Back in Harry's first year, Hagrid had still been a bit of a fool.
Quirrell, in disguise, had traded a dragon egg for the secret of the Three-Headed Dog Fluffy's weakness.
Then that egg had hatched into a Norwegian Ridgeback. After ruining seven or eight pieces of Harry and his friends' clothing, the dragon had been sent away, contributing minus a hundred and fifty points to Gryffindor before leaving. She could well have been called the year's most influential character.
Naturally, Harry remembered such a precious treasure vividly.
That Norwegian Ridgeback, originally named Norbert and later renamed Norberta after Charlie discovered she was female, should now have been at the Dragon Sanctuary in Romania.
Yet as Harry looked at the Norwegian Ridgeback sleeping soundly on a pile of hay not far away, he was eighty percent sure that this was Hagrid's bloody dragon from back then.
Hagrid had mentioned more than once that he went to Romania during the holidays to visit Norberta.
Like many animals, dragons treated the first creature they saw as their mother.
The first creature Norberta had seen after hatching was Hagrid, so for quite a long time, she had regarded him as her mother-as for why not her father, that hardly mattered.
As for how she had nearly bitten Hagrid with her highly venomous fangs-though they had been less venomous when she was a dragonling-and would certainly have done so if his giant heritage had not given him thick enough skin, that was a little dragon's way of showing affection for her mother.
After all, given the toughness of an adult fire dragon's hide, a dragonling's teeth certainly could not pierce it.
Anyone who had dealt with dragon hide knew how tough it was. Otherwise, it would not have been the standard material for gloves