“Where…? Where did she go?” Ludo Bagman announced.
Hailey chuckled quietly. “Keep an eye on the egg,” she told him, in a low mutter. “It’ll disappear in a moment.”
It was the day of the First Task. Hailey was seated at the Judge’s Table- not that she wanted to be. She was still certain there was a reason Ludo Bagman, one of the ‘impartial’ judges, had pushed so hard for her to be on the panel too only after he learned that she was British.
He thought he was stacking the deck.
Hailey knew he had a bet going with the goblins on the outcome. He’d made that agreement before the tournament started, to clear the massive debts he had incurred when paying out the bets from the World Cup. She’d even recommended betting on Cedric… But Bagman hadn’t listened, and was betting on Harry instead- who she knew wasn’t going to win. He’d flunked too many tasks… Well, she had, when she had gone through them as him. It wasn’t his turn to face the Hungarian Horntail yet- instead, Silver was facing a Brazilian Vipertooth in the arena before them. Not that it was very exciting- Silver was the only one coming to the task blind, but she’d evidently decided using her form spell to become undetectable to a dragon’s senses would be easiest.
She was also the fourth one of the day. Cedric Diggory had gone first- the boy Hermione and Ron called ‘pretty boy Diggory’. She’d found it amusing when she found out just how many people thought she was secretly a fan of his, but she really wasn’t. Sure, he was a model student, but she already knew four of those- Hermione, Morning Sun, Sadarina, and Silversong- that she actually had feelings for.
Still, though. Diggory had received some warning- a couple days- of what was coming, but it didn’t seem like he’d managed to form a plan in so little time. Instead, his battle had felt so much like he was flinging things at the wall to see what stuck.
He’d first tried looking innocent, but given up quickly when it became evident his ‘casual’ whistling of the Imperial March wasn’t going to work for anything other than making the crowd laugh.
Cedric’s second method had been distraction- but that also hadn’t worked. He’d used a particularly spectacular bit of transfiguration to make a large, vicious dog out of a nearby boulder. Unfortunately, the dragon had gotten tired of the barking and turned the angry bulldog to what Norberta had called ‘overcooked barbecue’ before he’d gotten close enough, so he had skittered back out, creating distance as quickly as he could.
Finally, with a look of desperation on his face, Cedric had raised his wand into the air and cried “Accio Egg!”
To his astonishment, and that of most of the Judges, that had worked. The dragon only spared the golden egg a brief glance before looking down to cover her eggs- and according to Norberta, muttering darkly about wizards hiding magical contraptions amongst her eggs.
Fleur had been second. She’d been successful on her first attempt- though only barely. She had hit her dragon with a carefully selected sleeping spell that had been invented for dragon keepers, despite having long-term side-effects that made it utterly useless for the same, then narrowly avoided getting burnt to a crisp when it let out a massive, fiery snore. She had had to extinguish her skirt, but retrieved her egg successfully amidst Norberta’s guffaws.
“She almost lost to a sleeping dragon,” Norberta had gotten out, after she’d calmed down enough.
Krum hadn’t had any difficulty with his at all. A quick curse to his dragon’s eyes and it was trampling away in agony- and Hailey, up in the stands, restraining Norberta.
“I’ll kill him!” Norberta had snarled. “He’s torturing her!”
Krum then just had to wait for it to walk past the eggs and retrieve the golden one from amongst the damaged real eggs. Norberta hadn’t been satisfied to learn how few points were being docked for the damage, but she had been happy to learn he was getting penalized for the damage.
Then, it was Silver’s turn.
The Brazilian Vipertooth had been the calmest of the bunch, according to Norberta- who had helped move the dragons on and off of the field. The Vipertooth had evidently realized what must have happened to Krum’s dragon, and why the ground smelled like crushed eggs (Norberta had mentioned the smell when removing Krum’s dragon, then told Hailey that ‘Vipey’- her name was in dragon, and didn’t translate- had noticed it as well). She had maintained a vigilant watch and low stance over her eggs, and had shifted in what Norberta had recognized as relief when Silver had pocketed her wand.
Vipey had expressed a little alarm when she then vanished- but unlike the three before, Vipey had been calm enough to ask Norberta what was coming during her almost alarmingly calm trek into the Arena. Norberta had still been shaken from seeing the damage Krum had caused, so had told her very little- just that the Champion’s job was to retrieve the golden egg- but Vipey was smart.
Hailey squinted her eyes. Vipey had tilted her head slightly, keeping an eye on her eggs- but her eye, Hailey realized, wasn’t looking at the eggs. She closed her eyes, applied the brand new- as of that morning- Morning Twist to her magical core, then used the resultant matrix- which was somewhat reminiscent of a changeling’s- to grant herself her keen pegasus eyesight in human form. Finally, she opened them.
She had expected things to look different to pegasus eyes- but she hadn’t realized that Silver’s invisible form was actually opaque to ultraviolet. It also looked like Vipey could see Silver- but was choosing to let her believe that she couldn’t.
So Hailey, Norberta, and Vipey watched as Silver crept closer to the eggs.
Finally, Silver carefully tapped the golden egg with her wand to make it invisible with her, plucked it from the bunch while the crowd muttered ominously about its disappearance, and started her victorious trek back to the entrance of the enclosure.
Then, after muttering something that made Norberta giggle, Vipey reached up a massive claw to pat Silver gently on the top of her head.
Silver froze, briefly, before ducking and breaking into a dead run, which made both Norberta and Hailey laugh.
Finally, after a chuckle of her own, Vipey settled herself down around her eggs and breathed flames on them, scorching the remnants of the grass charcoal black.
Silver reached the entrance, drew her wand, and cast a few little charms.
Finally, some fifteen minutes after she had vanished, she reappeared out of thin air- sitting in a lawn chair with a martini in her hand and the golden egg in her lap.
The crowd’s reaction was priceless.
Hailey had then explained what had happened to the other judges, since she’d used an ‘Equestrian sensory spell’ that allowed her to see Silver, and scored her a 9 since most of the crowd couldn’t see her.
“She wasn’t using that unfair advantage, was she?” Dumbledore muttered, out of the corner of his mouth.
Hailey chuckled. “Nope. That was her family magic- all British. Though, I suppose she did use a bit of Equestrian magic to cover her retreat, but she didn’t need to- it didn’t end up doing anything. Anyways.” She looked down at Norberta. “Ready to get Pokey?”
Norberta scowled. “I don’t like Pokey,” she grumbled. “She’s the meanest.”
Hailey nodded. Pokey was Norberta’s nickname for the Hungarian Horntail, since both Hailey and Norberta absolutely refused to call her The All-Queen. “Yeah, she’s a little like Prince Blueblood, isn’t she?”
She tilted her head. “Who’s Blueblood?”
Harry was a laughing stock. He had required three tries to summon his broom, an aged Cleansweep Seven, dropped it, cast some blasting spells that only succeeded in angering the Hungarian Horntail and blowing up the Judge’s Table because of his terrible aim, taken off, and fairly wobbled through the air in a spectacular show of balance but a dismal show of flying skill. He’d narrowly avoided getting shredded several times, and been set on fire nearly three. Finally, in a massive swoop while the dragon was rearing up, he…. Kicked the golden egg clear over the stands and out of the enclosure, straight into the Forbidden Forest, before subsequently dismounting his broom and hopping on one foot, clutching the other in apparent agony. Finally, he’d narrowly avoided getting cooked himself and fled on foot from his broom’s funeral pyre.
Once Harry had returned from a nearly ten-minute trek into the Forbidden Forest to retrieve the egg, Bagman had given him a ten for reasons Hailey was fairly certain of, and Kakaroff gave him a five for an entertaining display. All of the rest, Hailey included, gave him twos for such a disastrous battle- and two was the rules-established minimum score for a champion that had completed the task.
After all, Hailey had put Bagman’s hair out with her wand after one of Harry’s spells ignited it.
“I told you it wouldn’t be a good idea to bet on Harry,” Hailey told Bagman through the corner of her mouth, while Norberta was still laughing at Harry’s reaction to the Horntail bearing its teeth at him.
“Well that was entertaining.”
Hailey glanced behind her, where the comment had come from, to see Crystal jogging up next to her. “Yes, it was. Were you able to see Silver’s invisible form?”
“Uh, no?” Crystal muttered, looking at her. Hailey had stayed behind to help get the dragons put away properly. “Why would I be able to?”
She shrugged. “Because she was opaque to ultraviolet,” she answered simply.
“Oh,” Crystal nodded. “Unfortunately, no. I can naturally see infrared, but we only see ultraviolet if we take a form that can explicitly see it.”
“So, if you turn into a pegasus.”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She looked at Hailey. “Are you going to maintain that level of…” She paused. “Um, almost badass-scale comedy for the other tasks?”
Hailey laughed. “I did, yes.”
“Did? You already did them all…?”
She nodded. “Yup, time travel. Harry is going to be destroying his brand new Cleansweep Six in the lake, getting bludgeoned by about a dozen grindylows, and finally knock himself out against the statue down at the bottom, where the hostages are.” She chuckled. “And for the third task, it’s a maze, but he’s going to try and fail to summon the broom he hasn’t bought yet, and fall victim to nearly every trap in the whole maze, before finally managing to crash into the Cup in the middle at full speed, triggering the portkey with Silver and Diggory as well… then finally returning from there as a dead body.”
There were a couple seconds of silence.
“I think I’ll just pretend I understood that,” Crystal muttered. “So, he’s a crazy ditz that really likes his broomstick?”
“And he, ostensibly at least, stinks so bad he never leaves the shower.”
She burst out laughing. “That’s going to be fun,” she observed, once she’d recovered. “Are we going to see him anywhere else?”
She shook her head. “Nope. The last time anybody saw him in a class would have been two and a half years ago- and he only walked the school… what, once?” She paused, tapping her chin. “Yeah, right about once since then, and that was about two years ago. That said, there are a few people that know we’re one and the same- though almost all of them are cleared to know about the Changeling presence in the Castle anyways, and I’m also keeping them posted on what’s going on… to a degree. They all know there’s time travel involved, that I had some fun goofing off as Harry, and that I used magic constructs a few times, but not all of them know I hired a changeling.”
She looked at her. “Hired?”
“Well yeah,” she nodded “Unless you don’t want to get paid, of course. I was going to do it as a direct coinage transaction, so nopony can trace it.” She shrugged. “And I need to visit the bank soon anyways, since I don’t have the funds on hand to get the Second Task broom at the moment.”