EDIT, as of August 2, 2014: IMPORTANT NOTICE BEFORE WE BEGIN. I AM USING ALL CAPS TO MAKE SURE YOU, MY DEAR READER, ACTUALLY READ THIS.

THE REAL STORY STARTS IN CHAPTER THREE.

I REPEAT, THE ACTUAL STORY STARTS IN CHAPTER THREE. CLICK AHEAD, PLEASE.

(For interested parties, there is an explanation in chapter two, but it boils down to this: as I continued the story from the first chapter, it became more and more difficult for me to write. I struggled with the proper portrayal of character, and had a great many difficulties distinguishing between the two Hiccups in the narrative, whether or not they were appropriately characterized. I rewrote the first chapter, what is below, in first person, and carried on from there. I didn't want to delete what had already been posted because it seemed unnecessarily complicated, and I didn't want to start a new story on the website because, again, it seemed unnecessarily complicated. In fact, just attaching the story to what has already been posted and is now just a draft seems unnecessarily complicated as well. Rest assured I would not have put this much effort into both rewriting the chapter and explaining why and posting it as well if I did not believe it to be worth it. I hope my readers will understand and appreciate the effort.)

AGAIN. THIRD CHAPTER IS THE BEGINNING OF THE ACTUAL STORY. I'M SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION.

See end of chapter for notes.

A smallish Viking with a largish name sat on the floor of the Great Hall, his arms propped on his knees and his chin propped on his hands. Cradled in his lap was a remarkably small dragon, currently fast asleep.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Hope and Heir of the tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, is the hero of our story, though you wouldn't think it to look at him. Everything about him was unremarkable, from his freckled face to his small stature, except for his hair, which was wild and red and rebelled against gravity. His dragon was not much better, as he was remarkably small and didn't have a single tooth.

At the moment, Hiccup was desperately wishing to be in any other lesson but this one. He was best a Sword Fighting, and so it was at the top of the list of "preferred alternatives," but he would even take Frightening Foreigners or Advanced Rudery above this slow torture.

Hairy Hooligan History.

You see, though Vikings are stubborn, rough, crass, and think that Tact and Sensitivity was just the ability to bellow louder than the other person, they do know how to to Tell a Tale. To hear them talk about it, they'd invented the whole business. (Hiccup suspected the process had involved a great deal of boredom and even more mead.) Vikings told stories, and what is history but a very long, very detailed story? In fact, Tale Telling was the only Viking activity where being intelligent and articulate was expected, even honored.

But Hiccup was the most un-Viking-like Viking on the Island of Berk. He couldn't lift a hammer. He couldn't swing an axe. He couldn't even throw a bola. And unfortunately his oddities extended even to the one Viking tradition he might have thrived in. He was a clever and curious boy, and would have loved his Hairy Hooligan History lessons, if it weren't for one person.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock. The greatest Viking Hero to date, and the man the entire Hairy Hooligan tribe admired and strived to emulate. He was the first Viking to have tamed a dragon, the first to touch the sky. He'd brought down fleets, armadas, with his dragon Terror, the last of the Night Furies—the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself, a midnight black dragon the size of a house. The first Hiccup had been six feet tall with shoulders as wide as a tree, a beard as terrible and red as the last drops of lifeblood seeping from a fatal wound, and had a thundering, roaring voice capable of commanding even the most reluctant of dragons. It was said that, when Hiccup Horrendous Haddock spoke, the winds themselves fell silent and obedient. He was the reason why "hiccup" meant "hero."

He was also Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III's great-great-great-great-grandfather, and the bane of his existence. Because Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was nothing, absolutely nothing like his ancestor and namesake, and he was never, ever allowed to forget it.

"—All hope seemed lost," Old Wrinkly continued in a hushed voice. Nine out of ten of the children sitting before him leaned forward, hanging on his every word. Hiccup remained bored. Even Fishlegs, who usually agreed with his opinions about Viking tradition, was enthralled. "Stoick the Great looked Death Itself in the eye and welcomed it. With a shout, he leapt forward, drawing the attention of the massive, huge, monstrous sea dragon before him, desperate to give his village time to flee. When suddenly—" Old Wrinkly slammed his hands together, making every boy in the room jump, and Toothless jolt awake with a whine. "A burst of fire appeared over the monster's right eye, and Hiccup appeared, as if born from smoke and dragon fire himself!"

Hiccup snorted quietly, and ran a few soothing hands over his own dragon's snout, avoiding the bad tempered snapping with expert experience.

"Toothless hungry," the little dragon whined at him. "Give Toothless fish! Now! Now, now, now!"

"Hush," he whispered back. "I can't right now, you know I—" Hiccup yelped loudly, scrambling back in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid Toothless's displeased mouth. His dragon may lack teeth, but he made up for it in very sharp gums and a very strong jaw.

"What on earth—!" Old Wrinkly started as the boy fell down, helmet clattering off the floor and adding to the din. The entire class burst into raucous laughter as Hiccup, tears pricking the corners of his eyes, finally got his dragon to let go of his hand. Toothless sniffed and disappeared into the rafters, muttering to himself.

"Hard to believe this Hiccup is descended from that Hiccup," Snotface Snotlout, Hiccup's cousin, sneered. Fireworm, Snotlout's beautiful Monstrous Nightmare, chortled along with him. "He's so Useless he can't even listen to a story properly, let alone train a dragon!"

Hiccup grit his teeth, but didn't say anything. If they could have been learning about any one else, he would have listened, and loved it. If they could have learned about Bork the Bold, who started studying the dragons when Vikings still warred with them, or Skulduggery the Unpleasant, who had founded the Meathead tribe, or Agar the Scream, who had been the first Viking to trap a Whispering Death—any of these would have been better than Hiccup the Dragon Master. Any of them.

Old Wrinkly must have seen something defeated in the boy's face, because he called out across the room, "All right, lads, I think that's enough History for today. Hiccup, walk me back to my house, my old bones could use the help." Still sullen and glum, Hiccup nodded, and started trying to bribe Toothless down from the rafters.

Half an hour gave the room enough time to clean out and Hiccup to convince Toothless to wrap around his shoulders again. Silent and sullen, Hiccup followed his grandfather out of the hall and back to his house.

"Chin up, boy," Old Wrinkly said. "Why, Hiccup the Second had a slow start, too—"

"Yeah, for ten years," Hiccup muttered under his breath, "and then trained twin Monstrous Nightmares during his dragon training. At the same time."

"Well, I still say you're going to be the greatest hero Berk's ever seen," Old Wrinkly said stubbornly. "I soothsayed it myself. And your… Toothless Daydream…" (Toothless preened as he was mentioned, then nipped sharply at Hiccup's ear when he didn't join in the praise) "is unique if nothing else."

"Thanks," Hiccup sighed. "I'll see you tomorrow. The last fishing trip should be back in sometime tomorrow afternoon, right?"

"No," Old Wrinkly said ominously. "They've hit a storm, and it's going to take another week." Hiccup rolled his eyes at this attempt at soothsaying. It was bound to be as accurate as Old Wrinkly's other predictions, which had all been wrong. Needless to say, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III did not have very high hopes of living up to his illustrious name.

The fishing expedition's catch would change that.

Their lessons for the next day had been called off in anticipation of the fleet's return, so Hiccup escaped into the forest around Berk. He spent an extremely productive morning chasing after Toothless, who had gotten it into his scaly little head to steal the remains of his How to Speak Dragonese book and refused to give it back. By the time Hiccup bribed the menace back to ground level, the ships had not only returned to port but had also been unloaded.

"What's that, what's that, what's that?" Toothless chittered in his ear as they returned to Berk proper, bouncing up and down on his shoulder painfully and looking towards the center square. A large crowd had gathered, their size preventing the smaller boy from seeing exactly what was going on. With a sigh (he'd desperately been hoping for just an hour's peace), Hiccup changed direction. Fishlegs, who was almost as small as he was, was standing on tip toe at the edge of the crowd.

"Hey, Fishlegs," Hiccup greeted. His friend had the dubious honor of being even smaller than he was, as well as asthmatic and allergic to reptiles. They had bonded over their shared interest in dragons, their shared adventures, and their shared experience as the communal punching bags of their age group. They also were both named after great Viking heroes of the past with whom they had very, very little in common—Fishlegs less so, though, as they'd recently discovered that he was a berserker, just like his namesake.

"Hiccup!" he greeted, grinning hugely. "Oh, good, you're just in time—you'll never guess what the expedition found."

"What is it?"

"A dragon!"

Hiccup's eyes widened. "What? Really? How?"

"It's in the ice, too much to see easily, but Dogsbreath heard from Snotlout who overheard your dad talking—they think it's a Night Fury!"

Toothless redoubled his efforts to see over the people around them, and climbed onto Hiccup's head, where he once again began bouncing. "What's a Night Fury? I want to see! Can I eat one? Are they tasty?" Hiccup made a grab for the tiny, troublesome little thing, and missed, as Toothless used his head as a launching board, soaring through the helmets of the surrounding Vikings until Hiccup could no longer see him.

"HICCUP!"

He and Fishlegs winced in unison. That bellow could belong to no one but Stoick the Vast, chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe, and Hiccup's father. Of course he'd be up next to the ice, and of course that's exactly where Toothless had gone. Hiccup began working his way uncomfortably through the crowd, until he could stand in front of his father.

Stoick's moniker was not unearned. He glowered down above a tangled, bushy red beard, intimidating effect diminished only slightly by the minuscule dragon perched on his helmet. "For the hundredth time, control your dragon!" he snapped. Hiccup nodded, knowing his dragon listened to no one and that it was a losing battle to try. Toothless, made nervous by how loud Stoick could shout, fled back to his shoulder. Stoick huffed, and turned his attention back to the block of ice, speaking quietly with Gobber.

Of course, to a Viking, speaking quietly just meant at a loud enough volume to make your ears hurt, rather than bleed. Hiccup rolled his eyes.

"So you're saying you just… found it?"

"Out on that iceberg, over near the swamps! Yeah, it was just sitting there! Easy as anything to get it onto the boat! Do you really reckon it's a Night Fury?"

"Looks like the stories, don't it?"

"But one hasn't been seen in ages!"

Hiccup blinked. Sitting there. Really? They hadn't had to carve it out, or… or anything? He sidled sideways, keeping one eye on his father and the other on the ice. There weren't any marks on it, at least that he could see—though to be fair, he kept getting distracted by the dark shape within.

The ice was about twice as big around as Gobber, and about as tall as his father. Tiny air bubbles laced through it, obscuring an easy view of the shape within. It must have frozen in an instant, Hiccup decided, reaching out to trace fingers over the ice. It was almost definitely a dragon, large and black and curled around something, almost… protectively. "Huh," Hiccup said. The end of its tail almost touched its nose, and there was something odd…

His shoulder suddenly felt a lot lighter, and Hiccup looked up to see Toothless scrabbling up the ice, only to disappear over the top. "Toothless!" he hissed. "Get back here!"

"Nuh-uh, nope, Toothless was promised fish and Toothless didn't get fish and Toothless wants to know what Night Fury is."

"It's a type of dragon," Hiccup replied. "Now will you get down?"

"Toothless says…. no."

Hiccup groaned, burying his face in his hands. Great. This couldn't possibly get any worse.

And then Toothless shot a small spurt of fire at the ice, scratched at it once, twice, thrice with his claws… and it shattered.

Hiccup flung both arms up to shield his face as Toothless squawked indignantly at the sudden destruction of his perch. He flapped back to land on Hiccup's head, muttering under his breath. The crowd of curious Vikings had, for once in their lives, fallen entirely silent, because in the middle of the village square, surrounded by shards of ice was a Night Fury. Jet black and streamlined like all the tales said, the dragon was surprisingly small—not even close to the size of Fireworm, Snotlout's Nightmare, and she wasn't fully grown. Its wings were wrapped tightly around itself, so Hiccup couldn't judge the wingspan, but they had to be large—Night Furies were known for their speed and flying ability.

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. And the Night Fury opened its eyes.

Well, Hiccup thought, that just goes to show what I know. Now things can't get any worse.

With clear intelligence, and without saying a word, the dragon's eyes traced the crowd, matching gazes with Hiccup last. It tilted its head down towards itself, as if checking for something, before crooning in something that sounded, to Hiccup, very much like relief. And then, slowly, it unfurled its wings. And the universe proved that it loved to play tricks, because things got exponentially worse.

Nestled against the Night Fury's chest and clutched protectively in all four paws was a boy.

Soooo, new fandom. Hi, guys. For those of you who follow for my Godchild fic... I, ah, got distracted by dragons. (sorry.)

I saw the new How to Train Your Dragon movie, read some of the books, and decided to try to reconcile the two extremely different stories. Here's the first chapter of the result! I think (I hope) I got the general idea of what I'm doing across in this first chapter, but if there is still any confusion, let me know!

And as always, please read and review.