2.7 Discussions and recovery
2.7.1 In which enlightenment is attained
On their arrival at the infirmary, Madame Pomfrey immediately absconded to one of the private treatment rooms with the now barely conscious Miss Abercrombie. The sixth-year needed further treatment post haste.
The girl had awoken during her ride in Harry's forepaws only to see that same great green eye she had seen before peering down at her as she was held gently. Between the head injury and the early stages of the troll sepsis —predictably contracted through her open scalp wound — Abigail was hardly coherent, and she would remember very little of the events of that night beyond the feeling of Harry's magic sliding over her when he stopped the troll's club from liquefying her and the recurrent image of that warm green eye.
As for the rest of the group, well, they were less urgent cases.
"Both of you, remain exactly where you are! And no playing the fool!" Snape snapped before he stormed out of the infirmary, leaving a large dragon and a small bushy-haired girl seated in a side room just off the infirmary proper — oddly enough, a room almost identical to the one which had been converted to Harry's dedicated emergency-rations room.
"Okay, Mr. Snape!" Harry chimed in, the excitement of the evening causing him to forget to use the appropriate address of 'Professor'. The same excitement caused Snape to forget to care about his error.
"I hope Abigail is gonna be okay," Harry said when Snape had left the room. "I feel kinda bad for her getting hit by that rock since I was the one who broke the walls."
"Madame Pomfrey said she'd be okay, Harry," Hermione offered, focusing on her friend at the moment — partially because he obviously needed reassurance, but also because she needed to focus on something so she didn't go spare in the wake of the day's events.
"Huh, well I suppose you're right," Harry agreed, much reassured. "Madame Pomfrey's really, really good at that stuff, so she'd know."
"Harry… what's going on?" Hermione asked plaintively, in desperate need of answers now that Harry had settled down.
"Hmm? Oh, well, I'm a dragon, right. It happened when those standing-stone things went all wonky after I knocked my head on one of 'em, and I don't really remember what happened next 'cause I was too busy seein' stars," the dragon explained with a shrug. "We still ain't really sure how it worked, but Mrs. McGonagall says she thinks they're real close to figuring it out now."
"Er, when what happened?"
"Huh?"
"When the 'standing stones' went 'all wonky', what happened?"
"Oh, I turned into a dragon," Harry explained easily, as if turning into a dragon was no big deal. "I used to be a human, but you know how easy it is to misplace that stuff sometimes, huh? But don't have, you know, a big situation about it. I'm cool with it — aside from the whole 'not being able to let people know' bit. That gets kinda annoying sometimes, 'cause I don't like not telling my friends about it. It don't seem quite right, honestly."
Harry sighed, "But people are stupid, and that means I gotta look human most of the time. I mean being human's pretty cool too, because you can get into buildings and turn pages better and sit around with more of your friends 'cause you don't take up the whole room, but I don't like hiding, you know?"
"Oh, um, look… I guess you can change back and forth between dragon-form and human-form, right?"
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "I mean, not right now, because I got a troll bone stuck in my teeth, but normally, yeah. That's how I got back out of that busted-up wall the troll smashed me into with its club!"
"Okay."
The pair fell into a companionable silence for a time. Harry periodically glanced over at the door to the private treatment room into which Madame Pomfrey had disappeared with Abigail — for whom he was still rather concerned — while Hermione simply enjoyed the silence after a far-too hectic day. Eventually though, the bushy-haired girl spoke again.
"Harry?"
"Yeah, Hermione?"
"Thank you."
"Aw, it ain't nothing. You were in distress, and there's some stuff a dragon's gotta do because if he didn't, he wouldn't be a proper dragon, and anyway, there ain't nobody allowed to pick on my friends, and I don't care if the somebody who tries it tastes like bacon."
The dragon nodded decisively at that, despite the fact that his conclusion made little in the way of sense.
"…am I your friend?" Hermione asked tentatively. She vaguely remembered him saying something to that effect, but a lot of the last hour or so had gone a bit fuzzy in her memory.
'Course you are! Weren't for you, I wouldn't know trolls tasted like bacon, and you're really clever, and I like spending time with you, and anyways, ain't no way nobody can have too many friends because friends are the best thing ever! Well, maybe apart from damsels and treasures and… I think guns, but then guns and damsels are two sorts of really special treasure because they're so hard to get, so that's obvious."
"Maybe friends are another kind of special treasure?" The boy's voice had turned speculative. "That'd make sense; I'll have to have a good think on it later."
Hermione digested that for a few moments before she asked, "How'd you know where I was and that the… the troll was going to come in?"
"Well, I didn't know the troll was going after you specifically until I saw it going into the loo where you were, but we all found out about the troll being in the castle when Professor Quirrel came in to the Hall and told everybody. And my friend Hannah, she said earlier that you were in the downstairs girls' loo all upset and stuff because of somethin' or other, but you said you wanted to be alone, so I didn't want to push or nothin', but then we found out about the troll, and someone needed to come let you know, and I said I was gonna do it."
The dragon finally paused to take a breath before continuing. "And then Susan, she wanted to come with to help, 'cause I was her friend, and you were her friend too, and Hufflepuffs don't leave our friends in the lurch, and everyone nodded and they were gonna come with, but I made 'em stay 'cause the troll might've hurt 'em, but they didn't want to stay until I showed 'em a little about how strong I am, then they were okay with it, and I left. But then Abigail — though I didn't know her name then, right — insisted that looking after the students was her job 'cause she's a prefect, so she came along, and then there was the troll and it tried to hit me, so I hit it, and Abigail got hurt, and then I devoured the troll and got a bone stuck in my teeth, and then Mr. Snape came, and then Madame Pomfrey came, and now we're here!"
Hermione digested that for a few more moments before coming to a very pleasant conclusion. It seemed Harry wasn't her only friend in the world; he was just her closest one.
The recounting of the tale had apparently reminded Harry of troll bone stuck in his teeth, because he had started rooting around between his teeth again with his tongue.
"Ouch!"
"Are you okay, Harry?"
"Yeah, but I can't get my tongue under that troll bone to get it out, and when I try, it jams in and that really hurts."
"Let me have a look," she might not be a dentist, but she had certainly heard her parents talk shop enough for something like this. She got up and headed over to Harry's head. "Say, 'aah'."
"Aah," Harry said, terrifying mouth opened wide. Hermione certainly had plenty of space to work; Harry's mouth was bigger than her personal area in the Gryffindor dorms.
The offending bone was as thick as Hermione's wrist, and the end was jammed as deep into Harry's gums as her forearm was long. The end of the bone in contact with the gums was even sizzling a bit. There was no way she'd be able to move that thing; it'd be like ripping out a street sign by the pole!
But Harry was her friend, and that meant something to Hermione. If she had to attempt the impossible to help her friend, then she would give it her best shot! With that in mind, she gave it a yank.
"Ow!" Harry declared, flinching back, and in the process yanking the bone out of her hands.
"Sorry!"
"Ow, ow, ow, ow. I think my mouth's bleeding a bit," Harry said before he noticed Hermione shrinking in on herself. "Aw, don't feel bad, Hermione, it's not your fault, I just got stuff jammed in my teeth, and that sort of stuff happens, right? I mean, last time it was a driveshaft, but that came out real easy because the stuck-in bit got melted."
"…you know," Hermione offered, "Mum and Dad are dentists. They might be able to help."
"Well, maybe we'll try that if Madame Pomfrey can't help," Harry told her pragmatically, nodding firmly before they lapsed into silence again.
Eventually, Hermione broke the silence. "What's with Professor Snape, anyway? I can't tell if he hates everyone or what?"
"Oh, well, Mr. Snape, I mean Professor Snape, he's just a little hard to read sometimes…"
Harry happily launched into a discussion of one of his favorite people who was chronically misunderstood, and thus often required some editorializing. One topic lead to another, and the pair continued companionably for some time.
It was nice to have friends to talk to.
2.7.2 Protective potions master
As Severus Snape left the Infirmary, he seethed inwardly.
Four trolls had gotten through the school's defenses. Four of the blasted things!
Even one would have strained credulity, but four? If not for Mr. Potter's intervention, Miss Granger would have died with certainty and Miss Abercrombie might well have died trying to save her.
For all that Harry was obviously blaming himself for getting Miss Abercrombie involved — something Snape had noted and had resolved to speak with the boy about later — Snape knew better. Miss Abercrombie took her duties seriously, and she thought through things — probably why he was fonder of her than any of her fellow prefects. Miss Granger's missing status would have been discovered eventually, and Miss Abercrombie would have gone after her regardless — in all likelihood too late to do anything but get herself killed as well.
A silvery-white messenger spirit, a variant of the patronus charm-class, appeared before him to deliver its message. A phoenix — so it was from Dumbledore — calling for an emergency staff meeting. He turned toward the stairs.
Four trolls! This had to have been an attack, and an attack implied an attacker. Someone had tried to kill his students… had tried to kill Miss Abercrombie and Miss Granger, his favorite prefect and his most talented potions pupil in years…
…and as soon as Snape found out who was responsible, that someone was going to burn.
2.7.3 Minor irritation, major bloodletting
Albus Dumbledore looked out over a sea of carnage.
His links to the school wards had allowed him to home in on the trolls as soon as whatever concealment had allowed them through the wards dissipated, and he had made haste, arriving on the third floor just in time to see the Sergeant Major's squad open up on the three trolls which had assaulted their position.
It had begun just minutes ago with an odd whine which then deepened into a roaring drone as a stream of glowing projectiles had streamed from the goblin position at the oncoming trolls. The troll skin had resisted for a moment before the bullets penetrated enough to begin tearing fist-sized chunks out of the troll, coming so fast it didn't even have time to fall over before the stream cut it in half.
The other two followed-suit in short order, dead before the bottom half of the first troll finally managed to fall over, and the gun fell silent for a moment before the whine started again, and the gunner swept over the downed trolls, pausing at each head to obliterate it in a gruesome display of calculated savagery.
Albus had to admit, the goblins did good work.
Trolls were disturbingly durable creatures, and many a wizard had died to a 'dead' troll which was carelessly allowed to recover enough to be dangerous. Better to be safe than sorry.
As the echoes of gunfire died out, he heard a distant series of crashes, a roar, and then silence, at which point the wards informed him of the demise of the last troll.
"Corporal, a report on your status please," Albus asked as he approached the Corporal on duty.
"Sir! Three hostiles neutralized at this location. You're standing in them right now, sir," the Corporal — Mantrap he thought the name was — explained. "No friendly casualties, sir. Your man Hagrid informed us earlier that one Celestine, a centaur, had warned him of a robed man leading a group of four trolls on campus. I'd suggest you confirm the whereabouts of the fourth beastie, but based off that roar just now, I'd guess Mr. Potter has dealt with it."
"That would fit with the reports from the wards, but Severus is on his way to verify that right now." Since he had switched them to emergency status, the wards were tracking all the staff right now… or at least they were supposed to be. The wards were reporting Quirrel as being in his quarters, which made no sense. The man had passed out in the Great Hall — a question for later. "You said the report indicated a robed man?"
"Well, technically a robed human, your man didn't specify sex. We reported to you as soon as the report came to us."
Albus stroked his whiskered chin, "So we have another potential intruder, then. Thank you, Corporal, please stay on alert. Perhaps we can catch this person red-handed." The elderly wizard's eyes flashed as his magic flexed subconsciously. Mild-mannered Dumbledore might be, but he sincerely disliked people taking liberties with the wellbeing of his students, and leading trolls onto campus was most assuredly taking major liberties.
After the Corporal replied in the affirmative, Albus added, "If you encounter the intruder, please attempt to leave him or her capable of speech, I have some rather pointed questions to ask."
The goblin smiled toothily at the man's tone. It seemed there would be no arguments with that order.
Albus swept out of the hallway, a surreal picture of brightly colored robes with cheerful dancing jack-o-lanterns soaked up to mid-calf in troll blood and leaving a smeared trail of the same wherever he walked. A quick charm had rendered the blood sterile to ease cleanup by removing the risk of sepsis, but the blood itself was just as resistant as the rest of the beast and would have to be cleaned out the old-fashioned way.
His wand flicked out, and a bevy of messenger patroni appeared before winging their way off through the school.
There was a staff meeting to run, and some pointed questions to ask of his current Defense professor.
2.7.4 Taking responsibility
The mood in the staff room was decidedly more grim than usual. It was hardly a surprising shift; the school had been attacked, and while the weapons used were destroyed, the mind behind it was still at large.
A final sweep of the school had turned up no sign of another intruder. The wards reported all-clear, but that was less than comforting. The wards had also reported all-clear until the trolls were well inside the perimeter, so their mystery intruder had already proven capable of circumventing them. Without evidence one way or another, though, they had had to drop the lockdown and send the students to bed. A state of alert could only be held so long — particularly with teenagers in the mix.
Albus looked over the room. "I am pleased to see you all here, though we still seem to be missing several of our number," he began. "Rubeus has already reported to me personally, and he is currently attempting to track down the trolls' entry point at my request. Argus has been briefed and is cordoning off the two battle-sites. The troll blood must be disposed of and the sites decontaminated that our students might remain healthy, and in the case of Mr. Potter's fight, it is also critical that we ensure the structural integrity of the castle. However, we are still missing our Defense Professor," he concluded with a frown.
Quirinus Quirrel, a man who had no valid excuse for refusing to attend this meeting.
"Minerva, Filius," the two snapped to attention, "Quirinus has avoided our meetings for too long, see to his attendance," he paused, considering for a moment, "take three of the gargoyles with you to convey the importance of this, Minerva."
"Yes, Albus," the Scotswoman acknowledged with a firm nod.
"As the Heads are already aware," Albus addressed the rest of the faculty, "an unknown individual managed to deliver four mountain trolls into the castle. They were sighted by one of our centaur neighbors who was kind enough to relay a warning through Rubeus which arrived just before the attack was launched. The trolls have been dealt with, three by a Gringotts security team posted here for unrelated reasons, and the fourth through the intervention of Mr. Potter."
"Three students encountered the troll Mr. Potter dealt with. One, Miss Abercrombie of Slytherin House, was injured by falling debris; the other two, Miss Granger of Gryffindor and Mr. Potter, are uninjured, though Mr. Potter currently has a troll bone stuck in his teeth. We were lucky in this instance; had Mr. Potter arrived even thirty seconds later, we would be mourning the loss of Miss Granger."
"The infiltrator's whereabouts are still unknown."
"Sir," Septima Vector spoke up, "don't the wards report the location of any intruders to you?"
Albus sighed, "They do, Septima, but as they did not report the trolls until they were already in place to attack, we must assume that the intruder has discovered a way to circumvent at least the detection layers of the wards."
There were a number of gasps at that revelation. Hogwarts was known as the most secure place in the wizarding world precisely because of those wards, and the idea that this intruder could effectively ignore them at will was quite troubling.
"Be aware that we may yet find an intruder to deal with in the future, and be on the alert for any suspicious characters," Albus concluded. "Now our only remaining order of business is our negligent Defense professor."
As if summoned by his words, the door opened again, revealing a rather disheveled Quirinus Quirrel flanked by a furious-looking Filius Flitwick and a bone-white Minerva McGonagall, lips thinned in disapproval to the point that they were no longer visible. Three silvery gargoyles stood behind the trio.
"Albus," Minerva began, "we found Quirinus in his quarters, and he was…" she trailed off, seemingly unable to voice the rest of her report due to being entirely too incensed.
"Drunk!" Filius filled in angrily. "The irresponsible twit was intoxicated to the point he couldn't even walk straight, and he had to have gotten to that point after he delivered that entirely inadequate warning in the Great Hall. It took five sobering charms to get him here!"
Albus' expression turned thunderous. "Quirinus, what do you have to say for yourself?"
The man turned his head away, saying nothing.
"I see," the Headmaster said quietly. The rest of the room was silent. "Quirinus, I understand you are having trouble dealing with that vampire encounter in Albania, and I sympathize, but you have responsibilities as a member of this faculty. If you cannot fulfill them, then you should step down." Albus sighed, "I had wondered when you burst into the Hall and passed out over a single troll. You should have had no trouble dealing with a single troll, and even four should not have been a problem; they are after all a specialty of yours…"
Quirinus' head drooped in resignation.
"Your cowardice almost led to the deaths of three of our students, Quirinus, and returning to your quarters to drink yourself into oblivion, leaving the rest of the student body undefended in the process, was inexcusable," Dumbledore continued. "Your performance was so egregiously unacceptable that you will be docked half your pay for the year for this debacle, and one more incident will lead to your immediate dismissal. Do you understand?"
The Defense professor hung his head before nodding in acknowledgement. It was a fair penalty.
"Very well." As the man turned to go, Albus called after him in a friendly voice, "Oh, Quirinus?"
The defense professor stopped.
"If you are truly having so much trouble dealing with your memories of a vampire in Albania, allow me to offer you this truth to assist in fortifying your constitution."
Dumbledore's presence swelled, blood-soaked robes swirling about his feet. "I am much more frightening than anything you might have encountered in Albania, and if your ineptitude results in any more injuries among my students, or Merlin forbid, anything more permanent, I will ensure that you understand that truth to the deepest reaches of your being."
His presence faded back to normal as Quirrel stood frozen in place.
"Sleep well, Quirinus."
2.7.5 Discussions in the aftermath
Harry had been enjoying his conversation with Hermione for a while now, they'd managed to exhaust the topic of how to translate 'Snape' into the Queen's English, and the discussion had been all over the place since. Hermione wasn't talking much; the dialogue consisted mostly of her asking a question and Harry then running with the topic until he slowed down enough for her to ask another one.
It was the first time Harry had been able to talk with his bushy-haired friend without worrying about keeping being-a-dragon secret. It was pretty fun. So fun, in fact, that Harry was almost disappointed when Madame Pomfrey emerged from the room where she had taken Abigail.
Almost, but not quite.
"How is Abigail, Madame Pomfrey?" he asked.
Hermione looked on silently, still rather dazed by the whole thing.
"Miss Abercrombie will be back in excellent health in a few days, Mr. Potter," Poppy replied.
Harry looked relieved and then puzzled. "Was the knock on her head that bad?" he asked. "It didn't seem that bad when it happened."
"Were it just the head injury, she would have been up and about already," Poppy said. "The real issue was the sepsis."
At the children's puzzled look, she went on, "Trolls are dangerous for several reasons: they are strong, deceptively fast, and quite durable, but they also carry a more insidious biological weapon in the form of their stench. I'm sure you both noticed the smell of that troll that Mr. Potter dealt with — any open wounds exposed to that stink will become invariably infected, and Miss Abercrombie suffered such a wound to her scalp. She will recover, troll sepsis is a known problem with a known solution, but it will likely take several days for her to be ready to face the world again."
"Oh, man," Harry said, "I knew I should'a made her stay in the Hall, but I couldn't think of a way to explain without tellin' about bein' a dragon, and everyone said I shouldn't do that."
"I'll not have you wallowing in guilt over this incident, wretched lizard," a familiar voice cut in from the doorway.
Snape had returned.
"Miss Abercrombie is one of my prefects, and I know her quite well. Rest assured that had you not involved her, she would have involved herself. Miss Granger's absence would have been noted, and Miss Abercrombie would have taken it upon herself to investigate," the potions master said with quiet certainty. "Had you managed to avoid bringing her with you, the only change would have been that she would not have been with you had she encountered one of the trolls — and then she would have died quite messily."
"Oh," Harry said in a quiet voice.
"You performed admirably, Mr. Potter," Severus assured him. "Miss Granger is alive at this juncture solely due to your actions, and Miss Abercrombie likely also has you to thank for her continued survival. Do not castigate yourself over what was, by any reasonable estimation, the best possible outcome of the situation in which you found yourself; sometimes tragedies are unavoidable. Simply be grateful that Miss Abercrombie will recover without any lasting issues."
"Okay," Harry said more firmly as Hermione gently patted his arm in an attempt to be comforting. It wasn't terribly effective, as he couldn't feel her gesture through his scales.
The girl spoke up for the first time since Madame Pomfrey had entered the room, "Trolls?"
"What was that, Miss Granger?" Snape asked.
Hermione swallowed until she managed to find her voice, "You said 'trolls', as in more than one troll," she gulped again, trying to wet her suddenly dry mouth. "Does that mean there are more of those things?" She leaned in closer to the dragon's shoulder as Harry looked at her in concern.
Snape considered the question for a moment, "Four trolls were let into the castle by an unknown agent. Mr. Potter dealt with one, as you know quite well. The other three ran afoul of the goblin security team guarding the third-floor corridor, which you might remember the Headmaster mentioning in conjunction with dying a horrible death during the welcoming feast. The trolls did not heed the Headmaster's advice, and so his prediction was proven accurate. Judging by Dumbledore's robes, I would guess the troll blood was ankle deep in the aftermath."
"Oh! Is Corporal Mantrap okay? How about…" Harry began worriedly only to be cut off by another recent entrant into the conversation.
"Mr. Potter, the goblins suffered no casualties. In truth, when I left, I believe they were discussing the possibility of roasting the remains of the trolls which attacked them," yet another voice interjected from the doorway. "Now, I do not know whether the meat will prove palatable, but they are most welcome to try."
Albus Dumbledore had arrived in the Infirmary.
"Oh, hi Mr. Dumbledore!" Harry greeted the man cheerfully. "I'm glad they're okay, and you should let them know that troll tastes a lot like bacon; it's delicious!" His draconic face fell slightly as he clarified, "Oh, but they should watch out for the bones, though, they stick in your teeth somethin' fierce, and I still haven't been able to get the one that got stuck in mine out."
"I see," the elder wizard nodded gravely. "I assume that is why you are still in your native form, then?"
"Yep," the huge head nodded emphatically.
"Speaking of which, Mr. Potter, lean down here and let me take a look at your teeth," Madame Pomfrey butted in. There was no room for misplaced courtesy when one of her patients was on the line. "I'll see about getting that out right away."
The witch bustled over as Harry obediently lowered his chin to the floor and opened his mouth as wide as he could.
"If I might, Harry, I do have a request for you," Albus began, seemingly oblivious to the witch in the boy's mouth.
"What is it?" Harry asked, mysteriously intelligible despite his mouth being so thoroughly occupied. Though Poppy did smack him on the tongue when it squirmed about and spoiled her grip on the troll bone.
"As I heard Severus mention, the trolls were let in by a currently unknown agent, and we do not know if said person is still on the grounds. Once Poppy has extracted your inconvenient troll bone, might you be so kind as to bend your impressive olfactory capabilities to the task of tracking down the miscreant? One of the centaurs, Celestine, reported the intruders to Hagrid, so you will have a starting point." Albus chuckled, "I'm afraid Hagrid's hound, Fang, though it does have a very good nose, took one whiff of the site, and ran away whimpering. The trolls, I assume."
"Yeah, Fang's a bit of a wimp," Harry chuckled. Poppy yelped at the sound. Then his eyes narrowed doubtfully, "I'll give it a try, if you want, but I found out this morning that my nose ain't really good for tracking when I tried to look for Hermione after Charms class. I got to her books, but then all the other people's scents drowned hers out. I figure I might not even be able to smell whoever it was over the troll-smell."
There was more rather undignified squawking from the woman working on Harry's teeth as his mouth moved slightly in time with his words.
"Well, I would appreciate your efforts, whatever you may find, Mr. Potter. One more thing…" Albus began, only to be cut off by an irate Madame Pomfrey.
"Blast it, Albus! Stop asking the boy questions while I'm shoulder deep in his mouth! So help me, if you ask him one more bloody question before I am done with him, I will throw you out of my infirmary on your ear!"
With her piece said, Poppy gave the job another twenty minutes' worth of the old college try — interspersed with half-stifled swearing — before she finally gave it up. Troll bones were simply too magically resistant to get a good hold on with her spell repertoire. She sat down to think for a few minutes while Harry rested his aching jaw.
Hermione gave her two before raising the possibility of contacting her parents, the dentists, and asking for their help.
A twenty-six-minute discussion on precisely what a dentist's job was and how they did it ensued, before Madame Pomfrey agreed to the idea of sharing space in her infirmary with an outside specialist — even if only temporarily.
Albus Dumbledore — patiently waiting with his mouth firmly shut while his eyes twinkled madly — was then consulted, and Minerva was brought in on the discussion since she was the only faculty member who had actually met the Grangers, having been the one to deliver Hermione's letter and introduce the Grangers to the magical world. Shortly thereafter, the transfiguration mistress left for Crawley on the odd errand of soliciting a dental house-call for a pre-teen dragon in order to remove the troll bone stuck in his gums.
It was the oddest errand she'd been sent on in quite some time.
2.7.6 Draconic dental work
"Well, Mr. Potter, you seem to be taking very good care of your teeth, very clean, no plaque build-up at all. What exactly have you been eating? Do you make a habit of eating trolls?" Tony Granger asked.
Despite his conversational tone, the dentist was currently sweating bullets for a variety of reasons. There were, of course, the physical reasons — the furnace-like breath regularly wafting from the dragon's throat, the heavy protective gear and respiration equipment, the much larger and heavier tools he was using in comparison to his normal kit. Perhaps most importantly, though, was the fact that he was voluntarily up to his arse in an extremely large dragon's mouth.
Although, come to think of it, it would probably be a lot worse if he were there involuntarily, wouldn't it?
In any case, uncomfortable position or not, there was no help for it. He owed the young Mr. Potter a good turn for saving his dearest daughter from being eaten by a troll — a troll whose arm-bone he was currently attempting to extract from the gums between Harry's first superior molar and his second superior pre-molar. Or at least, that was where it would be in a human jaw, Harry's teeth were like nothing he'd ever seen before. The cutting and grinding edges were arranged completely differently, so he wasn't sure just what to call them.
Heck, the things looked more like something out of a documentary on industrial mining than anything else, maybe with some scrapyard-flair mixed in. They certainly didn't look like any teeth he'd ever seen on a human before. Scary looking chompers, though, he thought as he shook his head.
He held out his hand to the world at large and requested, "Tongs."
The school nurse slapped the requested implement into his hand a little testily. He supposed he could relate; heaven knows how irritated he would be if some other dentist came into his examination room and started using it for himself. If it was truly necessary, he'd allow it, but he figured he'd probably be acting a lot like this Poppy Pomfrey.
"No, sir," the dragon said, "this was the first time I've eaten a troll." The boy was remarkably coherent, given how little his jaw and tongue moved. Tony took a moment to consider that before dismissing it as just another bit of magical weirdness, probably the same reason the dragon could speak in the same sort of pitch he remembered from when it was human-shaped in Diagon Alley even though it had to have vocal cords as long as Tony's forearm at the moment.
More importantly, he could see the iron bar he'd improvised as a spreader to keep the dragon's mouth open straining against those few involuntary muscle movements, starting to give way. Tony shuddered. He'd better move this along, that bar wouldn't last much longer, and when it went, he'd be one twitch away from getting the world's worst haircut — right across the waist.
Was that bar starting to glow?
"OW!"
There! He'd finally managed to get the blasted thing loose, though he'd fallen back when it gave way. That was irritating. There he was, holding an arm bone longer than his leg — a lot longer, come to think of it — aloft triumphantly after the first sapient inter-species extraction, and he was doing so while flat on his arse in a puddle of dragon-drool. It painted an undignified sort of picture — though the air out here was blessedly cool in comparison to the dragon's jaws. Speaking of which, he looked up…
…and proceeded to work some moisture back into his suddenly dry mouth.
His stumble had come none too soon, it seemed. The sharp pain must have caused Harry's jaw to twitch a little too strongly, and his makeshift prop folded like a wet napkin. He'd probably have been suffering from at least a row of deep lacerations if not for that extremely fortunate tumble.
Bloody hell, had his patient just swallowed that iron bar?
"Daddy! Be careful!" his daughter yelped from where she was watching off to the side of the room safely wrapped up in Sharon's arms. His wife had made a beeline for her as soon as she'd heard the word 'troll' and seen the way their daughter twitched with each mention thereof. It was the reason the good Madame Pomfrey was currently serving as his vaguely hostile assistant.
"It's alright honey; I was clear before Harry's teeth got me, and I've just got to check for any debris and clean out the wound now. Open up again, there Mr. Potter, we're just about done," he reassured himself as much as his daughter. Just about done, indeed, then he could put this crazy situation behind him.
"Daddy! Honestly, can't you see that you're hurting poor Harry?" his daughter complained, throwing off his train of thought yet again. Poor Harry? Tony shot a dirty look at his wife, who was using their daughter's voluminous head of hair to smother a fit of giggles at the situation. He was the one who had just narrowly avoided death, and his daughter was concerned about his almost-killer's minor discomfort?
Bloody teenagers! God only knew how bad she'd be in a few years. Tony shook his head in disbelief. He knew it would happen eventually, but in his daughter's first year at boarding school? It was obvious, he'd already lost her to, well… to this Monster!
He sighed; Sharon's father had laughingly warned him of this when he'd brought Hermione home from the hospital, but he'd hoped he'd have at least a couple decades with his little girl before this happened. Though who'd have thought the man who took his daughter away would be the dragon from the fairy tale, rather than the knight?
No help for it, he supposed.
If he was going to make a habit of this, he'd have to invest in some better tools, he thought as Harry worked his jaw for a moment before opening back up as wide as he could. Honestly though, what sort of dental tools could hold up to use with a dragon of all things?
Centaurs, dragons, trolls, the fact that those things even existed was throwing him for a loop, and never mind being asked to extract a part of the latter from between the teeth of the second while the first hovered at the side of the room like a concerned parent. When he'd first encountered Suze in the Alley he'd been thrown, but he'd dismissed it as the magical world being weird. The weirdness had only really been driven home when he'd encountered it in his professional capacity.
"Just about done, Harry. Madame, could you rinse out the wound, please? I need to do one last check for any embedded splinters of bone, and then we'll let it heal naturally." As the witch stepped up with her wand, he considered the situation. Harry seemed like a decent sort, if a bit hyper, so that was good. All told, he supposed Hermione could have done worse for herself — he just wished it hadn't happened so bloody early! He turned back to the now-cleared wound to give it a final examination.
"All done then, Mr. Potter," he said, backing away and stripping off his heavy leather gloves.
"Thanks, Mr. Granger! And thank you Madame Pomfrey!" The woman in question gave him a friendly pat on the — ear, maybe? Tony wasn't really up on the naming conventions for dragon anatomy, but it was about as far up on the side of the reptile's head as the woman could conveniently reach — before walking towards another room with a deliberate stride that told Tony she had another patient to see. "That feels a lot better already," the dragon said, already prodding at the area with his man-sized tongue.
Tony took one look at that massive tongue before a horrible thought struck; he glanced over at his sweet not-quite-teenaged daughter, currently sheltered in her mother's arms, then back at that tongue and shuddered inwardly. No, not going to think about that, not at all! Instead he nodded in acknowledgement of his patient's thanks and set about removing the padded gambeson that the school's headmaster, the white-bearded fellow off in the corner, had conjured up out of thin air for him. "Happy to help, Mr. Potter. Thank you for saving my daughter from that troll."
"Of course," the dragon said happily. "She's my friend, so there was no way I wouldn't save her from getting devoured."
With the gambeson removed, and with it most of the dragon-drool, Tony found himself the target of a massive hug from his daughter as his wife picked up the after-orthodontia conversation.
"Now Harry, you really must remember to properly chew your food," Sharon smoothly lectured. "Getting food stuck into your gums like that could lead to an infection, and in this case particularly, could lead to an abscess, which are thoroughly unpleasant both to have and to treat." She was always better at this sort of thing while Tony was a mite better at the more finicky hand work. Their complementary abilities were part of the reason their practice worked so well. "Has this sort of thing happened to you before?"
"Only once," the dragon said, "but that was a driveshaft from that one little car I ate, and it was really pointy on the end. It's why Hagrid tries not to get Hyundai scrap anymore. That one wasn't such a problem, though, because the part that was stuck just melted. I'm not sure why the bone was so difficult."
"Drive-shaft?" Sharon's eyes narrowed, "Harry, apart from trolls and drive-shafts, what does your diet consist of? Are you getting plenty of calcium and fluoride in your diet? What about vegetables? Enough protein?"
With his arms still full of bushy-haired daughter, Tony looked at his wife incredulously. He'd always wondered just how much Sharon ran on autopilot during these discussions, and he supposed he now had an answer. Vegetables? With those teeth? Seriously, Sharon!
Harry, though, took her questions in stride, as — it was becoming increasingly apparent — he always did.
"Well, I'm not sure about the calcium and fluoride, 'cause I don't think they're usually used in steel, which is most of what I get from the scrapyard. I mean, they use limestone as a flux, but it gets skimmed off, so you don't get it in the scrap. Fair bit of aluminum and copper, too and little bits of other metals. I think the coal's got some sulfur and stuff in it, but I know the fuel oil's pretty light on minerals, 'cause it's refined a lot before I get it. Some of the rocks near my lair might have calcium and fluorides in them, though. I'll have to check," a head nearly as large as than the Granger family car nodded enthusiastically as Sharon's eyes grew wider and wider at the long list of not-normally-edible things the dragon was casually mentioning. "Um, on the vegetable stuff, I eat a lot of devil's snare, because it grows really fast and Professor Sprout always has extra around. It's like a sort of combination between mint and lemon, real tasty! I know there's lots of other magical plants which are real tasty, but I don't get 'em very often because they're kinda expensive."
The dragon frowned thoughtfully, and Tony couldn't help but wonder how he managed to be so expressive with such an alien face. "Maybe Professor Sprout would help me set up a greenhouse at my Lair so I could grow some more? That might be cool!" he said, obviously warming to the idea. "I'll have to ask. Um, and I eat lots of beef and pork and sheep and venison and bacon and other human-sorts-of-food at school, so there's that for protein. And roasted acromantulas are really tasty, too, but there aren't so many of those left, now," the dragon finished, almost regretfully.
Hermione had looked up during her friend's dissertation on his eating habits, and her eyes had gone almost as wide as her mother's, who was still struggling to process the unexpected responses to that very routine set of question.
Hah! Giggle at his near-death experience, would she? Now, Sharon was having the weirdness smack her in the face. She ought to be grateful she wasn't hip deep in the dragon's mouth when she was going through it! Then his daughter worked her way through what the dragon had been saying.
"Scrapyard? Devil's snare? Acromantula?" She sounded absolutely horrified. "Harry, those are giant spiders! What are you doing eating those? Those are dangerous, you might get hurt!"
Wait, what? Dangerous to the beast whose mouth he'd just been rooting around in? With those teeth?
What exactly was his daughter dealing with at this school anyway?
"Ah, Miss Granger, you seem to be laboring under a few misconceptions. Please calm yourself," a dark-haired man who had been silent to this point spoke up. "And Mrs. Granger, I feel I should clarify some things about your patient's biology in comparison to the human norm. Mr. Potter's body utilizes iron, copper, aluminum, titanium, gold, and numerous other metals in the same capacity yours or mine — or quite nearly any other creature aside from the drake-dog and certain magical plants, for that matter — uses carbon-based proteins. Technically speaking, iron is the basic building block on which his biology is built, displacing even water from its place as the primary medium for life-sustaining reactions. Carbon is used in some quantity, but the reactions are completely different from its uses within your physiology, serving mainly as an energy source with some utility as an alloying agent in his teeth and some regions of his scales," the man explained.
"His remarkable digestive tract is rather more like a living blast furnace than the acid and enzyme bath used by human-kind, though it does use some rather fascinating substances which manage to act as enzymes despite operating at a temperature sufficient to boil lead — ah, but I digress. On the subject of devil's snare, according to Mr. Potter, the plant tastes like a cross between parsley and lemon-mint; I believe it supplies certain trace minerals common to such plants in addition to a potent magical accelerant, which renders the species unsafe for human consumption but seems to be quite delicious to Mr. Potter's palate. As for the acromantula, Miss Granger, they are indeed giant spiders, and they are indeed extremely dangerous, but not to put too fine a point on it, so was the troll you encountered earlier today. Acromantula are approximately as threatening to Mr. Potter as a lobster in a grocer's tank is to you, and I have found that, properly grilled," at this, the man shot a pointed glance at the dragon in the room, who managed to look sheepish, "they are actually quite delicious, reminiscent of grilled shrimp basted in butter."
"Sorry, Professor Snape," the dragon apologized, "I didn't know you could get sick from eating undercooked acromantula."
"Harry, just what possessed you to try eating a giant spider rather than more… normal food?" Sharon asked, looking faintly nauseated.
"Well, for a start, they tried to pick on Suze's family," Harry explained as Suze nodded from her place at his side where she had managed to relocate while everyone else was busy discussing draconic gastronomy. "And then, well, I was kinda hungry, and there were a bunch of them just layin' around afterward, so I gave them a try, you know, like Mr. Slackhammer told me, 'Waste not, want not'. But I tried them, and they tasted good! Sort of like crunchy chicken in diesel — I think the diesel-taste is from the shell, because Mr. Snape didn't try that."
As Sharon tried to process that, the dragon continued. "I wish I'd known how tasty spiders were when they used to crawl all over me when I got sent to the cupboard when I was little," Harry remarked offhandedly as his form flowed back into that of the pre-teen boy they remembered from the alley several months previous, "then they would've been tasty instead of creepy."
"Why would you ever be put in a cupboard, Harry?" Sharon checked, her tone sharp. It seemed that with the boy back in a more relatable form, her training as a physician was coming back to the fore, and one thing physicians were trained to look out for — particularly with children — was abuse. Tony stifled a wince as he saw the tears brimming in the corners of his wife's eyes and the way her fingernails were biting into her palms. Sharon had always been one to get personally invested in such things too.
Her husband thought it was one of her better points — no matter how scary she was when she did so.
"Oh, they didn't really need me to do anything, doing better than Dudley on a quiz, or when the washing machine broke and needed fixing, or when I got blamed for Dudley nicking something from the corner shop. I always wondered what that stuff was about."
Sharon looked like she was about to wring someone's neck as soon as she found out who was to blame. Hermione was in a similar state, though she managed to make it look cute — it was entirely possible that Tony was biased. On a more serious note, he couldn't tell if this was an improvement over her earlier post-troll emotional state or not. Normally he'd ask Sharon, but she was unavailable at the moment. Even that Minerva McGonagall was looking rather murderous.
Were her pupils slitted?
"I mean, Uncle Vernon apologized in his letter, and he tried to explain, so I think I sorta get it now," Harry continued, oblivious to the feminine wrath building in the room. "He said that Aunt Petunia knew magical kids could do stuff accidentally, 'cause she grew up with my Mum, but she didn't know exactly how that stuff worked, so she just ended up blaming everything on me, 'cause why wouldn't she, if she knew I could've done it and there weren't no way for her to tell the difference? And Uncle Vernon wasn't home during the day, so he just took Aunt Petunia's word for it. So he tried to teach me proper, and for little kids that means punishments for doing bad things. Then since I didn't do the bad things in the first place, I didn't know what I was doin' wrong so nothin' changed, and it looked like it weren't working, so he got real frustrated and stuff. It really weren't nobody's fault, just one of those 'unfortunate misunderstanding' things."
The boy sighed, "At least me and Uncle Vernon and Dudley get on pretty good now — well, we write back and forth. Aunt Petunia still won't write — Uncle Vernon says she feels too guilty about how things happened. I don't really get Aunt Petunia sometimes…"
"So, you were placed with your Aunt and Uncle, but they were not informed of how to raise a magical child, so they had difficulties with it?" Sharon's voice sounded collected, but her eyes told a different story.
"I guess?"
"Did anyone ever check in on you?"
"Um, I dunno? I don't think so, but I don't remember too much about what happened back then, not like since I turned into a dragon."
"Do you know who placed you there?" Again, the kind voice was at sharp odds with the steel in Sharon's eyes. Hermione seemed to have caught on to her mother's train of thought as well and was looking cutely outraged. Tony was subtly edging towards the door. He wanted no part in the coming discussion.
Harry shook his head negatively.
"Na, bit ah ken," that faint Scottish burr Tony had always found quite charming about the woman who had introduced his daughter to magic by turning their coffee table into a pig — and thankfully, back again; he liked that coffee table — had thickened until it was nigh-impenetrable. "Albus, whit dae ye hae tae say fur yersel'?" This time, Snape was the one edging towards the door. He knew that tone all too well, and every time he heard it, it made him feel like a wet-behind-the-ears first-year all over again.
"Hmm?" the elderly man looked up from his reading. He had been busying himself with some of his usual headmaster-related busywork as he waited for Harry to be available to attempt to track the intruder's scent. "What was that, Minerva?"
"Why did you leave a magical baby with a non-magical family without explaining how magic worked?" Sharon explained, accusingly. "A situation which led to the child being abused!"
"Ah," Albus said in realization. "Yes, that was a major failing on my part. I will attempt to explain, but first, a time-sensitive matter." Ignoring the feminine outrage at his delay, he turned to the rapidly retreating Severus Snape. "Severus, our intruder is still at large; now that Harry is available, please escort him to Hagrid so that he might assist as much as he is able with our search for the person behind today's assault."
Harry perked up at the reminder, pulled away from his curious staring at the strangely behaving women.
Snape nodded, grateful for the excuse to leave, "Come along, Mr. Potter. It seems we still have work to do."
"Right!' Harry said, heading for the door with Suze trailing along.
Tony took the chance to sneak out with them.
2.7.7 Grave discussions
Harry couldn't help but wonder what was going on as he left the Infirmary. Hermione, her mum, and Mrs. McGonagall had been acting so weird. There was a voice that sounded like it was just a bit short of yelling about something or other, but it shut off with a sort of squelching noise and an odd flash — to his eyes, no one else's — as the door closed. This room had another one of those silencing thingies like Mr. Flitwick had put on the room where he was supposed to go if he got really hungry again. He couldn't tell if that voice that got cut off was Hermione or her mum, they sounded pretty similar.
It must be great to have a mum.
Well, he did have a mum, but she got killed by that Voldemort guy, so he couldn't talk to her and stuff. Come to think of it, didn't they put people who'd been killed in boxes and then bury 'em somewhere so you could go visit with 'em and remember 'em and stuff?
"Mr. Snape?"
"What?"
"You knew my mum, right?" Harry asked. At the man's nod, he continued, "I was just thinking how nice it would be to have a mum when I heard Hermione and her mum together, and it got me thinking. When people get killed they get buried in boxes in a special sort of place and stuff, right?"
"That is correct, Mr. Potter," the potions master explained in a rather softer than normal tone of voice. "A deceased person is generally buried in a box called a coffin on a small plot of land called a grave within a designated area called a graveyard. The graves are usually marked in one manner or another as well, wizards traditionally use carved stones called, rather unimaginatively, gravestones."
"Okay, um… I was wondering, do you know where my Mum is buried? I think I'd like to go see sometime. And Dad too, come to think of it."
"Yes," Snape said seriously, "as it so happens, I do know where she is buried, in Godric's Hollow. As is customary for married couples, both of your parents are buried in adjacent plots, so a single trip will take you to see both graves. I will see to it that you make such a journey as soon as is practical — it is important to know where you come from."
"Thanks, Mr. Snape."
"You are most welcome, Mr. Potter. For now, however, we must attempt to search out the culprit behind today's troll infestation."
"Right!" He did have something important to do, didn't he? The poo-head who had set those trolls on everybody was still around, and he needed to help try to find him. "I'm supposed to be following from where Celestine spotted the guy, right?"
"That is correct."
"Then wouldn't it be faster for me to fly on over and ask him where he saw the guy. I mean, the other students are all asleep now, right? So, there shouldn't be anyone to see me."
"I suspect that there are many still awake after the eventful evening. You would be hard-pressed to avoid detection now, particularly under the full moon. We will meet Hagrid at the front doors, and he will take you the rest of the way."
"Oh," Harry said, disappointedly. As he had noted multiple times in the past — waiting was hard.
The rest of the walk was quite quiet
2.7.8 A sinking feeling
Tony watched as the boy-who-was-actually-a-dragon and his pet centaur jogged to keep up with the extremely large and hairy man who met them at the main door of the castle. Why on earth did the first boy his daughter had shown an interest in have to be so completely immune to fatherly intimidation?
What horrible crime had he committed to deserve that?
The irritated father sighed, there was no profit in getting all worked up about it, he supposed. Judging by how she'd reacted before they left the infirmary, trying would just see Hermione furious with him anyway.
"So, I gather the troll that attacked my daughter was brought into the school by someone," he began, asking the sallow-complexioned man whose name was apparently Snape.
"That is correct, per the report of a centaur patrol which spotted the intruder leading four trolls with him," Snape replied.
Tony considered that for a moment, "If a centaur patrol saw them, they why didn't they take care of the issue themselves? Seems like a patrol ought to be armed, and, judging by Miss Suze; three or four of them should have been able to deal with most anything, I'd think."
"Ah, Miss Suze's customary armament is not representative of centaurs as a whole; rather it was acquired by Mr. Potter through his contacts at Gringotts. Sadly, despite the ongoing efforts of Miss Suze's uncle Ronan, the pinnacle of centaur weapons technology remains the recurved short-bow, and while their craftsmanship is superb, they lack the stopping power to deal with even a single troll, much less a group of four backed by a wizard."
"Really? I'd think they could get a pretty impressive draw strength on one of those bows, judging by Suze's size and musculature." Archery was a hobby of his. "With three or four firing from concealment, they should have at least been able to disable the trolls, I'd reckon."
"You seem to underestimate the lethality of a troll, Mr. Granger, despite recently extracting the arm-bone of one from our young dragon's teeth," Snape countered. "That bone — which had it been intact, would have been nearly two-thirds your height — came from the troll's forearm. The entire beast is a humanoid engine of destruction, nearly half again the height of Hagrid, the Groundskeeper currently leading Mr. Potter on his search, and perhaps five times his mass. They customarily carry clubs constructed from felled trees — the one that almost ate your daughter carried one comprised of a section of oak trunk as thick as your waist and twice your height — and they can swing them fast enough to take your head off before you fully register the movement."
"Worse yet, they are covered in a thick gray hide sufficient to turn anything which would be unable to penetrate well-made steel-plate armor, and their muscles are quite nearly as hard as the wood comprising their clubs. I am given to understand that firing an arrow into them is rather like doing the same to a large tree. Arrows are useless unless fired from a ballista, or perhaps the crossbow that my colleague, Hagrid, carries. Even for centaurs, with their rather imposing size, close combat with a troll is suicide. Worse yet, the beasts emit a toxic stench, contact with which will cause any open wounds to develop a thoroughly unpleasant infection which is quite difficult to treat, thus even successful close combat with a troll often proves ultimately lethal. Then there was the backing wizard to deal with…"
He shook his head in dismissal. "No, our neighbors were kind enough to deliver a warning, which was far more generous than we had any reason to expect."
"And there were four of those things here?" Tony asked in a choked voice. "With Hermione?"
"Miss Granger encountered only a single troll," Snape clarified. "The others ran afoul of certain security measures located on the third floor."
"Oh, just one horrifying plague-ridden murder-beast," Tony snarked, "I feel so very much better about this situation."
Snape said nothing — of course, it didn't really warrant a reply.
A few moments passed as the pair stared out into the darkened courtyard before the worried father hit upon another question. "You mentioned that the centaur's warning was 'more generous than you had any reason to expect' — why is that? I mean, I'd think that you'd let your neighbors know about that sort of thing as a matter of course."
"Ah, that is an unpleasant topic — most unpleasant," Snape grimaced in the manner of someone attempting to find the appropriate words to deliver some thoroughly ugly news. "I believe Minerva was the one to inform you of your daughter's magical talents. Am I mistaken in that belief?"
At the answering confirmation, Snape continued, "My colleague has the unfortunate habit of painting things in the best possible light, and her description of our world is no different. To put it bluntly, the wizarding world is a brutish and exceptionally scary place where might is the first and final arbiter of right, and it is largely inhabited by unutterable bastards who would not piss on a burning orphan unless they could see an immediate profit in doing so."
Snape paused to take a calming breath.
"More to the point, among wizards, oppression and exploitation are the normal state of affairs, with the strong taking whatever they can manage from anyone the can overcome, extort, or swindle. Non-human sapient persons such as centaurs are easy targets. For better or for worse, centaurs in particular have little that anyone wants, and are thus generally treated as filthy animals unworthy of interacting with so-called 'decent' folk," the potions master scoffed. "There is something horribly wrong with any so-called civilization in which a being capable of speech — and in fact quite civilized, such as that wretched lizard's pet centaur — is considered an uncontrolled wild animal."
Snape shook his head at the idea before continuing, "It is therefore quite unexpected that our forest neighbors would bother to relay a warning at all, instead of sitting back to enjoy the schadenfreude. I suspect, in truth, that the warning was delivered solely because of Mr. Potter's alliance with the Clan and his known fondness for certain individuals within the castle."
This was sounding worse and worse to Tony Granger. Just what sort of hellhole had his precious daughter gotten herself mixed up in? As the concerned father was trying to work out just what he should ask, the potions master continued to elaborate.
"Other species have suffered much worse than the centaurs. I am sure you are familiar with the goblins, for instance. Extraordinarily attuned with earth in a way unmatched by any since the stone-men of legend, they were, until less than a century ago, kept as an enslaved nation and forced to mine and craft riches for their wizard overlords — when they weren't being harvested for potions ingredients, that is. That state was only changed through the application of copious amounts of violence at the end of the nineteenth century. Veela were in a similar situation prior to winning their own autonomy — also through violence — nearly a millennium ago."
"Veela?" Tony was unfamiliar with that name, unlike the centaurs and goblins.
"Veela are a universally female race, believed to be descended from nymphs and possessed of a surpassingly strong control of the element of fire. As they also uniformly possess a superlative beauty and innate magics intimately tied to sexuality, I assume I need not elaborate on the sorts of depravities to which they were subjected."
The dentist's nauseated expression gave Snape all the confirmation he needed.
Snape laughed, a bitter, mocking sort of sound, "No, the wizarding world is not a nice place, and perhaps the worst of it was saved for our own kind."
"What do you mean?" Tony asked, though he had a horrible idea that he knew exactly what Snape meant.
"In addition to vulnerability, the sorts of monsters that infest the wizarding world seek utility. Goblins were enslaved for their talents as miners and craftsmen, veela for the sorts of depravities vulnerable women have been subjected to since time immemorial; centaurs, on the other hand, were simply driven into the outskirts then left mostly alone, because the monsters who did so saw little other utility in them. There is one species, however, that is of greater utility to wizards than any other…"
"Their own."
Yep, that is exactly what Tony had been afraid he was about to hear. "I have a bad feeling about this…"
"Rightly so, and it will only get worse from here on out. Wizarding industry relies almost exclusively on the labor of magical craftsmen, and magical labor does not come cheap," Snape sneered. It was a disturbingly natural-looking expression on the man's face. "It is distressingly common to find vulnerable magical children — and those born to non-magical parents such as your daughter are the most vulnerable of all — disappeared from the streets only to show up in 'contract labor'." The sallow-skinned man practically bit off the term. "The institution is effectively slavery in all but name, where they will then be forced to work for no pay until they die or are 'repurposed' for more sinister roles. Most support the manufacturing industry, but a fair number are funneled into those roles which were previously fulfilled by the veela." The man's dark eyes flashed with tightly controlled rage. "Between compulsions and mind-magics, they will even do so to all appearances willingly — denied even the basic freedom to bemoan their fate. Worse yet are the ones destined for supplying the black-market for ritual components…" At this Snape trailed off, shuddering.
Tony Granger considered that for a moment before his thoughts turned to outrage. "Why didn't she tell us about this? That, that… woman, led us to believe that this was a wonderful opportunity for our little girl, not some… Orwellian dystopia full of monsters in human skin!"
"To be fair to Minerva," Snape said, "I have seen more of the dark side of things in my life than she, due to my own regrettable choices. She has never had the misfortune of encountering the evidence that I have, and much is the sort of thing one is reluctant to believe of one's fellow men if not seen first-hand. She knows things are bad, but she remains optimistic."
His tone turned darker, "Then there is the other side of the coin to consider. Your daughter was already known to the wizarding world, and as an intelligent, fertile Hogwarts-aged witch, she would make a prime catch for the markets. It is the sad truth that I would fully expect her to have been snatched up within weeks of your refusal, had you been unwise enough to reject the Hogwarts offer. She would be subjected to a fate which I will not force you to hear spoken of, while you and your wife would either be dead, if the kidnappers were lazy, or left with no memory of ever having a daughter and under compulsion to have more children for them to take later, if they were not."
Tony was still struggling to find his voice when the dark-haired man continued. "By enrolling in Hogwarts, however, law and custom places her under the protection of the Hogwarts Headmaster and her Head of House, respectively, during her schooling. Few are those who would risk the wrath of Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall. It is not ideal, but she will have a much better chance of defending herself with a Hogwarts education under her voluminous head of hair and another seven years to improve herself."
"Those born to non-magical families are some of the most vulnerable members of our sick, twisted facsimile of a society, and it is always the most vulnerable who pay the highest price, Mr. Granger. Those who do not find patronage tend to disappear quite quickly to truly unenviable fates."
"Why shouldn't we just run, go to America or something?" Tony was grasping at straws at this point.
"And where would you go, Mr. Granger?" there was that mocking laugh again. Tony was really starting to hate that laugh. "Britain, festering cesspit that it is, is one of the most progressive polities in the Wizarding World. Our unfortunates are caught up in 'contract labor' because slavery has been outlawed since 1963, nonmagical persons such as yourself are legally considered persons under our laws since 1920, and the centaurs are left mostly to their own devices because hunting them for sport has become unfashionable in recent years — all through the efforts of our esteemed Headmaster. Most other nations are not so fortunate."
"The Confederacy, our neighbors across the Atlantic — a direct descendant of the Haudenosaunee Nation, rather than the non-magical colonies you are no-doubt familiar with — are some of the best, it is true, but they are insular and clannish to an absurd degree. If you are not negotiating on behalf of a large group — causing you to be directed to the central council — then you will be subjected to whatever the local tribes decide to do with you. Some will be kind, some will not, and there is no way to tell which beforehand. Most other magical nations in the world are far worse."
"Trolls, giant spiders, dragons, slave markets… Look, Professor. Sharon and I, we know next to nothing about… about this world, and by God, it scares the Hell out of me! I just don't want Hermione to get even more entangled in all of this."
"If you were not scared, I would despair for your intelligence, Tony, but quite frankly, your best opportunity for keeping your daughter safe lies in her becoming quite inextricably 'entangled' — to use your term — with the young dragon you just so capably treated."
"If this world is so bloody ugly, Professor, then why the hell should I let my daughter wallow even deeper in it?" Tony demanded. "I'm her father! I'm supposed to be looking out for my daughter's best interests! I'm supposed to protect her!" He buried his face in his hands and mumbled, "How am I supposed to protect her when she's off facing danger in a place I can't even follow?"
"Even if you did pull her back now, the only elements of this world that would respect your decision are those about whom you need not worry in any case. Your daughter is involved now, and she has been since she had her first episode of accidental magic; there is no way to extricate her safely," Snape laid the situation out mercilessly, though not unkindly. "Given that, what exactly do you expect to be able to do to protect your daughter when the government in general and the individuals in power in specific regard those of us with non-magical parentage as barely worthy of the term 'human'? The phrases bandied about are 'mudblood' or 'muggle-born', and I apologize for having used either within your hearing as both are quite disgusting epithets."
"And how is staying in that situation any better for my daughter?" Tony snarled.
"It is the safest path forward," Snape calmly insisted. "You were apparently not listening when I outlined this previously, therefore I will reiterate: there is nowhere to run. Your daughter's options are to seek powerful patronage and with it powerful protection, to learn enough to become too powerful for any to oppose her, to learn enough to hide herself away as a hermit for the rest of her days, or to accept the inevitable and give up. I firmly hold the latter two options to be unacceptable, and the second is likely unfeasible for Miss Granger — her magical strength is insufficient for that path unless she were to delve into truly horrific arts. However, your daughter is already well on her way to obtaining the first."
"You mean Harry?" the dentist scoffed. "How is he in any better position? And for that matter, why would he help?"
"Yes, I do mean Harry," Snape confirmed. "As to how he is in a better position to protect your daughter than you are yourself, there are several reasons. Firstly, although you seem to have somehow managed to put the fact out of your mind despite having spent the better part of an hour hip deep in his mouth, he is an excitable seventy-ton dragon able to bite through a car with the same effort you or I would use to bite through a biscuit. Secondly, although he is still underaged and therefore lacks most of the attendant influence, he is the patriarch and sole surviving member of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, and as such he has… certain political and legal immunities and benefits. Thirdly, he is quite admirably protective of anyone he considers a friend. Fourthly, he is the only creature ever known to have survived being struck by the Killing Curse, the flat-out deadliest spell known to wizard-kind. Fifthly, he is almost sickeningly good natured; the only thing I can categorically say I dislike about him is his habit of rampantly chattering away at a mile-a-minute. Aside from his frequent babbling, he is a surprisingly tolerable child, and I do not as a rule like children, so that is saying something. And sixthly, I have watched that boy dismember an acromantula the size of a small cottage for having the temerity to threaten one of his friends. I have absolutely no doubt that any being that dared to pose a threat to one of his own would meet a similarly ignominious end."
"…and you think he'd have a go at anyone who had a go at Hermione?"
"Think? Mr. Granger, he bodily devoured an adult mountain troll because it attacked your daughter. Remember? The reason you are here at this time?"
"Ah, yeah," Tony acknowledged sheepishly.
He must have gotten really worked up to have forgotten that particular gem.
The two men lapsed into silence for a few moments, staring out into the darkness of the front courtyard as they waited for Harry to return with results in his search.
"What's with those 'acro-mantula' things?" Tony eventually asked. "You've mentioned them several times now."
"Acromantulas are a species of giant arachnid," Snape explained. "They treat any creature less than twice their size, human beings included, as prey. Their origins are obscure, but it is known they did not evolve naturally. The leading theory is that they were part of a botched experiment, much like the duck-billed platypus; though I suppose it is possible that they may have been created intentionally. Wizards have made worse things — after all, basilisks and nundu exist."
The potions master shook his head in disgust at the idea before continuing, "In any event, the original instigator of the mess is unknown, and will likely remain so, thus the intention behind that particular bit of idiocy will remain a mystery. When hatched, acromantula are the size of a large man's hand and are able to prey upon species as large as the common housecat. As they age, they grow continuously. The largest known specimen was approximately eight yards long in body, with legs of similar length. They are clever — the largest are capable of speech — quick, ruthless, and utterly voracious predators."
As Snape paused to take a breath, Tony let out an awed whistle.
"Quite," the potions master acknowledged with a nod. "Their silk is immensely strong, with a tensile strength which remains unmeasured to my knowledge due to lack of equipment sufficiently strong to test it to failure. The diameter of the strands limits its value for the textile industry, as depending on the producing spider's size, it can range from the thickness of a dandelion stem up to the thickness of a human finger. However, I do understand that the centaurs use the silk extensively for producing exceptionally strong rope. The venom, on the other hand, is an ingredient in several remarkably versatile potions. Although deadly in all but the most minute of doses, if administered in sufficiently dilute quantities it is part of the simplest treatments for collywobbles and the dragon pox. In a less dilute form, it is excellent as an active ingredient in metal-polishing potions designed for magically-active metals like gold and mithril."
"They sound like they could be useful," Tony offered.
"Indeed, they can be," Snape agreed, "though the damage they cause to the local ecosystem within their territorial range is extensive and generally exceeds the benefit of availability of their potions reagents. In this area alone, they are primarily responsible for the extinction of at least twelve native species and endangering a further twenty-seven, four of which are the source of truly unique reagents. Until that dratted dragon came into the picture, the only things preventing them from boiling out of that forest like a plague of elephant-sized locusts were the typically low wintertime temperatures of this area and a hard-fought defensive action over some fifty years on the part of the local centaur clan."
Tony thought for a moment, "I bet there'd be a way to captive-breed them, you know, to milk their silk and venom."
"It has been done, primarily by removing their limbs; however, they are quite capable of regenerating amputated limbs in a matter of days, and strict vigilance is therefore paramount." Snape shrugged. "Personally, I am of the opinion that your kind, non-magical humans, are best suited to contain and control those brutes, but those in position of authority have other ideas."
Just as Tony was considering that, Harry jogged back into the light, accompanied by Suze.
"Hey, Mr. Snape, Mr. Granger, Hagrid took me over to where the trolls came in, but I couldn't make anything out from the smell, sorry," the dragon reported apologetically. "It just smelled like troll. We did find out they came in through the lake-side gate, though, and they took the north stairwell, if that helps."
"I see, thank you for your efforts, Mr. Potter," Snape said. "I shall relay your findings to the Headmaster."
"Right! Um, I'm going to go back to the Lair and get somethin' to eat, now. Do you think you can let Hermione know I'll be by to see her tomorrow?"
"I'll do that, Harry," Tony volunteered as the young dragon thanked him then jogged off towards the tree-line, centaur damsel in tow.
Best to be on good terms with his daughter's new protector, he supposed.
2.7.9 Night terrors
The infirmary was dark and silent but for the muted ticking of the clock above the door and the occasional whine of the wind past the windows. Although Hermione had avoided injury, Madame Pomfrey had offered her a bed for the night to spare her the late-night trip through the castle after her ordeal. The clock had quietly struck midnight half an hour ago, and her parents had left an hour before that, but Hermione was still awake despite her exhaustion.
She could not sleep; there was still too much to think about.
She had almost died that evening. Her thoughts kept circling around that truth, unable to leave it be.
She had almost died in a bloody school bathroom, eaten by a troll, and she had managed to avoid that fate not through the intervention of the teachers, not through her own skills and grit and intelligence, not even by chance… no, she had survived because her friend came to save her and happened to be able to turn into a bloody dragon!
This bloody wizarding world was mental!
Hermione had been slowly adjusting to the idea that the wizarding world was a very different place than she was used to. Beyond the fairy-tale aesthetics and the wonders of magic, there were different standards for personal behavior and different acceptable levels of personal danger. That giant gray monster, though… that thing had driven home just how different things were, and Hermione was still trying to process that.
It seemed the wizarding world was a Grimm Brothers fairy tale rather than Disney adaptation Professor McGonagall had described all those months ago.
Hermione could sort-of deal with her friend turning into a dragon. After all, Professor McGonagall could turn into a cat, as she'd demonstrated in their first transfiguration class what seemed like ages ago, so turning into a dragon didn't seem too far-fetched. Hermione figured that was just another wrinkle in her relationship with Harry. He hadn't told her before, but he seemed eager to talk about it after she'd found out…
…and the boy had saved her life.
She supposed she could cut Harry some slack on not telling her he could turn into a dragon, especially if he had some trouble staying in human form at times. She figured that'd be pretty embarrassing to talk about. A weird animagus form was hardly something to get worked up over, not in comparison to almost getting eaten…
…and there she was, back to the troll!
She shivered, despite the charmed infirmary blanket.
Hermione hadn't felt safe since Harry had left the room on that errand for the Headmaster. She'd managed to put it out of her mind for a while by going along with her mother and Professor McGonagall when they chewed out Headmaster Dumbledore — she blushed at the memory; what had she been thinking, chewing out the Headmaster? — but as soon as that passed, she'd been shivering periodically in a state just short of terror. Despite that, she'd managed to put on a brave front for her parents; she didn't want them to worry when they got home.
Her dad had passed on a message from Harry that he'd be coming to see her in the morning, and she was looking forward to it, and to the feeling of safety she'd come to associate with her savior. As long as Harry was with her, no weird magical monster was going to be able to jump out of nowhere and eat her.
"Harry would eat it first!" she whispered to the room at large, trying to convince herself she would be safe.
Now she just had to hold out until morning, alone in the dark, quiet infirmary, with nothing to read to take her mind off things — just her and her increasingly brittle thoughts.
It would be another three long hours before exhaustion finally managed to drag Hermione into a still-fitful slumber.