"You can actually tell this is a Norwegian Ridgeback egg?!"
Hagrid, who had just been sweating bullets over the prospect of being exposed, instantly lit up when Draco correctly identified the breed. This kid knows his stuff! He must be a kindred spirit!
"What's so hard about that?"
When the topic shifted to something he was genuinely passionate about, Draco unconsciously lifted his chin, returning to his signature haughty demeanor. "I can also tell you that it's no more than half a month away from hatching. Maybe next week, maybe the week after, the little guy will break out of its shell."
"How can you tell?" Hagrid rubbed his giant hands together excitedly.
Although raising a dragon had always been his dream, his actual knowledge on the subject was quite limited. He was relying entirely on a library book—Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit—that had been published Merlin knew how many years ago.
The information inside was likely decades out of date.
"It's not that difficult!" Draco's eyes were practically glued to the egg. "I have several dragon eggshell specimens in my collection at home. I brought them back from when I visited the Romanian dragon sanctuary with my father. I saw several breeds of dragons there with my own eyes—including their eggs!"
He curled his lip, his tone tinged with lingering frustration. "Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me get close enough to really observe them. If my father hadn't forcefully hauled me away with a Body-Bind Curse, I could have interacted with the dragons and their eggs up close!"
While Draco understood that it was for his own safety, those were real dragons and eggs! And they were raised by wizards! How dangerous could they really be?!
Yes, in this one specific area of logic, Draco and Hagrid had surprisingly reached a perfect consensus.
[So, our little dragon boy fell in love at first sight with this dragon egg?]
Seeing the interaction, Tom flashed a wicked grin and ruthlessly yanked Draco out of his fond memories.
"W-Who said that?!"
Draco snapped back to reality. Recalling the undignified scene he had just made barging in, his face flushed bright red, though his mouth refused to yield. "I was just passing by! I saw you lot sneaking around looking suspicious, so I followed you!"
"But it's past curfew, Mr. Malfoy." Hermione crossed her arms and curled her lip. "Harry and Tom are here serving detention, but what is your excuse for being out of your dormitory?"
"I—I—" Draco was momentarily speechless, his face turning an even deeper shade of crimson. It took him a long moment to squeeze out a retort: "At least I don't plan on secretly raising a dragon inside the school!"
That was the one piece of leverage he currently had over Harry.
"So what are you going to do? Tell the professors?" Ariana suddenly interjected, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "Or... do you want to join us and help keep this secret? Because if you do, you might get the chance to see the little dragon hatch with your own eyes~"
She had seen right through him. This young Master Malfoy's obsession with dragons was easily on par with Hagrid's. If she offered him a graceful way out, there was an eighty percent chance he'd take it.
"W-Well, since you're inviting me, it's not like I'm the one begging to join!"
Hearing Ariana's offer, Draco's eyes lit up instantly, though he tried his hardest to maintain an air of nonchalance. "And I'm not 'joining' you, I'm monitoring you! Raising a dragon in a school—especially in a wooden hut—is incredibly dangerous. If something happens, my father, as a school governor, would bear some responsibility!
"Therefore, until this dragon hatches and a suitable habitat is found for it, I will be keeping a close eye on all of you to prevent any accidents!"
"Are you sure you aren't going to tell a professor?"
Harry finally noticed Draco's incredibly awkward attitude. While he didn't know the term tsundere, he could tell Draco had no intention of actually ratting them out.
"Why would I tell the professors?" Draco's eyes glued themselves back onto the dragon egg. His gaze turned hazy with deep affection and longing. "To get Hagrid, or even you, expelled? I would never do that! Harry, I am going to defeat you fair and square, and prove with facts who is truly best suited to be your partner in the future!"
Despite his grand declaration, his eyes never left the egg. If the egg hadn't been sitting directly in the roaring fire, his fingers probably would have already been stroking it!
Nice speech. It would have been a lot more convincing if you weren't aggressively staring at a dragon egg the entire time, Tom thought, shaking his head in sheer disappointment.
It made perfect sense why Harry preferred Ron's company. At the very least, Ron wouldn't forget Harry existed the second he saw a fancy egg.
"Alright, let's talk about your incubation methods!"
Finally tearing his eyes away from the egg, Draco surveyed the crude setup with a deep, critical frown. "Are you just planning to leave it in the fire like this the whole time?"
"Is there a problem with that?" Hagrid held up his ancient book, looking confused. "The book says it right here: 'Keep the egg in the fire to simulate the mother breathing fire on it'—"
"There's a massive problem!" Draco's eyelid twitched violently as he looked at the incredibly outdated manual. "Yes, mother dragons breathe fire on their eggs, but they don't do it constantly! They regulate the temperature! If you maintain this level of heat non-stop, forget hatching it—the only reason you haven't roasted the poor thing is because of its natural fire resistance!
"Furthermore, the incubation conditions for different dragon breeds are entirely different! Time, temperature, humidity—you haven't met a single proper condition in here!"
Tom watched Hagrid get thoroughly scolded by an eleven-year-old and felt his mouth twitch.
The irony was palpable. Despite Draco tearing the setup to shreds, in the original story, Hagrid had successfully hatched Norbert using these exact "worthless" conditions!
However...
[I think Draco makes a fair point. Proper incubation conditions are definitely important!]
Tom looked between Hagrid and Draco, a sly, money-grubbing smile creeping onto his face.
[So, Draco, can you give me the exact incubation requirements? I can try to build a proper incubation chamber for it. For a fee, of course~]
"Really?" Draco's eyes lit up. He had been racking his brain on how to improve Hagrid's disastrous setup. Who knew Tom had these kinds of skills?!
But thinking back on Tom's reputation in the castle—his miraculous potions, his bizarrely effective spellcraft, and the magic harp that had shrunk a troll—it actually seemed perfectly plausible.
"If you can actually pull it off, I have more than enough Galleons!" Draco waved his hand grandly. He might not have inherited an entire family vault like Harry yet, but his pocket money allowance was astronomical. This was chump change to him.
[Deal!]
At the mention of Galleons, Tom's eyes instantly morphed into huge '$' signs.
Watching the two of them rapidly hammer out a business deal, Harry felt completely lost. "Wait, how did we get to this point? And... is Draco part of our group now?"
---
"I absolutely forbid it!"
Later that night, upon hearing the full story from Harry, Ron exploded. I was only gone for one night! How did so much happen?!
The dragon egg was one thing. After all, his brother Charlie worked at a dragon sanctuary in Romania, so dragons weren't exactly a novelty to him. But that slimy Malfoy had actually used his absence to secretly buddy up to Harry?!
Someone is trying to steal my best friend!