Chapter 25
The next morning, Fred and George were waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. The second she stepped off the last steps, she could no longer see the rest of the common room, which was still very messy from last night's party, but instead Fred's armpit. This unexpected hug did nothing but dissolve her to tears once again. The twins shared a look and guided her to the sofa. They were joined by Lee, Angelina and Alicia a few seconds later.
None of them said anything. No one had anything to say. They were all on exactly the same page and nothing any of them could say would be helpful or surprising.
"This sucks," Lee said, "A lot."
Everyone nodded and Fred said, "Lucky you've got your own team of personal trainers, Bea."
Bianca smiled and sniffed, "You guys better be helpful."
"Damn," George said, "I was planning on just leaving you to it and watching from afar."
"Yeah, it would have been great to watch you struggle," Lee said with fake disappointment.
"But how guilty would you feel when I die in front of your very eyes and you could have done something to help?"
"Meh," George shrugged, "Maybe a little bit."
"Come on, let's go get breakfast. We can't have our little champion starving before the first task."
"That would be one way to get out of it," Bianca pretended to consider this.
"As your personal trainer number 1," Fred said officially, "I am sorry to tell you, that that would be very bad for you."
"As personal trainer number 2, I would like to confirm this and inform you that you will be eating only green food for the rest of the year."
For the next few days, Bianca was in a miserable mood although she seemed to be a little bit happier than Harry. From what she'd seen, he'd fallen out with Ron and half the school seemed to either be against him or not believe he hadn't put his name in. Bianca made sure to always give him an encouraging smile when she passed to try and make him feel better. The Slytherins had developed badges with the Hogwarts logo on them that read 'Potter Stinks' when they were pressed. Bianca found this quite funny as they obviously didn't want to support her any more than they did Harry, but still apparently had to have some way of insulting him. Every time she passed someone wearing a badge, she quietly hexed them so a horrible smell was fixed around them and it was them that stank, not Harry.
A lot more people approached her in the corridors to speak to her or congratulate her, but the more this happened, the less she wanted to talk back. To begin with, she forced a smile and thanked them, but after a few days, she resorted to simply nodding and then after over a week, she did nothing at all. It felt rude, of course, but the more and more people who told her they were rooting for her made her feel even worse and just built up the anxiety which was settling like layers of snow in the pit of her stomach. All of these people who would be cheering for her, expecting great things and a wonderful performance from their champion would just end up disappointed when that champion was slaughtered and embarrassed within a few minutes.
Mrs Weasley had written back immediately with kind words of encouragement. Apparently she'd also written to Dumbledore, expressing her horror that Bianca and Harry were being forced to compete when neither of them wanted to.
The Wand Weighing ceremony and photoshoot were also particularly painful. Poor Harry was interrogated by that cow Rita Skeeter and forced to the front of every picture. Bianca tried to hide behind Dumbledore in as many photos as she could and, not being as beautiful as Fleur or famous as Harry and Krum, she thought she had been quite successful. She tried not to grimace as the individual shots were taken; although quite clearly they were only done as an excuse to get a decent photo of Harry without anyone else getting in the way.
Bianca was getting increasingly annoyed by Ron's constant presence too. She thought it was outrageous, the way he was treating Harry. He clung to the twins constantly when he wasn't in lessons, having nowhere else to go. He accompanied them to Hogsmeade, sat with them in the common room, and joined them at meals. Bianca thought he was being very childish but didn't say anything, too worried about the first task which was looming ever nearer.
She was growing more and more worried with every passing day. With no idea what to expect from the first challenge, she thought she may as well be going into it blindfolded and walking backwards. The day before the first task, she was sitting at breakfast with the twins chatting happily and trying to push away any thoughts of the tournament, when an owl dropped a letter right into her cereal.
She fished it out and opened it. Fred and George saw her face light up and peered across to see who it was from.
The letter read:
To Bea,
Mum told me what happened and I must admit I'm not as excited about the tournament anymore. I suppose you've had enough people telling you that you'll be amazing and all of that rubbish, and, I know you will, but I thought I'd give you a little helping hand. Go and speak to Hagrid when you have a spare hour or so and he'll explain. He'd scribbled a little smiley face and signed it, Love from your favourite brother, Charlie.
Fred scoffed, "He's not your favourite brother."
"Yeah," Bianca said, "Everyone knows I prefer Percy."
"I wonder why you have to go to Hagrid," George said.
Bianca shrugged, "I'll go down tonight and find out."
Hagrid seemed very happy to see her, but Bianca was more than confused when he led her into the forest. They seemed to walk for hours, deeper into the forest. Hagrid rambled on and on about how unfair the tournament was and how he was more than happy to help when Charlie wrote to him.
"Hagrid, where are we going?" Bianca said after at least ten minutes of walking.
But Hagrid didn't answer. He was watching something happening in front of them with a huge smile on his face. Bianca turned and saw why. Explosions of fire were dancing through the trees. At least thirty men were running about chaotically, trying to get four huge figures under control. Bianca realised with a gasp what they were.
Dragons.
A pair of strong arms grabbed her from behind, making her jump out of her skin.
"Guess who?" Charlie whispered into her ear. He turned to Hagrid, "Back already? You only just left."
"Well yeh said Bianca needed to see 'em, and there's not much time left to show her what with the task bein' tomorrow an all."
"Don't remind me," Bianca muttered, "Dragons? Charlie, I can't fight-"
"You don't have to fight them," Charlie said, "Only get past them. I can give you tips, don't worry. You're not meant to know about this though, so don't tell anyone."
Charlie showed her the dragons up close while they were sedated, trying to make them seem less intimidating to her.
"I'll be right on standby, in case anything goes wrong," Charlie said, when he'd told her everything he could, "You'll be amazing."
"You're about the one-hundredth person to tell me that," Bianca sighed, "Do you reckon if I gave Fred a wig, he'd do the task for me?"
Charlie laughed, "As much as I'd love to see Fred in a wig, I'd hate to have wasted my time telling you everything I can about dragons."
Bianca gave him a hug and thanked him.
"You know," Charlie said, "Bill and I decided that when we find out who put your name in that Goblet, we'll throw all four of these dragons at them."
"I'd love to see you try and pick up a dragon," Bianca laughed.
"We'd do it for you," Charlie said, "Now go to bed, it's late and you have to kick a dragon's arse tomorrow."
Bianca smiled appreciatively and followed Hagrid back to the castle. The raved the whole way about how beautiful the dragons were, but she tuned him out. How in Merlin's name was she going to get past a dragon?
When she got back to the common room, it was so late, Fred and George had already gone to bed. She sat in front of the fire, spending a few hours giving herself a silent pep-talk. She decided she would be confident when she stepped out to complete the task the next day. She'd hold her head up high and try her hardest, knowing that if she got through tomorrow her confidence would build and the anxiety inside her would start to melt.
Feeling much more confident, she headed up to bed, still reeling positive comments through her mind like a song on repeat.
The next morning, all of her confidence had dissipated and she felt awful. The image of those huge dragons breathing lethal clouds of fire out of her head. Fred and George had practically forced food down her throat at breakfast and dragged her from lesson to lesson throughout the morning.
It was like Bianca was in a strange trance, unable to do anything for herself. When McGonagall hurried over to her to bring her down to the tent after lunch, Fred and George asked for a minute with her first.
"I'll go and fetch Potter, then," she said, and rushed down the table to Harry.
George slapped her across the face. Her cheek strung and she cried out, "Ow! What was for?"
"Pull it together!" Fred said, "You haven't told us what you're facing, but it'll be dangerous and you won't get through the challenge if you're half asleep!"
Bianca nodded, determination filling her eyes. The boys gave her a quick hug, told her she'd be fine and pushed her towards McGonagall who ushered them out the building and down towards the forest. Neither of the students talked at all.
"When the audience has assembled, I'm going to be offering each of you this bag from which you will each select a small model of the thing you're about to face," Bagman explained, "There are different- er- varieties, you see. And I have to tell you something else too… ah yes… your task is to collect the golden egg!"
Bianca paced around the tent, listening to the hundreds of students filing past outside. Not soon later, she was reaching into the bag to pick her dragon.
She removed her hand, holding a grey model of the dragon Charlie had called a Swedish Short-Snout. It had a number one tied around its neck. She was going first.
Harry disappeared outside the tent with Mr Bagman. Bianca felt slightly ill, but she took a few breaths to compose herself and gave herself the same motivational speech in her head that she'd done last night. When the whistle blew, she held her head up and walked out of the tent. She passed Harry and smiled at him, paused for a second and stepped into the enclosure. The dragon was standing directly in front of her, eyes ablaze.
It opened her mouth, ready to barbeque her, but she dived to the side, running diagonally towards the beast. Everything Charlie had told her the previous night had been wiped from her mind. If the dragon wanted to torch her, it would have to be far enough away, so Bianca figured that by running towards it, she'd force it to back up until it couldn't go any further and hopefully by then she'd have a plan.
However, her adrenaline-filled brain hadn't anticipated that the dragon was smarter than that. She was looking wildly around the stadium as she ran, trying to spot the golden egg, so didn't see the dragon raise its mighty claws and put a foot out to stop her. She was pushed backwards and pinned down by a dragon's foot bigger than her. Her mind raced. What now?
The dragon stared at her with its huge golden eyes. There was an evil glint in it, but also the same thought process that was twirling in Bianca's brain. The dragon couldn't hurt her in this position. Blow fire and it would burn itself. Bianca wouldn't be able to get up fast enough to move if it moved its claws. The stones beneath her were digging agonisingly into her back but she ignored the pain and wracked her brains for a plan.
And so, when the dragon did move its foot, Bianca grabbed onto the claw with both hands and swung her legs up so that she clung to the dragon like a sloth. The Swedish Short-Snout didn't seem to approve of its new shoe, and shook its foot, desperately trying to dislodge Bea, but she gripped on tightly. Somehow, she managed to manoeuvre herself so that rather than being underneath the foot, ready to be completely crushed when it put its foot down, she was holding onto its huge ankle. Bianca climbed up the outside of the leg until she was hunched on its back. Holding onto a scale for balance, she looked around, trying to catch sight of the egg somewhere. The dragon flapped its wings and blew fire manically in an attempt to throw her off, but, safe behind its head where none of the flames could reach her, Bianca's eyes scanned the stadium until she spotted the egg in a nest behind a cluster of rocks.
Carefully she made her way down the back of the creature, nearly falling several times as the dragon thrashed and ran around the stadium. When she finally reached the tail, she dropped down, swinging from it for a second before jumping to the ground. She realised that was probably a mistake when she found herself ducking to avoid getting swatted by a long, deadly dragon tail. She stayed ducked down, hidden from view and occasionally popped up and sent a well-aimed spell to blow up a rock or fake some movement to distract her monstrous opponent. She didn't pull off any complex magic, but Bianca wasn't worried about impressing the judges or performing for the crowd, she just didn't want to die. Finally, she was next to the eggs, but that caught the dragon's attention. Movement amongst her precious eggs had the Short-Snout thundering over, eyes dangerously sharp. Just as it opened its humongous jaws to burn her to pieces, she raised her wand.
"Aguamenti!" she yelled, and a wave of water erupted from the tip of her wand. It drenched both her and the dragon and confused it long it enough to allow her to dive for the egg and grab it. Droplets of water were still falling from the sky as remnants of her spell when the keepers rushed over to control the dragon. Once it was subdued, Charlie ran over in excitement. McGonagall was also rushing over.
"That," Charlie said, "Was awesome. I didn't think anyone would get that close to a dragon."
"I think it's fairly safe to say that she couldn't have been closer to it," McGonagall said, waving her wand to dry off Bianca's dripping wet clothes, "Are you injured at all?"
Bianca shook her head, "No. No, I'm fine."
Bianca didn't watch the judges give her scores because she was scanning the crowd for Fred and George. Charlie was holding her hand but she was looking through the crowds of people who she'd forgotten were even there while she'd been doing the trial. Finally, she spotted them. They were still cheering and jumping around even though everyone else had fallen silent. She laughed and by the time she looked back to the judges, they had already lowered their wands and the scores were gone. She didn't care. Fred and George's delight and pride had been more than enough.
"36!" Charlie was yelling in her ear, "That's not bad!"
"Is that what I got?" Bianca shouted back.
Charlie chuckled, "Weren't you watching?"
Bianca pointed to the twins who now seemed to be doing some sort of choreographed acrobatics/dance routine while chanting her name enthusiastically, "I was distracted," she told him.
"Congratulations," Professor McGonagall said with a slight smile, "Come, I'll take you to Madame Pomfrey. She wants to check up on all the champions after they have fought their dragons."
"I'll catch you later, Bea," Charlie told her and ran off to help his colleagues bring the next dragon out.
Madame Pomfrey ordered her to lie down on the bed so she could treat the scratches and bruises on her back and remove the segments of stone which were stuck in there like huge splinters. Once all the pieces were out, the healer cleaned the grazes with warm water and rubbed on a salve which burned and stung for a few seconds but then felt gently cooling and soothing.
"Lie still," Madam Pomfrey instructed, "It'll take a while for the cream to sink in."
She dampened some pieces of cloth with a little bit of a liquid which looked just like water but smelt very odd and draped them over her back. Bianca thought it was all a bit excessive just for some cuts and scrapes, but Madame Pomfrey said, "They're deeper than you think and we don't want anything getting infected. Merlin only knows what strange dragon-y germs are on those rocks."
Bianca was forced to lie there, listening to the oohs and ahhs of the crowd outside while Fleur and Krum fought to get their own golden eggs. Adrenaline was rushing through her and she struggled to stay still with all the noise coming from the stadium. She was fairly certain she'd been forgotten about until Madame Pomfrey returned, very frazzled and irritated. She removed the cloth and rubbed whatever was left of the salve into Bianca's back and told her she could leave. She passed Harry on her way out the tent, smiled at him and congratulated him before wading through the crowds of people to locate Fred and George.