Chapter Fifty-Seven: The First Task
The next morning at breakfast, Harry looked like he hadn't gotten even a single minute of sleep.
"There really are dragons," he said hollowly. "Nesting mothers, apparently. Hagrid was a bit shocked that I knew already, but he'd intended to show me anyway. He took Madame Maxime with him, so she'll have told Fleur, and Karkaroff was spying from a distance…Cedric is the only one who doesn't know, I think."
"Are you going to tell him?" Daphne asked.
Harry nodded. "If I get a chance to, then yes."
"Why? This way you've got a much better chance of winning, don't you?" Ron asked.
"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen the dragons," Harry said darkly. "I might let Malfoy or Snape fight a dragon unprepared, but not anyone else."
"Ginny suggested you might be able to use your Firebolt to fly past it," Daphne said. "You know how to do Summoning Charms now, so you should be able to get it."
"I could give it a try, I suppose…maybe if I summon my Firebolt and use the Conjunctivitis Curse from the air… Can you guys help me aim for moving targets today and tomorrow between classes? I'd look like a prat if I kept missing my spells while flying around…" Harry said.
And so, the four of them (later joined by Fred, George, and Ginny) spent most of that Sunday in an empty classroom, throwing balls and making them levitate with odd, jerky movements, while Harry jogged around the room. From time to time, one of them would throw a larger ball at Harry, which he was meant to dodge as though it was a jet of flame.
While running around on foot was, obviously, very different to flying, Harry was still very good at it, courtesy of Mum's Quidditch courses over the summer, Dad's dueling training, and Harry's natural aptitude for thinking on his feet and reacting quickly. While at first, he missed quite a few of the thrown balls with his spells, he soon began to adjust and hitting his mark more and more often.
At the end of the day, they were all beat, but no one more than Harry, who'd done by far the most work. When Daphne headed back to her common room, she had a much better feeling about Harry's odds of at least not getting too badly injured.
The next morning after breakfast, Daphne saw Harry going after Cedric, probably to warn him, and smiled. It was a very noble thing of him to do, and she agreed with it wholeheartedly.
Later that day in Divination, Harry's kindness was sadly not rewarded, as Trelawney spent a good half of the lesson predicting that Harry would die a violent death. While Daphne's own visions had predicted the same thing, that vision was of some years in the future, so Harry probably wouldn't die during the first task, but that knowledge did little to make Daphne less nervous about it, and she doubted Harry felt any better.
In the evening, they did some more target practice…but then it was time for bed, and the next day Harry would face the first task.
Even at breakfast, Harry seemed detached from everyone else, and Daphne didn't want to disturb him. What could she say, anyway? She wouldn't be the one facing that dragon. She wasn't paying much attention during class, but neither did anyone else. Everyone was far too excited about the task. Despite Daphne's promise to sit with her Slytherin friends at lunch, she decided to stay with Harry for as long as she could to show her support.
When lunch had just finished, McGonagall came over to them and said, "Potter, the champions have to come down onto the grounds now…You have to get ready for your first task."
"Okay," Harry said, standing up. His fork fell to his plate with a clatter that sounded unnaturally loud. It was like the entire Hall was watching Harry.
"Good luck, Harry," Hermione whispered. "You'll be fine."
"You got this, mate," Ron said.
"I believe in you," Daphne said simply.
"Yeah…" Harry said in an odd voice.
Daphne watched him leave the Great Hall with McGonagall. "He's going to be fine," she said, more to reassure herself than her friends.
"Yeah. He's practiced loads," Ron said, just as shakily.
"They have people standing by…it's going to be okay," Hermione said, though even she wasn't at ease.
A short while later, the rest of the school was told they could go down to the field as well, and Daphne and the others joined the stream of people as they all filed out of the school. They didn't speak much as they walked, unlike everyone else around them.
They walked along the perimeter of the Forbidden Forest, so far that the castle itself had completely disappeared from view, where a massive enclosure had been set up, with raised stands surrounding it. Daphne ended up sitting between Hermione and Ginny in one of the front rows of their stand.
In the enclosure beneath them was a massive, silver-blue dragon with curved horns, which seemed to be guarding a clutch of eggs.
"Look at the size of that thing," Ron said incredulously.
"This isn't Harry's dragon," Daphne said grimly.
"How do you know that?" Ginny asked.
"The one I saw in my vision was black and had more spikes," Daphne replied.
"But how can you know that one was Harry's?" Ron asked.
"Because…"
Daphne hesitated for a moment. Should she tell them? Well, no use hiding it at this point, anyway.
"Because the visions I had were of Harry's future specifically," she said. "I, er, I like him, so my thoughts were subconsciously focused on him even when I wasn't actively thinking of him… But do me a favor and don't tell Harry that, okay? I'd like to do it myself…"
She could feel her face burning as if the dragon below her had breathed fire on her, but Hermione just smiled at her admission, while Ron looked surprised for a moment and then said, "Oh, that explains a lot."
Daphne glanced at Ginny on her other side, who smiled as well, though Daphne was pretty sure she saw a bit of regret in her eyes.
At that moment, a whistle sounded, and the talking in the audience hushed, like the calm before a storm…which burst the moment Cedric entered the arena, and Ludo Bagman's magically amplified voice echoed through the enclosure.
Even from where she was sitting, Daphne could see Cedric's grim expression as he began to close in on the dragon, while Bagman gave some information on the species and the task Cedric had to perform. The dragon noticed him quickly and snarled at him, protectively lowering itself over its clutch of eggs.
When Cedric didn't stop moving, the dragon shot a blast of flame at him, but Cedric dodged it and retreated, looking around the arena for anything that might come in useful. He seemed to settle on a rock, which he transfigured into a dog, probably to serve as a distraction.
Sending the dog forward first to draw the dragon's attention, Cedric began to approach from another angle, trying to stay out of the dragon's line of sight, but when he came close to the eggs the dragon noticed him and shifted its attention back to Cedric, who had to dive toward the dragon to avoid the blast of fire and got hit with the backwash in the process. He did manage to grab his egg, however, and everyone in the audience went wild, Daphne and the others included.
Dragon handlers rushed into the enclosure, most firing Stunners at the dragon while one of them pulled the eggs out of the way so the falling dragon wouldn't crush them.
Cedric was being led away, holding his hand over his burned face, and Daphne hoped Madam Pomfrey would be able to heal his injury without too much difficulty.
"That was awesome," Ron said. "Even though he's a Hufflepuff."
"I wouldn't want to be in his place, that's for sure," Daphne agreed.
After Cedric had received his scores, and the dragon handlers had gotten the next dragon, a smooth-scaled green one, into the enclosure, the whistle sounded again, and a short while later Fleur Delacour entered the arena to the loud cheers of the audience.
Harry had told them that Fleur was indeed, as Ron had suspected, part-Veela, and Daphne could see that even now, looking fearful but determined, she still looked stunning.
Fleur, like Cedric, at first tried approaching somewhat directly, but was quickly dissuaded by the flames. Then she raised her wand and began making complex patterns with it while slowly moving from side to side. The dragon tracked her movements and slowly began to sway as if Fleur was putting it to sleep with her actions — but then, when it had just lain down, the dragon snored and caught Fleur's skirt with a blast of fire, which she quickly had to put out with her wand before dashing in to grab her golden egg.
"That looked like a complex charm," Hermione said, impressed.
"I'm amazed it worked on that dragon," Ginny said.
"That's probably because it worked through the eyes instead of with brute force like the Stunners," Hermione said, but before she could go into the theory behind it, the judges were ready to give Fleur her score.
The third dragon was red and had an odd fringe of golden spikes around its face.
"Looks like Harry will be last, then," Daphne said.
"It wasn't like the suspense was killing us, or anything…" Ron muttered.
Krum slouched into the arena, but unlike Cedric and Fleur he didn't seem to care much for caution, instead simply marching forward and casting the Conjunctivitis Curse on it.
His aim was true, because the dragon shrieked in pain and anger — and began stamping around blindly, crushing many of the real eggs and forcing Krum to dodge its stomps in his way over to the golden egg, but he was still faster than both Cedric and Fleur had been.
Then, at long last, Harry's dragon was brought into the enclosure.
"Are you kidding me?!" Daphne shouted when she saw it.
It was black, and by far the biggest of the dragons, and had bronze-colored claws and spikes all along its back, with several bigger ones lining the tail. It also seemed to be the most vicious, given how fiercely it fought the handlers.
Then, the whistle sounded, and Harry entered the enclosure. Though the crowd was as loud as it had been before, Daphne and the others were focused entirely on Harry, who stared the dragon for a moment before raising his wand…
For a moment, nothing seemed to happen and the noises in the crowd were becoming questioning…and then Harry's Firebolt flew into the enclosure and stopped next to him.
Harry mounted the broom and took off, and Daphne could see that immediately, his confidence soared as freely as he did.
Harry began to dive and swerve, easily dodging the blast of fire the dragon sent at him, circling higher and trying to entice it to leave its nest by flying in and out of range, being as annoying to the dragon as he could possibly be.
Daphne's heart was hammering in her throat as she watched Harry trying to bait the dragon. Regular Quidditch made her nervous enough, and this was ten times worse. She made nervous sounds with every near-miss, but didn't take her eyes off him even for a second.
The dragon roared in frustration as Harry zoomed around it, snapping its jaws and swinging its tail, but Harry was too fast, too well-trained, and he managed to stay safe with every pass.
"I don't think he'll be using that Conjunctivitis Curse," Daphne said as she watched Harry fly. "It looks like he wants the dragon to follow him into the air."
Just as she said that, the dragon finally got up, flaring its wings wide — and Harry dived between its paws, grabbed the golden egg, and soared off with a burst of speed.
Maybe it was just because of the sheer relief Daphne felt at seeing Harry pass his challenge uninjured, but it seemed like the cheers he was receiving were even louder than the ones the other champions had gotten.
"Way to go, Harry! That'll show everyone!" Ron yelled.
"He did it! He did it!" Hermione shouted.
"Those flying skills were amazing! Krum's gotta be jealous of that!" Ginny yelled.
Daphne was shouting as well, but for the life of her, she had no idea what. She was just incoherently making as much noise as possible to show her support for Harry.
"Come on, let's go to him!" she said hoarsely the second she'd stopped shouting.
The four of them quickly made their way down to Harry, who was still being congratulated by McGonagall, Moody, and Hagrid.
"Harry! You were amazing!" Daphne said once they'd gotten close. She pulled him into a hug before she'd thought about it and quickly wanted to let go when she remembered their friends were present, but she needn't have worried as they all joined in the hug themselves.
"Easily the best of the lot!" Ron said.
"I've never seen better flying!" Ginny yelled.
"You were so controlled all the way through, I bet you impressed everyone," Hermione said.
Harry, meanwhile, accepted their congratulations with the biggest grin Daphne had ever seen him wear.
"Y'know…that was almost fun," he said. "But I never want to do it again."
"Come on, let's see the scores," Ron said, gesturing at the podium of the judges. Madame Maxime, Dumbledore, and Crouch all gave Harry a nine, while Bagman gave a ten. Karkaroff, however, gave a three.
"What?" Ron bellowed furiously. "Three? You lousy, biased scumbag, you gave Krum ten!"
Harry didn't seem to care one bit about his score, though, and Daphne could imagine why after what he'd just accomplished.
Charlie came hurrying over, telling Harry that he needed to go into the tent to receive some more instructions, and Daphne and the others waited for him outside the tent, all looking equally relieved that Harry had gotten through unscathed.
Only moments later, Harry came back out of the tent and they began to walk back to the castle, when a witch in bright-green robes leapt from behind a tree, holding an equally lurid quill.
"Congratulations, Harry!" she said. "I wonder if you could give me a quick word? How you felt facing that dragon? How you feel now about the fairness of the scoring?"
"Yeah, you can have a word," Harry said savagely. "Goodbye!"
Without waiting for a response, he turned around and kept walking.
Slightly shorter, this chapter, but since there were a few longer ones before it doesn't matter too much, I think. Also not much in the way of differences to canon. Madame Maxime gave one point higher (because Harry didn't get hit this time), Karkaroff one lower (because he doesn't want Harry to take the lead outright), so the standings don't change. Probably the biggest moment in the chapter was Daphne becoming more comfortable with her feelings. That's good, because we all know what happens between the first and second tasks…