There's No Room for a Dragon There...

"Thank you..." Hagrid wiped the droplets of water from his face.

Though Evan had extinguished the fire promptly, Hagrid's beard had still been singed quite a bit, leaving it uneven and ragged, which looked rather strange.

"Hagrid, are you all right?" Evan asked.

"I'm fine, just that Norbert is a bit too lively, probably just excited from having hatched," Hagrid was completely unconcerned about his charred beard, instead finding a reasonable explanation for Norbert's behavior.

You call this lively?

Evan watched Norbert, its mouth bristling with sharp teeth and nostrils occasionally puffing out sparks, and couldn't help but smirk. Hagrid's affection for large ferocious creatures was nothing short of indulgent.

At this realization, Evan suddenly understood that raising a dragon and collecting its blood might not be as simple as he had initially thought...

The unexpected incident had Harry and Ron sweating bullets, while Hermione was downright indignant.

"This can't be explained by liveliness, it nearly burned you! Hagrid!"

"It's alright now..." Hagrid murmured softly.

"Hermione, I'll help keep an eye on it when I can. There shouldn't be any major problems!" Evan also spoke up in an attempt to soothe the situation.

"But it's a fire dragon! In just a month or two, it will grow as large as a house!" Hermione glared at Evan, clearly dissatisfied.

"If someone discovers that Hagrid is keeping a fire dragon, he could be sent to Azkaban!"

"We just have to send Norbert away before that happens. Ron, doesn't your brother Charlie work with dragons in Romania? Once Norbert gets a bit bigger, we could arrange for Charlie to release him into a wild habitat," Evan suggested.

He was only interested in dragon blood, so Norbert's future whereabouts were of little concern to him.

"Send Norbert away? No, you can't do that! I'm his mum; he's so fragile. What if he gets bullied after I send him away? No one can separate us!" Hagrid panicked at the thought.

Bang~

Just as Hagrid finished speaking, Norbert swept a teacup off the table with its tail, shattering it on the floor. It then engaged in a fierce battle with an iron pot, denting it with its sharp teeth and punching a hole with a claw...

The display of aggression only strengthened the group's resolve to send Norbert away... Evan figured that if they sent Norbert to Romania, the local wildlife should be more worried than the dragon.

"You can't keep it forever, Hagrid!" Hermione reminded him.

"Maybe we could release it into the Forbidden Forest..." Hagrid suggested haphazardly, patting his chest in assurance.

"Don't worry, I have plenty of experience with releases. It's not the first or second time I've done this. Aragog's doing just fine in the forest... never hurt a soul!"

"Aragog! You've been keeping other things in the Forbidden Forest?" Harry looked at Hagrid in shock, not expecting that this wasn't Hagrid's first time harboring dangerous creatures.

"No, no, nothing at all, you must have heard wrong..." Hagrid hastily tried to cover up, but his explanation was weak.

"Aragog is an Acromantula," Evan interjected.

Revealing Aragog's identity at this point was Evan's way of keeping Harry and the others away from the Forbidden Forest this term, to avoid any run-ins with the creature. Without Malfoy's snitching, they were unlikely to venture into the forest anyway.

"How do you know Aragog is an Acromantula?" Hagrid asked in surprise, not having mentioned Aragog's species.

"An Acromantula? How big can a spider really get?" Harry was curious.

"About the size of this cabin, give or take a little?" Evan gauged the size of Hagrid's cabin and thought of the giant spider from the original story, including its long legs. It should be about right.

"You have to believe me, Aragog's a good boy, he doesn't bite..." Hagrid defended, sounding less than confident.

Harry and the others didn't believe a word, with Ron imagining a spider as large as a house in his mind, and finding it nightmarish.

"I swear I'll never go into the Forbidden Forest!" Ron declared, on the verge of a breakdown.

"Hagrid, the Forbidden Forest is too small and too close to Hogwarts; you can't hide a dragon there. It'll be discovered sooner or later," Evan urged, concerned that the forest's creatures were already suffering enough without adding a dragon to the mix.

"But I've only just got him..." Hagrid looked at Norbert with a heavy heart.

"We could wait a month, let Norbert grow a bit, then send him away. If he's too small, he won't survive on his own in Romania," Evan offered a compromise.

After much hesitation, Hagrid finally agreed, and Hermione, Harry, and the others had no objections, as Evan was right: a newly hatched Norbert indeed wouldn't survive in the wild.

Having decided to send Norbert away in a month, Hagrid took some time to recover from his disappointment but cherished the remaining time even more.

Evan, watching the awkwardly cute little fire dragon, was just as concerned as Hagrid, already scheming on how to sneakily draw some blood without Hagrid noticing.

However, considering the Blood Fusion Potion still needed time to brew, Evan had to be patient. After all, once blood left the body for more than three days, its vitality decreased significantly, and Evan wasn't sure if this would affect the potion's efficacy.

In the meantime, Evan decided to bond with Norbert first, just as he had with Fawkes. This way, when the time came to draw blood, he wouldn't face too much resistance.

With this plan in mind, Evan soon became a proud dragon keeper... or more colloquially, a "poop scooper."

Initially, Evan thought raising a dragon would be an exciting and joyful task, but after a few days, the novelty wore off, leaving little joy.

As a Norwegian Ridgeback, Norbert was a tad too temperamental. A sneeze could ignite furniture, and the dragon had a habit of gnawing on beds and fireplaces, leaving everything marked with teeth. Occasionally, it would get overly excited and wreak havoc in Hagrid's hut.

Every day, Evan had to cast the Aqua Eructo charm and countless repair spells.

Otherwise, the hut would have collapsed long ago...

As the hut's owner, Hagrid didn't mind at all, even though just the night before, he had to make do sleeping on the ground after his bed was burned. It wasn't until the next afternoon that Evan restored the bed with a Reparo spell.

Even so, Hagrid insisted that Norbert was just a bit lively, a sign of a healthy baby...

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