Three ponies (or pony-shaped people) and a pony-lamia didn't fit on one broom. For a start, Addera refused to let herself be shrunk, and then there was the issue of who would ride the broom and carry everyone.
Which was why we were walking. We being Twilight, Madam Hooch, and me—Addera was slithering. A warm two days had dried the swamp enough that walking through it wasn't nearly as bad.
My mood probably had something to do with finding out my trick could actually kinda work, and at least one other kirin thought it was a good way to do it. To say nothing of Madam Hooch calling it practical.
"I don't mean to pry, but why are you going back so soon? Didn't you want to learn how they stop from bursting into fire?" Twilight asked.
"Well, the thing was I thought they'd have the answers I needed, what with being kirins all their lives, but when I talked with Rain Shine, she didn't seem to be doing things better than I was already." There. I managed to say it without saying they had a town full of crazy kirin that could explode at any second.
Except for one. Autumn Blaze had been a strange kirin, but strange in a good way. A wizard way.
"Oh." Twilight looked a little confused, but she nodded along easily enough. "So, where are you going now?"
"We—that is I—need to go back to Earth. There was a family there that took care of me. I need to let them know that they don't need to anymore." I turned my head and looked up at Addera. The warmth in her eyes made me feel excited and happy. "It's something I was trying to put off, but Madam Hooch reminded me that I need to finish my old life before starting a new one."
"Very well put, Mr. Potter."
"You don't like them, Harry Potter. Tell me why." The request from Addera surprised me
I looked up at her and felt my shoulders relax a little. Had I actually been dreading this? Maybe. "They're not very nice and—I don't normally like to talk about it." I stared at the ground as I spoke. "They take care of me, but I don't feel like—like we're a family."
Madam Hooch snorted at that.
"What are your thoughts, Rolanda Hooch?"
I looked up at Addera to see her looking at Madam Hooch. Then I turned all my attention to Hooch.
"They are what we call muggles. Humans with no sense for magic, though now I suppose it would be more truthful to say they are pure humans or humans with so little of the crystal pony blood in them as they cannot control magic at all.
"But that's not what I hold against the Dursleys. While many muggles are very nice people once you get to know them, the Dursleys seem to pride themselves on being insular and—and rotters. Harry, please tell Addera where they had you sleeping."
I don't know why I glanced at Twilight. She'd been keeping out of the conversation, but was listening intently. Without any support from that quarter, I sighed. "They kept me under the stairs in a closet."
Addera looked at me from behind her glasses, and I realized how completely without emotion she seemed. At first it made me curious, but then I noticed her tail-tip was flicking very rapidly.
"Addera?" I asked.
"Harry Potter, I made some very specific promises to you. I won't be escorting you all the way to see these Dursleys, however I believe I can rely on Madam Rolanda Hooch for that particular meeting?" Addera looked up at Hooch and each nodded to the other.
It got so quiet as we kept walking that I tried to keep a bit closer to Twilight. When my attempts to keep pace with her caused me to almost trip, she turned her head and looked down to me. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah. How much further is it?"
"Long enough for another magic lesson. Have you been practicing your channeling?" My groan must have let her know I wasn't exactly managing to keep on top of that. "Well, let's do them together, okay? Reach for your magic."
My magic was easy to find, it was the burning mass of excitement bubbling inside—but she wanted my other magic. Relaxing my mind as I walked, I let that hint of pure Equestrian magic start to trickle in.
She coached me, and the more I channeled the magic in and out, the more easily it flowed. It was almost like sleeping the way the cool magic seemed to flush away my anger and—My eyes snapped open and stared ahead not comprehending what I was seeing.
The train sitting at the end of the tracks.
The thought I'd been startled by was gone. Whatever the revelation was had been lost to the reality of a train waiting for us. "T-Twilight?"
"It used to get me the same way. Come on, we're heading back to the Crystal Empire." Twilight led me up onto the platform beside the train where Addera and Madam Hooch were talking.
"… escort him to London, and to the street where they reside, but for their own sake I won't go near them. I made a promise I intend to keep, Rolanda Hooch," Addera said.
"I," Madam Hooch said, "am under no such promise." The smile she shared with Addera chilled my blood. Okay, it was time to adjust my definitions here—witches could be way more scary than wizards.
It had been a strange few days. As I climbed onto the train, I felt like I'd found out the meaning of life only to have it turn out to be a joke. This was meant to be an adventure to find out a safer way to live, but it ended up being confirmation that life was strange and complicated. "You were right."
Hedwig cut short any reply Madam Hooch might have made to my statement as she landed on my back just as I got inside the train. With a little hiss, she wiped her beak clean on my back.
'I hunted.'
I figured as much. I turned my head to poke my snout against her feathers and got a peck for my trouble—a peck that didn't hurt in the slightest thanks to my scales.
'I could peck harder.'
Sure you could, but then it might hurt.
"What was I right about?" Madam Hooch's voice snapped me from my communing with Hedwig. It took me a moment to realize what she was asking about.
"Life is too complicated for easy answers," I said as I climbed up onto the bench seat beside Madam Hooch. "But hope can make it hard to remember that."
Fluffing up her wings, Madam Hooch seemed to be paying more attention to Hedwig than to me. "A lesson worth spending a few days to learn, I'd say. Your owl seems to be far more tame than any I've ever seen before."
"Hedwig? That's because of the bond."
"What bond?"
"Addera called it a familiar bond, but she didn't seem to know much more than it could be used by bad wizards to control animals. So far it seems more the other way around to me." When I turned to nuzzle Hedwig again, instead of pecking me she let out a little whistle and stroked her beak along my cheek.
"I believe, Mr. Potter, you'll need to start from the start. What is a familiar bond, why was Addera worried about it, and why isn't she worried about yours?" The train shunted while Hooch was halfway through speaking, though she didn't seem too troubled by it.
"She said it was what Salazar Slytherin used to control her mother. It's a bond between a wizard or witch and an animal. There's some kind of ritual, and we were trying to research that when everyone had to leave Hogwarts.
"Anyway, it lets the wizard take control of the animal and use them for their own ends. Addera was worried I'd use Hedwig like that."
'You don't.'
I know I don't. I wouldn't ever want to do that to you, Hedwig.
'That is why you're the best wizard there is.'
Thanks. Was there good hunting today?
'No. I found some rabbit-things, but they tried to fight back. It was fun.'
"Harry Potter?" Hooch's words snapped me from my conversation with Hedwig. "You looked very discombobulated. Are you feeling alright?"
"S-Sorry. That's the thing. Hedwig was talking to me and—That's why Addera is less worried. It's only a guess, but I think the first thing that happens in these bonds is that the wizard uses their mind to—to dominate the animal." My chats with you are a little faster than just talking, but more than a sentence or two and people notice.
'Then we will keep words brief.'
"Like the Imperius curse. You haven't learned anything about the pinnacle of the Dark Arts yet, Harry, but this seems dangerously close to some of those foul curses." Hooch drew her broom from her back and started picking through the bristles with her teeth.
"Oh. But I haven't done that."
Chewing on a twig that was apparently a problem, Hooch broke it off nearly three centimeters from the end before dropping the broken piece on the bench beside her. "I am relieved to hear that."
"I know, but the funny thing is it seems more like it runs the other way, but not exactly exerting her will. Hedwig sometimes gets excited about things—usually hunting and finding bacon—and she worked out how to show me what she felt and saw. When she does that, I can't really say no."
'I don't do it without asking now.'
I know, and that's why you're the best owl there is.
'Correct.'
"…nds dangerous. Perhaps we should research a way to break this bond?" Hooch asked.
"No!" 'No!'
I shook my head. "No. I mean, we've come to an agreement. She only does it when we're both relaxed and I ask her. We're learning what this means slowly, but I don't think there's any dark magic involved."
Hooch looked like she was about to say something, stopped, then let out a chuckle. "Harry, for any other student in Hogwarts, I would say something along the lines of, 'You don't have the experience to begin to say that.'
"But you do. A little, at least. Please, until we can return to Hogwarts and Dumbledore can observe it, don't attempt to use this new power. This applies to you too, Miss Hedwig."
'Tell her I promise not to.'
I'm not going to do that, because then she'll know we did.
"Did you just tell her?" Hooch asked.
How did she know? Did I have a look to me when talking to Hedwig?
'You do.'
Gee, thanks. Now she'll know I'm talking to you again. And I am literally talking to you right now. I should stop and—
Hooch cleared her throat. "Mr. Potter, since you seem unable to accomplish this, why don't we just fall back to neither of you take control of the other?"
"It's mostly her doing it. She said she promised not to do it, and then she did it, and she can hear my thoughts so I'm always doing it—but I think we can manage not to do the show-and-tell bit, right?"
'I can stop doing that until tomorrow, but then I have to show you twice as much.'
That's sound logic, I guess. "She says she can hold off, but then she'll have twice as much to show me tomorrow."
"I guess that's the best I can hope for, then. There's a saying about how owls always manage to glide through dark times. I can only hope Miss. Hedwig can do so until we're sure the darkness isn't too much for the pair of you."
'I like that.'
You would. I like it too.
"You noticed it too?" Jack Crowley leaned on his staff as he stood on guard in the middle of a busy Sydney street. He was on traffic duty, of course, which was the literal guiding of muggle drivers around the things they couldn't see—first and foremost being Jack himself, Liz Harrington, and the rift between worlds that had appeared at the intersection of North Liverpool Road and Elizabeth Drive (the name of the latter street was still a sore subject for Liz).
"It'd take a normie to not notice it, and even then they might. Standing here just feels—It feels normal." Liz walked around the rift, keeping one eye on the traffic driving around them. "But what I noticed more was when we ain't here."
"Bingo. Is it sucking all the magic out of the world, or is it caused by all the magic having gotten sucked out of the world?"
"Or is this the source of magic, and something's blocked it?"
"Could be any of those," Jack said as he stopped and peered a bit closer.
Liz gestured with her wand to pull Jack back and found there to be a bit of force pulling him toward it. "Jack, you might want to—"
"Calm yer bits, Liz. I could feel it have a slight pull to it and was about to step back." Jack pulled out a pack of gum, unwrapped a piece and started chewing on it. "Damn I need a smoke."
"You've been giving them up for how long now?"
"Eleven—no, twelve years. It's easy for normies, they usually die from the damn things. Oh no, not wizards." Jack looked up at the truck coming toward him and casually gestured with his wand. The driver saw someone pulling out to one side of him, swerved around it, and sounded his horn angrily. "Wards need redoing."
"That's the problem. With all the magic coming from this thing, it scrubs enchantments unless I put more power than I've got into them. Damn it, where's our relief?" Drawing magic into herself—something that came as easily to a fifty-year-old witch as breathing—Liz started building the web of illusions and Lookaway charms that she preferred to memory charms.
Jack chewed away on his gum, wishing he'd taken the offer the previous year of having a memory charm put in to stop his need to smoke. "You know, I have to wonder what's on the other side of this thing—assumin' those Poms were right and it is a portal. What do you think is on the other side?"
Liz was about to reply when a cat tumbled out of the portal. She stared at it for a moment before her brain started to put things together. It was big for a house cat, but it also wore clothes including—a cape and a pair of sandals on its back feet. The feline's coloration was pitch black. "What the bloody hell…?"
Jumping to her feet, Aileek looked around at the strange place she'd landed. "Where am I?"
The accent threw Liz off for a moment. She looked over the cat that now stood on its hind legs and no higher than her waist and didn't for a second question why Aileek would be speaking English. "Just west of Sydney."
"Liz, I don't think I recognize what they are. Did they come through the—Truck!" Jack had almost no time to respond. Liz was the enchanter, he was a battle wizard—which meant he had reflexes akin to those of Aileek. Though he grabbed the feline and tossed her to the side, he had to use his wand to shove Liz along as well while he dove aside.
All three tumbled into the portal.
Groaning at his feet, and with Liz and Aileek looking down for the count, Jack had to take things into his own hands. They seemed to be inside a building of some kind, and he could distinctly hear the sounds of fighting outside.
Everything seemed louder in a fight. Even dueling wizards, who mostly fought only with the sounds of their own voices casting spells, would always remember the noises that came with spells. Adrenaline was part of the reason why. In times of great stress—like mortal peril—every sense was amplified to aid in escape or fighting. Hunched over under the low ceiling, Jack looked out one of the windows to see the most bizarre sight of his life going on.
The Abyssinians of Forepaw were fighting against invaders. Great hulking creatures with shields and spears that seemed to nullify what few magical attacks the cats had.
Jack might not be connected to the town or its people at all, but he could recognize a bully when he saw one, and the monsters that stomped through Forepaw were bullies. "Damn it. Okay, they aren't going into houses, so you should be safe in here."
"Wait." Aileek squirmed under the large human that lay atop her. "You can't save the town. This is just an expeditionary force. If you fight them, they'll send more. They'll wipe Abyssinia from the map."
Turning, Jack looked at Aileek. He studied her, noting the belt around her waist that held a dagger on each side. Those weren't for show and he knew it. "So what then?"
"I hoped…" Aileek pulled herself free completely and stood up. "How many of you are there on the other side of that portal?"
"None immediately. I can call in help." Jack, just like most Australians, couldn't turn down someone who obviously needed aid. "What do you need?"
Norbert had learned to like this new place. There was plenty of room for him and Whistlewing to fly together—something he greatly enjoyed—and he was still able to play with his other friend. His other friend had changed a bunch, but he sure smelled better now they all curled up together at night.
Whistlewing, too, enjoyed a little more freedom than normal. Her homelands had been a little crowded so far as dragon territory went, with the bigger dragons challenging her on every side, but here there were only the strange not-dragons, and they didn't care much where she flew.
When something dared to enter their sky when they were flying in it, however, Norbert and Whistlewing stooped into a perfect spiraling dive toward the falling object.
A second one fell through the same spot as the first, appearing midair and right in front of Norbert. Swerving to avoid the human, Norbert realized that this was a pair of humans without any means of flying. Two things filtered through his smarter-than-average dragon brain: if they hit the ground, Charlie would be angry, but if they did hit the ground, they would be meat to eat.
Whistlewing was almost Norbert's equal in intelligence, but she had cunning backing it up. Three humans hunting food for her was better than one. Snarling at Norbert, she grabbed the closest one with a talon and pumped her wings after the other.
The sound of the two dragons in the sky was fairly normal fare for the Dragonlands now. The Equestrian dragons were used to the strange creatures zooming around the sky, but when Inferno looked up and saw them playing with more humans, he saw opportunity.
Inferno's big sister, Rake, had gained a lot of prestige by doing a special duty for Dragon Lord Torch, and he wanted in on the racket. Smirking, he pumped his wings and launched from a lava flow directly into the sky.
Seeing that Whistlewing already had one human and was trying to catch a second, Norbert turned his attention on the spot where they seemed to come from and was rewarded by three small ones appearing. Three was more than two, so he was going to win! Winning meant being more impressive to Whistlewing, and that was something he increasingly found to be important.
It was easy enough for Norbert to grab the first little human with a claw, the second with his mouth, but he missed the third. They were noisy—screaming a lot—and he started to rethink if just dropping them and making it up to Whistlewing in other ways might be better.
"Got one!" Inferno grabbed the falling human with both his hand-claws and grunted at the weight of them. He wasn't as big as Rake, and wasn't sure if even she would be able to carry a full size human without dropping them. He realized that meant him doing it would make him look even better.
"Pleasedon'tdropme!"
The cry from the female human surprised Inferno. He grunted and used his wings to glide in a slow spiral toward the ground. "How'd you even get up there?" But he wasn't getting anything but a litany of "please" over and over again from her until he finally landed near where Whistlewing had put down the two humans she'd caught.
Simon Bent-Twig took one look at the creature that'd saved him and he considered throwing up, wetting himself, and maybe doing both a second or third time each. Dragons he knew about only in books. It was true he'd been traveling through dragon lands, but their wagon had a spell cast upon it by his talented wife to keep them invisible to the creatures.
May Bent-Twig reached out to her husband and shook him. "Simon! Simon! It's okay! It—It's not hurting us. Where's the girls? Where's Stefan?"
"I'm here, Mum!" Stefan Bent-Twig was the youngest of the family and didn't think it was strange to be saved by a dragon, not at all. "Bella's here too. Where's Bea?"
Drawing her wand from her belt, May cast about the sky looking for her eldest daughter. What she saw was an even stranger sight. "S-Simon! Look!"
Beatrice Bent-Twig clung to the belly of the dragon-thing that'd caught her and wouldn't let go even when it landed. She clung tight for all she was worth and screwed her eyes closed.
"You can, uh, let go now. We're on the ground." Inferno was surprised at the reaction of the human when she let go of him, reached up and grabbed his cheeks, and kissed him.
"Thankyou! Thankyou! Thankyou!" Beatrice said over and over, her thanks boiling up from within.
Standing stiff as a board, Inferno had no idea what to do. He looked past the human to what he assumed were its parents. To his shock they looked just as thankful as Beatrice, and he feared they might yet run over and hug him as well.
"Hey! It's not like I—" Inferno froze as his brain (an organ that he didn't normally stress too much) actually served up exactly what would have happened if he hadn't caught Beatrice. "I saved you…"
"You can talk?!" Beatrice stared into Inferno's eyes and felt love—or its nearest approximation for a sixteen-year-old girl—well up inside. "You saved my life!"
May rushed over to find her eldest daughter chatting with her savior. The other two winged creatures were well enough known to wizardkind, but while Inferno looked vaguely like the other dragons, that he spoke surprised her. "S-Sorry to bother you, sir, but you saved my daughter and I believe I might have to hug you." It was meant as a joke, but as May approached further, she noticed Inferno showed every sign of being embarrassed.
Her mind racing, May tried to get a feel for the creature and her motherly instincts hit upon only one answer firmly—he was a young whatever-he-was.
"I'm good for hugs!" Not realizing the joke May had been making, Inferno gestured to Beatrice (who was still attached to him like a limpet). "She's your daughter?"
"When she's not hugging a dragon for saving her life. You are a dragon, I take it?" May was fishing for information and trying not to offend. "Bea, you're safe now."
"Mum?" Beatrice's heart had stopped pounding a million miles a minute, which was enough of a break for her brain to kick in and tell her she was currently hugging—and had just kissed—a big talking dragon that'd saved her life. Feeling like she was blushing from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, she quickly let go of Inferno and backed away. "S-Sorry, I was just—Thank you for saving me!"
It was Inferno's second ever kiss and it surprised him just as much as the first one. Excitement boiled up from inside and he felt an intense rush of pride almost knock him over despite the briefness of the kiss. "You're welcome Beatrice." The words came out a full octave too high for his normal voice and earned him a giggle from both Beatrice and May.
Giggling, Beatrice stepped back to give her heart a chance to slow down again—she'd discovered its pace was dependent on her distance from Inferno's lips. "Just call me Bea, uh…"
"Inferno. My name. I mean, my name's Inferno." He blinked in surprise at Beatrice. "Yeah, I'm a dragon. Not like those others." He nodded at Norbert and Whistlewing. "Rake's new friend brought them with him when he fell into—Wait! You're from his world, right? Arth I think it was."
"Earth! We're from—" May cut herself short as a new implication hit her. A witch—at least one in good standing—was expected to react quickly to unknown situations. "This isn't Earth, is it?"
"Nope. This here is the Dragon Lands. I suppose you want to meet Rake's friend now? He's been looking after these two totally-not-dragons."
Looking back at her husband and their two youngest children who were with him, May nodded and turned back to look at Inferno. "I believe we would. Do you—" It was easy to assume that a non-human knew about magic, but May realized that she could be in a sticky situation if she revealed it. "Is he a little strange?"
"Yeah. What with him doing magic and all that. Turning him into a pony, if you can believe it? Anyway, he mostly hangs out with Rake over there. I guess I can show you." Turning, Inferno started walking off to show them where Rake and Charlie would be when he saw the pair stalking toward him. "Huh. Never mind. Here they come."
Charlie kept his heavy robe pulled as tight around him as he could, but he could still catch Rake looking at him with a strange hunger. He didn't fear she'd eat him, but he felt a distinct amount of possessiveness from her. "You okay, Rake?"
Nervous, as she always was when a part of her hoard was outside of her den, Rake blew some actual flame out of her nose. "Yeah. Trying not to let this be a problem."
"It's not easy, huh?" The worst part for Charlie was he had to split his focus between working out what five more humans were doing and his situation with Rake.
"Every time I look at you I want to grab you and put you back in my hoard. I can—" She bit off her reply, but knew she had to explain it sometime. "I can feel you, Charlie. A dragon can sense where their hoard is, and my stupid dragon brain has decided you're part of it. I can tell you're walking beside me just as much as I can feel exactly where everything else is that—that belongs to me."
Dragon magic. Charlie took a deep breath and sighed. "You can't help it, huh?"
"It's stupid."
"Right, but if you can't help it, nothing can be done so we just deal with it. You think you can keep from freaking out at your brother over it?" Charlie made a show of checking his shoe, that was now just a bunch of leather tied onto his hoof to hide the fact it looked like a diamond.
"Inferno? He's a runt still. He doesn't have a hoard at all. He's no threat." The words were carried by Rake's feeling. "How do you think they got here?"
"The other humans? Probably fell through the same hole I did, which means we might need to seal it up so no one else falls through. But until we can, we definitely need to keep an eye out for more arrivals." There was more to the situation, Charlie knew. Torch hadn't done anything to hide the fact he expected Charlie to be useful to the dragons and it was unlikely that the dragon ruler would think any differently of more humans arriving. "I need to find a way to feed them and keep Torch from considering us a problem."
Rake nodded. She was well aware that her own fate was tied, possibly tightly, to the humans. "You'll need to get them their own cave, or even one of those houses ponies use." She stopped talking, judging that they were within hearing range of the new arrivals. "Hey, Inferno, what happened?"
"These kinda-dragons were playing catch the human or something and they missed one. I dunno." Inferno completely failed to notice any subtle body-language between Charlie and his sister—which had a lot to do with Beatrice still holding his arm. "Guess I kinda saved one."
Simon Bent-Twig, feeling so far out of his element it wasn't funny anymore, stepped up to Inferno while summoning all his bravery. "Thank you for that. My name's Simon. My wife there is May, and this is Beatrice, Belladonna, and Stefan. We didn't realize there was something there until we fell into it."
"What were you doing in the area? That place is off limits," Charlie said.
"We'd ask you the same question. We had wards on our wagon to keep dragons away, but…" May looked at Whistlewing and Norbert, both of whom were inching their way toward Charlie—yet the wizard (and May had no trouble identifying the robes Charlie wore as robes) didn't seem inclined to gibber and run away as was normal.
When Norbert stomped up to his side and nuzzled at the pocket he kept venison in, Charlie reached out a gloved hand and rubbed the dragon on the snout without much thought. The two new adults both stared at him in shock. Whistlewing, however, circled between Charlie and the Bent-Twig family and made it clear Charlie was her human, though she also nuzzled at the pocket where he kept meat.
"I'm a dragonologist. I was keeping track of several dragons, notably these two, when Whistlewing here got stuck in the portal-rift thing. I tried to free her, but fell through. The local dragons are a completely different kettle of fish, you understand, and it's their lands we're trespassing in." Pulling out two cubes of venison, Charlie channeled magic as he tossed them high into the air.
Stefan's eyes widened as, when the little cubes of meat turned into hocks of venison, both dragons launched themselves up and snapped up one each. "Cor! Look at that, Bell!"
"They're not as cool as Inferno. They can't even talk." Beatrice felt compelled to defend her savior and still didn't want to leave his side. There was something about the raw strength and power of him that made her tummy twitch like it was full of butterflies. She'd had crushes before, but they were only for boys.
"Talking's not even what I'm best at. You should see me lava-diving. Nodragon can keep up with me!" Lifting a fist up, Inferno felt the need to literally thump his chest with it as he gave his wings a flap. "D-Do you want to see me lava-dive?"
"You'll forgive me for saying so," May said, "but if you wouldn't mind taking us back up, we'd like to go back through the portal to—I assume by your expression you've tried?"
Charlie nodded. "Rake looked for a few hours trying to find it. We thought the rift had closed. I don't suppose either of you has a broom?" He didn't need to state that he meant a riding broom, of course.
When he realized Charlie kept looking at him, Simon let out a resigned sigh. "Just to clear something up, uh…"
"Charlie. Charlie Weasley." Stepping up to Simon, Charlie held out his gloved hand.
"Well, Charlie, I'm a squib you see. Not a drop of magic in my blood at all. Sometimes I wonder what my May sees in me. She's the sharp one of our family. She's a witch—trained at Hogwarts and everything."
Knowing it had taken a good bit of bravado to admit that to a wizard, Charlie shook his head. "Wizard or not, you're stuck here like the rest of us. You're a squib, so you know of magic. Can you think of anything that might help? So far I've managed to live off a few yams and hardtack I'd been carrying with me when all this happened."
Simon was too used to being dismissed as soon as he said he was born a magicless squib. "Well, I did keep a kitchen garden back home. We was on holiday when we took a shortcut and—I'll try to find some things to get a farm started. Stefan, Bella, Bea; let's leave yer mum and the nice wizard to chat fer a bit."
When her husband and children were out of earshot, May let out a sigh. "How bad is it? I saw your faded Hogwarts badge there, Gryffindor. I was in Ravenclaw myself."
Charlie let out a relieved sigh—he'd been worried she'd been in Slytherin, but given her husband it was a long shot. "The dragons here are nigh impervious to magic once they reach adulthood, and the current leader of the dragons is a Dragon Lord Torch. He's big enough to roast us and eat us without breaking a sweat. Oh, and that lad Inferno's boast about diving into lava is not idle—these dragons are a threat level higher than even Dementors.
"But they seem to tolerate us for two reasons. They don't eat organic matter except by threat—they feed on gemstones. Torch wants us—me so far, but he'll probably want something from you too—to help the dragons in some way. I don't think it's entirely something he needs, it's just that it's what he needs to see. Also, Rake over there is probably the smartest and most easy-going of the bunch, also, her hearing is probably good enough she could hear a mouse squeak at this range."
"Yeah, I can," Rake said, studying her talons before breathing some fire on them.
"There's another thing. Using your magic will turn you into a unicorn." With that, Charlie pulled his sleeve up a little so May could see the crystalline nature of his arms. "Don't know if it'll stop or if I'll just keep going, but Whistlewing and Norbert need food, and the only source of food I have for them is some leftover meat I've been magicking into venison hocks for them."
The realization that Charlie was giving up his humanity for the dragons struck a note in May's heart. "You're a good man, Charlie Weasley. I've heard much of the Weasley clan—what wizard who ain't a high-and-mighty hasn't? Fiery hair and hearts to match is what they say. But I have to do what I can for my family, you understand?"
"What?" It dawned on Charlie what conclusion she'd jumped to. "Oh! No, no, no! I don't want your help taking care of them. What I was trying to do was warn you that you need to be careful of using your magic, and if you do use it, make sure you use it wisely." Unwrapping his "gloves", Charlie showed the almost-hooves his hands had become. "I don't know how much longer I'll be able to hold a wand, but I'm getting good with this." He rolled his eyes upward to his horn.
"You can use it to cast spells? That must make life easier." When Charlie held up his mostly-useless hands again, May realized how big her foot was. "Oh, right. Sorry about that. Well, on the plus side, Simon won't be changing at all then, but I'll warn the kids not to do any magic. They each have wands already—I've been home-schooling them."
"Why not Hogwarts?"
"Mostly Simon. The kids have enough to deal with in life without finding out all the bad things wizards say about squibs, or children of squibs."
Charlie winced. "I… I want to say that Hogwarts wouldn't darken their days with that, but I'd be wrong. I love that school—so many good memories there—but someone will bring it up. It mustn't be easy teaching them yourself."
May smiled and shook her head. "It would have been harder if Headmaster Dumbledore hadn't sent me a collection of books on teaching young wizards and witches."
"You teach your own children?" Rake couldn't help herself. The conversation had been hard to follow, but she latched onto one thing. "Why don't you leave that to others to do?"
For a moment May began to get angry. Her hand dipped toward her wand and touched the hard yew wood before she got a grip. "What kind of parent doesn't raise their own children?!"
Shrugging her shoulders, Rake didn't take the anger personally—mostly because she had a good idea May couldn't hurt her. "Dragons. Everyone just dumps their eggs here and leaves them to the dragon lord to look after. The dragon lord organizes the other young dragons to help."
"Wait." Charlie couldn't stop himself. "So Dragon Lord Torch, the biggest and fiercest dragon around, takes care of hatchlings? Didn't he threaten to kill you if we couldn't work out a way to make my magic useful?"
"He makes a lot of threats. What keeps us all in line is not knowing which ones he'll laugh off later and which ones are serious. It's usually best to just do what he says and treat every threat like it's real." With Charlie's hands uncovered, Rake felt her greed threaten to rear its head. His hands glittered like diamonds—she loved diamonds. "C-Cover your hands."
Taking his full attention away from May, Charlie turned to Rake. "And if I say no? You need to get used to this—to me."
"The worst part about this is how easy-going you are about it." Rake ground her teeth and could feel a good burst of fire easing its way up her throat. She wanted to scream and incinerate everything on the whole island, but most of all she wanted to make sure Charlie was safe. "Argg!"
May and Charlie both backed up as Rake arched her head back and let loose with a gout of flame that shot high into the air. The intensity of the leading fireball was enough to make both look away from the heat alone.
"You!" Raising one talon to point at Charlie, Rake was well aware that flame was literally dripping from her mouth. "I can't stand to think of you being hurt. And you!" She rounded on May. "If you end up anything like him—" She bit the sentence off in a growl. Turning, she started stomping off toward the lava lakes. "If you need me, I'll be punching rocks and dragons."
May waited for the furious dragon to leave before asking, "What was her problem?"
"It's complicated. Just don't use magic and you won't complicate it more."