The earth-shaking roar tore through the clouds.
As the largest and fiercest of all dragons, the Hungarian Horntail looked like some nightmare beast stepped straight out of myth itself. Its colossal shadow blotted out the sky.
The dragon's scales gleamed in the morning light with a hard, cold metallic sheen, like polished iron. Reflected in its eyes was the utterly stunned little wizard on the ground.
"Damn it! The old witch really can crawl through the wire and come beat me up in person!" Iain was crouched beside the utility pole, diary in hand, his hair a complete disaster, like a bird's nest after a tornado.
He stared at the dragon sweeping closer, and with his sniper-grade eyesight, he could clearly make out that there was still a woman riding on its back.
She looked to be in her early twenties, with long black hair falling like a waterfall and delicate features so flawless they seemed sculpted by the Creator Himself. To be fair, she was only just a hair short of matching Iain's looks. She had that same unreal sort of beauty, the kind that barely seemed like it should exist in the real world.
Iain knew appearances could deceive. He was absolutely certain this was Dumbledore's upperclassman from a century ago, a legendary witch who had once dominated Hogwarts.
"This is dirty play! We agreed grudges on WizardNet stay on WizardNet and get settled with words!" Iain flung the diary away and turned to run for his life.
Unfortunately, the diary could fly on its own and immediately went after its underage owner.
[Come on. Don't run. Show me your arrogance, and your power.]
The witch's tendency to hold a grudge practically dripped from the handwriting. Even the strokes looked amused by his misery.
"Don't do this! I'm still a kid! Children say stupid things, it doesn't count! Beautiful upperclassman!" Perhaps everyone had to grow up someday. Iain had clearly gotten a growth experience out of this one.
He sprinted toward the woods with all the speed he had, immediately switching into shameless surrender mode. Based on past experience, that trick should have worked flawlessly on women.
Very few women could resist a pitiful plea from someone as lovable as Iain. Unfortunately, this old witch was unusually hard to deal with. She did not play by normal rules.
[That's exactly why it's fun to hit you now. Also, I never had much affection for Merlin. Quite a few things he left behind fooled me.]
The diary floated beside his shoulder as it chased after him, fresh writing appearing with an unmistakable upward curl of delight at the end of every stroke.
"My cursed ancestor!" Iain shouted from across the street, grief and outrage finally reaching enlightenment.
"The people he offended don't dare go after him, so now they're all settling their scores with me instead!" The price had always been written into every gift fate offered. Merlin's inheritance was apparently no exception.
He dashed past the bakery. The shop was closed, but the curtain had been cracked open just enough for a pair of eyes to peek out at him before vanishing again.
The dragon circled above the town.
Every beat of its wings kicked up a gale, flipping trash cans in the street and ripping bedsheets off balconies into the sky.
Those sheets whipped overhead like white flags of surrender.
The whole town descended into chaos.
The Muggles could not see the dragon, but they could feel it.
"Why is my eyelid twitching so badly today?"
"I've got a terrible feeling something huge is about to happen. Is there going to be an earthquake?"
"My heart's racing. Something's wrong. Something's really wrong."
Even though the Muggles had long been fooled by the village's powerful concealment charms, they still sensed that something was off. One by one, they looked up at a sky that seemed, to them, perfectly empty.
Then, under the pressure of instinct alone, they began shutting themselves indoors.
The witches and wizards who lived here saw much more.
An old man in pajamas burst out of his house, looked up once, and went so pale he looked ready to bury himself on the spot.
"A Hungarian Horntail! It's a Hungarian Horntail! Why in Godric's Hollow is there a dragon here?!"
His scream exploded down the street like a grenade. His neighbor, a middle-aged witch still clutching a jar of Floo powder, nearly dropped it on the spot.
"Run!"
"It's a dragon! A dragon's here to eat people!"
The wizards looked even worse than the Muggles. Because they could actually see the dragon, and because they knew exactly how terrifying such a creature was, they all broke at once and fled in blind panic.
What, stand their ground? Fight it?
For ordinary wizards who could barely cast a proper Disarming Charm and who rarely mastered a decent Shield Charm, asking them to face a full-grown Hungarian Horntail was not bravery.
It was suicide.
"Merlin save us! Run! Use Floo powder!"
"Go, go, go! London! Anywhere!"
"Alert the Ministry! Alert Hogwarts!"
The whole street dissolved into a blur of moving bodies. Some ran for their homes, some scrambled into cellars, and some simply Disapparated on the spot. When it came to fleeing, wizards could be astonishingly efficient.
The sort of efficiency where they did not even bother taking the house with them.
Meanwhile, in an alley to the east side of town, a young wizard stood beside a dustbin, shaking like a leaf.
"What do we do, D-Dark Lord?"
Something moved at the back of his head.
"Hide," Voldemort's voice whispered from the back of the man's skull. After taking Iain's "Lighting Charm" head-on, he was now so weak he could only cling to some useless young wizard for shelter.
Fortunately, the man trembled before his authority just as so many others had.
"Do not let that dragon notice you. Do not let anyone notice you. In my current state, I do not yet have the strength to help you defeat a dragon."
"Of course, once I recover a little, I will grant you power. Enough to crush anything."
Voldemort's talent for empty promises was, frankly, nowhere near Iain's level.
Still, whether the young wizard believed him or not, he certainly did not dare object.
"O-okay. Okay." He began trembling even harder. Then he bent down, lifted the dustbin lid, and was immediately hit by a stench strong enough to peel paint.
His face twisted, but one glance at the dragon overhead settled the matter. He climbed in anyway. Then he dragged the lid shut over himself from the inside.
It was pitch-black inside the bin.
And it stank.
"Idiot! I did not mean hide in here!" Voldemort's face twisted on the back of his head. Even his red eyes ended up splattered with filth from the inside of the bin.
The humiliation was immense.
But then:
"Endure. Endure."
The weakened remnant soul had no choice but to swallow reality and tell himself this was temporary. Very soon he would recover his strength, return to the peak of power, and once again make the wizarding world tremble.
The real Dragon King of the wizarding world was here.
After enough self-hypnosis, Voldemort stopped cursing. Outside the dustbin, another dragon roar rolled across the air, this one close enough to rattle the tin walls.
Iain ran right past the alley, far too busy to care whether Voldemort smelled terrible.
"Stop chasing me! Dumbledore! Where is Dumbledore?" Still running, Iain could do nothing but try to call for the old headmaster from afar.
He could only hope Fox, wherever he was hiding, would hear him.
[You'd have better luck finding your ancestor and getting him to jump out of his grave to fight me. Don't worry, I'm helping you look for him already.]
[This is only an alchemical puppet wearing half my beauty. I'll even help you revive your ancestor. Then we can see whether he's tougher than you.]
The diary continued reading aloud at his shoulder. The arrogance was unbelievable. It was hard to imagine an old witch having the nerve to talk this big.
Then again, perhaps it was not all bluffing. Iain very quickly realized that.
In fact, the very next second he understood exactly whose edge he had been born a century too late to avoid.
"Water-Making Spell!"
The figure atop the dragon raised her wand.
The alchemical puppet carrying the old witch's vanished youth spoke a spell. It was one of the most basic spells in Hogwarts, the sort of thing a talented first-year could learn without much trouble.
But what burst from her wand was not a jet of water.
"What the hell?!"
Iain looked up.
The sky had changed.
Not simply darkened or shifted. It was as if an entire ocean had been turned upside down and hung above the earth, then released all at once in a catastrophic vertical collapse from the heavens.
The sound of a waterfall swallowed everything.
This was not the Water-Making Spell.
It was Poseidon descending in person.