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Charlie feels like no one warmed him that studying dragons involved reports.
Which, look, sure it probably could have been explained in the whole ‘studying’ thing, and it’s not like Charlie minds reading or writing about dragons. He can do physical reports and description reports and health reports (and even incident reports)—but! He didn’t sign up for writing a Merlin damn thesis.
Except for, y’know, how he kind of did.
“Does anyone want to swap thesis topics?” Taylor asks, from where they’re on their bed—though, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that they’re hanging off their bed, hair touching the ground. “I don’t think I understand anything about the keratin growth and how the production changes from an adult dragon to a hatchling dragon. I didn’t sign up to learn chemistry!”
Jessie kicks zir legs out. “I’ll trade,” ze says. “Do you know how little research exists on how sunlight effects the properties of dragon scales while the dragons themselves are still alive? The answer, in case you were wondering, is very little!”
“Would our supervisors kill us if we swapped topics a week before our three-minute presentations?” Charlie muses.
“Yes,” is the resounding answer he receives from the two other parties in the room. Charlie accepts this with a groan, and rolls over so that he’s face-first in the carpet. If he’s lucky, he might suffocate and die and not have to present his thesis at all.
One can always have hope.
There’s a moment of silence before Sunny says, “I suppose it’s a good time to mention I’m back?”
Charlie rolls over, and makes grabby hands at one of the mugs that Sunny has levitating beside her. “I love you,” he says. “What would I do without you?”
“That would be almost romantic if I didn’t know you were talking to your coffee,” Sunny says, “and also maybe if I was straight. Anyway, I caught the ends of the conversation—and I think our problems can all be blamed on one source.”
“Oh?” Taylor—no longer upside-down—says, before taking a long slurp of their coffee. Charlie pulls a face at the sound. At least he remembers his manners, for the most part.
Sunny hums as she hands Jessie zir drink. “Indeed. It’s Charlie’s fault.”
Charlie splutters, coughs, and almost dies by coffee. “I’m sorry, how?”
“Well,” Sunny says, as she begins to levitate herself, legs crossed, “consider our thesis topics themselves—do you know how often it is that there’s a focus on dragon health and safety to a standard above and beyond the Ministry standards? It’s not that often at all, you know.” The carpet rises until Sunny is sitting on it, and Charlie doesn’t know whether to frown at it—it never works for him—or at Sunny for her slander.
“She’s got a point,” Jessie says. Ze taps zir fingers against zir mug. “I mean, the sanctuary is a sanctuary, but usually research tends to be a little less ethical.”
By now, Charlie is well and truly frowning. “Just say cruel,” he says, anger growling in his chest like a dragon. “I mean, we’ve heard the rumours about how the goblins treat their dragons! But if I want to launch a rescue, it’s wrong and going to start a goblin war. I’m sure they wouldn’t notice if I figured out a way to create a spell that did the same thing without the whole sentient problem.”
“You,” Taylor says, with all the dramatics an over-caffeinated thesis student can contain, “are going to be trying to create this spell for years.”
Charlie sniffs. “That’s better than your first opinion of it taking decades,” he says, like he isn’t aware of the fact it will, likely, take decades. “Anyway, I fail to see how my caring for dragons wellbeing has anything to do with the struggles we face with our thesis?”
“I mean, it makes sense,” Taylor says. “The lack of research we run into is partially a result of our methods, really. I only look at shed scales, as does Jessie. You’re just insane, and Sunny is trying to start a new branch of research all on their own based on records from the dragon riders’ action in the war.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Charlie says, and they all laugh at that.
Silence falls over the group as they let the warmth—and caffeine—of their drinks sink into their bloodstreams. Charlie glances at the letter off to the side, which he’d been using as a bookmark in a four-hundred-page book on how dragons have motivated spell development.
Pressing his lips together, Charlie considers it, and then surveys his friends and fellow students. Technically, they’re not formally recognised as students as they work on the sanctuary and get paid for it, but the research they do is a requirement to be recognised as having the academic requirements to work with dragons and, considering their workload on the sanctuary, Charlie bets that they’ll all get the title dragon tamer/worker or something too.
“You staring at the note like it hurt you personally for a reason, Char?”
Jessie’s voice has Charlie blinking and shaking his head. He really did drift away in his thoughts for a second. “I was wondering whether we would all like a break,” he says, “complete with a dragon hatchling and some adrenaline and maybe some minor illegal activities. Y’know, just for some fun.”
“Count me in,” Taylor says, with approximately zero hesitation—and it’s times like this that Taylor’s criminal record makes sense.
Somewhat more reasonable, Jessie says, “Can I ask for a bit more information?”
Charlie tosses the note in zir direction, only for the note to drift aimlessly down to the ground because—unsurprisingly—paper isn’t that good to throw when it’s not crumbled up into a ball. Pulling a face at it, Charlie says, “Well, one of my old teachers might have gotten a dragon illegally, and it might be a very dangerous breed, and he’s maybe keeping it in a wooden hut. Not fireproof, mind you. My youngest brother—Ron—found out and he and his friends think it would be best if the dragon was no longer where the dragon currently is.”
Jessie blinks once at his explanation, and then says, “Yeah, sure I’m in. Sunny?”
“Hm?” Sunny looks up at the call of her name. “Oh, I’m down. Sorry, didn’t think I needed to verbalise it. Tomorrow night, then?”
“Sure,” Charlie says with a shrug, rather nonplussed at how quickly it’s all coming together. His friends, after all, are insanely intelligent for all that they grumble over their thesis topics and research and the number of hours they spend on crying as opposed to actual writing.
So, really, there’s nothing else Charlie can say except, “I’ll bring the coffee.”