The Brightest Sun

Chapter 30

How to Train Your Dragon: Harry
Summary:
Flying lessons and hard truths

Chapter Text

He stared in complete surprise, unsure why he even bothered to imagine that life would be something less exciting with the terrible trio on hand. Even with Teddy off at Hogwarts, Aegon and Rhaenys found enough ways to get up to all sorts of trouble.

Case in point: the dragons that were currently hovering over the two sheepishly grinning children.

“Remind me again,” he said, a note of irritation creeping into his voice, “just why you thought it would be a wonderful idea to go flying at this time?”

“We’re less likely to be seen?” Egg shrugged, hissing at the stinging kick Rhae sent him.

Harry’s green eyes bore into hers, a headache growing as he knew that Rhaenys had had little trouble convincing her brother.

“Hatchlings must learn to fly,” Auriga hissed, her golden eyes focused on his.

“What is a dragon without a rider?” Iacomus added, and Harry wanted to bang his head into the nearest post at the realization that Teddy had taught the damn dragons, intelligent as they were, how to argue their way.

He pursed his lips, eyes narrowed at the no longer smiling duo. The dragons were more than large enough to go flying on, the two of them three years old and as tall as Potter Hall. He had been dismayed to learn that wild dragons often continued to grow until their death - at an excrutiatingly slow rate once they reached middling age for dragons, some fifty years after their hatching - and the Horntail and Ironbelly he had met in his teen years were not the best example of their species' full height.

“You’ll have extra chores all week,” he told them, mentally groaning at the sight of the delight in their eyes. “We start training tomorrow, and you have to take care of them yourselves. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Dad,” they chorused, wrapping their arms around him in a tight hug before bounding back to their rooms.

He was left with the two dragons, their scales glinting in the moonlight. He was a touch surprised he had managed to keep them off the dragons for so long, but with Teddy at school he knew it would only be a matter of time before they began insisting on riding them, only a year left before Rhaenys was at Hogwarts.

“You might want to rest up,” he told them, sighing as they snorted and took off, the gust of air ruffling his hair.

Grumbling, Harry trudged back upstairs to his room, ignoring the snickering portraits as they placed their bets. He slid into bed, feeling Elia stir in her sleep, his wife turning to face him as she curled into his side.

“Which of them did it?” She asked sleepily.

“Both,” he answered dryly, a soft huff of laughter escaping him. “They start learning tomorrow.”

“Fantastic,” she murmured, and Harry watched as she quickly fell back asleep.

Things had not been so easy between them, the birth of Carina Malfoy only solidifying her want to have another child. She’d not said anything, wanting to avoid another argument and cooling period between them, but Harry knew what the look on her face meant.

He struggled with the thought sometimes, aching to go through with it but unwilling to see Elia suffer needlessly. Those times, he cursed himself for not using a contraceptive from the beginning, cursed the fact that she had fallen pregnant and his inability to easily have children, and cursed Tom Riddle for what he had cost him.

“It’s not as easy as you make it seem,” he murmured, eyes tracing her features. He could easily imagine what a child of theirs would look like - Teddy’s morphing habits helping him picture it clearly - and he felt a pang at the thought of what could be.