Chapter 37
A few more days passed. On an afternoon with no classes, Gray made his way to Hagrid's hut.
Hagrid was currently "playing" with Norma.
Or rather, he was being one-sidedly mauled. He wasn't fighting back at all—he simply let Norma rake her claws across his face while she tore at his clothes with her teeth. Every so often she would hop back a couple of steps and deliver a solid headbutt to his chest.
"Hey, Gray! You're here—look at her, full of energy! She's definitely going to grow into a strong, healthy girl," Hagrid called out cheerfully when Gray stepped inside. He raised one massive hand to fend off another swipe while waving with the other.
Norma had clamped her jaws around Hagrid's forearm and was dangling from it like a caught fish, tail and wings hanging limp.
The moment Gray approached, Norma swung her body in a smooth arc and launched herself into his arms, letting him catch her.
Gray exhaled softly. Honestly, if he hadn't been eating rock-skin biscuits for weeks and building up his strength, he wasn't sure he could have handled her weight so easily.
Harry or Ron definitely would have been flattened.
He stroked the top of her head. Norma rubbed her face against his hand in return.
In just these few days she had changed dramatically. Her body had lengthened by more than half, she had put on noticeable muscle and flesh, and her wings had grown powerful enough that knocking over Hagrid's bottles and jars had become almost effortless.
Hagrid fetched a bottle of brandy from the side, poured in the bowl of chicken blood he had prepared earlier that morning, and swirled them together vigorously until they were well mixed. Then he set the basin on the table beside Gray.
Gray gave Norma a gentle pat on the head. She obligingly stretched forward, plunged her snout into the basin, and began gulping noisily. At the same time she snatched up the pile of raw chicken Hagrid had left nearby and tore into it with big, enthusiastic bites.
"Thank you, Gray—really," Hagrid said, letting out a long breath as he sank onto the sofa. "I don't know what I'd have done without you."
His clothes were riddled with fresh holes, his face and arms crisscrossed with scratches and shallow bites. His already wild, unkempt beard looked even more chaotic now—like a tangle of overgrown vines.
"It's nothing," Gray replied. "I should be doing this."
Over the past several days he had been searching for ways to help Norma grow stronger and healthier. At the same time he had been trying to understand why she and Hagrid seemed unable to get along—even after Gray had placed a magical circuit bracelet on Hagrid to carry his own scent.
The ordinary books in the library had yielded nothing useful, so he had turned to the Restricted Section.
Fortunately his good relationships with several professors paid off. Professor Binns had readily signed a permission slip and pointed him toward the right volume.
Genesis: The War of Giants and Dragons
No one knew who had written it, or exactly when. The book itself was bound in an unusual material—something that felt like dragon hide, yet also like the skin of some unknown creature. It carried a faint, metallic scent of old blood.
The contents were chaotic. Beyond the main narrative, the pages were cluttered with the author's delirious ramblings, half-heard rumors, horrifying legends, and disturbing sketches and diagrams that made the skin crawl if one looked too long.
Even so, the book's magical contamination wasn't severe—more the kind that left you dizzy if you dwelled on certain passages, but harmless if you skimmed past them. Once Gray consciously filtered out the maddest parts, he finally pieced together the truth.
In the ancient era that could truly be called the dawn of creation, giants and dragons had been mortal enemies. Giants took pride in hunting dragons; their rite of passage into adulthood was to go alone and slay a full-grown dragon.
Dragons, meanwhile, had ruled the world. Giants were one of the very few races that dared resist them.
According to the book, dragons had possessed the power to wipe out the giant race entirely—but they deliberately allowed the giants to survive in limited numbers. The purpose was twofold: to keep dragons alert to danger, and to provide worthy opponents that would temper and train the younger dragons in battle.
In the end, of course, they overplayed their hand. In one cataclysmic war that shook the very foundations of the earth, both sides suffered catastrophic losses. The dragons were left too weakened to maintain their dominion over the world, and the giants were reduced to a mere remnant of their former numbers.
And then the account simply stopped—cut off mid-sentence in a way that would have earned the author furious letters from readers if it had been fiction.
But Gray had found what he needed.
Hagrid carried giant blood in his veins. Norma was a pure-blooded Norwegian Ridgeback. Though neither had ever met a member of the other race, and neither had been taught the ancient enmity by their elders, the instincts buried deep in their bloodlines still recognized one another.
In Hagrid, that instinct had been warped by his dominant human heritage. Instead of the pure urge to slay a dragon, it manifested as an overwhelming, inexplicable desire to have one—to raise one, to care for one.
For Norma, the reaction was simpler and purer: raw hostility toward the giant-blooded creature in front of her. Hagrid's strong human scent softened the edge somewhat, but the urge to fight was still there.
Gray looked over at Norma, who was now slurping brandy and chicken blood with noisy enthusiasm, and at Hagrid, who watched her with nothing but pure affection in his eyes. He sighed.
Still, the situation wasn't entirely bad.
Switching to his magical sight, Gray studied Hagrid.
At the sites of the fresh scratches and bites, tiny fragments of Norma's magical circuits lingered—left behind unintentionally when her claws or teeth broke skin. They glowed with a faint reddish light.
But even as he watched, Hagrid's own life-force circuits were absorbing those fragments, just as they had once absorbed the essence from the rock-skin biscuits.
With each fragment absorbed, Hagrid's life circuits grew slightly thicker and more robust. New branches sprouted, as though the pathways were evolving.
Gray turned his gaze to Norma.
There were no traces of Hagrid's life-force circuits on her—Hagrid would never strike back hard enough to leave any. Yet Norma's own life circuits were trembling and expanding, growing thicker and stronger than before.
Gray suspected the conflict with Hagrid's giant blood had awakened something deep in Norma's draconic heritage, allowing her body to develop in ways he couldn't fully comprehend.
One thing was certain: she was already far stronger and sturdier than when she first hatched. By his own careful measurements, her current condition now matched the standard described for a healthy Norwegian Ridgeback hatchling in the reference books.
Gray shook his head. He never would have guessed that the method to make Norma strong and healthy would turn out to be repeated brawls with Hagrid.
At least Hagrid wasn't exactly losing out. Whatever giant blood ran in his veins was probably being stirred awake too—though how much, Gray couldn't say.
None of that was his concern anymore, though. He still had his own project to finish.
Gray picked up a stalk of cabbage Hagrid had prepared and held it out. Norma eyed it with clear reluctance, but under Gray's steady gaze she sighed, opened her jaws, and swallowed it down. Then she took several large gulps of brandy to wash away the taste.
Keep growing, Gray thought, patting her head in approval. My fire spell depends entirely on you.
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