Harry had insisted on wanting to write to Sirius in order to tell him everything that had happened, so we both stole away and hid ourselves out of sight for a while in order to both construct our letters, each of us giving a detailed play-by-play account of what happened whilst facing our dragons before we signed and sealed them. Orion easily took the thickly enveloped letter, hooting softly and nibbling on my ear as if to say that he was glad I was alright, like he'd known I'd been facing something exceptionally dangerous only a short while ago. He perched on my hand as we then looked to Harry and Ron, struggling to get Ron's owl Pigwidgeon to stay still long enough for them to secure the letter to his leg, since it was too heavy to carry in his beak.
Ruffling his feathers, Orion hooted a little more loudly and began to preen himself as if showing off to me what a good owl he was, making me laugh. "Make sure you keep an eye on that one." I said to him quietly until finally, they were both released into the skies and although Ron's owl dropped alarmingly, he eventually managed to get himself back in the air as Orion circled a couple of times to wait for him. Our talk then turned to Karkaroff, as Ron had now been filled in on all the details he'd missed out on with my dad's warning, but for the moment we pushed it aside and instead, returned to the common room for the celebration that was awaiting us.
Fred and George grabbed me first in order to hoist me up onto their shoulders and paraded me around the room, sounding off a cheer rally as Lee released fireworks which filled the air with bright bursts of colours and shapes. I grinned broadly, insisting on eating something first before Harry and I were then floored with about a hundred different questions on what it was like to face our dragons, everyone going over their favourite parts. "Thought you were a real goner at the end there Mia, looked like that dragon had eaten you from where we were standing!" Fred was saying to me laughingly, though he had fixed his arm around my waist and very rarely let me go.
Eventually Lee turned his attention to the two eggs that were now sat on the table, completely forgotten until now. "Blimey, this is heavy." He said as he picked up Harry's, weighing it curiously before he then passed it over. "Open it, Harry, go on! Let's just see what's inside it!"
"You too Mia, hurry up!" George grabbed my egg and tossed it at me, forcing me to drop the leg of chicken I was making my way through in order to catch it with both hands, curling my arms around it with a grunt as I almost lost my balance from it. After yelling at George for being an impatient brat, I then looked at Harry so that we could time it, then together, we twisted the top and let the hinges open so that the eggs revealed a smooth, shimmering stone within as it sparkled with a luminescent glow. It would have been pretty had it not been screaming at us.
The jarring sound made everyone quickly cover their ears as I yelped and dropped it, the egg landing on my foot which then made me yell louder, cursing sharply at the burst of pain but upon rolling on the floor it closed, cutting off the sound so I ducked and twisted the cap once more to seal it as Harry rushed to do the same, silencing them both. "What was that?" Somebody asked as I hissed, clenching my teeth as I quickly fixed my foot from any damage.
"Sounded like a banshee, maybe you've got to get past one of those next!" Neville nervously said that it sounded like someone being tortured, suggesting maybe we had to go through the Cruciatus Curse but George pointed out that it was illegal before continuing.
"I thought it sounded a bit like Percy singing, maybe you've got to attack him while he's in the shower."
"If that's the case, then I think I'd prefer to withdraw from the second task. No one wants to see that." Now standing upright with the egg fixed under my arm, I tried to puzzle through what it could mean. Pretty soon everyone forgot about the eggs, resuming the party as Fred offered Hermione a jam tart which she wisely eyed with suspicion. He promised that he hadn't done anything to the tarts, just the custard creams of which Neville had just taken a bite. We all laughed as Fred pretended it was a joke, then next thing we knew Neville had turned into a giant canary.
"Canary Creams! George and I invented them, seven sickles each, bargain!" Rolling my eyes, I made sure not to accept anything from those two for the rest of the evening, boycotting anything I remotely suspected of being tampered with and thankfully, did not develop a new case of feathers. After all, I still had the feather patterns on my neck from the last batch. Glad to know they'd fixed the problem, though I was still miffed they'd used me as a test subject, I congratulated them on their success and warned them that if they dared try to sneak me some concoction of theirs again, then I would turn myself into a dragon and eat them both. Still, the celebration was an absolute laugh as we spent the night eagerly going over the matches whilst Harry and I made our miniature dragons fly about over peoples head, spouting off tiny breaths of flames every now and then which gave Fred and George the idea to try and make more in order to sell them.
I'd bet Hagrid would put in an order for at least one of every breed. It made me smile thinking that. Our jubilations lasted late into the night and into the early hours of the morning, and when I finally flopped down onto my bed I hardly remembered thinking anything further as I fell into a deep sleep, utterly exhausted from the day and hoping no one would care if I decided to skip a class or two.
