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Life for the researchers returned to normal after December 25th.
Every morning when he woke, Anthony could hear their voices, chatting and lively, passing by his window before gradually fading into the distance. Charlie became incredibly busy. Sometimes, they barely had time to finish asking, "How's your day?" before he'd shout, "Brilliant!" with a hurried smile, snatch a few bread rolls, and bolt out of the dining hall to leap onto his broom.
Hagrid and Anthony ventured into the mountains a few more times, but they never once saw Norbert. Andea and Delmar each accompanied them once. Then Delmar convinced Hagrid to help the researchers collect dragon dung during their breaks from searching for Norbert.
Hagrid quickly got the hang of the researchers' daily routines. He often followed them through the snow and woods, looking for dragon tracks or checking snapped branches to figure out a dragon's path. He learned to crouch down, to duck into the shadows of trees when a dragon soared overhead—not to just stand there, mesmerized by their beautiful flight. Anthony heard the researchers argue more than once about whether Hagrid was the most interesting and impressive exchange scholar they'd ever had.
One day, Anthony returned from the library and was surprised to find Hagrid sitting on the sofa.
"Afternoon, Hagrid," Anthony said. "No observation duties in the dragon hunting zone today?"
"Ooh!" Hagrid jumped, turning around. "Ah, it's you, Henry. You startled me!" He patted his chest, a pair of showy dragon-hide gloves on his hands. "No, not today. We're tracking Haylee and her little one tonight. Her eggs hatched, see, but we haven't got a good look at the baby yet."
"Sounds good," Anthony said. A sinister hissing sound caught his ear. "Er… what are you doing?"
Before Hagrid could answer, something exploded with a loud POP.
Hagrid smacked his forehead in annoyance. The leather glove made a sharp thwack against his forehead. "Ouch!" He turned back, grabbed a teapot, and poured water over something. A loud sizzling filled the air. White smoke curled up.
Anthony walked around to the front of the sofa. The table was covered in weird, wet fragments. They looked like curved, moss-covered slate, except some pieces still glowed with fiery orange-red light deep inside their cracks, stubbornly flickering in the gathering puddle.
Water was everywhere. Drips and drops streamed to the floor, pooling into small, shimmering creeks. Anthony stepped right into one. A fingernail-sized fragment drifted lazily up to his shoe and bumped against it. He picked it up, turning it over in his hand.
"I'm makin' a lamp," Hagrid said absently in answer to his earlier question. He carefully pinched another fragment between two gloved fingers, gently blowing on it. More steam rose. Like a freshly washed frying pan on a hot stove, the dark green piece dried at an alarming speed.
The piece in Anthony's hand was heating up, too. He didn't realize it at first. Not until it grew uncomfortably warm. Then POP! It exploded in his palm.
The realization hit him. "It's a dragon egg, isn't it?"
Once the thought formed, it seemed obvious. He was almost annoyed he hadn't figured it out sooner.
"Mhm," Hagrid grunted in agreement.
He took two dried shell pieces, carefully aligning their jagged edges. He stared at them, unblinking, until they began to quiver slightly.
With a soft Fizz, the pieces—ready to explode—let out a puff of black smoke and fused together. Hagrid placed the larger piece back on the sodden table and let out a breath.
Anthony watched. "From the newly hatched dragonet?"
"Mhm." Hagrid picked up another fragment, turning it this way and that, trying to find its match.
"You're going to put all the pieces back together? Make a lamp out of the shell?"
"Mhm."
"Right," Anthony said. "I'm guessing you won't be joining us for dinner, then. So, last question: want me to bring you anything back from the dining hall?"
"Mhm… Wait." Hagrid lifted his large head, gazing at the ceiling light in thought. "Let's see… It's Friday… I'll have two baskets of bread. If there's stew, some of that too… And tripe soup…"
Anthony nodded. "No problem." He grabbed the teapot and doused the eggshell fragment in Hagrid's hand, which had started hissing dangerously again.
"Oh, ta," Hagrid said gratefully. "And some dragon-milk cheese, if they have it."
His beard was dripping. Hagrid patted it with his wet hand, making it even damper.
"Alright," Anthony said, resisting the urge to point it out. He privately thought a sprinkler system might not be a bad idea if the dragon egg kept trying to blow up.
Anthony spent the rest of the afternoon with explosions as his soundtrack.
His cat had tried to investigate the commotion at first. But after one cautious step out the door, the cat faced a major problem: the floor was a mess of dirty, soot-streaked water, combined with Very Loud Noises and a Very Large Man.
The cat, with immense dignity, withdrew the paw that hadn't yet touched the ground. It leaped gracefully back onto Anthony's bed. The Wraith Chicken and Wraith Mouse were already huddled under the blankets, wisely having made no attempt to venture out.
Aside from the first two days, his pets had shown a marked preference for staying in their temporary room with Anthony. Instead of—he thought with immense gratitude—going out to pick a fight with a dragon.
He suspected this was because of the night he'd had to use his Necromancy senses, covering nearly half the reserve to find them. He'd been very serious when he told them his magic didn't work on mouse corpses that had been thoroughly toasted by dragon fire.
Norbert's burns were one thing. But he wasn't sure if he'd come back from being reduced to ash by a full-grown dragon—something the funeral home people had probably considered doing years ago.
Since that talk, they'd never slipped out into the night without telling him. A few times, they'd even come looking for him in the dragonology library during their walks. They'd wander from one high bookshelf to another, collecting stares, then jump onto Anthony's desk or lap and rub them all off on him—just like the ginger cat was now, weaving figure-eights around the two lumpy shapes under the duvet.
"Given up on patrolling the sitting room, Your Highness?" Anthony teased.
The cat, as if deaf, continued its affectionate rubbing, head bowed low against the lumps.
Anthony set his book down, leaned back in his chair, and watched for a moment. He realized the cat was pointedly ignoring him.
"And why spend so much time on this ordinary duvet?" Anthony continued. "Your presence and guidance would surely benefit the tables and sofas in the sitting room. You could save them from their… ah… dire straits."
His clever pun earned him exactly what he wanted: an irritated glare, flattened ears, and a lashing tail from the cat.
Another explosion sounded from outside.
"See? What did I tell you?" Anthony said, privately calculating the odds of Hagrid finishing his lamp before dark. The cat, with cold precision, unsheathed its claws, ripped the duvet open, fished out the Wraith Chicken, and began to chase it.
To Anthony's surprise, when he returned with Hagrid's dinner, the final piece of the dragon egg was already in place.
All the lights in the room were off. The only illumination was the deep, pulsing orange-red glow seeping through the cracks of the reassembled egg. It flickered rhythmically, bright then dim, as if a tiny dragon slumbered peacefully inside, breathing slow and steady. Shifting light and shadow flowed across the ceiling and walls. The puddles on the floor shimmered, reflecting the soft glow. Hagrid's massive frame stood before the sofa, his wild hair and beard outlined in a fiery halo.
Anthony couldn't find a better word than a soft, "Wow."
A pair of yellow eyes turned towards him from the sofa. He noticed his cat was there. A moment later, he spotted the Wraith Chicken and Wraith Mouse on a shelf nearby.
"Back already, Henry?" Hagrid said, as if waking from a trance. "Look! Isn't she beautiful?"
Anthony agreed, wholeheartedly. "She is." He handed over the bags with bread, stew, and cheese. "No tripe soup."
"Don't matter," Hagrid said, peeking inside a bag. "Oh, cutlery too! You're a good man, Henry."
Anthony steadied the chicken that had just flown onto his head. "Don't mention it."
Hagrid grabbed a bread roll and took a huge bite. "Charlie told me, once we've got these lamps finished, we won't have to worry about dragons attacking us 'cause of Lumos or lantern light," he said cheerfully, still admiring the egg. "We'll have five of these beauties tonight."
"They won't attack you? Because you'll look like dragon hatchlings?" Anthony guessed.
Based on his recent reading, most tools that couldn't help you run faster from a dragon were designed to trick the dragon into thinking you were one of them.
"What? No," Hagrid said, dipping his bread into the stew. "'Cause the light from the eggshell fragments hurts their eyes something fierce. The shell's meant to keep other dragons from attacking the egg, or from giving up an attack just 'cause there's a little crack in it."
"Ah. Right."
A knock came at the door. Anthony opened it. Charlie stood outside, two or three broomsticks tucked under one muscular arm. In his other hand, he held a more pointed dragon egg, also emitting a warm orange-red light.
"Hagrid, ready to—oh, you've put it together! Excellent!"
"Yep, thanks to Henry's cat," Hagrid said.
Anthony blinked. "What?"
"Every time I picked up the wrong piece, it tried to scratch me," Hagrid explained. "Clever little thing. Doesn't shed, either."
The cat, with an air of immense condescension, jumped down from the back of the sofa and paraded in a proud circle around Anthony's legs.
"Charlie, can I bring the bread—splendid—right, I'm coming! G'night, Henry."
Charlie added, "Good night, Henry."
"Good luck finding… erm…"
"Haylee and her little one," Charlie supplied. "Haven't named the hatchling yet."
"Good luck finding Haylee and her little one, then," Anthony said. "Have fun."
Charlie grinned. "Thanks. We will. Haylee's a Longhorn. Tricky to track."
It turned out Charlie was right.
On that night, when Charlie and Hagrid found nothing in the deep woods, Haylee somehow bypassed the perimeter wards. In the dark, she visited their living quarters. It was, in fact, a rather polite visit. The reserve lost nothing except for one quietly donated French-bred winged horse.
If a researcher hadn't needed to use the loo in the middle of the night, they might have just thought the horse had broken its tether and flown off. The researcher heard a strange noise and pushed his window open, only to find pure blackness outside. Puzzled, he looked up, wondering if it was about to snow again. Instead—he swore on his first-ever dragon footprint cast—he saw two gleaming horns hovering high above the darkness. A winged horse hung limp in the air, feathers askew.
Then, like a gust of wind, the darkness flew away. The horse carcass vanished with it. The researcher stared out at the bright moonlight for a long moment before the realization hit him. That had been a very quiet, very black Longhorn.
The reserve's housing administrator was furious. And deeply unsettled. He took the robbery—or theft—as a personal challenge to his work. He spent the next day layering even more protective enchantments around the living quarters. Anthony and his pets happened to pass by during their walk, and he stopped to admire the dazzling display of defensive magic for a while.
"Good morning, Professor Anthony," the administrator greeted him.
"Morning. Please don't let me disturb your work," Anthony said. "Just being nosy. If any of this is confidential—"
The administrator cut him off. "No, no, not at all. Any suggestions?"
They discussed various charms for a bit. Then Anthony remembered the alarm line Madam Pomfrey had set up for Sirius Black. Anyone crossing it without her permission would trigger an alarm.
"Have you tried something like that?" Anthony asked.
"No," the administrator said. "Knew it was useless since my school days. We have a saying at Durmstrang: 'With strong enough wit, no man cannot be fooled; with strong enough magic, no ward-line cannot be confounded.'" He glanced at Anthony. "Still using the old methods at Hogwarts, are you?"
Anthony didn't answer his question.
"Nice saying," he said instead. "But I suspect it works both ways. Wit keeps you from being fooled. Magic keeps the ward-line from being confounded. Besides—" he finished his question before the administrator could speak again. "I genuinely don't know… do dragons even cast Confundus Charms?"
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