As he went over everything he had learnt about the First Task, Harry felt like shuddering.
Dragons.
There were five dragons in the Forbidden Forest, just a little away from Hogwarts; the fact they were so close was worrying to him, since he had found out many students often snuck into the Forest on a dare every single year, and Dumbledore knew about it like all of the other teachers. Harry himself had gone out there, flying overhead. As he flew, he found no evidence of any tripping charms to let the teachers know if a student was out of bed, there were no wards along the forest line to stop anyone but the teachers from going in. Anyone could walk in there and get killed, but to just simply ignore the dangers of the dragons was insane. What was worse was the discovery the dragons were nesting mothers, which would make them even more dangerous.
In nature, mothers were terrifying when their offspring was threatened; grizzly bears would not hesitate to tear anything apart, even other bears if it protected their cubs, and dolphins would gang up on sharks. A dragon would burn anyone stupid enough to walk close to them and then tear apart the barbecued remains. What the hell were they thinking of?
But after learning about the history of the First Task and finding out the Champions would have to retrieve some clue for the next task, getting past a dangerous magical beast, Harry felt the choice was logical. But so many things could go wrong, and Harry wondered if Bagman, Crouch, Dumbledore, and everybody else involved had seen that, or if they were too stupid for words. Harry knew enough about dragons to know how dangerous they were.
But five dragons, here!
Harry could well work out that the British Ministry had made the arrangements for three dragons to be sent over, but he didn't even want to think of the nightmare that must have come when the dragon keepers were forced to drug two more dragons, and Harry asked himself why they simply didn't have two more Golden Eggs made, one for himself, the other for Charlus, and have them face the same dragon one at a time.
It wasn't long before he discovered that the other Champions discovered the First Task was dragons; Maxime seduced Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper, who was such a weak-minded simpleton and a Dumbledore supporter that getting him to open up hadn't been difficult for Maxime to make him open up, and show her the dragons, and the man acted like he was in a stupor over the fire-breathing monstrous beauties that he likely barely noticed anyway.
After that, there was no doubt in Harry's mind that Karkaroff discovered the dragons, and he would tell Krum as Maxime would likely tell Fleur. Once that happened, Harry summoned two of his family's House Elves and had them spy on the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons Champions. He wanted to know how they would tackle their dragons, but he had no intention of cheating them. He wasn't going to interfere, he just wanted some intel on them.
It wasn't long before the House Elves came back and told him what Fleur and Viktor had in mind; Fleur would lull her dragon into an enchanted sleep, and retrieve her Golden egg from there. Krum, on the other hand, would simply opt for the conjunctivitis curse straight into its eye, and hope the dragon he would face was in so much pain, that it would be distracted enough for him to steal the Golden egg.
Harry could see how both approaches could work, but there were still some risks. In the meantime, he had his own research to focus on as well, but after what he found out from his competitors, they weren't much of a threat to him. Nor were the Hogwarts champions; from what he found out, Diggory had found out about the dragons' thanks to his Head of House, and so Harry assigned one of the elves to spy on him. The news he got back made Harry question the older body's common sense, as well as the level of magic actually taught at Hogwarts, which made him glad himself, his girlfriend, his friends, his cousins, and his sister were not attending the place; transforming a rock into an animal was hardly going to fool the dragon for long, so it would be touch and go for him to succeed, but that was Diggory's problem.
Harry had gotten the other House Elf to spy on Charlus. James and Sirius were the ones to show him the dragons, and they had decided the rules meant nothing since teachers couldn't really interfere and they'd both started teaching him some spells to help him in some way. In the end, Sirius suggested that Charlus try to outfly the dragon he'd get to distract the beast. Lily, finding out what her husband was doing, added her suggestions when she saw the flaw in the idea of outflying the dragon, but some of her suggestions would involve magic that was just too advanced for Charlus to cope with, and so he decided to outfly the dragon.
Harry's feelings about Charlus's insane plan were mixed. On the one hand, Harry couldn't stand the person his twin was, but at the same time, he didn't want him hurt or killed. But what worried him the most was what Sirius Black was even thinking when he came up with the mad plan to outfly a dragon. Didn't he know anything about them? Dragons were faster than broomsticks. They were monsters, but they were beings of wonder and magic. Compared to that, the fastest racing broom was hardly going to put up much of a fight. But, unfortunately, Gryffindors were not quite good enough to outfox anything, unless of course it involved running headfirst into danger and hoping they came out of it in one piece.
Charlus and Diggory were no better than Krum, they were all trying to fight the dragon, but they weren't planning on taking advantage of some of their
It was tragic, but while he couldn't stand the woman for what she'd done and hadn't done, some of Lily's suggestions had been good ones in Harry's mind, and as he looked through the library on magical creatures the Ilvermorny airship had brought with them for this, he very quickly discovered there were ways he could put the dragon to sleep like Fleur. He could play a lullaby and put the dragon to sleep.
Simple. Effective. Quick.
Thinking of the Beauxbatons champion made him think; unlike the others, her gift with enchantment was there, for all to see. She was using her gifts with enchantments. Harry went through the possibilities for days, trying to spend as much time with Melissa and the others while trying to make it look like nothing was wrong, but he saw a danger in the plan. What if the dragon breathed on him? And then he found the answer.