Open Exploding Dragons

[Freddie Lagowski]

“Did you know dragons can explode?” asked Freddie. He and Chase both had a bit of time to kill between classes, and for some reason, they’d wound up killing time together. Freddie leaned against the wall, trying his best to keep a straight face. His favourite thing to do whenever people started talking about animals was see if he could make them believe something completely idiotic. He just hoped Chase would take the bait.

Godmod approved​

 

[Chase Edwards]

Chase was killing time between classes and he had somehow ended up running into Freddie, another first year, and he knew that he knew him from somewhere but he couldn't remember where that actually was, but he wasn't letting that bother him right now as he was having a conversation about dragons with the boy, and it appeared that he knew something that he didn't know. "OH MY GOD, REALLY?!" He said, his voice echoing off the walls a little bit. "THAT IS SO COOL! IMAGINE IF YOU WERE RIDING ONE AND IT JUST EXPLODED?!" He said, turning to look at Freddie again, "How did you know that?! Do you love dragons too?!" he asked the boy, a look of deep admiration on his face. Suddenly, while looking around, Chase saw his friend and knew she would love to know this information. "HEY, PEREGRINE! THIS BOY SAYS THAT DRAGONS CAN EXPLODE! ISN'T THAT SUPER COOL?!" he said, absolutely beaming at Peregrine, knowing that she would likely love this information as much as he did.

 

[Peregrine Piper]

Peregrine was idly walking through the halls after class, a little lost in thought about what to write in her next letter home. If she didn't write soon, Percy would probably find a way to get a howler sent to her instead and the idea of that was an utter nightmare. It would probably be like...well, quite a bit like this, she thought, as her name was yelled out in a very loud voice. She looked up and gave a small smile as she saw Chase...which immediately dropped at the next thing he said. Whoever that boy was, he was totally wrong. "How dare you," she said with an angry glare, her hands clenching into fists. "That's so not true! You're wrong! Dragons don't explode! Don't you dare talk about them like that!" Oh no, she thought. This isn't good. Dial it back, dial it back... "Dragons are proud and noble creatures and they'd never do something so stupid like exploding!" Oh. The call could not be completed as dialed.

 

[Freddie Lagowski]

Man, Chase was so gullible - he didn't even ask what made them explode. He just believed it, just like that. Freddie could've told him there was a dragon in the school and he probably would've believed that too. "My dad works with dragons," Freddie said, shrugging. Maybe his dad had written about dragons before - maybe Freddie wasn't even lying.

How dare... he? Uh-oh. Who was she? Chase's big sister? She was really mad. All he'd said was dragons could explode! It was a joke! Why was she so upset? "Yeah they do," he said, nervously doubling down. He knew he was wrong, knew he was making it worse, but he suddenly felt the need to defend himself. "When they fly over cows."​

 

[Chase Edwards]

Chase had been really excited to see his friend and share his new super obscure piece of knowledge about dragons that he had learned from his new friend, but he was very shocked to find that Peregrine did not seem very excited about this knowledge and was now completely yelling at Freddie, but he could not figure out why! "Peregrine.. why are you yelling?! He's giving us really cool dragon facts!" He told his friend, very confused about what was going on but happy that his friend had arrived to join them.

Chase. noticed, sort of, that Freddie seemed to be acting a bit differently now that Peregrine was there, but before he could think too much about it, he heard the only thing that he could possibly find more exciting than dragons: cows! "OHMYGODDIDYOUSAYCOWS?! ILOVECOWS!" He screamed, noticeably louder than he had been before. "PEREGRINE, DO YOU LOVE COWS?!" He asked his friend, a huge smile on his face.

 

[Peregrine Piper]

Peregrine immediately felt guilty for getting so upset. She could practically imagine her mum telling her off for being so badly behaved, meaning she always had to be the one to apologise to Percy when he set her off. Unfortunately, her guilt was at war with her temper, and she was caught in the middle feeling as though she was having some sort of out of body experience, unable to control her reactions in any reasonable way. "But they're not true," she said, sullenly. She crossed her arms across her chest, hunching over a little as she did. "I know more about dragons than he does."

Truthfully, she didn't know why she was that upset. It wasn't as though she was a dragon herself, although that might have been really cool. It wasn't a personal slight, in fact it wasn't even anything she was a party to. She was sticking her nose in where it wasn't wanted, and she should have just waved and moved on. But she was in it now. "And I suppose you're going to start talking about cows that make chocolate milk too, aren't you? I'm not falling for that again."

 

[Freddie Lagowski]

Freddie glanced at Chase. Why was he backing him up? Like, it was awesome, but it was weird. Even when Freddie was right, even when he was being honest, people never took his side. "Well, that's what my dad said," he said quickly. He'd been ready to back up his claim with facts about cow poo and methane, but it didn't seem fun any more. "He could've been lying."

Dragons were a hundred times cooler than cows, but apparently Chase disagreed. Freddie winced, covering his ears until the Gryffindor had finished screaming. "Ow - my eardrums," he said. Could he shut up a bit? There were classes going on all around them. Someone was gonna come bursting out of one of those doors and tell them all off - Freddie was calling it now.

"There's cows that make chocolate milk?" he asked, his brain suddenly catching up with his ears. That was awesome. Why didn't they have any on their farm? ​

 

[Teddy Pirrip]

Teddy didn’t have a headache right now, but the shouting first years in the corridor wasn't going to keep that the case if they continued much longer. Puffing out his chest a little so the prefect badge caught the light, and the Quidditch badge too but that was less relevant in this moment, he stopped at the group. “Alright, alright, keep it down. I think half the castle can hear you right now" he said, mostly to the Gryffindor making the most noise. He caught the backend of the conversation while he was there, "Although if I may interject, I prefer the strawberry milk cows." he said easily joining in.

 

[Chase Edwards]

Chase gasped, very loudly, when his friend accused the other friend of lying to him. "YOU LIAR!" Chase exclaimed, unable to comprehend why somebody would lie about something so serious! This wasn't a subject to joke around with! It was very serious business, dragons were legit the coolest thing in the whole world and this person was making them seem like a laughing stock. Chase could feel his anger boiling up, and he directed it all towards Freddie, shoving him away from the group. "DRAGONS ARE WONDERFUL YOU SHOULDN'T MAKE FUN OF THEM!!" Chase screamed towards the boy, and then immediately began to look extremely embarrassed at his own outburst. He didn't want to be the kind of person whose first thought was that of violence, he was the fun guy who talked about dragons with Peregrine.

He began trying to apologise when a Prefect appeared, telling him not to be so loud. What did he mean? He wasn't being loud, was he? But then all thoughts left his mind when he heard not only mention of chocolate milk, but strawberry milk, and he completely forgot to apologise to Freddie. "OOOOH! Do you think there's a bunch of different cows for all the different kinds of milk?!" He asked, completely forgetting that he had just attacked the Ravenclaw, he was now far too interested in talking about the different kinds of cows, and potentially the kinds of milk they produced.

 

[Professor Geovanna Adler-Cade]

Geo had been coming down from the third floor when she heard the screaming. There was no one around her so she wasn't entirely sure where it was coming from, but as she continued her walk back down the corridor, she noted a group of students up ahead in the distance. Had that been the source? It had been too unclear to make out what was being said, or at least it had been previously. The same screaming repeated itself however, and the blonde heard something about dragons coming from one of the students.

The woman waited until she was only a few feet away before speaking to the group, but in the time it took for her to cross the hall she also noticed one of them shoving another. "There are classes going on in here. If you're going to yell at each other, you can go and do it in the school fields," she told them, starting to waft them out of the corridor with both hands. It was one thing for students to loiter in the gangway when they were minding their own business, but she wasn't going to have them starting a fighting match when there were people trying to concentrate in the vicinity. It was only then that her eyes landed on the boy she was sure had pushed the other, "Chase, I want you to come by my office before the day is through," she told the Gryffindor, a little surprised to see him here but not showing it on her face. The two other younger students she didn't recognize, but as she looked up to see one of James' prefects, she trusted her husband enough to have given the badges to those that could handle a situation like this. "Everything okay here Teddy?" she asked, not wanting to get involved if he had it covered.