Here it is, chapter 3, the chapter you've been waiting for I imagine. The first task finally and then, next chapter, finally Aly in Essos.
Before reading the chapter, please read what I wrote below. It's important.
Since the dragons in Harry Potter are different from those in ASOIF/GOT, I decided, to make it all fit, to create a sort of dragon encyclopaedia. Basically every breed of dragon present in Harry Potter has a counterpart in the GOT world. To do that I had to change the characteristics of the Harry Potter dragons so bare with me.
For starters all dragons have two legs and not four like in Harry Potter and their size varied because of their age and not because of their breed. The older the dragon the bigger it gets, no matter what kind of dragon. Therefore you can ignore the Canon dimensions of the dragons in Harry Potter. Same thing with the flames, the older and bigger the dragon, the hotter the flame. They also have no fixed gender like in GOT.
All dragons look similar except for things like long or short snout, spiked or forked tail and venomous fangs. And of course the colour.
The colour of the dragon eggs correspond to the colours the dragon will have like in GOT and it's basically the different colours that differentiate one breed from another.
Beside the Canon dragon names (whose characteristics I sometimes modified according to the different dragons in the ASOIF books), I also made other types. I hope I made myself clear.
Here they are, the different types of the dragons with an example of the different dragons encountered in the ASOIF universe.
Antipodean Opaleye: Pearly white with orange horns, wingbones and spinal plates. Violet eyes and purple flame. Example: Aly's dragon.
Catalonian Fireball: Pale grey/silver scales like morning mist. Light orange eyes and silver horns, wingbones and spinal plates. Example: Grey Ghost, Seasmoke.
Chinese Fireball: Scarlet, smooth scales and golden spikes around its snub, golden wingbones and spinal plates. Example: Caraxes.
Common Welsh Green: Green scales and bronze horns, spinal plates and wingbones. Example: Rhaegal.
Egyptian Goldscales: Golden scales and pink wings. Example: Sunfyre
Greek Bronzescales: Bronze scales and yellowish brown wings. Example: Vermithor
Hebridean Black: Black scales, black fire, ridges along its back and a tail tipped with an arrow-shaped spike. Red eyes. Example: Balerion.
Hungarian Horntail: Black scales, red eyes, blood red horns and spikes. Black fire shot with red. Example: Drogon
Indian Yellow: yellow scales and pearly white horns, spikes and wingbones. Example: Syrax
Libyan Forkedtail: Mud brown with bronze spikes, horns and wingbones. Yellow eyes. Example: Sheepstealer
Norwegian Black Ridgeback: Black scales with brown undertones, black ridges and venomous fangs. Example: Cannibal
Peruvian Vipertooth: Scarlet scales and pink wings. Crest, horn and claws copper. Venomous Fangs. Example: Meleys
Portuguese Long-Snout: Light green scales. Horns, crest and wingbones ivory white. Example: Moondancer
Romanian Longhorn: Creamed scales and two long golden horns. Golden ridges, spikes and wingbones. Example: Viserion
Swedish Short-Snout: Blue scales and cobalt wings. Copper horns, spikes and wingbones. Blue flame. Example: Tessarion
Ukrainian Silverbelly: Silver scales. Dark silver horns, spikes and wingbones. Golden eyes. Example: Meraxes
Basically, these are the breeds of known dragons but there are also others, hybrids and such.
Also, just wanted to reassure some people. This is not the last chapter that you'll see Hermione (or Sirius for that matter). They will both join Aly to the GOT world, just not for a while. You'll have to see how that happens later on.
After this incredibly long chapter note, I'll leave you to the chapter, hope you like it! Oh, the words written in Italic are taken from 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'.
Chapter 3
"Can I tell you something?" Aly asked Hermione hesitantly. They had just finished their fencing training, the training dummies once again immobile and unharmed. It had been a week since they had started and they were learning quickly, thanks to the magic of the Room of Requirement that upped the difficulty of the dummies every time they learned something new. It was the kind of learning by trial and error, the swords that the dummies used sharp and quick, the cuts real if they hit. They needed to be fast to defend themselves if they didn't want to end up sliced like ham.
"Sure, what is it?" Hermione answered, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
"Sirius proposed to run away, the two of us together, to leave Hogwarts and Great Britain behind altogether, maybe go to the States, change our identities and start a new life somewhere else."
"And what did you say?" Hermione's voice was deceptively calm.
Aly shrugged her shoulders. "I said that I would need to think about it. Of course, there's also the fact that I'm magically bound to the Tournament and that I need to participate in it if I want to keep my magic."
Hermione's eyes sparkled at that, always happy to spread knowledge around like candy. "I researched that and it turns out that as long as you participate in the first Task, then you are free to forfeit. It would be seen as an admission of defeat instead of a refusal to participate in the Tournament all together and therefore your magic will be safe."
"Does that mean that if I survive the first Task I can just surrender and I will be free?"
Hermione nodded, a smile on her face. "Yeah, it means exactly that."
"So that means that I could really leave with Sirius if I wanted to." The possibility became more and more appealing the longer she thought about it.
"You would really leave without me?" Hermione asked, her voice reaching a high-pitched tone in her anger.
"I would never ask you to go with me, not because I don't want you to but because you have a life here. You love Hogwarts, and what about your parents?"
"I do love Hogwarts but it's just a school. The States have Ilvermorny which, I heard, is a very good school, though not as ancient as Hogwarts. It's not like I have many friends beside you and Ron. And Ron right now…well, I don't even know if he is a friend anymore. And my parents, well, I think that if I explain things to them, they wouldn't mind leaving. They are dentists so they could just open another studio everywhere they want. We could sell the house and the studio they have now and just leave."
"Hermione, I can't ask you to do that."
"You're not asking. I'm the one who wants to do this. I get why you want to leave so I can't ask you to stay. However, I can come with you. Just promise me you won't leave without saying anything, promise me that when you finally decide, that you will tell me and we'll make the preparations together."
"All right. I promise."
Three weeks until the first task and Aly had finally made a decision. It hadn't been easy because no matter what, she would miss Hogwarts because it was in this magical castle that she had felt happy for the first time. It was the place where she had met Hermione, (and Ron, though she tried not to think too much about him), where she had found out about Sirius, where Remus taught her the Patronus Charm and told her that he was friends with her father. There were a lot of good memories here but she realized that she couldn't stay anymore. It was time for her to move on.
She sent a letter to Sirius simply saying 'I've made a decision. See you after the first task at the cave.'
She talked to Hermione then and they both decided that the best time for her to leave would be during Winter break. She could explain everything to her parents then and simply not come back when the Term would start once again in January. That would also leave time for Aly and Sirius to find a place to stay.
Aly decided to make a plan about everything she needed to bring with her and about the travel arrangements. Taking a muggle plane from London would be the easiest solution. However, with all the scrutiny still on Sirius and all the Aurors and Dementors still looking for him, it would be better to leave the Country some other way – still a muggle way though so that they couldn't be traced magically – for example by taking a coach or renting a car, pass the Channel Tunnel and then take a plane from another Country like France. They therefore needed false IDs but she didn't think that would be too much of a problem using magic.
Aly then went to Gringotts and retrieved all the gold from her vault, not offering any explanation as to why except saying that no one had to know she had been there, especially Dumbledore.
She then put the entire content of her vault inside one of the seven-compartment trunk that she had found in the Room of Hidden Things (like she had taken to call it) in the Room of Requirement. She had also filled three other compartments with all the other things she had found inside the room that she had deemed useful or that she had simply liked (the room really was a treasure trove - sometimes literally since she had actually found gold and jewels there as well). Among other things she had found clothes – mostly wizarding robes but sometimes muggle clothes too – in different colours and fabrics. Some were really old, probably centuries old but perfectly preserved, the style really different from the one of today, resembling Medieval dresses. She didn't know why she had taken them, it was not like she actually had any use for them but the idea of leaving them there abandoned to gather dust didn't sit well with her.
She had also found a series of five books – they were at least a century old – about Potions that didn't use anything else but plants (fruits and vegetables included – no other ingredients from animals, magical or otherwise) and whose preparation didn't require the use of a wand. In these books there were illustrated at least five hundred potions recipes per book, a lot of them were used to cure various illnesses from the most common ones like headaches and menstrual pain to other more dangerous ones, while others explained how to create makeup and creams to improve one's appearance. There were some that would create antidotes to common and not so common poisons, others that were used for agricultural purposes and many that could be used as substitutes for the potions she had studied in class or she would study in later years.
Aly had never been good at Potions, mostly because Snape hated her, but she loved plants. Aunt Petunia had a beautiful garden that she had never bothered to take care of alone. Instead, as soon as Aly was old enough – five years old so not really that old at all – Petunia had given her the task of taking care of it. Aly had come to love tending to the different plants and flowers in the garden, even going as far as researching everything there was to know about them. She was especially interested in their curative uses.
When she arrived at Hogwarts Herbology soon became one of her favourite classes together with Defense Against the Dark Arts. She was probably the only one who could understand the obsession Neville had with it; not even Hermione was so zealous when it came to plants.
Since Aly wanted to try them but she didn't know how to get all the ingredients and not wanting to steal from Snape or the greenhouses, she asked the Room to provide them, unsure if it would work or not. Fortunately, it did. She found with great pleasure that some that she tried worked perfectly and most of them tasted really good too.
She therefore started to fill the trunk with both seeds to plant and finished products ready to be consumed, all under a preservation spell.
She also moved all her other things from her old trunk to her new one and started to bring everything around with her at all times, shrunken, lightened and in her pocket, afraid that once the day of the first task finally arrived she wouldn't be able to retrieve them, or even worse, not to leave at all.
One week until the First Task and Hagrid had asked Aly to meet him at his cabin at Midnight, though he hadn't explained why. Aly wasn't particularly keen on going, afraid to get caught and end up in trouble, something that she really didn't need so close to the First Task and freedom but she knew that she couldn't say no to him, though she hoped it wasn't to show her some new dangerous pet he had acquired like the three-headed dog or the dragon in her first year or the acromantula she had encountered with Ron in second year, though she had to admit that seeing a dragon being born had been an exciting and awe-inspiring experience. She had felt an instance kinship with Norbert – now that she thought about it it was probably the Targaryen blood in her – and she had been sorry to see him go when she and Ron had left him with Charlie.
Aly reached the groundkeeper's hut five minutes to midnight. She knocked on the door, body covered by her invisibility cloak.
"You there, Aly?" Hagrid whispered, opening the door and looking around.
"Yeah," said Aly, slipping inside the cabin and pulling the cloak down off her head. "What's up?"
"Got summat ter show yeh," said Hagrid.
Aly could see the excitement and nervousness coming from Hagrid and started to grow apprehensive. That feeling turned to confusion when Hagrid led her to the Beauxbatons Carriage. Aly followed him and Madame Maxime in what looked for all the world like a date in the moonlight and wondered what the hell she was doing there. What was that Hagrid wanted to show her?
Aly kept checking her watch and noticing the late hour, she was half-tempted to just leave them be, but then — when they had walked so far around the perimeter of the forest that the castle and the lake were out of sight — Aly heard something. Men were shouting up ahead . . . then came a deafening, earsplitting roar…
Hagrid led Madame Maxime around a clump of trees and came to a halt. Aly hurried up alongside them — for a split second, she thought she was seeing bonfires, and men darting around them — and then her mouth fell open.
Dragons.
Four fully grown, enormous, beautiful though terrifying dragons were rearing onto their legs inside an enclosure fenced with thick planks of wood, roaring and snorting — torrents of fire were shooting into the dark sky from their open, fanged mouths, fifty feet above the ground on their outstretched necks. There was a blue one with long, pointed copper horns, snapping and snarling at the wizards on the ground; a smooth-scaled green one, which was writhing and stamping with all its might; a red one with an odd fringe of fine gold spikes around its face, which was shooting mushroom-shaped fire clouds into the air; and a gigantic pearly white one, eyes as violet as its flame, which was nearest to them.
At least thirty wizards, seven or eight to each dragon, were attempting to control them, pulling on the chains connected to heavy leather straps around their necks and legs. Mesmerized, Aly looked up, high above her, and saw the eyes of the white dragon, with vertical pupils like a cat's, bulging with either fear or rage, she couldn't tell which… It was making a horrible noise, a yowling, screeching scream…
"Keep back there, Hagrid!" yelled a wizard near the fence, straining on the chain he was holding. "They can shoot fire at a range of twenty feet, you know! I've seen this Opaleye do forty!"
"Is'n' it beautiful?" said Hagrid softly.
"It's no good!" yelled another wizard. "Full-Body Bind Spells, on the count of three!"
Aly saw each of the dragon keepers pull out his wand.
"Petrificus Totalus!" they shouted in unison, and the Immobilizing Spells shot into the darkness like fiery rockets, bursting in showers of stars on the dragons' scaly hides —
Aly watched the dragon nearest to them teeter dangerously on its legs; its jaws stretched wide in a silent howl; its nostrils were suddenly devoid of flame, though still smoking — then, very slowly, it fell. Several tons of sinewy, scaly-white dragon hit the ground with a thud that Aly could have sworn made the trees behind her quake.
Aly felt a sudden urge to defend it and bring it away from there, though she knew that the Petrificus spell wasn't really harmful.
The dragon keepers lowered their wands and walked forward to their fallen charges, each of which was the size of a plane. They hurried to tighten the chains and fasten them securely to iron pegs, which they forced deep into the ground with their wands.
"Wan' a closer look?" Hagrid asked Madame Maxime excitedly.
The pair of them moved right up to the fence, and Aly followed. Her hands trembled at her side, not sure if it was with fear or excitement, maybe both. The only thing she knew was that she wanted to touch them, the white one especially, though she couldn't say why that particular one. She wondered if it was her dragon blood talking or her reckless Gryffindor side, probably both.
The wizard who had warned Hagrid not to come any closer turned, and Aly realized who it was: Charlie Weasley.
"All right, Hagrid?" he panted, coming over to talk. "They should be okay now — we put them out with a Sleeping Draft on the way here, thought it might be better for them to wake up in the dark and the quiet — but, like you saw, they weren't happy, not happy at all —"
"What breeds you got here, Charlie?" said Hagrid, gazing at the closest dragon, the white one, with something close to reverence.
Its eyes were open. Aly could see gleaming purple beneath its wrinkled white eyelid.
"This is an Antipodean Opaleye," said Charlie. "There's a Common Welsh Green over there, a Swedish Short-Snout, that blue one, and a Chinese Fireball, that's the red."
Charlie looked around; Madame Maxime was strolling away around the edge of the enclosure, gazing at the petrified dragons.
"I didn't know you were bringing her, Hagrid," Charlie said, frowning. "The champions aren't supposed to know what's coming — she's bound to tell her student, isn't she?"
"Jus' thought she'd like ter see 'em," shrugged Hagrid, still gazing, enraptured, at the dragons.
"Really romantic date, Hagrid," said Charlie, shaking his head.
"Four . . ." said Hagrid, "so it's one fer each o' the champions, is it? What've they gotta do — fight 'em?"
"Just get past them, I think," said Charlie. "We'll be on hand if it gets nasty, Extinguishing Spells at the ready. They wanted nesting mothers, I don't know why…probably because they know they are more aggressive than usual like that, the Opaleye in particular. It's a type of dragon usually not particularly aggressive, except when nesting. I tell you, I don't envy the one who ends up with it."
Five of Charlie's fellow keepers staggered up to the Opaleye at that moment, carrying a clutch of huge eggs in different colours between them in a basket. They placed them carefully near the fence. Hagrid let out a moan of longing.
"I've got them counted, Hagrid," said Charlie sternly. Then he said, "How's Aly?"
"Fine," said Hagrid. He was still gazing at the eggs.
"Just hope she's still fine after she's faced this lot," said Charlie grimly, looking out over the dragons' enclosure. "I didn't dare tell Mum what she's got to do for the first task; she's already having kittens about her . . ."
Aly lost interest in the conversation and waited patiently for Charlie and Hagrid to walk way, not interested anymore in returning back to the castle. A part of her psyche was still trying to process the fact that she would have to face a dragon during the first task but most of her mind was still in awe at the dragons to concern herself with it right away.
A noise distracted her and she noticed Karkaroff sneaking away and realized he had found out about the dragons too. So now the only one who didn't know was Cedric. Aly decided to tell him the next day, it was only fair.
She waited a good fifteen minutes for the wizards around to get far away enough from the fence that they wouldn't notice her near the dragons. Then she took a deep breath and took off her cloak before climbing over the fence.
Her heart was beating so hard and fast inside her chest that she could feel it in her throat but she didn't let it stop her.
She raised a hand slowly towards the white dragon, its left purple eye - the only one she could see from that position - watching her warily but still unable to move because of the spell. Aly touched the warm scales of its snout and smiled in wonder, a sudden, powerful sensation deep in her soul warming her from head to toe.
She was almost sure the white dragon in front of her had felt the same thing, though it was difficult to be sure since it was immobile. It was more of a sensation than anything else, similar to the one she felt when she interacted with Hedwig. Like there was a connection there that only they could feel or understand. She didn't know what it was, she only knew that it was very profound.
She caressed the scales gently and whispered to it: "I'm sorry you're here, trapped like this, just because some stupid ministry workers decided it was a good idea for you to be used as an obstacle in an even stupider Tournament. A creature like you should never be in chains. I wish I could set you free."
The dragon's big eye watched her, perfectly still but seemingly completely relaxed. Aly was amazed at how easy it was to read the expression in it, at how expressive it was.
Aly kept caressing it and talking to it, feeling more relaxed by the second too. "My father Leydon wrote that dragons were supposed to be extremely intelligent. I guess he was right. You can understand everything I'm saying, can you? Or at least enough to know that I'm not your enemy and that I don't intend to hurt you. I wish I could bring you with me where I'm going. I doubt Sirius would be particularly happy with it but I wouldn't mind. I guess it's in my blood."
Voices from a few feet away made her turn her head away. A few wizards were coming closer, though she was still covered in darkness fortunately so they couldn't see her. However, she needed to leave before being discovered. She turned to the dragon once again and said, still caressing its snout, "I'm sorry but I have to go now. I guess I'll see you in a week." She kept her hand on the warm scales for a few seconds still, watching its purple eye, then she turned away and left, cloak once again covering her form.
Aly had drawn out the white dragon from the bag. She had almost smiled at seeing the miniature one flapping its wings and puffing out smoke on the palm of her hand, feeling much calmer now. It seemed naïve to think the dragon would not attack her after only a one-sided conversation and yet she knew it to be true. There was a connection between them, she was sure of it.
She had had a strategy before coming here, using the Accio spell to bring her Firebolt to her – Firebolt that she had left in her dorm because she didn't want anyone to know that she had her trunk with her, hidden in a secret pocket inside her school uniform – and fly over the dragon to the basket full of eggs to retrieve the golden one. Now this whole plan seemed unnecessary since she felt she could actually talk to the dragon without being roasted alive.
She waited patiently for her turn, hearing the comments from Ludo Bagman about the other three champions until it was her turn.
Finally she heard the whistle blow. She walked out through the entrance of the tent, the excitement rising into a crescendo inside her. She was feeling reckless and yet, she was not afraid.
She left the tent and walked to a stage surrounded by stones that delimited the space and stands filled with hundreds of faces staring down at her. She vaguely registered them, her attention completely captured by the white dragon at the other end of the stage from where she was standing, crouched low over the basket of eggs she had seen a week ago.
The white dragon was watching her, not making a move to attack, though it didn't seem particularly friendly either at the moment. Aly took a deep breath to find her courage and started to walk slowly towards it, a hand stretched in front of her.
The dragon huffed a puff of smoke but didn't roast her with its fire so Aly considered it a victory.
She started to talk to it like she had done the night she had met it. "I know you don't want to be here, probably even less than I do. And I know that you're only trying to protect the eggs but I promise you, I'm not trying to steal them from you. There is one who is not an egg at all. The golden one, do you see it?"
Aly waited a breath until she saw the dragon moved its head towards the basket for a second and smiled to herself. She knew the dragon could understand her.
"Yes, you see it, don't you? It's right there and it's not supposed to be. If you just let me come closer and take it, I'll be out of your way soon."
In the back of her mind she registered the fact that the crowd was completely silent, probably astonished at the fact that her strategy was simply to talk to the dragon. She had no idea that she was actually speaking Parseltongue.
The dragon looked at her before starting to move its head back and forth and that's when she finally noticed the collar around its neck connected to a chain. Aly glared at the offending item and said to the dragon, "I will free you of your chains to show you that I'm not lying. How does that sound?"
The dragon huffed another hot breath and then finally lowered its head. Aly smiled and came closer, still slowly though, not wanting to spook it.
Once she was close enough to reach the collar around the dragon's neck, she pointed her wand at it. She wasn't sure if an opening spell would work in this case so she simply transfigured the collar into something else: paper in this case. Once that was done, she simply ripped it away from the dragon's neck.
"There you go, now you're free." She said to it before caressing its snout gently. The dragon huffed in gratitude, purple eyes kindly looking back.
Aly moved slightly away from the dragon now, though she was still close enough to touch it, and extended the hand towards the basket, noticing with pleasure that the dragon didn't do anything to attack her.
She was a breath's away from touching the golden egg when the necklace around her neck started to glow.
She didn't even have time to realize what was happening. One second she was standing in the arena near the Forbidden Forest on Hogwarts' Grounds surrounded by hundreds of people, the next, she, the white dragon near her and the basket full of dragon eggs and the fake golden one found themselves in the middle of a desert.