Drarry One Shots

Dragon Riders

A/N I've taken a brief break from a longer story I'm working on to write this one shot. It comes from another brilliant prompt from @Phantomofgryffindor - thank you as always. It was a lovely fluffy idea; I managed to turn it angsty... It's okay, Draco is very determined. Hope you enjoy. xx

(Warning: contains strong language)

***

'If you're going to be in the room, I expect absolute silence so you don't spook the hatchling,' Harry said without looking up at the spectators. It was a precarious time. Even after getting this far, the hatching of a dragon wasn't always successful.

Harry knelt on the sandy floor of the Incubation Room in the gloom. He was the only one not in the Gallery but in the Nesting Arena. He focused only on the large pale-blue egg in front of him. A crowd of the Romanian Dragon Reserve workers had gathered to line the walls and watch; they did for occasions like this. Seeing a dragon hatch, even in a Reserve, was surprisingly rare.

He'd designed and built the Incubation Room himself. There had been no specialist facilities when he first arrived at the Reserve two years previously and it had taken time to realise what was needed. The Incubation Room was circular kutcha hut with a 'gallery' that hugged the thick straw and mud walls – with the right Wards, the mud walls were harder to burn down than wooden structures. The gallery was specifically away from the four heated nests that had clear paths between them. 'Gallery' was a bit of a misnomer; it was more of a raised sandy path but it normally worked to keep visitors to the edges instead of wandering into one of the quarters. The room only needed four nests because the eggs were so rare, even in a reserve the size of the one in Romania. There was underfloor heating that focused on the nest areas and the temperature of the room was a very specific 38°C. The doors were Warded so the temperature never dropped, even when idiotic Dragon Riders wandered in to have a nosy around and then thought they could bond with an unhatched dragon.

'But nothing's happening,' whinged one of the latest Dragon Riders who was watching with the Reserve workers.

He was shushed by someone else spectating.

The new Dragon Rider clearly didn't understand the rarity of the situation and the reverence it automatically inspired. But they never did.

Seeing a dragon hatch was a rarity because dragons were notoriously clumsy with a short attention span and very little intelligence, despite what some may wish for or dream of. Dragons tended to think along the lines of food, flight, and fire without much in between. A brooding mother only ever laid one egg and that got broken too easily or forgotten about when the she got hungry or fancied feeling the wind beneath her wings or decided to randomly scorch everything in the vicinity. The attrition rate of dragon eggs was high. It was part of the reason why dragons were an endangered species and why the few Reserves that existed were so important. It was the entire reason why Harry's job existed. So, while risks were high when it came to working at the Dragon Reserves, the rewards were even higher.

Harry had found this particular egg on a walkabout with Charlie Weasley and another Dragon Handler called Mack. It was still warm but the mother was nowhere to be seen. He'd cast a warming spell around the egg and they'd waited, hidden from view, hoping she'd come back. She didn't. Charlie and Mack left Harry to it; they had fully-grown dragons to track and check on and there'd been another huge territorial fight the previous evening. It would undoubtedly mean looking for and dealing with injured and bad-tempered dragons.

Harry waited for nearly ten hours in a cramped, uncomfortable position near the messy, half-made nest in the quarry. He reckoned the mother was a first-timer, given the lack of care given to the nest. The more experienced mothers were better nest makers, though never perfect, mostly because they just hauled together what they could find, wherever they fancied, often in the oddest of places. This particular nest was slammed up against the rock face, half-made with small boulders and gathered rocks, tree branches, and what looked to be the scorched remains of some bones.