Chapter Text
Harry had no idea where he was or how he got here. He knew he had been fighting for his life in the infernal halls of the Department of Mysteries, he knew there had been an explosion, and he knew he had blacked out, but he didn't know where he was nor what unholy mix of experimental magic sent him here.
The mystery of the wheres and the hows quickly get pushed to the side in favour of survival, however, as this place was clearly a toxic wasteland. The sky was covered in unnatural clouds that gleamed a kind of purple or blue, the air began to sting his throat and lungs after a few minutes of breathing and there was no sign of life anywhere.
Or rather, there is no sign of current life. He was in the middle of what seemed to once be a very elegant town or city which was now in ruins; so clearly there was life here once, but now there was not a person or animal in sight or hearing distance, and not a patch of green to be found. The earth looked normal, it looked like regular old dirt and soil where it wasn't covered in cobbles and stone tiles, but there wasn't a single plant to be seen, so clearly something was wrong with the ground too.
After quickly throwing up a bubble-head charm, Harry's first thought was to explore - which turned out to be a bad idea. Everything went well at first. He explored the city, slowly ambling from building to building, poking his head inside whenever it struck his fancy - though his wand was out at all times of course. He was curious but not stupid.
The place was impressive. Everything was not only well built, but clearly built for grandeur. The buildings Harry assumed to be residences were less houses and more manors: large and airy and well decorated, ostentatious even, built with not just stone but marble and even some gold. There were a large number of carpets and tapestries that were half eaten and mouldy but Harry could tell they had been beautiful and probably expensive pieces of art once upon a time. Of course, the entire city wasn't just made of residential buildings; Harry also found what he guessed to be an armoury, filled to the brim with swords and armour made of an unidentifiable metal he'd never seen before, and perhaps a justice building with a large chamber and staggered benches along the outside which reminded him of the courtroom he was trialled in before fifth year.
All told, this was a wealthy city once, before whatever happened destroyed its inhabitants.
It was only when he got closer to the centre of the city that he started seeing skeletons strewn about. He decided not to go any further and return to the western side, closer to where the signs of civilization meet the great mountains. He imagined there had been vast fields between the town and the mountains, the space definitely seemed large enough for some pretty impressive farms. Alas, the space was now just brown dirt.
Once satisfied that he had explored his little neighbourhood as much as he could, he decided to venture outwards. Climb the mountain a little, get a higher view. Conjured water may not have all the properties and minerals of real water, but it does the job, and he had food in his pouch so it's not like he was in a rush to do anything. He had everything he needed, so he set off.
That was when everything went to shit. Because it turned out the wilder parts of this land were not as dead as he had thought, and there was in fact some wildlife. Terrible, mutated, dangerous wildlife.
He'd barely walked a mile across the would-be fields before something wrapped around his ankle and he was falling.
Of course, there was no plantation for him to grab onto to stop himself being dragged backwards by whatever it is, so he had no choice but to push himself onto his back and bring his wand to bear. The sight was enough to wretch a strangled shout before he sent of a cutting hex.
The creature was sticking out of the ground like an oversized, scaly worm and it seemed to be trying to drag him back underground to it eat him via its tongue. Of course, the cutting hex was sufficient and the thing let out a piercing shriek before it disappeared back into its hole, minus half it's tongue, but Harry learned his lesson. Whatever had fucked up the clouds and the ground also got the fauna, and they had clearly mutated, because that thing was not natural. And considering the lack of plantation, every animal in this territory was carnivorous.
His wand wasn't going back in its holster until he was back under the relative safety of a roof.
Harry spent perhaps a week in the wilderness, crossing the fields and climbing the mountain - which actually turned out to be a volcano - before he decided it wasn't worth it. In that time, he encountered two more of the worms, a mountain lion with six eyes and severe overbite, an incredibly large fiery version of the earthworms (which thankfully responded to Parseltongue because honestly that one might have been too much for him to fight off), and worst off all, a cluster of lamprey type eels with oversized teeth, two front legs, and an alarming tendency to jump out of the water at their prey.
He decide that was enough and rushed back to the city before anything else could find him.
So. On the one hand, he was alone in a highly inhospitable land with toxic everything. On the other hand, he had Hermione's charmed bag, which contained basically everything they could find in Grimmauld Place.
Hermione, the absolute psycho, had insisted on planning for everything, and had basically upended the entire house into her bag before they left. Luckily for him, because this not only included the highly extensive Black magical library, but also the entire contents of the kitchen cupboards (which, to be fair wasn't much. A lot of cereal and tea, as well as an alarming amount of potatoes for some reason), what seems to be an apothecary's worth of potions ingredients and - well honestly a lot of random nick knacks that could be used for any number of things.
But the point is, he had magic. He had his wand, and herbology and potions samples, and a full library of information, so all in all his position wasn't so bad.
He set to work.
Within a month, Harry had a nice little setup going.
After picking a house and warding and purifying it to the gills as well as fully taking stock of Hermione's - his now, he supposed - bag, his new house was completely furnished to his desires, all his books were on shelves, and he had a nice garden set up thanks to his wards, with edible and non-edible plants separated and a few pens set up for his future livestock.
He was busy. A lot of his time was spent either in the library, researching or learning runes (which he had learned are a way to anchor spells into permanence, which was needed if he was going to live healthily in this wasteland), or out in the wilderness, wearing armour he'd scavenged from the armoury, trying to find something that he could bring back and raise as livestock; which involved not only capturing strange beasts, but then bringing them back home and experimenting on them.
So far, he'd found a type of miniature wyvern that non of his diagnostic spells indicated was poisonous as long as the venom sack at the base of the head was avoided, as well as what probably used to be a rabbit but then grew fangs. Still, all he had to go on was books, so he would be making sure he had some bezoars on hand before sampling the meat. If all goes well, he would go out and capture a few of each to bring home, and voila! All set for a healthy and cosy life.
Loneliness, however, was bean issue - or it would be at least. He was far to busy to be social right now even if there were other people around, but he knew that once he was done with his experiments, all he would have to pass the time would be his books.
That was why he brought the dragon egg up from the cellar. It was quite dead, since it had been away from any fires for who knows how long, but considering everything alive in this place was deadly, he was very happy to have a dead dragon egg as a pet. And there was no one around to laugh at him when he eventually starts talking to it.
It was a very strange place he had landed in, he thought. He'd explored more of the city since his arrival, even going closer to the centre where the skeletons were and what he found had been baffling.
Dragons. Dragon skeletons with partially ruined saddles, and human skeletons either nearby or even on top of them. The people here used to ride dragons, which to be fair explained the oversized aspect of the city; the streets way wider than necessary or the ceilings far higher than was practical to build. But dragons! Skeletons in the streets and an egg in his cellar. Harry was sure that if he searched other cellars he'd find more.
It might be something nice to research later on, once he had everything to a sufficiently self-sustaining point. It might even take up a good chunk of time, he could be like an archaeologist or something. Explore the ruins of these dragonriders' civilisation.
Something to think on. For now, he had more wards to put up around the animal pens and then he was off for another creature wrangling adventure.
Life settled down. Everything was in place and he found himself with less to do to ensure his survival and more time to think up some hobbies for himself.
His farm was wonderful, and it brought him both a sense of childish wonderment and a sense of pride and accomplishment; to have started with nothing and to now have something. To create something useful with one's own hands. It was something that Harry had never really felt before. He had never had any sort of creative hobby, nor was being made to tend his Aunt's pretty little garden in the hight of summer ever really pleasant, but this, this was good. He was alive and he was comfortable in the this hellhole of a place, and it was all thanks to himself - although he could and did credit Hermione and her paranoid need to plan for everything, including the apocalypse.
But ultimately, as he had predicted and even looked forward to, his farm didn't need tending at all hours of the day. The plants needed watering and the livestock needed feeding every day of course, but other than that, his time was his own.
Reading was good, he learned a lot of useful things and he enjoyed the old histories and legends of magic. They weren't told about these types of things at Hogwarts, History class had been a joke, only focusing on the Goblin Wars, but the Black library was definitely filling all the holes in Harry's knowledge. It was, however, something that got boring real quickly.
Brewing was something else he tried. He needed to use up his potions ingredients. Of course, he could just put them under stasis but he would run out of space for ingredients before long.
He had fun for a good few weeks experimenting. First, he tried to find potions that had similar effects but different recipes. Then he rooted out the potions that only used plant based ingredients, as he could grow those in unlimited supply, whereas he only had a limited stock of animal based ingredients. After that, he narrowed it down even more to potions that only used non-edible plants.
It passed the time and gave him a good picture of his resources. Most potions were things he would never really need, like all of the poisons, cosmetics and pranks. A lot of them were useful, however, but only some of those were possible with plant-only ingredients. That said, it would take ages for that to be a problem, he had enough animal ingredients to make at least a hundred vials of any of these useful potions, and it wasn't not like he was taking many potions anyway, but it was a good exercise.
Even with all this, it didn't take long for Harry to start talking to his egg, as he had expected.
He talked about anything really. His plans for the day, what he read that was interesting recently, how the crops were growing, hopes for the future, how the hatchlings and kits were coming along. He told it about his home and his friends, the shenanigans he got up to in school, which he swore were not as bad as some of the stuff these baby wyverns pulled, the little shits.
The egg never talked back, obviously, but it sparkled a pretty turquoise and that was all that Harry required of it really. Maybe he should get it some companions? Some other eggs he could find in other houses' cellars? Or maybe he was going mad, he snorted. The things were dead, the egg was here for his companionship needs, it didn't need friends, the thing was ornamental. Very pretty though, like the beach on a sunny day.
By the time Harry had finished building his farm, organising his potions recipes and brewing up a sufficient stock of needed potions, he had stopped counting the days. He knew it had been more than three months since he had gotten here and probably less than six, but not much more than that. He didn't really care to know, why would he? His calendar consisted of his plant growth and his schedule was the timing of his animal's meals. Not much else mattered. Days passed and not much changed, he found new hobbies and areas of interest, exhausted them, and repeat.
Considering how old wizards could live to, Harry was not confident in his future or his sanity.
In hindsight, Harry should have paid more attention.
Obviously, he had no idea how this happened, so it wasn't like he could have prevented it, but at least he would have been prepared and maybe would have exhausted his panic-fuelled manic episode before he had a teeny, hyperactive, baby dragon on his hands.
It shouldn't have been possible. Dragon eggs needed heat! They needed fire to hatch! And this one had been kept away from fire since the nuclear disaster that had killed everyone else around here. The egg was dead and cold!
Except that it hadn't been, which was why Harry was berating himself. The egg had been cold when Harry had first brought it up. It had stayed cold for a good while after that. Then it had started to heat up, and now here we were, with a dragon hatchling. Harry was sure there was an expression about this - something about a frog not noticing it's boiling alive if you place it in cold water and then slowly heat it up.
The egg had heated up so slowly that Harry hadn't noticed, despite the fact that he had carried it with him from room to room.
Unfortunately, Harry couldn't focus on what had gone wrong and what had caused the egg to hatch, because he had a newly hatched dragon staggering about the place!
What now? He didn't have any whiskey or chicken blood! What was he going to do with a bloody dragon? He couldn't take care of a dragon! It would outgrow him in two weeks!
He wished Hagrid was here. Hagrid would take care of this, he'd know what to do. Harry was the worst person to look after a baby dragon. Did he even want to take care of the dragon? Couldn't he just... gently leave it somewhere outside? It would probably die, so no, that wasn't not an option. Harry needed to take care of it until it was self-sufficient, which thankfully shouldn't take too long. But he had no whisky or chicken blood! What else could he feed it?
Adult dragons ate meat obviously, could the hatchling have that?
"Yes. Yes!" Harry muttered to himself as he rushed towards the kitchen. Maybe ground up meat? Or like a paste, to make it easier for the hatchling to swallow? And add some liquid to dilute it a bit?
Deciding to throw caution in the wind, Harry presented the hatchling with a bowl of rabbit paste, grated ginger (for the spice) and water mixed together. It didn't look appetizing at all but with some coaxing, the hatchling hesitantly began lapping the mixture up.
He needed to go to the library, he thought hysterically. He didn't have the first clue on how to rear dragons, and even if this was short term, he would have liked to avoid the dragon dying, the thing killing him, and the dragon destroying his home. That would be nice. But he couldn't bring it to the library obviously, lest he lose all his precious books.
Reluctantly, Harry decided to leave the dragon in the bedroom, already saying goodbye to his poor bed and the cosy little nest he'd made himself.
Unfortunately, the famed Black library had no books on dragon rearing. There was an encyclopaedia of dragon breeds, as well as a book on killing dragons, but not caring for one. After multiple hours, Harry had no choice but to consider it a lost cause and go make the hatchling more food.
Surprisingly, Harry's room wasn't on fire when he returned. A chair had been upended and the old rug was a bit skewed, but there were no burn marks anywhere. He stopped in astonishment in the doorway until the dragon meeped at him adorably. It was standing in the middle of the room a few feet in front of Harry, in a wide stance. Once again, the baby tried to roar at him but all that came out was a cute little kitten sound. Harry tried not to smile.
"Here you go, baby, food."
It took him a moment to realize he was speaking Parseltongue, but then shrugged. The dragon definitely looked a little more serpentine than Norbert did. In fact, he hadn't spent all that much time perusing the encyclopaedia but this dragon didn't actually look like any of the breeds that Harry was familiar with.
As the hatchling dug in - again, very hesitantly - Harry decided to go back and get the book. After all, if it hadn't burnt down his room, the book is probably safe, right?
"Don't burn anything." he said for good measure, before he went to retrieve the encyclopaedia.
He then spent multiple frustrating hours pouring over the pages and failing to find anything that looked like the dragon before him. First of all, there were only five breeds of dragon out of hundreds that were bipedal and used their wings and forelimbs. Of those five, only one even came close to this turquoise baby that was exploring Harry's room with all the curiosity of a kitten, except that the Bi-Horned Scandinavian dragon has a horn on the top of it's snout between the nostrils, and another on the chin, hence the name. Now, the baby did have horns - they were small but they were there, Harry could already see two horns at the top of its head and a line of tiny spikes going down its spine - but the book was specific in the placement of the Bi-Horned Scandinavian's horns. If it didn't have one above and one below its mouth, then it wasn't a Bi-Horned Scandinavian, which meant this hatchling was not of any known breed mentioned in this book.
Which made things a lot harder for Harry, because if he didn't know what kind of breed it was, he didn't know how fast it would grow, how strong it was, or how docile it was. Raising a Swedish Short-Snout was one thing, raising a Ukrainian Ironbelly was entirely another!
At least, Harry figured out what the hatchling's issue with the food was after it ended up stealing every one of his meals. It wanted its meat cooked. Minced, diced or as a paste, none of that mattered, all the dragon wanted was cooked meat!
"I'm glad we figured that out, kitten, but I'll be glad to see you off in a few weeks." Harry said, trying not to smile too fondly at it.