When you Wish Upon a Fireball, or, Wizards celebrate New Year's like maniacs.

"Remind me again, Harry, what we are doing here?" Neville looked around at the smouldering cavern entrance. The overpowering, sour stench of dragon dung could be smelled already, and no sign of the creature responsible other than a remote buzz. Getting no immediate response from his fellow professor, Neville looked over to find Harry waving his wand; a moment later the hour flashed before them, 23:40.

Harry glanced back. "The students are expecting something fabulous and enriching for the celebration. We have just under twenty minutes to wrangle up a Chinese Fireball for their entertainment." He patted down his robes and drew a bottle. "Don't forget your fireproofing elixir." He downed the yellow concoction and stowed the bottle back into a pocket.

Neville gave a great sigh. "Wouldn't an actual dragon handler be the better partner for this?" Yet he followed suit and drank his potion, and hefted the shield Harry and he had enchanted the hour before.

"Charlie was kind enough to provide the directions, a dozen charms, and has promised to keep the Ministry occupied while we're relocating our prize there and back again," Harry answered. Unlike Neville, he carried no shield, but instead of luxurious rope of woven devil's snare; bright light and heat would ensure an ever-tightening binding, should he be successful in getting the make-shift harness around the dragon's lanky neck.

Neville just shook his head and lifted his gaze to the dim path before them. He marched forward, taking the lead, and used his wand to illuminate their surroundings just enough to make Harry's rope bristle and twitch.

They proceeded into the cavern's depths. About ten minutes in, they stopped again to cast bubblehead charms to get past the offensive odor. "And I used to think Fawkes' droppings were bad," Harry said. "A phoenix has nothing against a dragon's digestion."

"Keep it down, we're running out of time and distance. That buzz is growing painfully loud." Neville's words proved prophetic as the next turn brought them before a young, bright red, snoring Fireball. That in and of itself would have been enough to give the two wizards pause, but it was the far larger, darker, and quite alert mother dragon staring at them with flat and agitated eyes that proved to be the spanner in their works.

"Well?" Neville uttered over his shoulder. "Now what?"

Harry considered their much more limited options. After a beat, he said, "You have the shield. Draw mama's attention while I go in for the win. Then we just have to outlast the endurance match until our portkeys go off in a few more minutes."

"Of course." Neville blithely answered. "Never tickle a sleeping dragon, he added under his breath, quoting their school's motto. "Instead just enrage it."

With an unspoken signal, the two wizards launched into action. Neville leapt forward and thrust the shield before him, while his tempered lumos turned a deep blue and suddenly a javelin of ice erupted from his wand. It smashed straight into the adult's snubbed face with a crackle. At once, the ice spread and plugged up the immediate source of danger when facing a Fireball, the twin nostrils from which its famed name originated.

The response came at once. Plumes of smoke wafted into the air as the dragon shook her head violently and rose to all four limbs. Rather than wait for her to clear out the obstruction, Neville launched a second volley of smaller icicles and darted to the right, just in time to catch a raking claw to the shield that bowled him over backwards.

As soon as Neville had cast the non-verbal spell, Harry had also moved in at the same time, diving forward and thrusting his now lasso-shaped rope around the adolescent's lifting head. It was a perfect toss. Harry turned his dive into a roll, so that while Neville went backwards behind the force of the mother's thrust, Harry moved forward, twisting the rope tighter by the time he snapped up to his feet nose-to-bowed-snout with his dragon.

Suffice to say, wrangling a Fireball was not so simple as capturing a mustang. And while the fully grown dragon may have briefly been confounded by the ice blocking her nose and peppering her hide, the younger had no such disability as twin plumes of flame engulfed Harry's upper body like spontaneous combustion. Considering how the bubblehead charm erupted and burst, it very much was like watching a candle suddenly erupt.

"Merlins balls!" the defense professor's voice bellowed around a gagging cough. He was swept off of his own feet as the lasso constricted further, pulling him forward. He managed to grip onto his target, now plastered against the younger Fireball's chest.

Behind them, Neville climbed to his feet and felt a moment's pity for his partner, eying the piles of dung nearby for a beat; the next, his attention returned to the bigger threat, literally.

At full height, the adult Fireball loomed over everyone. She bent down and her spread maw glowed yellow with the backsplash of flame building up in her snout. The ice dripped to the cavern floor between her and Neville, and fireproof elixir or not, the herbology professor had no intentions of being engulfed in scalding flame. He thrust the unscarred shield forward and with a cry sent gales of wind to buffet the Fireball's head from side to side, rattling her brains.

While that plan had its own merits, chiefly hoping to disorient and confuse her, the much less savory outcome of her simply bending down and swallowing the wizard was her next action. Of course, getting his shield down her gullet proved rather more painful than that, and the enchanted steel creaked yet held firm now.

"Harry! How much bloody longer!" he bellowed, using his wand to jab at her gum-line and send flashes of debilitating pain in between attempts to crush him.

Harry managed to snap off another Tempus charm. 23:54. "Any second now!" He parried yet another irate paw from slashing him to ribbons as he held on for dear life.

Neville shuddered when sticky saliva dripped down the back of his robes. Deciding that bringing both dragons with them was absolutely out of the question, he made the better choice to bombard mother's front teeth. She gave a terrible growl and began to thrust her head back and forth violently, and like a stuck kernel, Neville flew loose at last. He managed to soften his landing and turn it into a roll toward Harry and the younger Fireball.

He had just narrowed the gap when both wizards felt an immense hook behind the navel jerk them across space and time.

When they fell out of the sky, it was on the outskirts of Hogsmeade in an open clearing prepared that evening for their new guest. A great net of devil's snare began to engulf the three of them, though Neville had the time to disapparate three feet to the side and plop down on the ground. Harry, on the other hand, had no choice but to scramble up the rope already binding to the dragon and managed to get onto its back in time to twist on the spot.

When he appeared a moment later beside Neville, he likewise dropped to his ass. "Well," Harry said. "That's the entertainment gathered." Before them, the Fireball's neck and chin was forced upward, facing the night sky, as twin bursts of flame flew high.

At the fire ball's height, Neville cast another bombardment curse. Combined, the very crude fireworks erupted into a thousand falling stars, and from nearby the already inebriated seventh years and adult shopkeeps cheered. Both professors took turns tickling the dragon to incense it into shooting more, and blowing them up.

"Promise me that next year, we'll just let Hagrid find something?" Neville wearily said as the minutes passed.

"You have to admit, that was fun," Harry countered.

"I don't fancy myself in between a dragon's teeth ever again," Neville disagreed.

"Fine, fine, I'll ask Hagrid for help next year."