Preldryrth felt her sister die. She felt Liliathla’s terror at the threat facing her and her hatchling, she felt Liliathla’s ending at the hands of a wizard, and woke screaming.
Dragons, even ones in human form, do not scream.
Preldryrth’s mate, Varsch, came alert, dragon senses seeking out any threats. He rolled out of their shared bed to check the house and their hatchling in the next room. The child was asleep on the floor, his dragon form already too large for a human child’s bed. He was too young to maintain human form for the length of time his parents could so he slept in his natural form.
Varsch checked the main floor of the house and extended his senses to the outside. The earlier Samhain revelers had abandoned the neighboring streets. The humans were mostly in their own beds. He went back upstairs to Preldryrth.
“She was attacked by the one calling himself the Dark Lord. He killed James and then came after her and Harrison.”
“How…?” Varsch asked. James was a human and frail as all humans were, but Liliathla was a silver dragon. Only the strongest of human wizards working en masse were capable of bringing down a full grown silver dragon, much less a female guarding her child.
“The liar used a black artifact to lock into her human form,” Preldryrth said. “She couldn’t transform to escape. The liar made sure she would die so he could fulfill the human seer’s prophecy the way he wants it fulfilled.”
“Even if the world burns?”
Preldryrth snorted. “You know what sort of monster the liar is. He betrayed his own lover to gain the Death Stick and for the accolades he drew to himself for ending a war he instigated. He betrays everyone who trusts him.”
“We must be prepared to get Harrison away from the liar and his minions,” Varsch said.
“We can’t enter the founders’ castle without an invitation.”
“He will want the boy cowed and ignorant,” Varsch said. “Malleable, emotionally stunted. As he did with the Riddle boy.”
“An orphanage?”
“No. Somewhere non-magical where they can place wards. Lily Evans Potter’s angry, vengeful, anti-magical, non-magical, sister’s family.”
“They’ll be watching us,” Petunia Evans Dursley warned.
“We’ve lived as non-magical humans since the day the king decided he needed spies in the human world, after the seer of the Golden Isles warned of the great threat to all of magic. I think we can pull it off for a few days without our neighbors noticing I’ve gained a hundred or so pounds,” Vernon Dursley said.
Petunia gave her husband a smile that would make goblins quake in fear. “And if the liar doesn’t bring Lily’s boy to us, he’ll find out exactly how much damage a pair of full grown intelligent dragons and agents of the dragon king can do to his precious castle.”
“That might annoy the centaurs,” Vernon pointed out.
“Do I look like I care about a backwards tribe of half-horses who refuse to have anything to do with their own kin and hate everyone else?”
A month after the deaths of James and Lily Potter, and Albus Dumbledore’s announcement that the scarred ‘Boy Who Lived’ had been placed in a loving yet isolated magical home, Minerva McGonagall decided to visit the Dursleys to check on young Harry. She hadn’t been happy with Dumbledore’s decision to leave the boy with Lily Evan’s older ‘muggle’ sister. Her own observations were that the two male Dursleys, father and son, were gluttonous, loud, and uncouth. She remembered Lily Evans telling her that her brother-in-law was a bigot and her sister hated anything magical.
McGonagall would never know that she couldn’t detect dragon glamours or that Lily had lied about her sister and brother-in-law.
McGonagall frowned at the lack of wards on the house as she knocked on the door of 4 Privet Drive. Dumbledore had assured her the boy was protected by blood wards that Lily herself had cast, but the transfiguration mistress couldn’t detect any wards art all.
A young black woman with a white streak in her hair opened the door.
“Can I help you?” she asked, looking over McGonagall’s old fashioned clothing.
“I was looking for the Dursleys,” McGonagall said.
“Never heard of them,” the woman said.
“I was sure…”
“We moved in five years ago,” the woman said. A very large black dog had come to stand beside the woman followed by a twin pair of toddlers who gaped at McGonagall. The dog stared at her with an unnerving gaze.
“Maybe you have the wrong house number.”
“Sorry to have disturbed you,” McGonagall said as she left.
Preldryrth, AKA Petunia Dursley, now Lilibeth Argent, watched her go.
She hoped the liar had a heart attack at the news that Harry Potter was missing and the Dursleys had never lived at 4 Privet Drive. If not, well, she and Varsch still had missions to complete – protect Harrison James Potter and deal with Albus too many names Dumbledore.
The goblins and spriggans were taking care of the self-proclaimed Dark Lord. They were both, after all, allies of the Dragon Kingdom of the Golden Isles and Riddle had attacked the goblins.
Dealing with the one who set her sister up to die would take more time but if that required dragon fire, so be it. Dragons had long lives and very long memories.
Wizards didn’t fear dragons nearly as much as they should.