"Why do we have to do this again?" Harry asked.
We both smiled for the cameras, trying not to blink due to the flashing lights. It almost seemed as though the media was more interested in the two of us than the actual contestants.
"The Ministry wants to rub us in the other schools' faces," I said. "We've got an Order of Merlin winner and a kid who's survived the killing curse, and they've just got regular kids."
"But we're not even competing!" he muttered, forcing himself to smile.
"Do you really want to be?" I asked. "I'm happy on the sidelines, even if we have to do these meet and greets."
I'd had some public relations training through the PRT, at least. Harry was just lost and confused, and I hadn't bothered to teach my kids anything about this part of it. Maybe that was something that needed to be rectified.
Rita Skeeter was still a button, of course, trapped in a junction of a little used vent in the castle. Her replacement was an almost skeletally thin woman with a piercing look in her eyes.
"Mary Finnegan with the Daily Prophet," she said. Her accent was Irish. "How do you feel now that a muggleborn has won the position of champion?"
"I'm not surprised," I said. "Muggleborn lack a few of the advantages of the pureblooded, but they are every bit as capable, especially when they are motivated."
"There are rumors that you've been training the muggleborn for this for years," the woman said. "Isn't that an unfair advantage?"
"The decision to have the tournament was only made this summer," I said.
"And as a seer, there's a chance you would have known that."
"I've been training the muggleborn to defend themselves," I said. "Because we are living in a dangerous world."
"And you don't trust Hogwarts to adequately prepare them?"
"No," I said. "Hogwarts is intended to teach the basics of magic. It is not a duelist school, nor is it intended to be. Given the threats the Death Eaters pose, it seemed important to teach them to stay alive."
"There are those who believe that you are the head of the muggleborn liberation front," she said.
"I'm a child," I said flatly. "I'm not a member of the MLF and I have never been a member."
"Some of the students you trained have been seen with MLF members," she said.
"Once they leave school, I have no control over what they do with what I have taught them," I said.
"Do you agree with the MLF?" the woman asked.
"Perhaps it is time to get back to the reason we are here," Rowle interrupted, stepping in front of me. "This event is a historic occasion, an effort to foster unity between nations."
"Rumor has it that you do not approve of the tournament,' the woman said, changing subjects immediately.
"My job is to protect my students," Rowle said. "I dislike anything that puts them at risk."
"There can be no glory without danger," Ludo Bagman said, interrupting. "And this is an opportunity for students to develop relationships across national lines that may last a hundred years or longer."
Considering that we didn't share classes together, I wasn't sure how that worked. Since I'd taken half the Durmstrang students for a swim, I hadn't seen any of them, even at meals.
Still, Rowle's interruption was enough for Harry and I to slip off the stage, and for the weighing of the wands to begin.
I could understand the importance of checking equipment, but it wasn't as though you could get an undue advantage by having a wand that was enhanced.
I'd checked.
It wasn't likely that a student who was good enough to become champion would be sloppy in wand maintenance either.
I was happy to get away from the event.
I spent the next few hours with my spell research team. They'd been the ones who'd come up with the ability to do partial disillusionments; like getting rid of Draco's bubblehead charm. It had been inspired, and I suspected that I'd have other uses for it later.
With a little bit of practice, I could probably fill an arm of my robes with bugs and use them to move it around while my disillusioned arm was pointing at someone. The arm would likely look unnatural, though and might risk revealing my power.
They spent most of the session talking about their successes and failures, and there were a lot of failures. There had been some injuries too; spell research was dangerous work. It helped to have someone there to revive you.
Still, some curse wounds couldn't be healed, and so I cautioned them. Their latest work was particularly dangerous. They were working on using runes to inscribe curses on objects.
It was a dark area of magic, and one that was possibly illegal. I cautioned them to not talk about it outside of the Room of Requirement, and to keep their research secret from even other members of our own group.
Luna Lovegood's mother had died in a spell research accident. I'd have asked about what she'd been researching, but I didn't want to bring up old traumas.
Most Wizard spell researchers tended to be individuals; they kept their work secret until they were willing to sell it, or they simply used it for their own advantage in duels.
I kept an eye on Karkarov over the next few days; it was then that I overheard him telling his champion that the first task was dragons.
That concerned me, of course.
It hardly seemed fair that he was giving his champion advice while ours remained in the dark. Furthermore, champions fighting dragons was a good way to have dead champions.
"Elena," I said. "The first task is dragons."
"What?" she asked, staring at me.
We were in the library, and I'd just told Edmund.
"I'm a seer," I said. "And Durmstrang cheated, and told his contestant. I'm just evening things out."
"Why would you tell me?" she asked suspiciously.
"I don't want anyone to die," I looked her straight in the eye. "Also, I don't care who wins."
"You are lying," she said. Her French accent was light. "Trying to make me prepare for something that is useless."
"It's dragons," I said. "I can't control what you do with that information, but I'm telling the truth."
She looked a little panicked.
"Try not to die," I said helpfully.
Edmund had been a lot less worried than this girl, likely because we'd gone over techniques on how to kill large magic resistant creatures.
His problem was going to be that it was likely they wanted it dealt with without killing it. That would be a lot more challenging.
Still, with dragons, there was a lot that could go wrong... or that could be made to go wrong. Spectators had died in past Tournaments, and Harry and I were supposed to have front row seats.
That just meant that we had to be prepared.
Time passed faster than I would have liked, and the day of the first event was upon us before I knew it. I'd ventured to the edge of the school so I could spy on the dragons that were just within my range.
I'd watched them several times; seeing how the handlers dealt with them and how dangerous each of them seemed. Hermione had determined the dragon types from my descriptions, and we'd researched their strengths and weaknesses; not for Edmund, but for the rest of us.
As I'd suspected, Harry and I were seated prominently on the front row. We were close enough to smell the fire and the scent of the dragons themselves.
Draco had recovered quite nicely, and was seated all the way on the other side of the stands. He was sitting in the middle of the Durmstrang students. Half of them were glaring at me. The half of them I'd dunked avoided my eyes.
It seemed his plan to gain acceptance from them was working.
He studiously ignored me; it was probably his best play. Glaring at me might provoke a response, and he had to maintain the fiction that he resented me for putting him in the infirmary overnight.
As it happened, Elena was the first contestant up. Her dragon was the Swedish Short Snout. It was a silvery-blue dragon who blew bluish flames.
Elena looked incredibly small in the middle of the sand pit. Her shoulders were hunched and her expression was tight. Her hands trembled and she looked as though she'd rather be anywhere else than where she was.
She took a deep breath and visibly calmed herself.
Forcing her shoulders back, she looked up and her expression became neutral. She reached into her bag and pulled out a ribbon, which she tied to the end of her wand.
The crowd quieted.
She gestured, and music began to play. It was a quiet, hypnotic tune.
She began to dance, twirling the ribbon so that it spun in shapes. Somewhere along the way, it looked like she made wand gestures, and she danced closer and closer to the monster.
It watched the ribbon, and its eyes began to droop. It began to slump forward and sooner than anyone expected, it fell asleep.
She walked forward quickly. She'd taken off her shoes so that her feet made no sound as she moved across the sand. She made a wide berth around the dragon, which was just as well, because it breathed out blue flames as it slept.
Grabbing the egg, she was quickly escorted off the field.
"Find out what that was," I told Hermione. "Dragons are magic resistant, so that was pretty impressive."
She nodded and made a note.
I was sitting with harry to my right, Hermione to my left, Neville was behind me, and Millicent to his right. She had continued to lose weight over the year and was now almost as slender as most of the other girls.
There was a fifteen minute wait after the event. I used that time to check the area for intruders. We were at the edge of the forest, and as such, we weren't protected. It would be easy for the Death Eaters to attack.
I had a plan for that, but it would require detecting them before they reached us.
So far, I'd detected no one.
The dragon handlers used the time to move Elena's dragon out of the pen, and the next one in.
This dragon was scarlet, with smooth scales and golden spikes. It had protuberant eyes and a short snout; it reminded me a little of pug dogs, if pug dogs could weigh four tons and breath reddish fire.
This was the Chinese Fireball.
"It's supposed to be a clever one," Hermione said. "And I don't think the Durmstrang champion is all that clever."
"Draco did say they had an inferior education," I said in a low voice.
Alek stepped out onto the field with a smirk. He swaggered as he walked, and I wondered if he knew something everyone else didn't know.
"Begin!" the announcer said.
Alek stepped forward and began blasting away at the dragon. He hit it in the eyes with conjunctivitis curses, and he blasted away at it on one side.
It screamed and danced backwards.
He darted forward, but apparently the dragon could still see. It breathed fire, and he barely rolled out of the way.
The chains strained as the dragon lunged at him, and he backed away, almost falling on his backside and cursing. He blasted at it frantically, but the spells bounced off its thick hide.
It lunged again, and he moved backward, frantically slapping at his fur cloak before finally dropping it to the ground, where it smoldered.
Enraged, he lashed out at it with half a dozen spells. None of them worked any better than the first.
The spells he was using were designed to cause pain and inconvenience. He wasn't allowed to kill it, however, and I wasn't sure that he would actually be able to by himself anyway.
He couldn't move forward, because the thing was lashing around so much. It stepped backwards, crushing some of its eggs, including the golden egg.
The crowd groaned.
Alek finally ran forward and barely managed to grab the egg before the dragon stepped on his leg, crushing it.
Dragon handlers rushed onto the scene, even as the dragon bent down to breathe flames on him.
Rowle stood up and cast a flame freezing spell on Alek, even as multiple dragon handlers cast stunners on the dragon. It fell over, landing on Alek.
The crowd went quiet, and I heard a few screams from the Beauxbatons girls.
The judges and Hagrid rushed down to the sand, and it took both Hagrid and Madam Maxime to lift a portion of the dragon up long enough to get Alek out.
For the next five minutes everyone was silent as healers from St. Mungos crouched over the body.
Finally, the verdict was in; he was alive.
The crowd clapped and cheered as though they hadn't just seen a teenaged boy almost die.
His body was levitated and was taken off the field. His leg was mangled, but as it was a physical injury and not curse related, it would likely be healed in a week or less.
There were more discussions among the judges for the next fifteen minutes, but the consensus was that it was better to finish the event.
The dragon handlers dragged the stunned dragon away, and the last dragon was brought out.
They'd given the worst dragon to the muggleborn, or course. The Hungarian Horntail.
It was jet black, with yellow eyes slitted like a cats. It's flame reached out fifty feet, longer than the other dragons. It's flame was very hot as well; it was turning sand into glass, and even from the stands we could feel the heat from the flame.
I gestured, and as a group all the muggleborn cast flame freezing spells on themselves, and on any students too young or unable to cast them on themselves.
We'd all agreed on this in advance; it was better safe than sorry.
Edmund emerged from his tent. He looked at the dragon and sighed. He immediately cast a flame freezing spell on himself, and then he grabbed several stones.
He transfigured one stone into a unicorn. It was a masterful piece of work, one that made me wish I'd been able to get out to the Forbidden Forest without being ambushed by the Death Dealers.
He did it again, and again and again.
When he was done, he had thirteen unicorns, and he cast flame freezing spells on each of them.
The unicorns immediately headed toward the dragon. In the meantime Edmund disillusioned himself.
The unicorns charged the dragon, and the dragon roared, lunging toward them. They stepped back quickly, stabbing at it from behind while it attacked the unicorns in the front.
I heard members of the crowd gasp as they saw Edmund's footsteps in the sand. He walked casually around the entire fight, and a moment later, he appeared with the egg held up high.
The crowd cheered, and the dragon pounced on one of the unicorns, sending meat and viscera flying everywhere. It looked up as it saw Edmund with the eggs and it screamed.
It lunged forward, and the chains holding it screamed as they snapped.
Edmund lunged to the side, even as the unicorns moved to protect him. The dragon lunged forward, killing the unicorns even as Edmund disillusioned himself again.
The dragon finished with the last of the unicorns by the time Edmund reached the tent.
It turned and looked us directly in the eye.
Fire exploded all around us.
I'd had the muggleborn protect the stands as well as us; the last thing anyone needed was to fall through burning stands to their death.
The flames washed over us, and they didn't hurt at all.
The dragon handlers were rushing forward, but they were going to be too late.
The dragon rushed forward, charging toward the stands.
The adults in the crowd were screaming and trying to get away, something that I should have anticipated.
"Foam!" I shouted.
A moment later eighty wands began to spray. So heavy and powerful was the dragon that it continued to move forward, even through the hardening foam.
It was only a dozen feet from me now, and I prepared to cast the killing curse; I'd managed to figure it out and had tried it out on some insects.
I felt myself being sprayed and I grimaced.
Apparently some of my people thought they were protecting me, Hermione, Harry, and Millicent by spraying us with the foam. Or perhaps their aim at the dragon wasn't goof.
In any case, my view of what was happening was quickly obscured, and I found myself stuck to the seat.
I'd thought that my experience with being trapped by containment foam would end with my villainous career. Apparently I was wrong.
Fortunately I could see what was happening through my bugs.
All eighty wands kept spraying and soon the dragon couldn't be seen at all. All there was of it was a growing mound of hardened foam. The thing screamed and struggled, but eventually it would exhaust itself.
The foam was designed to allow people to breathe.
Smoke began to come from within the foam; apparently the dragon was trying to burn itself out.
Eighty flame freezing spells on the foam took care of that.
A moment later, everything was silent.