Chapter 12 It's Dragons!

Nov. 21st, 1994

The week has been rather boring. I do get very sweet letters from my mother, now that I'm champion, but they'd be much sweeter still if they didn't all contain those exhortations to do the best I can and assurances that I can certainly win if I set my mind to it. Not anything about not putting myself into danger, or even just about being careful, - not from my mother!

Gabrielle misses me, of course, but she is also very excited about her big sister being champion; she has no idea that this Tournament can and most likely will be dangerous, but I can't bring myself to tell her. I'll have to, I suppose, after the first task, whatever it is going to be, but I don't want to frighten her unnecessarily.

Cho and Cedric have invited me to accompany them to Hogsmeade this afternoon. Cedric suggested taking one of his friends along, a seventh year student named Roger, I think

"He's a nice enough guy," he assured me, seeing my doubtful expression.

"And we'll tell him to do that Equanimity charm, too," Cho added.

"All right," I finally agreed, "but I'm telling you – if he's up to anything stupid, I'll just leave."

+++

It really was nice. This friend of Cedric's, Roger Davies, seems to be quite a decent person. Of course, him being under the Equanimity charm, I could not really judge his true self, but I believe the fact alone that he had allowed himself to be put under it suggests he must be. Anyway, he acted perfectly normally, and that's fine with me. We had quite an enjoyable time at the inn, talking about the usual unimportant things, and of course speculating about the impending first task.

"And you have absolutely no idea what's waiting for you?" Cho kept asking.

"Absolutely none," Cedric and I said together again and again.

"That task is going to test your - what was it? - your daring," Roger said, "so I guess it'll be pretty dangerous."

"Thank you," I replied dryly, which shut him up effectively.

"It might be some dangerous creature or other, most likely," Cedric reflected. "Hey, didn't we see some strange lights at the edge of the forest yesterday night?" he added to Cho.

"Oh? What were you two doing at night, may one ask?" I said teasingly and Cedric blushed profusely. (It's not easy to tell when Cho blushes, but I expect she did, too.)

"We were - never mind, we saw some lights at the edge of the forest, and I pointed them out to Cho. But of course, we couldn't see anything distinctly. Might be something to do with preparations they are making. But then, it might not..."

"The Forbidden Forest?" I said, suddenly interested. "Didn't you tell me there were all sorts of things in there? Can you tell me a bit more?"

"As I've already told you," Cho said, "None of us have ever been in there, as far as I know, Harry Potter is the only student that ever went in -"

"And his friend, Ron Weasley," Cedric added.

"Yes, of course, I forgot - you do tend to forget him when talking about Harry, don't you?"

"Ron Weasley? Is that the red-haired one with the freckles and the semi-moronic expression whenever he looks at me?"

"That's him all right. Well, anyway, let me think... You know, there are all sorts of rumours, it'shard to tell what's true... Ron especially likes telling tall stories... But it's pretty certain that there are spiders in there, hundreds and hundreds, and their boss as big as a house. Ron talked about it two years ago, I remember it quite well. Mind you," she added, tryint to reassure me (I expect I had started to look worried), "As I said, Ron usually tells tall stories, so the 'house' part needn't be exactly true - "

"Horse would be enough," muttered Cedric. "I can't say I particularly like spiders..."

"What were they doing in there?"

"Something to do with You-know-who, apparently. People got Petrified all over the castle, and Harry was looking for a clue in the forest. It's a long story, remind me to tell you about it some time."

"Didn't someone say, Harry was in the Forest the year before, too?" Roger said thoughtfully.

"Yes, I remember hearing something about it," Cedric agreed, "although it's even more of a rumour than the one with the spiders. -"

"He was in there in his FIRST year?"

"Indeed. But Hagrid was with him, it was some detention thing - tough on an eleven-year-old, if you ask me..."

"Was what's his name - Ron with him again?"

"Not that time. There were three first-years with Harry: Draco Malfoy, you'll have seen him at the Slytherin table, the pale blond guy, with hair almost the colour of yours, who's always sucking up to Viktor Krum - "

"I know whom you mean."

"Then there was another Gryffindor, I keep forgetting his name, a rather small paunchy boy, and Hermione Granger, Harry's other best friend."

"That must be the one with the bushy brown hair who always glares at me as if she wanted to hex me to the next century. Lord, she must hate me..."

"She seems to have a soft spot for Ron," Cho said, grinning.

"Funny, the way she and Harry keep talking and looking at each other, I'd have thought she was HIS girlfriend."

"Actually, that's exactly what that Skeeter article in the Daily Prophet said..."

"Then I'll bet you anything it's not true; that woman is a pest. Anyway, so they went into that forest, and what then?"

"Rumour has it that Harry had an encounter with You-know-who, too..."

"Again? How can he cope with all this?"

"I can't imagine either. As I said, there is something special about Harry Potter."

"Well, according to rumour," Roger went on, "You-know-who was killing unicorns drinking their blood..."

"He wasn't!"

"I'm afraid he was. And they say Harry only barely escaped by riding away on a centaur."

"A centaur! But trying to ride one is about the worst insult for them!"

"Here you are again - something special..." Cho said matter-of-factly.

"Well, I supose they'll not set us against centaurs, they can be pretty peculiar, but they're not really dangerous," Cedric joked, but I don't think he felt like joking at all.

"And I doubt You-know-who would be willing to cooperate, either." Cho grinned.

"So the only thing in the forest we can be rather sure about is the spiders," Cedric started enumerating, "and there may be vampires, or trolls, or werewolves..."

"And there's a full moon on the 24th," Roger whispered excitedly.

"Thanks again, just what I needed," I said sarcastically.

"But there are lots of other possibilities," Cho argued practically. "There are hundreds of ways to test your daring, it doesn't even have to be any creatures at all."

"Pity we can't go to that edge of the forest and have a look," Cedric said. "But there are very strict orders to keep away from it."

"And it would be cheating," Cho reminded him earnestly.

"It wouldn't work, anyway," I stopped this train of thoughts. "So let's just pretend we'd never do any cheating, it looks so very good."

"Yes, let's," Cedric agreed. "And let's get another round of butterbeer."

Nov. 21st 1994 - no, 22nd 1.30 a.m.

Dragons!!! It's dragons! I'm still shaking.

I was already asleep, dreaming wild dreams of spiders and werewolves. Suddenly I was roughly shaken awake by Maxime.

"Wake up, Fleur! This is important!"

"What? Who?" It took me some minutes to come back.

"Come with me," she said urgently, "I must show you something."

She half-dragged me into the common room and deposited me on a rather uncomfortable chair. She must have done that on purpose to stop me from falling asleep again.

"I know what you are going to face at the first task."

"What?" I suddenly snapped wide awake.

"Hagrid, their gamekeeper, showed me. Look!"

She waved her wand in an intricate pattern, and said something like 'Aparecium imaginis'.

The lights went dim and an image appeared in the middle of the room:

The first thing that I saw was the light of fires, and some shadowy figures were darting here and there. But soon I saw it was'nt just fire. It was fire coming from dragons that were tied to massive poles inside a heavy wooden fence. There were four of them, blue, green, red and black, each looking terrible but, in a way, also beautiful. The creatures were tearing ferociously against their chains, and it seemed that the poles would go any minute. The dark figures, - they looked tiny against the monstrous beasts, - pulled out their wands and sent a synchronised Stunning Spell showering in sparks against the dragons, which fell to the ground with what must have been a tremendous crash. The wizards lost no time and hurried over to fasten the chains and secure the poles.

Slowly the picture faded and Maxime spoke again.

"So that's what is in store for you. A Welsh Green, a Swedish Shortsnout, a Hungarian Horntail, and a Chinese Fireball. Don't ask me which one I'd prefer in your place. They are all vicious enough, and their fire reaches an average six to seven metres."

"What - " I found it difficult to speak. "What will I have to do?"

"I don't know. I don't expect you'll have to fight and kill one, they are too rare for that and the Wizarding Wildlife Foundation won't allow it; so I think you'll have to steal something your dragon is guarding. This is what dragons usually do, you know."

"But how...?"

"This is something you'll have to find out for yourself. I'm already breaking rules telling you this here, and you know teachers are explicitly forbidden to help the champions with their tasks, and they are sure to find out if I did tell you any more. So this leaves you about two days to work out how to do this. Good night."

Good night! What a joke! I don't expect I'm going to sleep at all again.

+++

Afternoon

I did get an hour or two's sleep, but I can't say it was much use. I kept dreaming of those brutes and the fire they were breathing, and woke with a start several times. In the morning, I told Margaux and Iphigenie about the dragons.

"Have you thought of anything yet?" Margaux asked, looking rather white.

"Of course not!" I snapped at her irritably. "I'm sorry, it's just..."

"I know," she said soothingly. "Let's look at this systematically. What do we know about dragons?"

"They're heavily armoured with their scales and things," Iphigenie stated. " And it takes very strong spells to get to them. But I don't know ..."

"You know what?" I told them, "The first thing in a case like this is always getting your facts right; and the best place to do this is - "

"The library!" they both shouted, laughing.

So I had Maxime put that Inconspicua Charm on my hair again, and went over to the library with my two friends.

There were a couple of students there working over their books, and I at once noticed Harry Potter and Hermione Granger among them, deeply buried in a pile of books.

"Dragons are extremely difficult to slay..." I heard Harry read out barely audibly as I was walking past.

It was all I could do not to whirl round and shout. I pulled my two friends away to another desk.

"Did you hear that?" I whispered excitedly. "He's reading about DRAGONS! HE KNOWS!"

"This may be just a coincidence," Margaux, always practical, said.

"No way!" Iphigenie contradicted fiercely. "Someone must have told him, too! I mean, what sort of a coincidence would that be?"

"So much for their strict keeping to rules! And I was starting to feel guilty for being the only one to know."

"Do you think Diggory and Krum know, too? After all, you know that Harry Potter is different in many ways, perhaps he's the only one, and has found out about the dragons all by himself?" Margaux can be annoyingly reasonable sometimes.

"It's possible, I suppose. I wish I knew."

At that moment, Viktor Krum came slouching in in his typical moody way (though, to me, he looked even more moody than usual). He walked purposefully over to a certain shelf, picked a book and went over to a desk in a corner where he had obviously been working before as it was covered with a pile of boks.

"Sneak over to him," I told Iphigenie, "and try to see what he is reading about."

"All right," she replied and casually sauntered off, looking at odd books on the shelves. Actually, it was so perfectly casual that it looked highly suspicious, but luckily nobody seemed to notice.

Presently she returned.

"Dragons!", she hissed excitedly. "He's doing dragons, too! No stupid talk about coincidence now!"

"Seems they have invented a new rule that all the headmasters tell their champions what the task is going to be," I mused. "Funny, though, Maxime said she was breaking rules in telling me..."

"Never mind," again it was Margaux' reassuring common sense. "Each champion knows, that's the important thing."

"And I was getting worried about having an unfair advantage," I scolded myself. "I even wondered..."

"Don't say you were considering telling the others!"

"I was indeed, - but they all know, anyway, so that's one thing less to worry about, which just leaves four big, fire-breathing dragons, what a relief! So let's just get on with our research."

+++

We spent the rest of the morning in the library, returning to our carriage for lunch.

The things we've found out about dragons are not too encouraging. Only very powerful spells of extremely advanced and specially trained wizards can penetrate the thick scales, usually it takes at least four of them to reach any lasting effect. The only soft spot of a dragon, if you can call it that, is his eyes. (There is, supposedly, another one on a dragon's belly, but it varies with the species, and is not easy to find, anyway, so I'm not considering even looking for it.) So I'll have to try and find some spell or curse that works on the beast's eyes, obviously, but I haven't got the slightest idea yet. Also, I'm quite exhausted after that sleepless night and the hours of reading. So I'm not going over to the castle for dinner, but have the house-elves prepare some small snack for me, and try to get some sleep early, although I very much doubt that I will.

A/N:

Lu, WickerBasket - Thanks a lot for reviewing. As you may have noted, I have taken up your ideas and made Fleur learn some more about Harry. If you'd like to hear more, I'll see what I can do. I've looked it up in the book, and I'm perfectly sure it never says anything about Fleur asking Cedric to the ball, the only thing we learn is that Ron saw her in conversation with him when HE (=Ron) asked her. And there is nothing about how she ended up with Roger Davies. So I have invented the things you've just read in this chapter, hope they are plausible enough. If there is anything I miss, like the thing of Ron and Harry not talking, please tell me. I'm trying to keep to canon as much as I can, but errors will happen.

Hope you enjoyed it; I'm starting on the First Task right away, but I guess it's going to be a bit difficult and so might take some time.