It was at breakfast, when he saw Cedric walk in, that the thought occurred to him, Has anyone told Cedric about the dragons? He had no doubt that the other school heads had warned their champions. Hermione had told him that the other two champions had been upset that she had checked out so many books on dragons. They had given her piercing and angry looks with every armload she had returned on Sunday. And almost broken into fights over the books when she left.
She had made no mention of seeing Cedric.
He sighed, and put down his omelette. “Be back in a moment,” he muttered as he got up and crossed over to the next table. The Hufflepuffs glared at him as he approached Diggory. He rolled his eyes at their antics. Like he cared what they thought.
Cedric turned to face him. “Hello, Harry,” he said neutrally.
“Could I speak to you in private, a moment?” Harry said. He nodded to the near corner of the hall, behind the Head Table. “It’s important,” he stressed.
The Hufflpuffs seated nearby all frowned and looked at him distastefully. Diggory studied him carefully, shrugged, and said, “Sure.” He got up and followed as Harry led the way.
The professors and students watched curiously as the two went to the closest corner of the hall.
Harry cast his mum’s silencing bubble around them. “The task involves dragons,” he said simply. “There are four dragons in the forest from the Romanian Dragon Sanctuary, I saw them early Sunday morning. So did Karkaroff and Maxine. I have no doubt that they’ve told Krum and Delacour. Has anyone told you?”
From the pale and shocked expression he saw, Harry thought not.
The soft, shaken, and barely breathed, “No . . . .” merely confirmed it.
“From what I overheard, we have to get past the dragons. For what reason, I don’t know.”
“You’re positive?” came the desperate plea.
Harry nodded.
Cedric just stood there, blinking. Finally, he focused back on Harry. “Why? Why are you telling me?”
Harry tilted his head, puzzled. “Because it wouldn’t be a fair contest, otherwise. Mr. Bagman said the first task is about daring and courage in the face of the unknown. Except, the other two champions know what the unknown is. When the task starts, the other two will have had plenty of time to prepare and you wouldn’t. That gives them a clear advantage.”
He shrugged. “Anyway, now you know.” He cancelled the bubble and headed back to his lunch.
The stunned wizard slowly returned to his place at the table and sat down, breakfast forgotten as he thought about his options.
As he headed back to his practice room, Professor Moody walked up beside him.
“Good morning, Professor,” Harry said politely.
Mad-Eye, as everyone called him, simply grunted.
Having the odd professor beside made the pony nervous and he quickly prepared both a shield matrix and a teleport, and held them at the ready. The shield matrix was in his wand, inside his sleeve, and the teleport at the base of his horn.
That was quite useful, actually. Maybe he should get a second wand?
The professor followed him into the room.
And immediately whispered, stupefy!
Harry spun to the left, his shield reflected the spell and made Moody hastily jump to the side.
Moody laughed delightedly at the barrage of stunning, banishing, and disarming spells that shot from Harry’s wand. “Constant Vigilance!” he shouted behind his shield.
“Okay, Sparkle, calm down,” he said as Harry jockeyed for a better angle at the door and escape.
Harry stopped casting, but kept his wand steady on the wizard.
“You can put that down now, Sparkle, no harm meant.”
Harry kept his wand pointed at the wizard. His mum had been fooled by that tactic, once.
Moody’s smile broadened, “Excellent, Sparkle, excellent.” He made a show of placing his wand in his holster and holding his arms and hands out from his sides, fingers spread wide.
Harry slowly lowered his wand.
“Good instincts, there. Never trust anyone while they’ve got a wand on you.” He nodded approvingly.
Harry put his wand away in his sleeve and waited, still on edge.
Moody looked around the pristine room, with tables and chairs neatly shrunken and stacked on a window sill. He nodded favourably.
Harry and his tutors always made sure any damage done was reversed. The only way you could tell the room had been used was that it was so clean and neat.
He studyied the colt carefully. “You found out about the dragons, haven’t you?” he said slowly.
Harry nodded cautiously. “I saw them Sunday morning, before daylight.”
“Good, good,” said Moody. He wandered around the room.
Harry moved closer to the door.
“Cheating’s a tradition in the Tri-wizard Tournament. Always has been,” Moody continued.
“I didn’t cheat,” said Harry sharply. “No professor or student told me about dragons being involved.” He watched the professor closely, especially his wand hand.
“Not accusing you, laddie.” He gave Harry a quick grin. “I told Dumbledore right from the start, it didn’t matter how honourable he likes to be,” he shook his head, “but Karkaroff and Maxime won’t be nearly so. They’ll tell their champions everything they can, as soon as they can. They want to win. They want to beat Dumbledore. It’d be quite a feather in their caps to brag at home how they beat the best Hogwarts has to offer, regardless of that old wizard. Oh, yes, they’d love to prove he’s only human.”
Moody laughed harshly. His magical eye spun so fast it made Harry feel uneasy to watch it. Harry refreshed his teleport matrix.
“Told Diggory, did you?”
“Him being the only one not to know seemed unfair.”
“Very decent thing to do,” Moody said.
They stood eyeing each other.
The conversation meandered a bit after that. The wizard wanted to know if Harry had developed a strategy for dealing with the dragons, yet. Harry had danced around the answer, not willing to reveal any details to someone he didn’t fully trust. It ended with Moody giving him vague advice that he should play to his strengths.
Well, duh!
Staying in the room after Mad Eye had left made him feel uncomfortable. He retreated to the Library and wandered through the stacks, reading the books’ names and seeing if anything struck him as maybe being useful.
Then it was time for lunch and Arithmancy.
Harry and his tutors spent the evening practicing the few spells that they thought might make it easier for Harry to manoeuvre around the Dragons, and distract them without actually hurting them or the eggs.
۸-_-۸
One of the things they discovered was that his mum’s don’t-notice-me-field and the wizarding disillusionment charm were almost, but not exactly, alike. They both acted on the subject, only. Whatever his mum’s version was cast on appeared to turn to glass — you could see through it. However, its drawback was that the edges of the field, your edges, could be noticed if someone was looking closely in that direction when you moved. And the closer someone was, the more noticeable it was. So, if someone were to casually look at you and you were standing still, they’d not notice anything. If you were walking, a casual look would still miss you. If they were staring as you moved, they might notice the edges where you were and were not. If you were running and they were looking for you? You became a lot easier to spot.
However, the wizarding notice-me-not charm, also called the bedazzling hex, fooled the mind of the observer. The fewer there were around it, the better it worked. Enough people watching, and they could clearly see you as the magic controlling their minds became too thinly spread to work effectively.
Harry spent the late evening inking both rune-sets into his armour. Then he linked them to another set of runes that optionally triggered them when he was wearing the armour. That had been Liza’s contribution. Now he didn’t have to cast the don’t-notice-me-field every morning on his helmet!
And because the armour would only really move against his fur when he ran or flew, most people would never notice it even when they were up close. Gluing several of the gems he had brought in his coin purse, for Spike on Nightmare Night, to the cardboard on his sides had provided a bit of additional power storage, especially when he added a charging rune-set to them. And it saved him from casting magic to power any of the spells on the armour.
The wizarding spell on the helmet had the additional effect that nobody noticed how it flattened his mane on the top of his head.
Now, no one would have forewarning that he was protected by armour. And if they didn’t know that, then no one would take it into account if they did target him. And the gems might provide just a tiny bit more staying power.
Which tied into what he had realized weeks ago, when he had first seriously sat down and thought about the Tournament. He had a serious problem with the Tournament’s magical contract, beyond the obvious, of course. Which mattered more, the wording or the intent?
The tasks, themselves, were merely part of the problem. It didn’t really matter what they were, playing chess or wrestling monsters. It all came down to how much of the task he had to do for it to count as a good effort by the Goblet’s magical contract. If he just appeared at the task with no intent to do anything, would the Goblet consider that just as if he had never shown up at all?
Did the Goblet contract work on the Champion’s actions or intent?
If actions were all important, then he could just show up, walk onto the field where the task was staged, cast a few innocuous spells, and just sit down. He had, by the letter of the contract, “shown up and attempted” the task.
That would be the absolute best outcome for Harry.
If it were the second, intent, though, doing the first would invoke a penalty. The second would require that he actually try to get past the dragon. He couldn’t simply go through the motions and pretend he was trying. He had to try, to the best of his abilities.
And if it was the first, then doing the second was a waste of time and effort. But the second had no penalties for him to worry about. Except for whatever the dragons did to him. Doing only the first had significant risks if it was the intent that mattered.
So, they all approached the problem from the point of view that whatever the tournament officials wanted him to do once he got past the dragons was something he needed to do.
۸-_-۸
Harry spent a listless night, and breakfast was a blur. The time before lunch seemed to crawl as he had to remind himself repeatedly not to practice casting the spells he planned to use. It wouldn’t do to go into the task already exhausted.
At lunch, Jonathan passed him a small bottle as he walked past. It turned out to be a dose of the Invigorating Potion. Which helped clear his mind. The Slytherins laughed and joked, loudly, and said they expected Harry to fail, miserably. The Hufflepuffs continued to ignore him, although Diggory gave him a nod and told those around him to shut up about Harry. The Ravenclaws sneered at him.
Victor Krum looked as morose as ever, and Fleur Delacour seemed not to notice anyone around her.
Harry concentrated on calming down his jumpy stomach. Too soon, Professor McGonagall came over and escorted him out of the hall. He hadn’t noticed, but it seemed the other Champions had already left without him noticing. He ignored her nervous nattering and concentrated on the plan.
Fleur drew the Welsh Green, Victor got the Chinese Fireball, Cedric, the Swedish Short-Snout, and Harry? Naturally he got the Hungarian Horntail. The most vicious of the four dragons. He wished he’d drawn the one he had talked to, the Chinese Fireball.
And all they had to do was retrieve a golden egg from the nest of dragon eggs.
Oh, lovely, thought Harry. Just the way to anger a mother, invade her nest of eggs!
Based on the colour of the other’s expressions, Harry thought all four of them were a little green contemplating what they had to do.
Cedric went first. From the screaming from the crowd, Harry knew he had arrived and was facing his dragon.
What happened next brought a big relieved smile to Harry’s face.
“What’s . . . what’s this? The dragon just rolled the golden egg out of her nest!” . . . “She’s sitting in front of her eggs” . . . “Mr. Diggory is taking his time” . . . “clever move!”
Interspaced, there was roaring from both the crowd and the dragon.
Then came a deafening roar from the crowd, Harry could only imagine that meant Cedric had gotten the egg.
Fleur’s experience was remarkably similar, only without the screaming, yelling, and roaring. The dragon tossed the egg out of her nest and, apparently, just curled around it and stared at her. Fifteen minutes later, the crowd roared with applause.
Victor entered the arena. Again, the dragon tossed out the golden egg as soon as she saw him. She rolled the golden egg as far as the limit of her chain, according to Bagman, and mashed it into the ground with a claw! She then retreated to her eggs.
Unlike the previous two trials, Victor’s was much more active, and started with the dragon crying out in agony. Harry had to hold himself steady, and resist the urge to race out of the tent to help the dragon. The shriek fell down to a roar and remained almost constant, with barely time for the dragon to draw a new breath.
While that was nerve-wracking, not knowing what was happening, and knowing the dragon was hurt, Harry had to focus on his own task. He quickly stripped off his robe and armour, piling both by the entrance.
Then he paced anxiously.
Finally, it all stopped. Either Krum had succeeded, given up, or there was a time limit.
Then came the whistle that signified it was Harry’s turn.
He took a deep breath. He checked his armour one last time, and then trotted out into the arena.
There were thousands of people watching. Not just the students, but hundreds and hundreds of others. They must have made a killing with the tickets, Harry thought in the back of his mind.
At the other end of the arena he saw the Hungarian Horntail. She crouched low over her eggs and glared at him.
While most of the audience had seen pictures of Harry, they were completely unprepared for how small the light-blue unicorn with black mane and tail was that cantered into view. The students, too, were surprised, they had expected him to be wearing his robe, like he had been since arriving at Hogwarts. A low murmur began to rise as the students informed the others just what they were seeing.
“Ah! Um. Ladies and Gentlemen, Harry Potter Sparkle,” Bagman said awkwardly.
Harry rolled his eyes, then summoned his armour with his wand. He stuck it back on his foreleg as his armour floated in from the Champions’ tent. He began putting on his armour as quickly as possible, making sure everything fit properly. He deliberately did not activate the camouflage spells. He wanted people to see the armour, then when they didn’t see him wearing it they wouldn’t realize he really was.
As soon as he had appeared, the dragon had huffed smoke out, then stepped off her nest and inspected her eggs. As he put on his armour, she lifted one egg between two claws, gold-coloured instead of the normal grey, and looked at it closely. She looked at Harry, who was almost done, and then carefully placed the egg back into her nest. She settled herself protectively over the gouge in the field that held the nest and watched Harry intently.
Waves of noise poured from the stands. Harry couldn’t hear what Bagman was saying over the thunderous beat of his heart.
Once he was suited, he again pulled out his wand. With one tap of the wand on his back, for show, he cast the wings spell, earning a gasp from the audience when he spread them wide and swept them down twice, lifting him slightly from the ground. The dragon shot a flame with billowing smoke to her left and swept it to her right, causing the crowd to break into screams and yells. Then she looked directly at Harry — and winked! The crowd, mostly distracted by the enormous flame and smoke, didn’t notice.
Harry stared at the dragon, then tapped himself several more times. They couldn’t tell, but he was casting silencing and scent hiding charms. He flapped his wings a few times, just enough to keep to a hover. Then he cast the wizard disillusionment charm on himself.
The entire process had taken less than a minute.
He lowered himself gently to the ground, and used a featherweight charm so he wouldn’t leave tracks. He started walking slowly and carefully towards the dragon. She stared at where he had been, then swung her head sideways and began shooting flames with clouds of smoke. She twisted and moved as if she were following an especially annoying bird flying in the air around her! She even twisted and shot flames behind herself, at times.
He didn’t know what the story was, here, but if he was lucky, the Horntail was merely playing a game. If not, then he hoped his armour’s spells and his shield spell would be enough. He kept his teleport matrix and shield matrix both solidly in place.
Every time her gaze passed over him, he froze in position, no matter how awkward. The third time it happened he began to suspect she was doing it on purpose. But she still shot flames in random directions, and acted as if she were tracking an airborne nuisance.
By the fifth time she looked directly at him, he knew that she knew exactly where he was. When he was only twenty feet away, she suddenly shot a giant blast of flame well over his head, to the screams of the audience. A moment later, a second blast in another direction, with more screams. It was clear she knew where he was, no one else did.
Just as he was about to take the egg, which she had placed at the very edge of the nest, she abruptly swung her muzzle down to her nest and nuzzled them, while scanning the air around her with her eyes. §Dragons and dragons and ponies against the world,§ she whispered.
He bowed. §Thank you,§ he said, §Dragons and dragons and ponies against the world!§ he rasped. He paused, then said, §How did you see me?§
She snorted a cloud of smoke behind him from her nostrils while apparently tracking something flying over by the stands. §Your body heat, silly. You forgot to hide your body’s heat.§ She growled and roared suddenly.
§Now, fly!§ she ordered. §And let them see you!§
She lifted her head and flamed to her far left, and swept it in an arc across the arena to her right, smoke billowing threateningly above the stands.
When a dragon gives you an order, you don’t hang around and ask questions.
Harry grabbed the egg and launched himself back across the field with his rear legs, wings pumping. He didn’t see it, but Hermione later told him that the dragon spun in a circle, flames and smoke blasting the entire way. She took a breath, looked down at her nest, then flamed almost from it to directly straight ahead, the smoke rapidly shotting across the field.
Harry was barely a yard above the ground, halfway across the arena, working more on speed than altitude. He felt a sudden blast of heat hit his hind-quarters. He cut the disillusionment charm and flapped harder. There was a golden section of wall and seating dead ahead, and he soared over it. The crowd in the seating ducked as he passed over them, close enough that he was sure he knocked a few hats off on the way. He circled around and landed at where he had put on his armour, panting and covered in sweat from the heat and frantic exertion. He could see a faint trail of smoke that had been pulled along behind him as he flew over the stands.
“Unbelievable!” Bagman yelled. “Did you see that!? Harry Potter, the youngest champion, gets to his egg in record time! Ten minutes — only ten minutes! I don’t think any champion, ever, has beaten the first task so handily! Well, this will shorten Mr. Potter’s odds!”
Hermione later told him his dramatic sudden appearance out of the billowing smoke with the dragon’s flames literally right on his tail was the most thrilling, and scariest, thing she had ever seen. As far as everyone was concerned they had watched an electrifying aerial chase that culminated in a last moment escape from a sudden flaming death.
Now that he was again back on the ground, he flashily used his wand to dismiss his wings, scent-hiding, and silencing spells. He stood back up on his back hooves, and summoned his robe. He floated the egg as he slipped his robe over his head.
Several people hurried towards him. Professor McGonagall reached him, first. “Wonderful, Mr. Sparkle! Wonderful!” Hard on her heels was Professor Moody, whose magic eye was practically dancing in its socket. He said nothing, but his smile and nod said it all. Professor Flitwick was grinning widely, and nodded approvingly.
Professor McGonagall looked him up and down, then said, “Right then, Sparkle, you look fine, but if I don’t take you to see Madam Pomfrey there will be words.”
Madam Pomfrey stood at the mouth of a tent beside the Champions’ tent, looking worried.
“Dragons!” she exclaimed, pulling Harry inside. The medical tent was divided into four cubicles. She guided him into one and started waving her wand casting diagnostic spells, talking furiously all the while. “Dementors last year, dragons this year, what’s next? Acromantulas? Nundus?”
He heard a moan from the cubicle across from his. Madam Pomfrey worriedly looked over that way.
“You seem completely fine, you can go get your score,” she said briskly. She hurried to the cubicle across from his, “How does it feel now, Mr. Krum?” Harry heard her say,
Before he could move, though, the tent flap burst open and two people hurried in, Hermione and Luna. “That was brill!” the bushy-haired girl exclaimed, hopping up and down.
Harry found himself blushing. Hermione stopped and stared at him a moment, then she continued, ticking the champions off on her fingers.
“Fleur danced her dragon to sleep, Cedric used transfiguration to distract his dragon, Victor used a blinding curse . . . ,”
Harry stiffened and glared across the narrow corridor separating his cubicle from the Bulgarian’s.
“But it’s temporary,” she hastily added. Then grinned nastily. “The dragon got her revenge, though, nearly roasted him until he gave up.” She snickered. “With the egg well out of her nest, she just sat there and blew flames over the golden egg, never gave him a chance to get close to it. And with her directly over her own eggs, he couldn’t use those for leverage. With her eyes swelled closed, there was nothing he could do to her.”
“But you, you clever little unicorn, dazzled everyone, flew right under your dragon’s nose, and picked up the egg.” She laughed. “And the disillusionment spell on top of the wings spell wowed everyone!”
Luna just smiled and nodded. “You certainly showed the weetimorousbeasties what a unicorn can do,” she said quietly.
“Hmm, yes,” said Hermione. She was even more proud of his success than he was! “You were definitely the best, Harry! Fleur got points taken off because the dragon snored a bit of flame just as she was picking up her egg and set her robes on fire. She put it out, of course, with what I imagine was the aguamenti charm. Cedric transformed a rock into a dog, but when he got to his egg the dragon decided he would make a better meal and set fire to his robes and chased him a short distance. He almost didn’t make it. And I told you what Krum did.”
She bounced and twirled in place a couple of times. Then lunged forward and hugged him. Luna quickly followed.
It felt good to be in the centre of a hug, again.
Hermione suddenly stepped back. “Well, we should see how things are scored!” She grabbed Harry’s left forehoof and started dragging him out of the tent. Luna held his right foreleg, above the golden egg he still held in the crook of his leg, and followed quickly.
The judges’ seats, there were six, were at this end of the arena, he now saw. The seats they were sitting in were draped in gold cloth with a gold background. He had flown right over them as the dragon’s flames and smoke chased him. It must have been shocking to see him suddenly appear out of the flames directly in front of them!
Then Bagman announced the scoring. Madame Maxine went first, with an nine; Mr. Crouch scored a nine; Headmaster Dumbledore, Mr. Bagman, and Mr. Weasley, Percy, that is, all gave him a ten, and last, Karkaroff, after a long pause, gave him a four, to much derision from the crowd. Harry had earned fifty-two points.
Hermione stared at the Bulgarian, outraged, with hands on her hips. “Krum was hurt, he didn’t get his egg, and Karkaroff gave him a six!” She huffed angrily and crossed her arms. “Blatant favouritism!”
“The Umgubular Slashkilters truly love the man,” Luna said. She looked at Harry happily. “Still, Harry has first place,” she added smugly.
Harry shrugged and bumped her shoulder with his. “Doesn’t matter. All I wanted was to survive. And I did.” He glanced back at where the Horntail had been. He wondered how he could possibly thank the four dragons. He didn’t have any gems that would be worthwhile. Nor treasure. Maybe a delicacy? But what? He would ask Ginny to ask her brother Charlie. He might have some ideas.
On the other hoof, he did know Rarity’s gem-finding spell, and its gold variant. Maybe if he combined those with a summoning teleport?
The crowd was starting to leave. The students streamed towards the school and the others towards Hogsmeade. Harry and the two girls started back, Luna skipping merrily.
A wizard ran up just as Harry and the two witches were partway to the Hogwarts’ lawns. Harry recognized him as the wizard who had talked with Hagrid, Charlie Weasley. “Harry! Just a minute! Bagman wants a word, back in the champions’ tent.” They reversed their direction. “Good show, Harry!” the red-headed wizard said. “You’re in the lead!” He slapped Harry gently on the back. “Well, I’d like to stay and talk, but I’ve got to run. We need to get ready to transport the dragons back home later tonight!” He headed off towards the dragon enclosure.
The other three champions were already in the tent when Harry and the girls arrived. One look inside showed that it was only the champions, so the girls decided to wait outside.
Krum looked awful. He had no hair and his entire head and neck were covered in an orange paste. Looking closer, Harry could see even his hands and arms were orange with the burn cream. Cedric looked better, with only part of his face covered in paste and half his hair gone. Fleur was the easily the least wounded, with only part of her robe singed. Just from their appearances, Harry could guess that the ranking were Fleur, Cedric, and then Victor.
“Well done!” said Ludo Bagman as he bounded into the tent, “All of you!” He looked as pleased as if he had just gotten past a dragon instead of merely watching. “The good news is that you’ve got a nice long break to prepare — the second task is at half past nine on the morning of February the twenty-fourth!” He sighed dramatically. “The bad news is . . . we’re not going to tell you what it is!” He grinned and looked for their reactions. They just stared back at him. “Yes, right then.” He coughed nervously. “Those golden eggs you’re holding, well three of you are holding — sorry, Mr. Krum — see the hinges? The eggs open! There’s a clue inside the egg, solve it to find out what the second task is and what you need to do to prepare for it!” He looked at their blank expressions. “Right, then. That’s it! Off you go!” He grinned widely at them, then he bounded out of the tent.
They were halfway back to the castle when Ginny hurried up to them. “Hey! Harry! That. Was. ACE!” She jumped up in the air with one arm raised.
Harry looked down, blushing.
Hermione glanced at him and stopped. “Okay,” she said in a no-nonsense tone. “Honestly. How can you possibly blush through all that fur?”
Ginny was staring, too. Luna didn’t seem perturbed at all.
Harry blushed deeper and shrugged. “Magic?” he offered weakly.
The girls just stared at him, then slowly started back to the castle.
“I told my brother Charlie that you could talk with dragons. He wants to meet you at dinner. Do you mind?” Ginny turned to walk backwards, searching his face.
Harry shrugged, again. “Sure, why not?” He looked around. There weren’t any students close. He was still a bit of a pariah to everyone not in Gryffindor. And most of the Gryffindors were still unsure what to make of him. The wings and Hayscartes’ Method spells had made a few inroads at making people friendlier.
Luna just smiled and skipped a circle around them. “Come on,” she said, let’s see if the house-elves will let us have some pudding to celebrate!”
The house-elves were more than willing to let them have pudding. And anything else they wanted to eat or drink.
۸- ̬ -۸