It was only at breakfast on the next morning that the young woman reappeared. She acted like nothing was unusual, and they all respected that. The days then went on without any notable event, except for one of Ed's idea which happened to be brilliant. Then the day of the first task was upon them. Every spectator was invited to get to the Quidditch field, which had been modified for the occasion. Meanwhile, in the champions tent, Dumbledore was explaining the rules to the players. The goal was to recover a golden egg that was laying among reals dragon eggs, guarded by a female dragon. Ed would be the fourth to go, just before Harry Potter, against a Norwegian Ridgeback. He then watched the first three candidates leave and come back, and then it was his turn. When he entered the arena and came face to face with the dragon, he knew what he had to do. Indeed, a few days before, he had gone to the requirement room, with the desire to speak to his cousin Eustace. The young boy had been quite surprised to see him pop up in the middle of the living room, but once the young king had told him the reason why he had come, he gave him a capital clue. Dragons had an alphabet. They had therefore worked together to learn draconic alphabet. When it saw him, the dragon growled. Edmund kept his eyes on it, without blinking, and bowed down respectfully. He then lifted his wand, and traced the first word.
"Friend."
He heard the crowd whisper and from the corner of his eye, he saw a member of the Jury, which by the colour of his hair he guessed was Charlie, lean towards the others, whispering something. He traced another word.
"Help"
"Trickery"
"Egg"
"Fake"
"Take"
The dragon growled once again, and then moved away from her nest. Ed took the golden egg, as well as a real egg in the nest.
"Egg"
"Real"
And he presented the real egg to the dragon. The dragon sniffed it, and sneezed. He put the egg back in the nest.
"Egg"
"Fake".
He wrote before of he presented it the golden egg. The dragon spat fire, and then traced two words on the rocks.
"Lie"
"Anger"
Ed rapidly wrote.
"Me"
"Friend"
"Me"
"Take"
"Egg"
"Fake"
"Dragon"
" And"
"Eggs"
"Real"
"Home"
The dragon seemed to hesitate, and then laid back on her nest. It was done. All Ed had to do now was to climb with the egg to the Jury's table. As he was starting to climb, he suddenly felt the dragon's head under his foot. He hence put his second foot down, and managed to keep his balance as the beast was going towards the table. Once the egg was on the table, he got down from the dragon head, and the majestic beast went back to her nest. There was a moment of silence, and then the air exploded in applauses. Then it was time for him to receive his marks. Charlie gave him nine points, noticing he had mistaken a few words for others. Glozelle offered ten points, praising the use of the mind, over the use of strength. Madam Maxime and Dumbledore both settled for 8 points. Only Karkaroff chose to give a 4, deploring the lack of "spectacular". Ed then returned to the champions tent, only to be welcomed by Hermione. He was amused to think that it might be one of her traits, as her younger version had already invited herself in the tent before the task had started, in order to cheer Harry up.
"You have been brilliant!" She exclaimed, jumping in his arms.
"Thanks to you. I knew who to ask for, but you gave me the idea of how to do it."
"So you knew?" Harry interfered.
"I saw the flames in the forest." he lied. "My cousin was once transformed into a dragon, so I know the signs when I see them."
"My cousin was transformed into a pig when I was a kid." Harry said. "It suited him very well."
Hermione burst out laughing at the thought.
"Well, he only had the pig's tale..." Harry added, embarrassed.
"It must have been funny to see." Ed smiled. "How did you find out about the dragons?"
"Erm... Hagrid showed them to me. And I told Cedric, so he wouldn't be the only one not to know. I saw Maxime and Karkaroff roaming around the forest."
"That's not quite the truth, is it? You had no way of knowing if I knew, so you would have come to tell me as well. But Cedric is defending the same school as you are, so you wanted to be equal with him. This is good. This is fair play."
And Ed walked toward the bed that had been prepared for him.
"Oy, Pevensie!" Harry called. "I never said... thank you for saving my life after the world cup."
"I did the right thing." The young king shrugged. "Good luck with your dragon, Potter."
And he turned to Hermione.
"You should go and enjoy the show." he said with an insisting look.
She nodded, and left the tent.