"Thank you…" said Hagrid, wiping the water off his face.
Despite Ivan's efforts to put out the fire, Hagrid's beard was singed off, leaving it uneven and high on one side.
"Hagrid, are you all right?" Ivan asked.
"I'm all right, but Norbert's a bit too lively, maybe he's just come out of his shell and got carried away." Hagrid didn't care about his singed beard at all, and tried to justify Norbert's actions.
'You call that perky?'
Ivan's lips twitched at the sight of Norbert's fangs and the sparks coming out of his nose. Hagrid's fondness for huge beasts was nothing short of spoiling.
With this in mind, Ivan suddenly realised that raising dragons for blood might not be as easy as he had first thought…
Harry and Ron broke out in a cold sweat at the unexpected turn of events, Hermione adding angrily,
"That's not explainable by being lively, it nearly burned you! Hagrid!"
"It's all right now…" Hagrid muttered.
"Hermione, I'll keep an eye on things if I have time. It shouldn't be too much of a problem!" Ivan tried to persuade her.
"It's a dragon! It only takes a month or two to grow to be as big as a house!" Hermione scowled at Ivan.
"Hagrid will be caught in Azkaban if it is discovered that he is keeping dragons!"
"Just get Norbert out of here before then. Ron, your brother Charlie is supposed to be working on dragons in Romania, right? When Norbert grows up, we can get Charlie to release him into the wild," Ivan suggested.
He only wanted the dragon blood, so Ivan did not care where Norbert went in the future.
"Send Norbert away? No, you can't do that! I'm his mother, and he's so vulnerable, what if he gets sent off into the wild and gets bullied? Nobody can keep us apart!" Hagrid was furious.
Bang!
As soon as Hagrid finished speaking, the teacup on the table was knocked to the ground by Norbert's tail, smashing it to pieces, and then Norbert used his mouthful of sharp teeth and the iron jar to fight back, biting holes into the jar and tearing holes in it with his claws…
The display of ferocity reinforced everyone's determination to send Norbert away … Ivan felt that it would be the wild creatures of Romania that would be worried if Norbert were to be sent.
"You can't keep it forever, Hagrid!" Hermione warned.
"Perhaps, we could put it in the Forbidden Forest…" Hagrid suggested, patting his chest in assurance.
"You may rest assured that I have a wealth of experience in setting them free. This is not the first time I have done this. Aragog was perfectly fine in the Forbidden Forest… he never hurt anyone!"
"Aragog! You keep something else in the Forbidden Forest?" Harry stared at Hagrid in shock, surprised that this was not the first time Hagrid had kept such a dangerous creature in captivity.
"No, no, no, nothing at all, you must have heard wrong…" Hagrid tried to defend himself, but the effort was futile.
"Aragog is an Acromantula," Ivan said.
When Aragog's identity was revealed, Ivan tried to keep Harry and the others away from the Forbidden Forest so that they would not run into Chino, who was wandering there.
"How d'ye know Aragog is an Acromantula?" Hagrid asked, looking at Ivan in surprise. He hadn't mentioned Aragog's identity, and when had he let it slip?
"Giant spiders? I mean, how big can a spider be?" Harry was intrigued.
"About the same size as this room? Maybe a bit smaller?" Yvonne glanced around Hagrid's room, then thought about the large spider in the book, which would be about the same size if you counted the legs.
"You gotta believe me, Aragog's a good boy, he don't bite…" Hagrid defended himself guiltily.
Harry and the others didn't believe a word of it, and Ron tried to imagine what a house-sized spider would look like, thinking it was a nightmare!
"I swear I'll never go to the Forbidden Forest!" Rone exclaimed, breaking down.
"Hagrid, the Forbidden Forest is too small and too close to Hogwarts to hide the next dragon. It's only a matter of time before someone finds out," Ivan advised. The creatures in the Forbidden Forest were bad enough; if Norbert stayed there, another group would die out…
"But I just had it…" Hagrid said, looking at Norbert longingly.
"We can wait a month and let Norbert grow up before we send him away. If he's too young, Norbert won't be able to survive independently in Romania," Ivan suggested, coming up with a compromise.
Hagrid hesitated for a long time, but eventually agreed, and Hermione, Harry, and the others agreed, as Ivan was right about Norbert not being able to survive in the wild.
After deciding to send Norbert away a month later, Hagrid was disappointed for a while before he got back on his feet and cherished the remaining time they had together.
Ivan looked at the ugly dragon in front of him, no less concerned than Hagrid, and was already thinking about how to sneak a blood draw while Hagrid wasn't looking.
However, given that it would take some time to brew the Bloodline Fusion Potion, Ivan had to be patient for the time being. After all, once the blood left the body for more than three days, its activity would be greatly reduced, and Ivan was not sure if this would affect the potion's effect.
Before that, Ivan decided to get on Norbert's good side, as he had done with Fawkes, so that he would not face too much resistance when he took the blood later.
With this in mind, Ivan went on to become a glorified dragon breeder… or, in layman's terms, a poop-picker.
Ivan had thought that raising dragons would be a new and exciting experience, but after a few days, he had experienced many new things, but he was not happy at all.
As a Norwegian Ridgeback, Norbert was a bit too grumpy, such as when he sneezed and the sparks that came out burned down the furniture, or when he gnawed on the beds and fireplaces, leaving bite marks all over them.
Over the course of the day, he performed Clear as Water at least several times, as well as countless restorative spells.
Otherwise, the hut would have collapsed…
As the owner of the hut, Hagrid didn't mind at all, even though he had to lie in the grass for the night because his bed had burned down the previous day, until Ivan restored his bed to its original state the following afternoon.
Even so, Hagrid insisted that Norbert was just a bit active, a sign of all babies' good health…