Nervous whispers became the dominant sound, and an occasional thump from the direction of the roar.
After a few minutes, a more regular thumping could be heard, and shortly after that the source of the thumps revealed itself: the hustling steps of Hogwarts School’s Care of Magical Creatures instructor, Professor Rubeus Hagrid.*
He jogged ponderously around a last couple of trees and approached the students.
“Right then! Sorry for the delay, things were a little, er, stressful for a few minutes. But it’s all settled now and here I am.
“Since you’ve covered the basics and intermediate creatures in previous years, we’re not going to spend a lot of time studying them. This year we’ll be studying some of the most fascinatin’ creatures in the magical world, and maybe even get to know a few of ‘em.”
Another unsettled whisper made its way through the group. Having studied with him for at least four years, each of these students was well aware that Hagrid’s idea of fascinating usually was synonymous with murderously dangerous to anyone else. And Hagrid also enjoyed those creatures which could be described, preferably at a distance, as very fascinating.
“So! We won’t be bandying about it, we’re going to need some protection. But not too much, because you want to be quick on your feet too. Everyone got their fireproof cloaks? Dragonhide gloves? Good, good.” He suddenly pointed to one small figure at the rear. “You there, Lorcan! Where are your iron-soled boots?”
“They’ve not got any in me size, Professor!”
“Ruddy…well, don’t dawdle if you have to run and try not to run through anything that’s on fire, right?”
“Right you are, sir!”
“Muggle trainers. If things get hot those’ll melt on your feet, you know? They’re made of plastic, lad.”
“D’yer want me ter go an’ change, Professor?”
“I’m half of a mind for it but we’re behind already. Nah, let’s get goin’.” He turned and began leading the way into the forest, the students following at some distance but Lorcan pushing to the front of the group.
“So what are we going to start with, Professor?”
“Yer a bit keen, aren’t ya Lorcan? I remember last year you passed the class with one hundred and twelve percent, did me proud, you did. Well what we have to start off this year is probably hitting the ground running, as it were. These beasts are about as big and, er, strong-willed as anything you’re ever likely to encounter, and the Ministry classifies them as quintuple-X, completely untrainable and impossible to domesticate.”
Lorcan thought that over for a bit, his lips moving as he appeared to silently recite learned excerpts from lessons. Finally he said, “Blimey, Professor, there’s not many beasts that fall under quint-x.”
“No indeed. There’s manticores, chimera, a few others you won’t ever encounter in these parts. But these you’ll spot from time to time. Here we go.”
The class of seventh years rounded the last bend in a faint path and entered a clearing in the dark, dense forest. In spite of the clearing, the ancient trees still crowded overhead so the patch of sky visible wasn’t as big as the patch of ground below it.
Sprawled at the far end of the clearing lay the class’s subject for the day, and they could see why the roar had been so loud.
“Right. Now, everyone, stay quiet. She doesn’t see very well but her hearing is fine. This is Blanche.”
Blanche was a dragon. Mottled pale grey and bearing scales down her back the size of dustbin lids, she stretched over a piece of ground half-in, half-out of the sunny part of the clearing. From her shoulders back she lay in sunlight, but her neck and head receded toward the forest’s gloom. She stirred at Hagrid’s voice, and snorted.
“It’s only me, calm yourself,” he called toward the creature. The massive serpentine tail swished a couple of times and was still. One wing rustled.
“So Blanche is, as you can see, a dragon. We’re going to spend some time learning about dragons in general and Blanche in particular. Blanche spent a lot of time living in the caves under Gringott’s…” the class gasped at this “…and as a result of livin’ too long in the dark, her eyesight is pretty poor. Dragons’ eyesight isn’t the best in any case. It doesn’t have to be when you hunt nothing smaller than a modest-sized goat. An’ she’s got a great sense of smell, too. If’n yer can’t smell a goat at a hundred yards yer’ve got no business bein’ a dragon in any case. But livin’ in the caves bleached her hide, too, and yer can see that her color’s not as true as yer’d expect.”
“Expect? What would we expect, Professor?”
“Oh! O’ course, Blanche is a Ukrainian Ironbelly. Biggest breed of dragon there is, but she’s a bit stunted. Caves, lack of food. She didn’t have a proper environment to attain her full size, see. But Ironbellies are naturally much darker than this, got a lovely ruddy slate grey, almost like, er, good steel gone a bit rusty underneath, yer know.”
Blanche’s color was nothing like Hagrid’s description. Rather, she was more the color of gravel by the side of the road.
“So is she trying to get her color back, Professor?”
“Ar, I dunno about that. I dunno if she can even see color. Nah, I reckon she just likes feeling the warmth. I think being in the dark for so long has made her eyes really sensitive to too much light, she keeps her head in the shade all the time, more or less. But the rest of her she stretches out like a big cat in the sun, and snoozes.”
Hagrid gave the class a few minutes to observe the dragon at length, answering questions but keeping them well back, though Lorcan kept trying to gain a few more feet whenever Hagrid looked away. He seemed quite captivated by the dozing beast.
“Poor thing,” he said. “Are those scars? Is that scarring on her legs and neck?”
“Aye. When she lived under Gringott’s, the goblins kept her chained up. And as you can imagine they didn’t change which leg the cuff was on very often, so her hide ulcerated pretty bad. I’ve been treating it for years though and it’s loads better.”
“That’s better?” Lorcan squeaked. “It looks awful!” Even from this distance, now that they knew there was something to be observed, all the students could plainly make out the discoloration and altered texture of hide that had endured long term damage.
“Ar, well. It looked a lot worse. Couldn’t hardly touch it at first. Downright sensitive.”
“And the neck?”
Hagrid’s normally open, pleasant expression hardened. “That was how they controlled her. Classical conditioning, the muggles call it, train her to associate an experience with something else and after a while they wouldn’t have to do both at the same time. So the goblins had these noisemakers, see, and they’d poke and burn her when they made the noise. Pretty soon the goblins didn’t need to poke or burn her at all, just make the noise and she’d stay away from them. Very convenient for them, I’m sure.” But even as he said it he made a fist with one hand and as it tightened, they could clearly hear a couple of knuckles cracking with a sound like walnuts shattering. “It’s taken a long, long time for the old girl to trust me.”
A couple of the students whistled, but left off immediately when the dragon’s head shifted to focus on them.
Lorcan couldn’t get enough of the creature and asked, without looking away, “She trusts you? She’ll let you get near her? How did you do it, Hagrid?”
Hagrid relaxed a bit. “Ar. You know how it is. You meet a critter what’s had a hard time, yer got to go easy.
“So I brought her a half a steer and set it where she could find it, but I stayed upwind too, see, so she could smell me and know I was close by. So she had a nice dinner and knew I was there, there but not threatening, see? Did that a few times over the course of oh, I guess it was a month or so, until she was eating with me standing right there. And a couple of weeks after that going little by little, like, she let me touch her.”
There was a whispered, “oooh,” from the class in general.
“And no, before any of yer ask, we’re not going to be doing that today. Especially not,” he said, as he reached out an immense hand and hauled Lorcan back from the several steps he’d taken toward the dozing dragon, “you.”
He set Lorcan on his feet. “We might be able ter at some point. Blanche is special, having long contact with humans has altered her behavior from what’s natural. But so much of that was bad, ‘s no surprise she takes a lot of time getting used ter a new person. Usually when a human meets a dragon, the dragon has a light snack. After all those years under the bank Blanche doesn’t see humans as something ter eat anymore though, see? So we have an edge to pry up there, a way to get past her instincts. But she’s still tetchy.”
He thumped Lorcan on the shoulder. “Yer a good lad. I like your gumption. But I also like yer mum, great with thestrals, and if I has ter bring Luna what’s left of her kid in an ashcan, well, it’ll be a bad day. So pace yerself.”
He motioned the group to back away from the clearing a bit. “Now. Open yer books ter Chapter Seven, ‘Dragons and Related Large Reptiles.”
* Characters and places established as features of The Wizarding World by JK Rowling are the sole intellectual property of their creators, including those participatory creators besides Rowling herself.
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