Book Two ― A School Divided
Chapter Thirty-Four ― Four Ways to Beat a Dragon
Story Summary: Following the events of Third Year, Harry Potter explores the Chamber of Secrets and finds a portrait of Salazar Slytherin. Following Slytherin's advice, Harry will attempt to break out of the games set upon him and finally be free. But how? And is freedom even possible for the Boy-Who-Lived?
Book Summary: Returning to Hogwarts after spending the summer scheming politics with Daphne and furthering Muggle-born education with Hermione, Harry is forced to act prematurely to ensure the safety of the First-Years he promised to help. With Sirius in forced exile, a Tom Riddle with a different plan, a suspicious Dumbledore, and a dangerous tournament, is Harry's desired freedom even possible? Can his ambitions coexist with his desires?
Note: This chapter has been beta-ed by user Outliner.
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Harry walked to the secluded classroom in which he knew Daphne and Hermione would be waiting for him. They had agreed to meet there at Harry's request, and he had just found out some information.
It would be more accurate to say that his feet were carrying him more than he was walking. He felt like his head couldn't hold any conscious thoughts in his current state of mind, and he did not expect to snap out of it until he reached the girls. Even then, it was only a slight chance.
When he opened the door, the girls were silently ignoring one another, but their reactions of simultaneous surprise were enough to tell a distantly aware part of his mind that he had to look terrible because both their visages showed enormous concern immediately.
"Harry, what happened?" Hermione asked warily, eyeing Daphne suspiciously. The Slytherin did not notice; her attention focused on Harry instead.
Harry silently dropped a piece of paper into the desk that separated both women, and Daphne picked it up first, to the frowning protestation of Hermione. Her expression quickly paled and then turned to scorn.
"This is not a funny joke, Potter," she said, her voice shaking.
"It's not a joke," Harry said hollowly. "I just confirmed it with Hagrid."
"And you trusted the great moron?" Daphne asked incredulously, though her voice carried little heat.
"Don't go there," Harry warned. He would be angrier at the insult to his first friend, but he was still too shaken up with dread to focus on anything else with any ardor.
"This can't be happening," Hermione whispered, horrified. "No, no, no, no."
"You saying no doesn't fix the issue, Granger," Daphne barked. "Weasley has to be messing with you," she then turned to Harry. "I thought you weren't talking?"
"Ron wouldn't joke about this!" Hermione defended their friend angrily.
"He wouldn't," Harry agreed. "It also explains why Charlie didn't leave the country after the World Cup."
"Oh God, why didn't I notice that," Hermione moaned into her hands. "Idiot, Hermione."
"Who is this Charlie, and why is his presence important?" Daphne demanded, frustrated by the omission.
"One of Ron's older brothers," Harry explained. "He's a dragon handler in Romania."
With that piece of information, Daphne's disbelief crumbled, and her face whitened even further, her blue eyes dimming as destructive images of dragons rampaging through the First Task dominated her mind.
"Why didn't my father tell me?" She whispered after a long moment of silence. "One of his allies is on the committee organizing the Tournament."
"I imagine there was an Oath involved," Hermione suggested slowly with a 'are you stupid' expression on her face. Harry sent her a reproving look, but she ignored it.
Daphne silently grabbed the notebook connected with her father and furiously scribbled 'dragons?' Barely a minute later, Cygnus responded.
"He said he's glad I finally found out about it and that more instructions are going to come from Zacharias Smith," Daphne grumbled in a bad mood. Harry knew her enough to know that Cygnus likely criticized her about how long it had taken for her to figure it out, which made him feel a bit angry on her behalf.
"How does that work?" Hermione said, reaching out for the notebook, only to have her hand fiercely slapped by an irate Daphne. "What did you do that for?"
"That's my private notebook with my father, you imbecile," the Slytherin hissed.
Hermione reddened at being called an imbecile and was about to snap something back at Daphne when Harry slammed his fist heavily on the table, startling both girls.
"Will you cut it out?" He snarled. "I'm going to have fight dragons, and you're too busy with your little catfight!"
Both girls looked shamed-faced, but Harry felt some regret at losing his patience. That had been happening a lot lately. He rubbed his forehead with his fingers to release some building pressure. He had been under too much stress lately, and over the previous weeks, keeping a lid on his temper was getting harder.
"Right, so, what now?" Harry finally asked when he recovered his cool.
"We need a strategy," Hermione mused. "What do we know about dragons?"
"They are enormous murder machines that take dozens of wizards to control," Daphne tried to deadpan, but her voice cracked towards the end, and the amount of fear she was feeling made itself known.
"Harry isn't going to fight it," Hermione snapped. Harry and Daphne exchanged a glance. If their estimations and goals were aligned, he would very likely have to fight it. "No one is crazy enough to make teenagers fight dragons. They'll probably be guarding something. Dragons are hoarders."
"I'll make sure to give Harry a nice shiny thing he can throw at the dragon to distract it," Daphne said with undisguised vitriol.
"What did I just say?" Harry growled, silencing Daphne. Hermione smirked smugly until he turned to her, and her confidence wilted as she looked down to the ground. Then, he sighed. "Look, we do need more information. I'm going to talk with Zacharias tomorrow and see what he can tell me."
"Until then, we can still try to think about what dragons have in common," Hermione said shyly. When the other two just looked at her, she continued. "We can try to think of its weak points and characteristics until you get confirmation on the species."
"Might as well," Harry said, sitting down heavily. "Should we get a book on the library or something?"
"I can do that!" Hermione volunteered excitedly and then visibly vacillated when she realized it would mean leaving the two of them alone in the room.
"I'll go too," Daphne took pity on her before taking a glance at Harry. "You seem like you need some alone time."
Harry nodded vacantly and kept his eyes fixed on the table as the girls left the room in silence.
Dragons. Actual dragons.
The world was full of idiots.
"That's what my father managed to tell me," Zacharias Smith whispered with exaggerated zeal, as Harry and the Hufflepuff lagged behind everyone else as they walked to their Care of Magical Creatures classes.
"You have got to be kidding me," Harry murmured under his breath, feeling a strong headache come on.
"Sorry," the other boy said with uncharacteristic sincerity, none of his usual pomposity apparent. "It's not much, but it's all I have."
"It isn't your fault, Smith," Harry sighed tiredly. "It's just such nonsense."
The other boy nodded and then nervously looked forward, to where his friends were talking excitedly in a group. Harry gestured for him to go there, and the other boy smiled sheepishly, wished him good luck, and restored the aristocratic and overly dignified airs that surrounded him constantly.
The fact that the dragons would be chained and that the chains would serve to weaken them a bit were positives for Harry, but the species of dragons he would have to fight were very, very bad news. Reading the book yesterday, he had memorized the worst possible scenarios, as he was sure his luck would prevail, and indeed it had. The Hungarian Horntail would be one of the four possible guardians of an unspecified magical artifact he would have to retrieve from a nest. Knowing his penchant for attracting unhealthy amounts of danger, he was sure he would get that dubious honor.
He let out a frustrated breath. He wanted to leave the class before it even began to prepare, as was his prerogative as champion, but Hagrid had already seen him and was waving at him excitedly. He didn't want to upset his friend.
It did not mean that he didn't spend the entire class fuming.
Finally free, he marched to Professor Moody's office. Daphne and Hermione agreed that with only one week until the Task, there were hardly any spells that would help him succeed. They had suggested he used his greatest asset, his ability with a broom — Harry had felt incredibly frustrated when Hermione said he could fly better than he could do anything else, and while he understood the logic behind the point, it didn't make Daphne's open amusement at his poorly-hidden anger any easier to swallow — to outmaneuver the chained dragon.
It was a sound strategy for an unmemorable performance, but Daphne had immediately said to him after Hermione was out of earshot that the broom was still a good fighting instrument for increased movement speed even with their plan of being more aggressive. Daphne wasn't sure what being more aggressive would entail but had asked him not to put himself at unnecessary risk.
At which point he snapped that being anywhere in the vague vicinity of a dragon was an unnecessary risk, and she merely eyed him sternly to get him to shut up, which he didn't. Things had been tense for him lately, and though he felt bad for snapping at Daphne, a growing part of him didn't care. It was already fixated on the dragon he would have to face.
He had already sent word to Cedric through Susan about the dragons, and the older Hufflepuff had been much warmer to him in the immediate aftermath of that bit of information; after he got over his initial wave of shock. During lunch that day, all four champions were stricken in equal measure, which was more than enough to show that they all had heard about the dragons the same day.
He arrived in Moody's office. Neville was waiting for him already, but the other boy took one look at his face and backed away from the greeting he had already begun. Harry frowned confusedly at the boy's reaction and then turned to Mad-Eye, who was eyeing him intrigued.
Harry put an itemized list of spells, all focused on one specific type of magic. Moody looked at him fiercely with the good eye, while the magical eye read the spell list.
"So, you figured it out, Potter?" He asked gruffly.
"Yes," Harry nodded.
Moody took a look at the list and looked at him with both eyes.
"Where did you learn about these spells?" He asked neutrally. Harry shrugged, knowing he wouldn't be able to lie to the man anyway, and unwilling to volunteer his possession of Rookwood's book. When Moody saw he wasn't getting an answer, he scoffed derisively. "What makes you think you can learn these spells, lad?"
Harry silently raised his wand, and without taking his eyes away from the Professor, he hissed. A green ice whip formed from the tip of his wand, filling the room with some small frost. Neville gaped at Harry, who was in the middle of a battle of wills with Moody.
Harry felt some slight tingling in his forehead, and he angrily snapped his eyes away from the Professor, sending the whip waving around the office. Moody nonchalantly cut down the whip before it could hit anything and commented frostily.
"You have no mental fortitude to be learning these spells," the Professor said.
"I don't need it to use them, apparently," Harry snarled, still not looking in Mad-Eye's direction. "As I just showed you."
"There's a difference between casting them and using them," Moody snapped. "Any idiot with a wand and enough power can cast these spells."
"So, what's your point?" Harry demanded. "I clearly have enough power to do it."
"Don't be so arrogant, Potter," Moody warned. "You are far from the first powerful wizard your age to try and do things before you're ready for them, and you are far from the most exceptional one. You think I didn't see your little book in there?"
Harry froze, but when an admonishment did not come, he breathed deeply.
"I'm going to practice them regardless," Harry said firmly, finally looking the man in the eye again. "You can be here for it or not."
Moody looked at Harry for the longest time and then turned to Neville.
"Hold on today, lad. You're getting cold," when Neville shakily nodded, Harry smirked triumphantly, until he felt a wand press against his neck. To his shock, the Professor had moved while he was distracted and had pinned him down with the wand before he could even react. Mad-Eye leaned forward, looking Harry dead in the eye, and whispered. "And don't think this conversation is over, Potter. I do not appreciate getting an ultimatum from a child. I'm only doing this because I wouldn't be able to look James in the eye if you died under my watch."
Mad-Eye let him go unceremoniously, leaving Harry to frown and rub his neck frustratedly. At least, he'd be learning. But he didn't feel very fulfilled at the moment.
The day before the First Task, Harry entered the Chamber for the first time since his argument with Salazar about Snape. He expected a cold reception, but he simply got a sarcastic drawl.
"The prodigal son returns," Slytherin greeted him indifferently. "Child."
Harry, who had grown unused to the greeting since it hadn't been used nearly as often by the portrait since the beginning of the year, immediately grew irritated. He was about to enter possibly the most difficult fight of his life — likely only the basilisk itself could surpass a dragon — and all that people had done whenever they greeted him is to be unproductive and unhelpful. Hermione fought with Daphne, Daphne fought with Hermione, Neville retreated back into his shell, Ron still wasn't talking with him other than sending him anxious looks, Susan looked wary but wasn't close enough to do much other than send him shaky smiles of encouragement, Moody had poked him with that staff of his with poorly concealed anger for all their training sessions, which had so far not helped him much, and now Salazar was giving him shit.
"I am not your son," Harry hissed angrily.
"Did I say you were?" Salazar inquired with a raised eyebrow. "Your temper is as loose as ever, I see."
"Well, an incoming fight with a dragon tends to do that with you," Harry snapped. "I apologize for my impertinence."
"Do you believe that Godric, or Merlin, or I, or any one of the great wizards to whose level you aspire to rise, would be shaken by that confrontation?" Salazar asked evenly.
"If you were fourteen, yes!" Harry yelled.
"Life doesn't wait for you to be ready," Salazar warned him stonily. "Make yourself ready."
"What do you think I've been doing?" Harry threw his hands in the air. "I'm training, but it's a dragon! What do they expect me to do?"
"The Ministry wouldn't let you fight against a dragon without safeguards about your safety," Salazar dismissed the concern breezily. He was about to continue when Harry interrupted him.
"Oh yeah, they put some charms in the chains holding the dragons back to weaken them, which just means I get to die from dragon fire at a slightly slower rate," he said with glib excitement.
"Do you honestly believe that your magic is the only thing you need to prepare before you fight a dragon?" Salazar asked, seemingly somewhere between sad and disappointed. "You have greatly neglected to work on developing your mind, and you will suffer as a consequence, regardless of the result of your incoming dispute."
"I would have done better if your instructions weren't impossibly vague," Harry snarled. "How do you expect progress with something as vague as think about it?"
"I have never held anyone's hand when it came to Occlumency, and I am not beginning with you," Salazar said firmly. "Learn it. You must learn it."
"Why?" Harry asked, frustratingly rubbing his head with his fingers, again suffering from mounting headaches. "You never tell me why. You just told me it's advantageous, and beyond protecting my head from Dumbledore, why?"
"If you do not know why by now, Child, I do not know if you ever will know," Salazar said silently. "Now, go. I have nothing more to teach you until you understand what is wrong with you."
Harry tried to continue the conversation with the portrait, but Salazar ignored him from then on. He eventually left, grumbling and feeling betrayed by yet another person.
Harry didn't even try to sleep. He surrounded himself with the Invisibility Cloak and went straight to the Room of Requirement as soon as he could. He frowned when he arrived at the portrait of Barnabas the Barmy at saw Daphne waiting for him, casually leaning against the entrance to the Room.
"What are you doing here?" Harry asked, not looking at her and already wishing for a room in which to relax.
"I can ask you the same question," she said with little warmth. "You have a dragon to fight tomorrow, and you're not sleeping."
"I don't see how sleep is going to help me," he grumbled. No door appeared when he finished walking for the third time. He frowned and faced the unchanged wall.
"Then you're an idiot," Daphne said uncaringly, forcing Harry to look at her. Her blue eyes were cold and unwelcoming, and it would have been more startling for him if he weren't so frustrated between the Room of Requirement being broken and the insult to his intelligence happening in quick succession.
"What do you want, Greengrass?" Harry snapped.
"For you to stop being a moron and be back to normal," Daphne responded frostily, though her eyes shined sadly for a brief second at being addressed by her last name for the first time in so long.
"I'll do that after I beat the — how did you phrase it — enormous murder machine that takes dozens of wizards to control?" Harry smiled coldly, his eyes not showing any affection at all.
"You are being an insolent little shit," Daphne hissed, her face rapidly flushing.
"I'll have you know that I'm not little," Harry drawled, frowning again at the wall when it failed to open the Room for the second time.
"Great, you're a grand piece of shit," Daphne seethed. "Congratulations."
"Thank you, I worked hard for it," Harry smiled without sentiment again, feeling another increasingly painful headache coming up.
"Harry, please, cut it out!" Daphne implored him.
"Cut what out?" Harry barked.
"You know what I'm talking about!" Daphne answered. "It's fucking obvious! You're not yourself! You haven't been for more than a week now!"
"Oh, I'm sorry for being slightly concerned about fighting a fucking dragon," Harry snarled, and when the door failed the open yet again, he finally snapped. "Why is this fucking door not working?"
"What were you wishing for?" Daphne demanded.
"How is that any business of yours?" Harry growled. "This fucking thing just decided to bail on me, just like everything else."
"Just like everything else?" Daphne hissed angrily, her face flushing again, before closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, and asking more sharply. "What were you wishing for?"
"What does it matter?" Harry snapped.
"Answer the fucking question!" Daphne yelled, wide-eyed.
"I am trying to find a place to relax in this fucking castle because I can't sleep! That happens when you're expecting to fight a dragon!" Harry cried out.
Daphne silently moved back and forth three times in front of the portrait, and sure enough, a door appeared. Harry gaped at her wordlessly while Daphne just raised an eyebrow defiantly and puffed out her chest.
"What did you do?" Harry demanded pointedly.
"I didn't do anything, Potter," Daphne answered coldly. "What you are asking for is impossible. The Room can't help you."
"Great, another thing that fails me when I need it," Harry drawled before smiling coldly at Daphne and grinning coldly. "Feels familiar."
Daphne teared up slightly, but Harry couldn't tell if it was in anger or sadness. He felt instant regret, but it was muted behind layers of something he couldn't quite place, and all his words felt more like reflexes than things he was ordering out of his mouth.
"I am only not leaving you out to dry because I know this is not you, Harry Potter," she whispered lowly. "But I do this again, and I will leave."
"Do what again?"
"Shut the fuck up and listen," she said in a warning, low voice, stepping closer to him slowly. "The reason the Room isn't giving you a place to relax is that the only solution is inside your head."
"Not you too," Harry growled. Before he could continue, his face was aching and he was facing the wall. He felt Daphne's slap before he processed it, and by the time he had recovered fully, she was already talking again.
"I told you to shut the fuck up and listen, and you are going to shut the fuck up and listen, Potter," she told him tonelessly. Then she forced him to look at her in the eye, and even in his addled state, he was taken aback by how cold her blue eyes looked at that moment. "When everyone you know tells you something, when Moody — and yes, I know about him — tells you something, when Salazar — yes, about him too — tells you something, when Rowena's magic tells you something, you listen. But most of all," she said, before slapping him again for good measure. "When I tell you something, you listen."
Then she leaned forward and kissed him softly, just for a second.
"I want my Harry back," she whispered. "But I will not waste my time on you if you don't want to be rescued."
With that, she left him there.
Cedric went first. The crowd watched enraptured as the first Hogwarts Champion nervously stepped into the arena and immediately faced his dragon, the Swedish Short-Snout. The creature was well named, with a flat and round face, but the thing which caught the most attention on the beast was the beautiful blue silvery-blue scales, which made for a sharp contrast with the yellow fangs on its two legs. Closer to a wyvern than to the modern conception of a dragon to the British, whose mind always went to the Common Welsh Green, it was not nearly as fast as the other three dragons on the ground.
In compensation, its flames grew hotter than almost any other dragon's. As a native of the cold mountains of western Sweden, near the mundane murder with Norway, it needed extreme warmth from its fire to keep itself on an adequate body temperature. Even now, Cedric watched as the dragon breathed a column of blue fire that half-melted some stones nearby.
Gulping dryly, Cedric eyed the dragon warily but stepped closer, doing his best to wave at the cheering crowds of Hogwarts students, to whom he was still the favorite.
He couldn't be more thankful for Harry for letting him know about the dragons, but it wasn't like he knew which species he'd be fighting. Luckily, his primary strategy perfectly matched the Swedish Short-Snout and its relatively slow ground travel speed. As long as the dragon didn't take off flying, he should be good.
He had studied the environments of several possible dragon species, and among them, he had read about the animals the Swedish Short-Snout liked to eat.
Transfiguring the rocks into wolves and dogs, he sent the transfigurations scouring across the arena, trying to make enough noise to pique the dragon's interest. He was betting that the number of people nearby might overcome its olfactory sense and force it to go by sight and sound instead.
Cedric sent a wolf close enough to the dragon that the creature advanced on it with a snarl, trying to bite it, but his creation leaped out of the way, howling all the way. He sent other wolves in that direction, hoping to steer the dragon away from the nest.
After some brief hesitation, the dragon sent a long burst of fire in the wolves' direction, but with enormous concentration, he managed to make all of his creations evade the dragon's attack. All the while, he sent one or two dogs to harass the beast, gnawing and gnarling at its two feet, trying to anger it.
Eventually, the dragon let out a mighty roar and snapped its tail against one of the dogs. Mercifully, the Swedish dragon was slow, and Cedric managed to send his dogs in the direction of the wolves. The dragon followed, sending fire all the while, forcing the Hufflepuff to take each step carefully, keeping half an eye on the dragon egg he had to capture, and the rest of his attention on the transfigured canines.
When he thought the dragon was far enough from the nest, he sprinted to take the egg, relishing on the approval of the crowd and the words of praise coming from Bagman. He took the egg and waved to the crowd victoriously when their clapping and cheering shifted to a gasp.
Cedric turned to see the dragon facing him furiously, one of his wolves torn to pieces and smashed back into rock, the others standing around uselessly. Evidently, the distraction had ended, and the dragon understood the origin of the ruse. The Hufflepuff froze just enough to admonish himself for getting too concerned with putting on a good show and not covering his bases appropriately when the Swedish Short-Snout sent a burst of fire in his direction.
Not having time for fancy tricks, he just threw himself to the side, crawling towards the nearest cover. Though he avoided certain death from the fire, his trouser leg was burning and scorching his skin. He hissed sharply and cast an Aquamenti to put out the fire, but the damage was already done, and he could see the burned skin through the hole in his trouser.
He got up, ignoring the protest from his leg, and formed a group of round balls from the chunks of burning rock that had got the brunt of the dragon's fire. He sent them in the direction of the dragon, trying to hit its eyes or nostrils, anything that might take its attention for just a moment.
After the fifth rock hit the dragon harmlessly and he had already been preparing for another dive, the sixth connected with its dark-colored eye, and the dragon stepped back and looked up, crying in pain. While the dragon occupied itself with recovering its sight, Cedric made a break for it.
As he was about to cross the safety of the protective ward, his back caught some of the heat of a last-second attack from the Swedish Short-Snout, which set his robes on fire. He was struggling to extinguish the fire with the egg on hand but was saved by Madam Pomfrey, which promptly set him to sit down so she could examine the burn wounds.
That had been uncomfortably close.
"He did well," Tracey said to Daphne from the corner of her mouth.
"He got injured," Daphne answered back in a low voice.
"He fought a dragon and escaped," Tracey said incredulously as they waited for the next contestant.
"It's still impressive," Daphne granted, looking at Tracey briefly before looking back at the tent where the other champions waited for their turn. "But I don't think he'll be the best."
The person which Daphne thought would do best — a suspicion shared with Harry — came next. Fleur Delacour was received warmly, though with less raucous enthusiasm than had been afforded to Cedric. The French girl had expected as such, as was unbothered by it. Applause for Cedric would be temporary, lasting as long as the Tri-Wizard did. But she would always be set apart from others by virtue of her heritage, always in people's glances, forcing them to look back as they walk past her.
She deserved the distinction, but her beauty had nothing to do with it. She was proud of her appearance, of course, but it was effortless, as it should be considering who she was. Her true focus of effort, and the real point of differentiation between her and others, came at her skill.
A few recognized that already. Some who surrounded her in Beauxbatons did so to be nearby flawless beauty, true, but some focused on her grades, her words, her skills, and her elegant spellcasting. Some others still mistook those talents as characteristics of a Veela, but they were Fleur Delacour's domain and not her people's. She would not allow herself to be reduced to a cheerleader for the Bulgarian Quidditch National team.
She focused on the Common Welsh Green. A fearsome animal, to be sure, and calling it common was an insult to its power and majesty. It was also the most beautiful of the dragons, looking curiously at Fleur with big, violet eyes which seemed to hold a certain animalistic version of wisdom. It was resting on its front legs, the green scales shimmering slightly with the sunlight.
Fleur appreciated the dragon respectfully. It was calmly looking at her, looking completely unthreatened by her presence. There was no aggression in the dragon's eyes, even as it stood chained and forced to entertain people. A large part of Fleur was repulsed by the idea of magical creatures being forced to play part in the entertainment of wizards, but she let the indignation wash over her like a wave. She had not expected any civilized choices from the British Ministry.
Madame Maxime would be getting some words, however.
As Fleur approached the creature, it finally showed some sense of protectiveness, by leaning forwards slightly and emanating a very burst bark of melodious song in the form of a roar. It was beautiful for Fleur, who stood there listening to it. She knew she was still outside the dragon's range of fire, Common Green's predilection for short bursts of flame meaning she would be able to weave around an attack with ease at such a long distance.
The song gave her an idea. It was fitting for a creature with a beautiful voice to face a witch with a beautiful voice, Fleur thought with some amusement, as she smoothly waved her wand around, subvocalizing in French the entire time. As she expected, a thin and faintly blue dome emerged, surrounding her and the dragon whole. She allowed herself a brief moment of respect for Dumbledore for ensuring that his protective wards did not cut off the possibility of high-level enchantments being made inside of it.
She looked at the crowd, which was intrigued by the translucent dome, and the judges. Though Bagman and Smith seemed confused, the Headmasters were looking at her with some respect, Dumbledore moreso than even Maxime, while Karkaroff was clearly only reluctantly conceding the grandeur of the act.
No one in the crowd would be bewitched by her. They would all watch as she did that to the dragon, unaffected. Fleur did not want them to be transfixed by her and not see the action.
She daintily touched her throat with her wand and started singing, releasing the full power of her magic to the dragon's ears. Briefly, she reconsidered her course of action, as using something she did owe at least partially to her heritage in this scenario felt counterproductive if her objective was to be admired by the things within her grasp. But the opportunity was too great to waste. If effortlessness could be attached to her appearance by everyone else, so could her magical prowess, and this was as effortless as a way to overcome a dragon as she could imagine.
Une jeune pucelle de noble cœur,
Priant en sa chambrette son Créateur.
The dragon's blinks became heavier with the magical drowsiness affecting it. Still, it roared defiantly, the sharp musicality of it clashing with Fleur's smooth tones. However, the Veela remained indifferent to the dragon's challenge and merely continued to sing, focusing on channeling her magic as much as she could into her voice. The effect made the enchantment she had weaved into the air balk, but it stood.
L'ange du Ciel descendant sur la terre
Lui conta le mystère de notre Salvateur.
The dragon became even slower, visibly fighting against the constraints under which the song held it. It opened its mouth, and Fleur briefly tensed, thinking she might have to cut her song midway through to block a fire burst, but it never came. Instead, the dragon shuffled, its legs slowly folding under itself.
La pucelle esbahie de ceste voix,
Elle se peint à dire pour ceste fois:
Fleur took a tentative step towards the eggs, which agitated the dragon just enough that it managed to stand on its four legs again, though its eyes were more closed than open. The dragon's tail was still, dropped to the ground like an anchor, and it did not seem primed to attack even if it used all its force. Yet, Fleur patiently sang on, standing her ground, waiting for a chance to move and grab the egg.
Comment pourra s'accomplir telle affaire?
Car jamais n'eus affaire à nul homme qui soyt.
Finally, the dragon slept. Fleur allowed a smug smirk to blossom on her face as the crowd gawked at the sleeping beast before erupting in loud cheering. She unconcernedly walked towards the golden egg, knowing that it would take far more than that to break through her enchanted dome and awaken the dragon. She grabbed the egg, made a show of examining it cautiously, and started the long walk towards the exit at a leisurely pace. Suddenly, her boot clanged awkwardly with an egg which she had not seen, further away from the nest, and some cheers died in favor of screams.
Snarling in frustration that she had not been more careful, Fleur turned in a dime, her wand already primed to respond to any threats. Lucky for her, as dragon fire from the recently-awakened dragon was already on its way to meet her.
Knowing she did not stand a chance to block the attack, she did the next best thing, and with a slash, a furious gush of wind blew from her wand, sending the fire to the right of her. Still, a flame connected with her robes and lightly charred them.
Even as a Veela, a creature of fire, the flames from the dragon made her uncomfortably hot. She cut off the part of the fabric which still burned wandlessly and faced the dragon, whose first burst of flame had already ended.
Fleur detested speaking offensive spells out loud. It was undignified. Enchantments required finesse, so the vocalization was necessary, but charms, curses, jinxes, these things were brutishly uni-dimensional. However, she did not believe she would be able to impart enough strength to hold back a dragon silently, so she finally cast a spell audibly for the first time in almost two years.
"Vineas," she exclaimed clearly, watching as a dozen vines exploded from the ground in frantic spurts, fighting a race against the dragon as it readied another fire burst.
The vines won. Quickly, they forcefully closed the dragon's mouth, and it had to swallow the fire it was already threatening to eject, something which did not sit right with the dragon given how it staggered back slightly, seemingly dazed by the sudden burst of temperature traveling back down.
Using that opportunity, and not allowing the tiredness from that spell to show, she directed them towards her secondary target: the dragon's nostrils. Quickly, it began to thrash and want to roar angrily, as its oxygen supply was abruptly halted.
Mighty though it is, the dragon still needs to breathe. Taking steps backward, knowing it was a matter of time before the desperate dragon broke through her vines, even considering the enormous effort she was currently expending on ensuring they would hold, Fleur began to distance herself from the beast, as the crowd watched on with bated breath.
When the dragon won against her constraints, she lost all pretense of calm and ran for it, twisting one last time to divert a burst of fire with another gust of wind. She reached the exit frustrated with her performance, scolding herself for being too arrogant and not checking her surroundings calmly before exiting when she had the golden egg already in hand, but her face expressed none of that.
"She was better than Cedric," Hannah Abbot admitted sulkily from the stands, as a group of Hufflepuffs was struggling not to cheer for the French champion's performance.
"I told you she was more than a pretty face," Susan Bones smirked, not bothering to hide her satisfaction. She had been the only one amidst the Hufflepuffs who had taken Fleur's presence as serious competition for both Hogwarts champions.
"No dispute there," Ernest Macmillan joked with a playful smile. "She's much more than just a pretty face."
"Gross," Hannah wrinkled her nose, which only made the boy laugh.
"She was impressive," he eventually said more seriously. "I'm still excited to see what Krum will do."
Susan agreed. The Durmstrang champion certainly had a fierce presence, and she had to assume that the fame from Quidditch would make him calmer than the rest under pressure. Whatever he did, she was sure it would be impressive.
Yet, a part of her was more curious about Harry.
Viktor Krum stepped into the arena without even allowing the applause to filter through his ears properly. Automatically, he raised his right fist in the air, firmly grasping his wand, and the Durmstrang contingent greeted him with ubiquitous and unified support.
He looked at the dragon head-on and took a deep breath. The Chinese Fireball was already spouting fire in his direction, making his approach hard, but Krum was safely outside the range of the fire. However, the heat of the flames made him sweat lightly in his heavy combat clothes.
Even carrying the weight of what amounted to armor, Krum would likely be the quickest of the four champions on the move. He was a world-class athlete, after all, and both his stamina and agility far outclassed the other champions.
The red and gold dragon was rather remarkable, with smooth skin that yet had the famed magical resistance of its species, the series of spikes around its face, and the sharp talons on its short arms. Fire came out of his nostrils in mushroom bursts that seemed to last forever.
Krum did not notice any of it, however. He had always been able to delete the world around him into its core components with enormous ease. It was what made him into an excellent Seeker. By taking away all distractions and focusing on what mattered, he could micromanage every aspect that impacted his performance, lending him the ability to separate from his opponents.
This ability to hyper-focus also made him a fierce duelist, though he recognized that sometimes he went too far and blacked out an essential part of the inputs he needed in a fight, like the sound of a summoned object behind him.
However, he was now focused on only one target, and he could not believe his luck.
The Chinese Fireball had by far the largest eyes of the four dragons selected for the Tri-Wizard Tournament.
For the previous week, Krum and Headmaster Karkaroff had been strategizing how to deal with the dragons. Viktor believed firmly that a dragon was a dragon. He couldn't control which of the beasts he would fight, so his strategy was to deal with them all similarly by finding a common weakness.
He wanted to pierce the damn eyes clean off the dragons, but Karkaroff insisted that doing so would risk his reputation and might potentially kill the beasts. Krum did not see many problems with the latter — dragons destroyed villages, damaged the Statute of Secrecy, and killed innocent people, even when in reserves — but he certainly did not want to risk the former.
He let out a frustrated breath. A week having to learn English magic, all due to Karkaroff's insistence. Of course, they'd make up something like the Conjunctivitis Curse to incapacitate their opponents without deigning to kill.
Still, he had mastered the curse, and he wanted to get this over with.
From a distance, as the dragon still hadn't stopped breathing fire, he raised his wand and aimed at the large, blue eyes. The target was so large that he was confident he wouldn't miss, even at this distance. Using snitches to practice his aim with the piercing spells had made him accurate beyond his already prodigious hand-eye coordination.
"Tumeo Oculto," he said slowly, taking care to try and match the pronunciation as close to the English one as he could. It was a hard language for him to gauge, and a week had not been enough time to learn how to cast it silently.
Surely enough, the curse hit the dragon's left eye head-on, and it immediately swelled up beyond any possibility of organic recovery. The dragon thrashed in pain and agitatedly moved about, trying to regain his footing after roaring at the impact. It ended up stepping over its eggs, but the golden egg mercifully stayed intact, protected by whichever enchantments had been placed upon it.
Krum grimaced slightly. He did not care for the beasts' deaths, but he could bet that the judges wouldn't approve, let alone the dragon handlers.
Honestly, what were they thinking, putting actual dragon eggs there? Of course, some of them might get damaged in the fight.
The Chinese Fireball, seemingly noticing that it had killed some of its offspring, furiously flew forwards, tensing up the chains and forcing Vikton to scramble towards some cover. The Bulgarian watched, with a level of horror he only barely kept away from his face, as the dragon almost snapped away from the chains' grasp.
He gulped dryly but kept his expression stony. He knew that he would stand no chance at surviving if those chains were broken. Likely, there was some enchantment on them to greatly weaken the dragon already. He had seen the creatures before, and this one was slower, less focused, and less aggressive. It would stand to reason that at least the worst of their nature had to be taken away for the contestants to stand a chance of victory.
Feeling his body relax when he saw that the chains were not going to break, Viktor used the fact that the dragon had drifted away in its attempt to snap itself free and cast another Conjunctivitis Curse on the other eye. Again, the dragon writhed in anguish, and Krum used the opportunity to move through the rocks to get closer to the egg he had to collect.
Yet, the flames followed him, and he was forced to duck to avoid getting burned.
He frowned. Fucking overgrown lizard could still smell him, of course.
Tired of English magic, Krum dipped into his Durmstrang education and cast one of the illusory spells that his tutor was so fond of, creating a facsimile of himself and sending it elsewhere around the arena. As the dragon couldn't see, he focused on imparting the illusion with as much of his aroma as he could and sent it towards the rock formation he had just come from. The dragon dutifully tried to burn the illusion.
Krum had neglected to consider he was part of a competition, and the impressive piece of illusion couldn't be seen given his focus on the smell, but such was the price of his concentration. He swiftly ran up to the egg and caught it, escaping the arena unharmed.
"That was... something," Neville murmured.
"It was brutal," Hermione agreed nervously, her mind already on the next bout, even if part of her had felt slight revulsion at the dragon's pain. "This is cruel."
"Won't hear any argument from me," Neville grumbled. "Padma and Parvati refused to come."
"They did?" Hermione asked, finally taking her eyes from the tent in which Harry was waiting to be called.
"As soon as they heard that dragons would be involved," Neville nodded. "Lavender is with them."
Hermione hummed, taking the information in but not managing to process it with the concern about her friend growing by the second.
Harry walked into the arena, the raucous crowd booming all around him. It was a vast expanse that they had built on the school grounds, large enough that one had to squirm to see from one end of it to the other with any clarity. He vaguely heard Bagman's narration about him and the Horntail that awaited him, but his attention was elsewhere.
He scanned the crowd, looking for Daphne. He could tell that some people were confused by his lack of action, but there was far too much excitement in the air for it to be widespread. When he finally found her, she was pale and wide-eyed with worry but still managed to send him three signals.
One of those signals, they had coordinated with Hermione. It was supposed to be the location of the brunette, in case he couldn't find her. He turned his head to the direction where Daphne pointed and saw Hermione, clutching his broom with a tight grip, looking on the verge of tears, shaking like a leaf. The other two signals were private.
The first was an F. Harry almost snorted. He knew that Fleur was going to be the most concerning opponent since the Weighing of the Wands. The second was the number 10, as displayed by two open palms. That one made Harry's expression close off.
Daphne would have given Fleur's performance the top grades. If Harry wanted to achieve his goal of using this fight to send a message both to Voldemort and the assembled students, he would have to wow them. The safe plan, using the broom for maneuverability to grab the damn egg, was out.
He analyzed the arena with languid eyes, seeing the rock formations and mounds of dirt peppered around the place for credible cover from the dragon fire. He studiously avoided the beast in front of him, a large part of him wanting to turn away and forfeit. That part of him grew as his green eyes invariably were attracted to the roaring and snarling and rattling of the dragon as it fought against its chains.
Then, it happened. Harry crossed eyes with it, his green ones staring into the black and yellow slits full of hatred, gluttony, and fury. Harry wanted to laugh at the suggestion that Parselmouths were Dragonriders he had found in that book in the Room of Requirement. That thing was no snake.
It looked more like a lizard, though even that comparison felt contrived. The Hungarian Horntail defied description from that range. It had malevolent yellow slits for eyes, with dark, ashy black eyelids occasionally hiding the glint of power that made Harry's spine tingle fearfully. It had bat-like wings, which grew darker as they went, a thin grey membrane holding the wing bones together. Though Harry knew that not every scaly animal was spiky, as his boomslang was proof enough, the dragon's scales were doubtlessly so, particularly in the tail. That explained the name, he thought vacantly, as the dragon snapped its tail with incredible speed against one of the chains holding him down, the movement forming a cloud of dust as it went. The chain buckled but held; the links ragged and damaged by the bronze spikes. A similarly colored set of horns were in his head, which made up the other half of the name. Four short but powerful legs supported the weight of its enormous torso, with several claws both sharper and larger than a basilisk's fang adorning each. Its face was long and fierce, with none of the dignified gravitas carried by some of its cousins. There was only malice on that creature, and clouds of smoke billowed out of his nostrils even now when he breathed no fire. Unlike magical incense, that trail of smoke was thick and more like fog, obscuring the dragon's face for brief intervals, except for the glowing yellow eyes, which only added to its threat.
Harry took it all in, but it was all overcast by a curtain of fear so heavy that it almost brought him down to his knees. He did not know how to react beyond to gape at the enormous killing machine. Before he knew it, the pressure on the pit of his stomach appeared as it had on the Great Hall, but he was far too terrified to notice or to care. There was no magical discharge or anything of the sort, simply a tingle of something that burst through the fear.
This is ridiculous.
It was ridiculous that he had to fight that beast. It was ridiculous that he had to set on this path simply to acquire some measure of personal freedom because of the ego battle between Riddle and Dumbledore. It was ridiculous that the Ministry approved this nonsensical dispute in the first place. Dragons. Actual dragons, being paired off against students, with only chains to stop them.
He let out an embittered laugh under his breath. All week, he had been told by everyone in the know that he should focus on his Occlumency. Control his temper. To not let emotions rule him. He was staring death incarnate in the face, but all that everyone was concerned about: Occlumency, Occlumency, Occlumency. What use was Occlumency against this?
The laughter grew louder and more bitter. Thankfully, the crowd was too far away and too noisy for it to travel very well, but those who were watching him carefully noticed something was wrong. Dumbledore, Daphne, Hermione, and others all leaned forward concernedly in their seats and were universally struck dumb by Harry's face when he raised his gaze from the floor, where it had been after his laughing fit.
He wasn't smirking, per se. It was a disturbing smile, almost fanged, full of hatred and anger. Something had snapped in him when he saw that dragon, and though his eyes were their regular green and not black as they had been in the Great Hall, they were overcast and dark, resembling a storm.
So many people wanted Harry dead or compliant. They all laid their paths for him, sometimes ending in nice rooms with his nameplate on the door, photos of his family behind a wooden desk. Others ended in a forgotten ditch somewhere around England. Some led to a martyr's death, a bright star that went too soon during his fight against evil.
What were they all, against a dragon? What were their opinions, stares, hopes, dreams, plots, scheming, ambitions, and fears? They cheered for him as he marched to probable death in a gladiatorial match in which he did not elect to be a part. He would not be their slave to serve or their jester to seek laughter, nor their role model to inspire emulation.
He was free, imbued with the same freedom afforded by the powerful yellow tinge in the dragon's eyes, and like the beast he now had to fight, he would rebel against the chains placed on him by others.
For some time, what followed would remain in his head as one of his proudest moments. Eventually, it became one of his greatest shames.
He walked calmly in the direction of the dragon. Hermione nearly fainted with fear when he did not summon the broomstick as they had agreed, and with each step, her fears grew tenfold. Daphne, across the large arena, shared the same fate, her blue eyes tearing up as she realized she was the one who had pushed him to impress and not to forfeit and that all their ambitions would be void of meaning if the boy died in the attempt to fulfill them. Dotted on the crowd, faces of despair, smug satisfaction, disbelief, fear, and anticipation popped up as Harry walked closer to the dragon's range of fire.
Harry drew his wand, and with a manic smile, cast the first spell of many, not bothering with the consequences, even as the noise died down to a bare murmur.
"Flagello Glacius!" He hissed, enjoying the sight of an enormous greenish-blue whip appearing out of his wand and coiling in the ground near him. While most people in the crowd did not hear the hissing and had assumed he had murmured something, Dumbledore had noticed the Parseltongue and had tensed up immediately. Hermione also noticed it and would have been confused if she wasn't too busy freaking the fuck out. Daphne recognized the idea behind the spell and moaned quietly.
"Harry, you idiot," she closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands, placing her elbows on her knees, willing with all her might that this would be nothing but a bad nightmare.
"What is he doing?" Tracey whispered sharply in her ear.
"Dragons are cold-blooded," Daphne murmured back, the words muffled by her palms. "He is going to try and use that against the Horntail."
"It breathes fire!" Tracey shout-whispered, looking at the boy carrying the glowing conjured whip leisurely. "Magical fire! Is he mental?"
Daphne's answer was interrupted by Harry's arm as it made a wide arc across his body, carrying with it the many yards of ice whip, its frost forming a vapor as it interacted with the water in the air. Finally, a sharp sound echoed through the arena as the whip reached its speed, shortly before knocking against the right wing of the Hungarian Horntail.
The beast roared in more anger than pain as the whip coiled itself around the wing, stopping it from flapping properly as the left one did. The dragon clawed through the whip cleanly and started to rapidly move towards Harry, a torrent of magical fire already forming in its mouth. The boy sprinted out of the way, crouching behind a large, sturdy rock. The fire chased him as he went, but he reached relative safety, even as the heat poured through the rock, seeming to melt even the air itself, creating unbearable pressure against his skin. Still, the dragon's fire ceased for a minute, and Harry took the opportunity to sprint out of cover and attack the beast.
"Reducto!" He more snarled than hissed, watching as a blue light wheezed through the air, creating static as it went, only to bounce harmlessly against the dragon's scales, more annoying the creature than anything else. "Confrigo!" He tried again, this time aiming for the dragon's right wing. The attack made it stumble a bit as his right side balked slightly under the explosive spells, but that only made the dragon's next move easier as it used the partial twist of its body to fully rotate, sending its tail in breaking speed towards Harry.
Knowing he had no time to move away, he stole Daphne's maneuver that day of Snape's attack and aimed his wand at himself.
"Flipendo!"
As he flew away rapidly, the very tip of the dragon's tail, mercifully not spiked, connected with his thigh painfully, sending him spiraling in a mad heap of limbs, not sure where up or down was. He almost blindly grasped his wand and yelled.
"Accio Firebolt!"
The broom was yanked away from Hermione's grasp and flew towards Harry, who was slowly regaining some semblance of reasoning when it came to his position on the arena. As his body drew perilously close to a rock formation, he grabbed the zooming broom with one hand and swung his body just in time to avoid another vortex of fire, immediately setting off into a wide circle to dodge the dragon's fiery breath.
He flew closer to the dragon, close enough that it did not attack him with fire but with his claws, trying to knock him out of the air. Yet, Harry merely turned slightly, allowing it to pass dangerously close to him as the crowd gasped at the near-miss.
"Defodio!" He aimed at the claws, and the dragon let out the first true shriek of pain as two of them were cut cleanly through, sending blood spurts through the air. Harry's triumph was short-lived, as the dragon used its tail to send him away, and he only barely swerved away in time. Then, in a shocking display of intelligence, the dragon sent a brief burst of flame to its bleeding wound, cauterizing it instantly. Harry gaped at it for a second before anger reasserted itself, and he tried again. "Defodio!"
Though he had aimed it at the membrane between the wings, the spell bounced harmlessly against the dragon's scales and collided violently against some rocks nearby, sending large chunks of stone flying through the air.
Harry aimed his wand at the stones, stopping them from flying too far away, and transfigured some into metal spikes, which he then cast a hissed Glacius over, freezing them instantly. He banished them in the direction of the dragon before taking the remaining pieces of rock and casting a Flagrante over them for good measure, again sending them towards the dragon.
The Horntail melted the incoming spikes dismissively and absorbed the damage from the cursed rocks without reaction. As the ice of the transfigurations melted, some retained shape for long enough to get lodged in the dragon's torso. Though they did not seem to be anything more than a slight inconvenience, they drew enough blood for Harry to repeat the strategy, positioning himself between the dragon and the largest group of rocks nearby, taunting it to see if it would attack with its tail, and then transfigure the rock debris into ice spikes with which to attack it.
The crowd roared its approval of Harry's aggressiveness and his ability to dodge the increasingly furious attacks from the dragon. Hermione was openly whimpering, and Daphne was having an exceedingly hard time not showing how distressed she felt and failing miserably. Luckily for her, no one was paying attention to her.
Everyone's attention was on the flying champion as he again cast another ice whip to punish the dragon, aiming for the wounds he had created with the spikes. So far, his strategy to use the biological nature of dragons to his advantage had failed, and he tried something else.
"Glacius!" As he expected, the simple freezing charm barely tickled the dragon, who managed to overcome it with just a huff of hot vapor, not even having to resort to its magical fire. It looked almost amused at Harry afterward, as if entertained by the pathetic effort. Still, the boy was too agile for the constrained dragon, and it failed to hit him with its tail when it tried. However, Harry had read enough of Rookwood's book to know another variant of that same spell, a far more destructive and powerful one.
"Crystallos!" He hissed, watching with dark satisfaction as ice crystals began to appear on the dragon's torso, visibly bothering and slowing down the beast. Unlike his previous spell, each crystal multiplied rapidly, quickly forming a cast of ice that threatened to surround the dragon as it began to coalesce into a large mass around his torso and into its wing. The dragon breathed fire on itself, melting the ice away, but could not reach its wing properly from the angle at which the chains held it down, and the crystals reformed and expanded again. Harry chuckled satisfactorily as the beast thrashed and roared in pain and discomfort, the crowd stupefied with shock, Bagman staring silently, his narration completely forgotten. With each second, the dragon grew slower as the ice lowered its body temperature, and Harry's expression grew more somber and sinister.
Thinking himself victorious, Harry was as speechless as the crowd was loud in their gasp when the dragon suddenly snapped extremely loudly, managed to knock off the cursed ice from its wing with sheer brute force, and then threw its tail in a vicious blow towards the flying wizard, which stood paralyzed in shock.
Harry only had enough time to hiss a frantic "Protego!" before the tail reached him. If he hadn't cast in Parseltongue, he would have been cleaved in half. As it stood, the magical barrier was strong enough to slow down the tail just so that the cut on Harry's side was not fatal, but it still was deep and gushing blood. The impact of the hit also sent Harry straight into the ground, and a last-second cushioning charm saved his life from ending as he careened head-first to the arena floor. Still, the collision left him dazed and with very little awareness of his surroundings.
Spots consumed his vision, and the buzzing of the crowd grew distant and faint. His senses fluctuated between completely deserting and overwhelming him, his body spasming as the pain of the wound on his side pierced through his entire being. Everything was just blindingly sharp, from the noise, to the ground, to the sun, to the heat, to the blood trickling down his torso. Then things snapped into place as the pressure in his stomach took over his body again, and the shadow of the dragon's enormous foot loomed over him. Dumbledore was already fighting through the wards he had erected to stop the looming death, and several people were openly weeping, including but not limited to an inconsolable Hermione and a shell-shocked Daphne. But Harry made a move, raising his wand rapidly.
"Impedimenta!" He hissed, the panic somehow shining through even in Parseltongue. The dragon stumbled back from the force of the spell and was forced to step a few feet away from Harry instead of crushing the boy, giving Harry enough time to summon his broom, which had, by some providence, remained in one piece through the last hit.
The crowd exploded in approval as Harry flew away, healing the wound as best he could with one arm, as the other shakily held the broomstick. Yet, his angered determination shone through, still full of bitterness and indignant vengefulness. He righted himself to face the dragon and dove again, this time betting on another strategy to defeat it.
He summoned another object, seeing as it left Neville's possession, and grabbed it firmly.
He grasped the dagger that he always insisted on keeping on his body but had to give to his friend to enter the arena, the same one Harry had collected as a prize for killing the last dangerous beast he had slain. As he flew close enough to the dragon's face for the fog to surround his body, Harry swerved away rapidly when it attempted to melt it with fire, drawing Fang and cutting through from the side of his mouth to the top of its jaw in one smooth flyover.
This wound truly agonized the dragon, which let out a fierce screech of pain and started to rock against its constraints in blind fury, trying to free itself to fully concentrate on the flying boy, who used the creature's state of mind to find new places to stab and cut. The basilisk poison imbued in the blade would never be enough to kill something that enormous, but it was enough to make its blood feel as though it was boiling, which was agony for the animal, whose body could not regulate its internal temperature efficiently.
The dragon's movements became erratic, sluggish, and uncoordinated as pain and agony overcame its base aggressiveness. To stop Harry from attacking the exposed back, the dragon covered himself with his wings. Yet, in Harry's altered state of mind, that only allowed him to try for yet another spell he had seen on Rookwood's book.
"Sarissa!" He hissed, the sibilant sounding pleasant against his lips in Parseltongue. The piercing spell, much like the Macedonian spear after which it had been named, burst cleanly through the wing, appearing on the other side, cutting through the membrane and lodging against the dragon's back. The dragon again howled in pain and thrashed about against the chains, this time with the intent to flee, but Harry only repeated the spell on the other wing, creating two nearly symmetrical holes on the beast. The crowd, now divided between slight horror over the ruthless cruelty of the youngest champion and sheer awe at the display of magical prowess and extensive ingenuity, watched transfixed as Harry drew his wand again.
"Flagello Glacius!" The ice whip formed again on the tip of his wand, and with incredible dexterity and precision earned through many hours of practice, he wrapped both wings together as the whip traveled around both holes, and then he flew away holding the whip behind him. The dragon, weakened by the poison and the many cuts it had endured, could not resist the pull and fell on its back. It turtled, trying to get back to its four feet, but the basilisk poison had done too much damage, and though it stubbornly kept breathing fire, it was now a weak spiral that could only go vertically, and which Harry avoided without an ounce of effort. He ensured that the dragon wasn't going to escape this time and calmly landed on the ground, walking a few yards to grab the golden egg and leave the arena.
The last thing he heard after he saw a pale and shocked Madam Pomfrey was the deafeningly stunned silence of the crowd turn into earthshaking noise. Then, he fainted.