A/N: In this chapter, hjdevnul will be pleased to see, Hermione starts breaking out the heavy brainpower. :)
I realize that I have given an extremely caricatured picture of Irish song, and can only throw myself on the mercy of the Celtic gods and goddesses. The slaughter of Suvla Bay, part of the battle of Gallipoli, is the subject of the song "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda"; for lyrics to that, to "Bold Robert Emmet" and dozens of other folk classics, see the website m [dot nu [slash eirinn [slash ceol. Thanks for charmingly-holly for the kind words on the use of music in this story.
vii. Harpstrings into Hippogriffs
Back inside the safety of Hogwarts' walls and wards, the students (both fighters and 'civilians') seemed unsure how to take their first defeat. Was it a temporary setback which their leaders (especially the invincible Harry Potter) would find a way to reverse? Or was this the moment when they stopped enjoying the bolts of luck which sometimes came to fools and children, the thirty-point streaks which gave false hope to Chudley Cannons fans, and reality caught up with them?
Harry himself, meanwhile, sought out Ginny to offer his consolations on the loss of her friend. He was half dreading the talk, and not just because of the sorrow of the occasion. As her memories transferred in death had told him, Sarah had been a confidante to Ginny, one with whom Ginny shared intimate details of both her real life and her fantasy life. All those confidences--so many of course involving Harry himself--were now breached, a fact Ginny had to be conscious of. So if I don't say anything about it, Harry thought to himself, it looks like I'm ignoring her feelings. If I say something, it looks like I'm taunting her about them...
After the opening conventions of such conversations had been honored, Harry tried to fumble towards some third way.
"I wish I'd known Sarah better. I never knew you were such good friends."
"She was-- oh, you know what she was like, now."
"Not from your point of view."
Ginny nodded. "She was the one who showed me how to make that singing card; she made one for all of our birthdays, in the dorm, and I was so impressed I begged her to teach me, and she seemed so grateful at my being impressed and asking for help."
"She was, she thought it was like some kind of validation that she belonged at Hogwarts. She wrote back to her mother--" Harry stopped, not knowing how much would be a violation of the dead girl's privacy, or her mother's... Would they ever get a chance to see her mother?
Ginny was lost in memory for a moment, after which she burst out in a mix of sobs and giggles. "I was just thinking," she said, "of your reaction to some of those conversations." Harry blushed and cringed, which caused Ginny to laugh and point at him triumphantly and declare, "Yes, exactly! You never imagined that thirteen-year-old girls could be so... frank, did you?"
"Had no idea."
The reminiscing continued, and Harry reminded himself not to append an "I know" to every statement Ginny made about her friend. It was late at night before they parted, and Harry couldn't help wondering what Sarah and Ginny would be saying to each other now under happier circumstances.
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For three days, the students of Hogwarts tried to arrive at a strategy for pushing back their besiegers. As they debated alternatives, the wards were being steadily weakened, and the officers were forced to draw them in closer and closer to the castle so they would hold strong in this smaller but less attenuated form. The students still needed and held the vegetable field, but the Death Eaters were now in possession of the Quidditch Pitch, Hagrid's cabin, the Whomping Willow, and the Hogwarts Express station. When the enemy moved into the area around the cabin, they discovered the grave of Ernie Macmillan. Students looked on from Hogwarts' towers as the marker was pointed at by laughing Death Eaters, who then called up to their Giant allies. After some repeated prompting and gesturing from Macnair, one Giant reached down with one hand, punctured the surface of the gravesite as easily as a man would punch through wrapping paper, and brought his arm back up with a fistful of soil and a limp human body. There were more instructions from the small masked figures, who then gestured and shouted towards the students, clearly calling on them to watch what would happen next. They did watch, helpless, as one Giant tossed Ernie's body to another, who swatted it towards a third, who punched it away towards a fourth... After that some students were cursing, some were crying, but nobody was watching anymore.
Hermione, however, had watched long enough to see how loth the Giants were to take any quick steps, even when it would have been useful in their "game," and how carefully they looked down before planting their feet on some unseen, untrodden ground. She knew that with the advantages of superhuman size and weight came a corresponding burden on their platform of support, making the Giants' feet their weakest and most sensitive parts. She knew as well that the Giants walked on sandals in the native lands, and regarded human shoes ("foot-cages," they called them) as one of the confinements of an alien civilization. But now, she saw, they were wearing the despised full-cover, ankle-high boots, no doubt at the urging of the Death Eaters who feared attack on their allies' weakness. The beginning of a plan occurred to her, and by the end of that night, she had fleshed it out. Neville's contribution, involving simple botany for the most part, made up the key material part of it. The Army of the Forbidden Forest received orders to be up and ready by dawn.
The first wave went out. For the first time, they did not take the heights, but came skimming rapidly over the grass before the Giants or wizards could react. This group cast no spell, but dropped vials of potion onto the ground. Blades of grass quickly began to go through their life cycle at hundreds of times normal speed: growth, seed dispersal and death. The enemy looked more puzzled than alarmed at this development, some scoffing out loud about "killer grass." But soon the Giants were shaking and stamping their feet, and some of the wizards and witches started in too. The seeds of the grass were finding their way into the smallest niches of their shoes, and the potion not only forced them to grow faster, it drove them to grow desperately on the water and nutrients of their new hosts. Soon the enemy was howling as dozens of blades rooted themselves in the flesh of their feet, died, and turned to sharp little sticks, but not before beginning this life cycle again.
For the humans it was painful, for the Giants it was agonizing. As the Giants dropped their shields and stomped their feet to kill or dislodge the invaders, and as some of the Death Eaters attempted spells to stop the grass attack, all were left vulnerable to the next wave of attackers. A dozen or more of the witches and wizards were felled by the stone bombardment while the Giants tore off their shoes in a frenzy to scratch off the tormenting grass. Some of the Death Eaters managed to kill the grass attackers on themselves or on nearby Giants with a local antibiotic spell, but forgot that wouldn't prevent the grass around them from infiltrating again. Now giants were running about chaotically, chased around by their wand-wielding allies attempting to rid them of the vegetative pestilence, leaving gaps once again for the students to exploit.
Macnair finally urged his fellows to defoliate the whole region, but by this time the Giants had all torn off their shoes, and any Death Eater foolish enough to try to stop them received a blow or kick from an angry Giant's fist or leg. The dark allies began angrily threatening one another, never a good move on a battlefield and one that now cost some their lives; the Army of the Forbidden Forest was holding nothing back now on offensive spells. Macnair finally rallied his diminished forces into a fighting formation on their now-bare ground, but the destruction of the grass had a side effect: it left hundreds of snakes out in the open and very upset at their sudden loss of cover. There was only one hominid on that field who could speak to the serpents' grievance, and offer them an object for retribution:
"Wise Ones," Harry Potter hissed. "Wise Ones, know your enemy! There are the invaders, there are the destroyers of your second clothes, the friends of the running rats: the Large Ones! Drive them off and reclaim your land!"
Most of the Death Eaters stood frozen in terror on hearing that language, whose meaning they knew nothing of but whose sounds they had so often heard produced by their Lord in preparation for some act of torture. The Giants had no such conditioned fear of Parseltongue, but even they had to be taken aback by its results, the angry, sinuous wave that advanced upon them from all directions. The snakes were upon them soon in too great numbers for wizard spells to counter, and they bore in on the meaty toes of the Large Ones. Venomous or not, dozens of fangs piercing their tenderest spots overwhelmed the Giants' pain tolerance, and the Hogwarts students felt as if they would be knocked down by the force of their foes' screams. Soon the Giants were in full flight, and any Death Eater trying to restrain them was backhanded into the ground, some to be swallowed up by the flowing serpentine carpet.
Left unshielded and grounded -- brooms had been left behind, since flying would have taken them out of the protection of their Giant guard -- the remaining Death Eaters surrendered. They knew what had happened to the first battalion caught on the ground against the A.F.F., and had no wish to suffer any more of that. They also feared what Voldemort might do to a third set of failures, more than they feared what Hogwarts students would do to prisoners of war. For some Death Eaters, at least, this faith in their enemies' decency wasn't a foregone conclusion. Macnair especially, for his role in desecrating Ernie's body, was the object of debate.
"Macnair," Ron spat, "doesn't get to sleep off the rest of the war." He suggested having him tied to the body of one of his dead comrades, which brought outraged protest from Hermione that they would be guilty then of the same crime they were punishing. "Hermione," Ginny asked, "are we supposed to be the ones upholding the rules of war or not? If we are, then it's up to us to make sure the bastard doesn't get away with violating them. If we don't do that, then what's the point of saying there are rules?"
Harry wasn't sure he knew what the point was either way. If both sides had agreed beforehand to follow the Geneva conventions, and if somebody was inspecting to make sure they were carried out, that would be one thing, but obviously this wasn't happening.
"They surrendered to us," Neville argued, "because they knew we would give them fair treatment. If we violate that ---"
"What do you mean, 'violate'?" Ron asked. "We never made them a promise."
"But we would have," Luna replied, "if we'd had the opportunity. So really, it would be going back on our word if we started using sadistic punishments."
"But we never gave the word!" Ron insisted.
"Still, if they didn't know that we were the kind of people who would have given the word, they wouldn't have surrendered," Luna said.
"So will going back on the pledge we didn't give cause them to un-surrender?" Ron pleaded.
"Don't be silly, Ronald. It will make us untrustworthy, and if we're untrustworthy, we can't expect to be trusted."
"But they won't know whether we're untrustworthy--"
"They do know, because they know what kind of people we are."
"But then -- if -- that means we couldn't act differently because they -- what I mean is--"
"You sound confused, Ronald. I don't see the problem."
On one level, Harry was entirely in sympathy with Ron's confusion. What Luna was arguing made no sense in terms of cause-and-effect, reward-and-punishment type reasoning. But he thought that if there was such a thing as magical reasoning, there might be worse guides to it than Luna Lovegood. In the end, the vote broke four to two against Ron's proposal, though the officers assured the students, especially the angry Hufflepuffs, that Macnair would face some form of trial and punishment from all of them before the siege was over.
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A week, two weeks, passed. Attempts were started to make Hogwarts more of a place to live rather than just a barracks and training camp: the students were resigned to the idea that this would be their home for the foreseeable future. Seating arrangements for meals now took no account of houses. At one breakfast Seamus glanced towards one of the dormant radios, and noted:
"We've had Welsh, American, and Scottish music. So you know what's supposed to come on the next time, don't you?"
"Canadian?" Susan suggested.
"Australian!" Mandy voted.
"Indian!" "Bahamian!" "Manx!"...
"No, you clods, it's time for something Irish!"
Dean groaned. "Please, God, no."
Seamus turned to his friend in surprise. "What the hell's the matter, you liked Gaelic music just fine when you visited our home, and Da got out his old LPs--"
"Yeah, what was the title of those LPs, 'Music To Weep Into Your Beer By'? It was bloody depressing. The minstrel boy gets killed--"
"That wasn't the point of the song, the point was that 'The foeman's chains could not keep that proud soul under'!"
"And the girl tells her boy to come visit her grave because she'll be dead next time he comes back--"
"That's right, 'And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me, And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be'. What kind of heartless fecking son of a bitch isn't touched by that?"
"Oh, you want 'touching,' here's a really touching one:
How well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter!
I'm sure looking forward to going out to fight with that ringing in my ears!"
"We don't forget our history, Thomas!"
"Right, I'll give you that, Finnegan, that LP must have sung about every defeat in Irish history. How about:
The struggle is over, the boys are defeated
Old Ireland's surrounded with sadness and gloom
We were defeated and shamefully treated
And I, Robert Emmet, awaiting my doom
Hung, drawn and quartered, sure that was my sentence--"
" 'But soon I will show them no coward am I'," Seamus roared. "'My crime is my love of the land I was born in, A hero I lived and a hero I'll die'! A hero!"
"Hung, drawn and quartered!"
"A hero!"
"You have to admit, Seamus," Anthony interrupted, "there aren't many armies which would play that song before a battle."
"And the way -- it's pretty uncanny," Hannah said, "how the radio keeps bringing us these rallying tunes, I'd really hate to get down here and find it playing... you know, something like..."
"Chopin's funeral march?" Padma offered.
"I'm but a Stranger here, Heaven is my Home?"
"Soon we'll be Done with the Trouble of the World?"
The nervous giggles were turning into cackles and screeches. The contagion spread with each new suggestion, until the hall seemed to settle on one song, with almost all the Army (even Seamus) joining in:
"Who waaaants to liiiiiiive foreeeeeever?
Who WAAAANTS to LIIIIIVE forEEverrrrrr?--"
Then suddenly a single voice was heard piercing through the chorus of a hundred, crying "stop it, STOP IT, STOP IT!" The students seemed to sober immediately, and turned to see Hermione with her hands covering her face, barely controlling her shaking. Ron came over to try to comfort her, but since he had just been taking part in the singing, Hermione angrily shrugged him off. It was days before Ron and Hermione were back to normal as a couple, and black humor aficionados were put off their game for some time after that. During wartime, though, there would always be an underground market (at the least) for their services.
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On October 18 the dragons came. The scouts at Gryffindor Tower reported twenty four approaching, including at least eight Hungarian Horntails. The Death Eaters riding the dragons were accompanied by twelve more on broomstick; these, obviously, were the ward-breakers, and the dragons were there first to guard them until they could open Hogwarts to attack, and then to attack the castle itself. A single trained dragon was more than capable of bringing down a wall; two dozen could destroy a castle and all its inhabitants. There was no way of knowing with certainty who the leader was, but the presumption was that it was the man MacGregor had always spoken of as Voldemort's dragonmaster, Antonin Doholov. The radio had no songs at all the for students this time; a news broadcast was on instead.
"For the eighth consecutive day, government offices in Britain came under attack from unidentified forces using unidentified weapons, leaving more than three hundred dead. The Prime Minister continues to insist that the government knows the source and nature of the attacks, and is capable of defending the country, but refuses to issue any details..."
The student army flew off. Harry was its only member with any experience confronting dragons, and his task had been essentially one of escape. The strategy group had already considered tactics based on Krum's partial success in the Triwizard Tournament: attacking the eyes. As in the fight against the Giants, the A.F.F. was resting its hopes on the ability to bring down a more powerful foe by focusing on its weakest spot. The fliers knew the drill: first, flank the dragons, so two or more squads could isolate the ones on the edge; one squad produces anti-fire shields, the other attacks with hexes to sting and blind.
The strategy never had a chance. The Death Eaters had learned not to leave themselves vulnerable by stringing themselves out in a line and leaving the furthest ends vulnerable to sniping; they advanced in an oval, which allowed those not being attacked to burn the attackers terribly if they approached. The dark forces had enough firepower in reserve to leave two or three dragons free to make terrible dives against any squads which tried to do damage, scattering the students like pigeons. Students' attempts to cast spells against dragons in full flight were utter failures. The size and speed of the creatures were terrible things merely to see, and to fight against such force quickly came to seem like hubris. If you see a plane in flight from the ground, you may say you know its size and speed, but it still seems like nothing more than a long balloon floating calmly past; but if you could hover on broomstick as a jet passed close, seeing that thing the size of a building run through the air faster than the eye could follow it... you would be lost, shocked into stupor.
That was how Harry felt, confounded again and again when trying to aim at something that should have been a big easy target. Ridiculous, he thought, ridiculous, that I can't hit something that size. And that thought became, ridiculous, that we're here trying to fight dragons, which became ridiculous, that they expect us to do this, to hold them off, to beat them by ourselves. Again a dive-bombing dragon forced a dozen students to break off in panic before they even made their formation. Who are we to think we can do this? Who are you to ask this of us? With a wrenching effort Harry pulled himself back into the present and into the fight, but a calmer mind still brought down no dragons. The rest of the student army was having no success either, but Harry and Ron quickly exchanged signals to continue, hoping that the Army would begin to get the range, get the timing. It will come, he told himself, there are lots of things you think can't be done but you keep at it, you come closer and closer each time.
But the dragons were coming closer too. None of the students had been snapped up yet, only because they had all flown off simultaneously in eight different directions when the dragon approached. The creature was therefore stymied for a moment, not knowing which way to hunt, which meal to chase, giving its prey a chance to escape. But then on one sortie, Terry Boot became too intent on lining up his chance to strike, and lingered in the air for a second after all his comrades had started away. That one second might as well have been a scent trail guiding the dragon's jaws towards him.
Far off, across the battlefield, Harry's mind was jolted by a five-year-old's exclamation of wonder as he wandlessly made his night-candle burn brightly enough to read the book ("Tales of Electricity") which the exasperated Alfred Boot had shut after the third reading before ordering his young son to bed.
For a second time, the Army of the Forbidden Forest withdrew from the field. It had never explicitly been made a rule that they would retreat after the first fatality, but some kind of spontaneous agreement was reached each time among the officers, drawn from a conviction that one death was a tragedy, more than one would be a catastrophe. Back within the wards and walls, for the third time, an impromptu wake formed itself. The mourners' circle had no real center, since there was no next of kin to act as the objects of consolation while others played the secondary role of consolers. After Ernie had died, his friends' grief had at first been mixed with a bit of panic that there were no set rules for this kind of memorial and no adults to assign them according to fixed wizarding customs. They adapted, though; the student who was sobbing the hardest one minute might be the one providing a shoulder the next.
For now, it was Anthony Goldstein who looked most in need of support; with his head down around his knees he looked like a victim of seasickness struggling against dizziness and nausea, motionless except for the cries that came surging up from his chest to shake him again and again. Terry's memories gave Harry some understanding of Anthony's grief; he could see how close they had been, the two slightly-built boys of the same age who had always been too smart for their own good, and wondered if Anthony would ever get over it, losing his best friend for close to seven years, what would happen to Harry himself if Ron... He suppressed that line of thought. Harry found himself standing near Anthony, with a number of others, mostly Ravenclaws, who were offering words and hugs, and he offered his own.
After some time, when the crying had died down somewhat, the remembrances began to be shared among those who had known Terry. As Harry listened to some and mentally noted how some details had been improved in the telling, he saw a number of the students turning towards him. Harry wasn't sure whether they were looking at Captain Potter, their commanding officer (in which case should he give some kind of pep talk?) or at the magical repository of Terry's memories (in which case he would have to say something... oracular?) or just at Harry, who was Terry's yearmate, who had taken History and Defence classes with him. It was only the last of the three Harries, though, who felt like talking now.
"Do you remember," Harry asked, "how Terry and Hermione used to keep sneaking glances at each other in History of Magic, and if one of them started drooping off, the other would start taking notes harder? It was like a couple of Muggle cyclists looking for their chance to make a breakaway, and if they sense the opponent is losing it a little suddenly the arms and legs start pumping--" and laughter burst out as Harry mimed Terry or Hermione going into an all-out, grim-faced, lung-sapping sprint of note-writing. He felt a clout on the shoulder then, and realized with some embarrassment that Hermione was standing right behind him.
"I want you to know, Potter, that I put a lot of effort into that... bloody useless class," she said, loudly enough to bring cheers and raised glasses from the entire room.
"And that's just one of the things we love you so much for, Hermione," Harry responded. It started out as a jocular comeback when it first passed his lips, but it somehow didn't come out that way; Hermione's startled look bore witness to that. Harry tried to say, with a smile and a shrug, something like Well, you know, that's how it is, not that way, you understand, but still...
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It was time for Hermione to pull another rabbit out of a hat (or, as the wizard saying had it, transfigure a harpstring into a hippogriff). After two days' intensive study of dragon anatomy, physiology, behavior and (Ron and Harry were prepared to swear) religious customs, she announced the plan.
"We can't overpower them, even at their weakest," Hermione argued. "Not without too many casualties, at any rate. If we can't fight them, we have to keep them from fighting us; essentially we have to use their own instincts, their own patterns, to modify their behavior. It's already been altered by training so that they would attack whoever their riders called on them to attack, we have to alter it again so they have a stronger motivation to do something other than attack Hogwarts students."
Harry nodded. This sounded interesting.
"So," Hermione continued, "we try to counter that conditioning, which usually depends on food reward, with something stronger."
"Sex drive," Luna suggested, and Hermione's face brightened with enthusiasm.
"Exactly, Luna! Dragon males turn on one another to fight over female dragons who are receptive, and the females stop their own activity to observe the contests."
Harry nodded again. This was sounding promising.
"Did they bring female dragons, Hermione?"
"Yes, Ginny; but this isn't the time of year for their natural cycle. There are potions which could force it, but--"
"But we can't exactly force it down their throats," Ron finished.
"Right. But there's a spell which could do the same, if we can cast them on the proper organ. The incantation is 'Fructuarius'"
Harry looked up eagerly. This sounded like it could work.
"If you look at this chart," Hermione continued, and put up a magical "slide" of female dragon anatomy, "you can see that the ovum is actually close to a natural opening; the spell wouldn't have to penetrate dragonhide, as long as the spellcaster could fly close enough--"
"Hermione, wait a minute, that 'natural opening,' you mean--"
"That's right, Ron, the anus."
"So the plan is -- one of us has to find the female dragon, fly up her arse, cast the spell to put her in heat, and then fly back and watch the fireworks go off."
"Reptiles don't go into 'heat' like mammals do, but otherwise -- yes, that's pretty much it. Of course we would have to have our best fliers going in," she said, looking at Ginny and Harry.
Harry's stopped nodding. She's getting back at me for imitating her note-taking, he thought for one brain-scrambled moment.
"That's just mad, Hermione," was Ron's reaction, and this drew vigorous nods from Harry, Ginny and all the portraits in the office.
"Not at all, Ron," Luna responded. "It seems to me like a very logical, well-thought-out plan." Of course this only served to confirm the others' initial impression, though Neville glared down anybody (whether two- or three-dimensional) who looked like they were going to draw that conclusion explicitly.
"Look, Hermione," Ginny said, "for this to work we have to be able to track and target a dragon, and that's exactly what we haven't been able to do in the first place."
"That's true, Ginny, but dragons are apex predators; nothing ever hunts them, so they don't feel threatened by smaller objects behind them. They won't move as quickly to get out of the way of a minor annoyance as they would in pursuing prey. They'll probably just swat at you with their tails--"
"Just swat us?" Harry said. "Hermione, please don't tell me--"
"No, Harry, none of the females are Horntails. We got lucky there."
"I told you, Harry!" said Luna, "your magical luck is a useful gift for so many purposes!"
Before Harry had a chance to retort, Hermione was moving on to her next point. "There's something else that can give us an edge. The dragons had to be conditioned to avoid attacking anybody on their own side. Dragons are primarily visual hunters, so it's almost certainly visual conditioning."
The instructor paused here, to see if the students could follow her reasoning to its logical conclusion.
"The Death Eater masks and robes?" Neville suggested. Hermione smiled and nodded. "Brilliant!" Ron said, "we've sure got no shortage of those. We have to charm up some internal ID system so we don't try to spell our own side, but we can manage..."
Harry shut out the rest of the conversation, shuddering at the thought of putting that filthy thing over his face. He had an instant, vivid nightmare of the mask mocking him in Voldemort's voice as he tried to fly, blinding him, choking him; if the Death Eaters caught him, they would show him off wearing the mask, they would bury him in it... He forced himself once again to go through his exercises, to calm himself, to stay objective.
"Harry," said a familiar voice, "they're clothes. Clothes can't defile us, only our actions can."
"And if it makes you feel better," said the companion voice, "you can paint 'Bugger Voldemort!' all over the front in reappearing ink."
"James!"
"Lily, it's the same principle, if only our actions can defile us, then mere words can't."
"He's got you there, Mom."
Harry heard these words echo against a background of silence and realized that he had not completely suppressed voicing his part in this dialogue; moreover, that the others had finished their discussion of the necessary spells and had been waiting for his input or decision. He flushed a bit at the looks he was receiving from his friends, then shrugged. Sod it. They already know I'm a few bricks shy.
"Alright," Harry said to the group. "We have approval of the plan, at the highest rank."
----------------
"Gold Team, in position," Ron called. Twelve mini-squads, in black garb with white masks, assembled. "Remember you don't need to get too close, just get the dragons spread out enough for Red Team to do their job." Twelve of the mini-squads would appear to attack the dragons following the same strategy as before, allow themselves to be chased, and then Red Team -- the superior flyers, like Ginny, Su Li and of course Harry -- would fly out and try to come in behind the dragons. If Gold Team's disguises threw off the dragons enough to allow them to do some damage to the enemy, that was a bonus, but their primary purpose, to put it bluntly, was bait. Ron gave the signal for Gold Team, and the forty-eight young witches and wizards were off.
Harry and the other members of Red Team held their brooms, waiting behind their own masks for their signal to go out. Harry saw one fellow Death Eater approach and pass behind him, then felt a shocking pinch which brought him turning around to face his harasser.
"Just checking my property, Potter."
"Ah. Err, OK, I guess. But you know, pinching men in disguise... what if it wasn't me?"
"That thing isn't going to hide you from me, Harry. I know it's still you underneath."
Harry was sure the emphasis he heard in those last words were not just his imagination, and felt a burst of happy amazement at the way Ginny could speak so exactly to his fears of the moment like this.
"Well. That's a pretty... nice thought. Reassuring, you know."
"I figured it might be."
The battle was joined, and Gold Team at first found the disguises succeeding beyond their hopes. A few of the dragons responded to the urging of their handlers and immediately attacked the false Death Eaters, but not with same devastating ferocity they had shown the other day. The majority made only halting and indecisive movements as the students flew casually towards them like friends floating over to say hello on the weekend pitch. And two of the great beasts remained so placid, despite the kicks, screams and spells from their masters, that the students were able to surround, stun and bind the dragonriders, then lift them out to be levitated off to the Hogwarts dungeons. The two now-riderless Horntails hung bemused in the air for a few seconds, then detached themselves from the battle and were off to Central Europe.
Now Red Team entered the fray. The students from Gold Team -- at least those who had been able to approach close enough to the dragons -- had already cast a gender-revealing spell and showered permanent magical highlights on the females. Harry's group spotted one female Ironbelly who was harrying and being harried by Padma's squad, and tailed her. Su Li was closest, and made her run for the target. Harry's heart stopped for a moment as he saw the small female form weaving back and forth towards the target, then started again as he saw her flying style, quite different from Ginny's. Then he cursed himself for feeling even a moment of relief that it was "only" Su Li in danger. The Ravenclaw was gaining steadily, was raising her wand to cast her spell, when a flick of the dragon's tail sent her flying off her broom and falling to the ground. Another squad took up the wounded flyer; it wasn't a long fall, and it hadn't been the thick end of the tail, Su Li should be all right with treatment, but still... 'Only' swat at you, Harry thought. 'Only' as thick as an aspen trunk and as fast as a whip.
Meanwhile, the fog of war was everywhere being thickened by clouds of dragon smoke, through which flyers came in out who might be foes or might be friends. One Death Eater in the heat of pursuit miscalculated where the wards were, or forgot that the students could pass back within them, and led his dragon into the magic boundary. The reaction was not as devastating as it had been for mere wizards, but still the dragon was tossed violently backwards, lost his wingbeat and fell to the earth. A falling dragon will instinctively turn so that it lands on its heavily armored back, and the rider on that back, with no time to extricate himself, could do nothing but add a minuscule bit of added cushioning for the Short-Snout. The dragon staggered up, dazed by the impact, and waited for his next command. When none came, he turned back his head, saw what remained of his former master, and gave something that sounded almost like a snort of satisfaction. The next moment he was flying away from the battlefield, and the moment after that he was visible only to the sharpest eyes on that field.
Encouraged by such successes, some students tried to bait the Death Eaters into similar traps; perhaps Hermione's lunatic plan wouldn't be needed after all... But Dragons are highly intelligent and adaptive animals, and did not fall for the same trick twice. Red Squads kept up their flying, and Harry's group maintained pursuit of 'their' female. Harry went after the Ironbelly, but had to pull away as the mad cross-traffic of war got in his path, dragons chasing mock-Death Eaters all oblivious to his presence. That left Zacharias next in best position to make his run, but he never got close enough to raise his wand; Harry watched in horror as a brilliant cone of flame came down from the Fireball interceptor above them, and Zacharias went to ground in agony. Harry and Ginny raced down to join him, put out the flames and stun him into unconsciousness. A squad came once more to take their wounded comrade back for treatment, and Harry made his decision.
"Ginny, you've got to go back with him."
She hesitated, glancing between Zacharias and Harry, clearly calculating whichever way I go, I might be helping save one and leaving the other to die...
"He's burned so badly Pomfrey will need you to help if he's got any chance. Ginny, I'm ordering you, please!"
Ginny reached up with her right hand to take off Harry's mask, and took off her own with her left. She gave his eyes a brief but searching examination, then said "all right Sir, I'm obeying you: this time." As Ginny replaced the mask on Harry's face, he felt the hint of a linger of her palm on his cheek, then she was gone, flying back towards the castle.
Harry was up on his broom and off in pursuit once more. There was the female Ironbelly again... I'm probably chasing you harder than any male dragons ever did, you ugly old worm. And I'm not even getting any. He wondered for a split second where that thought had come from, shuddered at the image it summoned up, then put his mind back on his quest. Harry was a hundred meters away, and the dragon was slowly banking side to side, looking for students to attack. By now the dragons were seemingly aware that the flying 'Death Eaters' meant them no good, and were chasing them with very little hesitation.
Meanwhile, the genuine Death Eaters (those not on dragonback) were taking a page from A.F.F. tactics and sending a hailstorm upwards in the direction of the dragons and their pursuers; their theory was that the projectiles which might be deadly against the student enemy would bounce harmlessly off the armor of their dragon allies. Harry accelerated and swiveled, dropped and stalled, swept out graceful parabolas and made airborne stutter-steps of desperation, keeping dozens of potentially fatal bludgers at bay.
Harry was within fifty meters, and glanced up at the Fireball trailing the Ironbelly from above; the Death Eaters might not have deduced the A.F.F. strategy exactly, but they were now aware that students were consistently trying to come up on the dragons from behind, and were positioning other dragons to intercept. The glance cost him a split second's alertness, and a stone flew full force into his hip. The shock of pain hit his system and Harry responded instantly, reflexively, as he had been trained to do in dozens of sessions with Professor MacGregor: cast a wordless analgesic charm before the pain had a chance to lodge itself in his consciousness. The shattered hipbone could be healed later, probably.
Thirty meters, about a dragon's body length, and the Fireball saw him and started a dive. Harry put on a burst of speed that he knew would make his dad stand up cheering, but Harry was no more going to outfly the dragon than a human, even an Olympic champion, could swim rings around a shark. The jaws opened for a deadly flameburst -- or perhaps the dragon would just make a leisurely meal of the boy -- then another broom flashed in front of the Fireball's head and a bolt of magic struck him right between the eyes.
The dragon bellowed in rage, shook its head dizzily, and made a wild snap somewhere in the direction of its attacker, but the Conjunctivitis curse had made it impossible to focus. The Fireball had apparently forgotten entirely about Harry, who was now within meters of his target. The last-moment rescuer now flew up beside him.
"Come on, Harry," Ron said, "let's blow this thing and go home!"
"Fructuarius!" Harry incanted, and the pair peeled off.
For a few agonizing seconds it seemed the spell had done nothing; the dragon kept circling, the battle went on around. Then the Ironbelly flew down to the ground, began walking in circles with her back raised high and roaring towards each of the compass points she passed. When her handler tried to start her flying again with a curse to her side, she looked back to him with an astonished glare, turned her body into a tight spiral which brought her rear end up against the rider in her midsection, and casually tore him to pieces with methodical lashing of her tail. In the near distance, a Short-Snout broke off its attack against the students to turn its nose in her direction, then began flying towards her. The Short-Snout found itself on a collision course with a Ridgeback, and the pair began their contest. In the further distance, the male Fireballs began their unique ritual contest: first they would spiral up around one another, climbing higher and higher until there was almost no air to support them, then plummet downwards in a leviathan Wronski Feint for two. Those riders who hadn't already passed out from lack of oxygen on the upswing would lose consciousness from the assault of G-forces on the downdraft.
Soon the air was filled with similar contests, awe-inspiring in their power and frightening in their ferocity, and the only riders who survived the dives, the claws and the flames were those who bailed out on their brooms. Some of those were able to escape from A.F.F. pursuit, as did some of their comrades who were there for the primary objective -- bringing down the wards -- but without their dragon guard, most were quickly subdued and brought in. It took much longer for the dragons to settle their conflict, but in the end one male regally accepted the submission of his rivals and went off into the forest with his mate.
Though primarily solitary animals, dragons will assist one another after mating contests, so the losing suitors groomed one another, tended scars and removed bits of human which had become lodged here and there before departing for their various homelands.