son, Dudley. In stark contrast, Vernon's wife, an inordinately thin woman by the name of Petunia, nearly vanished into the seat cushions of the front passenger seat; perhaps a bench seat would have allowed Petunia and her husband to average out comfortably.

In a sharp departure from their usual habit, the family of three had dragged along an unusual addition, Petunia's orphaned nephew, Harry Potter, who stayed with the Dursleys because he had nowhere else to go. The Dursley family generally held that young Harry was the ruination of any event he attended, no matter how minor, hence his poor acquaintance with the family dinner table and his slight frame. As such, Harry would normally have been fobbed off on an equally disliked neighbor, usually one Mrs. Figg, owner of an unmanageable number of cats and a collection of odd smells. Unfortunately for the Dursley peace-of-mind, Mrs. Figg had been unavailable, and they had been forced to allow Harry to accompany them.

So it was that Harry Potter came to be at the stone circle in Avebury at moonrise on the summer solstice of 1988.

A young boy of eight and not terribly enamored of history, Dudley saw nothing of interest in the ancient stones standing upright in the turf and was found the entire stop to be quite boring. In keeping with the family policy of blaming Harry for any and all problems encountered whenever he was present — and all too often whenever he wasn't — the rotund boy felt it perfectly reasonable to assume his cousin was responsible for the tedium and should be punished for his temerity. So, Dudley shoved the thin boy, and Harry was set stumbling toward a fateful meeting with an ancient piece of stone which was very much harder than his head.

Said meeting took place at the precise instant of moonrise and Harry's new megalithic acquaintance happened to be the one which would, in the circle's normal course of operation, be used to drain excess power in preparation for a delicate working.

Now had Harry been a normal child this would have done nothing, yet Harry was not a normal child. Harry was a wizard — albeit one ignorant of his heritage and untutored in the ways of his people — a wizard who had active power of his own flowing through his veins and infusing his blood with raw potential. Some of that potent blood had been introduced to an ancient magical device — primed and ready to activate — on the solstice, at moonrise, filled to the brim and beyond with the power accumulated over the course of millennia, and that infused potential triggered the stone to do as it was designed.

The gathering dusk lit up with a shaft of light brighter than the noontime sun, a light of all the colors of the rainbow and a few others besides, a light connecting the stone to young Harry's wounded head. A sound beyond sound echoed across the plain, and a cacophony of more esoteric forms of noise raced around the planet and diffused into the byzantine folds of reality. More power poured through that connection between the stone and Harry's head than had been used by every magical creature in every magical endeavor that had taken place since the stones last fell silent.

Normally — if such events were to occur frequently enough to be able to define a norm — a young boy such as Harry would not have survived such a discharge; indeed, he would have been annihilated, possibly even some distance into the past; such was the amount of power that flowed into him. In this case, however, Harry's magic, an almost sentient entity in its own right, lashed out in desperation, concocting and implementing a desperate solution on the spot to avoid dissolution.

Harry changed.

Power siphoned from the flow was used to spin substance from emptiness, and the young boy's form twisted into something new — something strong, something durable, something able to withstand the current. The flow of power ended as abruptly as it began, and Harry fell — no longer a critically-underweight eight-year-old boy.

1.1.2 A strange reaction

Thousands of miles away, in a cave sealed long before the circles fell silent, a massive eye opened; a voice deeper than human hearing and rough with disuse spoke in a rolling language not heard in millennia.

"What's that racket?"

A few moments passed with no further interruption before the eye closed heavily again — the owner dismissing the issue and returning to its rest. It was still too tired, the time still too early.

It would investigate later.

1.1.3 Thoughts in the aftermath

As the light faded and the echoes died out, Vernon Dursley blinked the afterimages from his eyes as he blearily examined the area, bewildered by this most unwelcome surprise, only to hear a young voice.

"Huh? Um, Aunt Petunia, why are you shrunk?"

Turning toward the voice — in the process taking in the expressions of horrified shock writ large on the faces of his wife and son — Vernon laid eyes on a decidedly terrifying-looking critter.

Its scales were the blue-black of fine steel tooling; Vernon recognized that immediately as a proud seller of fine drills, and it was about as long as the family car — near twenty-foot — a lot of which looked to be neck and tail. The creature — had it not been splayed awkwardly on the ground — would have stood at about Vernon's height at the shoulder, and it possessed a pair of wings, one of which was flailing clumsily in the air as the beast tried to right itself in a body it didn't seem quite able to work properly.

More than anything, it was that wing which caught Vernon's attention. Its flailing was taking it more than twice the height of that standing stone the boy had run into — a stone that was itself almost twice Vernon's height — and it was moving fast. Vernon's work selling drill tooling often took him into big, industrial facilities, and if the constant safety briefings from his clients had taught him anything, it was that when something that big moves that fast, that something is far deadlier that it really looks like it ought to be.

When Vernon saw the teeth looking like a peculiarly stout set of butcher's cleavers — now, where had he seen a cutter that looked like that before? — set into a jaw that could take the head off of a cow in a single bite, he realized that this critter looked like it ought to be very deadly indeed, and he made the sensible decision to tread very, very cautiously.

"Dudley, you shrunk too?" that voice piped up again.

On top of everything else, Vernon now realized that the young voice was issuing from the dangerous-looking beast itself. And that voice… that voice definitely sounded like his blasted nephew did when recovering his wits after a well-deserved cuff to the side of his freakish noggin. Did the new critter eat him or something? As long as the beast wasn't still hungry, maybe this wouldn't be too bad? Unless the critter was the boy…

…and didn't that seem like an all to plausibly freakish occurrence?

Vernon realized that he really shouldn't be taking this so well. It'd probably be for the best if he confirmed the facts of the situation before the shock wore off and he started panicking.

"Boy, is that you?" Vernon was thoroughly proud of that question. Here he came across an accidental dragon — because he was pretty sure that's what this critter was — and he managed not to stutter or anything. That was premium-grade stiff-upper-lip right there.

He had never felt so patriotic.

"Um, yeah. I feel kinda weird," his now-confirmed nephew continued, "nothing seems to work right anymore."

Fears confirmed, Vernon manfully put off his terrified gibbering for a later time — preferably when he was out of sight of his newly-draconic nephew — while he saw to salvaging the situation as best as he could. "You keep trying to work things out there, boy, and be proper careful, you're a lot bigger than you used to be," Vernon was still tickled by his even tone, surely no Queen's Guard in a bearskin could have done any better.

After the boy responded with a cheery, "Right!", Vernon turned to Petunia, still silently mouthing something or other in shock. "Pet, I think you'll need to drive the car home. I need to get a van; think I saw a dealership in Marlborough on the way out."

"Van?" Petunia repeated, blankly.

"A van," Vernon confirmed, "I don't think the boy will fit in the car, and we can't leave him here." Vernon's calm state of mind was starting to slip.

"But what'll the neighbors say?"

"What'll the rozzers say if we leave a DRAGON wandering Wiltshire?" Ah, there it went. "And what'll the bleeding DRAGON say if we try to ditch it?"

Whatever response Petunia had planned died on her lips, and she nodded reluctantly.

And so it was that an increasingly not-calm Vernon Dursley made a short, sharp visit to a local car dealership in pursuit of a van. He was satisfied with neither the quality nor the price, but the dealer could sense his urgency and took shameless advantage.

Vernon's smarting pride as a salesman did nothing to improve his mood.

A few hours later, the lemon of a van died as it pulled into the garage right next to the dragon, and Vernon put his family to bed. Hoping that a good night's sleep would prove everything to be a dream in the morning.

It would not.

1.1.4 In which Petunia does nothing useful

It had been several months since her nephew had turned into an automobile-sized dragon during their ill-fated rest stop at Avebury, and in the intervening time, Petunia had learned more about dragons and their physiology than she had ever wanted to know.

Well… except for that stint between learning her dratted sister was a witch and finding out that she, herself, was not. During that time, Petunia dreamed of being a magical veterinarian, caring for unicorns and pegasi and such. Back then, she would have eagerly devoured such knowledge.

Petunia's opinion of the magical world had soured in the intervening years, due partly to meticulously unacknowledged jealousy, but mostly due to long-buried grief-become-resentment over the loss of her sister to their secretive little world. So, Petunia now focused on the unpleasant realities of dragon feces and the problematic economics of paying for things to be turned into such, rather than the wonder of a flying, intelligent, magical, fire-breathing, and most importantly, friendly, reptile.

Petunia's was a sad existence.

As she sat at the kitchen table, drinking her sorrows away, Petunia reflected on the situation in which she found herself. It seemed to her that small dragons behaved in much the same way as small children, continually occupied with eating and sleeping, interspersed with bouts of defecating. It brought back memories of Dudley's infancy and magnified them to monstrous proportions.

On that first night, her dratted draconic nephew had eaten the entire contents of the garage: Dudley's bicycles, all three of them; the lawnmower; the grill; assorted hand tools; potting compost; garden pots; pesticides; fertilizers; a chest freezer and its entire contents; even the bloody van they had purchased specifically to haul his ungrateful reptilian bulk home — not even her poor innocent collection of lawn flamingos had escaped her nephew's ravening maw.

Oh, the flamingos!

Petunia choked up at the memory, before raising her glass for another sip. She had worked so hard for those, badgering Vernon into buying them then forcing him to cart them back from Harrod's. Even if she didn't dare to put them out since no one else on the street had them, now she didn't have that option because they were dragon food!

Why, not only would Vernon have to mow the lawn himself with the boy stuck in the garage, but they'd have to borrow a mower to boot! Petunia didn't know if she could stand the shame. It was bad enough that hiding her dratted nephew from proper folk kept her from entertaining as she wished — one of the few things for which Vernon was grateful to the boy — but now that dreadful Hyacinth woman down the street, the one married to poor Mr. Bucket, would have something to hold over her head.

Petunia could just hear her now, "Not able to maintain your own Lawnmower, are you? How Dreadfully Unfortunate! Have you and dear Vernon fallen on Hard Times? I had Wondered when you didn't Reciprocate after my Fantastic Outdoors-Indoors Luxury Barbecue hosted at our Glorious Bucket residence — that's pronounced 'bouquet', you know — but I hadn't Realized you were having Troubles of the Financial Sort. Simply Dreadful!" That woman would never shut up about it! She was almost as horrid a gossip as that woman at number 7 — or so Petunia had heard from her neighbor at Number 2.

At that point, a shirtless Vernon walked by the kitchen window carrying another hundredweight of coal across the back yard to the garage, following the frozen sheep carcass he had toted in earlier. It was very kind of him to avoid dirtying his shirts with coal dust again, but the sight of her husband's pale but increasingly muscular torso simply brought another problem to the fore of her mind.

Petunia almost despaired — Vernon was even losing weight! He was down almost eight stone since Avebury, and he was such a dreadfully handsome fellow. If he lost much more weight, Petunia feared she might lose him to that secretary of his. Petunia had seen the looks that woman was giving him at the last company Christmas party, and she would not stand for it!

That tore it!

She would simply have to sit down with her husband and figure out what was to be done about her sister's horrid brat. The situation was simply untenable, and Petunia refused to tolerate it!

Vernon would simply have to figure something out!

1.1.5 The lament of a salesman

Vernon faced a daunting task.

A young dragon, such as his nephew had become, seemed to live to eat, and it had fallen to him to keep the wretched beast sated, at least to the point that it didn't ravage the neighborhood in search of victuals. The glutton had devoured the entire contents of the garage the first night — including that lemon of a van he'd been forced to purchase.

While Vernon was not displeased to be shot of the reminder of that embarrassment of a transaction — and he certainly didn't mind the loss of those ridiculous lawn ornaments Petunia insisted on collecting — he was mightily irritated by the loss of his sales kit from Grunning's. Those drill bits were expensive, which was bad enough on its own, but far worse was the necessity of explaining that he needed a new kit at work. That had been unconscionably embarrassing, no matter how understanding his supervisor was.

Worse yet, he couldn't even use his nephew's testimonial for future sales — his customers wouldn't care that the drills were delicious!

It had been almost two months since his nephew became a dragon, and in the intervening time the reptile had grown almost five feet in length and put on a fair bit of girth. He was averaging twelve sheep, a quarter-ton of coal, 50 liters of petrol, another quarter-ton of scrap metal, and an unconscionably large volume of water per week. The great beast was also rapidly outgrowing the garage, and Vernon was working hard to keep the massive pile of dung he produced buried so the neighbors didn't complain about the smell.

At least his nephew had proven to be a remarkably polite dragon — proof that he and Petunia had raised the boy right, in Vernon's estimation. Now that he didn't have the excuse of physical intimidation keeping him in line, Vernon was forced to admit that the boy was quite well-mannered, if ravenous. In his new form, his nephew was now perfectly capable of doing anything he wished by force, and yet he still went along with Vernon's request that he stay hidden in the garage, despite obviously wanting to get out and about.

Vernon knew that his son, Dudley, had grown quite fond of his newly draconic cousin over the summer, and he could hardly begrudge the lad. Even Vernon couldn't help but acknowledge that the coolness factor of having a real dragon in the house made up for a lot of problems — even at his age. That the dragon in question was made of high-grade steel was something that Vernon found awesome beyond words, and that sort of wonder was something he thought the world had stamped out of him when he was a teenager.

Honestly, at this point, Vernon often caught himself wishing he didn't need to keep the boy a secret. The salesman within him could hardly imagine a better mascot for Grunning's Drills than a living dragon made of the same stuff as some of their best products!

Yet despite that, the problem of that monstrous appetite remained.

While Vernon had complained before about the cost of his nephew's upkeep before the events at Avebury — mostly because he felt like grumbling rather than any true concern — financial solvency was now a very real issue. The budget for dragon feed now exceeded their monthly mortgage payment, and it showed no signs of tapering off any time soon. The family savings would not be able to absorb the strain for much longer. And that was not to mention the fact that Harry really needed to be able to get outside and move — even Vernon had to acknowledge that the situation was unhealthy for the boy.

He'd have to see if his wife could remember how to contact those freaks her sister had run off with. Much as he disliked such weirdness, Vernon felt that they might be better equipped to deal with an outsize accidental lizard.

Last edited: Jul 16, 2020

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Dunkelzahn

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Threadmarks Section 1.2 - Calling in wizarding assistance

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Dunkelzahn

Dunkelzahn

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Jul 10, 2018

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1.2 Calling in wizarding assistance

1.2.1 An unusual letter

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Chief Warlock of the International Confederation of Wizardry, Chief Mugwump of the Wizengamot, five-time Winner of Wizarding Britain's Most Fabulous Fashion Competition, and carrier of far too many names, found himself to be decidedly perplexed. His potions professor, Severus Snape, had relayed to him a most curious communication from an old childhood… acquaintance of his, Petunia Dursley, formerly Evans, in which urgent assistance was requested regarding the situation of her young nephew, Harry Potter.

Albus had placed the boy with his aunt and her family following the death of the boy's parents in the last insurrection. It was the least he could do after they had died while following him in the conflict — particularly when they had been two of his favorite students during their school years.

Petunia's note was horribly nonsensical, rambling on about topics ranging from mortgages to flamingos to hyacinths to dragons of all things and sprinkled liberally with assorted capitalizations. As an educator, Albus was thoroughly disappointed with her composition — he knew Petunia had not been qualified for Hogwarts all those years ago, but that was a question of magical talent, not scholastic. Surely the non-magical schools could produce better results than this!

Unable to make sense of the problem from Petunia's note but equally certain that she was quite desperate for assistance with whatever it was, Albus supposed there was no help for it — he would have to go visit Surrey himself.

1.2.2 A visit from a wizard

"You're that Dumble-whatsit fellow Pet was telling me about?" was the greeting received by Albus Dumbledore on arriving at Number 4 Privet Drive.

"I am indeed Albus Dumbledore. You are Mr. Vernon Dursley, I presume?"

Albus Dumbledore was not one to be rude, even in the face of such abruptness — though he did wonder what the difficulty was. The elderly wizard had even made sure to don a nice, subdued set of robes for this meeting to avoid just such a reception! Muggles always complained about his dress-sense.

"I am."

Vernon disliked the idea of being even moderately polite to one of the magical freaks that had stolen away his wife's sister — particularly one dressed so garishly — but if nothing else, dealing with a dragon for a nephew had taught him the value of restraint, if not tact. He was desperate at this point.

"Come in," Vernon finally remembered to invite the man inside, leading him into the sitting room where Petunia was waiting, glass in hand with an impressive-looking bottle full of decidedly less impressive-smelling brandy sitting next to her.

After several awkward moments of silence, Albus decided that if he didn't bring up the reason for his visit, no one would — despite his presence being requested.

"Your note said something about a problem with Harry," he prompted.

Vernon blinked, that getup was so obnoxious he had forgotten what he was going to say, "Oh, right… you see, back around midsummer we went to visit my sister in Bristol. On the way back, we stopped at Avebury for a short break, and… well…"

"The brat turned into a dragon," Petunia interjected in a loud, piercingly nasal voice, pausing to take a swig from her brandy snifter. "Really, Vernon, it's not that difficult to explain." She turned to the wizard in the room, "We can't keep him here. He ate the lawnmower and now we must borrow the neighbor's, and that Bucket woman won't shut up about it! You dumped the boy here, so he's your problem. Deal with it!"

"Young Harry turned into a dragon, you say?" Albus confirmed, somewhat taken aback by both the claim that a small boy managed to turn into a dragon and by Petunia's complete lack of concern for said boy. He decided to focus on the important bit and leave the rest of the woman's statement alone, along with her apparent drinking habit.

Vernon was somewhat embarrassed by his drunk wife. His sister was bad enough in that regard, and he was beginning to get some rather unpleasant inklings regarding Petunia's behavior when he wasn't home. Deciding to ignore the problem for now and hope it went away, Vernon volunteered, "Yes he did. It's probably simplest just to introduce you to the boy, er, dragon. Right, to the garage then."

Albus followed Vernon to the garage while Petunia stayed seated, not about to leave her brandy for such an insignificant thing as actually fixing her problems. As the door opened, the elderly wizard was treated to a thoroughly remarkable sight. In the middle of the garage — well, rather, sprawled across the floor taking up most of the garage — was a small black-scaled dragon of a breed Albus was not familiar with. While a dragon was an unusual sight for a suburban garage in and of itself, the fact that the beast in question appeared to be reading a book was the real shocker. As the co-discoverer of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, Albus felt he could safely say that this was not normal dragon behavior.

Had it been, he would dare say that he would not have been comfortable bleeding so many of them for that research.

"Uh, hullo Uncle Vernon." When the dragon spoke… well, Albus probably should have been less surprised than he was. "I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry, boy," Vernon groaned, already on his way to the large chest freezer taking up a good chunk of the back patio. They didn't dare leave it in the garage with Harry — not after he ate the last one — and the garden shed was occupied with the other mainstays of the young dragon's diet…

"Uncle Vernon, could you grab some coal and petrol on the way back too, please? Thanks!"

…those were two of them, kept right next to the pile of scrap metal he managed to scrounge from some of his customer contacts. Vernon continued on to the shed with an affirmative grunt.

Dumbledore absently watched this byplay, still trying to process the situation, until he finally came to a rather startling conclusion.

"Harry? Harry Potter, is that you?"

"Yup!" came an immediate and proud response, followed shortly by a suspicious question, "Hey, how did you know my name?" accompanied by an equally suspicious look — a look that quickly changed to one of curiosity. "Hey, why are you all glowy? I never saw a glowy person before!"

"As it happens, I was a good friend of your parents before…" Dumbledore paused, the phrase 'before their deaths' on his tongue, before continuing, "when they were younger." There, that was a nice neutral phrase. "You sound rather remarkably like your father did in his youth."

Dumbledore had no idea what to make of the glowing question, but he did have a great deal of experience with young people due to his years as a teacher, experience which gave him a ready-made way to address such a question: pretend it didn't happen. Hopefully, young Harry would lose track in the confusion and not think to ask again before Albus had managed to think up a suitable response. Now he simply had to change the subject…

"Young man, what have you managed to do to yourself?"

"Well, I dunno really. Dudley shoved me and I cracked my head on this really big rock, and it hurt, and then there was all sorts of light, and it was really loud, and I fell down, and then the next thing I can remember I was tryin' to figure out how to flip back over usin' my wings, and I saw Aunt Petunia and it looked like she'd shrunk, so I looked at Dudley, and I saw he'd done the same, and then…"

Finally running out of breath, Harry paused long enough to notice the frozen sheep Vernon had dropped on the floor. Nicely distracted, Harry defrosted the carcass with a fiery snort, and then happily downed it in two bites before starting in on the sack of coal.

"This was when the ley lines went quite berserk, correct?" Dumbledore confirmed, beginning to make a connection between Harry's circumstance and a rather troubling anomaly reported to him in his capacity as Chief Mugwump.

"If that's what all the lights and noise were, then yeah, I guess." Harry replied with a distracted shrug, already shifting over his chosen drink consisting of a five-gallon jug of petrol washed down by an old oil drum full of water, which was then put under the tap again to refill.

Meal complete, Harry looked around, taking in the bare interior of the garage. "Man, I swear this place is so boring. One day, I'm gonna…" he drifted off, seemingly uncertain of just what he was going to do.

"Well, I suppose we should see what we can do to get you back to your old self," Dumbledore offered.

"Nah, I like this," Harry declined. "I'm big, and I get to eat as much as I want, and Dudley don't beat on me anymore. Don't gotta worry about getting' locked in the cupboard anymore, and if Uncle Vernon tries to hit me with his belt again, I can just sit on him till he stops tryin'." As Dumbledore's face turned thunderous and Vernon's turned white, Harry continued, "I wouldn't mind being able to turn into a person again, well, a people-shaped person, I'm still a person now, but just when I wanted to. Being a dragon is really awesome!"

"I see," Dumbledore said. "Well, we shall certainly not force you, if that is your choice." At this, Harry nodded in acknowledgement, and turned back to his reading, discussion apparently done for the moment.

Turning toward the white-faced Vernon Dursley, Dumbledore continued. "Vernon Dursley, seven years ago, when I left young Harry with you, I expected you to treat him as one of your own. I assumed that, as your nephew — a member of your family — you would do so automatically. It seems my assumption of basic human decency was in error…"

"Now see here, you!" Vernon interjected, face purpling with anger at the insinuation, "I looked after that boy as best as I was able, and I'll not have you saying differently!" Calming slightly, Vernon clarified, "Sometimes you need to apply discipline to raise them right, and that's all I did. And look how he turned out — turned into a dragon, and he's causing no trouble at all, aside from eating. That's proof we raised him right, right there!"

Stunned at this unexpected rebuttal, Dumbledore stayed quiet long enough for Vernon to continue.

"The only reason I had Pet contact you lot is because we can't afford to keep Harry here. He's eating us out of house and home. First night, he ate everything in the garage, including a Transit van I bought to get him home from Avebury. Between the sheep, coal, and petrol, we're spending more feeding the boy than we are on the mortgage, and I haven't even had the opportunity to break out the extra costs on the water bill! And in any case, it's not good for the boy to be cooped up in the garage because we can't let him out to walk about because of your bloody freakish secrecy bollocks!" Vernon lowered his voice. "It hurts my pride to say I can't provide for my family, but we need help with this."

Well, that put a different spin on things, then. "I see… while I still have reservations about your treatment of the boy, it seems that at least your intentions were admirable," Dumbledore allowed. "In any case, you are correct that this is no place for Harry as he is now."

Turning back to address Harry, Dumbledore continued, "Harry, I shall see to relocating you to the home of a friend of mine who will be able to provide you with much more spacious accommodations. I dare say that he will also be delighted with your company, as he has always been fond of dragons. I shall return tomorrow with several of my colleagues to arrange transportation."

"…okay." Harry said while Vernon's temper slowly cooled on the other side of the room.

1.2.3 An unusual errand

He had never expected that blasted, barely legible letter to precipitate this.

Severus Snape, Instructor of Potions at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, youngest Potions Master in living memory and semi-professional curmudgeon, had gathered with two of his senior colleagues, Filius Flitwick, the diminutive Professor of Charms, and Minerva McGonagall, stern Mistress of Transfiguration, at the request of Headmaster Dumbledore to assist with a spot of extra-curricular activity.

Coming, as the request did, just after the start of the school year — a time when the instructors were scrambling to get their students reacclimated to the exigencies of magical learning before they managed to kill or maim themselves after a summer without practice — it might seem surprising that several prominent teachers were willing to give of their time for something unrelated to their jobs.

That is, it might seem surprising unless the request was prefaced with — "There is something wrong with Harry Potter."

Snape himself was somewhat divided in his opinion of the child — on the one hand, the boy was the only son of his best — in truth his only — childhood friend, Lily Evans, and on the other hand, the boy was also the son of James Potter rather than Severus Snape. That was a slap in the face every time he thought of it, and he thought of it often. He would just have to see how the chips fell when he met the boy.

The rest of wizarding Britain, however, saw the boy as a larger-than-life figure, responsible for the death of the last Dark Lord before the brat was even out of diapers at the cost of only an oddly-shaped scar on his brow — credulous buffoons, the lot of them! Public opinion had inflated the boy's reputation to astronomical levels while conveniently ignoring the role his mother had played in the event — though to be fair, Severus himself studiously avoided any consideration of the possible role the boy's father might have played, in turn. In short, all this compounded folly meant that any news about the boy was bound to be met with rapt attention — warranted or not.

At least Severus was fairly certain that his two elder colleagues were interested in the brat as the son of two of their former students, rather than the overstated claptrap that was his public reputation. Otherwise he might have despaired completely. Regardless of their varied reasons for participating, however, a quick portkey transit brought all four Hogwarts faculty to a street in Surrey on a cool and quiet autumn evening.

Albus led off at a brisk walk toward one of the mass-produced, disturbingly uniform houses, his professors trailing in his wake automatically like a set of outrageously mismatched ducklings trailing after their ridiculously gaudy parent. As the odd procession approached the house — Number 4, Snape noted — he thought that the neighborhood suited his memories of Petunia Evans quite well: dull, pathologically conformist, and shockingly self-absorbed. Even the overlarge man who answered the door was no surprise. Snape idly wondered if he had always been so heavy or if Petunia had been fattening him up so she didn't have to worry about him running off with someone less mind-numbingly boring.

"Ah, Mr. Dursley," Albus greeted the large man, "I have brought along several of my colleagues to assist in relocating your nephew." The man nodded curtly and motioned them in and towards another door. By the positioning, Severus suspected it to be a door to the garage.

The large man volunteered, "Right through here, then. The boy's in the garage." So, he was correct. "Let me let him know you're coming first — don't want any problems."

What possible problems could arise from meeting a pre-teen boy? Snape wondered as Vernon opened the door and warned his nephew of visitors. It wasn't like they were walking into the lair of a…

"DRAGON!" McGonagall, his normally reserved senior colleague exclaimed. "Bludy hell! Whit's a feckin' dragon doon in thar?" Her normal slight Scottish burr had thickened abruptly to an impenetrable brogue which, taken with her highly uncharacteristic use of profanity, was a good indication that she was rather surprised. The accent only came out when Minerva was agitated, and the swearing when she was in shock.

Well she had a good reason, he supposed. "What, exactly, is that dragon doing in there?" Snape felt that he should back his senior colleague up in this instance.

A quick glance to the side informed him that his other colleague, Filius Flitwick, had reacted in an altogether different manner. In the intervening seconds, the diminutive man had managed to draw his wand and move far enough away to ensure that the three of them couldn't be caught in a single blast of fire from this new threat. The man might be a charms instructor now, but he hadn't forgotten his roots in the dueling circuit, it seemed.

The dragon then gave Snape his second shock for the night when it declared loudly, "Hey, my name isn't 'That Dragon', it's Harry. Harry Potter." Oh God in heaven, it even sounded like all his old, bitter childhood memories of James Potter. He'd have nightmares about this, Snape was certain. Heedless, the dragon continued, "and, well, I'm kind of hungry again."

"Oh God, not again!" Petunia's unfortunate husband seemed to echo Snape's own sentiments — though likely for different reasons — as he turned for another door on the back of the garage. Snape presumed that it led to the back yard.

"… this must be some tasteless jape," Snape declared, trying to convince himself. "It must be." Admittedly he hadn't thought Albus had it in him, but perhaps…

The dragon chimed in earnestly, "Um… no, I really am hungry."

"Not that! Blasted lizard!" the potions master snapped. "I meant that you cannot possibly be Harry Potter! I was acquainted — for better or worse — with the boy's parents, and both were quite decidedly human!"

"Sev'rus," McGonagall began, "It disnae strike me as a guid idea t' be hollerin' at a dragon. Ye kin wantae be canny." She was apparently still a little worked up.

Despite his senior colleague's nervousness, the dragon didn't seem too bothered by this. "Well, I kinda was human until those standing stone thingies lit up and made all the noise," it volunteered. "And, well, you know how easy it is to, well… misplace stuff like bein' a human and all. No reason to make a big situation about it or anything, I'm mostly okay with it."

Snape was having none of it. "This is preposterous!" He rounded on the surprisingly affable dragon, "I refuse to believe that…" The potions professor trailed off, noticing a particular detail for the first time and leaning in to take a closer look. "Bloody hell, it has the scar."

There on the dragon's brow was the dull and fading form of that infamous lightning-shaped scar that had so captured the imagination of the credulous wizarding public in the wake of the last war. It seemed that this bloody dragon might just be telling the truth. As Snape paused, struck by the realization, he was quite suddenly reminded that he was leaning dangerously close to a magical super-predator, friendly though it might be.

"Why does your head smell so tasty?" The question was posed in a perfectly innocent child-like tone, but it was all the more chilling for that.

"Er, I've got your sheep, boy! Delicious sheep!" Mr. Dursley interjected unexpectedly, having returned from his errand. "Don't eat the nice freak, er… man."

"Thanks, Uncle Vernon!" The dragon… Harry, responded before tucking into his meal with a blast of fire and a flash of teeth — very scary, pointy, dangerous-looking teeth. The Potions Master backed off adroitly, it was a potent reminder of just how deadly the dragon in front of them was.

"Ah, how many of those do you eat a day, boy?" Snape felt that he should make some conversation, hopefully distracting the boy from following up on the question of his apparently tasty-smelling head. He was rather attached to it, after all.

"Dunno, I don't count them," the dragon admitted.

Vernon, however, did count them, in great detail. "Twelve in the last week, along with six hundredweight each of coal and scrap steel, sixty-two liters of petrol, and about fifteen-thousand liters of water," he griped. "That's on top of him eating everything in the garage on his first night here — including a Transit van!" In the background, Harry chimed in indicating it was delicious.

"So, you've had a chance to break out the water bill, then?" Albus broke in unexpectedly.

"I have, but that's just what goes into him." Vernon went on, "The stuff that comes out the other end — God Almighty, the stench! Could knock a dog out a hundred yards upwind! And he craps out three wheelbarrows full every day!"

"It's not my fault!" The dragon sounded mildly distressed by the discussion. "It's got to come out somewhere, and you won't let me go to the woods. And, well, I just get so hungry."

"I know that, boy," Vernon said, surprisingly not unkindly. "But the fact remains that it is an issue, and between that and you eating everything in the garage on your first day here, well… we really can't afford to keep you here. Plus, keeping you cooped up in here — while necessary at the moment — isn't right for you. 'S why these folks are here."

Turning to the visitors, Vernon summarized, "We're at our wits' end, here! The boy's eating us out of house and home, and we just don't have the space for him to exercise properly. Pretty soon he'll outgrow the garage, and when we run out of money to feed him, he'll probably go on a rampage and eat half the neighborhood!"

"I'm not that bad!" Harry protested. "And I wouldn't eat anyone!"

"Yes, you are, boy!" Vernon insisted. "It's not your fault, but you are. And as for the second thing, you might not intend to, but hunger does funny things to people. Best just to arrange to keep you fed and avoid the issue entirely."

It was then that a rare, almost unheard-of sound rang out in the suburban neighborhood. Finally reaching the limits of his composure in the face of the absurdity playing out in front of him, Severus Snape laughed. It wasn't a very pleasant sort of laugh, rough and grating like he hadn't had much practice at it.

"Ha! I suppose we are to remove the blasted lizard from the premises, then?" He asked the room at large.

Albus replied, gloomily, "Yes, that was indeed the plan."

"To Hagrid?" Snape confirmed.

"There's no one better suited." Albus confirmed.

"Well, then, let us be about it," Snape declared with uncharacteristic levity. "His expression should be amusing if nothing else."

"Ye'r enjoyin' this far awfy much, Sev'rus," McGonagall chided, "th' boy's in a richt state."

"Minerva, I take my entertainment where it can be found." Snape intoned sententiously, "As it happens, it is far too rare a commodity to do otherwise."

1.2.4 Have fun storming the castle

It was a mismatched group that arrived at Hogwarts' primary portkey receiving point, a deceptively friendly-looking open grassy area at the bottom of the castle lawn. Innocent-seeming though it was, the area was within easy range and clear view of the castle's battlements in case of unexpected guests. On a magical front, the entire area was rigged as a death-trap. Detection and control wards invisibly festooned the area, and every seemingly decorative addition, from the statuary to the very paving stones of the pathway, carried enchantments of a dizzying variety.

It was peacetime at the moment, and the majority of the defenses were quiescent, leaving the dragon they had brought with them — who was again sniffing intently at Snape's apparently delicious-smelling head — as the greatest threat to the new arrivals.

"Stop that, you wretched lizard," Snape objected tiredly — he really would have to do something about that.

Even shared among four of the most powerful and well-practiced magicals in Europe, the energy required to carry a dragon the size of a small bus via portkey was significant. Snape and his colleagues were therefore understandably exhausted — though Severus, at least, refused to show it. The dragon in question was not tired in the least.

"Um, I kind of need to poo," the dragon said uncertainly.

"Then shit in the woods, you imbecile!" Snape snapped.

McGonagall growled, "Severus…"

Snape winced — Minerva had firm opinions on appropriate language around children. Normally this wasn't an issue — he refused to swear as a matter of principle, judging it a mark of a lesser mind. Such language generally only slipped out when he was tired or exceedingly emotional, which meant, in hindsight, that he had revealed more about his current state than he had intended.

Blithely oblivious to both Snape's biting tone and the interplay between the two adults, Harry explained, "Um, it's kinda close to the castle, and well, Uncle Vernon wasn't lying when he said my poo stinks." The dragon seemed a bit embarrassed at this admission, shifting his weight nervously between his various limbs — all six of them. It was an interesting sort of motion, quite novel really. "And I kinda-really-need-ta-go…" Perhaps that wasn't embarrassment, on reflection.

"Can you fly in a straight line?" Snape queried with a glare. If so, he could direct him farther out.

This time, the dragon did look nervous — though how he managed to convey such expressions with such a decidedly alien facial structure, Severus did not know. "I don't know! I never had a chance to try before 'cause I was stuck in the garage."

"Well, I suggest you learn fast, then." Snape suggested calmly.

"Okay!" With a course of action set, Harry set about trying to fly gamely, spreading his wings and galloping down the lawn while flapping madly. Surprisingly, he managed a clumsy lift-off, accompanied by an excited chant of "I'm flying, I'm flying!" The honeymoon ended, however, with a solid thump as the young dragon crashed headlong into the tree-line, snapping several of the smaller trees like twigs before an encounter with a large oak stopped him in his tracks — eliciting a plaintive, "Owie," as he slumped to the ground, and crushing the remainder of those broken trees to a pulp in the process.

"Height, boy! It's important!" Snape called out after him, manfully suppressing his own snickering. "You should probably work on your landings too!"

"Okay!" It seemed that even a midair collision with a hundred-year-old oak tree couldn't quash the young dragon's enthusiasm. All set for another attempt, the immediate reason for his attempted flight was suddenly rendered moot with an immense squelching noise. "Oh, I don't think I have to go anymore."

"Sweet Merlin, that is truly abominable!" Snape exclaimed, hurriedly casting a bubble head charm alongside his colleagues. "I don't suppose you will mind if I take a sample?"

Eye-watering stench or not, potions were Snape's one surviving passion in life, and this was a brand-new potential ingredient — eye-watering stenches were a hazard which came with the territory. At least this one didn't literally turn one's eyes into water — potions mastery could be a dangerous pursuit.

At the dragon's puzzled nod, Snape scooped up a small sample of the runny turd into a small crystal vial of which he kept a supply in his robe in case of just such an eventuality. Wrapping the sealed sample in a silk handkerchief, he nodded to Filius, who then vanished the rest of the mess and the stench with it.

"Wow, that's wicked!" the young dragon exclaimed. "Could I learn to do that?"

"I daresay you will, my boy!" Albus allowed warmly, seeming to have recovered his usual mien. "I daresay you will. Now, let us be off to where you will be staying. Hagrid is a dear friend of mine, and a suspect he will be quite thoroughly delighted to host you at his home! It is just this way."

1.2.5 Reflective Reptile

If there was one thing Harry James Potter — currently a little over eight years old and wearing the body of a great dragon hatchling of similar age — could tell you after the last eventful day and a half, other than that trees hurt when you ran into them, it was that Rubeus Hagrid was a wonderful fellow.

It'd been an eventful trip getting to that point for Harry. His last moments at the Dursley household had been both confusing and… well, he wasn't sure what to call the feeling, but had he a slightly more extensive vocabulary, he would probably have called it bittersweet. On the one hand, he was going somewhere with more food and more space, where he wouldn't stay cooped up in a garage all day, but on the other, he was leaving the only home he had ever known, and Vernon and Dudley at least, had actually started to be kind of friendly since he turned into a dragon.

Oh, well, no point in fussing over it now.

Then there had been so much new stuff! He met gobs of new people. Mrs. McGonagall, who sounded kind of funny and smelled a little like Mrs. Figg's cats, then Mr. Dumbledore had a long white beard like a skinny version of Santa Claus and glowed much brighter than the others, and there was even Mr. Snape with the delicious-smelling head! He didn't remember the name of the shortest one, but he seemed friendly enough too — Harry figured he could ask later.

Then they did that swirly moving thingy they called a portkey, which apparently moved them all the way to Scotland! That was weird but really neat. The four glowy people just did something which made them stop glowing quite so much, and then everything was spinning really slowly for a while, and then, bam! They were somewhere else!

So cool!

But the highlight of the day was definitely Hagrid. He was the best! Their meeting started off with the man really excited to meet such an incredibly gorgeous dragon! For his part, Harry thought it was really nice to meet someone who was so happy to see him — the boy decided to make a note to do that himself in the future. Then Hagrid offered Harry a place to stay in his barn, which was wonderfully large compared to the Dursleys' garage.

Even Hagrid himself was big! He was the first person Harry had met since his transformation that seemed sort of normal-sized.

The only downside of the encounter had been Mr. Hagrid's dog, Fang, which had whimpered rather pitifully on encountering Harry and had tried to hide under Hagrid's bed. Harry hadn't had good experiences with his Aunt Marge's dog, Ripper, but the other kids at primary had always talked about how fun their dogs were, and he'd hoped to find a dog he could be friends with.

Harry didn't know why Fang was so scared of him, anyway. It wasn't like Harry was going to eat him! Fang was a dog, and dogs weren't food; they were all dirty and stuff.

To top it all off, Mr. Hagrid introduced Harry to the wonders of the Hogwarts larder. It was this great big room which was kind of cold and there was loads and loads of venison, and pork, and beef, and even the old boring sheep, too. The best thing, though, was bacon. Harry had never had bacon before, 'cause Dudley had always eaten it before he could get any, and boy did he learn why; it was ever so tasty! And Mr. Hagrid said he'd be able to get him coal and petrol and metal scrap too, but not until the next day.

It was wonderful!

Mr. Hagrid even knew what to do about those itchy spots that had been bothering Harry for months. A bit of oil rubbed in between the scales and there was no more problem. Full of the dragon equivalent of junk food from the Hogwarts larder with a promise of more substantial fare the next day, comfortably free of itchy skin, and stretched out in a room more than big enough to fit him, Harry slowly drifted off to sleep after his momentous day.

This place was pretty all-right!

1.2.6 A tired self-assessment

"So," Albus Dumbledore began, accepting a glass of firewhiskey with a nod, "the boy-who-lived has become the dragon-who-lived, and we are left with the task of determining what to do with him."

After introducing the enthusiastic young dragon to the equally enthusiastic campus gamekeeper, the four staff members had retired to the headmaster's office to enjoy a stiff drink by the fire. Between learning of Harry's newly draconic form and schlepping said form across the length of the United Kingdom in one go, the tired group felt they deserved the relaxation.

As Filius finished passing around the rest of the liquor, Snape took a sip from his glass and offered up, "I can think of a few suggestions of what to do with him, but I am already aware that the rest of you will ignore them, so I won't bother."

McGonagall volunteered, "I would think the first order of business would be to determine how to change him back to normal."

Filius and Albus both attempted to speak at the same time, but the charms professor nodded for Albus to go first.

"In fact, young Harry has already expressed a desire to retain his current form, so we will respect his wishes on this front. I have already failed that boy three times over since the war — I will not do so for a fourth! Though he did express an interest in learning to take on a human form temporarily."

As Albus finished speaking, the charms professor spoke up, "As I was going to say, it is a good thing the boy is content with his change as there is no 'original form' to which to return him." At his colleagues' curious looks, he elaborated, "When we first encountered him, I'm afraid I cast several diagnostic charms on the boy by reflex…"

"Filius!" Minerva chided, with as much outrage as her tired state could support. Casting on others without permission was a terribly rude thing to do in polite society — particularly if one was not a Healer.

Flitwick colored in embarrassment, "A dragon just popped out of the woodwork in a London suburb!" He attempted to justify himself, "I was startled, and I cast on instinct."

"Why did you cast diagnostic charms on instinct?" Snape was curious — he wouldn't have thought of a diagnostic charm as a reflex casting in the face of a threat.

"It's a remnant from my time on the dueling circuit," the former dueling champion explained. "The situation was unusual enough that my first thought was that Harry must have been an illusion, so I cast a diagnostic charm I modified a while back to check for what the illusion was hiding. It looks for edges in magical constructs, because that's where spells can be undone or modified."

And consequently, where other spells can be hidden, his audience filled in for themselves. All three of his fellow professors were looking interested now.

"It's also a very light-touch diagnostic — it looks around the target rather than at it, so it won't trigger traps. Anyway, the charm determined that his form has no edges — at all."

This immediately drew a gasp from the transfiguration mistress in the room. "Without edges… that means the change is not a transfiguration. There'd be no way to undo it!"

Albus was nodding along with her while Snape was looking puzzled.

For his benefit, Minerva elaborated, "Any transfiguration requires magical input to maintain the change. Even ones which are self-contained or permanent have such connections, the edges that Filius' spell looks for, they are just… tied off, so to speak. A form without edges is not a transfigured form."

"Not just that," Filius interjected, "my spell looks for all edges, not just the cuts that you're speaking of, Minerva. Harry's form has no edges at all. I didn't even know such shapes existed! Any spell cast on the boy will need to forge its own connection to his magic, and I have no idea how to go about doing such a thing — outside overwhelming force, anyway, but the power disparity needed for that is ludicrous."

The charms master shook his head, "Any magic affecting that boy is going to have to originate from the boy himself. Either he'll need to learn the spell, or he'll need to actively guide others' spells into himself."

"Do you mean to say the boy has perfect magical immunity?" Snape shuddered at the implications. That sort of advantage was absurd!

The short man shook his head, "I doubt it's perfect — there's no such thing as a perfect defense. I simply have no idea how one might bypass it at this point." Filius drained the rest of his glass, "The fact remains, though, that no one is changing Mr. Potter's form except Mr. Potter at any point in the foreseeable future."

Albus calmly reentered the conversation with a suggestion, "In that case, perhaps it would be a prudent course of action to endeavor to teach young Harry a variant of self-transfiguration so that he might transform himself into a human if he wishes?"

Seeing that Minerva looked pleased with the idea, no doubt already planning lessons, he continued, "As we all know from Severus' unique insight, Voldemort," Albus took a sip as the customary flinch at the name of the last Dark Lord traveled through the rest of the group and his potions professor rubbed absently at his own forearm, "will be returning, and Harry will be at the top of his hit list."

"A dragon disguised as a human as a secret weapon?" Filius breathed, awestruck. "That would be an absolute nightmare to fight." He'd have to drop a suggestion to the Brethren that they search for a way to forge an alliance with young Harry, so they would never have to face him themselves. Flitwick might only be half-goblin, but even for a half-goblin, family was everything.

For his part, Snape was slowly coming to a horrifying conclusion, a conclusion that he desperately hoped was untrue. "Albus, please tell me that you didn't plan this." Everything was coming together so neatly that he felt he had to ask, but the amount of planning that would be required…

Albus almost snorted in laughter, "Ah, no, Severus, I did not plan this. It is a fortuitous accident, as it were. However, that does not mean we cannot take advantage of it…" the old man finished, leadingly. All three of his subordinates straightened with purpose at his subtle prompting.

Snape's mind ran through possible avenues of research and areas of application, finally settling on one to start off with. "I shall endeavor to investigate the boy's digestive processes immediately."

Flitwick — who had been running through a similar set of possibilities within his own specialty — had his train of thought screech to a halt at that apparent non-sequitur. "Why his digestive system? Not that it's a bad topic to study, but why first on the list?"

"In a surprise conflict with the Dark Lord, I suspect Mr. Potter is likely to eat the bastard in their first exchange. I wish to ensure that Harry's digestive tract is sufficient to destroy him or, failing that, prevent him from taking over." Filius nodded, that seemed reasonable. Snape continued, "The Dark Lord is bad enough now, I don't want to imagine him as a dragon, much less one effectively immune to outside magic." That prompted a shudder around the room, this time including Albus.

Minerva, ever the educator, was thinking more on the practical side of things. "I will need to start working with Poppy." Minerva elaborated, "The child is in our care, so we will need to establish a medical baseline, and he will need to have intimate knowledge of his own form and function if he is to learn self-transfiguration." She then nodded to Severus, "I suspect the process will also aid in discovering his bioalchemy, Severus."

The charms professor had come to some differing conclusions. "I believe I shall investigate the transformation event itself. Perhaps we could learn how to make such a magical structure in other situations. An edgeless magical shield, for instance, would be invaluable. I suspect our other colleagues would be interested in the project as well!" Filius looked giddy, "Oh, this will be the most fun I've had in ages!"

Dumbledore looked the hive of activity he had wrought with only a single sentence in the right ears at the right time and smiled. He had his own research to do, studies involving one of his mentor's longest-running research programs on ley-line flows and ambient magics. Nicholas had contacted him regarding some recent startling changes with very suspicious timing, but that was a topic for another place and another time.

"Professors, I commend you for your enthusiasm, but I must insist that Harry's situation be kept secret for now," Albus admonished, gently. "That secrecy is an ace that I do not wish to take away from young Harry before he can use it to best advantage."

Last edited: Jul 16, 2020

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Dunkelzahn

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Dunkelzahn

Dunkelzahn

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Jul 11, 2018

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1.3 Primary care physician

1.3.1 The Saga of the Greasy Hair

It was early morning on the following day, and the Hogwarts student body was abuzz with speculation. One of the prefects had spied the Headmaster leaving campus with three of the Heads late the previous night, then the next morning they were back, looking tired but excited about something.

Most suspicious of all, as of the previous evening, Professor Snape still had greasy hair, but now his hair was clean!

His first class almost didn't recognize him.

What on Earth was going on?

1.3.2 Eager anticipation

As the sun rose over the Highlands to the east, Hogwarts Castle casting its long shadow over the grounds, Harry bounced animatedly in anticipation. One of Mr. Hagrid's friends, another one he hadn't met yet, was going to teach him how to fly without running into things!

They were going to go up onto the moor across the lake where no one could see, and they were going to fly! Really fly! Without crashing! Well, hopefully without crashing, but there'd still be lots of flying anyway!

Ooh, it was going to be amazing!

But first, Mrs. McGonagall said he'd have to meet with another lady named Madame Pomfrey who was apparently something called a Healer to do something called 'diagnostics for establishing a medical baseline'. He wondered if a Healer was kind of like a nurse, since they were doing something with the word 'medical' in it? Well, he'd find out, he guessed.

Now he just had to wait. Apparently since she was a Healer, Madame Pomfrey had to stay in the castle during the day as part of her job, being 'on-duty' apparently. Not that he was sure what a 'duty' was or why she would have to sit on one all day. He'd have to ask Mr. Hagrid; it seemed a very silly thing for a nurse to be doing, and it was going to be a whole day until she was ready to see him!

Waiting was hard!

1.3.3 Enter, the Healer

Poppy Pomfrey was intrigued.

She had, of course, heard the Headmaster's request for help with an issue regarding Harry Potter the previous evening, though she had been unable to get away to assist. As the school Healer, Poppy was required to remain available during any times students were present on the grounds. As a boarding school, that meant she couldn't be traipsing off across the country during the school year, barring a medical emergency that couldn't be handled by anyone else.

She did, however, insist on looking the boy over when he was brought to campus. Poppy Pomfrey was the latest in a long, long line of Healers from the Pomfrey family — since before they had become Pomfreys, in fact. She had grown up at the feet of Healers, and she had been immersed in the mindset from her earliest memories.

While she had known she was going to be a Healer from her earliest childhood, Poppy had chosen to become a pediatric Healer because she wanted to work with children. Between the challenges associated with pediatric magical healing and the opportunity to help shape her young charges by providing advice, she had been quite eager to begin her practice.

Unfortunately, she had been sorely disappointed when she took her job at Hogwarts.

Pediatric healing was a prestigious and challenging field, considered in the Healing community to be the field's equivalent of curse breaking. Magical children often harmed themselves and others through accidental magic, and such unformed magic had no prescribed cures. Accidental magic was rarely fatal, so timing tended to be flexible, but the work was challenging and rewarding. Every case was a new case; there was no routine for the pediatrician in the magical world.

Hogwarts, however, only took students after their intriguing accidental magic difficulties were mostly over. By the numbers, accidental magic should continue into the children's late teenage years, but regular magic use meant that incidents were few and far between. Poppy's usual caseload was not full of unique cases of accidental magic reversal, rather she had the humdrum set of poorly-cast spell backfires typical of magical schooling, problems that were based on miscast versions of known spells that had been in circulation for centuries. Almost every case she had seen during her employment was already written up in one case study or other that she had been tested on during her schooling.

The mentoring front was even bleaker. Between the school bylaws — which interfered entirely too much with her business as a Healer for her peace of mind — and the attitudes ingrained into most of her charges before they came into her care, very few indeed were receptive to her teaching.

She remembered Granny's words, "Don't use magic around the house, you might need it for something important!"

It was a byline for any experienced Healer, and Poppy felt that it was excellent advice for anyone, but how could she teach the students to be mindful of their magic, to use it only when there was no other option? Their teachers encouraged them otherwise in every class, and their parents had been setting a contrary example from their earliest memories! Even the new-blood students, few that there were, were far too enthralled by magic at this stage to take her advice.

"Leave it be. Pain is a much better teacher than you can ever hope to be."

Another of Granny's favorites, that one was nipped in the bud by the school bylaws. Most of the ailments her students brought to her were minor things, and the only healing necessary was a little guidance before they could heal on their own. The bylaws required that she heal everything as fully as possible before the students were allowed out of the infirmary.

How was she supposed to allow nature to teach the children properly without leaving them with some lingering consequences? Many of those students returned again and again with the same issues! Leaving them a little reminder for a few days would teach them to be more circumspect. The best she could manage was ensuring that her potions tasted as vile as she could make them, a pursuit that the school potions master was pleased to assist with whenever possible.

Little Harry, though, he was young enough that she could guess whatever issue brought him to Hogwarts would be fascinating. If it wasn't, there would have been no reason to move the little fellow. She didn't know what the issue was — she had insisted on being kept in the dark to avoid biasing her diagnosis — but it was sure to be both interesting and non-life-threatening, the best kind of problem, in Poppy's estimation! He'd also be much younger than the rest of the students, a prime candidate to whom to pass on the family wisdom. Yes, she was looking forward to meeting the young fellow that evening.

As it happened, she would be proven right on both counts.

1.3.4 The Saga of the Greasy Hair – Reprise

Between classes that day, Severus Snape searched his private library, casting about for any possible alternative, but in the end, his search was in vain. His custom-brewed fire-retardant hair cream, a seldom-tested but still critical portion of his ensemble of potions safety gear, seemed to have no available substitute.

As the current version seemed to have the unpleasant side-effect of causing his head to appeal unduly to the nose of the newly resident dragon, the Potions Master reluctantly concluded that the extra risk of fire incurred by eliminating the cream was more acceptable than the extra risk of predation.

Perhaps he could acquire a hat in the same style as his robes until he discovered or created an alternative?

1.3.5 A simple checkup, unsimplified

As night finally fell and the students packed away to their beds with the arrival of curfew, five professors descended on Hagrid's hut to spirit young Harry away to the infirmary for his initial checkup, joined on the way out by a gamekeeper and a dragon. The number was, perhaps, excessive, but each had their reasons for being there, either to aid in performing the medical diagnostics, or to get the results firsthand for planning their lessons for or care of the young dragon.

In addition to the four he had met the day before, Harry met a new person, Professor Rolanda Hooch, who was a lady with a nice smile who also had eyes that looked like a cat's. He was kind of confused, because she didn't smell like a cat like Professor McGonagall, and Professor McGonagall didn't have cat-eyes even though she did smell like one. Both of them just laughed when he asked about it. Madame Hooch was the friend of Hagrid's who was going to be teaching him to fly! Harry also learned that the short man from last night's name was Filius Flitwick when he asked. It was good to know people's names, Harry decided, before finally turning to Professor Snape.

The young dragon's plaintive cry of, "Your head doesn't smell tasty anymore! What happened?", brought an uncharacteristic smile to the potions master's face.

On entering the castle and approaching the first turn on the convoluted path to the infirmary, the young dragon proved emphatically that five adult magical humans was still far from sufficient to keep him out of trouble.

On rounding the corner, Harry's voice sounded out with a panicked, "CNIGHET", loud enough to knock his companions for a loop, accompanied by a blast of fire which melted one of the castle armor stands like wax before an acetylene torch, left the wall behind a mess, and blew out all of the windows in the corridor.

As Harry slumped, panting slightly from his sudden exertion, the adults stared for a moment at the carnage, slack jawed. The armor was splattered all over the corridor in tiny glowing droplets, which would most probably not account for even half the original suit's mass, and the stonework was cracked, blackened, and partly molten in various spots, less so behind the armor, where the subliming metal offered some transient protection.

Professor McGonagall was the first to recover, with a highly appropriate, "Bludy hell!"

"And what exactly was that in aid of, you dunderhead?" Professor Snape chimed in, his rather pedestrian insult indicative of his surprise.

"It was a cnighet in shiny armor! I was sure it was going to hit me with a lance," Harry looked at the assembled adults suspiciously. "You didn't tell me there were cnighets here!"

"It was an empty suit of armor!" Snape snapped.

"I'm sure it was a cnighet! It looked just like the pictures in the books."

"Whit tha hames is a 'cnighet'?" McGonagall muttered.

"I assure you that whatever a 'cnighet' might be, there are none here!" Snape bellowed, turning pale in rage. Harry was used to Vernon's purple rage, so he wasn't sure precisely why Snape was yelling.

"It was a cnighet, I'm sure of it! Cnighets wear armor and ride around on big horses and stick lances into dragons to slay them. I'm not sure what 'slay' is, but it sounds scary! Cnighets are the murtle enemy of dragons; it says so in all the books. Everyone knows that!" Harry delivered this in rapid fire, finally giving his audience enough context to know what in blazes was going on.

Flitwick spoke up for the first time that night, helpfully providing, "It's pronounced 'night'."

"Are you sure?" the dragon asked. "Because it's not spelled 'night'."

"Quite sure," Flitwick confirmed, going on to explain, "the 'k' isn't pronounced anymore. It used to be in Middle English, but the pronunciation changed over the years." At his colleagues' odd looks, he went on, "Etymology is a hobby of mine. It mixes well with the love of old books."

"What's etymology?" the dragon had been sidetracked for a moment.

"It's the study of where words come from and how they change over time. Fascinating stuff!" Flitwick enthused for a moment, before remembering the situation. "Incidentally, that was an empty suit of armor, such as a knight might have worn, it did not contain an actual knight."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

"Oh, sorry," Harry looked appropriately abashed. "I'm sorry I flamed your armor, but it really looked like a knight!"

"You will be forgiven, so long as you promise not to flame indoors again." Snape thought this a reasonable precaution, and the round of nodding from his colleagues bore out his thinking.

"Okay," Harry nodded solemnly, promising, "I won't flame indoors unless it's really, really important." Which was not precisely the promise asked for.

At this point, Albus broke in to say, "That will be sufficient." Regretfully cutting off what promised to be a truly impressive rant from his potions professor. They really did need to get on with the infirmary visit though, and if he knew Poppy, she would insist on testing Harry's flame breath along with everything else.

That woman was thorough!

There was no reason to extract a promise from Harry and then have their colleague force him to break it a few minutes later.

That sort of thing set a poor precedent for children.

1.3.6 Physical examination

With the issue of the armor suits resolved, the remainder of the trip to the infirmary proceeded much more smoothly.

Madame Poppy Pomfrey had the distinct privilege of have the most subdued reaction to meeting Harry of any professor who had not been previously warned.

"My goodness, you are an interesting fellow!" Poppy's first words were anticlimactic in light of their explosive trip through the castle. An opinion that was written clearly on her colleagues' faces.

Harry, on the other hand, just beamed. This was another good one! Just like Mr. Hagrid, she was happy to see him.

"Just take a seat there, and we'll get right to business."

Poppy was quite pleased with this one, an accidental transformation into a dragon of a kind never seen before! This was groundbreaking! She was a little disappointed that her patient didn't want to change back since that meant that she wouldn't be able to document a treatment for him, but the challenge of working out how his new body functioned could prove to be quite a rewarding occupation in and of itself.

Once the Healer showed her patient how to actively allow spells to affect himself, her diagnostics proceeded apace, recording shape, composition, energy and fluid flows, even blood chemistry with a level of detail which would make non-magical medical technicians weep with envy. It was nearly an hour before she finished her preliminary diagnostics, during which time she did have Harry flame indoors again — twice.

Snape was unamused.

Seeing that her patient was starting to fidget a little, Poppy decided to conclude the current session. She had enough now to tell what was normal, the rest would be longitudinal studies.

"Well, Mr. Potter," she began in a brisk but friendly tone, "you are a very interesting young man. We'll be going over the details of your body in later sessions, but for now I'll touch on what you need for your flying lesson with Madame Hooch…"

Harry listened in rapt attention. Who knew his body was so cool! He knew his wings were awesome, but he had no idea there was more to it. He had something sort of like a rocket engine built into his spine? That was so cool!

Oh, Madame Hooch had said it was something more like the enchantments on a broom, no exhaust, huh. Harry couldn't tell if that was more or less cool than a rocket engine, but it was still pretty cool anyway!

It was some pretty good news to end the day.

1.3.7 Dragon-sitting

To Severus Snape's experience, dragons, particularly young dragons, lived a six-mode existence.

Those six modes could be summarized as 'Asleep', 'Eating', 'Reading', 'Defecating', 'Flying', and 'Asking all sorts of dunderheaded questions'.

Snape had no idea why Albus decided that he was the ideal dragon-sitter for those times when Hagrid was unavailable, mercifully infrequent though those times were. Were it anyone other than Albus, Snape would have suspected that it was some dastardly plot to get him eaten by the dragon in question.

Relative edibility aside, the blasted lizard never failed to irritate him! If it wasn't asleep or eating anything that was too slow to run away, the little blighter was either demanding copious quantities of reading material or otherwise bothering him when he needed to concentrate on his experiments!

"What's that, Professor Snape?" it asked, pointing to a bowl.

"Cold-pressed spungle oil, a common base for many ointments and creams," the man replied automatically. Snape sighed, how was he to get rid of the wretched beast? He would never get anything done at this rate!

"It smells really tasty." That was an expected reply by now.

"Everything seems to smell tasty from your perspective. Wretched lizard."

In the few days it had so far been at Hogwarts, the damned dragon had devoured a monstrous quantity of meat, lamp oil, what little scrap metal was readily available, and an unconscionable quantity of Snape's valuable potions ingredients. Snape had never thought to encounter a creature that could not only tolerate devouring an entire bubotuber without developing boils or any other ill effect but would enjoy the process enough to demand more!

The famously extensive Hogwarts larder was actually running thin, which led directly to his current predicament. Hagrid was unavailable for dragon-sitting because he was out securing contracts for scrap metal, coal, and muggle fuels to supplement the beast's diet before it managed to eat the castle.

Snape hoped that his laboratory would survive until the half-giant returned from his search.

"Not everything," Harry volunteered, oblivious to his companion's internal monologue, "I mean, wood smells kinda yucky."

"Dratted beast." Snape groused, almost automatically. Perhaps he should consider wood paneling for the laboratory? Or maybe some sort of wooden clothing? It was something to consider, in the meantime, he picked up the closest book, a dog-eared copy of Moste Potente Potions, and shoved it into the dragon's paws. "If you simply must stay awake, read this, and if you wish to eat something, ask an elf to bring you a meal."

"Oh, okay then!"

The dragon then shut up and the foul-tempered potions master realized that he wasn't as irritated as he had been before. Was he starting to go soft? He'd only been dragon-sitting for two days, how was the wretched lizard growing on him already?

He supposed the beast did have its uses. Its feces had proven to be a remarkably effective accelerator for potions usage — surprisingly less unpleasant to work with than the nearest alternative as well. Despite the constant questions, the dragon never repeated the same question twice, either, Snape supposed. Aside from the eternal 'where can I sleep', 'can I have something to eat', 'have you got a book I can read', and 'um, where should I go poo' type of questions. As those were easy enough to answer, 'In Hagrid's barn', 'ask an elf to bring you some food, dolt', 'here, read this and be quiet', and 'in the woods, you imbecile', the reptile's company was proving to be surprisingly tolerable.

At least the little bugger knew how to keep a civil tongue in his mouth.

"Um, Professor Snape, I've already read this."

"Then read it again, unless you've already memorized it."

"Well, I kinda remember stuff really well, right?"

"What, then, is the twelfth step of the brewing of Veritaserum?"

"Add the mixed ingredients to the dilute murtlesap base and bring to a slow boil until the brew begins to bubble."

"And the fourth step of the brewing of Skele-grow?"

"Chop the antler finely. No piece should be larger than the forepaw of a shrew."

"And the seventh step of the brewing of Post-Cruciatus Potion?"

"Add the bubotuber puss one drop at a time to the simmering mix; add each drop after the last has ceased to bubble."

Perhaps there was hope for him yet. Not that Snape would voice such a thing. Snape nodded, "I shall reserve judgement until we see how you can apply that knowledge you have crammed into your sizeable skull. Now, as I appear to have run out of volumes in my private collection for you to peruse, what sort of reading material do you desire?"

"Books about dragons would be nice."

"Very well, I will endeavor to locate volumes that meet your exacting specifications." Snape stood from the bench, "While I am so engaged, you must watch this potion carefully! If it begins to bubble, withdraw it from the fire at once. Failure to do so will cause it to explode most violently and, more importantly, will waste six hours of my valuable time. If that is to happen, I will refuse to allow you books for an entire week! Is that understood?"

"When it starts to bubble, take it off the fire." Harry dutifully repeated.

"Only to a distance of two handspans from the flame, mind!"

"Okay!"

"Take care that you do it boy, and do not otherwise interfere with it."

Last edited: Jul 16, 2020

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Threadmarks Section 1.4 - When Harry met Suze

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Dunkelzahn

Dunkelzahn

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Jul 11, 2018

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1.4 When Harry met Suze

1.4.1 Ill Omens

Magorian raised his gaze to the stars overhead, currently occluded by dark clouds beyond the boughs of the Black Woods, known to the human inhabitants of Hogwarts as the Forbidden Forest. The elderly chief of the Black Woods Clan of centaurs was currently very worried.

A hand's worth of moons had passed since the last grave omen, and now the Great Wyrm had been seen flying over the forest. The ancients' calendar, passed down through their oral histories, claimed that there were to be another four hands' worth of summers before these events were to come to pass, and Magorian had expected to grow old and travel to the final hunting grounds before then, leaving the problem to his sons. Why had this happened now?

Either something had changed, or something was very, very wrong.

At least the Great Wyrm wasn't lairing in the forest; that was the one saving grace of this situation. Magorian dreaded to think what it might mean for the Clan if that came to pass. They had enough trouble with the spider menace, and even at their best, his clan could not fight a Great Wyrm. There was precious little that could, and most of those things would be even worse news for the Clan.

If the worst came to pass, the secret histories claimed that it might become necessary to sacrifice fillies to appease the wrath of the Great Wyrm, and it was not like the Black Woods Clan had a surfeit of them. Even his eldest son, Bane, had only three wives!

What was to become of them?

His eyes returned steadfastly to the skies overhead, searching for a break in the clouds and the insight the stars could bring.

1.4.2 Inadequate rumors

It was inevitable; lock a group of several hundred children and teenagers in a relatively confined area for months on end, and gossip lines will quickly develop, allowing rumors to resonate through the group, growing stranger with each reverberation.

The current topic of choice was, and had been for more than a week, exactly what was distracting so many of their professors. Snape, Madame Hooch, Hagrid, Madame Pomfrey, even McGonagall, now, and there were some rumors that Flitwick and Vector might have something brewing that might or might not be related.

Older, but still fresh, topics included what exactly had caused that scorched spot near the postern gate and why Snape's hair was no longer greasy.

With each repetition, the stories grew more and more outlandish, sprouting conspiracy theories left and right. More enterprising individuals attempted to tie the various rumors together into a single interrelated whole. Some even tried to tie in those shockingly nasty smells wafting in periodically from the Forbidden Forest. The theories had gotten quite outrageous after a few days.

In an unusual twist compared to the usual course of such things, none of the outrageous conspiracy theories could hold a candle to the even more outrageous truth.

1.4.3 Reflections after a month

Albus and the three Heads of House had once again gathered for a discussion of the developments concerning their resident dragon — over stiff drinks of course. Things relating to young Harry tended to make more sense when ever-so-slightly buzzed.

This time, they were joined by the fourth Head, Professor Sprout, Madams Hooch and Pomfrey, and the young Professor Septima Vector, necessitating a change in venue from Albus' office to a little used, but still very well-appointed, staff conference room; the crowd had gotten to be a little much for the cozy sitting area in his office. The dragon of the hour was, to the best of their knowledge, peacefully sleeping in Hagrid's barn under the supervision of the gamekeeper himself.

As Flitwick again passed around drinks, this time shots of some sort of liqueur which looked for all the world like a perfect window into the starry night sky, Albus called the meeting to order. "So, now that you've all had a chance to play dragon-sitter, what does everyone think of young Harry?"

Snape grimaced, sniffing curiously at the unfamiliar drink, "I could wish that he was a slower reader and somewhat quieter. I suppose I should be grateful that the wretched lizard never asks the same question more than once."

"Severus," Minerva chided, "The boy is polite, respectful, intelligent, and friendly. What is your problem with him?"

"A bastard with exactly the same voice as that wretched lizard tormented me through my seven years as a student in this institution; that dratted dragon sounds entirely too much like his sire for my comfort!"

Having concluded his inspection of his glass, results apparently to his satisfaction, the potions master took a sip of the concoction. "If not for his voice," Snape allowed, "I might find his company… tolerable, but all too often I feel that I am in the same room as a young, dragon-shaped James bloody Potter."

"Ah… I see." The reply was voiced by Flitwick, but every professor old enough to remember Harry's father nodded in agreement. The man James had become had been good and decent, but during his childhood… "That is a disturbing image, indeed."

After a suitable pause for everyone to down a shot and refill their glasses in an effort to put said disturbing image out of their minds, Albus continued, "Well, does anyone else have an opinion on the dragon-shaped Boy-Who-Lived?"

"I must say, that I have never encountered another creature quite so hungry," Minerva began. "By Hagrid's commentary, the laddie eats more than the giant squid and whatever new three-headed monstrosity he's been raising under the name of 'Fluffy', combined. I confess, I have no idea where the boy puts it all."

"Indeed," Snape agreed. "Never had I thought to encounter a creature able to devour a whole bubotuber without ill effect, and I had thought that such a creature then asking for more would be an impossibility."

"I hadn't realized there was anything he couldn't eat." Flitwick said.

"He dislikes the flavor of wood," Snape helpfully volunteered, "and it seems that certain muggle plastics give him the runs."

Flitwick snorted, "You are a very strange man, Severus. You dislike the boy, and at the same time you seem almost fascinated by him."

"His body is extraordinary, a marvel of materials science and magic! His stomach juices have proven their ability to dissolve anything I have been able to test them against, even glass. I have no idea how he manages to avoid digesting his own internal workings. His bioalchemy seems to be based on iron and copper, with trace amounts of a host of other materials almost never seen in living organisms. His skeleton is composed mostly of aluminum, though I confess I do not recognize the manner in which it is alloyed and structured. What's more, despite drinking water in copious quantity, he retains almost none of it! The processes which support his continued existence take place in a molten iron substrate rather than an aqueous one; his bioalchemy resembles nothing so much as a furnace, burning tremendous amounts of hydrocarbons to heat and melt the metals that he ingests. It is as if he were a living machine! A being built not of flesh and blood, but rather living metal."

Snape took a moment to pause before snorting, himself. "I am certain that once you discover something about the dratted lizard which revolutionizes your own field you will be similarly excitable."

"He is a fascinating case," Poppy spoke up for the first time. "While Severus' description of his bioalchemy is accurate as far as it goes, the greater function of his body is amazing in its own right. He has flight organs arrayed beside his spine that work similarly to a broom, but do not push on the ambient magical field in the same manner. His reflexes are so quick I had to work with Filius to create a diagnostic spell capable of accurately measuring them. There is that marvel of a digestive system that Severus described, of course," Poppy nodded to the man in question, "but then there is his skin as well. The boy is able to maintain an internal temperature hot enough to glow white, yet his skin is barely warmer than human norm. Truly remarkable!"

"Do you have any idea how that flight enchantment works?" Flitwick asked, intrigued. All known forms of magical flight relied on ambient magic to work. It was the primary reason wizards had never traveled to the moon. "It might be another interesting topic to pursue."

"It might be," she allowed, "yet it remains a mystery at this time. I'll be happy to supply my measurements so far." The school Healer's expression twisted slightly, "There is one consideration, however, that must be addressed soon — the boy will need to learn occlumency sometime within the next few years."

This was unexpected enough that the room went silent for a moment, before Albus asked the question, "For heaven's sake, why?"

Occlumency was an advanced topic for a reason, its benefits were myriad, ranging from defense against mental intrusion to truly spectacular emotional control and near-perfect recall. However, teaching it to the young was always problematic — both because of the subject's difficulty and the hazards involved. For every successful student, there were three that came out of the training as emotionally stunted wrecks.

Albus sometimes wondered if that was why so many of his students from the darker families went so consistently and horribly wrong.

"I am sure you are aware of the cross-species fertility of highly-magical creatures?" Poppy looked about hopefully, but, finding only blank looks at the apparent non-sequitur, she continued, "Rubeus would be able to explain it if he were here."

She sighed before continuing with the air of a teacher delivering a remedial lecture. "Magic enhances biological function in general; that is why we live so much longer than muggles do. That rule also holds true for our various parts, magic makes them work better at whatever it is they are intended to do; it makes eyes see better, livers filter blood better, stomachs digest food better, and so on."

The Healer sighed, clearly irritated at having to explain what she felt was very, very basic magical biology. "That also holds true for reproductive organs and the gametes they produce. That is, for instance, the reason that veela reproduce almost exclusively with wizards despite the spotty history between our two races. Despite her near-human genetics, a veela's association with fire leaves her body temperature high enough to sterilize a non-magical man's contribution, making such couplings fruitless. A wizard's magic will overcome this."

Poppy took a sip from her glass, fortifying herself to continue. "Taken to the extreme, it is a property that experimental breeders have been taking advantage of for centuries. Many of the more… creative magical species owe their origins to breeding two dissimilar but highly magical species together. Despite the normally incompatible biology, enough magical strength will get the job done anyway and make something new. Breeders sometimes help the process along with spells, but for creatures of sufficient strength, they are not strictly necessary. The more power involved, the looser the requirements for successful breeding become."

"Mr. Potter has more than enough magic to make those requirements very loose indeed," the Healer sighed, "and therein lies the problem."

"How so, Poppy?" Dumbledore asked, white brow furrowed. "So far, all I can see is a good reassurance that Mr. Potter need not be lonely even if he fails to find any others of his species."

"Magic enhances everything, not just fertility," she replied, as if that should be enough explanation.

"And…?" he prompted.

"And male gametes are motile, Albus," Poppy said flatly. "They can move under their own power and, in this instance, are magically enhanced to an utterly absurd degree. Do the math."

Albus and his other colleagues did the math.

"Oh, dear," Albus summed things up quite well, as the rest of the room remained silent, contemplating the implications. "So, occlumency, you say?"

"Well in advance of puberty," Poppy confirmed. "One of the side benefits of occlumency is tight control over the body's autonomic functions, which should prevent any problems. To be honest, it might turn out to be unnecessary in the end, as this is all guesswork — I am feeling about in the dark here, after all — but the stakes are too high to run the risk."

The room fell silent for a time at that, the scale of the potential problem percolating through their thoughts.

"That…" Filius paused for a moment to collect himself, "that is rather overwhelming, isn't it?"

"Hundreds of them!" Snape gulped down the rest of his drink. "Merlin, there'd be hundreds of the blasted lizards, and they'd probably all sound like James bloody Potter, too. It would be a damned nightmare!"

"Perhaps so, yet it is a disaster that should be easy enough to head off," Albus cut off further discussion. "I shall begin his occlumency training forthwith, and it will require no further concern. What else do we have to report?"

"Harry's been coming along nicely with his flying lessons," Madam Hooch volunteered, eager to change the subject, "though he is still a tad clumsy. The boy's very considerate like you mentioned, Minerva," the flight instructor nodded to her senior, "but those wings! I've seen him accidentally swipe through a tree trunk as thick as my waist, and the boy barely noticed until the top fell on him. Was damn funny to see!" she chuckled at the memory. "Still, even without magic, that boy could tear through half the wizarding world on physical strength alone. Kind of awe-inspiring really."

Taking her cue from Rolanda, Minerva decided to give a status report on her instruction. Hopefully it would draw the conversation back onto more comfortable terrain. "He's been coming along nicely in transfiguration, as well. Harry has, just today, managed to change himself into a child-sized dragon. He cannot yet maintain it for more than a few minutes, but it is excellent progress. I expect he'll manage a human form by the end of next month. The boy is an eager and capable student — I truly look forward to having him in my classes in a few years."

"That is a theme I expect will continue, ad nauseum, in the coming years," Snape offered. "He seems to have an eidetic memory. Once I realized that he had read every book in my collection, I quizzed him on the contents and have done so several times since. I must say that if he were to sit his Potions OWL tomorrow, he would score a perfect O on the theory section. I confess I am looking forward to discovering just what he can do on the practical side of things with all that theory stuffed into his oversized skull."

"I think we all are eager to discover that." Sprout spoke up again, eager to get in on the potential academic prize, despite her absence during the dragon's initial retrieval. Someone had had to stay at the school in case of emergency, after all.

"I simply wish that he were a little less… annoying." Snape spoke up again after a moment's silence.

"You almost sound as if you are afraid of the boy, Severus," Minerva commented.

"Can anyone here honestly declare themselves completely unafraid of the blasted reptile?"

No one replied, prompting Snape to smirk before continuing, "I suspect that only Rubeus could honestly answer in the affirmative."

"…indeed." Albus spoke, "Though I must say that his, ah, lack of awareness of his own potential for mayhem is simultaneously a little disturbing and heartening."

"How so?" Snape asked, sounding curious.

"Well, I suspect the fact that he hasn't realized he could lay waste to a large portion of the surrounding area implies that he has little inclination to lay waste to much of anything," the elderly man replied.

"True enough," McGonagall allowed. "For the most part, his behavior reminds me of nothing more than my own son when he was young."

"A typical small boy in the body of a dragon — my nightmare is complete," Snape groaned. "I do hope we survive his childhood."

"Yes, sixteen tons of boisterous child is more than a little intimidating," Poppy agreed.

The staff settled into a companionable silence for a moment while savoring their alcohol.

"What sort of drink is this anyway, Albus?" Filius spoke up; he had been wondering since Albus had handed him the bottle to pour.

Albus smiled, "Ah, it is a creation of an old friend of mine who makes such brews as a hobby. He calls this one Starry Night, certainly not a terribly creative name, but that's no crime, and I think the taste makes up for it." He chuckled, "Since we seem to be making a habit of these meetings, I have decided to introduce you to some new forms of drink. Especially you, Minerva." The proud Scotswoman had been looking at her glass askance all night. "I know you would never drink anything other than single malt if I don't push."

"Not even water, had I my way," said proud Scotswoman agreed easily.

Sprout spoke up again, enthusiastically, "Oh! That sounds lovely! I do some brewing of my own, you know. Perhaps I could bring something next meeting?"

"I'm sure we would all be most appreciative, Pomona. We will eagerly look forward to sampling your efforts!" The old man continued, "Speaking of comestibles, Severus, how goes your investigation into the conditions in Mr. Potter's stomach?" It was a topic of some interest, after the reasoning outlined in their first meeting.

"It is slow going," Snape admitted, sounding not at all discouraged. His eyes gleaming with the enthusiasm of a great painter in front of his canvas, the potions master continued. "I am currently attempting to recreate the material of which his stomach lining is composed so that I might craft a vessel sturdy enough to hold for more than a few moments at the relevant conditions. I believe I am quite close, now."

"Good, good. Keep us apprised, Severus."

With that, the meeting settled back down for a moment before the young arithmancy professor, Septima, spoke up again. "Oh, I almost forgot to mention!" At her colleagues' encouraging looks she continued, "Filius approached me about improved diagnostic spells for Madame Pomfrey after her current set failed to determine Mr. Potter's magical strength." She nodded to the two persons so named. "I wasn't able to help at the time, but it later occurred to me that I could try a different approach for determining Mr. Potter's magical strength — or at least a rough estimate of it — using aura size."

She took another sip of her Starry Night. "As you know, aura is not normally used to measure magical strength because it is not a very sensitive measure. Albus' aura, for instance, would fill perhaps three-quarters of this room, were it visible, while a particularly weak new first year's might fill a quarter of the room. Not much difference in aura size for a tremendous difference in strength. I thought it could at least give us a range to tune a more sensitive measure around. Turning aura detection spells on Mr. Potter, however, revealed that his aura is not detectable from any distance less than ten miles, for the simple reason that his aura blankets everything within that distance."

"What!" It was difficult to determine who had spoken, as it seemed to be a general consensus among the rest of the staff.

Septima nodded. "I had much the same reaction, so I attempted the determine just how much power was involved in producing such an extensive aura, and, well, I'd appreciate it if someone would double-check my calculations, but they seem to indicate that Harry currently contains more magical energy than has passed through the Hogwarts warding scheme in the last thousand years. As we pointed out before, the kid seems quite content to behave himself, so I'm not worried about him turning that power on anyone undeserving, but it concerns me that he obtained that power through whatever incident occurred at Avebury."

She continued, visibly distressed. "I've not worked out just what that much power could do — aside from transforming an eight-year-old wizard into some kind of super-dragon hatchling, of course — but, I figured it could probably be pretty scary." On seeing the expressions on her colleagues' faces, Septima's voice turned sheepish. "And, well… I thought it was important that you know?"

The silence in the room after that report was deafening. That was a chilling pronouncement. The scale of the magical phenomenon that was Harry Potter had already boggled the mind, but this was something else again!

What would this new wrinkle bring with it?

It would seem certain research projects required more urgent handling. Priorities would need to shift…

…Pomona would need to break out the good stuff for their next meeting.

"For future reference, Septima," Albus' calm tone finally broke the stunned silence, "That sort of news should generally be reported at the beginning of the meeting."

1.4.4 Contemplations on the meaning of life

As the various dragon-sitters were sitting down to discuss their findings, the subject of their discussion was decidedly less asleep than they believed.

Like many large predators, dragons tend to be rather shockingly still by default. Harry's normal personality tended to keep him moving, but when his mind was occupied, his deeper instincts took over. As Harry had sat down in the large barn behind Hagrid's hut for a good think, it was perhaps understandable that his deeply-thinking pose had been mistaken for a deeply-sleeping one.

Harry had quickly come to the conclusion that the sorts of dragons written about in the various books he had managed to get his claws on through the assistance of Mr. Dumbledore's various glowy friends were not the same sort of dragon he was. It was pretty obvious, since they didn't eat metal and they couldn't talk.

This was a problem.

Turning into a dragon was the best thing Harry could remember happening to him, and he wanted to make sure he did it right by being the best dragon he could be! Doing anything less smacked of ingratitude.

Right now, though, Harry had no idea what it was that dragons like him were supposed to do. Were he human, he could look to his friends at Hogwarts for examples of what to do, but he was not. Who knew if good-human things to do were the same as good-dragon things?

He certainly didn't!

Attempting to address this lack, Harry had managed to talk Professor McGonagall into getting him some books that the non-glowy people had written on dragons to see if they had any ideas, though she insisted on dismissing the books as 'muggle fantasies'. Harry wasn't sure why she was so dismissive because they had lots of ideas and lots of different dragons to read about. They also seemed like a better choice than the ones the glowy people wrote about, since the not-glowy ones were about dragons that knights went after, and Harry was pretty sure he was that sort of dragon.

Was there something about people who glowed a bit that kept them from getting the right idea about dragons? Dragons seemed like pretty simple stuff to him, but maybe that was just because he was a dragon. Madame Pomfrey had been telling him about 'perspective' and 'point-of-view', and this sounded like it might be one of those things. He'd have to have another think on that later.

The different stories covered lots and lots of different kinds of dragons. He was sure they'd help him out somehow, but — none of them really fit right.

So, Harry had ultimately decided he'd have to figure it out himself. They might not be right in everything, but all those not-glowy-person fantasy things had to come from somewhere, right? Maybe they got bits right here and there. So, he'd read those books Professor McGonagall had given him carefully – he took notes on his findings and everything! – and he'd found some themes that seemed to be common to dragons that could talk.

Dragons who can talk needed to have a lair, and it should have treasures in it and preferably some damsels. Harry wasn't quite sure what the whole thing with damsels was, but the stories that mentioned them made it seem like they were really important.

Almost every one of the books — aside from those he had discarded because they didn't seem to be about the same sort of dragon he was — made it very clear that knights were out to get dragons, and he'd recently learned the whole 'slay' thing meant making the dragon dead, which sounded really nasty. As soon as he'd figured out what that was all about, Harry had resolved to flame any knights that seemed like they were out to get him, hard. He'd also keep an eye on those armor things around the castle, they seemed entirely too knight-like for comfort.

The thing that really bothered him was that the stories always made dragons out to be the baddies. He'd only found a couple that didn't, and they were pretty obviously not about the same sort of dragon he was. It was kind of sad.

How much of it was real, and how much was made up? Harry didn't know, but he did know that he was determined to do this being-a-dragon thing right!

He was going to be the best dragon ever!

And so, for the first steps down that path, he needed a lair, he needed treasures, and he needed damsels. Harry wasn't sure where to get any of them, but he figured he needed the lair first. He'd need the lair so he had a place to put the treasures and damsels anyway when he figured out how to get them. The problem was where to find a lair that knights couldn't get into.

After a bit more thinking, Harry resolved to ask Hagrid. Hagrid knew lots about dragons, and he knew where everything was around the castle and all sorts of other awesome stuff. He was sure to know where Harry could get a lair that knights couldn't get into!

He also needed to let the world know that dragons were the goodies, not the knights. Everyone would be better off if they weren't so confused about that.

He'd have to talk to the people that wrote all those stories and let them know what dragons were really like, once he figured that out himself. It was only right to help them out, since they'd helped him with the stories.

It was about this point that Hagrid walked in to check on his charge.

"Evenin', Harry," Hagrid said, stomping into the barn.

Hagrid was a very good stomper, made the ground go clump and everything. That seemed like something Harry would have to learn too — valuable life skill, stomping. Harry resolved to get Hagrid to give him stomping lessons someday.

"Hi Hagrid! There's something I wanted to ask you about…"

1.4.5 Harry goes house hunting

"… he wants what?" Dumbledore asked, perplexed.

"Harry says he's wantin' a lair," Hagrid repeated. "Says he needs it t' be somethin' he called 'knight-proof'. I 'spect he's lookin' fer a place t' make home; 'bout time fer the little feller, I'd say. There's a good place up inter the crags behind the forest, big cave with 'bout a hunnert-foot drop out the front an' plenty o' space up top. One o' the burns feedin' inter the loch runs outta it, too. Least that's what Madame Hooch says, she had a look 'bout a few years back. I ain't never been up there."

"That would be a good idea." Madame Pomfrey, who took the health of her young charge seriously and had been discussing her concerns about his lack of exercise beforehand, spoke up. "The poor boy needs more space to move around, and the cliffs are out of sight of the castle."

"Hmm, I must concur," Albus allowed. "Rubeus, if you and Madame Hooch could show him the cave during his next flying lesson? I suppose it is close enough that his tutors could visit the cave if it meets with young Harry's approval."

1.4.6 A hairy realtor

"I've found yer a lair, Harry," Hagrid said.

The young dragon had been dozing off before that statement, but the words immediately revitalized him.

"Really?" Harry was up and bouncing about, an action that involved all six of his limbs and his tail. Oddly enough, his head remained rock solid the whole time, gaze focused unerringly on his friend's face. If said friend were anyone other than Hagrid, he would have been rather unsettlingly reminded of a snake focusing on a mouse as its body coiled in preparation for a strike. Since said friend was Hagrid, he didn't find the reminder unsettling at all. "Ooh! Ooh! Where? Where? Can we go see? Is it knight-proof? Where is it? What's it like?"

"Easy there, Harry." Hagrid chuckled. "'S 'round the back o' the forest, up in the crags. Big cave, lots o' space fer ya t' stretch out an' move 'round, and no way inter it but flyin'. How 'bout we check it out t'night?"

"Ooh, that sounds amazing!"

"I'm glad the idea fills you with enthusiasm." Madame Hooch had entered the barn after Hagrid. "Well, then, let's go!" She was not eager to delay their departure any more than necessary.

After all, a dragon the size of a small bus bouncing excitedly is a disturbing sight.

At least, it is for people who aren't Hagrid.

1.4.7 New digs

Sunlight hitting his eyes gradually brought Harry out of sleep.

For a moment, he didn't know where he was. It wasn't the barn or the Dursleys' garage, and it certainly wasn't his old cupboard where he stayed before he turned into a dragon. There was sunlight streaming in from an opening in front of him, and he seemed to be resting on a rough rock floor. Where was he?

He opened his eyes to have a look around, and then he remembered the wonderful lair that his friends had found for him!

It was situated about halfway up a cliff, with the mouth shielded by an overhang. The lip was about a hundred feet off the ground, and there was about another hundred feet of cliff face above. The cave opened to the west with a view straight up the glen which climbed up to the moors and off to the sea. About half that view was taken up by the neighboring bluff to the southwest, whose light gray stone was currently reflecting the sunlight which had awakened him. The cliffs extended to the sides all the way around forming an isolated table-land separated from the rest of the plateau to the north by another steep-sided glen.

There was a stream running by his side through the cave — it was called a 'burn', he remembered Hagrid saying, though he didn't know why a stream would burn. The water flowed out of a crack in the wall in the back of the cave, travelled through the trench it had worn into the floor toward the cave opening, and Harry could hear the water splash merrily on the rocks far below. Madame Hooch had said something about an artesian flow, which he had gathered was a fancy way of saying the water ran uphill underground before coming out in the cave and acting normal again.

He'd have to learn more about that; it seemed like a funny thing for water to do.

Anyway, the mouth of the cave was big enough for him to take off easily, and there was a huge hollow space about fifty feet or so back from the lip which he could use to sleep in and store treasures! And, best of all, the young dragon could see absolutely no way that knights could possibly sneak in.

He had slept, and he was now feeling just a mite peckish, but the elves couldn't hear him out here so far from the castle. How was he going to get food?

Harry thought about that for a while, admiring his new lair in the meantime. Boy, that rock did look really good right now — he wondered what it would taste like. So, Harry tried it, taking a dragon-sized bite out of the wall of his new lair.

As he chewed his newly discovered food source, he realized two things. One, rock was not very filling, tasty, but he didn't think he'd ever get full on it; and two, despite the disappointing meal, he had just made his lair one bite bigger than it was before! The sheer bigness of it was already awesome, but Harry realized he could make it bigger any time he wanted.

That was amazing!

He could expand it to hold more treasures and damsels, and for when he got bigger, and if he wanted to make a library for all the books he wanted to get, and to make a potions laboratory, and whatever else he wanted! There was a whole mountain there, so he'd have all the space he'd ever need! The lair his friends had given him could get as big as he needed it to.

He made such great friends since he became a dragon!

Now he just needed treasures and damsels and his become-an-awesome-dragon plan would be well underway. He was pretty sure he knew where to get treasures, they were supposed to be at the end of rainbows, and he'd seen one of those just the other day out over the water — water which he could see from his new Lair, and wasn't that cool? He'd made sure to memorize where it had ended, one end on the sea and one end on the mountain, and Harry thought it would be a great idea to go give those places a good looking-over later that day once he'd made sure his Lair was all set.

1.4.8 The leading lady arrives

They had drawn lots to decide; it was the only fair way to go about it.

The worst case had come to pass for the centaurs of the Black Woods Clan, and the Great Wyrm had taken up residence in the forest. Worse yet, it laired above their most defensible campsite between the river and the Grey Cliffs.

There was no help for it; they would have to sacrifice a daughter to appease the Great Wyrm. The Clan could not afford another conflict on top of the ongoing war with the spider plague, much less a conflict with a Great Wyrm. That would be hopeless under even the best of circumstances.

When Bane, Magorian's eldest surviving son and heir, drew the shortest straw, he wept without shame.

It was a terrible duty, yet it was necessary nonetheless. If they didn't do it, they'd all be dead.

Proper dead.

So, at midnight, the warriors of the Clan, led by Bane himself, selected the fairest of his daughters, dressed her in her finest soft furs and linens, bound her wrists with silk rope, and led her to the edge of a clearing that laid within sight of the cave where the Great Wyrm laired.

And there, each stallion sadly glancing behind, they left her, one end of the rope tied about her wrists, and the other to a fallen tree.

There was no choice; the Great Wyrm had to be appeased, or they all died.

No choice at all.

1.4.9 When Harry met Suze

A new day dawned brightly at Harry's lair, the sun was shining, the breeze was blowing, and the sky was blue. As the young dragon awoke, stretching widely, he once again marveled at the sheer space inside his lair, for when a young dragon stretched widely, he stretched very widely indeed. After spending most of his life cooped up, first in the cupboard, and later in the garage and then the barn, the ability to move freely was a coveted luxury for Harry.

It was a great day to be alive!

The boy bounded to the mouth of his lair. His Lair! His home, he was master of all he surveyed! What a wonderful feeling! He looked out over the landscape in wonder. Harry felt he could see past the edge of the world from here. The foothills to his left blocked off the view of the castle and Hogsmeade from here, and the rest of his mountain blocked off the closest town. The only trace of mankind was a single distant fishing boat and rail line. The rail was empty at the moment, but he could still hear the echoing growl of the morning train to Mallaig. It must have just passed out of sight. The rest of it, though, empty forest and moor until the water began, and then open blue off to the Isle of Skye beyond. And it was all his; he had found his home, and it was just lovely!

As his admiring gaze pulled back from the distant mountains across the sound and turned to much closer forest, Harry noticed something odd. Down there, just on the other side of the river, something was moving, something in greens, browns, and greys.

Harry looked closer, and he realized that he couldn't work out what he was looking at. He needed a better vantage point.

So, he spread his wings and glided down to the forest floor some distance from whatever it was. He approached all sneaky-sneaky, because it had looked kind of horse-shaped; Harry wasn't sure if it was a knight.

Nosing his way through the greenery, carefully avoiding making any crashing sounds, he slowly realized that what he was seeing was some kind of lady.

She was dressed up in all green, brown and grey, was tied up, and had most of a horse where her legs should be.

Harry frowned a bit, trying to work out why she was tied up and had horse instead of legs.

He wasn't sure about the horsey bit, 'cause the stories always had knights riding horses, but the stories didn't say anything about the knights and horses actually being stuck together.

Trying to get more information, Harry sniffed at the wind. He wasn't sure how much good it would do, since he didn't know what knights smelled like yet. Harry figured knights would probably smell like metal and person. She smelled of horse and person; he wasn't sure if knights would smell of horse and person too. The young dragon thought for a moment, she didn't look like she was wearing shining armor, but she might be wearing it under the furs and leather stuff he could see. But then he'd smell metal, the boy reasoned, that meant she probably wasn't wearing shining armor.

And if she wasn't wearing shining armor, then she probably wasn't a knight!

That established, Harry took a closer look at the horsey-lady. Her not-horse bits, pretty much all of a lady except legs, were dressed in some sort of cloth. It looked kind of like those fancy napkins Aunt Petunia used for special guests, but thicker, and it didn't smell the same. There were added-on fur bits and leather belts in not-belt places that seemed to keep the rest of her clothes from moving around much. The horsey bits, which were pretty much everything of a horse except its head and neck, 'cause that was where the lady's middle started, weren't wearing anything. Her wrists were tied behind her back with some sort of rope that looked a lot like milky-white plastic, and that rope was tied to a tree on the other end.

Suddenly, it clicked. A lady tied up outside a dragon's lair — this was just like that story with the damsel and that dragon that lived in the sea! Well, she wasn't naked like the one in the story, but he guessed it was kind of cold out, so that made sense. He'd never really understood that part of the story anyway. Harry nodded decisively. The lady with horse instead of legs was a damsel, and that made the question of what to do obvious.

"Grr, grr, GRR. I'm a big fearsome dragon, and you're a damsel, so I'm going to carry you off to my lair, grr!" He declared, stepping out of the undergrowth. He wished he had gotten those stomping lessons from Hagrid already. Harry wanted to do this right, and it just didn't seem proper that the ground wasn't shaking from his every step. He hoped the horsey-lady wasn't disappointed.

As Harry approached his new damsel, the thought ran through his head. Maybe damsels were some sort of treasure? If they were, then they were obviously a very important sort of treasure. The stories had always taken care to specifically name the damsels, and they never did that for the not-damsel treasures.

1.4.10 When Suze met Harry

Suze was certain she was going to die.

She'd had a bad feeling for one hand and one weeks now, a feeling that she would soon face an irrevocable change in her life, the death of her current existence and the beginning of a new one. For a centaur girl of just shy of three hands' worth of summers, that meant either death or marriage, and her father would not be presenting her to any suitors for another two summers, while the threat of death loomed constantly in the Black Woods.

As soon as her grandfather, Magorian, had grimly announced that the Great Wyrm had been sighted above the forest, Suze had known what form her doom would take. She had left it unspoken, but she was not surprised when she was chosen as the sacrifice to appease the Great Wyrm's wrath.

Her father had wept for her.

She had made her father cry! Did that mean she deserved this?

Suze did not resist when she was tied and led away to the last place she expected to ever see. This was her duty; she had been chosen to protect her family, and she would see her final duty through to the end. Death was over in a flash, but shame was eternal.

Father had said so, and Father was always right unless Grandfather said differently, and Grandfather hadn't said differently about that.

When she had seen her Father's shoulders shake, she had wanted to reach out and comfort him, but her hands were tied, so she could not. This was necessary; what needed to be done, must be done, and there was no reason to cry about it. She would do her duty. She was happy to see her father and brothers walk away from her. They would not face the same fate.

When the Great Wyrm emerged into the clearing, she held herself proud. Her Father's last words to her had been, "Be brave for me, my daughter," and she would not disappoint him on her last day.

"Grr, grr, GRR.," it said. Not a growl, it said 'grr', like a colt pretending to be ferocious. "I'm a big fearsome dragon, and you're a damsel, so I'm going to carry you off to my lair, grr!"

It sounded startlingly young.

The fine silk rope that bound her to the tree parted like dust under the beast's claws. It was woven from acromantula silk, the finest known. One strand of that silk could hold an adult stallion's full weight without even the slightest stretch, and fire was the only way the Clan knew to cut it. That rope was woven from five such strands, and those claws cut through it like freshly knapped flint through a colt's hair.

Surely, the Great Wyrm would eat her soon?

Again, she didn't resist as its mighty forepaws closed around her and lifted; to quaver would be to shame her family. This was her fate, and she would face it with dignity.

Oddly, it seemed to be holding her exceedingly gently.

Having picked her up carefully, it then proceeded to whisper out of the side of it's terrifying mouth, "Am I doing it right?"

"…what?" It was the first word she had spoken since the previous night. She hadn't quite been able to work up the nerve before.

"Well, this is the first time I've done this carrying-off thing, and I want to make sure I'm doing it right," it explained. "I'm a dragon, and I'm supposed to know about this stuff."

For a moment, Suze considered saying he was doing it wrong, she had been expecting to be eaten by now, after all, but she reconsidered. It was probably an exceedingly bad idea to say no to a dragon, she reasoned.

"I think you're doing it right," Suze said uncertainly. "I've never been carried off before either, so I'm not sure how it goes, but, well, you've done a very convincing job so far. You may need to work on your growl, though."

The dragon didn't seem at all displeased by her commentary. "Okay! I guess GRR! isn't really fierce enough. I've heard dragons should be very fierce when carrying off damsels."

"Umm, I suppose so, but well… um…" Why was the Great Wyrm asking for advice rather than eating her? This was not what she expected at all!

"Well," the dragon sounded resigned but determined, "I guess I'll just have to make it up as I go along." With that, he took off. The ground spun dizzyingly away beneath her as Suze was carried along for the ride, and then her captor landed with a bone-jarring thud in the entrance to his lair, where, to her continuing surprise, he set her down gently.

"…um, sorry, I haven't quite got landings down just yet."

As her eyes adjusted to the lower lighting of the cave, she glanced around. The entrance tunnel spread out — about six lengths in — into a hollow which was large enough to contain the Clan's entire Grand Encampment with room to spare. There were Great Wyrm-sized bite marks taken out of the cave walls in places, and a large pile of gold coins about two lengths across off slightly to one side of the space. The gold looked to have been recently retrieved from the sea, based on the barnacles and bits of seaweed covering it.

"Are you going to eat me?"

The dragon seemed rather taken aback by the question. "Um, I'm kinda not going to do that, I mean I wasn't planning to… unless you want me to?" he finished uncertainly. When she shook her head negatively, he continued, "I mean, it'd be awfully rude to eat anything that politely asked you not to, so…"

"Please don't eat me Mr. Great Wyrm!" Suze blurted out, before realizing that she spoke out of turn and covering her mouth in embarrassment.

It was about this time that another voice entered the conversation. "Good afternoon, you dratted liza… What in Merlin's name is going on here?"

A tall, thin human — she thought it was one of the wizards from the castle, but she wasn't sure; dealing with them was her Uncle Firenze's job and not for the likes of young fillies — had entered the cave using one of those flying broom thingies. The human had long black hair — meticulously cleaned, she noted — drawn back into a neat tail, a hooked nose set on a thin face, sallow skin, and voluminous black clothing which had an odd smell to it. It was the first human she had seen — she wondered how they got by with only two legs?

Unheeding of her thoughts, the man continued his interrogation. "From where, precisely, did you steal that gold, young man? And what is this young lady doing here?"

"Oh, hullo Mr. Snape!" The Great Wyrm seemed delighted to see this acerbic human. "I saw a rainbow yesterday, and I remembered that you were supposed to find treasure at the end of rainbows, so I remembered where the ends were, and when I checked out the one that ended in the sea, I found a really old ship that had sunk there, and there was this gold spilled all out over everything, and it was just scattered about, so I figured no one really wanted it, so I grabbed it and brought it back here. The water got kind of cold down that far, but it wasn't really a problem. And then, today, the horsey-people gave me a damsel! She was tied up outside my lair and everything; it was just like that story with the dragon that lived in the sea, you know? And anyway, now I've got treasure and a damsel, and I'm a proper dragon now! Isn't that neat?"

The human, whose name Suze could only assume was Mr. Snape, took a moment to consider that before shaking his head in dismissal. It seemed that he didn't want to know.

"I see," he said. "I have brought some new reading material for you, some of which you requested, and some provided unasked by your other tutors. I have also devised, in collaboration with Madame Pomfrey, several new diagnostic spells for use in determining the workings of your remarkable interior. If you would be willing to settle in for a little read and spare enough concentration to allow the spells to connect, I could cast the examination spells at the same time?"

"Okay!" came the Great Wyrm's cheerful reply.

"And, Mr. Potter," the man continued, "they are known as centaurs. 'Horsey-people' is unnecessarily impolite."

"Oh… sorry."

1.4.11 Suze meets Snape and finally gets an explanation

Snape cast the first of his new diagnostic spells while his draconic research subject had its nose buried deep in an arcane transfiguration manuscript written in a form of English so archaic that Snape could barely puzzle out the title. The dragon seemed to have trouble with neither the language, nor the subject matter.

If he recalled, Minerva had passed it on in response to one of the child's more complicated questions, and he seemed to find the answer as fascinating as he found nearly everything else. Snape thought the tome so dry he felt the need for a glass of water just from looking at it. As he recalled, it was that very book which turned him away from his quest to become an animagus in his youth.

As he completed the first of his diagnostic spells, the female centaur spoke up in a soft voice with a lilting accent that the usually misanthropic potions master actually found quite pleasant.

"How old is the Great Wyrm?"

"He is a little over eight years old, in your terms, a hand and three summers, if I recall."

"…so, he's just a colt?"

"Indeed." Snape confirmed absently, the bulk of his attention centered on the results of his spell.

"Hmm?" Harry looked up from his reading curiously.

"Go back to your book, wretched lizard! I am attempting to hold a civilized conversation with this fine young lady; your input is not currently required."

Suze recoiled, fully expecting the man to be torched before her eyes for his temerity. She was, therefore, quite flabbergasted by the Great Wyrm's cheerful reply. "Okay!" Followed by a return to his book.

"He is, quite frankly, a naïve child," Snape's voice was low as he spoke to the centaur girl. "And I do believe that it would be in both our best interests if you were to do your best to ensure that his inevitable maturation is a gentle one. I am certain that the reasons are self-evident."

Without waiting for a reply, he suddenly switched topics. "Ah, this is fascinating," His diagnostic spell had returned a result. "It seems that the dratted dragon's skeletal structure is composed of orichalcum — I wonder how it was grown?"

"I know that if the right parts aren't in someone's food, they won't grow proper. Isn't orichalcum really rare?" she asked. "Where does he get it from?"

Snape was pleasantly surprised, "You are quite a knowledgeable one, aren't you, young lady? Indeed, until lately the making of orichalcum was thought to be a secret lost with the makers of your kind; the only known source was the skeleton of the drake-dog. The secrets of making the substance were rediscovered by the muggles, of all creatures. They call it aluminum oxy-nitride, a term which only makes sense when one realizes that orichalcum is in fact a quite specific phlogistonic nitrate of the ignoble metal aluminum."

"Really? I didn't know that."

"Few did, until very recently. What is your name, young lady? You seem tolerably well-informed."

"I'm Suze, daughter of Bane."

"Daughter of Bane, you say? You have my commiserations." Snape returned to casting, "Now, let us see what we can see about this young man's stomach lining… hmm, a form of glass? Curious, there must be something I am missing about its structure…"

"…you want to know how the Great Wyrm's body works?"

"Indeed, young lady; indeed. I see tremendous potential in discovering the workings of his body; his stomach alone holds the potential to revolutionize potion making. The lining routinely withstands temperatures and compositions which rapidly destroy every other material I have tested. Should I succeed in determining how this is done, and further manage to reproduce it, I am confident that I will become quite remarkably famous, and more to the point, quite remarkably wealthy. Of course, I will have to share that wealth with the blasted beast, as I have it on good authority that trying to cheat a dragon is an enormously bad idea for those who prefer to continue to breathe. Quiet now, I must record these results."

"Um, Mr. Snape?"

"What is it this time, wretched lizard?"

"I, um, I've kinda got to learn how to growl better. You're a really good growler, could you show me how it works?"

Snape froze for a moment, quill still in hand, before he gave a hearty snort. "Young man, if you are quiet and allow me to write these results down, I shall see to it that you are given growling lessons by the finest growler I have ever known."

"Okay!"

Last edited: Jul 16, 2020

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Dunkelzahn

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Threadmarks Section 1.5 - In which Harry learns his own strength

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Dunkelzahn

Dunkelzahn

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Jul 11, 2018

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1.5 In Which Harry Learns his own Strength

1.5.1 In the springtime of youth

Time has a way of passing when no one is paying any attention to it, and that holds true whether you're child or adult, dragon or human, magical or muggle.

That said, when you're young, it travels slowly. For an eight-year-old boy, a year is a very long time. For an eight-year-old who isn't in school and doesn't have people who insist on him doing chores, a day is a wonderfully long and full thing, and that holds true for any small child — even ones who've been turned into dragons.

Between lessons from his friends on the Hogwarts staff when the weather was calm enough for them to fly out from the castle, inventing new games to play with his centaur damsel, eating over at Hagrid's place, reading his way through his friends' personal libraries one borrowed armful at a time, seeing what sort of treasures he could scrounge up, and just generally stomping around his new home, doing all the things that eight-year-olds do when left to their own devices, Harry was a very busy dragon indeed. And he liked it that way because it was so very much FUN! There was always something to do, and none of it made his body hurt like the chores at the Dursleys' had, and people listened when he said he didn't want to do something.

It was brilliant!

As the days turned to weeks, and the weeks piled up enough to make a month or two, winter came to the Cairngorms painting the mountains white with snow and transforming the hills around the Lair — for that had become his home's official name, he had even added a placard to the side of the entrance — into a winter wonderland. On still nights, as they lay together and listened to the distant rumble of ships' engines on the other side of Skye echoing over the water just on the edge of hearing, his centaur damsel shared the names of the stars and what she knew of the stories they told. It was the same way Suze had been taught, herself, and had previously taught her younger siblings in turn.

When the wind picked up and the gales screamed in from the Atlantic, they watched as the winds tore up the water, whipping it into a frenzy of white, and blasted trees from the ground; it was an awe-inspiring sight for anyone, particularly so for someone who had never imagined such a storm before. Suze proved most glad of the heat put out by her dragon's furnace-like body, sheltering from the cold and wind by cuddling close to his belly. For his part, Harry liked to lay out of the wind but still in such a position that he could see out of his Lair to watch the clouds racing across the moon.

Spending so much time in the wintery forest, devoid of its obscuring summer finery, Harry quickly discovered deer — according to Mrs. McGonagall, that was the proper name for venisons that were running around — on the hills nearby and in amongst the dormant skeletal trees. After a while, he decided to find out whether they tasted as delicious as they smelled, and in his investigation, he received the second largest shock of his young life.

1.5.2 Blood spatter

Harry had been flying around aimlessly, just checking stuff out for a while and being disappointed at not finding any more gold at rainbow-end places when he noticed another one of those still-running venisons. He'd been meaning to give it a try for a while, just because he knew not-running-any-more venison was real tasty and the ones that were running around smelled real yummy. So he landed right in front of it, taking a moment to feel smug about how smooth his landings had gotten; he was really proud of that, especially with the amount of painful and awkward effort that had gone into it.

He then declared, "GrrrRRrrrr!"

The deer snorted a lot, backing away while waving its multi-pointed horns at him. Harry could smell the venison, and it smelled even yummier from up close, but he couldn't see it. Maybe the horns were in the way? He swiped at them with his paw.

He was surprised to say the very least when the deer's head splattered, painting the snow bright, steaming red.

1.5.3 The unlikeliest of counselors

Harry's Lair was oddly quiet that night, Severus Snape noticed as he set down on the lip of the entrance chamber. He was much less clumsy on a broom than he had been at the start of term; lots of practice flying to and from the Lair, he supposed. As the potions master walked into the main chamber, he noticed that it had grown much larger than before, new sections and passages seemingly clawed or chewed out of the solid rock.

Blasted beast really had no idea of his own strength. He'd grown at an absurd rate over the few months he'd been here. It was now reaching the middle of December, and the wretched lizard was already nearly half the size of the locomotive pulling the Hogwarts Express.

At least his growth had slowed recently.

The dratted dragon could normally be found lounging around the lip of his Lair at this time of day, tired from a day's worth of playing. Snape quickly schooled his features back into a scowl when he caught himself being sentimental, firmly reminding himself that the wretched beast was a dragon and therefore not worthy of such consideration from hard-working potions masters who should not be sentimental about such things.

Today there was no sign of the dragon; though his pet centaur, Suze, was hovering worriedly about the entrance to the Lair. The girl was a smart one, very well-educated by the standards of her kind, and unlike the rest of her Clan, she was willing to learn more.

"Where is that blasted dragon?" he asked.

"He's through there." She indicated a one of the recently opened passages, this one extending far enough to leave the granite of the main outcropping and enter a layer of orange and black striped gneiss from what he could see before passage bent to one side. "He's, um… upset about something, but I'm not sure what."

"I see," Snape said. He felt concerned for a moment before suppressing the impulse. That was starting to crop up more and more; he briefly considered whether he should see Poppy, then decided against it. Last time she had made some nonsensical crack along the lines of his heart growing three sizes that day.

It was just James Potter's brat, he assured himself. It must be something minor blown far out of proportion.

Beyond that initial bend, the passage was pitch black, and Severus was forced to use a light spell to find his way down it. The contrasting colors of the folded layers in the rock made for a strangely beautiful walk. After a few hundred feet, the edge of the light cast by his spell glinted off gold and illuminated the dragon's tail.

"What in Merlin's name is wrong with you, wretched lizard?"

There was a moment filled with the musical rattle of shifting gold as the young dragon turned around, and then he was suddenly faced by a tremendously large eye looking at him with — was that worry?

"…umm, hi, Mr. Snape." It was the first time in all his experience with the dratted beast that it had not sounded excited.

"I repeat; what precisely is the matter, young man?"

"Um… Mr. Snape, do people squish as easily as deer?"

"What exactly brought this on?"

"…well, I kinda thought that I'd see if venison that was still running around was as tasty as the kind that wasn't, but when I went to brush the horns out of the way, it kind of came apart on me and, well, it kinda went splat."

"I see." Snape said, nodding as he got the idea. "I'm afraid there is no gentle way to say this, lad but the vast majority of other creatures are indeed quite fragile in comparison to you."

"…oh. Um… I think, maybe, I shouldn't go places anymore…"

"Nonsense!" the potions master snapped, utterly incensed. "Desist with your self-indulgent depression, dolt! You may be sizeable and a tad unnerving, but that is no reason to hide yourself from the world! Don't you dare! What would your mother think, young man? I'll tell you what she would think; she'd be disappointed that her only son proved to be a coward!"

Snape's voice softened — somewhat, he was still Snape, after all. "You are a large and powerful creature, but that simply means that you must use good sense and self-control. You have the strength to do a great deal of harm, but by the same token you can do a correspondingly great deal of good; it is a matter of how you use your strength, and that choice is your responsibility!

"As a wizard, I have the power to kill with a word, the power to bring destruction without fail to any who anger me, but it is not something used casually, rather a last resort for when all else has failed. For you, it is the same with your strength, your fire, and the edge of your talons. Your physique is a weapon, indeed, and like all weapons it must be used responsibly; you must treat it with respect, but you must never be afraid of it!"

"If you are afraid of yourself, you will never amount to anything, and that, young man, would be an astonishing waste! I have not spent days and days drumming a measure of knowledge into your oversized skull for you to squander it out of cowardice, sulking away in this cave like some reclusive ignoramus!" Snape was back to full voice. "Do you understand me, boy? Do you?"

"…I guess."

"Don't guess, boy! Know! Guessing is for those who lack drive and purpose." Snape stopped to catch his breath. That was the most energetic speech he'd delivered in years. He shook his head, "Dash it, boy! You are a… a, a tolerable child, and I do not wish to see you waste away on account of some dead animal."

"…I'm sorry, Mr. Snape, but it just went splat, and I don't want that to happen to any of my friends."

"An admirable sentiment, boy, but hiding yourself in the dark is not the answer." Snape said, in perhaps the gentlest voice he had used since his childhood memories of green eyes so similar to the ones he was facing now — if admittedly, much, much smaller green eyes. "You have power, both physical and magical, and your responsibility is to use that power properly. Your intentions are in the right vein, but your course must be to learn how to control that power, not simply lock it away. Our choices define us far more than our abilities, and your power means that your choices will have greater consequences than most; therefore, I can only hope that you will be wiser about your use of power than most."

"Can you teach me how to use power wisely, Mr. Snape."

"I am afraid I am the wrong person to ask that question, my boy." When had the wretched beast become 'his boy'? "You should ask that of Dumbledore."

"I will."

"See that you do. Now come out here into the light; I have further diagnostic spells to cast and another load of books for you to read."

1.5.4 The circle of life

It took a great deal of discussion with both Dumbledore and Hagrid to get across to Harry that dead deer was where the no-longer-running venison came from, but they managed by early January. After that, Harry found enormously, if briefly, surprised venison to be thoroughly to his liking, though it never became the mainstay of his diet. That remained the province of Hagrid's scrap-dealership contracts and large quantities of fossil fuels.

Suze was able to brush up on her food preparation skills as some of her dragon's regular catch provided a welcome taste of home to supplement to her diet of human food supplied regularly from the castle, and Harry also became quite fond of meat cooked over a wood fire, both because the smoky flavor suited his palate and because of the associated memories of spending time with his damsel. As the occasional slowly became the customary, the Lair took on a much cozier appearance with the addition of myriad deer-leather household goods; Suze was always taught not to waste such things, an attitude she managed to pass on to her dragon.

It was another couple of months before Mr. Snape, Mrs. McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey finished their preliminary analysis of his body. According to them he was made mostly of all sorts of metals with interesting names, but he burned petrol and coal to keep the fires inside him blazing. That was so cool! It sounded like his tummy worked like a cross between a jet plane and a steam train, and Harry couldn't think of many things cooler than jet planes and steam trains!

Madame Pomfrey had said something else about an 'energy defect' which he gathered meant there was something more going on that they weren't sure of yet, but the jet plane and steam train explanation worked for him so far. The comparison was pretty good since things that got in the way of jet planes and steam trains tended to go squish, and the same went for things that got in the way of dragons.

Slowly, winter turned to spring, which brought with it tremendous sheets of rain that washed away the last remnants of the winter snows as gales rattled the land. The forest came alive from its winter hibernation, green flowing as new leaves spread across the trees and bracken covered the hillsides. Harry added the pungent meal of wild goat to his menu as the deer proved more adept at hiding in the undergrowth than they had at hiding in the snow, and the goats had the unfortunate habit of climbing things making them much more visible from the air. From time to time, he'd manage to take a stray sheep for a fluffy snack. The things almost seemed to keel over in fright before he even touched them.

The tremendous growth spurt which had defined his first few months at Hogwarts had tapered off for a time. He was no longer putting on an inch every night, and his appetite trailed off accordingly, in keeping with his more sedate rate of growth.

Spring turned to summer, bringing with it a plague of midges. The tiny menaces seemed to find Harry irresistible, but they dropped dead, exploding in minute puffs of steam after the first bite. Again, Suze took shelter by sticking very close to his flanks. She might be constantly brushing dead midges out of her hair, but she knew from bitter experience how irritating the swarms were without such a shield.

As his ninth birthday approached, Harry finally managed to acquire a human form, or rather, he managed to transform into an outward copy of his last memory of what his body had once been. As a consequence, his human form looked rather small for his age, lacking almost a year of development during what would have been a time of major growth. Learning to transfigure himself had taken forever from his perspective, but by any objective measure, his progress had been remarkable.

With his new form quickly came the discovery of a new game he could play with his damsel called 'horsie', a game that the pair took to with gusto.

As July drew to a close and his ninth birthday approached, for the first time in his life, Harry had trouble getting to sleep because of his anticipation for the day.

Birthdays were special, and everything was more special for dragons!

Last edited: Jul 16, 2020

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Threadmarks Section 1.6 - In which Harry makes an alliance

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1.6 In which Harry makes an alliance

1.6.1 Unexpected results

"She still lives!" Bane said.

Ronan had to admit he was a little worried about his eldest brother. His chieftain's heir hadn't been the same since his daughter had been sacrificed to appease the wrath of the Great Wyrm. The life had seemed to drain out of him with each step he took away from the clearing where she had been left, and his eyes had not left her direction until long after she was no longer visible. By the time the party had returned to the Grand Encampment, Bane had been a shell of his former self, black fur dulled and shrunken in on himself in despondence.

Then, just this morning, Celestine had galloped into camp, eyes wide and face ashen, and immediately rushed to Bane, asking for a private conversation. Though he could not hear what was said, Ronan could see the life returning to his brother's form. Now Bane was standing next to Celestine by the great hearth, and the fire was back in his brother's eyes.

"Your pardon, Bane?" Tiberius said.

"Suze." Bane replied, and suddenly Ronan knew what had happened.

"I swear it is true," Celestine said. "I saw her half a day's swift run from here, not just alive but playing like yearlings with the Great Wyrm, itself; though, the beast has managed to hide its nature. It walks in the form of a young human colt of perhaps one hand and three summers, but its scent is unmistakable, and I witnessed its transformation."

"Impossible," Julius scoffed.

"Nay, brother, it is true, on my blood I swear it!"

"We must watch the stars carefully." Magorian pronounced. "What omen this may portend I cannot say, but we must decipher it, lest we learn the hard way."

"Agreed, Father." Bane agreed with a fierce nod. "I suggest that we maintain a close watch on the Great Wyrm, that we may discern its habits and nature. And, I pray, that we might learn how to avoid its wrath."

"I concur." Magorian agreed, and with the chieftain's agreement, the rest of the warriors nodded in assent. Authority had spoken.

1.6.2 Post-party musings

It had been, Harry decided as he lounged atop his gleaming, slightly less water-stained, golden hoard, a wonderful birthday indeed.

Mr. Flitwick had come by the previous afternoon and given him precise instructions on how best to enjoy a birthday, the most important part being that he was to lounge around and relax, maybe doing some lazy-but-fun things like polishing his gold until the sun came out from behind the Cairngorms. The tiny man had been adamant that birthday mornings were something best savored, and after that day, Harry reckoned he knew what Flitwick meant.

That morning had been really quiet and relaxed and stuff. He'd spent the morning polishing up his gold with Suze, removing all the barnacles and bits of seaweed that had been stuck to it for the last seven months since he had fished it out of the sea, and it gleamed like nothing else now. Plus, that faint rotten smell was gone, which was awesome! He figured he'd guessed right about damsels being a very important part of a dragon's hoard, what with how good Suze was at making his gold gleam properly. It was nice! Plus, the waiting for presents was even better all stretched-out like that, it felt sort of like chores, but good, since there was something brilliant waiting at the end of it.

When the sun was shining down from directly over his Lair, he and Suze set out for the castle. He wasn't sure why the sight of his centaur damsel galloping had been so weirdly cool, but it had been weirdly cool, so that was cool. He'd been a bit worried that a knight would jump out and try to steal her, but there had been not a speck of shining armor in evidence, and she'd stuck right to his shadow the whole way down the glen without any problems.

When he got down to the castle, he was pleased to note that there weren't any suits of armor scattered around anymore. They'd apparently been replaced with metal statue things that looked like the stone ones on top of that old church he had seen that one time, and they glowed a little bit. Harry wondered what they were for. Then he got to the Great Hall, and the thought had slipped his mind, for there had been presents!

And, oh, what presents they were!

Mr. Hagrid had given him a special kind of petrol drum that never seemed to run out of petrol. He'd apparently worked with Mrs. McGonagall to make it, and she had said it filled from a big tank somewhere else down by the Hogwarts rail depot through something called a portal, so it actually needed to be refilled sometimes from a train car, but trains were cool too, and now he'd have a reason to go look at them more often.

Just because she'd helped with Mr. Hagrid's gift, though, didn't mean Mrs. McGonagall didn't get him something else. He'd never imagined so many presents in one place just for him! He'd been very careful not to count them, though, that would have been behaving like Dudley used to, and he didn't want to do that; Dudley was nasty.

Mr. Dumbledore had given him a barrel of some sort of reddish watery stuff that smelled really tasty. He said he'd gotten it with the help of his friend Mr. Flamel, and that if you put steel in it, it would turn to real gold! Apparently, it wouldn't work for too long, but Harry figured when it stopped working it would probably taste very nice.

Mr. Flitwick had given him lots and lots of books, all kinds of books, story books, books on magic, books about different sorts of metal, books about dragons, and lots of other books about all kinds of weird stuff that sounded really cool. He'd even put them into a big chest like the sort of chest pirates buried their treasures in! Harry figured books were another kind of treasure, they had to be if they were packed into a treasure chest, right? He'd have to make another part of his Lair just to house them proper.

Mrs. Sprout had given him a cauldron packed full of gems that she said were the fruit of a very special tree that grew rubies instead of apples or something, and he figured they'd be just the right thing to scatter through his hoard to gleam all red and shiny. It kind of made him wonder what other sorts of plants were around, if there was one that grew rubies. He'd never really thought of plants as being interesting before. Mrs. Sprout got a very odd smile on her face when he'd said as much.

Mrs. McGonagall had given him a great big shiny sword she called a claymore and this little metal Rolls-Royce lady that flew and everything, made out of proper silver. She said the flying lady was for fun, but the sword was something every responsible young man should have, and she was happy to provide him with his first one.

Mr. Snape had given him two things, one was a great big chest of gold coins he said were something called 'royalties'. There was a lot less real gold in them than the ones in his hoard, but Mr. Flitwick said it was normal for coins to be a mix of metals, and the mix sometimes changed over time. The other was a special saddle and harness for his centaur damsel, which would make playing horsie ever so much more fun. It even had reins!

Harry wasn't sure why several of his other friends seemed so angry about that; maybe they were disappointed that they hadn't come up with such a cool idea?

Looking back at it, he did think he'd have to find a different way to attach the reins, though. That piece that was supposed to go in Suze's mouth looked like it would be uncomfortable, even if it was the right size, and he didn't want to hurt his damsel. Plus, that would make it attach to her head, and Harry still remembered how fragile heads were after the first time he splattered a deer, better to tie them on somewhere else less likely to splatter if he got a little excited. He'd been practicing his control, but better safe than sorry.

It'd also make it really hard for Suze to talk, and he liked talking to her — maybe they could make some kind of harness or something?

Ooh… that gave him another idea! He'd have to talk to Hagrid later.

He got other presents too, books and paintings and treasure and stuff, but none was as cool as the stuff his good friends gave him.

And there had been cake!

He resolved then and there to get his friends good things for their birthdays, even though he wasn't sure when they were and didn't have many ideas. He'd just have to think about it more.

1.6.3 Nefarious plans revealed

As soon as the birthday dragon was out of earshot, the questioning began.

"Whit in Merlin's name whair ye thinkin', Sev'rus?" Minerva was quite wroth with him, it seemed.

He supposed that she had good reason in this case; it would bear explaining.

He saw Albus off to the side, eyes twinkling merrily. The old man must have thought everyone would miss his gift of a reagent that could have originated from nothing other than the philosopher's stone. For a moment, Severus considered throwing him under the metaphorical bus to save himself an explanation, before he decided to let Albus have his victory — for now. He would probably be able to wheedle a sample out of the old man in return for letting things go in front of the rest of the staff; even the possibility of that would assuredly be worth his troubles.

Back to the angry Scotswoman, then.

"I shall assume that you have never had the displeasure to encounter the tremendous waste of skin known as Bane of the Black Woods Clan, else you would like as not already have determined my purpose in this," Snape said. "You should count yourself exceptionally fortunate for that, Minerva."

"Yer met Bane?" Hagrid asked, surprised.

"Indeed. I encountered the poltroon during one of my ingredient-gathering expeditions into the Forest." Snape confirmed.

"…I'm nae getting' yair drift." Judging by her tone, Minerva seemed to be reaching the limits of her self-control. "If ye cannae gimme a guid explanation fur daein' that tae th' lassie then ah will gie ye a proper seein' tae!"

"Frankly, Minerva, Bane is the most unutterably narrow-minded, anally-retentive, cretinous, self-important, objectionable, twinkle-toed dunderhead I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, which is no mean feat considering that I formerly associated with the likes of Lucius Malfoy." Snape informed her. "He is repulsive to the degree that, were it not for our friendly hyperactive reptile's pet, I would believe that the Ministry might have a point regarding centaurs. More to the point, young Suze has the grave misfortune of being one of the blowhard's daughters."

"Punishin' a wain fair tha sins o' tha faither isnae becomin' o' yeh, Sev'rus!" the transfiguration mistress hissed.

"What kind of imbecile do you take me for, Minerva? It has nothing to do with that! You know as well as I do that there is not the remotest possibility of our resident lizard using that gift in a way that will harm the girl; there is not the slightest risk of that." Snape dismissed the possibility out of hand.

"However, I would gladly forfeit a month's salary to see Bane taken down a peg or two," the sallow-skinned man continued, "and in light of the rant on centaur superiority I was subjected to upon our meeting, I can see him objecting quite strenuously to his daughter being, to quote a certain lizard, 'played horsie with'. Especially when the game involves a saddle and reins. Considering just how extraordinarily resilient that lizard happens to be, I foresee Bane promptly receiving the attitude adjustment he so richly deserves."

"So, the point is to get Harry to beat Bane up?" Dumbledore asked.

"Indeed, Albus, it is." Snape smirked.

"Severus," Poppy interjected with an artfully innocent tone, "where exactly did you manage to acquire that bridle? The size was suspiciously appropriate for a human female's head, and I'm fairly certain no tack shop would carry such a thing."

As Severus shifted uncomfortably, the Healer continued mercilessly, "I think I recognized the maker's mark, in fact, from a certain shop in Hogsmeade that patrons are reluctant to be seen entering. A pair of overly adventurous seventh years managed to get themselves stuck in one of her creations just last year; I had to go speak with the proprietor to determine how to release them. Very peculiar establishment, indeed."

"It was a special order," he temporized.

"A special order? From her? You weren't joking about being willing to part with a month's pay for this, were you, Severus?" Poppy was obviously not going to let this drop, judging by her amused tone. "Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting!" She laughed mockingly, "Especially when you quoted sizes fit for a girl in her mid-teens, I can just imagine her expression!"

"Severus," Minerva sighed, apparently having put together the clues from Poppy's questions, "did you actually go so far as to spend a month's pay on…" she grimaced as if she had a bad taste in her mouth, "sex toys custom-fitted for a fifteen-year-old girl in pursuit of a prank on the girl's father?"

"Yes." Snape ground out, grudgingly. Tuning out the varied reactions of the rest of his colleagues, he turned to Poppy. "Did you have to point that out, Madame?"

"If you're going to play a prank, you should be prepared for some backlash," the Healer said, sententiously. "It's no fun unless there is both give and take; without that, it is simply abuse, picking on those who cannot defend themselves." Her tone turned arch, "Rather similar to a teacher taking advantage of their position to torment their students, I'd say. This Bane is unlikely to be able to step up to the occasion, so I did in his stead."

"You never do change, do you, Severus?" Minerva groaned. "How on earth did you get out of that shop without being cursed? You are a teacher, for Merlin's sake, you know how that must have looked!" Then she shook her head and changed the topic without waiting for his answer. "What happens, then, when Harry accidentally kills this Bane? That will not sit well with Suze, if he is her father. Are you willing to put the boy's friendship with his damsel at risk over a petty grudge?"

"I sincerely doubt that will happen," Snape scoffed, putting his embarrassment behind him with an act of will. "When all is said and done, he is a remarkably responsible young man. Or hadn't you heard what happened when he managed to knock a stag's block off? It took his pet centaur a week to persuade him it was safe to pick her up again. He will be appropriately moderate in his actions, never fear."

"Severus, you are not the only one who is fond of young Harry, and…"

"I am not fond of that dratted dragon!"

"Severus Snape, stop lying to yourself. It doesn't become you." Minerva said, making Severus feel like a naughty first-year again.

How did she always do that?

"Dash it, Minerva! I want to hate that wretched lizard! I'd love to hate James Potter's bloody spawn!"

Everyone went quiet, watching as his face screwed up into a grimace.

"But," he concluded with an aggravated sniff, "I quite inexplicably do not, and not merely because he represents the best chance for a more-or-less peaceful resolution to the goals I have been working toward my entire adult life."

"Do you really think he can manage to stop the Ministry's bigotry?" Flitwick boggled.

"Indeed, I do, Filius. You've recognized his kindly nature; how, precisely, do you think he will react to learning the current way of things?"

"Violently."

"Indeed."

1.6.4 A visit to Hagrid

Over the next few days, Snape's gift saw heavy use, indeed. Despite the trouble the potions master had gone through to acquire them, neither Harry nor Suze proved terribly enthusiastic about the bit and reins, usually leaving them out from the ensemble. Both were, however, quite fond of the saddle. Harry liked the extra realism it added to the game, and Suze liked the extra comfort of having some purpose-made padding between her aching spine and the enthusiastically — and perpetually — bouncing young boy.

After a week or so, though, when the initial gloss wore off the new gift, Harry remembered his idea from his musing on the evening after his birthday party. Games were always more fun when everybody could play, and he remembered how it felt to be left out from back before he turned into a dragon.

He didn't want that for his damsel! When he was dragon-shaped, he was more than big enough to give Suze rides too! He did it all the time carrying her in and out of the Lair, after all.

How was she going to ride, though?

He could carry her in his forepaws, but that wasn't in the proper spirit of the game. Her horsey-bits weren't really shaped right to sit on him, either, and even if they were… well, he had really big and kinda pointy scales on his back, and they moved back and forth a lot when he flew. Harry was pretty sure that sitting on them while that went on would really hurt!

He was equally sure, however, that Hagrid would know how to get around that problem.

This was the thinking that led Harry and Suze to approach Hagrid for advice on how to make a carrying harness, so Harry could carry his damsel on proper horsie rides. Hagrid would prove quite capable in this regard, eventually producing a carry-harness which would prove amazingly useful for this purpose and a wide variety of others over the coming years. The end product would be comfortable and durable and useful for all sorts of things beyond just hauling centaur damsels about.

Hagrid's expertise was often undervalued due to his rough appearance and humble mien; a veritable diamond-in-the-rough, Hagrid was.

Unfortunately, Hagrid would not have the opportunity to shine on this particular visit.

1.6.5 Murphy's Law interlude

Murphy is a cruel but fair overlord. He makes no exception to his Law; it is enforced without pity or discrimination. Young or old, rich or poor — none are safe, regardless of identity, or even species.

Sometimes, Murphy appears to take great glee in smacking down anyone or anything that gets cocky.

Thus it was that, as a young dragon-in-human-guise and his centaur damsel approached a certain gamekeeper's hut and knocked on its oversized door, a party of centaurs was patrolling the edge of the forest in the same area.

The fact that Bane was among this group of centaurs was, in hindsight, probably inevitable.

After all, no matter who you are, Murphy knows where you live.

1.6.6 The rash actions of a concerned father

Catching sight of the Great Wyrm and the young beauty the Clan had sacrificed to it, Celestine signaled to the rest of the patrol group to approach cautiously. Keeping a discreet eye on the Great Wyrm was a standing duty for all warriors of the tribe. While the rest of the party closed in, the Great Wyrm dismounted from the back of his prize, knocked on the gamekeeper's door, and was answered promptly by the large man inside.

As one of the finest warriors the Clan could boast, Bane was posted on the side of the patrol deeper into the forest in hopes that he would be the first to intercept any of the spider menace that detected the group. When the call came, he was therefore the last to arrive, and he did so just in time to hear the words, "I need help making a harness for Suze."

On hearing those words from an apparently human child and seeing his daughter wearing a saddle, Bane immediately forgot everything Celestine had said about the Great Wyrm's ability to hide his nature. He lost his senses and saw only red.

Seizing up a stout branch to use as a bludgeon, the towering centaur stallion went storming out from the tree-line and charged directly for the wretched human brat that was daring to treat his daughter as some beast of burden! Bad enough that it was forcing his daughter to wear a saddle, now it was trying to hitch her to a cart? He'd show that little bastard who not to mess with!

As he bore down on them, he barely noticed the human brat going "HEY!" or his daughter's strangled gasp of horrified surprise and frantic warding gestures when he abruptly found himself no longer looming over a small human brat.

Instead, he was nose-to-nose with the largest, scaliest, and most unutterably dangerous-looking creature he had ever seen in his life, and the frantic warnings Celestine had been yelling registered far too late. All of a sudden, he was no longer holding the cudgel, rather he was skidding along the forest floor with his ears ringing and thoroughly unable to determine a great many very important things, like what day it was, which planets were ascendant, or which way might possibly be up.

Peeling himself off the ground, Bane found himself once again nose-to-nose with the hot end of the Great Wyrm —

And it was inhaling very, very deeply.

It was then that he heard his daughter yell, "Please don't kill him!" and the Great Wyrm paused.

"...oh, um, well, he kinda jumped out and tried to get me — are you sure he isn't some kind of knight?" it said.

Odd, it sounded like some sort of… colt?

"Well, he wasn't one of those the last time I saw him." Suze told the Great Wyrm, coming up to stand beside him. She still had that demeaning human-made thing on her back, but oddly, she didn't seem to feel terribly demeaned.

"Are you sure? I mean, I still haven't figured out what knights smell like, but from the descriptions of them, they've gotta smell like armpits and horse, and he fits that pretty well. Since all those books are so wrong about dragons, I thought they might be wrong about what knights look like, too." An utterly massive eye peered at him from a distance far too small for comfort. "You're not a knight, are you?"

"No!" Bane declared. He resolved to cease his attempts to stand up until everything stopped spinning.

"Oh! Then you're just a big bully." The Great Wyrm's eyes narrowed. "Well, if you try to pick on my damsel I'll sit on you until you wee yourself!"

"Harry…" Suze said, "This is my father."

"…oh." The Great Wyrm glanced between the two of them several times. "Are you sure? I mean, I've heard dads and their kids are supposed to look at least a little like each other. I mean Dudley looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. And you don't look anything like this big meanie."

"She looks like her mother." Bane said. The world was starting to settle down, and his head no longer felt quite so much like it was packed in wool.

"Please be quiet, Father. You've already done enough damage for today." When had Suze become so outspoken?

"Damage?" Bane asked, blankly. "The only one damaged is I!"

"Father!"

"Well, it's not my fault you came at me with some big hitting stick like some kind of knight or something! I thought you were trying to slay me!" The Great Wyrm snapped, sounding oddly defensive.

"You are the one who treats my daughter as some kind of common riding beast!" Bane countered.

"Father! Be silent!"

"It's fun and she says she thinks so too!"

"You disrespectful…" Bane bellowed, once again attempting to stagger to his feet when he cut short and froze when Suze slapped him.

His daughter had been gentle and kindly since her first steps. She'd never raised her voice, much less her hand, to anyone before. The slap left him sitting, wide-eyed, on the grass with his jaw slack.

"Father, the Great Wyrm is one hand and four summers old. He is a child, Father, and I will not stand for you to raise your voice to him for a child's games."

Bane opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to process this shift in his reality.

"…we had thought that he would eat you," he said, utterly befuddled. "When will he return you to us?"

"It's not my fault you're a poo-poo head!" the Great Wyrm declared, leveling a truly fearsome glare at Bane, despite the childish vocabulary. "And it's not my fault you don't know anything about dragons! I don't eat anything that politely asks me not to eat them, and I never will! And you gave her to me anyway, and I don't see why I should give her back just because you were being wrong and silly! And you obviously didn't care about her anyway if you gave her away even thinking she was going to get eated! That's not very nice at all!"

Bane drew a breath, eyes bulging, as he prepared to explode into another vitriolic rant about this insinuation that he didn't care for his daughter's welfare, when he was cut off by an unexpected interruption.

As the Great Wyrm's heated tirade was starting to spew smoke alongside the childish outrage, Magorian, who had been retrieved at a dead run by one of the more level-headed centaur warriors as soon as Bane started his ill-considered charge, stepped in. "This is neither the place nor the time, son," the elderly centaur growled, highly disappointed in his heir's judgement at the moment. The hotheaded brat had almost gotten them wiped out by a Great Wyrm, one that was at least willing to pretend to be friendly, at that!

Bane nodded, grudgingly submitting to his father's command. He still glared at the Great Wyrm, though.

"I apologize for my son's actions; he often acts without thinking." Magorian apologized to the Great Wyrm after shooting another withering look at his eldest.

The Great Wyrm didn't reply to that, still glaring at Bane while slightly smoking, so Magorian continued speaking.

"We meant no offence by our actions; the ancient auguries foretold of a time when the Great Wyrms, such as yourself, would return to this world, bringing with them the eldest of magics. Perhaps the timing of the prophecy was in error, for they predicted your coming to occur some four hands' worth of winters hence at the shortest night. The ancients foretold that the Great Wyrm would have a terrible hunger for the flesh of maidens, thus, when we sighted you dwelling on the fringes of our lands, we feared you might perchance have come to destroy us."

Something in his speech had finally torn the Great Wyrm's attention away from his idiot son. It looked like he might not have his effort in raising the boy go to waste just yet.

"…I guess that's another story that doesn't get it right about dragons," the Great One said, sounding mightily perplexed. "And, um, they might have gotten the magic thing backwards because I became a dragon last year at midsummer when the moon just came up, and those ley-line thingies went all glowy when that happened."

"Hmm, we must look to the stars to discern the meanings of these omens."

"Father, why are you…" It seemed he might have spoken too soon about not wasting his effort.

"Bane, we gifted her to the Great Wyrm to do with as he pleased, for better or for worse. Let it rest; what is done cannot be undone. Instead, be grateful that we were mistaken about his intentions toward your daughter and rejoice that she still lives." The centaur chieftain sighed, "If we were in error about that omen, what other misinterpretations might we encounter?"

"That, I cannot say," Bane admitted, before glaring again at the Great Wyrm, this time with his best father-glower, the one he reserved for lusty young stallions that came sniffing about his daughters. "Just do not dare mistreat her, Wyrm, or I swear on my life there will be a reckoning!"

"Okay." The Great Wyrm sounded not at all perturbed by the threat. "And don't you go picking on her neither, or I'll sit on your head!"

"Peace, Great One, peace." Magorian said, and Bane was quite frankly astonished when the Great Wyrm reacted like any colt would have to a warning word from the great centaur chieftain.

"…sorry. He, um, he just kinda made me cross."

"He will atone," Magorian assured, shooting a commanding look at his eldest son. "And naught more will be spoken of Suze dwelling within your lair."

At the Great Wyrm's puzzled look, Suze spoke up. "Chief Magorian means that I will stay with you, Harry, no matter what my father might think on the subject."

Its eyes lit with understanding. "Oh! Well, it isn't like anyone could make me send you away," it declared. "You're really nice and I'd miss you if you weren't here."

"I… thank you, Great One," she said while blushing prettily. Not that Bane was in any state to notice, he was still boggling at how very obvious it was, in hindsight, that the Great Wyrm was still just a child.

"Great One, would you object if we were to return to our holdings near your lair?" Magorian voiced the question. The Clan had lost another three to the spiders in the past month, and remote possibility or not, this was perhaps their best chance to avoid losing more. "Our current lodgings are frightfully close to the spider plague, and the hunting is poor there."

"Well, since you were there before me, it wouldn't be very fair if I tried to make you go away," the Great Wyrm said, thoughtfully. "And I won't eat neighbors, that would be rude, and Mrs. McGonagall says that you shouldn't be rude, because being polite doesn't cost none and it makes everyone's day better."

"Wise words, Great One."

"And if you've got neighbors who aren't poo-poo heads," At this it shot a pointed glare at Magorian's eldest son, "it's a very good thing, because then they might be friends, and friends are the best thing ever, apart from treasures and damsels, because you need those to be a proper dragon!" A thoughtful look crossed its massive face. "Maybe friends are another kind of treasure? That would make sense. And… I guess it'd be nice to have more people to talk with; my friends at the castle are real busy so much of the time…"

Was this daunting behemoth in fact merely a lonely child?

1.6.7 When Spiders Attack

Scant hours after the nearly-disastrous encounter with the Great Wyrm of the Black Woods, the centaurs returned to their Grand Encampment, packed with the practiced efficiency of a race that had been universally nomadic for longer than written history, and set out for their campsite between the river and the Grey Cliffs, not far from the Great One's lair. Chief Magorian was not one to waste time when the lives of his people were on the line; with the spider plague, this meant that he scarcely remembered what the word 'leisurely' meant, at that point.

"Father, are you certain this is wise?" Bane asked. He and his best warriors were now escorting the bulk of their people in hopes of fending off spider attacks even as they walked toward the lair of the Great Wyrm, a place that not even eight hours ago had been believed to hold an even more certain death than the spiders. It was not a situation he relished.

"Nay. I am not certain, Son, but what choice have we?" his father asked in return. "It was merely a matter of time before the spider plague discovered our encampment so close to their nest, and we do not have the strength of arms to fight them from such a poor defensive position. All would have been lost!"

Bane sighed and nodded. The camp near the cliffs was a supremely defensible position, situated on a spur of land between the river and the loch, it left only a single approach, for the spiders could not swim because of their size. It was defensible from all approaches except the air, which was why they had been forced to flee at the Great Wyrm's appearance.

The Black Woods Clan had been caught between a rock and a hard place, but now it seemed the rock was a little friendlier than they had believed. They could only hope that the seeming was true.

If the mighty wyrm had hungered for the flavor of centaur flesh, then surely Suze would have been devoured long ago? Or was this some scheme to ensure a ready supply of such delicacies?

Just as Bane was thinking that, the other terror of the Black Woods descended on them in a wall of chittering chitinous, far-too-many-legged death. Just before they could reach their hope of safety, the one thing the Clan had dreaded for months had occurred; the spider plague had found them, and it found them on the march when their defenses were nearly nonexistent.

In a flash, half his warriors were struck down, paralyzed with venom and bound with silk. If the menace could be fought off, they could be saved, the venom acted slowly enough to be treatable, though recovery would be long, but the situation looked bleak, a pitifully small group of brave centaur warriors arrayed against a seemingly-endless sea of chitin and waving limbs.

"YOU LEAVE MY DAMSEL'S DADDY ALONE, YOU BIG CREEPY MEANIES!"

Following that unexpected bellow, a thunderous jet of blue-white fire exploded across the clearing, striking the largest spider, one more than thrice the size of a centaur, dead on and turning it to vapor between one instant and the next. Nothing was left but the stench of burning hair and embers floating in the wind.

"AND HER GRANDPA TOO!"

Bane's eyes threatened to burst from their sockets as the Great Wyrm barreled into the fray with all the grace and power of a living landslip, that is to say with no grace at all and with absurdly overwhelming power. It slammed another of the spider plague from its web with a single blow from its mighty forepaw, splattering the nightmarish creature against a tree trunk with a wet crunch. The impact was energetic enough to splash Bane with arachnid viscera from four lengths away.

He had been fortunate indeed, it seemed, to survive a blow from those talons.

"AND HER FRIENDS!"

Another blast of that shattering flame issued from the Great Wyrm's maw, and Bane would, ever after, swear he had seen rings of greater intensity rippling through the jet of beautifully deadly fire…

…and then, suddenly, the spider plague was fleeing. His daughter's captor had saved the Clan from certain doom…

"Mmm, tastes like scrunchy chicken in diesel, yummy!"

…and was now eating the fallen instruments of said doom with all evidence of relish.

Bane had to chuckle at the irony, the plague that had hunted them for so long was now prey for their new ally.

Perhaps Great Wyrms weren't so bad, after all.

Last edited: Jul 16, 2020

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Dunkelzahn

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Threadmarks Section 1.7 - In which Harry gets to know the neighbors

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Dunkelzahn

Dunkelzahn

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Jul 11, 2018

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#21

1.7 In which Harry gets to know the neighbors

1.7.1 Campfire stories

The trailing bits of summer rapidly faded to autumn, the change of seasons bringing with it yet more rain and copious piles of dead leaves to jump in. Students returned to Hogwarts with the start of term, leading to less company from Harry's friends at the castle. Fortunately, Harry had new friends in the form of his centaur neighbors with whom to keep company.

Despite their new ally breaking the spider plague, and with it the bulk of the restrictions on their movements, the Grand Encampment remained on the headland below Harry's Lair for the winter, the glow of cooking fires and the whiff of wood smoke providing a pleasant, homely touch to the glen below. By the time winter solstice rolled around, the Clan had almost gotten used to the comings and goings of the Great Wyrm, whether in the cute-but-hyper small human-looking colt shape or as dozens of tons of slightly unnerving scales and muscle.

In his human-looking shape, he was as agile as a mountain goat; in his true shape, he was like a gale and a landslip and a river in full spate all rolled into one. In both, he was cheerful, usually excited, playful, enthusiastic, helpful, full of questions, completely fearless, and energetic to a degree that rapidly exhausted anyone of more than a hand of hands' worth of summers, yet he was always almost exaggeratedly careful that no one got hurt.

He'd swiftly taken to listening in with evident interest when the elders taught the Clan's children, joining in outright when they lost the last vestiges of nervousness around him — predictably somewhat in advance of their elders. He also joined in with the children's games or inviting them to join him in his. The language of childhood play proved to be universal whether it took the form of various games of chase, in which Harry was declared to have an unfair advantage on account of being able to climb trees, or various derivatives along the lines of Cops-and-Robbers, Cowboys-and-Indians, Playing Soldiers, or whatever local variant is appropriate in any given time period, but essentially boils down to running about brandishing make-believe weapons and declaring "Pow, pow, you're dead!", "No, I'm not!", "Yes, you are!", and so on and so forth.

The Great Wyrm had introduced the "Cowboys and Indians" and "Playing Soldiers" variants to the Clan youngsters, and with them had come the horrors of cap guns and sucking-cup arrows acquired by said Wyrm from the toy shop in the local wandless human town of Mallaig. Despite the near-universal adult exasperation with the results of this parting from tradition, Bane couldn't find it within himself to be angry for long. After all, it had now been a full season since the Black Woods Clan had last lost a warrior to the spider plague, and it was the Great Wyrm's enthusiastic friendship which made that miracle possible. Seeing his friends and family come home safely from each patrol was well worth any quantity of stray suction-cup arrows and inordinately loud play from the children.

It had been a full season since the spiders had even tested their defenses, and that had been the full-scale assault which the Great Wyrm had so handily crushed before gorging itself on the corpses of the fell beasts.

He wasn't really sure when standing here, on the bluff that offered a clear view of the only approach to the current location of the Grand Encampment, had changed from a matter of tense sentry duty to a matter of form, but he was certain that they had the Great Wyrm to thank for it, when he taught the spider menace the true meaning of fear. The thought brought a grimly satisfied smile to Bane's face. Everyone in the Clan had lost siblings to the spider plague. His own father had once counted ten strong warriors as his sons, of whom only Bane and two of his brothers remained.

It seemed shameful that the changing times could perhaps be a good thing, but Bane had never been one to shy away from the truth, at least, not from truths hammered into him as thoroughly as this one was. He winced at the disjointed memory of skidding across the clearing in front of the gamekeeper's hut like a flat stone skipping across a lake before shaking off the memory.

As Bane returned to the formality of sentry duty, he steadfastly pretended to ignore the way most of the children in the Clan were snoozing in a played-to-exhaustion heap piled up against the young Great One, who looked to be in a similar state, the heat of his immense bulk fending off the chill of the highland winter from his much smaller playmates. When it came down to it, those children were in perhaps the safest place they would ever know, for Bane had no doubt that were something to harm even one of its playmates, the Great Wyrm's wrath would be terrible to behold. It was truly a mighty protector.

In the end, it mattered not. The Black Woods Clan owed the Great Wyrm a debt of gratitude, of blood unspilt, which would guarantee its welcome among them until the stars grew old and dim. He let his gaze stray to those stars for a moment, examining their positions behind the scudding clouds, trying to discern what futures they might foretell.

"Venus is bright this eve." That was his younger brother, Firenze.

"But Mars is rising," Bane said, "and the North Star shines strong."

"I will stand watch the rest of this evening, brother," Firenze told him. "You have stood far too many of late. Go and partake of some of the warmth by the fire."

Sighing, Bane rose, giving his little brother a companionable clout on the shoulder, and jogged off toward home, Wyrm, strong drink, good cheer, and strange portents of things to come.

Despite its appearance from a distance, he noted the Wyrm was, in actuality, wide-awake and listening raptly as Magorian told the eldest saga of them all; the tale of the birth into bondage of the centaurs, of Alpharias He-Who-Is-First-Among-Brothers, of the War of Gold and Ivory, of the patronage of the Darkened Mountain, of the fading of the Great Ones, of the disappearance of the Sun Elves, and of the once unfamiliar taste of freedom. It was told once per year, on the Solstice, yet all knew it by heart.

He accepted a stein of mead from a comely lass — one of his nieces, Firenze's eldest — and settled himself close to the Great Wyrm as Magorian drew to a close.

"Thus it was, and thus it shall be, until the lines awaken and the skies burn with blue fire when the Great Ones return to our world," the old centaur finished.

"These times are upon us, are they not?" Ronan asked.

"Perhaps," Magorian nodded. "I believe so. When summer comes, our clan shall host the Great Conclave, and we shall see."

"It is indeed an interesting time to be alive." Ronan said.

"Our kin from the farthest east would tell you that living in such times is a curse," Bane remarked.

"Yet does joy not hold the root of sorrow and sorrow the root of joy?" Celestine asked.

"Perhaps." Bane allowed.

"Then perhaps a blessing might hold the root of a curse, and the curse hold the root of a blessing." Celestine pushed.

Ronan scoffed, "Our Eastern kin look too closely at their navels."

"Perhaps, instead, they pay too little attention to the stars," Bane offered.

"Bane may have a point," Magorian said. "Mars has shone strongly these past few nights, but Venus grants us her light by evening, and the North Star is strong."

"That means that a time of lots of strife is coming, and there's humans involved, but there's hope in it, doesn't it, Mr. Magorian?" the Great Wyrm asked.

Magorian chuckled. "You have listened well to the Elders, young Great One. Aye, that would seem to be what is to come. I cannot say with certainty as we have not had a truly clear night in half a season."

"Maybe when me and Suze get her harness worked out, we can make another one for you, and I can take you up above the clouds, so you can see?" the Great Wyrm offered.

What was this? Bane hadn't heard anything of a harness for his… oh.

"You mean, the harness you were asking about when we first met was one to allow you to carry my daughter safely, so you could take her flying?" Bane confirmed.

The Great Wyrm nodded, enthusiastically. "Yep! Well, it started out as a way to let me carry her when we played horsie, 'cause playing's not so fun unless everyone gets a proper turn, but Mr. Hagrid managed to build it strong enough for flying too! We're still trying to get the straps right, though, so Suze don't hurt herself if I have a bumpy landing. Mr. Hagrid had examples to work from, but they were made for humans; centaurs are way harder to keep safe while you're carrying 'em."

Well, Bane certainly felt like an ass, now.

His humiliating defeat at the hands of the Great Wyrm came not in a valiant but futile attempt to defend his daughter's dignity, but rather because he objected to the Great One trying to keep his daughter safe during their play. He might need to work on looking before he charged into things in the future. His father's sidelong, knowing look reinforced that notion, much to Bane's embarrassment.

"Enough of this heavy talk, Father." Stars, shine good fortune down on Ronan for his obliviousness! "This is the longest night, let us warm it!"

"I concur, we have all been too solemn of late." Celestine agreed.

"Then let the revel commence!" The chieftain said, smiling in approval.

1.7.2 Christmas at Hogwarts

Following hard behind the longest night, Christmas had been the most wonderful Christmas Harry could remember. Not that he had many to compare it to, really. The previous year's holiday had been during such a chaotic time of transition that it had passed him by almost unnoticed, and before his transformation, the ones at the Dursleys' weren't really worth mentioning from Harry's perspective.

This year, though, had been amazing! Apparently, all his friends at the castle had been busy with the kids who couldn't go home for Christmas until they had gone to bed, but then they'd all met at Hagrid's house for a very special private Christmas.

His friends had gotten him tons of gifts, but he wasn't sure exactly how many. Present counting had been right out, as Harry still didn't want to be Dudley-ish.

He'd mostly got treasure for Christmas, and he'd been really glad for Mrs. McGonagall's help with picking gifts for his friends. He thought it was really neat how Mr. Snape struggled not to look delighted with the flask of big-spider poison; Harry couldn't blame him; the stuff was delicious! Mr. Dumbledore was the same way with all those sweets he had ordered from that one kid he met in the toy store at Mallaig who'd been selling them for something at his school.

There hadn't been many of his centaur friends who'd come, just Suze really, but that was okay. He understood that most of the centaurs didn't get on too well with glowy people on account of all the stuff Mr. Magorian had said poems about at the Solstice celebration, and that was fair enough because it sounded like the glowy people's ancestors had been really mean to centaurs.

Why would anyone want to do that, though? Centaurs were cool.

Harry relaxed in his Lair with Suze by the new Rayburn, a black and white fireplace-cooker thingy that Mrs. McGonagall had gotten for him which was nice and warm with a wood fire that smelled really nice, even if the smoke vented out through a really long pipe through the mouth of the Lair. Suze really liked it too, 'cause she didn't like the smoke so much from cooking inside before.

Mr. Flitwick had given him a dragon-size bed that fit in with his hoard, which was really nice of him! It was comfy, but he wasn't sure how long it would last. Harry could see whatever it was Mr. Flitwick did to make it strong enough to hold him, and it flickered every time he sat on the bed. He'd just have to enjoy it while it lasted! It was a really nice thing to do after all.

Glowy people were cool and so were centaurs, but dragons were definitely the coolest!

His life had gotten so much better since he turned into a dragon. He had friends and treasure and a damsel and a home. And he could defend himself; his centaur damsel had said that before centaurs were afraid of the big-spiders because big-spiders ate centaurs, but because Harry was a dragon he could eat the big-spiders instead, and they tasted yummy!

As he listened to the quiet duet of the crackling fire in the Rayburn and the shallow breathing of Suze dozing next to him, he idly picked a piece of something out from between his teeth. He wasn't sure what it was, but it smelled kind of like that huge tasty roast that Hagrid found, and the little floppy-eared squeaky people Mr. Snape called house-elves had cooked. It had gotten tangled up with some of the little colorful wires that ran all through the Toyota he ate earlier. Harry sighed, the brightly colored parts of those melted off fast, but the copper bits took a little longer, and in the meantime, they got wrapped around everything! Tasty though, and when mixed up with some prime beef, it made for just the thing for a before-bedtime snack.

He had to admit he felt kinda sorry for other people who weren't dragons. They'd never know how yummy a Toyota was since their teeth couldn't get through it.

This was definitely life the way it should be lived. He'd spent the day celebrating with friends, had plenty to eat, and now he was relaxing by the fire on a cold winter evening. He could do with a bigger lair, but that was easy because he just needed to bite off the right bits of rock. He could do with more treasures, but he just needed to find the right rainbows. He could do with more damsels, but he figured they'd come in their own good time.

For now, relaxing on his hoard, his centaur damsel cuddled into his side, her hair glinting in the orangey light from the Rayburn in his now toasty-warm Lair, at the top of a few hundred feet of cliff face to keep knights out, and belly full of good food, Harry was a very contented dragon, indeed.

1.7.3 Harry learns a new trick

The Solstice celebration was a scant few hands of days gone and was still warming the hearts of the Clan when Bane found himself once again on watch. As usual these days, he was using it mostly as an excuse to study the sky.

Venus was subsuming herself in the light of the moon when the Great Wyrm landed nearby.

"Hello, Mr. Bane," it said as it seated itself beside him.

"Well met, Great One." He couldn't go allowing the young ones, whatever their kin, to go without learning proper manners.

"Watcha looking at?"

"Venus hides in the light of Selene. It is a conjunction seldom seen, and its meaning is thus far hidden."

"Oh," the Wyrm looked wistful. "You know, I'd really like to go there someday, but I'm not sure I could fly high enough."

"…pardon?"

"To the moon." The Great Wyrm said this absently, as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to have said. "The not-glowy-people flew rockets to the moon. They had to wear these big, puffy white things so they wouldn't go squish because there's no air up there, and they called going there 'Apollo'."

"A fitting name," Bane breathed in wonder. He was astonished that the wandless humans would have the respect and good sense to give such a portentous title to the grand endeavor that traveling to the moon must have been.

"Yeah, I think it's kinda cool that they give such good names to space missions."

"Indeed, travel such as you speak of must have been a grand undertaking and it bodes well to give it a title of such strength." Bane's imagination was caught by the idea as he gazed up at the moon in question. "What sort of conveyance could do such a thing?"

"The rocket ship they used was called the Saturn Five, and it was a bit more than twice as tall as the towers on the castle. I looked it up because it was neat to think of something that was still so much bigger than me flying. Rockets are really cool!"

Bane had trouble imagining an object of that scale which was designed to move at all, much less fly into the heavens. As he struggled to imagine it, the Great One had already continued.

"But I think the best part of it had to be looking down and seeing all the world laid out like a treasure in the sky."

"I cannot begin to imagine what it must have looked like…" Bane admitted. "What brings you here this night?"

"There's something I wanted to show you," the Great Wyrm said.

"And what might that be?"

"This."

The Great Wyrm's form flowed as swiftly as ever; Bane was long used to seeing it by now, as the Great Wyrm was wont to pop between forms as the mood took it. This was the first time, though, he had seen it take a form other than its own or its human guise.

Standing near the edge of the bluff was a centaur colt, looking to be perhaps one hand and three summers of age, with features like those the Great Wyrm wore when wearing the shape of a human.

"…remarkable," Bane said.

"Um, you ain't gonna be angry right?"

"Of course not."

"…well, Mr. Snape kinda thought you might get a bit, um, annoyed…"

"Your choosing the form of a centaur merely assures me that the ancient stories are correct, and that Great Wyrms are truly wise beings."

"Huh? I'm not sure I get it."

"Don't worry yourself about it, lad." Bane winced at how the Great Wyrm's new form had affected him. It wouldn't do to let his manners slip, even if the lad was unlikely to care.

"Okay. It's only the second form I've tried, and I wanted to show it to you." He nodded, "I'm not sure what I'm going to try next…"

Bane nodded, before volunteering, "Your friends shall soon be done with their lessons; perhaps they might wish to play?"

"Oh yeah, it's that time, isn't it? Bye, Mr. Bane!"

Bane chuckled; it seemed children would be children, regardless of what form they wore.

1.7.4 Springtime interlude

With Christmas but a fond memory, the rest of winter passed in an odd juxtaposition of icy weather and warm companionship. The threat of the spider plague was no more as Harry had hunted them quite heavily during the winter, and the vicious arachnids were now quite scarce. Harry was idly considering developing a way to farm the things.

The Black Woods Clan wintered below the Lair, and there was always much playing to be done. However, time passed as time always does, and winter melted into spring. With the melting snows and the revel celebrating the spring equinox, the Clan moved on with many thanks and promises to return again as the season allowed, as was their nature.

Now free from the spider threat, Harry's winter neighbors busied themselves with the myriad tasks of spring and summer which spread the Clan throughout the Woods and made visiting them a much more occasional activity for the young dragon.

With his professor friends busy with the winter term and his centaur friends scattered while foraging in the suddenly much less dangerous forest, Harry found himself with a surfeit of time and no ready-made distractions to fill it. There were always new things to explore, new rooms to excavate in his Lair, new rainbow-ends to search for treasure, and his damsel was always good company, particularly with the completion of the harness Hagrid had been working on.

Even so, Harry was quite glad for the diversion of Mr. Snape's arrival at the Lair in early May carrying a puzzling message from a Mr. Slackhammer 'cordially inviting' Harry and Snape to attend a meeting at Gringotts Merchant Bank in Diagon Alley, London, to discuss greatly important matters of business that might prove 'most lucrative'.

Once Harry learned that 'cordially' meant 'in a friendly manner' and 'lucrative' meant 'profitable', he was quite enthusiastic about attending, as he figured that it would probably involve new friends and treasure.

Snape's exasperated offer to buy him a dictionary proved his current meeting to be most lucrative, as well.

Last edited: Jul 16, 2020

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Threadmarks Section 1.8 - Business ventures and broken trust

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1.8 Business ventures and broken trust

1.8.1 In Which an Industrial Giant takes its first steps

It was a rare sunny day in early springtime, and Harry, currently in his human-looking shape, hurried to keep up with Mr. Snape's longer strides as they walked through Diagon Alley towards the broad steps of the grand building called Gringotts. Harry wasn't sure why he needed to be in human form, or why he couldn't bring Suze, or why Mr. Snape insisted he wear a headband, but Mr. Snape rarely yelled about things that weren't important. It wasn't like it was a major hardship for Harry. The form might be a little cramped, but hands were handy, and Suze hadn't wanted to come anyway.

The building was all done up in white and gold, occupying a prominent corner in the heart of the busiest wizarding shopping district in all of magical Britain with a grand set up steps leading up to the main entrance, though Harry noted that lot opposite those grand steps was oddly empty. The main entrance at the top of those broad steps was flanked by columns and a pair of what Mr. Snape called goblins dressed in highly visible, very colorful uniforms and armed with big spear-axe-thingies that Harry would later learn were called halberds.

He was understandably surprised when they saluted him.

"Hi," he said. Mr. Snape had told him before they came that it was very important to be polite to goblins, but they didn't reply, just standing there all silent and guard-like. They reminded Harry of those soldiers in the red jackets and tall, fuzzy hats outside the Queen's palace in London, except they were, you know, goblin-shaped rather than human-shaped. Uncle Vernon had always made sure to point them out whenever they passed the area, and he had always seemed very impressed.

"Leave them be, young man," Snape admonished. "They are soldiers and they have a duty to fulfill."

The resplendently uniformed pair of guards remained stoically at attention; they didn't so much as blink. It was kind of impressive how still they could stand.

Inside the bank, Harry and Mister Snape joined a queue, and as Harry soaked in the appearance of the bank lobby, he figured goblins had the right idea. There was gold everywhere. There were even glittery bits mixed in, taking the form of massive crystal chandeliers and glass-encased lamps and candles.

Harry did wonder why they put everything on the walls rather than in a proper hoard, though.

Harry could recognize Mr. Snape's look as one of surprise when, rather than waiting for the queue to move along, they were approached by a well-dressed goblin in a three-piece suit who, once having confirmed that he was speaking to Severus Snape and Harry Potter, ushered them into a hallway off to the side of the big room where various goblins were doing bank-type stuff for various glowy people.

The room they were eventually shown into was a comfortably-appointed office with a big desk in the middle covered with important-looking paperwork. There were several chairs sitting across from the desk around a small table, and various shelves and filing cabinets lined the walls. All in all, it looked much like any executive-level office in a major company, albeit one from the previous century, done up in dark woods, green glass, leather, and brass while lit via gas lamp. The only major differences were the combined gun rack and ammunition locker on one wall and the office's occupant.

Behind that impressive looking desk sat a rather portly goblin dressed like an old-fashioned gentleman complete with collared shirt, necktie, and vest; the outfit would normally be completed by a tail-coat and stovepipe hat, both of which were adorning the coat rack just inside the office door. On looking up and seeing his guests, the well-dressed goblin immediately stood.

"Your guests, Mr. Slackhammer," their sharply-dressed escort introduced them.

"Aha! Mr. Snape, Mr. Potter, come in, do."

"Thank you, mister…" Mr. Snape prompted.

"Slackhammer, Crackjaw Slackhammer." The rotund goblin introduced himself. "Before we begin, may I offer you congratulations on behalf of the Brethren, Mr. Potter, on your most singular achievement of transforming into a Great Wyrm?" He respectfully inclined his head, "We were most impressed when the news was passed to us by our mutual acquaintance, Master Flitwick."

When Harry smiled and nodded proudly, the dapper goblin continued, "Take a seat then, gentlemen; there is much to discuss."

"Indeed?" Mr. Snape asked, "And what, might I enquire, would this business entail?"

"Ah, Severus — do you object to my usage of your given name?" At Snape's negative reply, Slackhammer continued with a somewhat shark-like grin, "It seems that your formula for the materials used for high-temperature cauldrons, based, no doubt, on Mr. Potter's quite remarkable interior, has fallen into the hands of the muggles."

"Oh dear," Mr. Snape said.

"Am I in trouble?" Harry asked.

"Yes, most unfortunate." Slackhammer agreed with a small, commiserating nod. "It seems that a group of colonial muggles going by the term 'National Aeronautics and Space Administration' have expressed quite the interest in your formula, Severus my dear fellow."

"And what kind of interest might that be?" Mr. Snape asked.

"What Mr. Snape said," Harry agreed, nodding.

"It appears that the muggles have contrived a method for catapulting an object so far up that there is no more air, and things forget which way is down. I understand that it involves placing the object on top of a very large pile of explosive materials and setting it off."

"You mean, like spacemen and moon-rockets and stuff?" Harry asked.

"Precisely. I am, of course, speaking of spaceflight." The goblin tilted his head to the Great Wyrm. "And it transpires that when things are dropped from such a prodigious height, they become quite astoundingly hot."

"…and thus, they must be protected from that heat, correct?" Mr. Snape checked, obviously starting to get the idea. "Otherwise they would burn to a flinder."

"Indeed, Severus, indeed," Slackhammer confirmed with a nod. "It appears that their finest exo-atmospheric vehicles have to date used a silicate material for this purpose. The material performs quite well under heat, but it is quite brittle and fragile under impact or vibration and must be replaced frequently. It is also quite startlingly expensive."

From what Mr. Snape had said, if a goblin said something was 'startlingly expensive' then it must really cost a pile.

"So, stuff made how Mr. Snape copied my guts is cheaper?" Harry asked.

"These muggle space-men believe that coating their vehicles in Mr. Snape's formula," Slackhammer elaborated, "based on your internal workings, Mr. Potter, would reduce the costs per launch of their exo-atmospheric vehicles by a substantial margin. They would gladly pay for the honor of utilizing a copy of your entrails to coat their vehicles, and pay to the tune of a thousand Galleons per hundredweight used. I am given to understand that the material in question will prolong the life of their current 'orbiters' by at least a decade and quite possibly hasten the development of improved successor vehicles which they are, in fact, designing around the material in question."

"So they want to use a copy of my tummy to coat spaceships, huh?" Harry asked, gob-smacked. "Wow, that's wicked!"

"I propose the three of us become business partners within this, ah, endeavor, shall we say?" Snape ventured. "To me, it falls to uncover further improvements upon this substance and others, to Mr. Potter it falls to inspire new improvements through his remarkable biology, and to you, Mr. Slackhammer, falls the distribution and production financing of these remarkably profitable materials. I suppose we should split the profits three ways, eh Mr. Slackhammer?"

"I'm good with that," Harry nodded agreeably, visions of great, gleaming stacks of gold and treasure filling his mind's eye. He almost expected there to be an audible ka-ching cash register noise, as he remembered from one of the TV programs Dudley used to watch that there were tons of just paint on a space rocket.

Slackhammer's grin got even broader.

"It seems to me, gentlemen," the dapper goblin remarked, "that everyone within this room is about to become quite startlingly wealthy."

1.8.2 An Odd encounter

It was about two weeks after the meeting with Mr. Slackhammer, and Harry was passing the time with his damsel enjoying the early-morning sunshine on the bluff opposite the Lair when Suze's eyes narrowed, and her gaze fell on something on another escarpment to the north.

"What's wrong, Suze?" Harry asked when he noticed her shift in attention.

"I think I see something on the other bluff," she pointed it out with a frown. "It looks like there's someone there, and he seems to be watching us."

Harry took a look in that direction and saw. "Well," he said matter-of-factly as he hauled himself up from his reclining position, "I guess I'll have to go make sure it's not a knight, then. Be back in a mo'."

With that said, he threw himself into the air and made a direct line for the cliffs in question, part of the formation that wrapped around behind the isolated butte that contained the Lair.

As it turned out, there was a man up there, and he had apparently been there for some time, judging from the tent and associated campsite. The man had one squinty eye that seemed to be looking at his nose while the other one looked normal, scraggly white hair with a receding hairline, and he was wearing the most absurdly bright overcoat Harry had ever seen, a major accomplishment for Harry who routinely associated with the likes of Albus Dumbledore.

"Oh dear!" the man declared as the bus-sized dragon he had been observing dropped down right in front of him, eyeing him with an eyeball significantly larger than his head.

"Hi, what are you doing up here?" Harry asked brightly before his voice shifted to a suspicious tone. "You're not a knight, are you?"

"Oh, heavens, a talking dragon! How remarkable!" the scraggly-haired man exclaimed. "In answer to your question, I find myself in these hills in pursuit of the species Haggii scotia trundulus, the Three-Toed Mountain Haggis, quite a delicious species in fact, and no, I am not a knight, I'm a zoologist. Er, um, you're not intending to devour me, I hope?"

"No, I don't devour anyone that politely asks me not to devour them."

"Oh, well, that's a relief, and I'd be much obliged if you would refrain from devouring me, please?" The man continued, "I say, are you by any chance a member of the species Draconis majoris tricornae, popularly known as the Three-Horned Hammer-nosed dragon?"

"Well, I'm not sure. Y'know, I've been trying to figure out what sort of dragon I am for absolutely ages — um, what do Three-Horned Hammer-Nosed Dragons eat? 'Cause I'm the only dragon I know of that likes the taste of Toyotas."

"I cannot say for certain," the man replied, "for you see, no one has ever seen a living example of the Three-Horned Hammer-Nosed Dragon, and its dietary habits are therefore still unknown. We only know of them from a single fossilized skull, and I must say, their cranial structure bears a marked resemblance to your own; the layout of your horns and the structures around your eye sockets are quite distinctive. I have no idea how in the world fossilization managed to transform a skull into orichalcum, but that's quite beside the point."

"Orichalcum, huh? Hey, I think maybe I'm that sort of dragon," Harry was positively delighted, "because that's what my bones are made of!"

"Remarkable, remarkable," the man muttered while scribbling furiously in his notebook. "Perhaps your species has some relationship to the drake dog, a member of the same phyla? I say, would you mind if I asked you a few questions about your eating habits, behavioral tendencies, preferred habitat, that sort of thing? Just out of professional curiosity, you see; I confess to having been quite fascinated by the examination of the skull of an apparent member of your species reported in the Journal of Cryptozoological Studies some years ago."

"Well, me being here is sort of a secret, so only if you promise not to tell anyone where I am or what my name is," Harry said.

"Well, that wouldn't be a problem; as you are a member of a species which can readily be presumed to be endangered, it does of course behoove me to keep the details of your territorial range strictly confidential, and as I cannot say I know your name, it would be very difficult for me to relay it to anyone, wouldn't it?"

"Oh, yeah, well, I guess, but just between you and me, my name is Harry Potter," Harry said.

"And I am Xenophillius Lovegood, but everyone seems to refer to me as 'Odd' and I can't say precisely why — are you, perchance, named after the famous Harry Potter? You know, the Boy-Who-Lived? Or is he named for you?"

"Well… I dunno," Harry admitted. "I mean, Mr. Dumbledore seems to think there's something really important about me, and according to The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts someone with the same name and scar as me who was born at the same time as me squished that Voldie-morts guy, and I almost think I'm him, but you know, I thought I got my scar in a car crash."

"Hmm… most intriguing, but, well, according to the on-scene reports, the Boy-Who-Lived is a member of the species Homo sapiens sapiens, popularly known as the human race," Odd said, making another note. "And, well, not to be rude or anything, but how in Merlin's name did you fit in a car? You're larger than most of them! Was it a very stretchy car?"

"Uh, well, no, y'see that was before I turned into a dragon. I used to be human."

"Turned into… Remarkable! That must have been a truly exceptional event, I cannot ever recall mention of a human somehow becoming a dragon of any species, much less one thought to be extinct… Extraordinary! What did it feel like?" Odd enthused, still scribbling rapidly.

"I dunno, I'd banged my head on a rock, and by the time I woke up, I'd finished turning into a dragon, and I was really hungry, so it was hard to notice much else about what it felt like."

"Ah, well that's a shame. It would have been quite fascinating information."

1.8.3 Scoldings

Two hours later, mind all awhirl from the million-and-one questions fired at him by his new acquaintance, Harry came in for a landing back at the closest of the Black Woods Clan summer encampments, where he had tracked Suze to after finding she was no longer on the bluff. They had been intending to visit her family anyway. There he found his centaur damsel waiting, worriedly pacing while checking the angle of the sun.

"Harry! There you are. Are you okay? Did you get hurt? Was that human a knight? Will we have to move?"

"…um, no. He was a zoologist called Odd Lovegood," Harry said, rather taken-aback.

"Oh, thank Selene!" she declared, hugging Harry about the neck — well as much of his neck as she could hug, the whole thing was rather beyond her arm-span. "I was so worried! Don't do that to me again!"

Bane, who'd been lounging in the sun nearby waiting to find out whether they would have to do something to help their ally — as unlikely as that seemed, given his strength — was treated to the rather startling sight of his slender-and-lovely daughter sternly telling off forty tons of dragon while said dragon acted like a colt who'd been caught out late after dusk.

His brain half-melted, the usually-stern centaur beat a hasty retreat.

1.8.4 Breakfast surprises

Two weeks later, picking up the latest issue of his favorite unintentional humor column, The Quibbler, Severus Snape spent several minutes staring blankly at the photograph on the front page before he declared, "Oh hell."

The potions master then beat a hasty retreat to the Headmaster's office to see what could be done, issue jammed firmly into his robe pocket.

1.8.5 Not so severe fallout

"Ah, Severus, what's the rush?" Dumbledore asked, popping a lemon drop as the man burst into his office.

By way of answer, Snape slammed the copy of the Quibbler down on his desk.

The cover photo of the conspiracy-theory-and-weirdness periodical sported a photograph of Harry, in dragon form and wearing one of his attempts at a friendly smile, against a background of heather and rock. Above the image was emblazoned the title 'Interview with a Dragon'.

"…oh dear."

"That is significantly milder than my own reaction, Albus."

"Yes, well, I'm politer than you are," Dumbledore said, leafing through the article to have a quick read.

"Didn't you read it?"

"I came straight here the moment I saw the cover."

"Ah, well, there's no mention of location or Harry's identity; however, the editorial appears to contain hints and speculation that, reading between the lines, gives the game away. And," Dumbledore grimaced, "I must say Odd is quite cunning, for a lunatic; he's arranged it so the last letter of each line in the article about Harry, if read in reverse order, spells out 'This dragon is named Harry Potter; the Boy-Who-Lived is missing. Coincidence? I think not.' It's a shame Odd's so crazy; he'd be brilliant if he were sane."

"Why that…" Snape's rant came to a screeching halt before it even got going. This was Odd Lovegood they were talking about. The man lived and breathed conspiracy theories and rumors — trying to run damage control on this would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

Instead, he decided to take a different approach. "It seems it is time for a discussion with the dratted dragon on journalists and why it is prudent to avoid them."

1.8.6 A journalist burns his source

"But he said he's a zoologist, and that means someone who knows lots and lots about all sorts of animals!" Harry complained, sounding a touch defensive.

"Odd Lovegood, you… you…" Snape trailed off in a huff, rapidly shaking his head.

"Harry, some people are… not entirely honest," Dumbledore said, "sad as it is. Odd Lovegood is indeed a zoologist, and that does indeed mean someone who studies living creatures of all kinds, but his income comes from a magazine he publishes, thus he is also a journalist."

"He told you a half-truth, in other words," Snape explained. "That is, he told you the truth, but left out parts so as to lead you to an erroneous conclusion. At least his paper is primarily composed of wild rumors and conspiracy theories, and your name was only mentioned in code. It is unlikely that anyone who could cause problems for us will take the information seriously."

"He said my name?" Harry was troubled. "But he promised he wouldn't do that!"

"As I said, Harry, some people are not entirely honest," Dumbledore repeated, sadly. "In this case, it is unlikely to cause any major problems, but it is always a cause for caution. To be fair, Odd only stated your name in an anagram he worked into the text, so the argument could be made that he kept his word, technically. The man is oddly brilliant in his own peculiar way."

Flitwick, who had been silent to this point alongside his fellow Heads, Minerva and Pomona, spoke up in an attempt to distract Harry from this troubling development. "What was Odd doing up there anyway?"

"He said he was looking for the territory of the three-toed mountain haggis." Harry began, picking up enthusiasm as he remembered that part of the conversation. "What's a haggis? Is it tasty?"

"Och, well," McGonagall said, "the wild haggis is a terribly difficult creature to find; they only come out at night, and they live very high up in the mountains. That's why their legs are longer on one side than the other; it's so they can stay upright when they're running 'round the side of a mountain. To catch a haggis, you have to get it to turn 'round so it loses its balance and rolls down the mountain into a well-placed net."

"Really, Minerva, stop having the poor boy on," Snape complained with a glare.

"…huh?" Harry asked, bewildered.

"A haggis," Snape explained, "is a dish of Scottish origin, prepared from the less-than-appetizing portions of a sheep, mixed with oatmeal and spices and then cooked inside the sheep's stomach lining. The Scottish have all manner of shaggy dog stories to tell in an attempt to confuse the unwitting and English."

"Och, well that's what they want you to think," McGonagall remarked, conspiratorially.

"Drat it! Minerva, can't you see the boy is getting confused?"

"Mrs. McGonagall, can I get a haggis? It sounds tasty!" Whether it was actually some fantastic creature or just a Scottish dish like Mr. Snape said, Harry was game to try one.

"Of course, laddie, I'll arrange ye tha finest haggis in aw Scotland, whi' neeps an' tatties an' aw!" McGonagall told him, positively delighted in this interest in the heritage of the beautiful land he now called home. "It'll be Burns Nicht soon, we'll make a proper nicht o' it!"

"…oh God, why did you have to set her off?" Snape groaned.

"Awa whi' yeh, Sev'rus, yeh wee chewchter."

"Minerva, I am still quite unable to understand a word of your native accent; would you please stick to the Queen's English while speaking to those of us not of Scottish descent?"

"Wassock."

1.8.7 Musings on lies and liars

As it turned out, Mrs. McGonagall had made good on her promise of a haggis by the end of the summer, and it had been a celebration to remember at the Lair, replete with bagpipes, whiskey, poetry readings, and good company under the summer night sky.

The haggis was just as tasty as it sounded, though Harry found it to be very small, indeed. That was normal for human foods, he noted. Fortunately, he had eaten heavily before the celebration, and he was quite satisfied by the time the party wound down and his guests left for the castle.

As the fire in the Rayburn died down to embers and Suze dozed against his side, Harry thought back on the events that led to the evening's celebration — and his conversation with Odd Lovegood.

It had been the young dragon's first encounter with a person who deliberately played him false, and Harry found the encounter left a bad taste in his mouth. The man had seemed so nice, but then he had misled Harry about his profession and broken his promise not to reveal Harry's name to anyone.

Harry knew that the name was only published in a hidden code, but in a way, that made it even worse. He could have almost understood a slip revealing the name accidentally, but taking the time and effort to encode it like that meant that he had to have done it on purpose. The man had lied to him, and that made Harry kind of angry.

Harry sighed, his irritation slipping away with a light puff of smoke. He'd talked about it with Madame Pomphrey before, and while she had been sympathetic, she had also introduced him to something she called 'commensurate response'. So, even though Mr. Lovegood had been very rude by lying to him and breaking his promise, it would be too much for him to eat the man next time he saw him, because the man's broken promise wasn't as bad for Harry as devouring him would be for the liar.

Harry was not sure what to think of that.

It was even more confusing when he thought about what else he had found out. Mrs. McGonagall had been lying to him too, about the haggis being a special kind of animal. It really was a dish made out of sheep and oatmeal like Mr. Snape said. But that kind of lying didn't make him angry, because she was just joking around, and it was kind of confusing for him to think about.

What was the difference between funny lying and lying that made him mad? Was it because Mr. Lovegood had intended to deceive him, and Mrs. McGonagall hadn't? The problem was, she had intended to deceive him, but she intended it to be a joke that he would laugh at when it was revealed.

Did Mr. Lovegood mean to have it be a joke too? Maybe, but Harry didn't think it was very funny.

How could he know who he could trust to tell the truth about important stuff, now? He didn't know what to look for to be able to tell that Mr. Lovegood was lying. Was there a way to figure that stuff out?

It was all so complicated, and Harry decided he didn't like it very much. As the final embers died in the stove, leaving the faint moonlight as the only illumination for the Lair, the young dragon finally settled in to sleep, settling his head down on his forepaws, turned so he could see his damsel with one eye, taking comfort in her presence. His scales had grown thick enough to make cuddling very difficult on his side of things; he couldn't actually feel her there, so he had to make due with other reassurances.

He hoped none of his friends ever turned out to be the bad kind of liar. Harry didn't know how he'd handle that.

Last edited: Jul 16, 2020

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Threadmarks Section 1.9 - In which Harry makes an enemy

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#23

1.9 In which Harry makes an enemy

1.9.1 Diagon Alley chase

Perhaps a month after the impromptu and unseasonable Burns Night celebration at the Lair, the seasons turned and with the coming autumn the students returned to Hogwarts and Harry's professor friends' free time dried up like rain puddles on a warm summer day.

His centaur friends were still in the middle of their Grand Conclave which was interesting for a while, because of all the new people visiting, but quickly devolved into the elders just yelling the same things back and forth in slightly different ways. Harry thought the whole thing got very boring very quickly. Worse yet, all his young centaur friends had to be quiet, so they couldn't play like normal.

To complete his dilemma, Harry had managed to run through everything from his friends' personal libraries, so he had run out of things to read. There was still a lot in the Hogwarts Library, but those were enchanted so they couldn't be removed from the castle grounds, and his Lair was too far away to count.

With nothing to do and nothing to read, the young dragon had gotten so bored he had even started to read the dictionary Mr. Snape had gotten for him.

This last item was the final straw which had driven Harry to return to Diagon Alley for the first time since his travels with Mr. Snape. It'd be hours before anyone could come over from the castle, and the weather was too rainy to go flying with Suze.

After their first trip to see Mr. Slackhammer, Mr. Snape had left a two-way portkey behind in the form of an old brick. He'd said it was easier than trying to power one to carry them both himself, since it recharged on its own from the ambient energy, and afterwards he'd left it with Harry after explaining how it worked. Leaving it near Harry would apparently make it charge faster because he was so awesome.

This meant that Harry had a way to and from the Alley.

"What are you doing, Harry?" Suze asked. She'd been kind of clingy since the thing with Mr. Lovegood.

"Well, I'm bored, and all the others are busy and it's ages until anyone's going to come up from the castle, and I haven't got anything to read, so I reckon I'm going to go to Diagon Alley and buy some more books," Harry said, picking up the headband he'd worn on his last trip with Mr. Snape.

Suze frowned. "I think I'd better come with you."

And thus it was that the pair, human-form Harry and his centaur damsel, found themselves wandering, somewhat lost, down the main street of Diagon Alley when an unpleasant and thoroughly unwelcome voice came from behind.

"Boy! Why is your pet not on a leash?"

With a growl that carried over surprisingly well from his dragon form, Harry answered, "She's not my pet, she's my damsel," as he whirled around to face the unpleasant voice.

Said unpleasant voice belonged to an equally unpleasant-looking woman. Her appearance was startlingly toad-like for an ostensibly human woman, and she seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with a shade of pink that reminded Harry of a certain bottle his aunt had always pulled out of the medicine cabinet whenever Dudley would eat himself sick.

"She's your what? Never mind; filthy beasts like that should not be let loose in the Alley." With that offensive declaration, the squat woman drew her wand in a threatening action that was echoed by the three nondescript men accompanying her.

At this clear threat, Harry almost returned to dragon shape in order to roast them, but he remembered Mr. Snape, Mr. Dumbledore, Mrs. McGonagall, and Mr. Slackhammer had all been quite adamant that, although there would be a time when it became appropriate for him to reveal his nature, that time was still off in the future. He wasn't sure why, but just about everyone he respected who wasn't a centaur said so, and even the ones who were centaurs didn't say differently, they just didn't have anything to say on the subject. Harry figured he'd take their word for it until he was sure he knew what the deal was.

Without the option of reverting to dragon form and annihilating the threat that way, Harry and Suze were ill-suited to dealing with the situation, so there was only one option left.

"Run, Suze!" He grabbed her hand and bolted for Gringotts, half-dragging her behind him with his disproportionate strength. The woman's nondescript companions moved to block the pair, as their course took them close to the toad woman and her group anyway. Had they been selected for skill rather than political reliability, they might have realized something was wrong with the picture of an apparently nine-year-old human child dragging around a centaur, but they were not.

Suze immediately cottoned-on to what little plan her dragon had come up with, and she used her hold on his hand to swing him up onto her back, charging at a full run straight through the group of wand-brandishing wizards, bowling them over like ten-pins.

She didn't stop until she was in the Gringotts lobby and she calmly came to a halt in front of a half-dozen halberd-toting guards-goblins who had moved to intercept.

"We gotta hide, there's crazy glowy people, and they wanna do something nasty to Suze, and we gotta talk to Mr. Slackhammer!" Harry declared.

As if to emphasize his point, the doors crashed open behind him, and the pink toad woman and her plain-clothes security detail, now accompanied by a number of blue-overcoated official-looking people came barging into the building, only to skid to a halt in the face of the business end of a dozen of those nasty-looking halberds. There were now dozens of uniformed goblins flooding the foyer and separating Harry and Suze from their pursuers. Some were the brightly uniformed ceremonial guards, but the majority were now in olive drab and carrying a far different armament.

Out of almost everyone on the scene, only Harry recognized them immediately for what they were: guns. Hefty, great Army-looking things of a type he'd seen in pictures in one of the not-glowy-people history books Mrs. McGonagall had gotten for him back when he asked about dragons, pictures about a war in the Falkland Islands.

"Easy, you maggots!" bellowed an exceptionally ferocious-looking goblin who seemed to have traded in the rifle-or-halberd for a sword and an unnecessarily-large pistol, and was resplendent in what Harry recognized as the dress uniform of a goblinish Sergeant-Major. "That's the feller Vice-Chairman Slackhammer's been conducting business with!"

Much to Harry's relief, the goblins stopped pointing their weapons at him and Suze, saluted Harry, saluted the Sergeant-Major, and joined in with pointing weapons at the pink toad woman and the people with her.

"What is the meaning of this? Don't you know who I am?" The pink toad woman sounded a little freaked out. "I'm the Secretary of Wizarding Defense, and I demand that you immediately turn that filthy animal over to…" The woman trailed off in the face of a loud, intimidating, interruption.

"Are you," the Sergeant-Major roared, turning an oddly-brownish purple with rage as he seemed to inflate at a downright alarming rate, "personally responsible for a full nine-point-seven percent increase in Gringotts profit within the last calendar month? No, Madame Umbridge, you are not! The young gentleman here, as it so happens, is! Is that quite perfectly clear?"

The pink toad woman, apparently called Umbridge, turned very pale indeed. The blue-overcoated official-looking people started to whisper among themselves as well. Her security detail remained oblivious.

"Ah, Great One, if you and your lovely companion would accompany me?" That was a voice Harry was very glad to hear, and turning that way, he found himself looking at Crackjaw Slackhammer.

"What about them, Mr. Vice-Chairman, SIR?" the Sergeant-Major bellowed, snapping off a salute before angling a thumb in the direction of the pink toad-woman.

He was a very good bellower, Harry wondered if he would be willing to give lessons?

"Politely ask them to vacate the premises, Sergeant-Major."

"And if they don't, Vice-Chairman, SIR?"

"Then it will be time to be impolite, Sergeant-Major."

"Sir! Yes, Sir! At once, SIR!" The Sergeant-Major bellowed, saluting again before he whirled around and fixed the goblin soldiers with a ferocious glower. "Alright, you miserable maggots! You heard the Vice-Chairman, jump to it!"

"SIR!" the swarm of goblins barked, "YES SIR!"

"Gentlemen and lady, please be so kind as to vacate the premises AT ONCE!"

For that matter, was this goblin capable of not bellowing? Ooh, and how did he do that cool inflating thing? Harry wanted to learn that too!

The pink toad woman and her coterie beat a hasty retreat.

1.9.2 Umbridge fumes

"Those miserable beasts!" Umbridge muttered, glancing nervously at the doors to Gringotts as she and the three plain-clothes Aurors who'd been accompanying her withdrew alongside the group of uniformed Law Enforcement Patrolmen who had joined them.

"All due respect, ma'am, but what happened back there?" Auror Dawlish asked.

"Weren't you briefed on 'fire-arms'?" Umbridge snapped.

"…um, should I have been?"

"Yes!"

Auror Flint spoke up, "They're a form of muggle wand. They launch a small metal thing so hard and fast it'll go right through a wall and kill the bloke hiding behind the wall."

"So, I take it they're dangerous?" Dawlish asked.

"Very." Umbridge said, thinking back on the briefing she had first received when she had been promoted to Secretary of Wizarding Defense. Something about the goblin rebellion of 1899. It was information not readily available to the public. Nobody wanted a panic on their hands.

In 1899, after whatever had set those wretched goblins off, the Ministry had, as usual, expected to kick the doors down, fire off a few spells, slap a few more sanctions on the upstarts, and wash their hands of the matter. That was how it had always gone before.

But, it hadn't gone anything like that. Every Auror or Hit-Wizard who'd attempted to storm the bank had died on the receiving end of an infernal, not to mention loud, device of at-the-time unknown origin. After the second attempt to storm the bank, the then-Director of Magical Law Enforcement, along with a guard detail of fifty-five Aurors, had been cut down by another team of five goblins wielding more of the contraptions.

Based on circulating rumors, Ministry research into the devastating new weapons being wielded by the goblin rebels had revealed said gadgets to be muggle devices known as 'fire-arms', in specific a 'Maxim machine-gun' and a number of 'Lee-Enfield Magazine Rifle'. The astonishing destructive power that tests showed these peculiar contraptions to possess had scared the then-Director of Muggle Relations so badly he'd taken his entire family into hiding. It hadn't been long after that the Ministry had sued for peace.

That had been the first time in known history that a goblin rebellion had ended, as uncomfortable as it was to say such a thing, in victory for the wretched beasts. Worse yet, reports from the Unspeakables showed that the goblins had taken to the 'fire-arms' with tremendous — one might even say diabolical — enthusiasm.

She'd seen photographs of the 'fire-arms' those goblins had threatened her with today. Apparently, they were a type known as 'Ellwunehwun Self-Loading Rifle', and although of a shorter effective range than the bewildering assortment of 'Lee-Enfield', it could cast its projectile faster and more accurately than even the finest duelists, and like all such 'fire-arms' that projectile traveled far too fast to be effectively blocked or dodged.

With an attempt at a face-saving sniff, she made tracks for the Ministry.

1.9.3 Of guns and Goblins

"Where'd you guys get all the guns, Mr. Slackhammer?" Harry asked. "I thought guns were kinda hard to get."

Slackhammer smiled a little smugly. "Ah, Mr. Potter, that is courtesy of Gringotts holdings in the muggle world. As it so happens, Gringotts owns a small but significant portfolio of stocks in several firearms manufacturing concerns: the Birmingham Small Arms Company, Vickers Defence Systems, Heckler and Koch GmbH, and Fabrique Nationale de Herstal, to name those in which we hold the most substantial interest. As such, it is quite remarkably easy for us to acquire both weapons and munitions whenever we so desire, a situation that has proven most fortuitous on occasion."

"But how do you manage that with the not-glowy-people. I thought they watched that pretty closely?" Harry asked, puzzled. "I'd think they'd notice the guns were going somewhere."

"That is a story part and parcel to our winning independence from the wizards in the 1899-1900 financial year." Slackhammer explained. "You see, just prior to that time, the non-magicals were facing a rather unpleasant war in far southern Africa, and our leadership saw an opportunity. We offered our assistance in dealing with the native shaman, who had been wreaking havoc on the muggle command structure, and in exchange we were allowed to join the British Empire as an autonomous state. The only ongoing requirement is that we maintain a regiment that can be called upon by the Empire in magical conflicts." Slackhammer chuckled, "We would have done so in any case, as we will certainly treat our allies with respect commensurate with their own treatment of ourselves, so that is no trouble."

"Wow!"

"Indeed. That most lucrative deal led to our acquisition of firearms, and thence led to the events of the 1899-1900 financial year in which the Brethren won our autonomy from the wizards by force." The dapper goblin smiled proudly, "I confess that those events have caused the gun to attain significant cultural meaning within the Goblin Nation, to the point that no goblin with any sense would permit himself to be seen dead without at least one firearm within easy reach. Even the ceremonial guards at the doors to this bank carry decidedly non-ceremonial sidearms concealed upon their persons. It is courtesy of those magnificent devices that we were not utterly subjugated and likely nationalized by the Ministry of Magic almost a century ago."

"I guess that means you've got a gun, right Mr. Slackhammer?"

"Naturally; I never permit my Enfield Number 2 Mark 1 to leave my side," the goblin said, withdrawing a nicely polished revolver from beneath his desk. He showed it to Harry with a proud smile before returning it to its place. "It is of course merely one weapon within my private armory, some of which you can see behind you." At this, he nodded to the gun rack on the office wall which was fairly bristling with rifles. "At my rank within the Goblin Nation, I am expected to maintain a fitting collection of weaponry, both to equip myself and provide for my subordinates should they be unable. Our law holds that it is not merely the right of all to bear arms, but rather the duty of all to be armed and ready to defend the freedom of Gringotts as a corporation and the Brethren as a people. And, frankly, with our less-than-stellar magical gifts, without the gun we would be quite easily overwhelmed by the ranks of the wizards."

"I know a bow is more accurate, and an arrow flies far faster and is deadly at a greater distance than any spell," Suze joined the conversation. "Is the same true for these 'guns', Vice-Chairman?"

"Quite correct; a competently-trained shooter could put every bullet in a well-maintained revolver into a wizard before the wizard could cast but a single spell. Their magic does have the advantage of flexibility, a wand can heal as easily as it can kill after all, but for defense of one's home, kin, and livelihood, a well-tuned gun is a far superior weapon. And, no offense intended, Lady, the gun is significantly more powerful and vastly easier to learn to operate than the bow."

"None taken," Suze said. Today had not been the first time she wished her people had developed something with more punch than a short bow. She still remembered the sound of her arrows bouncing off the chitinous armor of the spider that had dragged down her younger sister years ago.

Slackhammer steepled his fingers as he considered something. "Hmm… On that subject, Mr. Potter, I do believe it might be prudent to see that you and your companion acquire a fitting armament. The humble gun scares the gold out of magical law enforcement and poltroons such as that Umbridge creature for a very good reason, after all."

"Y'know, I think that might be a good idea," Harry said. "And, ah, look, Suze is really good with a bow, but I was wondering if there weren't any better bows than the kind her uncle Ronan makes, not that Mr. Ronan's bows are bad or anything."

"There are indeed a number of bows of significantly more advanced construction than those made by centaurs, works of beauty though their traditional bows might be," Slackhammer confirmed. "Might it be possible to grant myself and a small number of my staff permission to visit your home? I can but guess that you lair in a significantly more remote location than here in London, especially considering you have a centauress for a companion; they are known for their liking of solitude, and it would be better to instruct you in the usage and upkeep of firearms in a secluded place."

"Well, my Lair's up in back of the woods behind Hogwarts; I guess you know where that is?"

"Naturally," Slackhammer confirmed with a sharp little nod.

"Mr. Vice-Chairman," Suze began, "I get the idea of being armed with something that scares the wizards, but isn't there some way I could accompany Harry to Diagon Alley without some sort of mess like today happening?"

"Hmm… I cannot say for sure. Perhaps one of my family solicitors could advise you on that, one moment…" Slackhammer wrote a quick note, rang a small bell, handed the note to the goblin who immediately came into the room, said "Take this to Madame Axetalon please, Mr. Steelhammer.", nodded his satisfaction when the other goblin rushed off with a cry of "At once, Mr. Vice-Chairman!", and sat back.

"I have taken the liberty of requesting the company of my family's most prominent solicitor, one Madame Shredblade Axetalon," he told Suze. "She is blessed with an eidetic memory, and her knowledge of law, both magical and otherwise, is without peer. She should be with us shortly. Now concerning travel to your most excellent lair, Mr. Potter, my people can be on the outskirts of Hogsmeade within eight hours by motor vehicle, and we can easily arrange a meeting place thereafter."

"Um, Suze, does your dad get angry about goblins?" Harry asked.

"No, Father admires them," Suze told him. "There's only a handful of Namers who have managed to get wizards to treat them with any respect at all, and goblins are the most recent."

"Respect from a wizard," Slackhammer chuckled, shaking his head. "That is indeed quite the undertaking."

"What do you mean?" the young dragon asked.

"I mean, pitiful as it is, most wizards are quite astoundingly bigoted," Slackhammer told him. "Exceptions do, of course, exist, such as Mr. Severus Snape, who treats all with matching honest dislike, or Mr. Albus Dumbledore, who is a fine gentleman as wizards go, but the vast majority have naught but disdain for any being who is neither human nor magically gifted. Why, most of their number look down on those members of their own species born without the genetic quirk of magical talent!"

The dapper goblin shook his head disparagingly before continuing, "There are only a handful of Namers, to use the centaur term, also known as sapient beings, who have managed to beat some respect out of the wizards. My kin managed that under the glorious leadership of Chairwoman of the Grand Board of Directors, Ragnak Shatteraxe, during the revolution often termed the Bold '99, when we introduced the wizards to the power of the machine gun. Our dear friends, the Veela, were able to achieve that same great and noble undertaking centuries ago due to their incredible talent for the manipulation of fire. Vampires and werewolves have won some modicum of regard, simply due to the immense difficulty of killing individuals of either species, but they have yet to win themselves the same rights veela and goblins hold. The centaurs chose to hide themselves away from the wizards, a wise choice given that they lack the blessing of the honest gun."

Harry considered that for a moment before setting it aside for further consideration later. "Um, if you're coming to visit, you should know that my Lair's up on a cliff, so I'll need to carry you in. I can pick you up, but if there are a few of you, that'll take a few trips."

"That is not a problem, Mr. Potter. We would be honored by such travel arrangements."

"Harry, the harness…" Suze prompted.

"Oh! Yeah, we made a carry-harness, so I could take Suze out flying with me without dropping her, so if you've got harnesses or something which we could clip on securely, I could carry all of you with that, I bet."

"I am certain we can arrange something, Mr. Potter." Mr. Slackhammer seemed pleased at the consideration.

"Mr. Vice-Chairman, Madame Axetalon to speak with you," a goblin in a sharp suit stated, sticking his head in the door.

"Ah, Madame Axetalon, come in, do."

The goblin who entered was smartly dressed and almost completely indistinguishable from the males of her species; if Harry hadn't been forewarned, he would never have realized she was female.

"A profitable day to you, Vice-Chairman Crackjaw," she said with a broad, toothsome grin. Her voice didn't betray her gender either. "Congratulations on your promotion; I can but say you've worked long and hard for your new rank, and it's about time your efforts were rewarded."

"Thank you, Solicitor Shredblade, and a profitable day to you too," Slackhammer said, his grin just as shark-like as ever, "but there is no need for you to butter me up. The chance of my aunt allowing you to be dismissed from your position with the Slackhammers is thin indeed."

Axetalon chuckled. "Director Hellblade Slackhammer has always been a superb judge of character, Crackjaw. So, I understand that you require my services?"

"Indeed, or rather my young associates here do. Madame Axetalon, the young lady is Miss Suze, daughter of Bane of the Black Woods Clan, and the young gentleman is Harry Potter, Great Wyrm of Hogwarts. Mr. Potter, Miss Suze, this is Madame Shredblade Axetalon, finest of the solicitors in my family's employ."

"An honor," the female goblin said, inclining her head politely.

"Hi!" Harry said with a big smile firmly in place.

"Well met," Suze intoned with a polite bow.

"Mr. Potter and Miss Suze face a perplexing conundrum that you might be able to provide an answer to," Slackhammer told Madame Axetalon. "You see, they seek a way that Miss Suze, being as you see a centaur, might accompany Mr. Potter to Diagon Alley without falling foul of the unashamed bigotry of the Ministry of Magic."

"Ah yes, the Wild Animal (Control) Act of 1847. I see, that is quite the perplexing conundrum, isn't it?" the solicitor mused, her eyebrows collapsing into a deep frown. "Hmm… it supersedes the Sapient (Mobility) Act of 1612… no, the Wartime Expenditures (Mobility) Act of 1941 does not present any loopholes for centaurs… Aha! Under the Steeds (Mobility) Act of 1513, centaurs may, if sufficiently controlled, be regarded as Steeds under the letter of the law. Miss Suze, Mr. Potter, tell me, did the wizards successfully verify your identity?"

"I dunno," Harry said, looking to Suze.

"Well, I don't know either," Suze said.

"They most assuredly did not," Mr. Slackhammer asserted.

"Excellent," Madame Axetalon declared. "Under the Criminalibus Iustitia Decretum of 438, any person, being, or creature suspected of a crime but not of verified identity may only be listed as a suspect for a maximum of two full seasons. Despite the conflict with the Criminal Justice (Identification) Act of 1837 which lists one year and one day as the maximum term, the older Decretum has not been repealed, so the more restrictive option takes precedence. Therefore, if you were to avoid Diagon Alley until the day after summer solstice, and thereafter pay any necessary regard to the Steeds (Mobility) Act of 1513, there is nothing beyond alteration of the letter of the law which they may do. And for all acts committed prior to said alteration of the law, you are of course covered by the Charter of Succession (Rights) of 1380."

"…um," Harry said, confused.

"In layman's terms," Axetalon elaborated, "Under the Steeds (Mobility) Act of 1513, in accord with the Charter of Succession (Rights) of 1380, with no alteration made by subsequent revision of said Charter, any creature regarded under the law as a Being, has, where not in contravention to the Servants (Control) Acts of 1394, 1440, and 1502, the legal right to possession of a Steed, defined as an animal, creature, or device utilized for personal transport. This definition covers horses, ponies, brooms, velocipedes, motorcycles, pegasi, cottages with animated chicken legs, and other more unusual creatures and devices, including, I might note, centaurs. The only exception to said right concerns flying carpets and automobiles fitted with more than three wheels, which are listed as Items of Muggle Origin under the Muggle Separation (Artifacts) Act of 1984. The steed or device must be, and I quote, 'controlled in an adequate and safe manner' as per the Animal Control (Domesticated) Act of 1422 and may be left outside any building within wizarding territories for a maximum of twelve hours."

At this point, Harry was very glad he had been bored enough to read the dictionary in the past few days. "Can I see the Animal Control (Domesticated) Act of 1422, so I can see what we have to do?"

On reading the Act in question, Suze muttered worriedly, "I get the feeling that Father won't like this."

Half an hour later, having gone over details of future travel arrangements, the young Great Wyrm and his damsel left for the portkey transition point which would take them home, accompanied by ten of 2 Company's biggest and meanest looking infantry-goblins. Back in his office, Vice-Chairman Slackhammer spent a moment checking financial reports, nodded his satisfaction, and then began to pen a note addressed to the Grand Chairman of the Board of Directors herself.

No foolish human would get away with threatening a business partner as profitable as Mr. Harry Potter on Slackhammer's watch, no SIR!

1.9.4 Umbridge faces Consequences

About an hour after she arrived back at the Ministry, as she was sulking in her office plotting revenge for her embarrassment at the hands of that boy, his centaur and the dratted goblins, Dolores Umbridge was thoroughly surprised to be summoned to the Minister's office.

"You wanted to see me, Mr. Minister, sir?"

"Dolores, just what in Merlin's name have you been doing?" Cornelius Fudge complained. "I have no idea what brought this on, but Gringotts just sent me a letter declaring one Mr. Harry James Potter and all his dependents and associates to be, and I quote, 'an important financial asset of Gringotts' and, well, threatening sanctions if anyone within the Ministry is to, and I quote, 'interfere' with him. Your name is mentioned in a most unfriendly manner several times. Just what in Merlin's name have you been doing?"

Umbridge blinked, positively gob-smacked. She'd only been near Gringotts once in the past week, and that was… chasing that filthy centaur and the boy it seemed to belong to… Oh dear!

"I… uh… I," she stammered before swallowing a few times, "I encountered a child allowing his pet centaur to run riot in Diagon Alley, Mr. Minister, sir."

"And how does that relate to Gringotts?"

"Well, as per the Wild Animal Control Act of 1847 I moved to apprehend the uncontrolled animal, and the child immediately ran off with it. We gave pursuit, not using any spells so as to avoid injuring the child, you know how sensitive small children can be to stunners, and the suspect and his animal attempted to hide in the bank. We followed them, assuming our job was over, but we were shouted at most coarsely by the goblins, threatened with those infernal 'fire-arms' of theirs, and summarily ejected from the building. I returned directly here."

Fudge sighed, pinching his nose. "Dash it, Dolores, that boy's the Boy-Who-Lived, he must be. I wondered why the goblins were on about him now; no idea why the goblins are so up-in-arms about him and his pet, but they've got us by the financial throat. How do you think the voters would react to another goblin rebellion?"

"Surely it wouldn't come to that?"

"There's a financial breakdown attached to the missive I received, and somehow they've attributed a two-million Galleon profit in the span of a single month to the Boy-Who-Lived. That's no less than nine-point-seven percent of their profit over the last month. For Merlin's sake, the last Goblin Rebellion blew up over taxation reducing their profits by a tenth of a percent!"

"They'd go to war over a tenth of a percent?"

"Go to war? Merlin's sake, Dolores, they massacred seventy-eight Aurors, twelve Hit-Wizards, two Unspeakables, four innocent bystanders, and a Director of Magical Law Enforcement over a tenth of a percent! They kicked in the front door of the Ministry over a tenth of a percent! Imagine what they would do over nearly ten percent!"

"…oh dear, I didn't know that…"

"Blast it, you're the Secretary of Wizarding Defense! Knowing that is your bloody job! And now, you've nearly started a war over a leash-law violation…" Fudge's eyes turned cunning, "scratch that, you were the Secretary of Wizarding Defense."

"Sir!" Dolores gasped, "You can't be serious?"

"Of course I am, Undersecretary. I need to be seen doing something after all," the man finished smarmily. "Now I can contact Gringotts with an apology over the deplorable behavior of a member of the Ministry and report that she was punished, and you don't even lose much in the way of your salary. Everyone wins!"

But she would lose status! Oh, the humiliation. There would be blood for this! Though she raged internally, outwardly, she bowed her head, "Yes Mr. Minister, sir."

She would get even with those miserable goblins and that brat of a Boy-Who-Lived if it was the last thing she did.

And with his little pet, too!

1.9.5 Suspicious vans

On a deserted stretch of road winding through the coastal moors of the western Highlands, a quartet of white Transit vans slowed to a stop, miles from the nearest town, and a pair of unusually short figures, dressed in drab uniforms and toting very businesslike rifles hopped out of the back of the lead van, examined a cut in the hillside then waved the vehicles to follow them.

The odd procession quickly disappeared from sight into the sea of flowering heather, heading in the general direction a stand of trees below a cliffside some distance away, and leaving the road to its lonely existence, keeping company with the wind and the distant crashing of waves on the shore.

1.9.6 Hospitality

Harry was quite satisfied with the day.

A small platoon of goblins had arrived around noon on the second day after his overly exciting abortive shopping trip with Suze, bringing with them a selection of various firearms and complicated bows. They came in those same white vans that the plumber always used when he visited the Dursley house, and Suze led them into the forest where he had waited in dragon form with his harness so he could carry them to the Lair.

Along with the guns and the trainer, they'd also sent along another soldier, Corporal Hookknife, who was an engineer who was supposed to ensure their harnesses worked together and set up a proper and safe firing range. Harry got along with him famously, since he was impressed with the Lair and the improvements Harry had already made — calling it an 'eminently defensible home' — particularly since they had been made using only Harry's teeth and claws. The young dragon and the corporal had engaged in a rather animated discussion of possible future changes and the methods that could be used while the rest of the platoon unpacked and set up a temporary camp in one of Harry's recently excavated side rooms. It was a discussion that would spawn an almost endless series of home-improvements for years to come.

As it turned out, the Sergeant-Major — whose name was apparently Hooktalon — was able to talk without bellowing. When Harry asked, Hooktalon had explained that bellowing was an absolutely necessary talent for all Sergeant-Majors as it was required to maintain discipline and respect of the soldiers under his supervision. Since it was their job to be grunts, and it was their Sergeant-Major's job to think for his soldiers, it was thus the duty of any Sergeant-Major to bellow to get the message through their thick craniums; otherwise, the Sergeant-Major would be forced to give them firm kicks around their posteriors.

One of the other goblin soldiers, a grizzled old Color Sergeant called Griphook, had privately told Harry that the Sergeant-Major was in fact a big old pussycat whose bark was worse than his bite, but Harry decided it was probably safer not to risk it, especially since Corporal Mantrap said that anyone who messed with the Sergeant-Major was asking to have his or her lungs extracted via their nostrils.

Okay, so maybe there was a chance that Sergeant-Major Hooktalon bellowing was like Mr. Snape growling, but there was a chance it wasn't, and Hooktalon was scary!

After the squad had unpacked and gotten set up, the lessons on proper safety and handling began. The beginning consisted of seemingly endless repetitions of what Sergeant-Major Hooktalon called 'golden rules', all of which sounded very cautious but eminently sensible. Once he had seemed satisfied that Harry and Suze had gotten the message on the 'golden rules', the Sergeant-Major had them repeatedly take apart and put back together the guns until he was satisfied with their performance, and then he finally allowed them to riddle a number of targets with bullets.

Harry had to admit Suze was a far, far better shot than him. She'd demonstrated with her shortbow, showing enough accuracy to get a sniff and 'adequate' out of Sergeant-Major Hooktalon. Then she'd had a go with two rifles and received a brusque nod and a 'Well, young lady, looks like we've found something you're good at', which was high praise indeed coming from a Sergeant-Major, according to Corporal Mantrap.

It'd been fun, and there were now a pair of rifles stacked in a nicely polished wooden gun rack just to the side of the entrance to his treasure chamber. One was what the Sergeant-Major had called a 'Rifle, Short Magazine, Lee-Enfield, Mark Three' — a name which Harry had thought sounded kind of back-to-front, and the other was one of the Falklands-looking guns, which Harry now knew was called an 'L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle', which sounded like it was the right way around.

Suze had her own set, though her gun rack was empty as she had immediately set to making a harness and ammunition bag using the copious quantities of tanned deer hide they had left over from Harry's winter snacking. Suze was most insistent that she would carry them on her at all times; the trip to Diagon Alley had made a big impression on his damsel.

It was funny really, when Harry'd seen the way the rifles slammed into Sergeant-Major Hooktalon's shoulder, he'd expected them to knock him flat, but they hadn't kicked at all. From the raised eyebrow and the comment of, 'Strong little whippersnapper, aren't you?', this had also surprised Sergeant-Major Hooktalon.

In addition to her new guns, they had also had a new bow for Suze. It was a weird-looking thing with a string that looped back and forth several times and pulleys at the ends of the bow. Bane, who had come by to pay his respects to Harry's goblin visitors, had taken one look at the thing and muttered and grumbled about 'new-fangled', but he went quiet and calculating after he'd seen it demonstrated.

The addition of the gun rack had also seen to the first real bit of organization in the Lair. Harry made a room specifically for his toys, because confusing one of his toy guns with the real thing would be a really bad idea.

You really needed to guard your guns as closely as you guarded your treasures and your damsels, Harry mused.

He'd long since worked out that damsels were an especially valuable sort of treasure since they were so hard to get ahold of, and, as he drifted off to sleep listening to his guests staying in the new guest quarters he had dug the previous day, he came to realize that the same held true for guns.

Anything difficult to get a hold of was probably a treasure, and swords counted as treasure too, so that meant weapons were treasure, and a gun was a sort of weapon. Sergeant-Major Hooktalon's statement that Harry should make certain that anyone who wanted to take Harry's guns away was forced to attempt to prize them from Harry's cold, dead fingers just served to reinforce that conclusion. Anything you had to put up a big fight to stop knights — or Bagginses or any other sort of baddie — taking away was obviously a treasure.

1.9.7 The world according to Dumbledore

"Mr. Dumbledore, I think there's kinda something wrong with the whole Wizardy World thingy," Harry said.

It had been five days since his overly-exciting visit to Diagon Alley, and one since his goblin visitors had left, leaving him with plenty of ammunition, firm instructions to practice every day, and a reading list from Corporal Hookknife on things to help him figure out how to do the stuff they had talked about. That was for later, though, for now, Harry and Dumbledore were lounging at the entrance to the Lair after Harry's latest Occlumency lesson.

Occlumency was apparently an important thing for him to learn; Madame Pomfrey had insisted, though he wasn't sure why. According to Mr. Dumbledore, it was supposed to keep people out of his head, and it helped with remembering things well. Harry figured getting into people's heads without permission sounded incredibly rude, so that was a good reason, but he already remembered things really well. Madame Pomfrey had insisted, though, so he figured there was some other reason they hadn't shared yet.

In any case, Harry figured it was entirely possible that memories were a kind of treasure because of that whole 'treasure the memory' thing people talked about sometimes, and so he figured he'd treat them as such until proven otherwise. It wasn't like the Occlumency lessons were difficult or anything anyway.

"And why would you think that, my dear boy?" the old man asked.

"Because, well, because that pink toad-woman said Suze isn't a person and because the goblins say they had to do lots of shooting before the glowy people stopped saying goblins weren't people," he said. "And, uh, Mr. Slackhammer kinda sounded like it wasn't just goblins and centaurs — he mentioned veela too, and it's got something to do with why you don't think people oughtta know I'm a dragon, hadn't it?"

"Ah," Dumbledore said with a resigned sigh. "Indeed, Harry; I regret to say it, but you are in fact quite correct. I have been able to, in my lifetime, make some small improvements here and there, but like all change, it is a slow process. And, indeed, that is why your transformation must remain a secret for as long as possible. The last thing the wizarding world needs is a civil war coming so close on the footsteps of Voldemort's last insurrection."

Harry nodded, his expression distant. "I guess," he said. "Mr. Dumbledore, how bad is it, really?"

"Not as bad as either Severus or the goblins would have you believe," the old man assured him. "Severus has had a rather rough ride of things, I'm afraid, and the viewpoint of the goblins is that of outsiders and outcasts. It is true that changes must be made to bring the cycle of war and destruction — of which Voldemort was but the latest repetition — to an end, but I do not hold that said changes should be made through bloody revolution, as Severus espouses."

Dumbledore shook his head sadly, setting his long beard swaying, "He cannot see it, but to tear the wizarding world down would be to destroy what good remains in it. He would, as the idiom goes, throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have, in my lifetime, made many changes. For instance, the Declaration of Brotherhood of 1920, which established the legal rights of muggles as people, was passed through without any bloodshed, and I have since managed to abolish slavery as a legal institution as of 1963 with the Magical Slavery (Abolition) Act." The old man continued proudly, "I am currently working to gather support for another Act which would make the hunting of several species, including centaurs, illegal. We have already managed to paint the hunts in an unfavorable social light, and we feel that we may be able to pass the Act soon as few want to do it anyway."

As Harry frowned at that, the elderly statesman continued, "I confess I have had to make some quite difficult decisions in my time, and I am well aware that there are further difficult decisions yet to come my way, but someone has to make those decisions for the greater good of all." He grunted as he levered himself upright, "Now, I must return to the castle; I shall see you the same time next week."

"…okay," Harry said absently, still frowning. Something about that discussion seemed wrong, and it really hadn't answered anything.

He resolved to keep niggling Mr. Dumbledore about it, and to see if Mr. Snape were more willing to explain things.

1.9.8 The world according to Snape

"Mr. Snape…"

"What is it now? Blasted reptile." This time, two days after Dumbledore's disappointingly evasive conversation, it was Snape who was at Harry's Lair.

"I'm really starting to think the wizarding world really isn't fair," Harry said.

"I see…" Snape muttered. His customary sneer vanished to be replaced by a frankly rather worried look. "And what, precisely, has brought you to this conclusion, young man?"

Harry gathered his thoughts for a few moments before he haltingly explained the events of his last visit to Diagon Alley. The potions master listened in complete silence, frown deepening the entire time.

"I see," he repeated once Harry had explained his attempt to get an answer out of Dumbledore. "You have indeed arrived at a quite incisive conclusion; there is indeed something quite wrong with this world we live in, and I confess I had hoped to protect you from those unpleasant truths for a little longer."

A wry, if grim, smile spread itself across one side of Snape's face — Harry was somewhat sad to note this smile looked as if it had settled comfortably on his older friend's face, unlike the happier one he had seen on a very few occasions which looked terribly out of place.

"I suppose I should have expected you to work out the basics of the situation; you're as sharp as your mother was. And, indeed, there is something deeply and horribly wrong with any so-called civilization that would treat any thinking being as an animal."

"How bad is it really?"

"Bad," Snape firmly stated. "Bad to the degree that even those wizards and witches not born of magical parents are considered little more than animals. Albus would have you believe in gently reforming it all over the course of decades, or more likely centuries. I believe that the goblin's example is the one that we should be following."

"You mean we oughtta machine-gun anything that tries to shove us about, right?" Harry confirmed.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Snape confirmed. "Our target, my boy, is the government of this cesspit that calls itself a civilization, but it would not do us well to act without suitable preparation, and we are as yet unready. I know well the consequences of marching into the fray unprepared…" The potions master trailed off, his eyes focused into the distance as his right hand rubbed absently at his left forearm.

"Mr. Snape?"

"My apologies, Mr. Potter," he visibly pulled himself back to the present. "I was lost in memory for a moment. In any case, I judge that we would be best served at this moment to keep our heads down and endeavor not to draw attention while we make the necessary preparations."

"I'm a big part of your plans, aren't I?"

"You most assuredly are," Snape said with a firm nod. "And not merely because you represent our best chance of an alliance with the goblins and our best source of the substantial quantities of capital our mission shall surely require. When the time comes, I suspect you shall find yourself at the forefront of this."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "I'll need to get stronger, won't I?"

"Indeed. The flames of freedom must be lit, and the torch will someday in the not-so-distant future be handed to you. It would be best for us all if you were prepared for that day."

"I know my kin will fight alongside you in this, Harry." Suze spoke up for the first time from her place at her dragon's side.

"How so?" Snape asked, curious why they would do so.

"We owe the Great Wyrm a debt of blood unspilt. A year has passed since last we lost any to the spider plague, and we no longer need fear them, for now it is they who know fear," Suze told him with conviction. "We owe him a debt which can never be truly repaid, and when the time comes that he makes battle upon his foes, my grandfather has declared that we shall go forth beside him."

"I see," Snape frowned. He then let out one of his dry and not-very-pleasant chuckles. "Then I suppose I should welcome you both to the revolution."

From then on, Thursday evenings were spent studying potions and plotting to overthrow the wizarding government, both of which Harry found absolutely fascinating and, in fact, quite