The Dragon Keeper and the Secret Keeper

~THE DRAGON KEEPER~

and

~THE SECRET KEEPER~

~CHAPTER FIVE~

~The Norwegian Ridgeback~

A few uneventful months passed. Spring came, and Lizzie was coming home at all hours of the night from delivering eggs. Charlie kept busy by playing wizard's chess (which he was terrible at) with Tristan and Patrick, and occasionally by listening in on Jane and Clara's planning for the new Muggle Activism group.

Then one bright May morning there was an owl from his brother Ron.

Dear Charlie,

I am writing because Hagrid is in a bit of a pickle. He got himself a dragon egg, and now its hatched. He can't keep it obviously. I was hoping that you could come and take care of it. I think it's a Norwegian Ridgeback.

Love,

Ron

Charlie shook his head in amusement. Hagrid had finally got a dragon. And I thought I loved Dragons too much.

He wanted to help Hagrid out, of course. But he didn't have any leave from work for a trip to England. And he wouldn't be able to just walk out of there with a dragon if he did go...

He remembered that Marty and Gus would be visiting him in a few weeks. Perhaps they could fly the dragon out...

He thought on this for a while. Lizzie came in from a Peruvian Vipertooth birthing looking terribly worn out. She slumped next to him with her coffee. "Wha's that?" she asked. He handed her Ron's letter. She had the same reaction - shaking her head and smiling. "Good ol' Hagrid. Got 'imself a dragon at last."

"I was thinking about getting Marty and Gus to pick it up on their way here. I don't know though, how do you sneak a dragon out of Hogwarts? Think they could fly it?"

"They'd have teh have some kinda harness."

Charlie nodded thoughtfully.

"Why not see if Tristan an' Patrick can go too?" Lizzie suggested.

"That might work..." Charlie nodded. "Two beaters and two dragon keepers should be enough to handle a single baby Ridgeback I think. I'll ask them."

* * *

Tristan and Patrick were more than eager to break wizard law. Charlie wrote Ron, and he received a reply a few days later. It simply said Midnight Saturday it is.

Saturday night the boys apparated with brooms in hand to Hogsmeade, where they would meet Marty and Gus, and the four of them would fly up to the school. No one had come up with any way to transport the dragon other than flying. They couldn't apparate with it, and floo powder wouldn't exactly work either.

Sunday morning Charlie was outside bright and early, finishing his chores so he could go meet the others. Lizzie and Clara were waiting at the edge of the reservation's expansive forest when he got there. The four boys were right on time, swooping down as if they had just finished a quidditch game.

"Charlie! How are ya!" Marty and Gus called as they touched down, the small dragon bouncing unhappily in its harness.

"Hey!" Charlie grinned and extended a hand to each of them in turn, and did one of those half-handshake half-hug things that men do. Then he stepped back again. "So how are you two? How was the flight?"

"Fine, everything went fine," Gus nodded.

"Ron wasn't there," Marty put in. "His friends said the dragon bit him, and he's in the Hospital Wing."

"But he's fine," Gus added, seeing the concern on Charlie's face.

"This little baby's got quite a lot of spunk," Marty gestured to the Ridgeback. "We had a time getting him in that harness. Hagrid named him Norbert."

Charlie stepped over to the Ridgeback. "Norbert is it? Well, Norbert, you're going to like it here. In fact I know just the girl for you. Real fiery personality."

Clara giggled and Lizzie rolled her eyes but smiled. "Come on then, where're we takin it?"

Charlie nodded toward the forest. "We'll just set it loose. We can't put it in a pen, someone will notice. He looks old enough to take care of himself."

Lizzie made a worried face, but didn't say anything.

"Hear you had a great season, Marty, Gus," Charlie said cheerily as he untied the harness.

"You know we're still waiting for you to join us Charlie," Gus replied.

"Oh, I like it here thanks," Charlie smiled over at Lizzie, who smiled back. "Besides, you already have a seeker."

"Well, yeah, but..." Marty trailed off.

"But he's not as good as you," Gus finished for him.

"What about us? You never put in a good word for us!" Patrick sulked.

"Yeah!" Tristan added.

Gus and Marty rolled their eyes and shook their heads, and Charlie just smiled wryly.

They let the dragon loose. It flapped its little wings and waddled off into the forest, huffing and puffing angrily, and scorching a few small trees on its way.

"Want some breakfast?" Charlie asked, looking around at them all. Everyone nodded vigorously.

Back at the flat, Charlie served up pancakes and omelettes to each of them.

"Hey Charlie, remember Slatero Quirrell?" Gus asked between bites.

"Yeah... Slytherin, right? Isn't he teaching at Hogwarts now?"

"That's right! How'd you - oh, Ron right?"

"No, actually. Clara."

"Clara? So that's where you've been all this time!" Marty looked over at her as if just noticing her.

"You went to Hogwarts? I thought you were a muggle!" Gus's full mouth dropped open.

"I am," Clara blushed. "I was tutored privately in some of the subjects. They hid me up in --"

"Clara!" Lizzie interrupted, eying her as if to say Don't tell them too much!

"Tutored privately?" Marty looked at Charlie and Lizzie. "Wow."

"So you had one-on-one lessons with Snape?! And Trelawney, that old dingbat?!" Gus stared at her as though she'd grown a second head.

Clara scowled. "Professor Trelawney is no dingbat! An' Professor Snape... he's not so bad..." She didn't seem to have even convinced herself.

Charlie sighed. "Clara, Snape was a Death Eater."

"What?!" Clara's eyes went wide.

"Long story, Clara," Lizzie shook her head.

"Tell me!"

Charlie looked at Lizzie, who sighed heavily and then nodded for him to go ahead. "You were maybe five or six I suppose. Are you sure you don't remember anything?"

Clara shook her head.

"Alright then. Well, Snape was a muggle-born. He had a muggle sister. For whatever reason, the Death Eaters targeted her. Some of these men were old Slytherin friends of Snape's, and so he figured if he joined them they'd leave her alone. But one night - again, for what reason we don't know - they went after her again. Snape got caught in the cross-fire, and it was your dad and some of the other aurors that came and pulled him and his sister out. His sister's husband was killed though."

"Clara," Lizzie took over in a calm tone. "Sybil Trelawney used teh be Sybil Snape. Married a muggle, poor bloke. Never knew what hit him I s'pose."

Clara's eyes went wide. "Trelawney is Snape's sister?"

Charlie nodded, and went on. "Dumbledore took her in. She had been one of those muggle 'psychics' - you know the kind." He held back a chuckle. "But she did know a lot about divination, and the Divination professor had retired. So he let her take the job, and she's been teaching it ever since."

"That was our second year," Lizzie took over again. "I got special permission teh take Divination early, an' so I was one of her first students."

"Don't sound so proud of it," snickered Gus.

Charlie shook his head and got back to the point. "We don't really know what Snape did after he left the Death Eaters. It was a whole year before he came and started teaching potions." He scratched his stubble thoughtfully. "I always wondered about that..."

Clara was looking thoughtfully at the table. "So Professor Snape... he... hurt people?"

"Well, actually, from what I hear he never actually did any torturing or killing himself. Although supporting that sort of thing can be just as bad as actually doing it." Charlie looked down at his now-cold eggs. Everyone was lost in thought for a few minutes. Then an owl came in and dropped the Daily Prophet off, breaking the mood. Charlie picked it up and scanned the headlines.

"Well, I'm off. Got work teh do." Lizzie got up. "Try teh keep these boys out of trouble, Clara."

Clara smiled half-heartedly. "Alright."

"I should get down there too," Charlie said. "See you all this afternoon."

He wondered as he stepped out if it was a good idea to leave Clara with the four rowdiest, raunchiest fellows he knew. But then he remembered they'd been up all night, and thought they were probably too tired to cause too much trouble.

* * *

Boy was he wrong.

Returning to the flat late that evening, Charlie found quite a scene. They had gotten into the butterbeer. Clara was giggling and hiccupping in one of the armchairs. Tristan and Patrick were having a mock-sword fight with the fire pokers. And Gus had managed to partially transmogrify a frying pan into a banjo, and was strumming away and singing drunkenly.

Marty was sitting at the kitchen table with Jane. The two of them looked a good deal more sane than the others.

"What the bloody hell is going on here?" he asked with a laugh, dropping into a chair next to Jane.

"Oh, its all in good fun, Charlie," Marty smiled. "Have a butterbeer."

Charlie took the bottle from him and took a long swig.

"Jane's been telling me all about the Muggle Activism group she and Clara are forming."

Charlie remembered that Marty was half-muggle. "Oh yeah? Thinking of joining?"

"I would if I could. Unfortunately, the team takes up all my time."

"How are the Canons doing this season? I haven't been able to keep up," Jane asked him with genuine interest.

As Marty talked about the team, something told Charlie that he was the third wheel in a two person conversation, and he got up and walked over to the others.

Clara had started singing along with Gus. She sounded just like Lizzie when she sang - it was rather painful to hear because of the accent. Charlie tried to block it out. "Tristan, Patrick, put the 'swords' away. You'll put your eyes out." He realized he sounded like his mother.

"This is a duel of honor! Stay out of it!" Tristan called, jabbing at Patrick.

The door opened. Everyone looked up except Tristan and Patrick.

"Yeh started the party without me?" Lizzie grinned. "What in the name of Dumbledore are yeh all doin?"

"They're all insane, Liz," Charlie shook his head, going to stand next to her. "This is how I found them when I came in."

"Hand me a butterbeer, Marty," Lizzie reached over and he obeyed. "Ahh. Nice teh have everyone here. Tristan! Patrick! Break anything an' yeh'll be duellin' me!"

"Stand aside foul wench!" Tristan called, lunging at Patrick.

"Excuse me?" Lizzie's eyebrow arched.

"Eh..." Tristan looked at her out of the corner of his eye as he blocked Patrick. "Nothing..."

Lizzie sat down next to Gus, and Charlie took the other armchair.

"Clara, stop singin, please."

Clara frowned but stopped.

"So. What shall we do? How long are you staying, Mary, Gus?" Charlie asked, taking a swig of his drink.

"We're staying the week if that's alright," Marty called back.

"That's fine. But we don't have a guest room now that Clara's staying here."

"Well, Jane's offered to let me stay at her flat..." Marty replied.

Charlie smiled to himself. "Alright. What about you Gus? Want to just sleep on the couch?"

Gus nodded, still strumming away.

"What are we doin? I want teh do somethin. How often are we all together like this?" Lizzie looked to Charlie for a suggestion.

"I know!" Gus stopped playing and looked up, a mischievous grin growing. "Remember we used to go Niffler-tipping in Hogsmeade?"

Charlie chuckled. "Well, there is a Niffler farm just down the road from the gates..."

"Let's go!" Lizzie grinned. "It'll be jus' like old times!"

They left the flat and went out the reservation gates, talking loud and stumbling from the butterbeer. It was a short walk to the Niffler farm, where they all gathered at the fence and looked around.

"Looks like they're all underground," Charlie said, disappointed.

"Aw, no! And we walked all this way." Tristan kicked the fence.

"There must be something to do around here," Marty looked around, but the road was pretty much lined with empty pastures.

"We'll make our own fun," Lizzie declared. She looked around at them, and when her eyes fell on Charlie she grinned. "Charlie, give us all rides!"

"Oh, I don't..."

"Yeah! Charlie, I want a ride!"

"Come on old boy!"

Charlie smiled meekly. "Well... alright... I suppose..."

Everyone cheered.

Charlie climbed the fence, and they all followed. He turned to face away while he changed. In a few seconds, a Winged Horse - an Aethonan, to be exact - stood in his place.

Lizzie went first. Charlie bent down as far as he could, and she pulled herself up on his back. It was a bit awkward taking off because of where her legs were, but once she adjusted them the flight was rather pleasant. He didn't fly too high for fear of being seen by a muggle airplane. When he landed, she jumped off and gave him a kiss on the side of his head, and then helped Clara up.

Each of them took a turn except Tristan and Patrick. Charlie thought they were too drunk and was worried they might fall off. They protested adamantly, but he refused to transfigure again.

"If you could transfigure, what would you turn into?" Jane asked Clara as they walked back to the fence.

"I don't know... a bird, like Lizzie. Or a cat. Meow!" she giggled.

Jane grinned. Charlie knew why.

Just then, a burst of flames from the other end of the field caught their attention. Charlie squinted toward it. "It's that Ridgeback! It's flown out of the reservation!"

"We should've thought teh put a collar on it!" groaned Lizzie. The reservation put special collars on all its dragons so they wouldn't fly over the fences.

"Well, we'd better get it back to the grounds," Charlie said, starting to jog across the open field. He heard the others running behind him.

"I didn' think it could fly yet!" Lizzie proclaimed, panting.

"You two, go around behind it," Charlie nodded to Tristan and Patrick, who didn't protest. " Stay back," he told the rest of them, and he and Lizzie went on toward it alone. When he saw Tristan and Patrick approaching from the other side, he pulled out his wand. "Alright, stunning spells, on my count!" he yelled. "One, two, three!" And they all yelled "Stupefy!"

The dragon was stunned in a very angry pose. In a second it would have been blasting fire at them all.

"What now? The spell will wear off in a few minutes." Tristan ran back over, Patrick following.

"I can handle this," Jane announced, rolling up her sleeves. She pointed her wand at the dragon, and vines began to grow around it, like they had grown on Jack Pole's wrists. They wrapped and grew until they had covered most of the creature. "That should hold him. Now..." she did a levitation spell on it, and led the way back toward the fence. "Come on then, I don't know if I can levitate this thing the whole way by myself."

Marty and Lizzie raised their wands to help, and they all trudged back toward the reservation.

Inside the gates, Jane told them all to wait behind a building while she went and got a collar. She stalked off mumbling about how they should have come to her before they'd set it loose.

"Well, at least we caught him. We got lucky," Marty said.

"No, not lucky." Lizzie grinned crookedly. "I don' believe in luck."

"Whatever you say, Mystical Lizzie," Charlie winked. She stuck out her tongue.

"I still want to know how it got out. Dragons that young can't fly." Tristan crossed his arms.

"Do you think someone let it out, to get us in trouble?" Patrick's eyes went wide.

"Oh, don't be paranoid," Charlie shook his head. "No, it got out some other way. Maybe there's a place he got through without flying."

"Yeah. The front gates." Patrick nodded conspiratorially.

"I don't think so. No, there's somewhere else... You know, if he can get out..."

"Someone else can get in," Lizzie finished for him. "We have teh find out where it got through."

"Oh, come on. Who would want to sneak into a dragon reservation?" Gus chuckled.

Lizzie looked meaningfully at Charlie. "Jack Pole's master, whoever that is..."

Charlie scratched his cheek in thought.

"Huh?" Marty asked.

"We'll tell you later," Charlie told him, seeing Jane approaching. "For now we have to get this dragon back in the forest."

While putting the collar on it, Charlie managed to get his arm burned. But other than that they rereleased Norbert with no trouble.

They guessed that Madame Calluster would be suspicious if Charlie showed up with a burn in the middle of the night, so Lizzie and Jane helped him treat it back at the flat. Then everyone said good night. Charlie had trouble getting comfortable with his wrapped arm, and lay awake for quite a while wondering how Norbert had got out of the reservation.

Author notes: Thanks to everyone for reading & reviewing! I should probably tell you, I plan for this to be a trilogy, so some mysteries won't be solved for a while.
So what do you think of Trelawney being Snape's sister? Can you keep up with all the OC's? I know there are a lot, but I'm hoping I introduce them gradually enough that you can keep track.
Please go review for me! :)