5
First meet…
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She walked around with a surprised look on her face as Harry stood in the corner watching her. He looked like he had accomplished something when he saw that Daphne was at a loss of words.
"So, what do you think?" he asked as everything around them dissolved back into the white void that the room originally looked like.
"I didn't think that the room of requirement actually existed," she said as Harry looked at her with a bit of surprise.
"Wait, room of requirement?" he asked.
"Yeah, this room," she said. "I read somewhere that Hogwarts supposedly consisted of a room where one could ask for almost anything. It was named 'the room of requirement' and was supposedly made by Rowena Ravenclaw. However, just like the chamber of secrets many looked for it but couldn't find it and in the end it became nothing but a myth. How did you find this place?"
"An elf friend of mine told me about it," he said.
"Elf friend?" Daphne said with a raised brow. "You want to be more specific?"
"I think I will not," Harry said. "So, what do you think? Will this work? We can ask it for almost anything for our requirement. I tested this place yesterday and my friend told me that whatever is in this castle, this room can provide us with that."
"So it does have its limits," Daphne said.
"It does," Harry repeated.
Daphne seemed to be thinking something before she spoke. "So, a dragon's egg, eh?" Harry nodded. "If I help you, will you let me use this room on my own?"
He blinked a few times. "Why are you asking me that?" he said. "Of course you can use this on your own. Just, don't tell anyone about it otherwise word will get out and this place won't be as private."
"You don't have to tell me that" Daphne said. "Thanks," she said in a low voice before turning around so she couldn't look at Harry's surprised expression. She hadn't thought that he would let her use this place. It seemed she had misjudged him. But then again, she didn't know much about him.
"You're…welcome," Harry said awkwardly. "So…uh, can we start, you know…figuring out ways on how I can complete the first task?"
She looked at him and smirked. "Sure," she said, "but we'll have to get some books on dragons from the library first. Also, bring those three books on the tournament that you checked out last time from the library."
Harry nodded.
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"Did they find the culprit?" Sirius asked as he sat on the chair facing Remus.
"No, they haven't," the werewolf said. They were at a secret location that Remus had managed to get with the little money that he had saved when he was teaching at Hogwarts last year. It was under fidilius so Sirius could also live there with no one else finding out about their location.
"What is Dumbledore doing?" Sirius said sounding impatient. "It's not like it was done by some outsider. Whoever did this is clearly still in the castle."
"How do you know that?' Remus asked.
"Harry wrote to me when I asked about his selection after finding about it from the Daily Prophet," Sirius said. "He told me that because of the tournament the wards around Hogwarts have been fortified even more and anyone who leaves or enters the castle's limits is carefully recorded of their comings and goings. As for what McGonagall and others are saying there has been no development in the investigation."
"What about Dumbledore?" Remus asked. "What does he have to say?"
"You know how secretive he is," said Sirius. "Even if he knew something he wouldn't tell anyone about it. Whoever did this clearly wants Harry dead because everyone knows the reputation of that blasted tournament. Whose idea was it to revive the damned thing?"
"Some official in the ICW, I don't know," Remus said, "however, it quickly got support from some nations seeing that the magical world needed a means of entertainment and so reviving an age-old tournament seemed like a good idea."
Sirius sighed. "I wish I could be of more help to Harry. Who knows how he is handling the situation right now."
"He is a brave kid and a powerful wizard," Remus said. "Besides, he has some amazing and loyal friends I've ever seen."
"You're right about that," Sirius said, smiling a little. "I bet that Hermione girl will definitely come up with something. When I first met her, her intellect reminded me of Lily. I wonder if her and Harry will end up together."
"He's still fourteen!" Remus said.
"And that's the prime age when people fall in love for the first time," Sirius said with a grin.
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Hermione saw Harry talking to Neville at the end of the Gryffindor table. She wanted to go up to him and ask him how he was but one look at Ron and she changed her mind. He had told her not to talk to him unless Harry apologized. She didn't know why Ron was acting that way but she listened to him. However, seeing one of her best friends not talking to her anymore was hurting her.
"He would need my help to complete those tasks," is what she told herself whenever she was alone. She knew Harry couldn't go much farther without her help. She was the brains of their group. Harry needed her. So why wasn't he apologizing? Well, he hadn't done anything wrong. A part of her knew Harry wouldn't put himself into danger unnecessarily. So there was no reason for him to put his name in the goblet or have anyone else do it. But Ron's words also made sense to her for some reason.
In the end she decided that Ron was the right one. Besides, he needed her more than Harry. She couldn't see Ron in detentions for not doing his assignments. Harry would manage on his own.
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"So you are helping him," said Tracey.
"Will you keep your voice down?" Daphne said looking around her house table. "Yes," she sighed.
Tracey looked at her for a moment. "Well, I know how much you complain about nothing going on in your life with boring classes and everything." She then put her hand on Daphne's shoulder and looked her in the eyes. "Just promise me that you will be safe. Our housemates won't take it kindly if they find out that you are helping a traitor house."
"I'll try not to disappoint you," Daphne said with a smirk as the two girls chuckled.
"But seriously, knowing you, you wouldn't just do it to distract yourself," Tracey said. "There's something else, isn't it?" Daphne just shrugged so Tracey made a face. "Fine, don't tell me."
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Daphne arrived by the tapestry at the seventh floor and looked around. Harry was nowhere to be seen. She sighed annoyingly before jumping in surprise when she heard his voice from behind her.
"You're here," Harry said as she turned and looked at him.
"Where did you come from?" she asked composing herself.
"I was here," Harry said.
"No, you weren't," she said. He smiled before showing her his invisibility cloak which was crumpled in his hand. "Is that your invisibility cloak that everyone keeps talking about?" she asked.
"They do?" he said. She looked at him with a 'Really?' look. "I didn't know that."
"Of course they do," she said. "These are very rare and you can only use them just a few times before they run out of magic." She then paused for a minute before looking from the cloak to him. "Can I?" she asked somewhat hesitantly.
Harry smiled. This was the first time he was seeing her like this. "Sure," he said handing her the cloak.
She grabbed and unfurled it, feeling the fabric. "It feels like a really thin plastic," she said. "I've used one and this one is completely different. Where did you buy it?"
"It was left to me by my dad," Harry said slowly.
"Oh," Daphne realized as she quickly but carefully folded the cloak before handing it to him. "I'm sorry," she said.
"It's alright," Harry said. "Shall we go in?" Daphne nodded before the door appeared and the two walked in.
She saw it was a cozy small hall with a small fireplace and two comfortable couches by it along with a chest-high table. She recognized the color of the couch and guessed that Harry must've asked the room to be Gryffindor common room. She didn't mind it. She didn't care what place Harry made the room to look like. She was here for one thing and that was to help him figure out a way to survive in the tournament.
"Did you get the books?" she asked. He nodded before taking out a small pouch from his pocket and enlarged it. Inside were the three books on the tournament which Harry had checked out from the library along with two more books on dragons. Daphne noticed that one of them went into a deeper concept and knew that Madame Pince wouldn't have just handed that kind of book to him. Pointing to it she said, "How did you get this? I'm pretty sure a book like this belongs in the restricted section."
Harry smiled as Daphne realized it. "You stole it?" she asked, sounding shocked.
"I prefer to use the term 'borrowed'," he said.
"How?" she asked. "You can't just walk in there and take whatever you want. As far as I've seen Pince always has one eye looking at the entrance of that section."
"I have my ways," Harry said looking at his invisibility cloak. Daphne realized but didn't say anything as she nodded once. "So, let us begin." They settled on the couches as Harry put the books on the table.
"So, are you sure that the first task requires you to steal a dragon's egg?" she asked.
"If I said that I was a hundred percent sure then I'd be blindly believing Cedric's words," Harry said, "but I don't' have anything else to go on with so, yeah. Besides, I saw one of the dragons." Daphne looked at him all of a sudden. "What?" Harry asked.
"You should've told me about it sooner," she said.
"This is the first time that we are talking about it," Harry responded. She glared at him. "Sorry," he said meekly.
"Describe it to me," she said. He looked at her confused. She sighed. "The dragon that you saw, describe to me what it looked like."
"Oh, uh…I didn't get a good look. It was pretty dark," he said. "However, I noticed that it was green in color. Also, it had a lizard-like body." He saw Daphne was quickly flipping the pages from one of the books on dragon. At that moment she reminded him of Hermione. He smiled at that when she stopped and looked at the opened page with a tilted head before turning the book towards him and putting her finger on one of the pictures.
"Is this the one you saw?" she asked.
Harry looked at the picture and nodded. He was surprised that she was able to find it that quick. "Yeah, this is what I saw," he said. Even though it was dark Harry had caught a glimpse of the beast when it breathed fire, lighting up the area like it was morning. "Wow, you really found it quickly," he said before mentally swearing that he saw Daphne crack a smile. Somehow it made him feel good in a way. "Common Welsh Green," he read the name underneath the picture. Unlike most pictures in magical books this picture didn't move. Harry kept reading what was written underneath it. "They can grow up to fifty feet and have a wing span of over eighty feet for males and sixty for females. They are one of the calmer species of the dragon kingdom…calmer?"
"What?" Daphne asked.
"The book says that it's one of the calmer species," Harry said. "What I saw that night was anything but that. It was breathing fire everywhere. One of the handlers even got injured when the dragon made the cage fall on him. Its roar was deafening. If that is calm, I don't wanna know what an aggressive dragon is like. Who's to say that they've got one of those for the first task as well? Knowing my luck, I'll probably get the worst of the bunch."
"Alright, calm down," Daphne said. "Maybe the dragon was agitated because it was in a cage. However, that makes me wonder whether they caught wild dragons for this task."
"Wild?"
Daphne nodded. "I was under the impression that they wouldn't be stupid enough to do something like that and instead use sanctuary dragons that are brought up in a safe environment amidst the dragon handlers," she said. "The way you described it, it's indicating more towards the fact that whatever dragons they've brought for the tournament must've been caught from the wild. Talk about making things dangerous. Female dragons, in general, are of more volatile nature. You add in their maternal instincts to protect their eggs and you get yourself a really angry dragon that won't think twice before turning anything in front of it into ash."
"So, in short it's impossible," Harry said. "That's what you are saying?"
"If it was impossible the tournament organizers wouldn't do it," she said. "If it's a challenge then there must be a way to solve it. Also, they are unlikely to use the same species of dragons for the four of you."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked sounding nervous. "How is that fare – letting us face different dragons?"
She rolled her eyes. "Probably because when one of you completes the task, the other three champions would figure out how to do it too, with there being the same dragon species. I didn't make the rules, Potter," She said. "Besides, it's just a speculation. However, it is also highly likely that that is the case. Four female dragons of the same species kept in close vicinity of each other with their eggs is an invitation for disaster. You didn't see any other dragons?"
"I didn't," he said. "However, I heard another roar in a different direction of the forbidden forest. It could be that they are keeping the dragons away from each other."
"Hmm," she nodded thinking. "Well, whatever the case, we have to figure out how you can get past an angry mommy dragon and steal her egg. I'm guessing that they will make the fake egg look like the real one so the dragon won't remove it from her nest."
"I'll have to watch out for the dragon," Harry said sounding a little panicked. "How in Merlin's name will I find enough time to figure out which egg is the fake one?"
Daphne looked at him as she wondered the same.
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Thanks for reading…