Title: Hello, My Name is Norbert(a)

Summary: As Harry prepares to face off against a dragon in the Tournament's first challenge, he meets an old friend he wasn't quite expecting to see.

Note: So I got this idea in my head after talking to a friend and I figured I'd write it down, since it didn't seem to me as though anybody else had (maybe I missed it...). Hopefully you get as much enjoyment out of the idea as I did. The title, by the way, is supposed to have parentheses, but wouldn't let me do that. Oh well.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Darn.

Harry was nervous- beyond nervous, in fact. Outside the tent, he could hear the cheering of the crowds, punctuated occasionally by screams of terror. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to block them out.

He needed to concentrate. He and Hermione had talked over the plan (get his Firebolt and outfly a dragon, basically) and it seemed plausible, but he could only summon his broom if he really, truly focused.

"You have to want it," Hermione told him firmly, earlier that morning, before the champions had been ushered out into the tent. Harry had a feeling that, when the time came and he was confronted by an angry dragon (from what Hermione had told him, female dragons were also much more violent, even when they weren't nesting), he would definitely want it.

His nervousness wasn't helped by the fact that he had ended up with the tempermental Norwegian Ridgeback he had seen that night in the woods, when Hagrid secretly took him on the date with Madam Maxine (the dragons were not the only horrific things he had seen that night, Harry remembered, thinking of Hagrid's sad excuses for flirting).

He was broken out of his reverie by a call for him to come out into the arena.

It was time

Harry took a deep breath, like he would sometimes do before a big Quidditch match, and stepped out.

This is nothing like Quidditch, was his first thought. The stadium was massive, but not in the same sense a Quidditch pitch was. A Quidditch pitch was all green grass and wide, open spaces. The arena was rocky, covered in dirt and holes and boulders and difficult terrain.

In the center of it all, Harry could make out the egg, nestled in a pile of straw and dirt. He looked around. The dragon was no where in sight. There was nothing else for it: he took a step forward-

Only to be blindsided as the swipe of a tail caught him off guard. He was thrown into some rocks and the crowd groaned in sympathy. Harry groaned, too, but in pain, as he stood up and dashed for a boulder, hiding behind it.

The dragon was close behind. Harry, for a moment, was convinced that he was going to be burned to death as she tried to burn the rock he was behind. Apparently, she realized that it would take too long and stopped.

Harry, ready to take advantage of the break in the assault, leaned out from behind it and yelled, "Accio Fi-"

The dragon cut him off. Apparently realizing that it would take too long to incinerate the rock, she had settled for grabbing it in her talons and hauling it upwards, before dropping it.

Harry avoided the crashing boulder just barely, but the shrapnel that flew at him was enough to loosen his grip on his wand and send it skidding along the ground before it hit the base of the arena wall and was buried in a sea of loose gravel and dirt.

The dragon roared in triumph as Harry darted for his wand, digging through the dirt best he could. It took him only a second to find it, but by then it was too late. When Harry stood up and turned around, the dragon was there, standing in front of him, her nose inches from his face.

He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, or, in this case, a wall and a fire-breathing monster.

Holding his breath and gripping his wand, Harry wondered vaguely why he wasn't dead yet. The dragon didn't look like she wanted to kill him, though. In fact, she looked oddly- contemplative.

Suddenly, she moved forward. Harry closed his eyes and flinched- Here it comes. He expected heat and fire (if he felt anything at all... Does a person who's incinerated actually feel anything?), but instead felt something cool and slimy on his face, something oddly like-

A tongue.

Harry opened his eyes, only to be met with another face-full of tongue as the dragon licked him again. Harry blinked as she then began to gently nuzzle into his chest, like a dog eager to be pet.

Harry leaned to the side slightly to get a look at the dragon's tail and, sure enough, it was wagging.

Ignoring the confused mutters of the crowd, Harry did the only thing he could think to do. He reached up and began to pet her, right near her eye-ridges. She made a contented rumbling noise and pushed against him further, almost knocking him off his feet. Thankfully, the wall was right behind him and kept him from falling over, although with the dragon's head at his chest and the wall at his back, Harry was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.

His mind was spinning with a single thought: Why in Merlin's name has this dragon not killed me yet?

The dragon, Harry contemplated, was acting as though she knew him, as if they were friends, as if-

Harry's eyes widened and he stopped petting the dragon.

"Norbet?" He whispered incredulously.

Norbert, or, he supposed idly, Norberta, sat up on her back legs and let out a roar and a flame of fire in acknowledgement.

Harry decided to take it as a yes.

Then, because he had been spending too much time around Hagrid and had apparently absorbed quite a bit from his lectures on how dragons were misunderstood (They're real gentle creatures, Harry, honest; yeh'd be shocked at 'ow smart they are, most folks would, 'cos most people don' give 'em no chance), Harry had a crazy idea.

Since his crazy ideas usually tended to work in life-or-death situations, he decided to give it a try.

"Norbert," Harry began, then added, "-a. It's lovely to see you again, but I sort of need that gold-egg behind you."

Norberta blinked at him and for a minute Harry felt like a bit of an idiot. Then, she turned around, plodded over to the nest, gently picked up the golden egg in her mouth, and brought it back to him, dropping it in his outstretched hands.

Harry gaped as Norberta then went back to licking him- this time his hair. Apparently she, like most of the other females in his life (Aunt Petunia, Mrs. Weasley, McGonagall, Hermione...) had decided it was too messy.

As he stood in the middle of the arena, surrounded by a dumbstruck crowd and holding his golden egg with a dragon licking his hair, Harry realized something very important.

I have a lot of explaining to do.

AN: So, that's it. Quite possibly one of the shortest stories I've ever written- definitely the shorted thing I've ever posted. Still, I appreciate any feedback, since this is my first oneshot!

Until next time!

Tinyrose65