Sirius Black wasn’t one to consider things; instead he decided to try different things out, see how they suited him. He had always been interested in dragons, but it wasn’t until he left Hogwarts that he considered working with them, really considered it, that is. Not only would he get to see what it was like, but he would be able to keep his eyes open for anything that Dumbledore might find helpful in the Order that he had founded.
This was how Sirius found himself at a dragon reservation in Romania, working side by side with some of the best dragon keepers out there. The dragons were huge, each differing in size, depending on the type. Sirius quickly learned to keep away from some of them, and to sleep with an eye open, always listening. Being around such great monsters made him nervous and jumpy, though he tried his best to hide it and usually succeeded. While they were kept under control, so that the Muggles in the area wouldn’t see them and find out about them, Sirius wasn’t quite convinced that they wouldn’t find a way out. Plus his partner, Jacob, hadn’t been much help when he had first come to Romania.
‘The mountains look beautiful in contrast with the sky,’ Sirius thought. Sirius was staring at the clouds in wonder, before being brought back to reality as someone began to speak.
“Well, now that you’re here, there’s something you should keep in mind. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him*,” Jacob stated solemnly.
Sirius looked up, stunned. Did he really just say that? “Are you serious?” he asked, not sure whether or not to believe him. It had to be a joke.
“Dragons are a serious thing, young man. While we do our best, the dragons are often unpredictable, and you must learn to expect the unexpected. They are wild creatures, after all.”
“I’ll keep that in mind…,” Sirius said, deep in thought. Maybe this job wasn’t going to be what he thought it would be.
As the third day came to a close, Sirius confirmed what he already knew: he wasn’t suited for the life of a dragon keeper. The first two days he had been given easy tasks, to help him adjust, but when he was switched over to some of the more regular tasks, he didn’t do too well. It was so much work, to have to keep the dragons from going places they shouldn’t go to, and keep them from setting something on fire and burning down the forest around them. Charms had to be checked around the reservation”which was quite large”constantly, so that no one would accidentally stumble upon where the dragons were and also to make sure that all of the dragons stayed inside. It was exhausting work, but someone had to do it.
He was thoroughly worn out as he headed towards the sleeping area. It was dark out, and many people were already in their beds, sleeping. But Sirius was restless. No matter how tired he was, he couldn’t fall asleep, so he didn’t even bother trying. It was useless and futile.
Deciding to go for yet another walk, he headed out towards where the night dragon keepers were on duty, keeping an eye over the dragons while the others slept. The majority of them focused on the fiercer dragons, for often they tried to get away. While they still had some freedom, they couldn’t just let them go anywhere. Else there would be a lot of damage control, fixing all of the minds of those who could see them flying in the sky. It would be a disaster, one that surely would lead to the wizarding world being discovered in full.
Sirius’ mind wandered, going round and round in circles, thinking about his friends back home, and how shocked they had been when he had first told them where he was going.
Without noticing it, Sirius had wandered over to a well charmed area”something meant to keep people out. He stopped as he noticed the signs of the charms in place, and quickly disabled them, if only for a moment, before putting them back up once he was inside. It was a neat charm, he had to admit, and it would have kept him out if Remus hadn’t taught him it.
Something hit his foot, and he looked down. “Hey, mate,” he said as he leaned towards the baby dragon, a Norwegian Ridgeback, by the looks of it. Sirius glowed inward as he made the identification”maybe his time here was paying off after all. “What are you doing in here?”
Sirius scratched his neck as the dragon leaned towards him, apparently enjoying it. How can something like this be protected by such strong charms?
Sirius got his answer when he saw a blast of fire miss him by a centimetre. This was a baby dragon all right” but one who’s mother wasn’t taking kindly to Sirius.
Quickly he started to back off as the mother dragon started making all sorts of noises and breathing fire towards Sirius.
Sirius saw his life flash before his eyes in that moment, what he thought might the last of his life. He quickly ran, swerving to avoid the blasts of fire. Seeing a rather large rock, he took cover behind it, needing a minute or two to catch his breath.
As he took cover he realised that some type of alarm must have gone off, for a dozen dragon keepers ran through to stun the dragon, slowing bringing it away from Sirius, though it was still breathing fire in Sirius’ direction. Sirius stood up and realised he had been at the wrong place at the wrong time; the fire that had almost completely melted the rock burned his leg, scorching that small section.
More people entered as the dragon keepers gained control over the mother dragon. Among them was Sirius’ partner, Jacob.
“What did you do, son?” his partner yelled. “You are to never go into this place! It is highly dangerous!” Next thing he knew, he was being dragged out of there, watching the other men and women stun the dragon so that it would calm down. It took a lot, though, to put it down. Almost ten men and women had to stun at the same time, with more waiting behind, prepared for the worst.
As he walked away from the site of the baby dragon and his mother, he was still shaken. Why wasn’t this something they mentioned earlier? It would make sense to tell people not to go someplace if they were at risk of getting their heads seared off.
He shook his head and walked off towards his bed, people shouting at him from behind. It wasn’t his fault-- at least not all the way. It was their bloody fault for not telling the newcomer all the rules.
Sirius could feel the sun rising through the tent even though he couldn’t see it. He felt the changes in the air as it slowly warmed. Sirius kept his eyelids closed tight as he savoured his sleep, he didn’t want to get up. He heard someone walk into the tent, not really knowing who it was, though.
“Wake up!” Jacob snapped. “There’s no time for sleeping for you after what you did last night!”
Sirius didn’t open his eyes, but instead rolled over onto his stomach and said, “Five more minutes, Prongs. Let a man rest, won’t yah.”
Jacob rolled his eyes and stepped closer to Sirius. “I don’t know who this Prongs is, but you need to get out of bed.”
He counted to ten before he ripped the covers off of Sirius’ bed, causing him to fall onto the ground in a loud commotion.
Sirius’ eyes shot right open; he was more than awake now.
“That’s what you get. Sleeping is for those who deserve it. Now hurry up and get changed, we have a lot of work to do!”
Sirius looked mad as hell. “Why! You don’t go and wake someone up like that!”
“Just get changed!” Jacob retorted before leaving in a hurry. “I expect you outside in five!”
“Who is he to treat me like that?” Sirius muttered under his breath. “It’s not like I did anything wrong last night. They didn’t tell me not to go in there!”
Sirius sighed and started to get changed. The faster the day was over, the closer he was to leaving.
It was a sunny day, too sunny. The sun shined brightly in everyone’s eyes, making it harder to see. The sunrays reflected off of the dragon’s scales, making a beautiful colour; something that everyone had to appreciate. It was things like that which made it worthwhile to get up in the morning and get yelled at.
“Are you listening to me, young man?” Jacob asked, aggravated.
“Yes, I am. And my name is Sirius,” he said, emphasizing his last word. It was the fourth day, and still Jacob hadn’t gotten his name right. He was getting tired of having to repeat himself over and over again.
“Doesn’t matter”pay attention. Now that you’ve officially messed up big time, I think it is necessary for me to give you a tour of the place; so you don’t do anything like that in the future.”
Sirius groaned. More dragons? Hadn’t they tortured him enough?
“And I expect you to remember everything about them. I will quiz you on them later on. One mistake and you’ll be on clean up detail,” Jacob said with a glint in his eye. Clean up detail was dirty work, no one wanted to do it”if anything could get Sirius to remember something, it was the threat of this.
Jacob started walking around the reservation, waving to some people as they passed, occasionally stopping to talk. No one talked to Sirius though. Apparently everyone had found out what he had done the previous night.
As they approached the first dragon area, Sirius tensed. What if he did something to upset one of them again?
“This is a Romanian Longhorn, native to this area. We don’t know all that much about it since we haven’t found one in a while, but as you can tell it has green scales, which helps the dragon blend in a bit with its background, except when the sun’s hitting it. It’s also rather friendly, one of the friendliest we have,” Jacob stated. Then, as if remembering what Sirius had done last night he added, “But don’t anger it or anything like that. It isn’t affable enough that it won’t burn you to a crisp if you upset it.”
Sirius took note of everything about the dragon, from its size to what it looked like. After this, no one would say that he was ignorant and unable to learn something.
“Now, the Romanian Longhorn is one of the only dragons we have that are really native to this area. The rest of the dragons here tend to live in other areas, though we’ve found them around here. The mountains are a great place to find dragons.”
As they were talking, they walked further and further. As Jacob’s sentence came to a close, Sirius found himself in front of the same place he was at last night.
“In here are two Norwegian Ridgebacks: a baby and a mother. When you went in there last night the baby was quick to approach you, not really knowing better…but let’s just say the mother doesn’t take too kindly to humans. If you had stayed there for much longer without someone coming to help you…you would have gotten much worse than a minor burn.”
Jacob’s face was solemn, as if remembering past times and someone else who had done something similar to that. He shook his head, the look instantly leaving his face as he continued, “If you value your life, don’t go in there. The Ridgeback is a venomous dragon, you’re lucky the baby didn’t bite you with its fangs. I won’t go into too much detail with this dragon, seeing how you know a bit about it already.”
Jacob and Sirius both chuckled.
“Yeah, I learned rule number one: while the babies might be cute, you don’t want to meet their mothers.”
“Well, we must keep moving now. There are many dragons, like the Norwegian Ridgeback, that aren’t native to this area. Out of all of the dragons that can be found on this reservation, two seem to have taken pretty well to each other. The one is a Ukrainian Ironbelly, and the other is a Romanian Longhorn, like the one you saw before”“
Before Jacob could go on, Sirius interrupted. “But aren’t the Ironbelly dragons supposed to be”unfriendly?”
“Traditionally… yes. We like to avoid them, giving them their privacy. I wouldn’t want to be the person to run into one of them; I don’t even like to have to be around them. But for some reason, this one is less aggressive. Despite its size, which is almost five and a half tons, it’s mating with a Romanian Longhorn”though you know nothing can come from that relationship. The two of them found each other before we even found them on the reservation. They’ve been together for a long time…” Jacob shook his head. “It’s one of those things that even we dragon keepers can’t understand. Keeps us on our toes though. We can never know enough about these dragons to know completely what they’re going to do, and how they might react. Keep that in mind,” Jacob said before adding, “young man.” Apparently we still wasn’t going to call Sirius by his first name.
Sirius gritted his teeth to keep himself from saying anything and nodded his head as if everything was all right.
“Before moving on, care to know more about the Ukrainian Ironbelly.” He paused for a moment, as if waiting for a reply before moving on. “They can weigh up to six tons, which makes them the largest breed of dragons that we know of. It’s a bit hard to hide this dragon, as you can tell. But they tend to live in less Muggle populated areas”” He waved his arms around him at the surrounding mountains, as if trying to make a point. “The majority of them live a little way from here, in another secluded area…but as I said before, this dragon is different.”
“How many different types of the dragons are there?” Sirius asked, curious as to the real number.
“That we know of, ten. There is always the possibility that there are more, though, but they just are gentler and haven’t given us any clues to where they are. I highly doubt that we know all of the different types of dragons.”
Sirius was in deep thought about things other than dragons. Was it possible for anyone to use them in other ways-- besides from just keeping them away from Muggles? Possibilities ran through Sirius’ mind like wildfire, one after another. It was something worth remembering for future references. Something that Dumbledore would be interesting in hearing.
Sirius half paid attention to the rest of the day with Jacob, forgetting the deal they had that morning. Luckily when Jacob questioned him, it was more about the first part of the day, and not the rest.
“What are the two types of dragons here that are rather attached to each other for some unknown reason?” Jacob asked, expecting Sirius to not know.
“The Ukrainian Ironbelly and Romanian Longhorn,” Sirius answered without second thought.
“And which dragon do we have here that is native to this area?”
“The Romanian Longhorn, who is rather friendly, though I shouldn’t trust that to be always true if I ever meet one. Always be fearful and remember they are powerful creatures. That’s something I won’t forget,” Sirius said with a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Very good. Maybe you’ll make a good dragon tamer after all, Sirius.” Jacob slapped Sirius on the back and with a lurch Sirius remembered that Jacob had just called him ‘Sirius’ instead of ‘young man’. Maybe things were looking up.
Towards the end of his stay, Sirius was beginning to see the beauty behind dragons. They looked magical when you saw them, and when they shot fire towards someone…well, it was a bit scary. It made you remember that everything has its downsides, and for dragons, it was their aggression and appetite that didn’t make them the most loveable creatures; it was a turnoff.
But that didn’t make even the saddest things bearable; but what is brought into nature, must be taken out eventually, as Sirius soon learned.
It was a rather cloudy and windy day that Sunday. The clouds looked as if rain threatened, so everyone rushed to make sure that everything was covered up so nothing would get soaked. They had to secure things down, so they wouldn’t blow away accidentally. It was hard work, but it had to be done. For once Sirius didn’t mind helping out.
The wind blew harder and harder as the rain began to fall, and lightening filled the sky-- mostly everyone headed towards shelters; some staying by the dragons to watch them; others that weren’t on duty headed towards their quarters.
Suddenly a roar filled the air, drowned out by the sound of the wind, but not much. It was plainly heard. Men and women around Sirius leapt into action, trying to run towards the sound.
“What’s going on?” Sirius shouted to Jacob.
“It could be one of two things. Either that dragon just hurt someone, or it’s not going to be around much longer.”
“How do dragons die?” he asked, wondering. They were such a large beasts that it didn’t make sense. They looked fierce and powerful; how could something like that just die? It wasn’t something that one would think possible.
“No questions right now. Ask later,” Jacob said, running out into the fray.
Sirius did the only thing he could at that moment, run after everyone, hoping to find someone he recognised and could stay near in the confusion.
Lightening filled the sky, lightening his way, for a few moments which was just long enough to find someone to stick close to.
As they approached the dragon they could see something was wrong. Everyone running towards it sped up, hoping they were in time to save it.
It was a sad thing to see a dragon dying. It was like extinguishing a fire, taking all of the warmth with it. It was slow and painful, and the worst part was knowing there was nothing you could do to stop it. It was nature’s way of reclaiming them; it was something that needed to happen for life to go on.
The dreadful sounds of a dragon’s dying roar had been coming from the first Romanian Longhorn Sirius had ever seen. It looked beautiful, even in death, though you could see the pain running through his body. It had a long gash, running up and down the length of his body from a nearby boulder that looked like it had fallen from up above. The dragon was slowly bleeding to death.
In those few moments, Sirius realised something. So comes snow and fire, and even dragons have their ending.* Dragons might be magnificent beasts, but they too die, though many people refuse to believe it.
Sirius walked towards where Lily and James waited with open arms as he came home. It was good to be back, after spending so much time away.
“Prongs, old man, I’ve missed you!”
“It’s only been a few weeks, Padfoot.”
“Weeks, months--” Sirius shrugged. “”I’ve seen enough to last me a lifetime. I’ve seen some neat things, and have some things to tell some people, but it’s good to be home.” Sirius slapped James on the back and thought, It’s good to be home.