Chapter Text
Flashes of yellow, green, and red lit up the dark space. She was nursing a cut arm, her wand arm. It was an ambush. “Bombarda.” She flung out recklessly at the group of poachers, the explosion blasting them against the side of the tent. The rafters creaked, breaking in half before debris rained down.
“Harry, move!” She yelled as she ran towards him, grabbing at the shoulder of his coat as they dived past the falling beams.
They collapsed down facing each other breathlessly in a narrow hallway. She took in her partner, his glasses fallen askew, hair a mess. “You alright?” She asked him, quickly checking him over for injuries. Harry didn’t seem to bleed. He’d grown out a scruffy beard that desperately needed a shave and had become considerably bulky since their school days.
“Yeah, I’m fine. You?” He asked breathlessly, pointing his head towards her arm.
“Just a scratch.” She lied. She could feel the sharp sting of the laceration that told her it was far too deep to be just a scratch.
A deafening roar rang out in the tent, causing Hermione and Harry to cover their ears.
“How many poachers do you think we’ve got left?” Hermione asked Harry. She started feeling woozy.
Hermione had led a team of Aurors to this location, tracking down poachers running a dragon fighting ring. They hadn’t accurately predicted just how many they would encounter. The rest of their team, along with the Magizoologists specialised in handling the said dragons, got stuck behind holding a group off whilst Harry and Hermione advanced.
“Only one way to find out.” Harry said ever the hero.
They both leapt out from around the corner, wands drawn. Their eyes blew wide as the room opened up to a lowered pit, seating around it in a full ring for spectators. The pit wasn’t empty. A full sized dragon sat mere metres away, chained to the ground with its back turned as if shielding itself. The other dragons they’d encountered had all been in cages.
Crouching, they cautiously tried to move around the pit, not wanting to alert the dragon of their presence.
A large neck swung rapidly towards them serpent like.
They both froze.
Hermione, Harry and the dragon all dared not to move. The dragon watched them with its large pupil-less eyes.
“Don’t move.” Hermione warned quietly.
She’d never seen a dragon like it. It almost reminded her of the Ukrainian Ironbelly she rode on the back of out of Gringotts. Yet this one had a pearlescent sheen to it. It was beautiful.
Its gaze seemed to be locked on her and her alone, yet it didn’t seem aggressive, almost as if it knew they weren’t there to harm it. The dragon, heavily chained and injured, but she did not know how much slack it had, if it could reach them.
Mesmerised by the beast before her, she didn’t realise someone had struck her until she was lying on the cold, hard ground.
“Stupefy!” she heard Harry shout before an ear-piercing screech sounded from the dragon.
“Hermione! Hermione! Are you alright?” Harry’s blurred face came into view, then his lips started moving, but nothing was coming out. She couldn’t feel anything, she could only feel the cold hard ground against her back, her palms. She could feel the cold sitting on her chest. It had somehow burrowed under her skin, settled over her bones like snow.
Harry disappeared from her vision all together, the avalanche burying her completely.
“Mum! Mum!” Hermione woke to the sound of her six-year-old daughter’s voice.
She opened her eyes blearily and took in the sight of untamed red curls bouncing around a freckled face. Hermione hugged her fiercely, thinking she’d never get to hug her again. She squeezed her tight, nuzzling her face into the nest of hair.
“Mum, you’re freezing!” Rose giggled as she pulled away.
A healer, her ex-husband Ron and Harry, all stood in the room at the foot of her bed, their faces solemn at Rose’s comment.
“Are you alright, Mione?” Ron asked. She could see just how worried he was, but knew he was trying to stay strong for their daughter.
“Yeah, I think so.” She looked at Rose, then at the healer. “I’m still cold, but I think it’s eased a bit.” She shivered at her own lie.
Harry came up to her side and held her hand, giving it a tight squeeze, looking down on her with tears in the corner of his eyes. “How about we go find some apple rings on the fifth floor, Rose?” he distracted himself, plastering on a smile for her daughter.
Her little face lit up as she kissed her mother and hopped off the bed to take Harry’s hand. Hermione mouthed a thank you as they walked out the door together.
Ron’s face turned grave as he faced the healer, waiting for an update.
“They hit you with a curse, something far worse than just your ordinary freezing spell. We could not find a counter-curse for it… yet. However, we’ve been able to get your temperature to rise marginally. It appears warming you by muggle methods, blankets etc are the best practice. I assume you’re not interested in being moved to the fourth floor?”
Hermione looked at Ron quickly and shook her head. She couldn’t think of anything worse than being admitted to the Janus Thickey Ward.
“Didn’t think so.” The healer looked at Ron, then back at her. “We think it’s best you return home, where we hope your condition will slowly improve. A healer will come and treat you daily. I’ll go prepare your discharge paperwork.”
“Thank you.” Hermione said in a shaky breath.
The healer nodded and left the room.
“Do you want Harry and I to come stay with you?”
“No, I’ll be fine. I just need to be tucked up by the fire under a layer of blankets, it seems.” She scoffed. How ridiculous.
“You’ll be able to read books all day. That’ll make you happy.” He laughed half-heartily.
“Well, it’s certainly forced me to take some time off work.” She commented bitterly. That had always been a sore point between her and Ron, working too much.
Harry and Rose came bounding back in with their haul of candies. Rose jumped on Hermione’s bed with her apple rings.
Harry gave Ron a side hug. “Everything alright?” He asked, looking between them both.
“Yeah Miones going home.”
“We’ll come stay.” Harry declared.
Hermione and Ron laughed at the repeated suggestion.
“You can visit. I don’t need to be banging into you both every morning in the kitchen.” They both chuckled, but she could see them both wince slightly. That was when she had first caught them together, making out up against her kitchen cupboards. It wasn’t funny then but she could laugh about it now.
“I’ll catch up with you and Rose. I need to talk to Hermione.” Harry said, giving Ron a look.
Hermione was head Auror, she surpassed Harry easily considering she was the real reason for his survival all throughout their school years. Ron had dropped out all together, now working at the joke shop with George.
Ron nodded and left the room with their daughter.
“Move over.” Harry commanded and made himself comfortable next to Hermione in the hospital bed. Tucking her under his arm and against his chest to keep her warm. “Blimey, Mione you’re freezing!” He rubbed his arm up and down her back, trying to get some warmth into her bones.
For all the hero Harry was as an Auror, duelling by Hermione’s side, on the inside he had a warm gooey centre, not unlike his famous chocolate lava cakes. He loved to bake and cook for friends and family. Hermione couldn’t count how many times he’d surprised her with a fridge and pantry stocked full of his homemade food. At first she hated it, jealous of his warmth that had lured her husband into his arms, something she had lacked. But it didn’t take long for Harry to break through her defensives. He’d do anything for her and Ron. Rose was lucky to have two father figures in her life, Harry doted on her, loved her as if she was his own. How could Hermione have anything in her heart other than love for that?
She desperately tried to nuzzle against his chest, but the chill still clung to her fiercely. The healers had put three pairs of woollen socks on her feet, yet she still couldn’t feel them.
“We think they used it on the dragons to keep them from breathing fire when they weren’t fighting.”
Great, she was suffering from a curse that could make even a fire-breathing dragon cold.
“What happened to the dragons?”
“They have transferred them to the reservation in Romania. The one we encountered in the pit, well, it escaped, broke out from its chains, then ate the poacher who cursed you before tearing through the roof of the tent.”
That dragon had life-threatening injuries. She hoped it survived. If the poachers had used the curse on that dragon and it felt like she did now, she understood why it would eat one of them.
“You sure you don’t want me and Ron to come stay? We could hop on either side of you in bed, keep you nice and warm.”
Hermione laughed and swatted him. “Stop! No!! I don’t need to be in a Ron and Harry sandwich. Thank you very much.”
“Incendio.” Ron lit the large fire hearth in Hermione’s living room as she wrapped up on the couch, facing the flames. Multiple woollen blankets curtesy of Molly Weasley hugged her tightly whilst Rose sat at the other end of the couch with her feet tucked in, reading a book.
“Alright Rose, we’re going to let Mum rest now, alright.”
“Nooo, I want to stay with Mum. I’ve got to keep her warm!”
Ron looked at Hermione for help. Ron thrived as a parent, admittedly he wasn’t much help when Rose was a newborn, he was completely out of his depths. But soon Rosie was his entire world. That world just didn’t leave any room for her.
“She can stay if she wants. It’s fine, I can look after her. If there’re any problems, I’ll floo you.”
Ron’s brow creased in concern.
After three nights in St. Mungos, Hermione was relieved to be home. After she and Ron split, she had bought a house in the country with some land. It had become her favourite place in the world. Everything was exactly the way she liked it, with no one else complaining about how many books lay about, or how many little Muggle nicknacks she collected.
Her living room had wooden floors with multiple rugs layered about the space. There was a window seat that caught the afternoon sun perfectly, looking out onto the front yard.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ron pressed.
Rose was six now and took little looking after. Hermione wasn’t worried about it. “I’d like the company,” she said, warming her legs against her daughters.
Harry returned from the kitchen. “Right, dinners in the oven, you just have to pull it out when it beeps. Try not to burn the house down.” He chided, whilst wrapping his arms around Ron’s waist.
Ron leant his head on top of Harry’s. “Are you sure you’re alright to look after Rose?”
“I promise to call you both if I need to. But we’ll be fine, we won’t move very far, will we Rose?” Rose’s face glued to her book as Hermione tickled her with her feet under the blankets whilst she giggled, still not taking her eyes off the page.
Ron and Harry kissed them both goodbye before throwing floo powder into the flames.
“Rose! Rose!!!” Hermione called out, wondering where her daughter had disappeared to. She had just come out of a hot bath, expecting her daughter to be curled up beside the fire where she’d left her. It was now her bedtime.
She walked out onto the back porch. The sensor light flickered on. She could see in the distance her daughter was standing in the back meadow. What on earth was she doing out there at this time of night!?
Hermione shivered, making her way down the porch steps hurriedly towards her daughter. “Rosie!” She called out to the night. “What are you doing out here?!”
Her daughter turned around, her wild hair caught in the evening breeze as she yelled, “Mum! There’s a dragon in the meadow!”
Hermione sprinted then, grabbing her wand out of her dressing gown pocket as her teeth chattered fiercely. It was a spring evening but she may as well of been running through a blizzard.
“Rose!!! Get back now!!! Get back to the house!” Hermione’s throat felt like she was choking on shards of ice as she screamed.
Her daughter did not move even though she stood only mere metres from a dragon.
Hermione couldn’t believe her eyes when she came closer, standing beside Rose, wand at the ready. Couldn’t believe what dragon was lying down in her meadow. It was the dragon chained to the pit in the poachers tent with its head bowed in submission, those glittering eyes now fixed on Hermione.
“It likes apple rings!” Her daughter exclaimed enthusiastically, holding up a near empty bag.
“I need you to go back to the house now, Rose.” Hermione said sternly, not taking her eyes off the injured dragon sitting amongst the wildflowers.
“Why? It’s friendly!” Rose argued.
“Now, Rose.”
“Mum, he’s injured. You need to help him!”
“I will. Go to the house and call your father. Tell him we need Uncle Charlie.”
The dragon puffed a plume of smoke her way. It was easily twice the size of Hermione even sitting down, its large front claws as big as the sheep that frolicked in her paddocks.
“But I want to watch.” Her daughter whined.
“Now Rose!”
Rose took off sprinting back towards the house.
Hermione, with her hands held up in front of her, carefully stepped towards the dragon. It only submitted further, rolling onto its side so its belly faced skyward. Its scales were otherworldly, pearly with an iridescent sheen catching in the moonlight. Marring its beauty was large lacerations and scarring, some wounds still open.
“What did they do to you?” She whispered to the night.
She carefully stepped around its head, moving closer towards its belly, it was hard to tell whether its pupil-less eyes were tracking her. She couldn’t believe the heat radiating from the beast. It was like standing next to a bonfire. Tentatively, she dared reach out and touch its hot scales. She felt the dragon tense slightly before relaxing into her touch. Hermione couldn’t help it. She closed her eyes, letting the warmth radiate through her palm and into her body. She craved it. The sensation reminding her of the dream she had in St Mungos.
“I’m going to heal you now.” She whispered softly to the dragon, its belly rising and falling with each breath.
She performed a series of basic healing spells she had picked up over the last decade working as an Auror. As she moved down its body, working on a section of its back near its hind leg, the dragon tucked its spiked tail around her and lifted its wing, creating a cocoon.
Exhausted from the spell work they had ordered her not to do, she slumped down amongst the daisies resting against the dragon’s warm belly.
“Hermione!” She heard feet pounding towards her.
“I’m alright.” She called out groggily.
The dragon huffed, lifting its head with a grumble from deep in its chest. Hermione placed her hand on its scales. “It’s alright, he’s a friend.” She didn’t want to move. She wanted to stay there all night camped out under the stars against the dragon, not caring if it would decide to eat her or not.
“Hermione.” Charlie warned.
She used the dragon to stand on wobbly feet, the warmth departing as the chill greeted her savagely. She walked over to Charlie Weasley, his wide frame and ginger hair blowing in the evening breeze.
“Blimey Mione! Are you alright?” He grabbed her arms and protectively put her behind him, “What on earth is an Antipodean Opaleye doing in your backyard?”
“It’s the same dragon Harry, and I rescued on that raid. It must’ve tracked my scent. It’s terribly friendly. It needed healing.” She said breathlessly, her teeth chattering.
Charlie hesitantly took a step towards the creature, bowing his head as to not startle it. The dragon blew out a large puff of smoke towards him.
“Doesn’t seem to like me as much as you.” Charlie reached into his satchel and threw the dragon a large piece of meat.
Hermione looked on in wonder, the dragon seemingly satisfied.
“Come on, let’s get you inside.” Charlie said as he put his arm around her shoulder, leading her back toward the house.
The dragon growled behind her, and she turned to watch it huffing as she walked away. “Rose was standing right by it. She was feeding it. How is that possible?”
“It’s an Antipodean Opaleye. They’re native to New Zealand, actually. We know the breed for being fairly docile. Not that they wouldn’t attack if provoked, but it’s obviously formed an attachment with you. Rare but not unheard of, something we Magizoologists only dream about.” He spoke as he opened the back door.
Rose came barrelling around the corner. “Uncle Charlie!” She threw herself into his arms.
“I heard you were feeding the dragon!”
Her face was impossibly wide in excitement! “I did! She loves apple rings! Is she alright now? Did Mummy heal her?”
Hermione laughed, “We don’t know if it’s a girl, Rosie.”
“But it’s so pretty it must be!”
Everyone laughed at the six-year-olds sound logic.
“She or he will be okay.” Hermione reassured her daughter.
“Is that the same dragon from the raid?” Harry asked, looking out the kitchen window.
“Yes it is. What do you suppose we do Charlie?” Hermione asked.
“Well,” he scratched his copper beard, “That breed prefers valleys over caves, and considering his apparent likeness to you, Hermione, you may find he will make this his new home.”
“That’s not an option though with Rose, is it?” Added Ron. “She wouldn’t be safe here with a dragon roaming around.”
“From what I’ve observed tonight, I can almost guarantee an attack from that dragon would be highly unlikely unless threatened. I could organise getting the dragon removed from the area, but that would not be something I’d advise. We seldom like to remove dragons from their natural habit. My best advice would be to wait it out. You may find the dragon moves on by itself.”
Hermione stayed out to the dragon currently sleeping in her meadow, “Wonderful, I now have to share my home with a dragon.”