Dragon Nest

Summary: Wherein Hyacinth is broke, encounters a dragon and the dragon doesn't leave.

Hyacinth was just opening her store when she encounters smoke.

It wafts out from under the door cracks and blows into her face uncomfortably. It smells like burning wood smoke.

With some alarm, she palms her wand and shoves the door open.

She hits something with a dull thud!

"What on earth?" she asks out loud.

She was unprepared for another voice to say, "Do you mind?" Hyacinth jumps.

"Err?" she says nervously.

"I'm trying to sleep here," the voice continues. "Do stop bumping me around. It's hardly comfortable."

Hyacinth edges around the door crack and comes face to face with an eye that's the size of her head. It's surrounded by light, opalescent yellow scales.

"Sorry," Hyacinth manages in the face of what was obviously was a grouchy dragon. "But this is my shop. And I'm opening today. I need to open the door." She's proud of herself for not squeaking or screaming.

The dragon sighs. "And I suppose you want me to go away now…" he mumbles.

There's something forlorn and desolate in the dragon's tone that resonates with Hyacinth. Before she can think about it, she places a hand below his eye to stop him from squirming around to leave.

"Stop it," she says sharply. "I want to move you and you can go back sleeping."

The dragon gives the impression of quirking an eyebrow. It detracts from the sheer relief that crosses his face.

"And how do you want to go about that?"

Hyacinth raises her wand. "Do you mind being smaller?"

The dragon doesn't answer, probably from the astonishment at the idea. Hyacinth usually wouldn't offer, but the Elder Wand was good for some impossible spell-casting. Occasionally.

She starts to cast Reducio, lessening the size of the Antipodean Opaleye dragon to something resembling a very large cat. She fetches a pillow from her stockroom and carefully levitates the dragon on top of it. The dragon purrs at the touch of the pillow, further solidifying the image of a feline in her mind.

"Oh, this is lovely," the dragon sighs, rolling around the pillow. "Simply beautiful. I didn't know wizards could enchant my kind. I thought you were simply too inept to manage it."

Hyacinth doesn't bristle, too used to dealing with purebloods who all spoke to her that way.

"You'll find that I'm probably the only one of my kind who can do this," Hyacinth says dryly. "And I didn't even know dragons talked."

She puts the purring dragon out of her mind – or as much as a witch can put a firebreathing lizard inside a bookstore out of her mind and starts cleaning the dirt brought in by a sleepy dragon. It is mainly ash and earth, some clumps of flesh that she would determinedly not think about and dust.

By the time Hyacinth has a breath, the store is already accepting customers and she gets her first order of butterbeer. She doesn't notice until it's too late but every witch and wizard who comes to her counter to order a drink or ask for the location of a book pauses at the sight of the miniaturized dragon snoozing by the cash register.

"I like this admiration," the dragon mumbles when she takes a break with a cup of hot chocolate and some biscuits. "No fleeing in terror. I will invite my kin."

Hyacinth looks up from her sugar haze with some alarm.

"What?" she hisses, remembering not to shout at the last minute. It resembles a strangled squeak. "Don't you dare. I can't take care of all of you. There are animal clauses in place for this!"

The dragon rears up his head. He still manages to make it look legal despite his size. Really like a cat.

"Did you just qualify me as an animal?" he growls. It rumbles deep in his little chest and makes her hot chocolate shake. "I am a dragon, witch. I am fire and death incarnate. We are the lords of the sky and the makers of the first flame."

Hyacinth wants to put her head in her hands. "Yes, I know you are!" she says. "And I really respect your kind. I nearly got killed when I was fourteen by a nesting mother dragon. But I'm not the one who makes these laws. Your kind gets put in Dragon Reserves to keep you alive. Because you were being hunted to nearly extinction decades ago."

He subsides irritably. "Hmph, those laws have nothing to do with me. My kin are already coming."

With that, he rests his hands on his claws and starts snoring, delicate spirals of smoke being emitted from his nose in a weird parody of a snore.

"Merlin's arse," she curses.

Then she looks up and finds that every customer in her book café is staring.

"Uhm," she starts nervously. "Sorry for the interruption."

An interested wizard leans over his table, curiosity alight in his face. "Is that an animated dragon doll? He's fairly accurate isn't he? But shame you made him talk. I would have liked one for my niece."

Hyacinth wants to cringe. She'd found that wizards never really wanted anything to start talking. Because talking implied sentience. Sentience alluded to intelligence. Intelligence usually demanded rights. Just look at what they did to the poor Centaurs and the house-elves.

Luckily, the dragon did not take offence. He just opens one eye and gave her a look. It says, There's your solution. I'll play along.

It isn't reassuring. Not in the least bit reassuring.

.

When the dragon said kin, he hadn't mentioned how many.

The part of her that would forever be a Slytherin applauded. The Gryffindor bits cried. Almost fifteen dragons of varying sizes were in her backyard. Thank Rowena for Grimmauld's place charms. The automatic expansion charm was Merlin sent. If it hadn't existed, they would have flattened a good part of London.

"Merlin's arse!" she muttered.

The dragon, curled up around her neck like a scarf, purred in greeting.

"Welcome to our new home," the dragon greets them. "This is our witch."

Hyacinth wants to cry. She settles for laughing instead. If it sounded a tad bit hysterical, nobody mentions it.

"Reborn," one of the dragons says, a large one that had a lovely light orange pattern on her scales. "What have you done now? The flock won't just roost…what on earth have you done to yourself?!"

Hyacinth finds herself in the unfortunate situation of being under the scrutiny of fifteen grown dragons. Her hand is clenched white around her wand and she shakes.

"Stop that," the dragon – Reborn – snarls. "This is my witch. She can reduce our size. These small creatures have this glorious invention called a pillow."

It's a credit to Hyacinth's bravery – if not exactly her intelligence – when she meets their eyes squarely and defiantly.

"What an adorable little animal," a smaller purple one remarked. "I shall try this myself."

Given permission and comforted with Reborn's purring at her throat, Hyacinth raises her wand and does not flinch when every dragon hisses at the sight of it. Determinedly, she casts a Reducio on the purple dragon and makes it a bit smaller than Reborn, proportionate to what Hyacinth remembered their sizes to be.

"Now," the purple dragon says, tone demanding. "Where is this … 'pillow'?"

Within the hour, every dragon is reduced in size and lounging on their own pillows under the sunlight. Only two had elected to share one and they were amethyst colored dragons that looked nearly alike. Almost like twins.

Hyacinth learns all their names in the course of changing their sizes.

"You can call me Verde, witch," a green dragon had announced like a lord bestowing a favor. "And make my size bigger than Reborn's."

Reborn had hissed a challenge at that but given that Verde had been infinitely bigger than Reborn just then, Hyacinth had complied.

"I am Luce," the one who had scolded Reborn had said. "And I am sure you will give me a size that is wonderful."

In hindsight, that absolute faith in her abilities had been worse than any demands.

Skull was the purple and almost perpetually sad dragon that did not make any demands at all. Viper is the third amethyst colored dragon that is bigger than the twins, strange triangular marks on her scales. Fon, one of the few Chinese Fireball's in the herd, had been as red as the miniature she had seen in Viktor Krum's palm.

Collonello, a name that had made her choke back laughter, was a light blue she had seen in purebred Antipodean Opaleye, asked for nearly the same as Viper.

Kyoya, the first one to volunteer to a change, had also been a Chinese Fireball, but the purple color indicated a mixed breed. The twins were Mukuro and Chrome, names that had twisted Hyacinth's tongue, but not as much as Tsunayoshi.

"Call me Tsuna," the easy going orange dragon had offered. His eyes, a lovely shade of amber, gleamed with good humor. "I have no idea what my mother was thinking, naming me that."

An energetic yellow dragon by the name of Ryohei had reminded Hyacinth so much of a Labrador that she had almost made him larger than the rest. The thought of dealing with Reborn's offended hissing had her shrinking him almost to the same size as the rest.

A red and blue dragon, a really strange mixture that announced how mixed the dragon's blood was, had asked to be called Hayato. His very nature reminded her of a cat and if she shrunk him smaller than Reborn, which was a complete accident.

The last one to be changed, a blue dragon that had some spiked scales from a Norwegian Ridgeback and the opalescent color that was prevalent to the rest of the herds breed, announced his name to be Takeshi.

.

Hyacinth learns a lot of things about her houseguests.

One, they weren't cats. Though they loved napping in sunshine, they loved baths even more. She had never met a cat who liked water.

Two, bread was bad for dragons. She'd accidentally given Tsuna indigestion and the rest of the herd nearly killed her for it.

Three, herding them all to work was worse than dealing with toddlers.

Toddlers couldn't fly.

Toddlers couldn't breath fire if you squeezed too hard by accident.

Toddlers didn't argue with logic on why they couldn't have ice cream.

By the end of the week, Hyacinth found herself fired from work.

The dragons all found her in the kitchen, crying.

Initially, there had been a cacophony at her tears but Reborn beat them all into submission with angry glares and hisses.

"What's wrong?" Yuni asks.

She wipes away the wet trails with determination but it's a futile thing when she drops fresh tears every blink.

"I'm fired from work because apparently, "enchanted dragon plushies aren't conducive to the reading environment."

While Reborn had agreed to no contest being an enchanted dragon plushie, the rest certainly hadn't. They all looked at Reborn with revulsion.

"Why do you not start your own business?" Reborn asks. His tail is lashing back and forth agitatedly and his leathery wings, large even in his small size, is whipping up a storm. "From what I have seen of your nest, you are certainly affluent enough to start your own."

The sudden inquisition stems her tears, if only due to surprise. The dragons certainly never expressed interest in her life before. It had always been demands for more fish or more pillows.

"The house is an inheritance," she explains, and then goes on to elucidate what an inheritance was to dragons who certainly lived forever and who fought over hoards. "My godfather left it to me. My parents left me a lump of gold, but I had to give it to the goblins to pay for repairs after I broke out a dragon in captivity in their bank last year. So, despite how large the house is, I have nothing to buy things with."

A couple of the dragons exchange shifty looks at that announcement.

"Hmm," Verde rumbles at the side. His tail is tucked under his claws and his wings are folded neatly at his back. Hyacinth will forever equate him to a Persian Cat. "It seems to me, witch, that your problems can be solved with some monetary…lending."

Viper jumps up like something burned at the word.

"Lending?" she asks, ignoring the amethyst dragon making a ruckus. After the week she'd had, dragons in a snit really weren't impressive.

"We are dragons," Fon explains. "Even the younger ones have quite a hoard amassed. We shall lend you some and we will give you something in recompense for … putting up with us."

Hyacinth wants to protest. She actually did protest. "We're friends," she says, looking around the dragons ringing her and the younger dragons playing tag overhead. "You don't pay friends for staying with you."

Luce noses her hands. "No, you don't," she agrees. "But we can help a friend out."

Hyacinth bursts into tears again.

.

She calls her Book Café "Dragon Nest".

It's a small, quaint thing that served original, dragon themed drinks that none of the wizards had ever seen before.

Firewhisky and butterbeer are still served, but Hyacinth also gave out Dragon Breath and spicy platters of Dragon's Fire.

Her reduced guests had learned their lesson at making too much noise but Hyacinth still had to partition a space in her café she called, "Dragon's Play Area," where it's soundproofed and fireproofed. Any dragon itching for some chaos would go there and play.

It becomes something of an attraction in her café, to watch the reduced dragons play and wreak havoc to the miniature obstacle course she added.

Everyone still thinks they're dragon plushies, but of course a dragon tamer would notice. Charlie would notice.

.

"They're not just enchanted objects, are they?" he asks her. His blue eyes sparkle with interest as he watches the dragons play Quidditch in their Play Area.

She is wary but since this is Charlie, she concedes the point. She can't ever fool a Weasley. They knew her too well.

"No, they're not," she sighs. She sits opposite his table and he shoves aside his book on dragon lore. Reborn, who seemingly never left her side when she worked, let out a threatening rumble.

"That's impossible," Charlie breathes, looking at Reborn with awe. "It's impossible for magic to affect Dragons directly. They're nulls, Hyacinth."

She shrugs and procures the Elder Wand, putting it on the table. Any wizard worth their salt would recognize it.

"That's…isn't that Dumbledore's wand?" he asks.

Hyacinth nods. "And it's Grindelwald's too. He took it from Gregorovitch the Wand Maker."

Charlie is not labelled a genius for nothing. "The Elder Wand?"

He shakes the awe away quickly, immediately looking at Reborn again. The vain dragon starts to preen.

"Can I touch him?" he asks. He realizes his error and looks at Reborn in the eye. "May I touch you?"

Reborn concedes to this and flies over. Hyacinth lets out the breath she is holding when Reborn holds himself obediently still.

"What have you been feeding them?" he asks.

Hyacinth is decidedly not an expert in dragon care and accepts advice from the dragon expert.

"Fish. Mainly fish. They don't like cooked food. And I almost killed one of them with bread."

He laughs at her. "Ground pork and mix it with eggs," he suggests. "Any protein, really. They burn through it quickly, judging by how much they play."

"Thanks, Charlie," she says, unaware of the burden she had carried regarding the health of her dragon friends until Charlie came along. "Thanks so much. I wasn't even sure if they're the proper weight or something. There's no books about their kind!"

"Mixed breeds," he says knowingly. "They get pushed out of their herds more often than not. I would save them, but where would they go?"

By the gleam in his eyes as he looked at her, he knew exactly where they would go.

"Oh no!" she exclaims, standing up. "I am not! I will not!"

Charlie laughs, pays his tab and leaves. Hyacinth did not believe for one second that he changed his mind.

"You tempted fate," Reborn says, finally speaking. He only ever really spoke when they were alone. "You really tempted fate, naming your business Dragon Nest."

She knows that, Merlin dammit!

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