A ten year old Mirabel Madrigal notices that there is something lurking in the borders of the Encanto and decides to investigate. There she discovers something she wasn't expecting: a pitch black dragon, and his human companion, a feral boy her own age.
Should she tell someone? Would they believe her? Has the "not-special" Madrigal found her new friends?
Can I Keep Him? is an Encanto/How to Train Your Dragon Crossover fanfic by HotPatooty, author of the The Dragon and the Butterfly Saga.
The fanfic can be read on Archive of Our Own here
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This fanfic provides examples of:
- Big Brother Instinct: Toothless and Hiccup (or Clever Claw) see each other as brothers, and Toothless will do anything/everything he can to keep his little brother safe.
- Bigotry Exception: Scar the Skrill hates humans after he was captured and tortured by them for years. Yet, he willingly acknowledges Hiccup as a member of the Bewilderbeast's nest and often gives him the same stories and lessons he would give to any hatchling.
- Cassandra Truth: Mirabel seems to be the only one who ever noticed the existence of the "monster" lurking in the jungle outside of town and no one believes her when she tells them.
- Crying Wolf: Señorita Pezmuerto insists that she saw a "monster" steal her goldfish from her, but the whole town considers her crazy, as she often loses her goldfish and makes wild explanations for how it happens, having no idea that she's just bad at raising goldfish... except this time she actually did see Toothless just steal and eat her goldfish.
- Delusions of Doghood: Since Hiccup thinks he's a dragon and has been raised as such, he tends to act more like an animal or retain some animalistic affectations. The story itself likes to compare his living situation with the Madrigals as if they had adopted a rowdy dog (although a few people point out how this behavior isn't good).
- Didn't Think This Through: When Mirabel decides to capture the "monster" to prove its existence to her family, she sets out food for it with plans of catching it with a crocheted net. Unfortunately, she didn't anticipate that it would be too big for her net to slow it down, nor did it occur to her that being a normal girl with the strength of one would be insufficient when hunting a large beast.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite his hatred of humans, Scar is horrified when he learns that the Elder Stormcutter stole Hiccup from his parents.
- Food as Bribe: Because he has "the attention span of a sparrow", the only way Mirabel can get Hiccup to sit still is by dangling food in front of him.
- I'm Taking Him Home With Me!: The Elder Stormcutter found Hiccup when, during a dragon raid, he took shelter in a human house. He swore that Hiccup had "the soul of a dragon" and knew that humans would ruin him. So he took Hiccup and raised him alongside Toothless.
- Interspecies Adoption: Hiccup was raised from a baby (alongside an orphaned Toothless) by the Elder Stormcutter. Hiccup believed for the longest time that he, too, was a dragon (especially after hearing so many terrible stories about humans).
- Just Here for the Free Snacks: After meeting Mirabel, Hiccup and Toothless consider just leaving considering all of the bad experiences they've had when humans discover them, but instead they try stealing the Madrigal's breakfast unguarded. Or so they think, Casita managing to manipulate the furniture to keep it away from them.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The morning after Mirabel gives Hiccup and Toothless her mother's magically-healing arepas, the two try and steal the family's breakfast the next morning. In Casita's attempts to protect it, the family finds the dishes smashed and breakfast ruined.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Isabella can catch Camilo pretending to be Dolores because Dolores never yells...something he forgot when he pretended to be her to trick Isa.
- Refuge in Audacity: Camilo's plans always seem "too silly", but they usually work themselves out in execution. One example is that they convince Dolores that Mirabel is teaching a parrot how to talk (instead of a Wild Child and a dragon) by actually teaching an actual parrot to talk in order to sell the lie, using an already domesticated bird from a local old man.Camilo: Honestly, if people just listened to me more, the world would be a better place!
- Shout-Out: Casita keeping Hiccup and Toothless from stealing breakfast from the Madrigals via a Shell Game brings to mind Shifu doing the same to Po and Po doing it to Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Hiccup was raised thinking he was a Clever Claw, a made-up breed of dragon with superficial similarities to humans. No matter how many similarities he notices, the idea that Cloudjumper might have been lying to him never occurs to him.
- Wild Child: Hiccup — or "Clever Claw" — has spent so much of his early life with Toothless and no one else that not only does he move as though he were a dragon, but he doesn't speak any human language.
