Harry Potter and the Dragon

XXIII

Behind the Armor

Just before the chatting and gleeful friends could check the balcony was strong enough to sustain them, the dragon, victim of a violent attack of happiness, made a sudden movement so as to bite Harry playfully, and Buckbeak, scared, slashed the beast's right forearm in a flash of claws.

The dragon screamed sharply whereas Harry tried to control the hippogriff and prevent Ron and Hermione from falling. "Get a grip, you idiot! Beaky couldn't have seriously hurt you!" he shouted crossly.

"I'M DYING!! THIS FUCKING HORSE KILLED ME -!!"

"Don't be stupid! We were about to fall, you moron! What were you thinking of?!"

"Alright, it was nothing... but it was funny to see your faces..." laughed the dragon.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, and even Buckbeak - mentally, though - started to shout insults to the dragon, who ignored them all while cackling with mirth. This delightful scene was being secretly observed by a third party, who lurked in the background waiting to play his part.

Gilderoy Lockhart, front teeth missing, sooty and seething, limped forward unnoticed, crossed the balcony, and in an attempt to make his revengeful debut good enough to grant him the adoration of the masses, jumped on top of the dragon shouting "Die, you cursed beast!"

The dragon didn't sense Gilderoy's weight on his back, just the scream piercing his right ear. He turned around to see what had happened, but gravity caught him unprepared to support both the intruder and himself; the man had had the extraordinary tact of grabbing his gold, flapping wings after launching himself into fame; wings that, though unscathed, were prevented to perform their duty for being folded by a considerable force. The beast spent a third of a second attempting to paw his attacker, another to cast a desperate glance at Harry, and the last to realize that he was going to fall at least a hundred feet to the ground.

The laws of physics applied and both bodies made violent contact with the surface at the same time, luck turning for once against Gilderoy, who had been abandoned by the gods for his awful performance and had to pay his lack of talent by having to cushion the dragon's monstrous landing.

An indecipherable sound escaped Harry. Hermione screamed sharply at his back, but he heard her as if she had been miles away. His hands led Buckbeak towards the dragon, and during the seconds that took them to get to the ground he felt as if something had disconnected all his senses one by one. They landed by a heap of debris, beside the heap of flesh that squirmed inside a swelling cloud of dust.

Harry jumped down and darted towards the beast, who was already on all fours and had started to walk erratically. "Are you alright?! You're not hurt, right?" Harry asked anxiously, not very focused on his words.

The beast didn't answer but staggered on. There was blood on his back.

"Are you fine? Are you fine, dragon??! Dragon??!"

The dragon kept on walking, his head bumbling. Then, he collapsed heavily on the floor.

"Dragon??! Answer me!!! Are you okay??!" Harry was trembling. He kneeled by the beast.

"Oh, fuck..." the beast breathed painfully. "I'm over... That hurt, you know? ...How come... I never thought...jumping off... with my wings tied up when... when I tried to kill myself before...?" he hissed slowly.

"Don't say that!! Don't say that, you asshole!! You'll be fine -!" Harry had to make his words dodge a lump in his throat.

"... At least ...I got to see you... one last time, boy," the dragon strove to say.

"SHUT UP!!" Harry shouted, his prickling eyes closed. "Shut up, you moron -! You - you sound like a stupid, cheesy play -!"

The dragon, however, couldn't snap back an answer to such an insult. He just rolled his eyes, and exhaled a particularly strong breath through his green-bloodstained nostrils.

Harry gasped. For a moment, all he could perceive was the sound of the breeze blowing tree leaves around. And then something exploded inside. "NOOOO!!! FUCK!! FUCK!! ...This is not happening... It's not possible... NOOOOOO!!!!" He turned around in desperation. Hermione was standing open-mouthed and bright-eyed a short distance away, by the silent form that Gilderoy had been. She was clutching Ron the cup, who seemed unaware of the tension of her grip, dumb from shock.

"NO!! Wake up... WAKE UP!! Don't -!! This is stupid...! You can't die, you hear me??! YOU CAN'T DIE, YOU HEAR ME!!" Harry cried. "I love you, bastard -" He cleaned his nose with his sleeve. "- You stupid prick... FUCK!!! FUUUUCK!!"

The boy started to shake the dragon's body; the tears in his eyes making the static shape lose sharpness. Suddenly, everything lacked sense. Harry realized that crying was not enough a means to express what he was feeling, that he had surely been ill-designed, miscalculated, for he was neither ready nor able to contain that overwhelming degree of misery; that life was indeed wretched, terrible wrong, utterly unbearable, unlivable. He began to sob on top of the unmoving, thinly scaled chest; thinking that horrible moment was going to last forever, whishing his numbing pain would kill him once and for all.

But Harry's life denied ceasing. In fact, it insisted on staying longer, pulling his eyelids open so he could see what was happening around.

Strange sparks were falling all over the place like a rain of minuscule comets. These dashing light drops disappeared as soon as they touched the earth, leaving tiny traces of colored smoke. Amazed, Harry looked up, trying to see who was shooting at them, but then he felt the dragon's body quiver, and after gaping at that unnatural fact, he saw the beam-lit, golden corpse rise a couple of feet off the ground.

The boy moved backwards in stupor. The body was now yielding light as if it were cracking and its inner flames were emanating a blinding, powerful energy. Harry saw the body rotate and shine and he marveled, but what simply threatened him with insanity was what happened next: the long and frightful hind limbs started to shrink and whiten to the point of resembling human legs, his violent and agile fore ones reduced and changed into what was unmistakably a long pair of arms, ending in long fingered, human hands, and the dragon's head, eyelids ajar and tongue lolling from the snout, got smaller, rounded, and finally stopped mutating once it had become a fair-hued, blond-haired boy's.

Harry felt not only his heart, but his entire body pumping from an incoherent mixture of terror and hope. He stood up and witnessed, petrified as a statue, how the now human-sized, ex-dragon's body, as naked as the beast had liked to roam around most of the time in the past, stood up a few feet away and opened his eyes once the intense magical brightness was over.

The blond boy blinked and looked around confused. He examined his hands, inhaled deeply, and, looking at Harry, spoke with his proper voice for the first time in quite a long period. "Harry... it's me!" He then shut up and bit his bottom lip, as if engulfed by a sudden nervousness.

"What the -?" Harry didn't have a clue of what had happened, a wide wave of questions suspended in midair at the sight of the boy's stunning beauty.

"Harry..." The blond boy walked forwards cautiously, clumsily moving his long legs.

The dark boy went a step back in the evolution process; his mind lost an undefined number of abilities after staring into the boy's gray pair of eyes and realizing what the dragon had been hiding all along. He felt himself turned into a beast, animalized, and afraid of his new condition, remained motionless.

"Harry... it's me!" The blond boy had halted in front of him.

Harry was finally beaten, defeated, violently lashed by the whip of instinct; knowing well he had never been so sure of the course of action he had to take he moved forwards, and as softly as his steely conviction allowed it, he touched with his lips the pale pink ones that helped to compound the blond boy's utter perfection.

The kiss created a spinning jet of sparks that shot through the air, spread in the sky, and fell all over the place, bathing with a glimmering tempest the punished building and grounds. The pieces of torn structure gathered together and went back to occupy their past and secular place in space, and here and there shouts of happiness burst as sonic fireworks, but neither Harry nor the blond boy were aware of this, enclosed in the peculiar cage of golden beams that had derived from the original, miracle-making, dazzling magic drizzle. In fact, they were conscious of nothing but each other, absorbed by the dizzying practice none of them had been an expert in but they had mastered during the second it took them to close their eyes.

Once both were invaded by the urgent need of confirming that what was happening was real, they broke apart and looked at each other. Harry's glasses were askew, so the blond boy straightened them with a gentle maneuver before his cold fingertips made contact with the dark haired boy's flushed cheek. This latter took his cloak off and put it around the blond boy's shoulders. Then, he hugged him for a moment before facing him and saying casually, "Harry Potter, nice to meet you."

"I know, stupid!" the blond answered, and then kissed him for a while before whispering in Harry's ear, "Draco Malfoy, pleased to meet you, too..."

"Your name is Draco?? You're not joking, right?" Harry asked, amused.

"Do I look like I'm joking? Do you think I'm in the mood of making jokes right now?"

"Well, you've just made a very big one..." said Harry looking around.

"Shut up for once," snapped Draco before kissing Harry's smile away. Harry didn't protest but decided to run his hands along the cold back covered by his cloak.

Once he had carefully checked there was no trace of scales, he cupped Draco's face and then made his fingers slide into silky, silvery strands of hair. He left Draco's mouth to stare into his eyes, but in the corner of his own he saw not only one, but at least ten people standing nearby, placidly looking at them while they performed their newly appointed favorite sport - bound to be upgraded soon.

Harry felt shamefully busted but Draco just turned around to face the strangers. "Told you, didn't I?!" he shrugged. "Well, from now on, I won't tolerate any further moaning about that stupid curse and what you had to bear, understood?!"

"Yes, Master, and.... congratulations," said beaming a man whose brown hair had traces of premature white.

"Master?" asked Harry, puzzled. "Who are they?" he asked Draco, but before seeing the sneer in the boy's face he realized that if the beast had been transformed, probably his servants had, too.

"I'm Lupin, Harry," replied who had just spoken. Beside him stood the tall figure of another man, sour-faced and greasy, whose identity didn't need guessing.

"Master, we are waiting for orders," Snape the former clock said succinctly. However, his lips curled and his black eyes narrowed when he looked on Harry, as if making fun of him for catching them in such a compromising situation.

"Just go back to the manor and start cooking lunch. I'm starving." Draco said curtly. Then, he added, looking at the boy by his side, "Did you notice that even though I smashed the whole manor it was rebuilt? Ha ha!" he laughed, "Stupid dark wizard! Serves you right!! I hope all this paraphernalia exhausted your magical reserves!!"

Harry didn't get the dark wizard's part but didn't have time to ask either, because a red-haired boy, freckled and lanky, was coming nearer. Contrasting with Snape's and Lupin's formal appearances he looked untidy, for his clothes were twisted as if he had put them on in a hurry.

"Ron!" Harry grinned broadly at his ex-cup friend.

"Harry! Thanks a lot, mate!!" he said enthusiastically.

"For what?" Harry asked, puzzled. "What did I do?"

"Come on! Don't you know yet?!" Ron laughed. Then he cast a brief glance at the blond boy's face and seeing there was a pout in progress, decided to stay silent.

"I knew it!! I knew it!!" exclaimed Hermione, coming closer. Ron composed his looks a little.

Draco turned to look at Harry, took his hand and dragged him away from the crowd. "There will be time for that boring story," He said dismissively. "Now come with me... I wanna show you something,"

"What can you show me I haven't seen yet?" leered Harry.

"Well, you'll see..." Draco leered back. "There's a place in the manor I haven't visited in years... Well, actually I was there yesterday... it was the first place I destroyed, but now I hope it is back as I remember it was..."

"Well, it should be... What's so special about that place?" Harry inquired, genuinely intrigued.

"Nothing. There's nothing special about it. It just happens to host the biggest bed ever made for humans... It's my late parents' bedroom..." He ended up hissing in Harry's ear.

"What?" Harry couldn't help squeezing the hand he was holding in surprise.

"Some things can wait but others can't... I love you, and now there's nothing I could care about more than ravishing you till you're convinced," Draco pointed out while rapidly walking along the manor's corridors.

"You're kind of straightforward, aren't you?" Harry giggled. "By the way, who said I don't believe you love me?" he asked, glancing sideways.

"Shut up! I'm doing this for your own sake, you know?"

"Yeah, sure," Harry could barely say before being pushed against a random wall and being wildly kissed.

They eventually made it to the room, and closed the door for what seemed to them was the biggest piece they could detach from eternity.