Harry spent a good deal of Sunday afternoon in Fort William, partly because he discovered a book called The Chrome Circle that was a sequel to one he'd read before.

It was actually sort of a funny kind of sequel, because it was the fourth book in the series but it was a very direct sequel to the second book. It also had a character who seemed to be part-dragon and part-kitsune, but who seemed to mostly look all-kitsune, and that sort of made sense in some ways when you remembered that magic was involved (and after all wasn't a kitsune sort of a magical mix of human and fox traits?).

He hadn't finished by the time he had to head back to Hogwarts, but that was okay. It would just go to the top of his to-read pile.

Then when he got back it was for a little bit of homework – this time it was writing about what you needed to remember to safely keep a Niffler, and as far as Harry was concerned it could have just been 'don't have shiny objects in your hoard' and that would be a good start – and talking to Remus.

Apparently he was "on the mend", which was one of those phrases which sounded reassuring. They spent a lot of time talking about the situation with the rest of Remus' unexpectedly acquired new family, as well, and Remus said that it wasn't easier or harder to manage teaching them all what they needed to know (which was mostly 'magic') but just… different.

Harry sort of knew what he meant. It was just odd to contemplate what it would be like teaching an adult to read – even though that was probably something he'd need to do for Empress at some point, since even if she could read it was probably Latin, Greek and the funny English with the long 'f's – and for a wizard learning basic magic was the same thing.

Remus also said that they hadn't yet been able to tell for sure whether any of the Muggle werewolves were still Muggles while they were transformed. That would be very hard to find out, but… well, there was the time.

It sounded to Harry like Remus was doing a tremendous amount of work for someone who was injured, and he said so.

"You know what I'm not looking forward to?" Neville asked, some way into the Feast that evening.

"Old age?" Dean suggested.

"No – what?" Neville blinked. "Why old age?"

"Well, are you looking forward to it?" Dean said, and Neville had to admit he wasn't. "There you go."

Everyone sort of sat in silence for a bit, until Hermione cleared her throat. "No, Neville, what?"

"Tomorrow's feast," Neville said, cutting a slice of pie. "There's only so many feasts you can have before you sort of start to feel stuffed."

"Call yourself a teenager?" Ron asked. "Besides, if you do feel too full, just do some more exercise. I know that's my plan."

"We'd love to have you as a goalie for a football match, mate," Dean suggested. "It's sort of something we already know you're good at."

Harry chuckled, then took his own bite of pie. "Maybe tomorrow they'll do American food or something."

"What counts as American food?" Ron mused. "Those hamburger things?"

"I think they have their own type of pizza, as well," Harry said. "And hot dogs."

He looked up at the high table, where the Goblet of Fire sat in front of Dumbledore. "I wonder who's going to get chosen."

"Maybe it'll be Angelina," Hermione suggested. "She said she'd enter. Or it could be one of the Slytherins."

There was a loud brrrrring noise from up at the high table, and everyone looked up from their meals.

Dumbledore was fiddling with an old-style alarm clock, the type with the two bells, and in the near silence he twisted the key through three full turns.

He put it down on the table, then smiled pleasantly. "Just making sure that we will not miss when the Goblet is ready," he said. "And on that note, I believe it is time for dessert. Please try to take no more than half an hour, for I would not like for anyone to miss out on the last of their trifle if they happen to be our Champion."

Pudding flew by, though fortunately only metaphorically.

Harry took Professor Dumbledore's warning to heart, and did his best to make sure he wasn't starting anything that looked like it would take too long to eat. That still meant there was a lot of choice, and he felt quite pleased with how much he'd enjoyed the feast (was it the Triwizard Feast?) when Dumbledore finally stood.

"I would tell you all that I estimate the Goblet of Fire will require about seventy-three seconds," he began. "But by the time I had finished giving that estimate it will be less. Now, when a Champion has been happily selected, I would like them to come up to the top of the hall, starting here, and then walk along the length of the staff table before going through into the chamber behind my chair. It is there that they will be receiving their first instructions."

He smiled pleasantly. "After which point, with those formalities taken care of, we will get to the other formalities. I believe that Professor Flitwick has a piece prepared for our choir to sing, though he has told me he was singularly unable to find one which fit the occasion, and there will generally be all the things which people like to do to show off at events such as these."

Picking up the alarm clock, Dumbledore nodded gravely. Then he flourished his wand, and at once all the candles were extinguished; the only light was from the Goblet of Fire, which burned brightly enough to illuminate the whole hall with blue-white light.

"I wonder if it would have been Percy if this happened last year," Ron said, quietly.

After several long seconds, there was a sudden gout of dark red flame from the Goblet. Hundreds of sparks fizzed into the air, briefly forming a smoky rooster-tail lit from within, then they dissipated and Dumbledore's hand darted out to catch something.

It was a piece of parchment.

"The champion for Beauxbatons," he announced, "will be Fleur Delacour!"

One of the French students stood up, and about a third of the Great Hall started applauding straight away. Then it spread quickly, just about everyone clapping within a few seconds, and Harry watched along with everyone else as she walked along the length of the High Table.

Her hair was sort of silvery-blonde, the same colour as Draco Malfoy's hair, and Harry wondered if that meant they were related somehow. It made a bit of sense, if you thought Malfoy sounded like a French name, but then again it wasn't as if anyone who had the same hair colour had to be related so it was probably just a coincidence.

"Now she is a quiche," Fred said, in tones of grudging approval.

"You what?" Ron asked, startled enough to look at his brother instead of at Fleur.

Hermione sighed loudly. "Seriously?"

"What does he mean?" Ginny asked. "I must have missed this… does that mean you want Harry to eat her or something?"

"What?" Fred asked. "No, I just mean-"

"After he said he didn't like quiche, I asked him if he knew what it was," Hermione said, sounding like she was barely restraining herself from having a good tut. "And he didn't."

"Be fair," George said. "I knew it was French. I mean, Fred knew it was French."

"I told him it was a kind of savoury French tart," Hermione continued, then stopped and slowly shook her head as just about all of them tried not to giggle.

Then the Goblet of Fire sent out another plume of red smoke and flame, and Dumbledore caught the second parchment.

"Ah!" he said. "It seems the champion for Hogwarts will be Cedric Diggory!"

Harry was pretty much okay with that one, though not as okay as Hufflepuff in particular (who'd exploded into cheering and kept going for several minutes – there was even a long howl from June, abruptly cut off as she realized it was a bit impolite). He liked Cedric, who seemed to be dutiful as a Prefect and pleasant enough as a person, and while he'd probably have preferred a Gryffindor Champion he didn't really mind someone from any of the four Houses.

"Well, at least we know one thing," Neville said. "It's pretty clear he did more homework in his OWLs than Fred, George and Lee."

"Good point," Lee admitted. "You've got us there."

"Has he?" George asked. "I don't remember being got."

"Seemed pretty clear to me," Lee shrugged. "Sometimes you just have to admit this sort of thing."

"Speak for yourself," Fred muttered.

Then there was a third burst of flame, and Dumbledore missed the third parchment. It started to fall, then flew back into his hand, and he wiggled the fingers of his free hand with a twinkle-eyed smile before unrolling the parchment and reading it.

"And the champion for Durmstrang is Viktor Krum!" he said.

"What do you want to bet that nobody else even bothered to enter from Durmstrang?" Lee asked.

"I think some of them did," Ginny frowned, but she didn't sound convinced.

"Well, if he's good at… whatever the Triwizard Tournament expects, and he's good at Quidditch, what isn't he good at?" Neville said.

"Blending in?" Harry suggested. "It's kind of annoying when you can't blend in, take it from me."

"Mate, literally nobody in the Muggle world thinks there's anything unusual about you even when they see you," Dean told him. "You of all people can't complain about not fitting in, given you're the only wizard who can fly in public and nobody bats an eye."

"...I was mostly thinking of when I first came to Hogwarts, and Diagon Alley, and stuff," Harry defended himself. "But yeah, you've got a good point."

"And now that we have all our Champions chosen and our schools satisfied," Dumbledore said, as Krum disappeared through the door, "I fear I must now ask you all to wait a little while we tell them what will be happening. But I can assure you all that you will be able to contribute in a very real way to the Tournament, by cheering on your school's champion."

He winked. "Though I would please ask you to only do so during the actual tasks, as I fear random bouts of cheering amidst the normal lessons are a little distracting."

Then there was another plume of red flame, and sparks cascaded out of the Goblet again. A fourth piece of parchment came flying out, and Dumbledore caught it just after it reached the apex.

In total silence, he unfolded it.

Then, to Harry's surprise, he began to smile.

"It seems that we have a fourth champion," he said. "The champion is 'I had to see if I could do it', and it seems they are the champion of school 'Your move, headmaster'. Alas, the note is typewritten."

Professor Moody cackled up at the staff table.

"I take it this was your doing, Alastor?" Dumbledore added, turning towards the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.

"Yep," Moody agreed. "You did a pretty good job, but I'll show you how I got round it later."

"Bugger," Dean said quietly, as everyone began talking about what had just happened.

"Dean, language!" Hermione chided.

"It's those books Harry and you keep handing around, they have this kind of stuff in them," Dean replied. "Still, I was really hoping I'd thought of everything."

"Professor Moody's been trying to think of everything for ages as well," Harry said. "I suppose it's not very surprising that he's good at thinking of things as well."

Professor Dumbledore, the other head teachers, and both Percy and Mr. Bagman had vanished to brief the Champions, and Professor Flitwick stepped up to the front of the dais.

"While we wait, how about a bit of music?" he asked. "If the choir could assemble?"

June was one of the first out of her seat, partly because when she sat down again after the spontaneous Hufflepuff celebration she'd put her forelimbs on the bench and her hind limbs on the stone of the floor. Harry realized she must have been preparing for precisely this moment, and watched as she and the other choristors took their places.

"I must confess we were quite unable to find something appropriate," Flitwick admitted. "But instead I think we'll give our visitors a bit of local colour. If you could start us off, Joseph?"

A Seventh-Year boy took a breath, held it while Flitwick waved his wand as a baton, then he – and the choir – launched into the Skye boat song, the one which went 'Over the Sea to Skye'.

The next morning, at breakfast, Harry remembered that one of the things Professor Dumbledore had said about the Tournament was that anyone taking part wouldn't have to do their end of year exams.

That sort of made sense if they were going to have to spend time on how to do the Tasks instead of revise, but it sort of didn't make sense for the people who were going to not win the tournament. Obviously saying 'I won the Triwizard tournament' would work pretty well as a way of showing how good you were at magic, but saying you didn't win might not work so well.

And weren't there NEWTs in Seventh Year? Cedric didn't have to worry about that because he was in Sixth Year, but Harry was fairly sure that NEWTs were actually quite important (like OWLs.)

"I wonder what the first task is going to be," Ron said, sitting down next to him. "Any idea?"

Harry shrugged, not really wanting that conversation to go any further.

"Maybe it'll be that you have to do something nearly impossibly hard," Ron added. "You know, like prepare some Pox Prevention Philter while Professor Snape's watching."

"Or finding the right book in the library without Madam Pince noticing," Neville contributed, then blinked. "Actually, come to think of it, when does Madam Pince eat? I've never seen her in the Great Hall."

"Maybe she eats in the library," Dean suggested. Immediately after that, though, he shook his head. "No, you're not allowed to eat in the library."

"Beats me," Ron shrugged, finishing the process of buttering his bread, and put a big piece of smoked ham on the lower piece followed by plenty of cheese. "We've got Herbology first, right?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Harry agreed. "Then I've got Creatures, so you must have Muggle Studies."

"And the afternoon off for me," Ron finished, pressing down firmly on his sandwich and pointing his wand at it. "Hyacinthum flammare. Maybe I'll try and work out what I want my Runes project to be."

"Any ideas?" Neville asked, interested.

"Well, I did have this idea about making rockets and stuff loads more efficient," Ron replied. "You know, so they can go higher with the same fuel. I think it'd be pretty good to have some kind of runic nozzle, maybe?"

He shrugged. "I do kind of need to know more about rockets for that, though. Proper rockets, I mean."

"I'll see if I can find something next week," Harry suggested. "I could have a look in the used book shop as well, that's usually got all sorts of stuff in it."

"Thanks," Ron said.

He was about to say something else, but one of the visiting Durmstrang students had just come over to their table.

"Is… that food on fire?" he asked, pointing.

"Not really," Ron said.

The Durmstrang boy looked at the sandwich, still merrily burning away, then back at Ron.

"Not really?" he asked.

"Nah, it's not really fire," Ron explained. "It's sort of a cheap version. Finite."

The flames vanished, and he took a bite.

"Ah, great," he said. "I got it just right that time."

"Maybe you should start timing it with a watch," Dean mused.

"Nah, I can't make the flames the same temperature every time," Ron dismissed.

Harry got the sense that the Durmstrang student didn't quite know what to make of Ron's cooking. It was a pretty simple idea once you got used to it, though.

Half of what everyone talked about in the lessons was the Triwizard Tournament. Herbology with the Hufflepuffs had all the Hufflepuffs talking about how proud they were of Cedric (and Harry found it hard to begrudge them, because he was sure he'd have felt the same about a Gryffindor champion) and in Care of Magical Creatures Professor Kettleburn took the time to tell them all about how some of the most dangerous events in Tournaments past had involved magical creatures such as the Cockatrice.

Harry promptly got out his copy of Fantastic Beasts, flipped through to the section on cockatrices, and found – as he'd sort of remembered – that there wasn't one.

"Professor?" he asked. "Are cockatrices Beings as well, like three-headed dogs are? They're not in Fantastic Beasts."

"And what house are they going to be in?" Seamus Finnegan added quietly.

"An excellent question!" Professor Kettleburn said brightly, then his whole demeanour changed. "And alas, the answer is no. They are not in Fantastic Beasts not because they are not Beasts but because there are none left at all; the last is believed to have died in 1933. A sad day, a sad day."

"Are there others like that?" one of the Ravenclaws asked.

"A few," Kettleburn agreed. "I must admit I am particularly sad to have never seen a Roc, as they were truly glorious birds by all accounts – but alas they were all gone more than a hundred years before the Statute of Secrecy. A shame, as the wizard Clemenes once wrote that he saw one with a wingspan of nearly a full mile."

The number took Harry's breath away. Oh, there were really big dragons in books like the Silmarillion, much bigger than that – but this was something that had actually existed, and that people had seen.

There were some really amazing things in the world now, things there hadn't been in the past, but sometimes you sort of wished that all the amazing things from the past could still be around as well.

Even if they would have been very hard indeed to hide.

Arithmancy wasn't immune from Tournament-related lesson plans either. Professor Vector drew up a chart on the board, showing them all who had won each of the last forty tournaments before the eventual cancellation of the Triwizard, and then begun asking what they thought might be helpful in working out who was going to win.

Hermione was the first, and suggested exam marks. That got her two points for being so prompt, and Professor Vector used a touch of magic to rearrange things and show them all the average test scores of the champions who'd come first, second and third.

Terry Boot added age to the list, which shuffled things again, and then Harry asked a bit awkwardly if gender was not one.

"Correct, Mr. Potter," Professor Vector said. "As it happens, that has nothing to do with it. Is there another you can think of, instead?"

"House?" Harry asked. "Or would that mean there weren't enough?"

"No, House is a fine suggestion," Professor Vector told him. "The only problem is that Beauxbatons does not have Houses, but we can still look at the Hogwarts students by that measure."

Colours appeared on the board to show all the Hogwarts champions.

"Work out if the House is significant," they were told, and Harry started counting up the total number of Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs and Slytherins in each category.

"So does Durmstrang have Houses?" Neville asked, during the Halloween Feast.

"Pardon?" Dean said. "Um… doesn't look like it? Their uniforms are all the same."

"Professor Vector said that Beauxbatons didn't have houses," Neville explained. "It was in Arithmancy. So I was wondering if that meant that there were no houses at Durmstrang."

Harry cut a slice of pie, and discovered to his surprise that the pie was actually full of goats' cheese pasta. After a moment he shrugged, took the slice, and started eating.

"Hermione will know, won't she?" Ron asked. "Hermione, does Durmstrang have Houses?"

"That depends if they've changed it in the last few years," Hermione replied, most of her attention on carefully folding up a slice of pizza.

"Well, yeah, obviously," Dean said. "If we decided to get rid of Houses then we wouldn't have them, why do you mention it?"

"I actually think I heard about this once," George frowned. "It was in OWL History of Magic? Unless I'm remembering wrong."

"You actually paid attention in OWL History?" Fred asked. "Why?"

"I'd already got enough sleep that night," George countered. "Anyway, I think they keep switching back and forth on stuff… is that what you mean?"

They looked at Hermione, who held up a hand to ask them to wait for a moment.

After swallowing, she nodded. "Yes, reports about Durmstrang are either very inconsistent or they keep changing things about the school. Some of the authors who write about it have said that it's somewhere in Norway, others in Belarus, most recently they've said Bulgaria… there's a theory they actually move it around a lot, which would be very difficult."

"So you mean someone might start in, um..." Harry cast around for a House name, "Wyvernwindow, and then in fourth year the headmaster says 'Nope, we don't have Houses any more!' and that's the end of it?"

"Wyvernwindow?" Ginny repeated. "Where did that come from?"

Harry shrugged helplessly.

Over the next several days, Harry spent a lot of his spare time thinking about how the First Task was going to go.

Explaining what they wanted to Nora might be tricky, and making sure that she didn't get hurt was something that worried him a bit. They were going to be telling the Champions that Nora wasn't to be hurt, certainly, but there was always a bit of worry – even if Empress told Harry that dragons were not so fragile as he feared.

She also admonished him that if there was anyone who should know that, by his stories to her, it was him.

"That's a good point," Harry admitted, nodding to himself. "Thank you."

Empress chuckled at that.

"I suppose sometimes being further away from a problem lets you see it more clearly," she suggested. "How are the hatchlings doing?"

"Well, they're getting bigger, but they haven't said anything yet," Harry replied – they were considerably less than a month old, after all. "I think Ollie's starting to get the idea you don't break things without a really good reason, though."

"An important lesson," the ancient basilisk said solemnly.

"What are you going to be teaching them tonight?" Harry added.

"Just trying to get them used to the meanings of words," Empress told him. "I'm doing the same thing that worked for Nora – I'm still a little surprised it worked, so I don't want to change a single thing in case that makes it not work."

There was a tiny little tink tink sound, like something hard striking stone a long way away.

"Is it early enough we have time for a little of the book?" she asked.

"I think so," Harry decided, reaching for Dragonflight. "When we finish this one, do you want the sequel, or something else?"

"Ask me when we reach the end of it," Empress told him. "How many books are there?"

"At least twelve, I'd have to count them to be sure," was Harry's answer, as he opened it to their place and took the bookmark out. "Now, then..."

That weekend's trip to Fort William turned up a copy of the brand-new The Dolphins of Pern, which added yet another to Harry's collection – or, it would once he'd taken it home from the library and made a copy – and he spent about twenty minutes in the library in case there was something that would fit what Ron was after in there.

Harry did turn up a book about the history of the American space program, which sounded like a good start, and then crossing to the old book shop he paused only to check the weather before practically diving into the stacks to see what he could find.

There was just something about the aura that hung around a second hand book shop. Almost all of the books there were a little the worse for wear after their first owners, and many of them had clearly been well-loved and well-read, which meant that just about anything you picked up had a history.

It was kind of nice to know that if you found a book there and enjoyed it then you shared that in common with someone else – even down to the exact copy of the book. (Even though in this case it was more that Harry was after something for someone else).

Of course, the fact that Harry was in this shop at least once a month – unless he was down in the south of England – probably had something to do with how pleasantly familiar it felt.

Eventually, after getting distracted a couple of times (and then going out to check the weather again, just in case), Harry found something that seemed very much like what he was looking for. It was sort of an old book, from the early nineteen seventies, and described itself as 'an informal history of liquid rocket propellants' - and, much to Harry's surprise, the foreword was by no less a name than Isaac Asimov.

Reading the first few pages of the first chapter made Harry fairly sure that he'd found something that Ron could enjoy. He wasn't sure if Ron would follow everything on the first reading – he wasn't sure he was following everything on the first reading – but the writing style was fun enough and it definitely seemed worth a read.

About two weeks into November a newspaper article appeared in the Daily Prophet about the Tournament, which was a little bit odd as far as Harry was concerned. It spelled Fleur Delacour's name four different ways (with a second 'e' in Delacour, without the 'u' in Fleur, both at once and then mercifully correct), got Cedric Diggory's house wrong and spent about two thirds of the column space on Viktor Krum – mentioning all sorts of things that Harry was fairly sure were a little bit unlikely.

For one thing, about thirty seconds after the papers arrived in the Great Hall during breakfast Krum had stood up and announced loudly that the only thing he'd said to this Skeeter person was 'no interview'. Which was a bit of a hint.

After it seemed like Krum (Harry didn't think he could call him Viktor at the moment) had calmed down a bit, Harry got down from his seat and went over to offer a few suggestions. The first one was the same one Professor Snape had given him, to try reading the Quibbler as it would probably help him calm down a bit, and the second one was simply that maybe he could talk to someone about getting the Daily Prophet to change their story.

Harry did have to admit he didn't know anyone in Britain who would be good at that, as it had never been necessary, but Draco seemed like the sort of person whose family would have to know that. So he pointed Krum at Draco, and said that if that didn't work he'd see if – say – Sirius had any ideas as well.

He wasn't entirely sure why Draco gave him such a strange look at that.

Classes were getting more and more mixed up with talk about what the mysterious First Task might be – or at least the mysterious-to-everyone-else task – and on the Thursday (the seventeenth, just three days before the Sunday the Task was going to be on) Harry overheard someone in the Library say that they'd heard a manticore had been seen in the Forest.

"So that must be the task," Ron said, after a few seconds. "Right? Why else would there be a manticore here?"

"That doesn't sound like a very safe Task," Hermione frowned, looking up from the notes she'd taken in their Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson. "It's not as bad as a cockatrice or – or a basilisk or something like that, but manticores are well known for being extremely dangerous."

"Half of Fantastic Beasts is known for being extremely dangerous," Dean pointed out. "The forest's got centaurs, wargs and acromantulas in there already."

"And sometimes a dragon," Ron added.

"That only happened once," Harry said, feeling a little embarrassed.

"Still counts," Ron shrugged.

"I agree with Ron on this one," Neville contributed. "It could be that Hagrid wanted a new pet, though."

"Manticores talk, Nev," Hermione countered. "They're not really pets."

"Same for dragons, now, at least if you speak dragon," Neville riposted. "And wargs, too – didn't Hagrid once say he tried to raise werewolf cubs under his bed? That must be what he meant."

"Honestly, I should probably ask June about that," Harry said.

"You'd probably have to ask her grandparents, it was fifty years ago," Hermione frowned. "Now… the main bit of our Defence homework is finding a new use in a fight for a spell that's not meant to be used in a fight."

She looked up. "I don't suppose anyone's already thought of one?"

"If I can get it right, the Summoning Charm would be good," Harry said. "I don't think you can summon someone's wand, but how often does an actual fight happen in an empty space?"

"Oh, that's a good one," Ron grinned. "You could summon a table from behind them – even if they realized what you were doing they'd have to turn around and stop the table."

"Exactly," Harry agreed.

"Kind of a pity you got that one, now," Ron added. "Hmm… what about Switching Spells? You could Switch someone's ears with a cactus or something, and then they wouldn't be able to tell what you were casting."

"Those are kind of tricky spells," Neville contributed. "I'm not sure you could actually do that."

"Yeah, but he didn't say they had to be things you could do," Ron shrugged. "Just new uses."

"You wait, that'll be the practical," Dean guessed.

That Saturday, as part of making the arrangements for the actual First Task, Harry went up to Professor Dumbledore's office.

To his surprise (when he'd heard about it) the password was 'Onions', and so the first thing he did when he got up to the office was ask why the password was Onions.

"Sometimes I feel I want a little change," Dumbledore said brightly. "Caramelized onion?"

Harry took a piece of dried caramelized onion from the bowl Dumbledore offered, and he had to admit that it was in fact quite sweet.

"There, you see?" Dumbledore winked. "There is no good in one's password being too predictable, after all."

He smiled. "I do hope I'm not keeping you from your friends on this fine day."

"Not really," Harry shrugged his wings. "Ron's got this idea to see how fast brooms go when you're very high in the air, but that's going to be this afternoon."

Then he frowned, remembering what he'd overheard. "Professor… is there a manticore in the forest?"

"No, but there was one earlier this week," Dumbledore said. "We were discussing things, and I felt it prudent to have the discussion in the Forest rather than alarm anyone too much by bringing her into the school itself."

He steepled his hands. "And if it means that, perhaps, everyone is a little too ready to believe that a manticore might only be around Hogwarts for one of the Tasks… well, who is to blame for that but themselves?"

"That's sneaky, Professor," Harry said. "Are you sure you're not a Slytherin?"

"Alas, my underhandedness has come with age," Dumbledore replied. "Though I dare say that anyone organizing a tournament such as thus really must do all that is in their power to hide what the tasks actually are from the contestants. Otherwise it might be dreadfully easy, and where is the fun in that?"

Harry nodded along.

"Now, as to the Task itself," Dumbledore went on. "Which is tomorrow, as I am sure you are aware. I am afraid you will be missing your usual chance to go to the library in the Muggle town, so if you do have any books due back I recommend you take them today as soon as we are done."

That made sense, and Harry said so even though he didn't actually have any books that were due back.

Dumbledore said that was excellent, and that he hoped that Harry did not have the same problems with library books as Dumbledore had had in the past.

"On one occasion, alas, I forgot about one for more than forty-five years," he explained. "It was so very overdue I had to buy the library a new shelf to make up for it. Now, the earlier you can come down to the enclosure that is to be built behind the Quidditch Pitch, the better..."

Late that afternoon, an hour or so before sunset, Harry landed next to Hermione with a slight whoosh of air from his wings.

Ron followed him down, braking his Nimbus to a stop. "So, uh… do we have the answers yet?"

"How long do you think this is going to take?" Neville asked. "This is kind of impressively complicated Arithmancy."

"It's not that bad," Hermione replied. "The tricky bit is working out if we're sure."

She checked back over the numbers she'd written down before. "Okay, so it took two minutes going up and a minute and a half going down, so we can be fairly sure that brooms go faster in a dive."

"We already knew that, right?" Ron asked.

"You have to time this kind of stuff," Dean shrugged, waving around the stopwatch he'd been using for the last few hours.

"And going from directly over Hogwarts to that beach took about four minutes at three hundred metres," Hermione went on.

"I thought it was a thousand feet?" Ron asked.

"It's metres if you're doing science," Hermione replied. "And at four thousand metres… it was a lot harder to tell. But at least Harry could still tell when you were right over Hogwarts."

She carefully averaged out the times for the high altitude runs – Harry hoped that he'd got the timing right about when to mirror-call Dean to start and stop the stopwatch – and frowned slightly as she wrote the result.

"Three minutes and fifty seconds," she declared. "But it looks like it's just basically the same time, because there was so much variability."

"So a broom goes at the same speed at high altitude?" Ron summarized.

"About the same," Hermione clarified. "But… what did that book say… the pressure up there is about sixty percent of the air pressure at sea level. So it should have been going noticeably faster if it was pushing just as hard."

"What does that mean for flying really high on a broom, then?" Neville asked.

"Well, it means that if you could breathe and take supplies and stuff, you could fly to the moon on a broom," Hermione answered. "I think. Depending on if they work without any air at all. But it'd take, um, about two months?"

"So you'd need a really big broom and lots of supplies," Ron summarized. "Still, you could use a broom for steering a spaceship in orbit, couldn't you? Or maybe getting it to space."

"If they work in space then that would work," Hermione said.

"I think we need to learn the Bubble-Head Charm," Harry suggested. "Then we can check if they work in space at all."

"We'd need a long time to do it," Hermione warned. "But… maybe not as long as all that, actually. There's still some air even fifty miles up – I mean even eighty kilometres up – but once you get past maybe, um, fifteen kilometres then it'll probably work in space if it works there. And that's only about twelve or so minutes going up."

She pointed at Harry. "Don't forget that you're going to need a broom to get up there as well."

Harry nodded, and was about to ask about how much weight a broom could carry when he noticed someone coming out from the castle to meet them.

"...is that Malfoy?" Ron asked. "Where are his thugs?"

"Vincent and Gregory aren't thugs, Ron," Hermione hissed. "And he's called Draco."

"He's called Draco Malfoy," Neville supplied helpfully. "So either of them might work."

"Potter," Draco called, once he was a bit closer.

Harry waved helpfully, in case Draco needed reminding which one he was.

"Can I see the dragons?" the Slytherin boy asked.

"…what?" Ron said, entirely baffled.

"I can't ask that big Nora one, not and get an answer I'd understand," Draco went on, speaking as if it really should be quite obvious what he meant. "And the groundskeeper's busy with the dragons half the time. So. Can I see the dragons?"

Harry didn't really see a reason to say no, partly because it wasn't as if the dragonets were going to be in danger from Draco.

Every time he went to see the three little dragons, now most of a month old, Harry was amazed with how quickly they were growing. Nora had grown just as fast, but there was just one of her and there were three of them – and, as a result of all that, they had one another to play with and were full of energy.

Sally came bounding over when they approached, wings flaring out to help her jump – not quite actually taking off, not yet – and skidded to a stop in front of Harry before regarding him with a tilted head.

"Which one's this?" Draco asked.

"Sally," Harry replied, watching her reaction carefully. He wasn't able to tell if she'd reacted more to the word than to any other word, but then Ron coughed.

"Mate," he said. "You answered in Dragon."

"Oh, right," Harry realized, and this time made sure to not look at the Short-Snout dragonet. "She's called Sally. She's the only dragoness, the other two are boys."

"And they are safe?" Draco added.

"They're what you'd call 'dragons'," Dean said. "So no, they're a bit dangerous."

"But so are wizards," Harry added.

"Sally! Sally!" Hagrid called, coming over the top of a rise in the ground. "There she is. Turn me back for five seconds and off she goes."

"Does that mean you've turned your back on the other ones?" Draco asked.

"...hadn't thought of that," Hagrid muttered. "Think you can bring Sally over, Harry? I've got to make sure Ollie or Gary hasn't buggered off."

He eyed Draco for a moment, then shrugged.

It was an unusual evening.

None of Harry's friends knew quite what to make of Draco, and Harry didn't either. It seemed like Draco didn't know what to make of Harry's friends either, though, and none of them mentioned anything about what had happened over the last few years.

Draco did seem to be fascinated by the young dragons, though, and as far as Harry was concerned that probably meant he couldn't be all bad.

AN:

I'm going to choose to assume everyone's surprised at who the Champions are.

As for the book Harry got Ron, that's called Ignition! (Including the exclamation mark.) And is quite a wonderful if sometimes alarming read.

I know people have been asking for a book list. I don't actually have one compiled, unfortunately...