A Tale of Two Dragons: A Dramione Story

Chapter 4

The next morning Draco was in his pajamas, kneeling beside the large box of other artifacts he had decided to keep from vault 2056. There must be something in here that could help me, Draco thought. While he did procure some great magical items to sell, nothing besides the horcrux seemed suspicious. Draco picked up an enchanted flower press from the bottom of the box. He opened it and found a few red flowers pressed inside. Removing it, it became alive again, as vigorous as it would have been on the day it had been picked. The flower press then spoke to him in a sweet, yet scientific, voice identifying the flower as a red poppy. Draco replaced the flower and it rapidly withered again to its previous state. He admired its magical properties, yet it, too, seemed unhelpful.

For the next two hours Draco continued to inspect each item, making notes both for his store inventory and to see if it had any connection to the scroll horcrux, yet nothing stood out to him. After repacking everything into the box once again, he heard his notebook whistle. Draco crossed the room and picked it up, noticing Hermione's message.

Don't forget.

Draco chuckled and penned her a message in response.

Of course I won't forget, I'm a bit more reliable than that. You'll find me in the ancient runes section. I've been looking at the other items from vault 2056. No leads yet.

Draco finished dressing, put his notebook into his pocket, and grabbed an apple for later. He told his employees he would be out for the day, fed his rats, and apparated into the ministry library.

The ministry library was the largest he had ever been in, which was impressive because the Hogwarts library was considerably large. It was lit by large lanterns that hovered and roamed the shelves, following visitors and helping illuminate the pages they read. Draco used a map and located the ancient runes section of the library and scanned the titles on the shelves.

Ancient idioms and what they mean

French petroglyphs

Ten translations teachers don't tell you

A guide to man's use of symbolism

Draco glanced at the table of contents in the last title, deciding it looked promising. He found a nearby table and a lantern followed him. He had not so much as pulled out his chair before Hermione had found him and set down her hefty collection of books on the polished wood of the table, making a sonorous thud.

"What have you got there, Granger? I hope you haven't taken every book in this place, I don't know what the librarians would do with themselves if you did," Draco joked, eying the large stack that teetered to a dangerous four feet. He carefully sat down so as not to topple it.

"You know, you really can call me Hermione. We're learning to be friends and calling me Granger makes me feel like we're back at Hogwarts," she said, joining him at the table and beginning to page through a book.

"First name basis, eh? It's good to know I've moved up in the world." Draco was amused to see that it got a slight snort out of her. "You can call me Draco, you know. If you want." He hurriedly started paging through his book to make himself look busy and to hide how awkward he was feeling.

"Draco," Hermione said, testing the name out. "It suits you."

Draco couldn't remember a single time anybody apart from his mother had said his name so kindly. "Thank you," Draco said softly. A surge of gratitude coursed through Draco's chest.

Draco and Hermione both silently turned to their books. Hermione had just started flipping through International dragon identification. They continued to study for five hours, though both of them were growing very frustrated that they hadn't found answers to their questions. Hermione was particularly disturbed because in the past books had never let her down. Even when she had gone looking for the most forbidden of subjects, like horcruxes, she was still able to summon them from Dumbledore's office and find all the answers she needed. Hermione had scoured all six of the books about dragons she could find, and yet not a single one of them had any dragon that looked or acted like the one on the scroll container. She had only found one line of information from Dragons: facts and folklore that she could imagine would ever be helpful, though it was distressingly cryptic. The most evil and powerful of dragons have either yet to be discovered, are only discovered by those who die soon after, or only exist in the minds of those who have seen signs that they may exist. Hermione could only speculate that the dragon on this cover could be unidentified by wizardkind or completely fictitious.