Stealing the Stars

Harry had been with the Dragon Tamers for over a year, bringing his total time spent away from England up to one year, seven months, and eighteen days. After Snape's appearance in Bucharest, he'd headed north, and fallen in with the band of 'merry men' as they sometimes referred to themselves as, and hunted Dragons. Truth be told, Harry had never been happier in his life. For the first time ever he was totally and absolutely free. There was no one telling where to go or what not to do, and there were no deranged psychopathic wizards trying to kill him. For that matter, there were no sane, slightly mad, or even mostly deranged wizards trying to kill him.

To his absolute delight, no one had been trying to kill him in over one year, seven months, and eighteen days, save for the last dragon he'd come across, and he knew enough of Dragons now that it wasn't taken personally. Shortly after joining with Raul and Luis, he'd found a dying mother, her draclings scattered in pieces around her, save one.

"Be careful, James," Luis called, and Ranjya, his fiancee, circled closer. "She'll not be wanting any company right now." Harry nodded, but he'd been doing this for nearly a month now, and was confident in his ability to cast the correct charm for flame-repelling, and the spell for keeping his feet firmly on the ground, no matter how hard the dragon pulled. Raul snuck up next to her head, and drew his sword before offering up a prayer.

"For the Great Mother, return to your mother's mother. She will receive you warmly, for you have given your life in protection for your youth. May you be reborn healthy, whole, and loved, as you have loved. Be free, Mother." On 'mother' he plunged the sword into her brain, silencing her roar of pain. Harry flinched, unable to watch the blood seep out around the blade. Keeping his eyes averted from the dead mother, he wouldn't have noticed the small movement coming from the bushes otherwise. Turning his back on Raul, Luis, Ranjya, and the others, he crept cautiously towards it, and was knocked over in surprise as a foot-long winged lizard launched itself at him, growling.


Steam filtered from its nostrils and it bared its teeth, but it did no real damage - having bested Harry by climbing on top of him, it wasn't sure what else it was to do next. Harry cautiously reached up, and stroked the ridges above it's eyes, and was surprised again when the baby dragon settled down and started making a purring noise deep in it's chest.

It was Ranjya who found them that way, and she tossed back her head and laughed. "Look like James found himself a friend!" she called, and Luis followed her over.

"You've got two choices now, James," he said, looking serious. "You can kill her, or you can keep her."

"I can keep her?" Harry asked, startled anew. He'd thought that they'd make him leave her out here.

"She'll die if she's out here alone, James," Ranjya said softly, kneeling to pet the dracling. "Better to do her the mercy of killing her swiftly now than letting her starve to death."

It took Harry only moments to decide what to do with the young dracling. "I'll keep her, if it's alright," he pronounced firmly, and Luis and Raul nodded approvingly.

Ranjya knelt beside him again, and lifted the dracling into her arms. "I'll teach you of being a mother, James," she said quietly. "She'll grow quickly, so make sure you can hunt enough to feed the both of you. She's past the milk stage, thank the gods, but she'll require a lot of meat, often fresh. You can do this?"

Harry climbed to his feet, repairing the damage done to his clothes by her talons. "I'll have to, won't I?" he asked, and took the purring dragon back into his own arms.

The baby dragon, named Draci after Harry's old nemesis at Hogwarts, was more than a handful, and was often a pain in the rear. Raul's group were a happy lot, however, and dealt with her minor scrapes and tussles good naturedly. She learned the rules of the camp, and was never far from Harry.

It wasn't long before she was not only hunting for herself, but bringing kills back to be shared amongst them all, though she never acquired the taste for her meat to be cooked, as her human Flight preferred. She was dark green, almost black in the right lighting, and true to form, had two long, golden horns extending down the back of her neck.

Luis often commented how strange it was that she had two, as most Romanian Longhorns had only one, hence the name, to which Harry laughingly replied he'd never done things the normal way, and now that he had a dragon, he wasn't about to start.

She grew rapidly, as they'd warned, and one year later had become the size of a small sedan. Harry had taught her one or two words, much to Luis and Raul's surprise - they rounded up dragons for the Reserve, and didn't spend much time around them. She often spoke 'hungry' and 'tired' or 'thirsty' and if Harry was gone from her side for more than a few hours would start up a wailing 'JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!' until he returned.

The nearby towns the Tamers frequented had become used to James and his dragon, and Harry had no qualms about taking her right up to the door of the stores he'd go into and leaving her outside for a few moments. Often, if the door wasn't solid, she'd poke her head in and look around.

"What?" She called. "James, what?" The storekeep glanced over at her and laughed, seeing her poking her nose at the cat he kept.

Harry hurried over, seeing the door open and the unmistakable smell of burnt things that accompanied her. "Oh, Draci, that's a cat."

"Cat. What cat?" The nosy dragon poked at it again, and was rewarded with a plaintive meow as the cat rubbed against her scales. "Cat what?!" she nearly shouted, and Harry winced.

"She likes you. Keep your voice down, we'll get kicked out!"

"Sorry," Draci purred, nuzzling Harry as the cat had nuzzled her.

-o0o-

Snape Apparated into the small town on the outskirts of Turda, and strolled immediately inward, wondering what had taken his contact from England so long to track one wayward boy. He'd been told their meeting place was in a small restaurant called "Billy's", a foreign affair that had been there as long as anyone could remember.

He was making his way with single-minded determination when the sight of a long, scaly tail stretching out into the road distracted him. He followed the tail up to it's car-sized body, and noticed the wings flexing, and stopped short as he realized he was about three metres from a dragon.

Blinking at the sight of the dragon poking it's head into the door of the shop, he followed it up. "Excuse me," he called. "There's a dragon on your doorstep." Laughter issued from inside, and Snape had to shift himself violently to avoid being trampled as the beast backed out of the store, turning to look at him.

Snape felt uncharacteristically afraid as the dragon pierced him with blindingly molten gold eyes, and he had backed up a few steps when it opened its mouth, but when words - not flames - issued forth, he nearly did himself in by fainting.

"James! Who?" Excitedly, the dragon poked its head back in, repeating its question. "Who! Who? James!"

"Draci, calm down! If you set fire to anything in Mr Rastal's shop, we'll get kicked out! I like this shop!"

The urge to faint passed, as an ice cold rock formed in his stomach. I recognize that voice... To his great surprise, Harry Potter emerged from the shop, cuddling the dragon's snout, and smiling. His hair was longer than ever, brushing his waist now, and his eyes were still brown, but the scar was unmistakeable.

"Who? James, who?" The dragon repeated, and turned to glower at Snape, who felt himself pale as Harry's gaze snapped up to him.

"Not you again," he snarled in Romanian.

"Yes, me," Snape said idly back, in the same. "That's a very nice dragon you have."

"I don't have her," Harry said, switching into English. "She's family. Why are you here?"

"What?" Draci asked, nudging him. Harry put a quelling hand on her neck, and she stiffened, feeling his tension. "What say?"

"She talks," Snape whispered, his curiousity starting to overwhelm his fear at finding the massive beast and his surprise at running into Potter again.

"I've known her since she was only a few months old," Harry answered tersely. "She's grown up talking."

"What say, James?" Draci pressed, and Harry lapsed into Romanian.

"This is a bad man, Draci," he said, holding her. "Bad man. I'm telling him to go away."

"Go away, bad man!" Draci snarled at Snape, smoke trailing from her nostrils. Her wings flared up behind her, and she raised up to her full height. Snape nearly tripped over himself he stepped back so quickly, and hurried away. We've got you now, Potter, he mused to himself, and heard the voice of the dragon behind him.

"I do good, James! Good! Bad man go away!"

"You did good, Draci, but come on. We've got to leave..." He almost turned back to eavesdrop some more, but his need to talk to the tracker was overwhelming. By the time Snape and his cohort made their plan, and went in search of Harry, he'd disappeared again.

-o0o-

Harry had taken Draci on the road, this time alone. "We're going away," Harry said by way of explanation.

"Away?" She'd replied, not comfortable with the smells. She wasn't dumb - teaching her to talk and understand proved that beyond any shadow of a doubt - but she didn't understand why they needed to go. "Where? Luis?" She asked, and Harry shook his head.

"Not to Luis, or Raul. They'll understand why, I told them a long time ago that I couldn't stay forever." He would miss them, and his job. He'd enjoyed camping out in the Transylvanian wilds, rounding up Dragons to bring back to the reservation. Charlie still worked there, but as he was never needed to actually go to the reservation itself, the two men never ran into one another. As far as Harry knew, the only people from Home who knew where he was were himself, and Severus Snape.

Snape was a bit of an enigma. He'd always been a mystery, veiled in shadows, his true intentions never coming quite forth, but Dumbledore had had absolute faith in him, and had his faith returned in murder. Snape was trusted by Voldemort, too, and those two facts were enough to damn him in Harry's eyes.

And now, for whatever reason, he'd got it into his head to follow Harry. While it would be harder to run with Draci, as people would remember seeing a dragon passing through, and the strange white boy who accompanied it, he also had a year and a half's knowledge of how to get by in the wild, and Draci was more than happy to hunt for them both if he gave the word.

"We're going south," Harry said finally, pointing.

"South!" Draci replied eagerly, bouncing beside him. Harry went back towards Bucharest the same way he'd come north, walking some of the way, and taking a bus for others. Draci understood to follow his bus whenever he got on one, but he mostly avoided them for her sake.

This time, instead of stopping, he went all the way out of Romania and into Bulgaria. At what he considered 'the border' he stopped, and dug a deep hole. Draci paused to watch him instead of going on, as was her wont.

With miserable ceremony, Harry laid his wand to rest in the ground between Bulgaria and Romania, three feet down, where no one would find it again. When the last of the dirt had been pushed back over it, Draci nuzzled against him, purring as she had when he'd first found her. Harry leaned against her solid flank and cried, knowing even as he did so that it was a necessary step. If he wanted to leave his old life behind forever, he'd have to leave all of it.

"Come, Draci," he said some time later. "We're going to Bulgaria for a while."