//------------------------------//
// Lesson Zero 
// Story: Harry Potter and the Crystal Empire 
// by Damaged 
//------------------------------//

Kirin were strange, but I think they'd make good wizards and witches. No less than three impromptu songs had rounded out our day, with offers from various kirin to use their couches/homes for the night. Despite her being the strangest of a strange bunch, Twilight and Addera had both agreed that Rain Shine, the leader of the kirin, would be the best choice.

And that's how I wound up sitting across from the biggest kirin I'd ever seen. She looked at me with evident curiosity, though she was a lot quieter than some kirin I could mention. "You're here to learn how to control your anger?"

I knew I was smiling. Hearing that—hearing the head-honcho kirin ask that—was the fulfillment of this whole quest. "Yes please."

Rain Shine used her magic to pick up her cup and bring it to her lips. A long, slow sip of her tea made her sigh as if it were the best drink ever. "The secret is to not get mad. Kirin have been surviving generations using meditation to push all the things that would make us angry deep inside."

Well, that seemed easy. "Can you teach me that?"

"You're in luck. Teaching kirin this meditation is what I'm best at. It works best if you're a little upset already. Is there something you can think about that might make you upset?"

The answer to that was easy. "Yeah. How angry do you want me?"

"Not enough to make you turn into a nirik."

So definitely not the Dursleys. Okay, what about Snape? No, he was hardly annoying at all anymore. Slytherin? Ah, there we go. I thought about Draco and how annoying he—or she—was. Feeling the annoyance build, I backed off from my thoughts and opened my eyes.

Rain's eyes and horn were glowing softly. She nodded to me. "There. That's good. Now, I want you to close your eyes and focus on that thing again."

About to start, I paused as a familiar sound met my ears—which caused them and my head to turn toward the open window. "That's a broom. A broom someone's really pushing hard. Who'd be riding a broom here?"

The noise was kinda like a thrumming sound, but with an odd rattle to it. I jumped down from my seat and ran to the door. A quick Locomotion charm and I was outside and looking at a gray-maned pegasus with bright blue coat who was climbing off an old-style broom that looked like it had some changes made. "Madam Hooch?"

She spun around and locked eyes with me. "Harry. James. Potter. What on Earth do you think you're playing at?" Each step she took toward me seemed to shake the ground like an earthquake. "Do you have any idea the turmoil Hogwarts is in right now? What possessed you to do this?"

Still with the anger bubbling within me from my aborted meditation class, I stomped a hoof on the ground in protest. "I don't want to go back to the Dursleys! They're horrible, they are mean to me, and they wouldn't accept me when I was human!" I could feel my nirik side starting to nibble at the edges of my mind. "And—I wouldn't last five minutes with them before I set their house on fire."

"You want to know the truth? You're making decisions as an adult, so I should treat you as one. Neither Minerva nor myself were enthusiastic about you staying there either. There weren't a lot of options, however, and Albus claimed it was the safest place for you." Hooch tucked her broom up under her wing and started walking to the edge of the village—away from me.

Getting the distinct feeling I should follow, I trotted after her. Her tone held none of the accusation and I was more curious to know what she wanted to tell me than I was furious. "But I could have stayed at the school. I could have been fostered to another wizarding family. What was so special about the Dursleys?"

"Because your mother asked it."

I froze. The revelation that Hooch knew my parents was big. I looked up at her. "Why?"

"No one knows, Harry. Who came with you?"

"Addera and Twilight. Addera is—" I bit back on my words. What was she to me? She felt like home. Like a real home. When she hugged me I thought of— "Addera's taking care of me."

She let out a sigh, and it looked like she became a little smaller. "Well that answers most of my questions. Why are you here, Harry?"

"I came here to learn how to stop getting angry and turning into a nirik. I want it to stop so I can just be normal." I almost shouted the last bit. Being normal was what everyone wanted. Catching on fire randomly was good for a party trick, but it was starting to get annoying.

"And you thought they'd have all the answers?"

"They have to. Look, they haven't burned everything down lately." I was proud of figuring that out. If Hogwarts weren't made almost entirely of stone, I was sure I would have burned that down by now—not counting the owlery.

Madam Hooch let out a sigh. "Tell me, Harry, have you learned how they suppress their more flammable urges?"

Now I was a little confused and unsure. What was she getting at? "They meditate. Rain Shine said they push all the things that would make them angry down inside." Now that I said it myself, I realized that something about it sounded wrong. 

"By the look of your ears wilting, Harry, I'd guess you worked out that is not a good fix?"

"It doesn't solve the problem, does it?"

Hooch shook her head. "No it doesn't, Harry Potter. All that does is add weight to the problem and put it off for another day. So, who do you think has all the answers?" 

This was like class. Well, it was like the better classes—the ones where you don't get told the answer, but you have to learn it on your own. "Dumbledore?" The short and sharp laugh from Hooch told me that was wrong. "Princess Celestia?"

"I'd wager she knows more than most, but the point I was getting at was that no one knows them all. It's rhetorical."

I knew that word. We'd learned it in English at my muggle school. "I just want an answer to this one. How do I stop setting places on fire?"

"A wise student of mine, one of the best fliers—on a broom—I've ever seen, worked out that if he lets the pressure off from time to time, the fire doesn't burn him up inside."

It didn't take a genius or a wizard to work out she was talking about me. "But that doesn't work perfectly. I still get angry at things."

"That seems like quite the problem. You might never solve it, but I think you have a good chance. The one thing I can tell you is, shoving all your anger into a ball inside you is not a healthy way to deal with it."

Sometimes I wished that reality wasn't quite so real. This was Equestria! The ponies here were meant to be happy all the time and not be stuck with problems they can't solve. It took me some time to figure my way through the storm of thoughts in my head. I wanted to find Ron and Hermione and see if they needed help. I wanted to go back to Hogwarts and help them do—do whatever they need done. "I need to tell them that there's a better way."

"And then?"

"Then I need to go back to Hogwarts and see if I can help with anything."

"You're a good boy, Harry Potter, but sometimes you need to realize that you don't have to be everywhere and doing everything. I'll come with you, but you need to go back to the Dursle—"

Anger flared and I felt my nirik self shoving forward. I barely had enough time to throw my glasses off before I flared into a small inferno. "I am not going back—"

"Get yourself under control, Harry. I'll talk to Addera in the meantime." It shocked me to see Madam Hooch just stand up and walk away.

But the surprise of her leaving wasn't enough to shake me out of my rage. I stomped off to the edge of the village and started cursing up a litany of all the things that were annoying me.

"Hi! What's up? Get a bit annoyed?"

I jerked my head around and my perfect vision narrowed down to see Autumn Blaze. She was the mare who did so much singing. Could I get angry at her just for that? You bet.

She didn't bother backing away from me as I stalked closer to her. "What, you're going to try burning me? I'm a kirin too. Come on, I'll show you my favorite burning spot."

A burning spot? My anger flickered for a moment as curiosity tried to take control. Instead, both compromised with keeping me curiously angry. I followed her into the forest and it wasn't long before I saw what she meant by burning spot. The ground was bare and darkened in patches and the plants seemed to be well back from the middle of the clearing.

"There you go. Let it all out."

That's when I realized what I'd taken for a few blackened stumps were actually made to look like kirin. Everything clicked and I realized I wasn't the only one who'd come up with the Get Angry—Let It Out method of taming my nirik side.

Fixing my eyes on the first log in a row, I let it have a blast of fire. 

"Yeah! Give it another one!"

I laughed and sent another blast of nirik fire at the log, only for my excitement to drain away the anger that'd been fueling me. What shocked me, as my vision grew blurry again, was that the fire wasn't consuming the log.

"Here, you dropped these." My glasses landed on my face, carried there by Autumn's magic. "Life has its ups and downs, and it should have both. Not that my village realize that."

"Why aren't the logs burning?" I walked over to the one I'd blasted just in time for the flames to snuff out completely. I prodded one with a hoof but it didn't yield its secrets.

"These are from the same wood I built my house from. I don't know why, but it just doesn't burn like normal wood. Gives you a bit of time if you wake up hangry, you know?" She walked up beside me and poked at the wood with her own hoof. "I was trying to come and talk to you, but Rain Shine said you ran off. She didn't try to teach you the Bottle It All Up method, did she?"

"Tried to, but then a teacher set me straight. Then I—I got angry because Rain Shine had made me get a little angry to teach her thing, and now—now I have to go and apologize to her." It was like my mouth had no brakes. Whatever I thought was pouring free. "Thanks for showing me this spot!"

"No problems. You going to give another few—And he's running off…" 

Autumn's words faded behind me as my hooves pounded on the path. I needed to find Madam Hooch and explain why I got so angry so easily.

The forest path gave way to the town itself, and that's when I heard a voice say, "There he is. Harry Potter, where did you go?"

I bounced on all four legs up to Addera and didn't fight her when she picked me up. I spotted Hooch standing behind and to the side of Addera. "I'm sorry I got angry, Madam Hooch. Rain Shine asked me to think of something that normally got me angry, so when I spoke to you I was on edge already."

"I realized that a few moments after I left you, Harry." Hooch sounded the closest to embarrassed I'd ever heard her. Normally she was so practical and stoic. 

"I ran into Autumn Blaze. She—she uses the same method I do for keeping control of her anger. She showed me a spot in the forest where she lets herself get angry." Now I did squirm in Addera's arms. It still surprised me sometimes how comfortable it felt to get hugged by her, but the coziness of it always seemed to be more than enough to keep embarrassment away. When she put me down, I pointed toward the path I'd run out from. "It's just down there."

"Miss Hooch believes we should return to Hogwarts, Harry Potter." Addera, I realized, had discretely coiled her tail around behind me. Did she think I'd run? She was smarter than I gave her credit for sometimes. "But we need to go further than that. You need to collect your things from the Dursley residence and we need to find a more appropriate home."

It wasn't at all what I expected her to say, but it was still a huge improvement on actually living with the Dursleys. What surprised me was Hooch wasn't objecting. I looked up at her curiously.

"In my personal estimation, Addera is a finer guardian by far than your foster parents. It is not completely up to me, however I would suggest that with You-Know-Who out of the picture, there'll be a lot less attention paid to a young Hogwarts student. If you return with me, I certainly won't make comment as to where you end up living." Hooch had a half smile that surprised me almost as much as her deviousness. "But you need to collect your things, Harry."

"Then we can come back?" I asked.

"If it seems like the best place to settle down. I am not sure about you, Harry Potter, but I have had enough excitement for the next hundred years or so." Addera's hoof reached down to my mane and ruffled it. Weeks ago I would have jumped aside or coughed to distract her while I backed away, but now I found myself leaning into her side.

She was comfortable and there when I wanted something comfortable. "Perhaps we could find somewhere warmer than the Crystal Empire, though. I don't mind some snow, but that seemed a little too constant for my taste."

"We have options, Harry Potter. Let's return to Hogwarts and find out what this will entail." Not seeing Addera's eyes didn't even feel strange anymore. How often did you normally get emotional feedback from looking at someone's eyes? I guess there was so much of her to watch that there were plenty of other sources.

"Okay, I'll go back. We need to tell Twilight what we're doing. She helped us get here, after all."

We ended up talking to Rain Shine and then Autumn Blaze before finally finding Twilight and telling her what we were doing. Equestria was a strange world, but I found everything moved a lot easier here—we came and met the kirin, made friends with them, then when we needed to leave there was no fuss or trouble. It was like it didn't matter if we were wizards at all.





The mark on his arm was pulling him—Bartemius Crouch Junior was sure of it. His time wrestling with the Imperius curse in his head made him perfectly aware of the fact he was being manipulated, even if Winky tried to direct him away from it. 

"Not that way. That way is—" Winky bit back her words. They both knew what lay in the direction Barty was traveling. "I'm not letting you go to Azkaban."

The tone of Winky's voice stung Barty. He knew full well that he didn't want to travel this direction, but every time he changed direction it wound up pulling him back toward that horrid target. "I know, but nothing seems to help. Besides, the Horse-King wants us there."

"Horse-King? What's so great about this Horse-King? Why do you follow his trail?" 

"Power. Redemption. Curiosity. All better excuses than because his magic is forcing me to. You don't have to come with me, Winky."

"Master—Barty doesn't have a wand." She was still struggling with the idea of calling her master by his first name, but it had been a personal request. "Barty needs Winky because Winky can do this."

All Barty's life he'd had servants or magic to do his bidding. If he was cold, he'd use one or the other to warm himself. If he was hungry, he'd likewise use the tools at his disposal to solve that problem. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, even Winky's resources were stretched to their limit, but when she snapped her fingers and a basket of apples appeared in her free hand, Barty reached out a shaking hand for one. "Thank you," he managed to say before attacking the apple.

Several things had combined to make running for her life the most joyful time of Winky's life, and it had all started with her master asking for her help to leave. To a house-elf, being needed in such a way was the culmination of a life of good service. This was her time to enjoy and serve her master to the best of her abilities. That he thanked her caused every bone in her body to warm in happiness. Carefully selecting the wormiest-looking apple herself, Winky joined Barty in their impromptu meal.

"What if he isn't a good leader?" Winky didn't want to challenge her master on something important, but she also didn't want him doing something that would get him hurt. "What if—"

"I'm not sure if I have a choice, Winky. I talked my way into Voldemort's good graces and learned a lot, I think I can do so again. Besides, I have you at my side. Now, where do you think we could grab a wand on the way?"

"Wizards and witches are possessive of their wands and will quickly notice theirs missing. A wand shop owner is possessive too, but they are less likely to notice one missing." Winky looked up at Barty and smiled at his surprised expression. "So we take some from a wand shop."

"Some?"

"Barty wants his choice, correct?"

She got him, Barty realized. Of all his family and friends and even the other Deatheaters, it took a house-elf to get him. "A choice would be good, but I don't want you risking anything." 

"Winky is too clever for them. You'll see."





Ginevra Molly Weasley felt on top of the world. She soared through the sky riding a dragon, and for the first time in her life—in public at least—she didn't care who saw her doing magic. 

This was it, she thought, this is someone dealing with all the evil and bad witches and wizards in the world. Her smile pulled even wider at the thought that it wasn't just someone, it was her. "I can feel some over there. Take me to them."

Everyone who bore King Sombra's mark now felt like they were on a long leash. Ginevra tugged on them to remind them all she was coming.

Igor's ears didn't hear the command over the rushing wind, but he felt the will of Ginevra. She aimed him like a spear and he turned and dove toward a manor house on a tall hill. For the first time in many years, Igor Karkaroff felt pride. 

The first Ginevra knew of Igor's plan was him turning his body so he was plunging feet first toward the manor. His body crashed through the ceiling and wall of one side of the manor house. 

Vaulting down from Igor's back, Ginevra felt and heard a dread-spell being cast.

"A-vah-dah…"

Panic struck Igor. Every wizard and witch in the world knew the incantation that was coming, but thanks to his large size and the house now impeding his movement, he was the biggest target present. A green glow started to burn from a nearby doorway.

"… ke-dah-vra!" Rentmany Goyle stepped a little further into the room to ensure his spell would be well placed. He was not just an experienced wizard—but a master of the dark arts and a Deatheater. He'd learned the Killing curse at a young age, had mastered it, then had learned even more about the forbidden spell at Voldemort's side.

All Rentmany's knowledge of the Killing curse told him that the beast that'd landed in his house would be dying very shortly. A green bolt of light shot from the end of his wand and traveled toward the monster, but a dark figure placed itself betwixt wand and target.

The spell hit Ginevra in the chest. She didn't know why she'd moved, but instinct had told her it was right to protect those under your care.

When the black-dressed woman didn't immediately crumple to the ground, Rentmany froze in shock. "N-No. It can't be! No one can live through having their soul ripped out!"

'A glorious demonstration, Ginevra. Protecting your pets is an important skill for a student to learn.' Sombra, a little giddy at the power his student was showing off, rushed toward Rentmany. 'Ah, here we have one of that whelp's own pets. Your master, unlike Ginevra Molly Weasley, will not protect you. What will you do?'

"Weasley? You're from the—" Rentmany halted as his arm began to burn with pain. Even through his robes he could see dark magic burning where his dark mark had been. He could feel something otherworldly, could hear its voice, but he couldn't see it. "Y-You're the horse."

King Sombra examined the aura of the creature before him, then delved deeper through the mark the man bore. 'Unicorn. King. Lord. I would accept any of these, but I won't accept horse!' He grabbed at Rentmany's soul and stroked it like a cat would a birdcage. 'Do we have an understanding?'

"What are you doing to him?" Ginevra, having ensured Igor was safe, made her way over to Rentmany and King Sombra. "Is his body suitable?"

'Ginevra, again you surprise me. I hadn't considered this creature's body. It may be old, but it will do for now. Liar, come here.'

The call of his master's master was as irresistible to Peter Pettigrew as a flame was to a moth. He jumped out from behind Igor's bulk and rushed over. "Your Glory, King Sombra, how may this pathetic rat serve you?"

Reaching out to the gem around Peter's neck, Sombra turned his attention back to Rentmany Goyle. 'See? That is how to grovel. If you'd been a little better at it… What am I saying, you're still just scum.'

The feel of dark magic pooling around him made Rentmany start to panic. His first instinct was to fight, but he hadn't lived as long as he had by merely running off instincts. Apparating was an art form with which he was well acquainted, and he began to employ it—only for the spell to fall apart the moment he tried to cast it.

"What are you—" Words failed Rentmany not because he wanted to stop talking, but rather because he couldn't talk. Something dark slithered into his head like a snake and, to his shock, shoved his own mind aside as it took up residence. "These creatures are not as grand as my own form, but it will take some time in Equestria to regain enough energy to become my true self again."

The change in voice as well as the way the man stood made it clear to Ginevra that King Sombra was now in control. The man was a Deatheater and he had greeted them with his wand out—no quarter would be given. Ginevra was determined to only feel mercy toward those who sought it. 

Tugging on the leashes to all the Deatheaters, Ginevra felt a weak pull toward King Sombra. "My King, I can still feel him. Are you keeping him around fo—" The connection snapped like a dry twig.

"I was just cleaning up, Ginevra. He had a wife and son—the woman is running from the back of the house, she is not a target. The boy was at your former school. Curious. I wish to meet this offspring." King Sombra stretched out strange limbs and muscles, relying on the stolen memories of his new body's host to keep from embarrassing himself. 

He didn't take any chances this time, carefully dealing with every aspect of Rentmany Goyle. Sombra saw no benefit in keeping the wizard around—he already had a perfect student. "This is your hunt, Ginevra. Where next?"





"So it's every time you use your magic, huh? That sucks for you." Rake held up a scale from her last molt and used the rough surface to sharpen one of her claws. "And it's pretty obvious you're turning into a pony. Still, for a pony, you're not stupid."

"That's such a relief." Charles Weasley looked at the white hair that had worked its way down his arms. "And I need to keep using it to keep them fed." He nodded his head to where Whistlewing and Norbert were basking on a rock nearby.

Rake turned her head to look at the two dragons and blew out through her nostrils—leaving two smoke trails. "You really have a thing for taking care of 'em, don't ya? Will you give up being you for 'em?"

That was the crux of it, and it surprised Charlie that Rake had thought it. What was infinitely more surprising was him nodding his head. "Yeah. They saved my life despite having no actual reason to. I owe them, but I also admire them. They're fighters, Earth dragons. Wizards tried to wipe them out for so long that some of us decided we needed to protect them."

"You're a wizard, right?" When Charlie nodded, Rake continued. "Okay, so why were you lot trying to wipe them out?"

Flexing his stiff fingers, Charlie pulled out his wand. "The muscle of dragon hearts is used to make some of the most powerful wands. Not that I would use one. I found willow to be the best." 

"That thing's the source of your magic?" Having learned to be careful with Charlie, Rake merely pointed at his wand rather than reaching out to touch it.

"No, but I need it to do magic."

"Why don't you use your horn? That's kind the thing unicorns do with 'em."

"What, you mean this thing is actually useful?" Reaching up to his forehead, Charlie tried to ignore the extra hair his fingers encountered as he touched at the horn. "How's it work?"

Rake barked out a laugh that came with a rush of blue flame. She turned to look at Charlie and asked, "What kinda dragon do you think I am?"

"The kind that needs to help me find a way to be more useful?" Flicking his wand around in his fingers, Charlie felt the eagerness of the wood—its desire to be used. "But yeah, my fault. So what else do dragons like except their hoards?"

"Fighting. Baking ourselves in lava. Fighting. Eating gems. Fighting. Fighting. Also, we like to fight sometimes." Rake reached to the pile of bright sapphires at her side and grabbed a few and munched on them.

"Okay, so something to help you fight?" 

"Not for me. I'm big enough I win any fight I get in with the runts around here—that's why none of them'll touch you. Free gems is a good enough way to make me happy. What about lava? Can you make something really hot?" More priceless (on Earth) gems got tossed into Rake's mouth before terminal crunching dispatched them.

"There's a spell that's meant to be able to burn anything except stone… It's called Fiendfyre." Charlie wasn't sure if mentioning wizardkind's more destructive spell was a good idea. "It'll probably turn me more into a pony, not that I'm going to be able to stop that anyway."

"Anything but stone? I don't know if that'll be hot enough. Do you have anything that'll melt stone?" 

"I know a wizard who likely would, but let's try the best fire spell I know first. Not that Fiendfyre stuff, that's a little too nasty." Charlie ran through the magic he knew and aimed his wand at a rock in front of him. "This one is normally pretty weak, but I was pretty good at it in school. The trick is that the longer you keep it on something, the hotter it gets."

Stream of flames was a simple spell. It needed only a simple incantation that Charlie hadn't had to use since his first few castings of it. Aiming his wand more carefully, he sent his will and magic down through is hand and the shaft of willow in his grip.

"Whoa! Purple flames? Sweet." Before Charlie could react, Rake reached her foretalon out and put it into the stream of flames. "Huh, getting warm."

If Charlie hadn't already determined Rake to be practically indestructible, he would have stopped his spell immediately. As it was he kept a close eye on her to see if she were showing signs of being hurt, but the longer he kept the flame on her hand, the bigger her smile got. 

What he had noticed was that the hair on his arms was now all the way to his hands and his hands started to feel a little cramp-y. "I think that's as hot as it will go."

"That's pretty good, actually. Not quite lava temperature, but close to it. Can you do the middle of my back, just between my wings?" Rake got up and turned her back to Charlie—something she'd never do to another dragon.

Sighting down his hand, Charlie could see more and more fuzz sprouting from his hand as he worked the spell. He could feel a tingle in his growing horn, and tried to focus on that as something distinct from his wand. One moment the gout of flame was coming from his wand, the next it was coming from his wand and his horn.

"Oh! Right there! I thought you said you couldn't get it hotter?" Rake looked back over her shoulder at Charlie and gave him a fang-filled smile. "Got your horn working? Nice."

"Working out how to get my horn not-working right now, actually." Charlie could feel himself changing at a far more rapid pace. His hands both seemed to meld together one finger at a time, and he was shrinking inside his clothes. 

The flow of magic to both his wand and his horn suddenly cut off as Rake turned and took each in a different hand. It was like having his body dunked in ice-water. A shiver ran through him as the touch of her magically inert scales acted like a sink and left him unable to even feel magic. "Th—Thanks."

"You good now?"

First Charlie tried to nod, but the grip Rake had on his horn stopped him from being able to nod. "Yeah. Thanks." When she released both her grips, Charlie let out a sigh as magic seemed to flow back into him. "How did you do that?"

"Dragons and magic." Rake just shrugged and rolled her shoulders. "I was surprised your fire spell even worked. I guess you make the fire close to you and just shoot it out?"

The insight surprised Charlie. As he tried to sort out how his one hand that still had movable fingers worked, he revised his opinion of Rake's intelligence upward again. "Yeah, actually. So dragons are what to magic?"

"When a dragon is nearing adulthood, their scales become a little bit more of everything, but the biggest thing they become is a bad day for magic. You can still use magic to do stuff to us, but you can't use the magic directly on us. If any of that makes sense." 

Rake was making a lot of sense to Charlie. So other dragons in the area, younger dragons, wouldn't be immune to magic yet. That was likely why they were all kept in one place like this and guarded by an adult or two, he figured. "Yeah, I think I have that worked out. Torch is taking a big risk letting me stay here, isn't he?"

"That's why he made you my problem. He knows my scales are almost to being fully adult—that I'm almost fully adult. He wanted someone nearby in case you tried to do something insanely stupid. At first anyway. Torch isn't stupid, so I think he figured out you aren't either." She watched curiously as Charlie sorted himself out and adjusted his clothes to fit his shorter stature. She felt a little sympathy for him—not being a dragon and immune to magic would definitely suck, but she knew it'd suck more if she was a dragon and then became something else. "It's magic changing you, right?"

"Yeah. Every time I use it, I change a bit more. I guess the magic here is just a lot more unicorn than it was back home."

Thoughts warred in Rake's head. On one talon, she pondered, Charlie is an outsider. But on the other he's also pretty cool for a non-dragon and doesn't deserve to have all this happen to him. "Follow me."

Charlie followed Rake all the way to a sheer cliff side. Large boulders made walking in anything approaching a straight line impossible, and when Rake turned right and then left around a pair of boulders, Charlie moved quick to follow her into the gloom of what seemed to be a cave. "This is—"

"If I hear you told anyone about this, I'll pound your head so hard you'll be stuck in the ground. Got it?" Rake walked to what resembled the rear of the cave, then turned and slipped through a side opening.  

Following Rake deeper into the cave, Charlie froze at the mountain of gems that lay before him. The cave had opened into a huge bowl, and that bowl was full of stones. Gemstones. "This is your hoard."

"I only brought you here because I know you're not stupid enough to take anything or think you can swindle me. I would have taken this out to you, but it's so delicate it'd fall apart in my claws." Rake walked past her gems, barely resisting the urge to climb the pile and lie on them.

What Charlie saw when he reached a dark corner of the cave with Rake—wasn't a thing. Focusing on his horn and leaving his wand in his robes, he cast a Light charm. Then Charlie gasped. "Dragons molt?"

"When we're smaller it's more dramatic. This was my last set of scales before getting my adult scales in full. They were partially magic resistant." Rake crouched low and pinched one of the larger scales that'd broken free of her old skin. "You're clever, Charlie. What could you do with these?"

The most incredible ideas rushed through Charlie's mind. Magic resistant robes was the best thing he could think of. Shrugging off curses and charms in a duel, he'd be able to stand toe-to-toe with Dumbledore! But that wasn't why she'd shown it to him. "Why do you keep your old scales here?"

"Other dragons could taunt me with them, though I don't really care about that so much. Force of habit." Picking up a small part of skin that had been on her arm, Rake held it out to Charlie. "If you made a hat with this inside it, you could limit how much magic you use. Just don't use your wand."

"That might work. I'm not—Do unicorns just accidentally use their horns often?"

"Don't know. Don't care." Stomping over to her pile of gems, Rake walked through them—wading to the top of the pile. Gemstones against her scales, hot with their proximity to the lava flows in the rock, sang songs of eternity through her body. "And try to keep it down while you work. If any dragon sees you coming or going, don't come all the way back here. Just—I dunno—let them eat you or something."

Carefully taking off his robes, Charlie started to take stock of not just his possessions, but also himself. He was smaller—not just his limbs but his torso had shrunk. He was covered in a coat of hair from his collarbone down his body and arms, all the way to mid calf on each leg. He had a tail—or at least the start of one—but what shocked him most was how his right arm looked.

The hand he'd been holding his wand in earlier was now gone. Where his wrist and hand had been there was a fetlock and hoof. Yet still that wasn't the most shocking thing to Charlie. He looked at his hoof in wonder for a moment, then looked past it to the refracted patterns it made on the floor of the cave. 

His arm looked like it was made of clear-white crystal. "Rake?"

"What?" In her present position, it was hard for anything to break Rake's good mood and annoy her—yet she had to give Charlie credit for managing it.

"Do you know any ponies that are made from gemstones?"

Rake's attention was focused completely on Charlie. Her every sense stretching to examine what he was showing her. His arm—now a pony foreleg—looked to be one large hunk of crystal. Like a diamond it glittered in the light of his horn. Greed boiled up inside, but like every adult dragon she could fight it back—somewhat. He was here, in her den, part of her hoard.

Having an Earth dragon look at him like he was a piece of meat was a level of objectification Charlie was use to. Having an Equestrian dragon look at him like he belonged to them was something else. It was so startling that when he saw Rake shake her head and look away, blushing, he felt compelled to speak up. "Are you okay?"

"Me? You ask me if I'm fine? I have the biggest and most unique gemstone I've ever seen in my own hoard and you ask if I'm fine? I want to coil around you and bury you in here and—" Rake snarled and lit the room up with a gout of fire from her mouth. 

Charlie watched as the flame danced around the ceiling of the cave, its light dwarfing his horn. "I'll cover myself back up. Sorry."

Rake turned her head to watch Charlie covering himself back up. All the dragon scales in her den wouldn't be enough to protect him if the other dragons found out about what he was becoming. Her claws weren't big enough and she doubted even Torch's willpower and the Bloodstone Scepter were enough to stop the war she could see brewing over Charlie. "You need to keep covered all the time. If that spreads—You need to keep it hidden."

"Is it really that bad?" Charlie felt he already knew the answer. Rake seemed a perfectly intelligent dragon—probably even smarter than most of the wizards he knew—but the way she'd looked at him a moment ago gave him chills.

"I—I might have to change my plans. You can't stay here with all these juveniles. I'll talk to Torch." Rake stood up in her hoard and tried to not think about whether it seemed a bit smaller in comparison to herself. She wasn't going to give into her greed over this. "And don't leave this cave."

Watching Rake leave, Charlie had to wonder how much dragon poop he'd just jumped into and if there was a bottom to it. "Maybe it's time to start swimming?" he asked nobody.