AN: Good morning everyone and happy Wednesday. This is the second chapter for today and man does it feel awesome to write again. Boy work has been busy and my home life has been nuts with renovations! I also may have possibly started to put up Christmas decorations, what else am I supposed to do with all this free time? Hope your life is going well and everyone is staying safe. You can thank Harry Potter audio books for these chapters, I've been listening to them when I have free time. Anyways today is October 14, 2020 and this is the second chapter today. Anything you recognize is JK Rowling's and anything you don't is mine.
Hermione POV
I paced back and forth in the empty classroom rubbing my temples. Too much had been happening lately. All the information Tonks had given us yesterday, Harry talking to Sirius, and now this. For the Tri-Wizard Tournament Harry needed to fight dragons. And it sounded as if Karkaroff was a known death eater... What the bloody hell would happen next?!
"Dragons!" Ron yelped looking sick. "You think my mum would've told me. Or Charlie."
"Or me!" Ginny said, dropping her head into her hands. Neville wrapped his arm around her shoulders but I ignored them. The twins looked furious but hadn't said anything. Luna was staring blankly out the window absently twirling her wand.
Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville, Fred, George, and Luna had taken to being around me every moment they could since yesterday and were doing their best to keep me calm. Ron and I had explained everything to the others about Sirius yesterday and then he had transformed from shaggy dog to full grown man. To say that Luna had been shocked was an understatement. In fact she had looked terribly hurt.
Sirius had disappeared into the back room with Harry for a half hour. Harry said he was going straight to bed and that Sirius had snuck out the back door. Someone had dropped off a delivery of butterbeer and had to run off before he could finish the conversation.
"Let's just try and keep you alive until Tuesday evening," I said faintly, "and then we can worry about Karkaroff."
"We also need to work on your stuff too Hermione." Harry said tapping his leg.
"You're sure Sirius said it was a simple spell?" George asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Yes." Harry said, hitting his fist against his leg.
For an hour we went back and forth talking about what in the world Sirius could have been referring to. No one had any ideas. Fred eventually said it must be something that was taught at the end of sixth year or seventh year since he and George didn't know.
"We should look in the library." Luna said faintly, her eyes had taken on a strange look that hadn't been there before.
"Agreed." I said and led the way out of the classroom. It took us a half an hour to grab every book we could find on dragons and then we started to flip through them.
"Talon-clipping by charms. .. treating scale-rot. . .' This is no good, this is for nutters like Hagrid who want to keep them healthy. .." Ron said, throwing the book onto the table. Luna immediately put it back onto the shelves.
"Dragons are extremely difficult to slay, owing to the ancient magic that imbues their thick hides, which none but the most powerful spells can penetrate. . .' But Sirius said a simple one would do it.. ." Neville said flipping back and forth between one page and another.
"Let's try some simple spellbooks, then," Ginny, throwing aside Men Who Love Dragons Too Much.
Luna returned to the table with a pile of spellbooks, set them down, and began to pass them out around the table. George immediately opened his and started to flip through his while Fred glared at his. Ron pushed back from the table with a grunt and walked off to look at the books himself.
I was whispering to myself next to Harry who had dropped his head to the table with a loud thunk.
"Well, there are Switching Spells. . . but what's the point of Switching it? Unless you swapped its fangs for wine-gums or something that would make it less dangerous.. . . The trouble is, like that book said, not much is going to get through a dragon's hide. . . . I'd say Transfigure it, but something that big, you really haven't got a hope, I doubt even Professor McGonagall. . . unless you're supposed to put the spell on yourself? Maybe to give yourself extra powers? But they're not simple spells, I mean, we haven't done any of those in class, I only know about them because I've been doing O.W.L. practice papers. . . ."
"Hermione," Harry said, through gritted teeth, "will you shut up for a bit, please? I'm trying to concentrate."
I snapped my mouth shut. Fine. If he wanted to be a prat he could be. I pushed up from the table and walked up to Madam Pince. She had a stack of books in front of her that she was putting back onto the shelves.
"Madam Pince? I was wondering if you have any new books on -"
"Not since the last time you asked Miss Granger. I told you I would let you know if anything changed." Madam Pince didn't even look up from the book she was checking in.
"Sorry." I muttered walking off. Ugh all I wanted to do was learn about this Pristine Mating stuff as much as I could but there was no information out there for it. I wandered back to where our group was sitting and plopped down next to Harry. Before I could pull another book towards me Krum came in.
"Oh no, he's back again, why can't he read on his stupid ship? Come on, Harry, we'll go back to the common room. . . his fan club will be here in a moment, twittering away... ."
And sure enough, as they left the library, a gang of girls tiptoed past them, one of them wearing a Bulgaria scarf tied around her waist.
"Bloody hell..."
"Come on, we'll have better luck in the common room anyways." I said shaking my head.
"Girl you aren't going anywhere." Ginny said, grabbing my arm. "We have some serious girl talk we need to do. You too Luna, come on."
AN: Please review guys! It means so much to me guys and it helps me get out chapters faster!
