An Accidental Alliance

chapter 2

Harry was kicked out of the library when they closed at eight. He had an hour left before curfew and spent it in the hallway just outside the library, having hovered his things rather than shove them in his back only to pull them out again right away. He got a strange look from Madame Pince when she left, but she didn't say anything.

He was still working on the full-scale Welsh Green, trying to get the shading on its stomach right. The scales kept throwing him off and he'd changed the color of his ink from light green to dark over fifty times since he had started. It finally occurred to him that he could smudge the ink and once he conjured a glass of water and some paper towels he found his job much easier. Suddenly everything clicked and a few minutes later he had an exact reproduction of the dragon on the cover of the book.

He held up the parchment and smiled at it. He hadn't known he was good at drawing, never would have guessed from his atrocious handwriting, but this wasn't half bad. Yeah, it was just a cartoon, but it was a perfect cartoon, roughly speaking, and he had drawn it. It had only taken-he cast a Tempus charm-two hours to get it. That was pretty impressive, given that he'd never drawn before. Or maybe it was awful, he really didn't know. His knowledge of anything and everything art-related was exactly zero.

Then Harry ruined the drawing completely by trying to add the quote. He knew his handwriting was bad, but he thought he could write those four words without making it look like a five-year-old had scrawled all over the paper. He was wrong. Now the whole thing looked ridiculous, and he cursed. He attempted to magic his letters into something resembling calligraphy but he just made it worse, spreading the ink around the page and over his perfect dragon and then he set the damned thing on fire and watched angrily as it burned away to nothing.

"Potter!"

Harry flinched, jerking towards the sound of the voice. Professor McGonagall was striding towards him, lips thin and a dangerous frown on her face.

"Yes, Professor?" he asked quietly.

"Out of bed past curfew," she stated, standing before him. Towering before him, really, since he was still sitting. "Doing magic in the hallways. Setting fires. Really, Potter, what's gotten into you?"

"I lost track of time?" he said, almost like a question. "And I, er, got frustrated with my Muggle Studies essay."

"So you burned it," she replied. "And what, may I ask, are you doing with a children's book?"

Harry flushed. "Um. Studying?"

"Your lack of conviction is as unsurprising as it is ridiculous," Professor McGonagall said sharply. "Ten points from Gryffindor, and be lucky it isn't more. Get back to your dorm, Potter."

"Yes, Professor," he said, quickly gathering his things and speeding off towards Gryffindor Tower where settled himself at a table in a corner and went back to drawing dragons. He knew his time might be better used attempting to improve his penmanship, but that was a task to save for another night. Potentially never.

Around ten he set his drawings aside, which were really just exact copies of the cartoon on the cover over and over again, and picked up Hogwarts, A History. The title was in big, elegant letters along the bottom, and underneath, in smaller letters, the author. The school's motto curved along the top of the cover on a scroll, and the castle was in the middle. Harry considered. He wanted to stick with cartoon dragons-he had figured them out-but as long as he was pretending to design a new cover for the book, he might as well do it right, and there was no way such an esteemed book would concede to have a cartoon on the cover.

Not that they'd have someone tickling a dragon at all, but that wasn't the point.

Harry considered. Maybe it was the point. It wasn't like this endeavor would ever leave the confines of his sock drawer, where he kept all hidden things. Realistically speaking, tickling a dragon was more of a cartoonish activity than a realistic portrayal of a dragon curled up on the ground laughing while a little girl tickled its belly with a flower. Namely, it was not possible to use the words "realistic", "dragon" and "tickle" in the same sentence as long as said sentence did not also involve words like "flames" and "claws" and "very dead wizards".

So, cartoon it was.

He flipped through the book again, looking for a reference photo with the dragon in roughly the right position-lying on its back. But it seemed dragons did not do that, and while he supposed that made sense, as their bellies were potentially vulnerable, it was nevertheless very frustrating. Eventually settled on the cover photo again; at least the dragon was standing up, so if he turned the book sideways, it was almost like it was lying down.

Sort of.

It was like all of his hard work had disappeared the second he tried to draw something from his imagination. Getting the dragon in a curled position, finding the right arc, that was surprisingly difficult. Half his dragons were folded in half and the others were lying flat; there was no in between.

Harry momentarily gave up on dragons and filled an entire sheet of parchment with bowl-shaped arcs. Then, slowly but surely, he filled in each arc with a miniature dragon. Somehow it was much easier to imagine when all he could see were arcs.

When Ron came over around eleven to tell him he was going to bed and Harry really ought to as well, they had double potions with the Slytherins first thing, Harry's sheet of arcs was almost entirely a sheet of dragons. There were a few left to fill in but, for the most part, he had perfected the art of drawing a dragon lying on its back, curled up as if giggling. He was ignoring the hard parts, like their expressions and the little girl but, for the mean time, he was pleased with himself.

"You really are copying dragons out if a kid's book, then," Ron asked as Harry handed over his handiwork for inspection. "I thought Hermione made it up to cover something embarrassing. Not that this isn't, mind you. Pages and pages of dragons, Harry? Really?"

"I'm redesigning the cover of Hogwarts, A History," Harry said. "To go with our motto, y'know? Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus and all."

"So you're drawing a dragon that's being tickled?" Ron asked, handing the drawings back.

"Yes," Harry said firmly, as if it wasn't weird at all.

"Huh," Ron replied. "Well, I guess that's alright, then. Dragons are pretty cool."

Harry thought back to fourth year, and first, and how he had almost gotten killed both times, never mind the dragon they had ridden out of Gringotts. "Er, yeah."

"Anyway, coming to bed, or are you going to stay up all night drawing?" Ron asked. "I'm sure Slughorn would love that excuse. At least it'd be a new one. 'Sorry I'm distracted, Professor, I'm just tired from drawing cartoons all night.'"

"Ha ha, very funny," Harry replied, rolling his eyes and putting his things back in his bag. "I'm coming, don't worry. I don't care about Slughorn, but Malfoy spends enough of Potions glaring at me as it is, the last thing I need is to give him an excuse to complain for real."

"Oh, that's right," Ron said, leading them up the stairs. "I forgot Slughorn assigned you two as partners. How's that going?"

"How do you think?" Harry grumbled. "He does most of the work, at least. I just have to do all the prep, and sometimes two or three times if he thinks I've done it wrong, and he does the actual brewing. Suppose it could be worse."

"Something worse than Malfoy?" Ron asked with a grin. "Yeah, maybe if you were partnered with that Aragog monstrosity."

They entered the dorm in a fit of giggles.