Oh darling, don't you ever grow up,
Don't you ever grow up
Just stay this little
Oh darling, don't you ever grow up,
Don't you ever grow up
It could stay this simple

"Never Grow Up"
Taylor Swift

LUCY:

When I opened my eyes again, I was in my bedroom. I sat up and glanced over toward my roommates' beds. Lavender and Parvati were gone, but Hermione was sitting on her bed, nose in a book.

"Wait, how did I get here?" I mumbled. "I don't even remember falling asleep."

Hermione answered without looking up from her book. "You fell asleep in the courtyard after running out of the Great Hall. Cedric brought you to the portrait hole, Fred and George brought you into the common room, then Skye brought you up here."

I glanced down quickly, relieved to see I was still in my robes and no one tried to change me into pajamas. The last thing I needed was everyone seeing my scars, especially the scar. My relief was temporary, however. "Wait, oh Godric, what does everyone else think happened?"

She shook her head. "Cedric used the story we agreed upon. They just think you were so stressed you more or less self-destructed. Cedric and I also agreed you should miss classes today."

I couldn't believe my ears. Hermione and Cedric of all people, encouraging me to skip classes? "No! I can't! I mean, I actually managed to sleep the night before a full moon. I don't remember the last time that happened. I feel so much better than usual-"

"Which is why Cedric and I decided you are staying here today." She closed her book and looked me in the eyes. "Lucy, you missing class today makes our story more believable. You want that, don't you?"

"But what about Quidditch?" I protested. "Professor McGonagall doesn't let us go to practice if we miss that day's classes. Skye would kill me if I miss-"

"That reminds me, Skye said you don't have to go to practice today." She sat on the foot of my bed and smiled her most innocent smile. "You're staying here today, Lucy, and that's that. If Skye Parkin of all people agrees that it's okay for you to take a break on top of your brother and your best friend, you've been overruled."

I slumped against my pillow. "But I feel better."

"So there's no reason to go out there, where you'll feel worse. Lucy," she lowered her voice, "Cedric was so happy to hear you were still asleep when I headed down to the Great Hall this morning. If not for yourself, do it for him. He wants you to stay here today because he knows you'll feel better if you do."

I sighed. "Okay. I'll stay."

She smiled. "Good." She glanced at her wristwatch. "Well, now that you're convinced, I'm going to head to class. I'll come get you half an hour before sunset, alright? You have no reason to leave this room, okay?"

"Okay," I said through a yawn. "Take care of Neville and Harry and Ron for me."

"Will do. Get some rest."

With that, she slipped out the door and I heard her footsteps all the way until she left the portrait hole.

I really did feel better than I had felt on the day of a full moon in a long time, but it was still a full moon. I had slept all through the night, but I could already feel the anxious energy beginning to buzz anew through my veins. As much as I would have loved to sleep the day away, I knew it to be impossible.

I managed to crawl out of bed and made my way over to my chest. I pulled the ancient runes book out for the first time in several weeks, running my fingers over the cover.

Harry remained the only person who knew I had it. I knew I really ought to tell at least Hermione or Cedric, but I didn't. I knew that if I told Hermione, her insatiable curiosity would overcome her and I'd never see it again. If I told Cedric, he'd probably worry about who sent it, and want me to get rid of it in case it was dangerous, or something like that. No, I had convinced myself that the book would remain a secret between Harry and me, just like our nightmares after the mirror.

Because it was such a secret, I hadn't been able to work on it much. But with the full moon that night and probably around eight uninterrupted hours ahead of me, I figured it was as good a time as any to study it.

I worked all morning by the light of my wand, translating rune by rune. It didn't make much sense yet (the sentence structure was incredibly complicated and consistency of spelling was seemingly nonexistent), but I was making progress. I heard Hermione's footsteps coming up the stairs around lunchtime, so I quickly shoved the books and papers under my pillow and feigned sleep. She opened the door, and, apparently satisfied with my performance, closed it quietly and went back down the stairs. I smiled in spite of myself and went back to work.

The screams gave way to howls. The werewolf trod the now-familiar path around the house, feeling the now-familiar pangs of hunger, amplified by the fact the girl hadn't eaten at all that day.

A couple of kilometers away, a bushy-haired and big-hearted girl was staring out the window into the night, not hearing a word her professor was saying, which was incredibly out of character for her. The green-eyed boy next to her noticed this strange behavior, and he meant to ask about it, really he did, but before he got the chance, the girl snapped from her trance and began writing notes. He noticed then that her handwriting was far neater than usual. This was the handwriting his friend typically reserved for essays alone; her standard handwriting was often a scribble only she could read, as she was still trying to learn how to write with a quill. When he tried to ask why she was writing so neatly, she shushed him, and he thought he spied the glimmer of tears in her eyes. When the red-haired boy on her other side tried to ask why she was crying, she shushed him as well. The boys exchanged a glance and shrugged their shoulders in unison before turning their attention back to the front of the room.

She was right to worry about her best friend. The wolf, driven mad by intense hunger, was desperate, launching itself at anything and everything that might contain something, anything to eat.

The werewolf knew in the recesses of its mind that the wardrobe in the corner was unstable, but it tried anyway to bust it open. It tried again and again and again, until the wardrobe collapsed and landed on top of it. It didn't know at the time that it had just fractured three ribs, and that the girl would not be able to laugh or talk or even breathe without pain for the next several weeks. All it knew was that it was still hungry, and now it was in pain too. It managed to wrestle itself free from beneath the heavy furniture before sunrise.

30 nights later, the Shrieking Shack was again occupied. The fractured ribs were mostly, but not completely, healed. The girl had managed to keep her injury a secret from everyone but her brother and her best friend; everyone else just assumed that the paleness of her face and the softness of her voice and the rarity of her laughter was attributed to the same anxiety that had overcome her the night before the full moon.

The April night was finally somewhat warm. The girl had learned her lesson, and tried to eat as much as possible before the sun set. The wolf was somewhat content, only pacing the house for a couple of hours before settling down and trying to sleep. There were no injuries that night, for which everyone was glad whether they knew it or not.

While Hermione, Harry, and Ron spent much of their free time studying in the library, I opted instead for the solitude of the staircases of the Quidditch stands. Sure, I was interrupted by the twins every now and then, wanting --- no, needing --- my opinion on one thing or another, but their presence was always welcome. But for the most part, I was left alone, and I was glad for it. My ribs were mostly healed, but it was nice not having to worry about trying to act okay.

One particularly sunny Saturday, however, I felt suffocated within the four walls. I tried studying in the stands instead, but the skies beckoned to me. Unfortunately, Hufflepuff was already practicing, meaning I had no broom and no place to fly. I realized trying to study would be useless, however, and opted to explore the grounds a bit. My feet led me to Hagrid's hut, and I arrived just as he was leaving.

"Good morning, Hagrid!" I called. He turned around and smiled when he saw who had called him.

"Mornin', Lucy! How are yeh?"

"Too beautiful of a day to focus on my studies," I admitted with a shrug. "How are you?"

"I, eh... er..." He ran a hand over his bushy beard, glancing back and forth nervously. "I shouldn' tell yeh this... but, well... c'mere a minute. You can't tell anyone about this, alrigh'?"

"Of course, Hagrid, I can keep your secret." Curiosity piqued, I followed Hagrid into his hut. He ducked into a back room, and emerged seconds later with a large black egg.

My jaw dropped. "Hagrid, is that a dragon egg?" I rushed forward to examine it, running my fingers along the surface. "Is it a Norwegian Ridgeback?"

"Sure is," he said, his chest swelling with pride. "Only problem is, I haven't ever had a dragon of my own before, an' I was just heading up ter the castle, ter the library, lookin' fer something that might help me."

"If you want, I can stay here and help make him comfortable while you look for an official guidebook," I offered shyly. "My dad works with magical creatures, after all. I'm no expert, but, well, I know where to start."

"That'd be great, thank you," he said, resting the egg in my arms. It was heavier than I expected, but the sheer excitement of being able to hold a real dragon egg mattered far more than how uncomfortable it was to hold it. "I'll be back."

And with that, he was gone. I set the egg gently on the worn rug in front of the fire.

"Oh sweet mother of Godric Gryffindor! It's a real dragon egg! With a real dragon inside!" I took a deep breath, muttering to myself as I worked to try to organize my thoughts. "Okay. I need to put him --- or her --- in the fire. It'll simulate the way Norwegian Ridgeback mothers breathe on their eggs. Right? Right. Now I just need to light a fire. Where would Hagrid keep matches? I wish Mum was here to just light it with magic. Oh, wait, I can use magic now. Incendio!"

The fire burst to life accordingly. I sighed when I realized I should have put the egg in before lighting the fire. I considered attempting to use Hagrid's fireplace tongs to place it there, but they were Hagrid-sized and not me-sized; I was barely taller than they were.

I turned toward the egg, contemplating my options. I could try to bring it to the fire and hope I didn't burn myself, but that seemed risky. I had never attempted the flame-freezing charm before, and now didn't seem the right time to try.

"You can use magic, stupid," I said to myself, pointing my wand at the egg. "Wingardium leviosa!"

I guided the egg slowly to the fire, nestling it in the embers. Once it was secure, I lowered my hand and went to kneel beside it.

It wasn't the first time I had seen a real dragon egg in a fireplace. Every couple of years, Dad would bring an egg home from work for a couple of days before sending it off to a dragon sanctuary, usually the Romanian one. I had never been allowed to go to the sanctuary with him, but boy, did I try. I begged and begged, but he never gave in. That being said, I was more than content to look after the egg for as long as we had it. As a little girl, I would sit in front of the fireplace for hours upon hours, watching the flames dance around the new life. I watched it from the moment I woke to the moment I went to bed (and sometimes I watched it even when I was supposed to be in bed). But for all of my efforts, I had never seen an egg hatch, and I had never seen a dragon, a real dragon, with my own two eyes. Sitting in front of Hagrid's fireplace, knowing I'd get to see the baby dragon hatch within a couple of weeks' time, was a dream come true.

"Hi," I said softly to the egg. "I know you don't know me yet, but I love you already. My dad told me once that talking to dragons before they're born can help make them more friendly with humans, so here I am."

I talked to the egg until Hagrid returned, a book tucked securely under his arm. "I got the book!"

"And our new little friend is in the fire!" I reported happily.

"In the fire?!" He glanced over, panic in his eyes.

"Don't worry, Hagrid, it's what you're supposed to do. Their mothers breathe on them, so this helps mimic that."

He relaxed slightly. "Alright. Okay."

"Let's see what the book has to say about it," I said, climbing into a chair at the table and gesturing for him to open it. For the next hour, we stirred chicken's blood into brandy and shut all of the windows and curtains in his hut. It grew extremely hot extremely quickly, but neither of us minded. I was about to start gathering materials to make the baby dragon a sleeping mat when there was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?" Hagrid called, knocking the book to the ground in his fright.

"Just us," Harry's voice replied. "Me and Ron and Hermione."

I scrambled to pick up the book and toss it under a cushion on Hagrid's couch. "What do I do?" I squeaked in a whisper, hurriedly sitting on top of it.

"Jes act natural," he replied as he opened the door. Of course, their eyes found me immediately.

"Hi, Lucy!" Ron said brightly. "Taking a break from studying too?"

"I, um, yeah." I nodded.

"Hopefully not too much of a break," Hermione added, eyeing me warily. "Have you been sticking to that study schedule I made you?"

"Would anyone like stoat sandwiches?" Hagrid interrupted, beginning to boil some water for tea.

"No thanks, Hagrid," Harry said, glancing my way and smiling. I smiled back, carefully arranging my robes to hide the fact that I was trying to hide an extended edition of Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit beneath me. Harry turned back to Hagrid. "We were wondering if you could tell us what's guarding the Philosopher's Stone apart from Fluffy."

Hagrid looked at them disapprovingly. "O' course I can't. Number one, I don' know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn' tell yeh even if I could. That Stone's here fer a good reason. It was almost stolen outta Gringotts... I s'ppose yeh've worked that out an' all? Beats me how yeh even know abou' Fluffy."

Hermione flashed her brightest smile at him. "Oh, come on, Hagrid, you might not want to tell us, but you do know, you know everything that goes on round here. We only wondered who had done the guarding, really. We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you."

Her flattering was working like a charm. Hagrid radiated pride as he placed tea in front of them. "Well, I don' s'pose it could hurt ter tell yeh that... let's see... he borrowed Fluffy from me, then some o' the teachers did enchantments. Professor Sprout, Professor Flitwick, Professor McGonagall, Professor Quirrell, an' Dumbledore himself did somethin', o' course. Hang on, I've forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Snape. Oh, and Professor Babbling."

"Snape?" they asked incredulously, as I asked "Professor Babbling?" But Hagrid didn't hear my question, as their three voices were far louder than mine.

"Yeah, yer not still on abou' that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect the Stone, he's not about ter steal it."

In the heavy silence that hung over the room, I tried to remember where I had heard the name Babbling before. I made a mental note to ask Cedric later.

Harry was first to speak. "You're the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy. aren't you, Hagrid? And you wouldn't tell anyone, would you? Not even one of the teachers?"

"Not a soul knows except me an' Dumbledore."

Ron scratched his ear and shifted his collar. "Hagrid, can we have a window open? I'm boiling."

"Can't, Ron, sorry." I cringed as he glanced directly at the fire, and Harry followed his gaze.

"Hagrid, what's that?"

Ron rushed over and crouched down to get a better look. "Where did you get it, Hagrid? It must've cost you a fortune!" he gushed.

"Won it las' night. I was down in the village havin' a few drinks an' got into a game o' cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest."

"But what are you going to do with it once it hatches?" Hermione asked.

"Well, I've bin doin' some readin', an' Lucy's bin helpin' me fer the past hour or so. She knew to keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on I em, see, an' when it hatches, yeh need to feed it on a bucket o' brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour."

I joined Ron at the fire. "Isn't it beautiful? It's a Norwegian Ridgeback, we reckon."

"But those are so rare!" Ron gasped. "And wait, aren't they illegal?"

I nodded. "My dad rescued an egg once. We kept it at the house, but he found a sanctuary that would accept it before it hatched."

"Hagrid," Hermione said, sounding very disapproving, "you're keeping an illegal dragon in your wooden house."

But Hagrid hadn't heard her, as he had come over to stoke the fire.

"He'll be beautiful," he murmured, a wide smile on his face.

A couple of weeks later, Hedwig dropped a piece of paper in Harry's lap. He looked straight at me, a smile playing with the corners of his mouth as Hermione and Ron leaned over to read the note. He couldn't say anything in front of Fred and George, but I knew what the note said. I knew the egg was about to hatch.

"I'm going to Hagrid's," Ron said as we walked to Herbology. "Lucy, do you want to go with me?"

"Yes!"

"No!" Hermione snapped. "You can't!"

"Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?" Ron groaned.

"We've got lessons, we'll get into trouble, and that's nothing to what Hagrid's going to be in when someone finds out what he's doing-"

"Shut up," Harry whispered, jerking his head toward Malfoy, who had seemed to have stopped to listen. I winced. How much had he heard?

I sighed. "I'm going to go to class," I said in a much softer voice, "but by Godric I will sprint to Hagrid's the second the bell rings because I am not missing the hatching of a dragon."

Ron and Hermione started their arguing again, so Harry attempted to drown them out by starting a conversation with me.

"So, you really like dragons, don't you?"

I nodded. "My dad works with magical creatures, so I've been around various animals my whole life, but never dragons. Believe it or not, I'm the only one in my family that really loves dragons. My dad's afraid of them, my mum prefers plants to creatures any day, and my brother is afraid of fire and by extension dragons. But don't tell him I told you," I added with a smile. "It's one of his only weaknesses. He would sooner swim with grindylows than cast the fire-making charm."

Harry laughed. "Like Ron with spiders?"

"Exactly!"

"I heard my name and spiders in the same sentence and I don't appreciate it," Ron said loudly.

I laughed, and for the first time in a while, the pain was manageable.

Never had a class seemed so long. The second the bell rang, we dropped our trowels and sprinted to Hagrid's hut. I was the first one there, the adrenaline coursing through my veins numbing the increasingly sharp pain around my ribs. I had barely knocked before Hagrid ushered us inside.

"It's nearly out," he whispered, and I rushed to the table, the others behind me. I couldn't keep a wild grin from my face as the egg clicked and cracked further. The egg opened with a sudden crack, and the dragon slid out in one fluid motion.

Its wings were significantly larger than its thin and bony body, and its eyes were a brilliant orange like the fire from which he was born. It sneezed, and sparks flew out of his nose and landed on my sleeve.

I giggled as I swatted out the small flames. I really couldn't help it. "Hi," I said softly, laying my hand flat on the table, palm to the sky. To my delight, the little dragon crawled up onto my hand. "It must remember my voice!" I exclaimed in a reverent whisper as I stroked its head.

I held it out to Hagrid, and it scurried over onto Hagrid's arm.

"Bless him, he knows his mummy," Hagrid said, beaming. His face suddenly dropped, however, and he passed the dragon back to me before bolting to the window.

"Hagrid, what is it?" Hermione asked. "What's the matter?"

"Someone was lookin' through the gap in the curtains, it's a kid, he's runnin' back up ter the school."

Harry jumped up to see for himself. "Malfoy," he spat.

My heart sunk. I cradled the little dragon close to my chest as if to shield him from Draco, though I knew he was long gone.

"Don't worry, Hagrid," I said. "We'll keep both him and you safe."

"In the meantime, we really should head to our next class," Hermione said reluctantly.

"But we'll be back." I passed the dragon to Hagrid, stroking it on the head one last time. "This little one still needs a name."