"Come on Ron, it'll be alright. I have a good feeling about this." I say, giving him a little wink and dragging him with me to an empty compartment toward the back of the train. Little did we know that the boy we would befriend that day would lead u...
"Wonder what it's like to live a peaceful life," Ron sighed causing me to laugh.
"Ron we live with the twins. When was it ever peaceful?" He shrugged, pointing his quill at me in a way to say, "you have a point".
It was the morning after we had found out about Hagrids little secret and we were all in the Great Hall doing our homework, finally. Hermione had finally given in and made the boys a study schedule as well and they were not too thrilled. As if they'd even use it...
We heard some light screeching and looked up to see Hedwig flying down toward us with a letter in her claws. Once she dropped it, she hopped over toward me so I could share my toast with her until Harry showed us the letter he had received. It only had two words on it. "It's hatching."
Despite Ron and I wanting to just skip Herbology to go see it, Hermione absolutely refused to let us.
"Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?" He pleaded, still trying to get her to change her mind.
"We've got lessons!" She hissed. "We'll get into trouble and that's nothing to what Hagrid's going to be in when someone finds out what he's doi-" I put my hand over her mouth to stop her from talking anymore.
"Shut up!" Harry whispered as we watched Draco stop only a few feet away from us. Had he heard them? I worried. And while they didn't mention the dragon the rest of the way to class, they continued to argue about going the entire time. Harry and I had decided to just walk ahead of them to get a break. By the time we reached Professor Sprout's greenhouse, they had finally agreed on a decision. After class, we would go down to Hagrid's hut to see the progress. So that is exactly what we did.
"It's nearly out," Hagrid whispered to us as we walked into his home. The egg wasn't in the fire anymore, instead, it was now laying on the table with multiple deep cracks on it. I was able to see something moving inside and we could hear a weird tapping noise from it. We all got excited each grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the table to watch. Once the egg had split open, a tiny black baby dragon slipped out. To most people, it wasn't very pretty, but I had to disagree. The wings were extremely large compared to its body, with a long nose with large nostrils, little stubs for horns, and large bright orange eyes. Then it sneezed and out came a few sparks. "Awe," I cooed, ignoring the other three judgemental looks toward me.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Hagrid cried out, reaching his hand out to pet the dragon, who only snapped at his fingers in return. I nodded excitedly. "Bless him, he knows his mommy." That's when I hesitated, looking up at Hagrid, I was reminded of the fact that this wasn't some innocent pet. It could become extremely dangerous and with Hagrid not realizing this, he could put himself in danger just trying to pet it!
"Hagrid," Hermione started. "How fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly?" I looked at her with wide eyes and I could tell she knew it wasn't going to be a good answer.
Hagrid had opened his mouth to answer but stopped as he looked over our shoulders and his face went white. He jumped up and ran to the window.
"What's the matter, Hagrid?" I asked him, running over beside him and peeking out the window. My heart dropped.
"Someone was lookin' through the gap in the curtains... It's- uh- a kid. He's runnin' back up ter the school." And with that, Harry ran out the door while Hermione and Ron joined me in the window. Although it was already a little dark, you could still see a short blonde-haired boy running up toward the castle.
"It's Malfoy... He knows about the dragon." I whispered, already worried about what he could do to Hagrid knowing that he didn't care for the large man at all.
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The entire next week we had all been on edge. Draco had been walking around the school with a large smirk on his face and acted as if he owned the school. It was absolute bullshit.
We had been spending a lot of our free time with Hagrid and his baby dragon- who had already started to grow- and no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get him to listen to reason.
"Just let him go," Harry encouraged. "Set him free."
"I cant." Hagrid sniffled. "He's too little. He'd die." And while I loved Hagrid, I honestly wanted to rip my hair out in frustration. The dragon had managed to grow three times its size. In a week. Hagrid hadn't been keeping up with his work for Hogwarts and it was starting to show. Looking around, you could see lots of empty bottles of brandy and poor chicken feathers all over the room, and smoke was still in the air because of all the sneezing that the baby dragon did.
"I've decided to call him Norbert." Hagrid suddenly declared. "He really knows me now, watch. Norbert! Norbert! Where's mummy?" With tears in his eyes.
"He's lost his marbles..." Ron muttered to Harry and me. All we could do was nod as we watched the large man attempt to play with the dragon that was taking up most of the room in the hut.
"Hagrid," Harry pleaded. "Give it two weeks and Norbert's going to be as large as your house. Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment." But Hagrid only bit his lip and looked down at his hands.
"Charlie!" Harry suddenly shouted. Ron leaned in toward me and said, "Now he's losing it, too." Not even bothering to quiet his voice as we both just looked at Harry confused. "I'm Ron, remember?"
"No- Charlie- your brother." Duh. "Charlie, in Romania. You said he's studying dragons. We could send Norbert to him. Charlie could take care of him and then release him back in the wild once he's old enough!" My eyes widened.
"Brilliant!" We both shouted. "How about it, Hagrid?" Ron continued. After some long convincing, we finally got Hagrid to agree to our proposal so all four of us ran up to the owlery and I quickly wrote Charlie a letter informing him of the situation and asking if he could help us out at all. Now all we had to do was sit and wait...
I know it's another short chapter, I'm sorry. I hope you guys don't mind too much. What would you rather have: long chapters or a medium one like this? Or does it even matter? This is my first fanfic so I'd appreciate the help. Thank you!
