GoF Ch 17- 20 post DH look - DRAGONS

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181997

Mike wrote:
> Now we know that the rumor was true, there was a dragon guarding
some of the high security vaults in Gringotts. Is that what Charlie is
doing with the dragons in Romania, training some of them for highly
specialized jobs? I only remember people like Ron saying Charlie 
"works" with dragons, I don't remember anybody saying he "trains"
them, but I might have missed that. 
> 
> I always thought of Charlie's job as a sort of magical gamekeeper, 
much like Hagrid's job at Hogwarts until he gets the CoMC teaching 
post. (Strike that, Hagrid still does his gamekeeping duties even
after he gets the teaching post). But if it's a "job", who's paying
Charlie and his mates to look after dragons? Qui bono, who benefits
and therefore who gets something out of this group doing stuff with
dragons besides the group themselves?

Carol responds:
First, thanks, Mike, for bringing up a topic that we haven't discussed
to death!

I don't think that Charlie and his friends train dragons for
Gringotts. I think that the poor, abused dragon that we see in DH
(kept confined and out of the light so long that it's nearly blind) is
"trained," using a cruel variation on Pavlovian conditioning, by
Goblins who teach it to associate the sound of the clankers with
brutal mistreatment. (I don't know whether the goblins had other
dragons as well; HRH don't see any, but, if they exist, I'm sure
they're subject to the same mistreatment.) How the Goblins obtained
their dragon(s), I don't know. I can't imagine someone like Charlie
and his friends selling a dragon to the Goblins if they knew the
treatment it would receive.

That aside, the dragons seem to live mostly on a dragon preserve in
Romania, perhaps one of the few places where they can safely be kept
from Muggle view (and Muggles kept safe from them!). Between the
pressure of large Muggle populations and the Statute of Secrecy,  
dragon populations are probably dwindling (much like giant
populations). I see Charlie's job as something like that of a Muggle
researcher studying a dangerous endangered animal like, say, the
Siberian tiger. They would want to provide ideal breeding and living
conditions for the dragons, keep the population healthy, study their
habits, and so on. Occasionally, as with Norbert in SS/PS or the TWT
in GoF, they'd be called upon to transport dragons, but that can
hardly be their primary job. (They might also supply dragon skin,
dragon blood, and dragon heartstring to merchants and manufacturers,
but I don't want to think about that part.)

As for who pays them, surely it's the MoM (not necessarily just the
British version)--the same people who pay Wizarding researchers to
maintain the Hall of Prophecy and to study Death, Love, Time, the
Mind, and other mysteries. 

Carol, who vaguely remembers some researcher in the Wizard of the
Month archives who was killed by the creatures she was studying
(Trolls?) a la the author of "Born Free," who was (ironically) mauled
to death by a lion, IIRC

Carol,