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The Dragon Standoff


The radio in the Ford Anglia crackled. Molly was holding Percy in her arms, feeding him a bottle as she watched Arthur and several other Ministry workers standing about talking across the street in front of a house where they were investigating claims of magical artefacts. She rocked Percy, humming along with the song on the radio until it finished, then smiling down at Percy and laughing as he waved his hand and caught her thick curly red hair in his fist. “Oh Perce, you’re mumma’s little dumpling. Mumma loves you so very much Percy darling…” she smothered his forehead with kisses.

“Aurors are responding to an urgent call to Gringott’s Bank at Diagon Alley after evidence of a break in has been found.” The radio news announcer’s voice filled the car, and Molly looked up in surprise. A break in at Gringott’s?! Unheard of! She reached for the dial as the news announce guffawed quietly, “Don’t go getting too excited, folks, it isn’t what it sounds like - seems it’s a couple of kids that wanted to see the dragon - somehow managed to sneak past the half-blind goblins and have made it past the vaults. Goblins and aurors alike are working through trying to decide how best to find the children among the bank vaults. Experts from Romania are being port-keyed to the scene as well to assist in the Dragon Standoff!.”

Molly stared at the radio.

“I’m here with the father of the missing children… you, you there… excuse me!! Sir? Father of the missing children? Have you have any comments for the thousands of listeners to WIZX Radio?”

“Bugger off alright, I’m sort of busy here and I’m not their father, I’m their uncle alright? Bloody news reporters can’t ever do their duty in fact checking!”

Bilius Weasley’s voice echoed about the interior of the car.

Molly’s Weasley blinked, staring at the radio. She very calmly turned and tucked Percy into his little car seat in the back, buckled him in gently and said, “Mumma’s going to go and speak to your dada for just a mo’!” and then she turned, and her eyes went very dark and she pushed the door of the car opened, and stared across the street.

“ARTHUR IGNATIUS WEASLEY!” she yelled.

Arthur looked up from the hiccupping teapot he held.

So did the other officials around him.

“What’d you do, mate?” asked one of the other officials.

“I haven’t any idea,” Arthur answered, “But I’d better go and find out.” He handed the teapot off to the other gentleman and held his hat onto his head as he ran across the street to the pale blue car.

The other officials watched as Molly started shouting - they overheard a few words - your idiot brother, dragon and the children were among them - and then Arthur Weasley ran for the driver’s door and without so much as a glance back at his team or the hiccupping tea pot, the Ford Anglia sped away.

The official holding the teapot snickered, “That’ll be an interesting tale to hear at work tomorrow.”




Far, far below Diagon Alley, deep in the earth, Charlie Weasley’s tiny fingers were running over the scales on the face of the dragon. He stared up into the dragon’s eye, which was as high above him as his mum would stand tall, and he cooed, “Hullo Dragon!” The dragon’s eyeball moved, watching him as he petted her hard scales and sang about sealing wax and strings.

Bill sat very still, afraid that if he moved he might spook the dragon - for every time he’d so much as started to move, the dragon’s eye had moved to him and narrowed and smoke had leaked from her nostrils. So he’d sat down on the cave floor and hugged his knees and desperately wished he hadn’t brought his brother here, wondering how they’d ever leave if he couldn’t so much as move. He watched Charlie walk along, running his palm over the lower jaw of the dragon, which formed a sort of crest that went along the back of the dragon’s skull, up to her head, a series of sharp horns. Then he turned back and walked the otherway, pausing here and there to put big wet kisses against the dragon’s scales. “Love you dragon! Love you dragon!!!” And he reached the front, where the dragon’s top jaw formed a triangle, and her front teeth hung over the lip and curved, threateningly long and sharp. Charlie tripped on his trainer laces, which were untied, and caught himself against the tooth.

Bill whispered, “Charlie… Charlie don’t touch that. Come over here.”

But Charlie didn’t pay his brother any mind. He stared at the tooth for a long moment, then ran back to the dragon’s cheek, which he hugged again.

The dragon didn’t seem to mind the little boy touching her scales and putting tiny kisses on her face. In fact, the dragon rather seemed to like him, and her eyes followed him as best they could and she turned her head so he could reach more of her snout and Charlie giggled as she lifted up her face and blew little smoke rings at him that curled around him. Charlie hung onto her nostrils and climbed onto her snout and sat and she kept her face low to the ground, as though being careful that he wouldn’t have so far to fall if he slipped… She even brought the tip of her tail about and seemed to sort of guard him with it, holding it close to where he sat…

Bill had never been so scared in all his life. All it would take was just one snap and Charlie would be but a memory.

Suddenly, there was a very loud noise. Great cowbells and banging metal and clanging chains and swords against shields and the dragon’s tail curled around Charlie, lifting him off from her snout as she looked, putting him down on the ground near to Bill. Bill grabbed onto Charlie’s overall straps and held onto him, refusing to let him go, even as Charlie cried out and tugged against the straps, “Dragon! Let go, let go, let go!”

The dragon hissed and curved herself tighter ‘round the boys, her body a wall they could not see over… But on the otherside of her, coming over the little bridge that went over the stream, was a load of Goblins and aurors - Gideon and Fabian Prewett, with terrified expressions on their faces among them - with their wands raised, as well as four dragon trainers from Romania - thick, burly men with snout muzzles and batons. The goblins were the ones making all the noise, clanging metal against metal, a sound they had trained the dragon with for centuries - when the dragon heard metal, it knew it was about to be beaten, and it would back away and cower in fear.

Well, usually it would.

Today, it had something to protect.

The dragon let out a fierce roar, a terrible roar that was so loud the walls of the cave shook and the hats the aurors wore went flying off. The dragon hovered, and her great feet thundered on the cave floor and she swept her tail even closer around the two boys, so they had only a very little amount of space around them, and she lowed her head and great black smoke was coming up from her nose as the fire lit in her belly…

The goblins had great bats and spears and spiked balls on chains as they came toward her, but the dragon feared that they would hurt Charlie, and she was angered and she hissed and roared and the closer the aurors, trainers, and goblins came, the angrier she got and she dragged Bill and Charlie along as she backed up… They clutched the tail’s scales as she moved them, their trainers scraping easily across the cave floor. Finally, backed against the wall and cornered as far as she could go, the dragon roared again with a terrible fury, and then with a great rushing heat, she blew fire across the cave floor at them.

The fire struck the first line of Goblins, who lowered their shields to block it, and the Aurors immediately shouted extinguishing spells. “This is madness!” GIdeon shouted, “She’s just getting angry with all that racket! Surely this isn’t proper?” He looked to the trainers from Romania.

“It’s a barbaric way of training them,” admitted one of the Romanians, “The old way. The goblins have had this dragon for centuries.”

“Well it seems quite effective,” Fabian answered in a snarky tone.

“Typically,” a goblin replied haughtily, “It is. But we’ve never had to try to extract a child from the dragon before. Usually if a person has made it this far into the bank we would prefer if the dragon ate them.” He waved toward a pile of bones in the far corner.

Gideon looked ill.

“Well surely there’s some more effective new training…?” Fabian said.

“She’s acting like a protective mother,” the Romanian answered. “There’s no reasoning with a protective mother.”

Fabian thought they ought to bring Molly down here and see what she made of the dragon. She’d probably breathe her own fire right back at it.

The goblins continued clanking and clanging their metal and moving forward, spears at the ready, and the dragon hissed and growled and groaned and snapping at them and her teeth came very close several times to grabbing onto one or two of the goblins, and they would rush back and beat her with batons across her snout as a response and she would crow with pain and snap again and the thick black smoke was rising from her nostrils again as more fire lit in her belly and Gideon Prewett ducked with Fabian and the other aurors and the Romanians as she blew more fire at them and it struck the shields of the goblins again with twice the force as the first fire.

“Oh bloody hell this is getting us nowhere,” Gideon said, annoyed.

“Absolutely no where!” agreed Fabian.

“Know something that would get us somewhere, Fab?”

“But of course I do, Gid,” Fabian replied.

Together, they called, “Accio broomsticks!”

The other aurors were looking at them like they were mad as the Goblins and Romanians contingued their onslaught against the beast, and they all ducked a third spray of the dragonfire… but then there came two broomsticks, whistling through the dark as they shot down the full height of the cave, and came to hover beside the twins.

“Here we are - proper transportation!” Gideon cried. He bumped wands with Fabian - a sort of cheers - and they leaped aboard their broomsticks and kicked off from the ground.

The dragon looked up at them as they flew around in circles, getting their bearings, dodging stalactites and doing loops. They were like very annoying flies and she snapped at them, but they were far faster than her reflexes were and she started getting angry, the black smoke rising from her nostrils again, but the goblins started back with their clanging and clanking and she aimed her fire directly at them, and the smoke was thick from her nostrils and Gideon cried, “Now!” to Fabian and they shot down - quickly ‘round the dragon’s horns, over her back, skimming just above her scales and ridges.

“THERE!” Fabian yelled and pointed to the curl of her tail, to the loop where she held Charlie and Bill, protecting them from the goblins and the trainers and aurors that she saw as attackers she needed to protect the little ones from.

The twins swept through the air, down to where the children were and Gideon grabbed onto Charlie’s overall and pulled him board the broomstick hugging the tiny boy close to his chest, and Fabian followed, grabbing onto Bill’s arms and tugging him onto his broom, and the twins swooped back across the dragon, who snapped once more at them as they passed her, her long neck unfurling and a great roar of distress when she saw they had the children on their brooms, and she unfurled herself and ran after the two dots of broomsticks, reaching the end of her chains and falling onto her belly with the sudden end of her mobility, and roared in agony up the cave after them.

“Bye-bye Dragon!” Charlie called.

“Bye-bye dragon indeed,” said Gideon, whose face was pale and sweaty with nerves.

They landed on the platform by the carts at the very top of Gringott’s and disembarked from the brooms and Gideon pulled Charlie up into his arms so he sat upon his hip and Fabian held Bill’s hand and they exited the vaults and into the daylight-bright lobby of the bank with the two boys - smoke covered and smelling of singed fabric.

Molly Weasley was in the middle of giving Bilius the third degree, shrieking threats of what she would do to him if those children weren’t returned safe and sound from the depths of that bank, and Bilius was looking quite sorry for himself for he was sure every one of those threats would become a reality… and then came the Prewett twins and there was a great shout of celebration from the goblins and Arthur Weasley as well and Molly let out a scream and ran for her boys.

“OH THANK MERLIN, THANK MERLIN YOU’RE ALIVE, YOU’RE ALIVE, MY BOYS, MY BOYS!”

Bilius let out a great sigh of relief.

Chriselda Blythe patted his arm.

“What were you thinking?!?” Molly demanded through her tears, “What were you thinking? You said you wouldn’t get into any trouble!”

Charlie said, “Dragon!”