From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 102 Nobetha

When Ivy solved the mess of Defense Against the Dark Arts and walked out of the castle, the sky outside was bright and sunny.

Spring comes very late in the Scottish Highlands, so although the sun is shining, there is always a hint of chill in the air.

However, the plants lining both sides of the path from Hogwarts to the Forbidden Forest were not like the wizards who complained that the sun was not warm enough. They bloomed many flowers enthusiastically, which were very lovely. Even someone like Ivy who had not slept all night could feel their vitality.

Hagrid still covered his cabin tightly, leaving no gap for the cold wind blowing from the Black Lake. The kind-hearted hound Fang was tied to the door, to fulfill his master's duty of guarding the Forbidden Forest.

Ivy adjusted his body to the appropriate height through Transfiguration. The professional characteristic of the Philosopher's Stone gave him a powerful talent for Transfiguration. Perhaps he should try to learn Animagus. Maybe he could successfully get a job as a Druid.

After stroking the furry dog's head, Ivy knocked on the door of the cabin.

"Who is it?" Hagrid's alert voice came from behind the door.

"It's me! Ivy." Ivy had just given her name when the wooden door was opened by Hagrid. He looked around and pulled Ivy into the door.

"Why are you so late? I thought you didn't have classes this morning!" Hagrid complained.

"Then you must have come on the wrong day, Hagrid," Ivy was sure, because both the first-year students of Slytherin and the professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts had a series of classes on Friday morning.

The former was a Potions class with Gryffindor, and the latter was a Defense Against the Dark Arts class with the seventh-year advanced class.

"How long have you not been out of the house?" The heat in the cabin was suffocating. He didn't know if the Howling Flame, as a magical creature, would release carbon monoxide when burning. However, judging from Hagrid's healthy appearance, it was highly likely that he would not.

"Not long. Anyway, I still remember to eat." Hagrid replied nonchalantly and turned towards the fireplace.

In addition to an indescribable burnt smell, there were all kinds of messy things scattered on the floor of the cabin.

There was a knitting needle as thick as Ivy's little finger, and an unfinished woolen fabric hanging on it. Ivy couldn't tell what Hagrid was knitting, but it should be for the little dragon.

There were chicken feathers all over the floor and blood dripping on the ground. That should be chicken blood. This stuff will be used in the baby food that Hagrid prepared for Xiaolong. Another ingredient is brandy. Ivy also saw a few bottles upside down in the wooden barrel in the corner. I wonder if Hagrid has tasted it first for his unborn baby.

"Come and see! Ivy!" Hagrid brought a frying pan and took the Howling Flame and the cracked dragon egg out of the stove and placed them on the wooden table in the middle of the house.

As soon as the hot bottom of the pot touched the table, it immediately released a puff of green smoke into the air. Ivy used a thermal insulation spell to isolate the transfer of heat, thus saving Hagrid's wooden dining table.

"Howling Flame is such a responsible mother. The book says that it usually takes a month for a dragon egg to hatch, but it's only been two weeks and he's almost broken out of the shell!" Hagrid threw the macho pink mat aside and lay on the table, staring at the shaking dragon egg with wide eyes.

In addition to the cracks, there was a constant clicking sound coming from the dragon egg, as if the little dragon was scratching the inner wall of the egg with its nails, but because there was no fulcrum, it could only repeat this action over and over again.

That sound made Xiaoyan, the foster mother, very uneasy. She kept trying to poke the dragon eggs with her claws. But it seemed that she realized that her actions were inappropriate. She finally restrained herself and made an anxious, coquettish meow.

This was the first time Ivy heard it make a sound. In the past, it expressed its emotions through panting and low purring. This kind of cat-like sound had never been heard before.

"You are an Art Elemental Statue, not a real cat!" Ivy picked up Xiaoyan and said in surprise, "Not to mention that you are my magic pet. As long as the intelligence I shared with you is high enough, you should be able to learn to speak. Why are you meowing all of a sudden?"

"Howling Flame can talk? Like the Sphinx?" The expression on Hagrid's face told Ivy that he must have misunderstood something. "Can this skill be taught to Norbert?"

"Nobert? You mean the little dragon that hasn't hatched yet? I don't think it's smart enough to learn to talk." Ivy rationally denied Hagrid's idea.

"We've got to try it!" said Hagrid eagerly. "Just think, Ivy, we taught a dragon to talk! How cool that would be!"

Just as Hagrid was discussing the possibility of the little dragon Norbert learning to speak with Ivy, the dragon egg in the pan suddenly made a sharp scraping sound and then cracked in two.

The little dragon staggered out of the eggshell and used the nails on its limbs to scratch the cast iron pan, making a harsh metallic sound.

The little dragon Norbert is a standard Norwegian Ridgeback. Except for his orange eyes, his whole body is pure black. The wing membrane connecting his front paws and ribs looks much larger than his body. There are many black spikes on his wings, making him look like someone who is not easy to mess with.

It sneezed, and a few sparks flew out, leaving a few black spots on Hagrid's wooden table.

"It's so beautiful, isn't it?" Hagrid was completely fascinated by the little dragon. He reached out a hand and touched the little dragon's head, and the latter bit his finger.

Even a newly born Norwegian Ridgeback has long, sharp fangs, and those fangs will become toxic as they age. They are very dangerous hunters and can easily catch prey without breathing fire.

However, the newborn dragon had no killing power for Hagrid. Hagrid stiffened his fingers and carefully lifted it from the pan.

The little dragon flapped its wings vigorously and swung its long neck hard, as if it wanted to tear a piece of meat from Hagrid's fingers, but its movements ultimately only made its body hanging in the air shake.

As if afraid that the little dragon would fall from the sky, Hagrid held its butt with his other hand and shouted excitedly to Ivy: "Look how strong Norbert is! It will grow into a big one!" Perhaps tired of not being able to swallow the food, the little dragon finally let go, and Hagrid carried it to Xiaoyan. The big cat stretched out his prickly tongue and licked the little dragon's forehead.

"Oh - how touching! Look at your baby! It's healthy, you're a hero mother, Roaring Flame!" Hagrid grabbed the tablecloth and wiped his face. The affectionate interaction between mother and child seemed to make him cry.

However, Howling Flame was not a fire dragon, nor a real big cat, after all. It was an artistic elemental statue. Although it provided the little dragon with the necessary heat, this Norwegian Ridgeback, which was probably a close relative of lizards, was obviously a cold-blooded killer. It suddenly opened its mouth and bit Howling Flame.

Xiaoyan had the reflexes of a cat, and he dodged the dragonet's bite effortlessly, pinning it under his claws.

The little dragon began to struggle, waving its limbs and tail wildly, occasionally scratching the pan, making crackling sounds.

Xiaoyan raised his claws, and the little dragon immediately twisted his unfamiliar limbs to climb up, once again attacking his adoptive mother.

Without any surprise, it was once again stepped on by Xiaoyan. But this time, after struggling for a few times, the little dragon began to howl miserably, and the sound was several times more unpleasant than that of a crow with a broken throat.

"It's calling for its mother!" Hagrid's love didn't seem to be affected by the cry at all. He gently let Howling Flame release his claws and comforted the little dragon himself.

"I think it should be a female." Ivy said cautiously.

"What? Why?" Hagrid seemed to disagree. "Look how lively it is!"

"The female Norwegian Ridgeback is much more ferocious than the male. You should call it Norbeta." Ivy opened the large book "Types of Dragons in Great Britain and Ireland" under Hagrid's pillow and pointed to the entry about the Norwegian Ridgeback.

"Don't make fun of me, Ivy. You call this vicious?" Hagrid seemed to have heard a joke and laughed out loud, but his laughter seemed to anger the quiet Norbeta again. It raised its bumpy head and bit Hagrid's finger again.

"It must be hungry!" Hagrid made excuses for his darling. "Fortunately, I have prepared its first meal!"

The smell of brandy and chicken blood is not pleasant. The blood or alcohol evaporation makes the room smell very strange, but Norbeta seems to like this smell very much and keeps sniffing it.

"I must apologize to you, Hagrid," Ivy said sincerely.

"Why?" Hagrid asked nonchalantly, his mind entirely focused on feeding Norberta.

"Dumbledore already knows about the dragon eggs." Ivy blamed Quirrell in her heart. If Quirrell wasn't such a bad dark wizard who couldn't even find any heinous crimes in him, Ivy wouldn't have let the secret slip.

"What?" Hagrid's face was full of horror, and he didn't even notice that he had poured brandy into Norberta's nostrils.

The little dragon started coughing violently, spraying out a lot of sparks, which directly set the large bottle in Hagrid's hand on fire.

Ivy used a fire-condensing spell to help the flustered Hagrid out of the predicament. The latter put the little dragon down beside the barrel and let it find food in the barrel by itself. Then he sat back at the table with a worried look on his face.

"How could it be! How can I face Dumbledore? He trusted me so much...but I betrayed his trust!" Hagrid was very entangled, "But Norbert is still so small and can't even find food by himself. I can't abandon it!"

"You're right, so we have to find a way to make this the best of both worlds," Ivy said patiently.

"Do you have any solution, Ivy?" Hagrid asked eagerly, his eyes full of hope.

"Remember? I said I once kept many magical animals in Hogwarts, some of which were not so safe, such as purple-horned beasts and giant purple-horned beasts." Ivy nodded in admission. There was even a dormant basilisk under the castle. Compared with it, the newly born fire dragon was not a threat at all.

"Great, what should we do then?" Hagrid looked less worried.

"Remember what the Ministry of Magic's dragon-keeping law says?" Ivy asked, and then began to recite the provisions of the dragon-keeping law, "'All private dragon-keeping is prohibited...' Note that word, 'private'!"

"What do you mean...?" Hagrid seemed to understand, but also seemed not to.

"Hogwarts is not private!" Ivy immediately stated his purpose. "This castle is an academic institution, an educational institution, not a private institution! As long as Norbeta becomes the property of the school, the Ministry of Magic will have no right to interfere!"

"Nobel is a good baby, not some cold 'property'!" Although Ivy knew that they had not yet reached an agreement on the gender of the dragon, he did not expect that Hagrid objected to the property attribute of the dragon.

"What I mean is that we have to convince the Ministry of Magic that it is the property of Hogwarts. Only in this way can we prevent your separation and avoid the possibility of you being thrown into Azkaban." Ivy persuaded, "Besides, the little dragon also needs to be taken care of. Dumbledore can't really watch it being put together with other property of the school. When the time comes, won't it be you, the gamekeeper, who will be responsible for taking care of it?"

Hagrid seemed to be moved by the prospects described by Ivy, and his mind was empty with a longing look on his face.

Although it was not very moral to pit his own friend, all Ivy had to do was to create a little difficulty so that Hagrid would be forced to agree to put the little dragon in the basement of Hogwarts and be under Ivy's personal supervision.

In this way, Ivy not only got a fire dragon, but also got a keeper who brought his own dry food.

(End of this chapter)