Tough As Dragon Skin

"Uh - "

"Holy Hell! How'd she get loose?!"

"Uh - "

"Get the ropes!"

"Uh - "

"Ty! Where's Reggie?"

"Uh - "

"Tybalt! Where's Reggie?"

"Uh - " Tybalt Bancroft point up at the shiny pointed teeth of the female Norwegian Ridgeback. "She ate him," he informed his comrades in a high squeaky voice.

The other six men with Tybalt gaped at him a moment. One of the men, his flaming red hair and bright green eyes, groaned and ducked to miss being tumbled by a large, scaly tail as the female dragon turned around to lumber from the wizards that had been trying to transport her away from her nesting grounds.

"She's heading for the Muggle town!" shouted Marty Topper. "BROOMS!"

Charles Weasley, known to his friends as Charlie, gave Tybalt a shake before heading for his own broom in a vain hope that it would bring his friend from his self-imposed trance. "Come on, Ty! If that female gets to the village, there are going to be a lot of missing Muggles that is going to be hard to explain away!"

Tybalt didn't move for a minute but when he did, he quickly turned on his heel and bolted in the opposite direction of the dragon. "Damn," Charlie said, kicking the broom off the ground and watching his friend crash through the underbrush of the wooded area where they had stopped for lunch. "There goes another one."

His broom rose higher into the air but Charlie turned his attention from his fleeing comrade toward the enraged dragon quickly gaining ground on the small Romanian village. Most of the inhabitants were Gypsies, tied to the small town through various laws passed over the last few decades in Romania to keep them from their ancient nomadic lifestyle. A superstitious people, the last thing the Gypsies would need in this small village is a female Ridgeback stomping through, looking for her eggs, which were ahead of her in the relocation convoy.

With the ease that only an expert in Quidditch could manage, Charlie swooped between the leafy trees, dodging branches and birds without any difficulty. While the escape of the female Ridgeback was a major problem, it wasn't anything they hadn't planned for in advanced. Relocating dragons was always a tricky business. If one spell fizzled or one dragon broke free of restraints, there was always hell to pay, Muggle and Wizard alike. Charlie crossed his fingers a moment as he neared the dragon that their emergency plan would work.

"There you are!" called Marty, his long blonde hair whipping about his face. "Where's Ty?"

"Went running the other way," Charlie said with a shrug. "He *did* see his brother eaten by a dragon. Had to be a bit of shock."

"Damn," cursed Marty. "Okay, we can do this without the extra wand." Marty assured them but he sounded uncertain. "Ready wands!" The six men raised their right hands, varying length of sticks in their palms, all of them pointed at the dragon. "Steady! If we miss, we're in deep dragon dung!" They all took deep breaths.

"NOW!" Marty cried and the wands' tips burst out large showers of orange sparks that flew toward the dragon.

"STUPIFY!" they shouted in unison and the dragon stopped in her tracks, frozen.

"My God, we did it!" whooped Charlie, spinning his broom around in excited wonder. His friends did not share his jubilation, however, and he turned his head to see what had them so arrested.

The dragon had reached the village edge and was getting ready to teeter onto a house.

"Oh no."

With an almighty crash the dragon wiped out a house and a barn, easily demolishing the flimsy structures that were little more than mud bricks and thin wooden planks. The wizards swooped their brooms down out of sight immediately as people began pouring out of houses and public buildings, gaping at the huge creature, staring at them with her shocked eyes open wide and glassy. A few whisps of smoke filtered lazily out of the dragon's nostrils.

"Amos, get the ropes," Marty began ordering and pointing, "and take those two with you. We've got to get her out of that village. Charlie, you take the rest and start doing some damage control. I'll go back to camp and get an owl sent to the ministry so that they can send someone to - " Marty glanced up, blowing an errant strand of blonde hair out of his eyes. "Never mind."

The rest looked up as well. At least a dozen men and women mounted on broomsticks were zooming toward them. Charlie looked around. "Who Apparated?" he asked.

"I did!" puffed Tybalt as he sprinted toward them through the trees. "I knew we'd need help."

Marty glowered at him. "We could have handled this, Ty," he growled.

"No," Charlie told him honestly, "we couldn't, Marty. Tybalt, you did good." He placed a comforting hand on the younger man's shoulder. "Quick thinking."

"I wanted to run home and hide," confessed Tybalt as soon as Marty turned his back, "but I knew Reggie would drag himself out of the dragon just to kill me if I did."

"We might get him out yet. Did she chew him?" Charlie's face had lost its cheerful visage and he patiently waited for Tybalt to formulate an answer.

"I don't remember, Charlie," the young man confessed. "I don't think I watched much. I remember her grabbing him up and flopping him through the air and then..." His voice faltered.

"Doubtful she did anything but swallow him. We'll do a check. He might just be slimy and really grossed out is all." Ty looked slightly hopeful but not too much, as if Charlie were just giving him false hopes.

"Hey!" Charlie waved a hand at several wizards crowding around the dragon. "We got a man in there, possibly not chewed! Can you guys help us get him out?"

The wizards looked up and several smiled tightly. "That him banging on the ribcage?" asked an old man with no teeth and grizzled hair. He had a blackened look about him that spoke of many close calls with bursts of flames.

Charlie listened and heard faintly Reggie's voice screaming and begging to be gotten out. He grinned at Ty, who looked relieved. "Yeah, that would be him."

"Okay!" shouted the old man. "We got a rescue operation to start! Get these Muggles outta the way!"

The group worked with the old man on the dragon while the rest of the ministry wizards went around to clear from Muggle minds the entire incident. Charlie was glad he wasn't them; he'd never been good at the 'obliviate' spell. Bill should have been an Obliviator, though, he reckoned, instead going off to Egypt for Gringotts, the wizards bank.

Shaking his mind from reverie, Charlie worked with his comrades to get the dragon safely moved to her new location and to rebuild the destroyed home and barn. They were all thankful that no one had been in the home at the time of the dragon's loss of balance.