Fletcher followed Tumplin down, down down to the level between vaults 500 and 501, where he KNEW a giant dragon happened to reside.

Gulp.

As he climbed out of the cart, he didn't see the dragon at first. "Wwhat do you want me to ddo, Ms. Tumplin?" the intern asked nervously, swallowing a few times and he stuck to the wall of lair and squinted into the impermeable darkness. He hadn't had to face a dragon in the Triwizard Tournament; why now?!

She rather liked having interns. They were eager to do all the little tasks that the junior curse breakers felt they were too important to do. She waddled down to the depths and they both crawled into the cart for the ride down to the dragon hold. She reached into the cart and grabbed the clankers before they got out of the cart. Though she heard snores and doubted they would need them.

She looked back at Fletcher and smiled. He was properly scared, and that was a good thing. There was nothing worse than a cocky curse breaker, they didn't to die very quickly.

She stopped and listened, making sure it was proper snores she heard. The smell was particularly strong. "Well Mr Fletcher, I would like for you to sort out that smell," she whispered. It was clear what the smell was. She pointed to a shovel and a bucket. "I suggest you work fast and silent." she gave him a wink handed him the clankers and made her way back toward the cart. "See me in my office when you are done," she whispered back over her shoulder before climbing back into the cart and heading back toward the fresh air.

"Ssort out that SMELL?!" Fletcher repeated quietly but with a definite tone of disbelief and disgust. Now that his ears had adjusted to the silence on this level, he could hear a certain rumble that must have been dragon snores...

Work fast, work silent... and... and Tumplin was assuming that he just knew how to use the clankers?! Fletcher's gaping face turned from staring at the goblin to the staring at an enormous pile of poo. It looked about as big as house from here and probably hadn't been shoveled in who knew how long... for the love of Merlin, were they saving the dragon dung for something OTHER than the torture of interns?!

During the time Fletcher took to look morosely at the bucket, pile of poo and one tool he had on his side, the goblin left. He turned around to complain and only caught Tumplin's last direction as she zoomed away.

Faaaaantastic. His first day of work and what did he get to do? Try not to tickle a sleeping dragon while he cleaned up after it.

Stomping over to the shovel and pail, Fletcher produced his wand and flicked it to get a pair of decent gloves. Hell no, he was not about to start on this task without some precautions. Next, he cast a charm that would at least... filter away some of the stench permeating this entire level. Slipping the gloves on, Fletcher sighed and grabbed the shovel.

Nothing else to do but get down to it... as quickly as possible, as Tunmplin said....

Who dared disturb Bunny's sleep?

One purple eye glowed in the darkness of her lair, her tail twitching ever so slightly at the sound of stomping.

A furl of smoke issued from her nostrils and rose twisting and curling towards the ceiling. Bunny, had spotted the human and it looked even tastier then the goblins.

A low growl emitted from her mouth as she opened the other eye. Yummy human food. Opening up her very large mouth and showing very sharp teeth that would make mince meat of the human boy in seconds, Bunny let out a huge spray of flames followed up by a very loud...


"RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWRRRRRRR!!"

Oh. My. MERLIN.

Fletcher had not noticed the purple glow emanating from the dragon's open eye. Not at first, anyway, as he started dutifully shoveling heaping mounds of poo. Nor did he see or smell the little puff of smoke thanks to his handy charm from earlier.

But as he turned with a shovelful of dung, it was like being caught in a slow-motion scene straight from one of those Muggle motion pictures. The breath of fire came shooting toward him at waist level as the sound waves from the dragon's roar seemed to buoy the flames along faster. Acting on pure instinct and without any other options, Fletcher hit the floor, face-first, belly-down and just in the nick of time.

He felt the flames whoosh just over the top of his head and thanked his lucky stars once again that Rae had given him a haircut just last week. Whew, THAT had been a close one. Fletcher almost let out a triumphant chuckle as he felt the adrenaline that came with such a close call leave his body.

Then he felt something else too... something sticky, smelly, heavy and warm.... something that would not be stopped by a simple air purifying charm.

"Poooooohooohooohooo," Fletcher quietly moaned, half-crawling, half-sliding backward on his knees, back to where he had left the clankers. He had dived to the ground and had gotten a face FULL of the very same dung he was supposed to be collecting.

Brilliant.

WHY had he wanted to work here again?! How was he ever supposed to show his face above ground after this? Maybe he could just live down here and work in the mines of Gringotts, hopping from vault to vault, jumping out of the corners as the carts rushed by... scaring little firsties opening their accounts... they'd tell stories about him, the GlitterPuff who became the PooPuff overnight....

Fletcher had started sniffling at his imagined fate and was almost wishing he had been scorched by the dragon instead of submitted to the byproduct of her other end when his foot clinked back against something hard. The slight impact caused whatever it was to let out a loud, resounding CLANK!

CLANKERS! He was SAVED!

The flames had lit up the entire area of the lair and Bunny got a good look at the human boy before he landed face first into her dung.

A low rumbling sound came from the dragon's belly and one could be mistaken into thinking it sounded a bit like a chuckle. Yes Bunny was in fact rather amused.

Her tail thumped against the stone floor of the lair before she slowly got to her feet, ready to let out another stream of flames when the unmistakable sound of a Clank! came from the human.

Bunny recoiled a little and waited to see what else was going to happen. After a minute or so and nothing else seemed to happen, Bunny gave a snort and more smoke furled up from her nostrils.

But she did nothing else.

Just waited to see what the pretty human boy would do next.

Was that dragon.... laughing at him? No.... she just... had an upset stomach, surely, and she wasn't getting to her feet to go stomp on him either... no...

Fletcher had to be mistaken.

He continued backing, his foot hitting the clankers again because he was still too shaken to tear his eyes away from the dragon. She had SMOKING NOSTRILS, man. That was worse having a backfiring wand in one hand and a hungry dugbog attached to the other.

The dragon did not seem to be moving for the moment, however, so it seemed they were at a stalemate until one of them made a move. Since GlitterPooPuff did not wish to be barbequed today, he decided to go first.

Moving his arm behind him like he was in a daze since he still didn't dare to take his eyes off the dragon, Fletcher sat up a little and grabbed the bag of clankers. He moved it around to his front and his eyes widened as he started shaking the bag.

Yeah he wasn't so sure of how to use them, so what. They made noise and he was guessing the dragon would not be able to sleep OR breathe fire at him with such a racket.

She could at least be bothered enough to not do the latter. Please.

Recoiling even more when she heard that awful noise, Bunny gave another snort and little bursts of flames flew out of nose just enough for her to see the human boy in front of her.

He had no idea how to use those things.

Which meant he would have no idea how to punish Bunny either.

With a loud thump of her tail, Bunny moved forward slowly as far as the chain around her neck would allow and stretched her head out so that she was just a couple of feet away from the human boy.

Another low rumbling noise came from the dragon's belly and it looked as though she was just about to make a kebab out of Duncan Fletcher when instead she bared her teeth at him.

In what appeared to be a strange version of a cheesy grin.

For a boy who had once incendio'd a desk in the middle of class just for the fun of it, Duncan Fletcher suddenly did not like fire. No, he did not like fire, not this close, not this hot, and definitely not coming out of the nostrils of a fully-grown, probably-annoyed, dragon.

Fletcher also did not like seeing the dragon bare her teeth THISCLOSE TO HIS FACE!!!!! She was growling and there was ssssmoke and Fletcher was trembling as he slowly realized that the big beast before him was straining at the end of her chain.

The end of her chain... that meant she could come no closer, right? This, right now, was the worst it was going to get... right??!

Swallowing his trepidation, the Hufflepuff jingled the bag of clankers slowly, shifting it from hand to hand as he gathered his courage and rose to his feet. "Hhhi dragon. Sorry for waking you." He held the noisy bag up and shook them again, the sound of hammers on anvils ringing out more loudly now. "You're probably a really nice dragon, ma'am, but I'm going to be frank with you."

He'd been backing away the entire time he had been talking and now that he hoped he wasn't about to be dinner, he wiped his face on his sleeve and spat out a bit of poo that had landed on his tongue.

"Your dung is more terrifying than a fully-grown cockatrice."

Fact. Fletcher was possibly one of the few living people that had now fully experienced both.

The dragon's head cocked to the side as she watched the boy with the bag of noisy objects. Bunny, did flinch a couple of times when she heard the clanking noise but she did not retreat any further.

This human boy was very fascinating and oh so pretty.

And his voice was even prettier. Bunny, had no idea what he was saying but just the sound of it seemed to calm her down.

She made another rumblng noise but it was softer this time and then Bunny did something rather bizarre.

She fluttered her eyes at the pretty human boy.

It... wait... what??! What WAS that? What was the dragon doing now, particularly with her... lady-dragon-lashes...?!!!!

Fletcher could only stare hardcore at the dragon before him. One of his hands even snaked up to his eye where he proceeded to rub it repeatedly, clearly in shock from what he was seeing. He'd had a pretty legendary first day thus far but this? There was no mistaking what the beast was doing here. No mistaking it.

She was flirting with him.

Okay but NO ONE was going to believe that a dragon was flirting with him. No one. Fletcher hardly even believed him self; there was just no way that she was fluttering her eyelashes and and and PURRING like that! For the love of Merlin, this had to be some sort of attack move designed to lure him in and then crush him like a fly!!!!!

The intern stopped staring and took another giant step backward. And then another. And then one more. He was past the point where he had disembarked from the mine cart to begin with and was more than ready to head out of here now.

"I'm just... going to pretend that did NOT just happen." Fletcher shuddered and let out a big breath. "I'm sure you're just confused, madame dragon. Yeah. Sorry I didn't get to your poo but... I gotta get outta here."

He backed up a little further and looked out toward the tracks, wondering how one called a cart or if it was possible to walk the path of the tracks until he found one....

Nathan rather liked having interns. They were eager to do all the little tasks that the others felt they were too important to do. The man escorted the four little ones down to the depths and crawled into the cart for the ride down to the dragon hold, reaching into the cart and grabbing the clankers before they got out. "Alright, you lot," he said, shoving the bucket of meat into one of their hands. "Just feed bunny, and then come back down to the halls, yeah? Use the clankers. And.. err.. good luck." With that little bit of instruction, he headed back into the cart and out of the depths.

Oakey had a few things in mind for this second task cleaning a vault was not at the top of his now that Mr.Ailes had realized he tasked the four of them to clean the entiriy of the bank, yeah the four underaged witches and wizards just using brooms, mops and dusters. He wasn't going to forget that.

Once the Cart stopped Oakey followed the bank manager out. "B-Bunny?" Oakey tried to ask Mr. Ailes, but fumbled with the sudden bucket of meat he was holding in his hand some of the raw meat slapping the front of his shirt. He eyed Gwendolyn, Jory, and Elise nervously as their boss, and Bank Manager left them down below the depths of the bank with something called Bunny. "He's kind of irresponsible isn't he?" Oakey jokd adjusting his hold of the bucket in just one hand, using the other to try and wipe meat juice from his nice new botton-down shirt only smearing it more into it.
he sighed at this in disappointment.

"Er...Bunny?'' Jory asked staring after Mr Ailes as he left. He eyed the meat and then the other three. "You guys don't think he's referring to a dragon, do you?'' He felt a sudden pang of nervousness.

There was onlt one way to find out. "I guess we'd better get started.'' The Puff picked up the clankers. "Shall we get going, then?''

Following Mr. Ailes and the other interns, Gwen was thinking if he really was serious about this. A dragon? He would let interns feed a dragon? Interns who can’t use magic?! Truth be told, she had expected him to ask them to sort some useless pieces of parchment. The task was once again completely different to what she had imagined. As they got there, she heard the man give them some instructions before leaving. ‘Seriously?’, she mumbled after a while. ‘This is amazing!’ Or, like her friend Joanna would say, ‘awesome’. Heh.

GRIN.

While looking around, she heard Oakey say something. Irresponsible? ‘Yes, pretty much’, she said simply. But seriously... was she the only one who liked the second task more than the first one?! A dragon. That is just epic. However, Gwendolyn was more disgusted by the meat which they were supposed to feed the dragon with.

‘Hmm... yeah. Bunny’, she mused. ‘Maybe it is still a small dragon’ Like... hmm...a baby Swedish Short-Snout? That way, the name wouldn’t be that silly. Though, whoever named this dragon ‘Bunny’ clearly had no inspiration. Nodding to Jory, after he suggested to get started, Gwen took a few more steps and looked around.

So... where was the dragon?

Elise followed the bossman into the cart, making absolutely sure that she was sitting in the middle and protected from mean things in those scary dark places that might hurt her. Because they probably ate poor little vegetarians like Elise because nice things didn't like living in the dark.

Were they going to clean the mean things that guarded the vaults now? Because they sure seemed to be doing a whole lot of cleaning that week. Following the manager out and making sure to stay in the middle she blinked a few times to get her eyes to adjust to the light. It was dark in here. Or maybe Elise just needed glasses. Whatever it was, Elise was a little scared.

Listening to the bossman, she nodded a little. Feed Bunny. Wait a moment, why would gringotts even have a bunny? Weren't they a Wizarding Bank? But that made Elise start to wonder if Bunny was even a bunny at all! She turned around to call for the bossman, but he had already left in his little cart thing.

Elise then turned to Oakey, hoping that maybe the Hufflepuff Prefect could help her out a little bit. But when she looked closer, she realized that he was just as uncomfortable as she was, only that he had a bucket of raw meat in his hands.

Wait a moment. Raw meat? This 'Bunny' was probably not a bunny at all! Because bunnies are vegetables, just like Elise. They were vegetarians. HERBIVORES. Herbivores didn't eat meat! Carnivores ate meat. And carnivores ate people because people were meat.

Elise tried to laugh a little at Oakey's attempt to lighten the mood but her face dropped when Jory mentioned that it might be a dragon. "DRAGON?" she squeaked, ducking behind Oakey in the hopes of making him a human shield from what could be a dragon.

And then he suggested that they get started. Elise didn't want to get started, however. She was scared! It was dark, and she was going to become dragon food because Gwen seemed disgusted by the meat they were supposed to use. Forcing herself to think of Kurumummy and cookies and other nice things, she swallowed. Finding her non-existant Gryffindor courage, Elise followed after the older students, taking small steps because she didn't want to die just yet.

Someone was disturbing Bunny's nap. And Bunny was not pleased.

A scaly eyelid flickered up, revealing a purple eye, searching for those who had entered her lair. And.. was that fresh meat she smelled? Her tail twitched ever so slightly at the scent, furls of smoke issuing from her nostrils. She was hungry.. so hungry. And it looked like a snack was coming her way. The dragon began to rise, curling and straightening towards the ceiling of the lair. A low growl emitted from her mouth as her other glistening eye opened. It was as she suspected. Tasty human food! Had the goblins sent her a snack, finally? Bunny opened her mouth, displaying rows and rows of sharp teeth that she would use to devour her lunch, and let our a spray of burning fire. She didn't want her lunch to be raw, did she? The dragon continued to spew streams of fire, and when she was done, another growl escaped her lips, this one much louder than the first.

"RAAAAWWWWWRRRR!"

As they all moved in further Oakey's steps become as irregular as his heart beat felt at the moment. He did not want to hear that there was a Dragon in here with them. He avoided thinking so, until Elise had to blurt it out as she practically clung to his back. He stopped suddenly when a huge purple eye opened and looked the four of them. This wasn't a job to give interns, then the Dragon stood and Oakey suddenly felt as though he had shrunk in size as he looked up at the enormous beast. He took a step back and knocked into Elise almost falling backwards but the meat had hit his good shirt once more. "Move away." He whispered harshly to the younger Ravenclaw girl behind him. Oakey set the bucket of meat down and finally decided to ditch his not-so-good collared shirt, to just his plain grey undershirt beneath it. This area was getting hotter anyways with the Dragon spurting fire out everywhere.

His spin shivered as the Dragon growled, Jory could use the Clappers, he had a better idea. Reaching into the bucket Oakey picked up a piece of meat. "G-got you l-lunch Bunny" Oakey said trying to swallow the fear that the dragon had built in him. He leaned forward and flipped the piece of meat hitting Bunny's front foot. "W-we're here to feed you, not b-be feed to you"
Dammit, he was stammering to much, did this Dragon even understand human speech. "Good Bunny, N-nice Bunny"

"Don't be harsh with her,'' Jory told Oakey, referring to Elise. At that same time a great growl came so suddenly, he nearly jumped out of his skin. "That was...loud,'' he whispered looking around.

After Oakey threw the meat to Bunny ("What a name for a dragon,'' Jory thought repeatedly.) he waited for the dragon to gobble it up. "Come on, that meat's much tastier.'' He wasn't sure if that would encourage the dragon to go for the meat but but if it started any ruckus, he would have to use the clankers for sure.

Certainly, Mr. Ailes could have waited until they came across the dragon. Gwen continued to walk, and glimpsed at the other interns before drawing her attention to the place where noises could be heard. Not long after that, the purple eye of the dragon was visible. ‘Come on. It can’t be that bad…’, the Ravenclaw mumbled, but didn’t get to finish talking, when the dragon started growling. A moment later, the loud RAWR was still echoing in her head. Fineee. It CAN be that bad.

Gwendolyn looked up at the dragon. ‘Is it a Chinese Fireball?’, she mused. Duh. Great time for asking questions. They were a moment away from being eaten by a dragon, and Gwen’s biggest concern is what kind of dragon Bunny is. Nice.

Gwen took a step back. As she heard Oakey talk to the dragon, the girl raised an eyebrow at him. Was it really worth trying to reason with the dragon? Anyway. If they would really be in danger, then the Gringotts people wouldn’t have sent them here, right? Riiiiiiight? Gwen tried to encourage herself with that thought. ‘Come on’, she said, more like to herself and walked towards Oakey, in order to pick up a piece of meat from the bucket.

Eww.

It was weird, but she disliked that meat more than the dragon. The dragon was quite… cute. She glimpsed back at Bunny, waiting for her to eat the first piece, before attempting to throw another one in her direction.

Oakey was being mean, but Elise nodded and stepped away. Right into the open space where the dragon could see her and burn her and turn her into toast with a single breath. But then Jory the nicer sixth year stood up for her and if Elise wasn't terrified stiff, she would have ran over and hugged him untill he couldn't breathe. But she was terrified stiff and so could only offer a stiffly scared smile and a stiff nod.

She was that scared.

Uh... Okay. It was a dragon. It was big and black and scary and it ate meat. And it looked like it had eaten a few goblins too, judging by the skeletons in the corner waaaaay over there. Elise noticed that those bones were turning a little yellow, which meant that it was a while back. So this dragon? She was probably very very hungry. And since Elise wasn't planning on getting eaten, she just stopped moving. 'Don't eat me,' became like a mantra that Elise mumbled under her breath, hoping that it would work.

Unfortunately, that wasn't a very good idea as a huge plume of flame illuminated the entire area and caught some of her beanie on fire. That was just brilliant, she thought as she pulled it off her head and began stomping on it to get rid of that fire. This was definitely no job for fifteen and sixteen year-olds.

Not touching the meat, Elise reminded herself that the dragon and a nice big chunk waiting for it at its feet. And if Elise picked up that slab of meat in that bucket now, the dragon might smell it instead of the carrots she had for lunch and think that she was it's food. Not good. So she'd just wait for it to eat that before she picked anything up.

Nigel was still thinking about this mysterious Bunny as the ride started. It was a good thing he did not get cart sick because it was the best time to think. So what did bacon have to do with Bunny? And what kind of creature would you name Bunny? Guess he will find out.

The waterfall was an awesome sight to see. But they were moving pretty fast. So not much time to observe. The ride was over faster than Nigel thought. He cracked his back and got out of the cart and onto the platform.

Now where were they? The area did not have the best smell.

Hopefully they would not have to wait long before they found out what Bunny was.

Cleo climbed into the cart, scribbling down notes in her notebook.

Text Cut: Cleo's notes

Don't call the security man sir
Don't call the goblins creatures
Try not to fall out of cart
Wear other shoes
arrange for these shoes to spontaneously combust

She tucked the notebook onto her lap as the cart sped forward. She soon lost track of which directions they were heading. Her stomach swirling, the cart headed through a mysterious waterfall... SPLASH.

But she didn't get wet. She paused, her arms over head as an attempt to keep her face dry, and relaxed. The waterfall was probably some illusion or something like that. Once the cart screeched to a halt, Cleo stepped out and looked around.

What was that smell? She wrinkled her nose. And then...

Cleo dropped her notebook in surprise. She had not expected to hear a dragon so soon. As she picked it up, her heart started racing in anticipation. If she wanted to go into security, she probably would want to know how to control the dragons.

She flipped to a clean page.

Who had been mad enough to disturb Bunny's blissful sleep?

A purple eye glowed in the darkness of the dragon's lair, tail twitching ever so slightly at the sound of humans stomping around the corner.

Rising from her nostrils, a furl of smoke twisted and curled towards the ceiling. She had smelled the humans and and they seemed to be tastier than even the goblins. And she was ravenous today.

From her mouth came a low growl as she opened the other eye. Yummy human food. Opening up her very large mouth and showing very sharp teeth that would make mince meat of the human bean in seconds, Bunny let out a huge spray of flames followed up by a very loud...

"RRRRRAAAAAWWWWWRRRRR!!"