Chapter Text
“Dragons are dangerous.
To most this will seem like common sense, but in my time I’ve encountered many young thrill-seekers searching for an adrenaline high only to be met with the flames of inescapable death.
This book, The Dragon Compendium , is here to give you the tools to become a dragonologist, if you so wish. Still, I’ll warn you again, dragons are dangerous and not everyone is suited to their care.” ~Excerpt from The Dragon Compendium by Ignis Nagy, M.P.H.D.
July 1995
Dragons are dangerous, but dragons are also empathetic, loving, and emotional creatures who are trying to navigate a world that has become too small for a creature of their size and power to exist in.
That’s where dragon reserves come in.
Most commonly these reserves are in the middle of buttfuck nowhere at the corner of hey-is-that-another-living-human street and wait-no-that’s-just-a-tree avenue. The Romanian dragon reserve is no different.
The Capitol Draconum Reserve is nestled in the mountains somewhere near the city of Brasov, warded so heavily that it’s nearly impossible to get in or out without every single living thing within the reserve being alerted of your departure or arrival.
These spells are the handiwork of the late Harvey Ridgebit, one of the most extraordinary minds to ever come out of dragonology, and one of the most tragic lost to it as well. Mr. Ridgebit founded the Capitol Draconum Reserve around two main principles:
Firstly, dragons are wild animals and can therefore not be tamed, do not attempt to imprint upon them, they will kill you.
Second: dragons are all like children, even the eldest of their kind. They will imprint upon you.
A third principal was later added by one of his first employees, although it tended to stay off of official records: Dragons are vicious motherfuckers.
The name of this employee? Anastasia Hickith, although everyone tended to call her Hicks.
Amongst her other credentials, Anna could also claim the title of the only wixen in modern European history to ever take a dragon as a familiar. The circumstances for this bond were unique and unlikely to ever be recreated, but that’s a story for another time.
For this reason, as well as many others, Anna found herself the lead keeper of the reserve at the fine old age of 67. The only reason that she wasn’t running the place was that she found the idea of paperwork to be a bore, and much preferred the most hands on work of the keepers.
Thus the master of the reserve, at least in name, was a rather pokey man by the name of Geronimo Freslin, though everyone just called him Gerry.
Anna’s crew, the keepers, were only one division of the reserve. They looked after the full-grown dragons, tending to them, befriending them, and attempting to make their lives better.
On occasion the reserve would get eggs, those eggs would go to the hatchery where they would be cared for until their hatching when they would be moved to the nursery that housed the reserve's other hatchlings.
Capit0l Draconum had made great advances in the early socialization of the dragons. They had found, much to the delight of many of the researchers at the facility, that dragons were truly pack animals, and it was only the modernization of humanity that prevented them from living in larger groups.
Along with the workers at the nursery and hatchery, there was a team of physicians and researchers that worked around the clock to improve the lives of the dragons in the reserve. Then there were the wixen that worked primarily on the upkeep of the reserve: the cooks, the casters, the cleaners, etc..
To be the largest dragon sanctuary in the wizarding world, the reserve had to be a well oiled machine, but this machine also housed several hundred biological arsonists, so there was hardly ever a quiet day.
“IF YOU DON’T WANNA BE DINNER, MOVE YOUR ARSES!”
Hungarian Horntails are a particularly nasty breed, especially when aggravated. Unless treated with care Horntails will lash out at everyone and everything. This particular dragon was a newer addition to the sanctuary and was particularly angry.
If Anna had more time she would have admired the magnificent creature for hours, but when you have a creature 3000 times bigger than you bearing down on your trainees then you don’t have much time for sightseeing.
“GRACIN!” She barked, summoning the attention of a lanky, brunette woman. “Get the trainees out and close the enclosure gate.”
She nodded and continued to usher them out, bringing down the heavy padlock of the gate.
Carefully she approached the bucking horntail, conscious of its spined, whipping tail. Its body was convalescing under the enchanted chains, desperate to free itself from the cage.
The dragon was young, barely old enough to be considered fully grown, but she was powerful.
Quietly Anna began to hum, as she stepped forward, holding her finger up to her lips to silence everyone else. If she were a lesser keeper, the speed at which the horntail whipped around to face her may have killed her, let alone made her lose her concentration.
Angry golden eyes met calm gray ones.
The two stared each other down for what could have been two minutes, or even an hour. The horntail’s neck began to glow with the heat of oncoming fire, but Anna merely reached out and struck the animal’s snout, hard.
The growing flames stopped, receding back down her throat.
“Weren’t expecting that, were you?” Anna murmured. Startled calm, the dragon watched as the keeper walked around and released the chains that held her with a sweep of the wand she usually kept on her forearm.
With another wave of her wand the chains disappeared, only to appear outside of the cage in a neat pile.
Turning her back on the horntail Anna walked away, allowing the dragon’s golden eyes to bore into her back. The bars of the cage fizzled out of existence as she walked through, solidifying behind her.
All of the enclosures in the reserve were keyed to her magical signature, most everyone else had to use a door.
Once she was outside of the bars the horntail turned her back on the woman and settled into a ball on her new nest.
All of the trainees watched Anna approach as if she was either bloody astounding or bloody crazy. She was never sure which she preferred.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she began. “Go on. You’ve been traumatized enough for the day.” The trainees murmured to themselves as they walked away, glancing back at her with awe or fear.
“Gracin, Kaneko, go after them and make sure none of them are really all that traumatized.” Two of the other keepers nodded and walked after the group.
“Sharma, Cristian, make sure the horntail’s got everything she needs for the night.” They nodded and left.
“That was one helluva demonstration, Hicks.”
Charlie Weasley was the epitome of dragon keeper: Tall, broad, muscular, and without a sense of self-preservation, in essence, he was Anna if she was male.
Charlie was young too, just in his twenties, but he had the scars to match most of the senior keepers. Anna liked him, he was a hard worker and to do this job you had to be.
“It would’ve been less of one if Roberts hadn’t signed off on the dragons for the tournament.” Roberts was a former senior keeper at the reserve. The previous summer Anna had fallen ill and Roberts had taken over as the head keeper in her absence.
All would have been fine if he hadn’t agreed for four of the reserve’s dragons to be used in a death tournament for children. He had been promptly “let go” when Anna resumed her position.
Anna snapped her fingers, summoning a blur of copper scales to her side. Her dragon was a Peruvian Vipertooth named Elidyr. Much smaller than the Horntail in the cage, but also significantly faster.
His species tended to be vicious, but Elidyr had been hand-reared from a young age. Barely out of his shell, poachers had attacked him and his mother, killing the older dragon and stealing the younger’s fangs. A death sentence for a creature whose main defense was his venom.
Fortunately, he’d been found and rescued, ending up in Anna’s care for the rest of his life.
He was a beautiful dragon, all bronze shining scales and magnificent maroon sinew between his wings.
With a small chirp Elidyr licked Anna’s face, earning himself a good scratch behind his horns.
“This came for you.” Charlie held out a letter.
“Whose it from?” Anna asked.
“Mara.”
Maman,
I won’t waste your time with pleasantries.
I am reaching out on the behalf of Headmaster Dumbledore. He is in need of your skills.
Lord Voldemort has risen again, and Dumbledore fears for our chances. You must come help fight, or if not fight, advise us. Voldemort will try to gain the aid of every magical creature possible. We must prevent this.
Please Maman, I know you swore never to enter England again, but you must. If not for anything good, then for Natlie and Malachi, for Isolde and I.
With all my love, your daughter,
Mara Helpta-Hickith.
When she looked up Charlie pursed his lips in sympathy.
“We’re going then.”
* * *
It didn’t take long for Anna to collect her belongings, stuffing them into a bag without much thought.
Each keeper had their own cabin in a tiny village near the enclosures. They were heavily warded to keep stray dragons out, but plentifully charmed for the comfort of their residents.
Anna’s wasn’t much, merely the essentials, but there were some who turned the inside of their homes into veritable mansions.
Charlie met her outside of her cabin with Elidyr, talking to the dragon as if he was participating in the conversation, a duffle flung over his shoulder.
“The boss man says we’re clear for leave, but we’ve gotta use his floo.”
Anna wrinkled her nose, climbing astride Elidyr. She hated flooing.
“I’ll meet you there then?”
Charlie snorted. “Sure thing, can I use your floo to get there?”
Anna nodded her affirmative. Apparition was impossible within the complex, but the reserve was so big that almost every building had an easily accessible floo. None of them were connected to the larger system, but they worked well enough.
Anna preferred to fly.
With a beat of his powerful wings, Elidyr launched them into the sky. It was as exhilarating as it always was, being up so high, feeling the wind embrace your entire body.
This flight, however, was accompanied by an intense feeling of dread.
Fifty years, that’s how long it had been since Anna had set foot in any of the British Isles.
Most of her education had been at Beauxbatons Academy of Magic. She had been born and raised in France, but when her mother died, when Grindlewald’s influence in France grew, she had to be sent to a new school.
Her mother wasn’t French. She was Welsh and thus attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
For Anna it was hardly a choice. She was desperate to attend Hogwarts. Her father conceded, deciding that Hogwarts was better than Castlebruxo in Brazil. In the end it hardly mattered, he died barely six months after she left.
They said it was pneumonia.
While she was at Hogwarts she made some of the best friends of her life, but fate wouldn’t leave her alone that year.
Her whole world collapsed again, and so she decided to start anew.
To gain her magizoology mastery she finally made it to Brazil where she learned everything the wixen there could teach her, and when they had nothing more to teach she moved on. Anna jumped around a lot, but it was when she was in the States for the first time that she finally found a reason to stay.
His name was Aster Hickith and he was a Herbologist.
They were assigned to a case together, and ended up mucking it all up. At the end of the day, they sat on the sidewalk, drenched in blue goo, being stared at by the muggles who walked past.
They’d both been fired, but at that moment neither of them cared.
Aster asked her out to dinner that night. Of course, she accepted.
They were married not long after, and not much longer after that they welcomed Maravilha Hickith into the world.
She had her daddy’s brown skin and tight curls and her mother’s gray eyes and fighting spirit. For a while everything was good. Really, really good.
It seemed like it was only going to get better when Anna got the job offer for the Romanian reserve, and it did, at least for Anna.
She loved the job and she loved the freedom.
Elidyr, who had followed her all the way from Hogwarts, finally had enough room to fly, but when Mara began attending Hogwarts the picture started to fray.
Anna’s promotion was the spark that lit the fuse.
They were divorced in 1974, the same year that Mara graduated.
They found that they really were much better as friends then they’d ever been as spouses. By that point, however, Anna had been a Hickith too long to give up the name.
Later that year, Aster moved back to his family in the States.
Much to her parent’s shock, Mara didn’t follow him, instead choosing to pave her own way in England. She became an Unspeakable only a year after she graduated.
It was at Christmas a year later that she brought her girlfriend to meet her parents.
Isolde Helpta was the opposite of Mara in almost every way.
Where Anna’s daughter was quiet and thoughtful, Isolde was loud and confident. At first both Aster and Anna were skeptical of the match, but it didn’t take long for the Magical Games and Sports secretary to endear herself to them.
They were married in ‘78.
Voldemort came and went, Natalie Helpta-Hickith was born in ‘82, and her brother Malachi only three years later.
Life slowed down after that.
Mara became the Head of the Unspeakables, Aster began dating and later married a man by the name of Leo who made the best mulled wine on either side of the pond, and Natlie began attending Hogwarts as a very proud Ravenclaw.
Life was good.
Until it wasn’t.
Until Voldemort came back.
Until all of Mara’s letters home were cryptic and full of secrets.
Until every floo-call with Isolde her face got more withered.
Until last Christmas when they felt they couldn’t make it to the States.
Anna had still made her annual visit, glad to see her old friend. Deep in the throws of Leo’s wine she finally told Aster about Hogwarts, a time in her life she had kept a secret from him throughout all of their marriage.
When she was finished he pulled her into a hug, kissed her on the cheek and told her to tell Mara. She had yet to.
Their daughter had been needling for Anna to return to England, wanting to see her home, see her life, but everytime Anna managed to deflect it. She cited work, or exhaustion, or illness, but this time she couldn’t avoid it.
Far be it for Anna to deny her daughter anything.