Fortunately, they had already done a lot of research on dragons their first year, when Hagrid acquired the egg that eventually became Norbert. But Sunday evening and most of Monday was spent furiously reviewing that information. It probably wasn't a secret to the judges that everyone in Gryffindor knew what the task was, as Harry enlisted his friends' help.
It was almost certainly well-known to the other challengers as well, unless Madame Maxime wanted to keep it a secret from Fleur. Harry thought he'd spotted Karkaroff skulking about in the forest, so Viktor presumably knew. He wasn't sure about Cedric. Had anyone told Cedric?
"Cedric, dragons," Harry told the older boy, catching him on the way out of the great hall after breakfast.
"What about them?" he asked, distracted from whatever conversation he was having with his year mates.
Harry quickly summed up, not caring if the other sixth-year Hufflepuffs heard, "The convergence for the task opens to Muspelheim. There was at least one dragon. I don't know if we're supposed to fight it or if it's just going to be there. But, you know, dragons."
Cedric's eyes widened, almost seeming to shade from blue to green in his surprise. "You're sure?"
"We're not supposed to have seen it in advance, so I can't tell you that I did. But… check with Fleur or Viktor if you don't believe me."
"I believe you. Thanks, Harry," he said, shaking his head and continuing off with his friends.
Harry managed to confirm in passing that both Fleur and Viktor had definitely heard from their headmasters, so now it was just down to how he would survive—maybe even fight—a dragon.
How was he going to fight a dragon?!
He still didn't have a great idea by lunchtime. On the way out, a gruff voice called, "Potter!" He turned to find Moody clomping over to him, having left the staff table early and seemingly waited for him outside the doors. "Walk with me. You can catch up to your friends."
Nonplussed but used to the teacher's abrupt manner, he waved to the others as they cautiously left him to walk with the teacher. "Yes, sir?"
Moody waited until they were around a corner and clear of earshot before asking, "You questioning your enthusiasm to be in this tournament, yet?"
"A little," he admitted.
"Good. Shows you're not stupid or crazy. Got a plan?"
"Not if I have to kill one," Harry sighed. "If I could put up a shield that could at least block a lot of fire, I might be alright. But I can't do what the dragon handlers could, and even they got burned a little."
"Good enough. Let's teach you," Moody said, gesturing him into his office.
"Don't you have class, sir?"
"Seventh-years. They know to practice dueling themselves. Better use of my time to keep you from becoming the Boy-Who-Became-Charcoal."
Not exactly knowing why he rated such attention, Harry was nonetheless glad for it. Moody showed him how to reinforce and angle his shield so it was stronger against dispersed energy attacks like fire, and then started casting fire spells at him, slowly ramping them up in intensity as he proved he could take it. They had to open a window in the office eventually, it was getting so hot inside: Moody's fire spells were strong. He didn't declare Harry ready until there were scorch marks on his desk, several feet away from where he'd been casting.
"Right. On you get. Don't get eaten. And…?"
Harry nodded, "Constant vigilance. Thank you, sir."
After spending Monday researching and practicing, and still feeling overwhelmed, Harry certainly didn't expect to be woken before dawn on Tuesday with the message, "Harry. It's happening. You have to get up and get ready." He wasn't sure how Colin Creevey had gotten tapped to deliver that rude awakening, but Harry was grudgingly impressed at how well the boy dodged his still-mostly-asleep energy whip.
It was probably good that Harry never had much of an appetite before a big test or other challenge, because he didn't have time to go to breakfast. As soon as he stumbled down to the common room in the uniform robes the tournament organizers had provided him (with his name emblazoned on the back), McGonagall was waiting to escort him out of the castle and into the forest. "You don't seem to have any questions about where we're going," she noted dryly.
"Why would they keep this a secret?" Harry fired back. "We're all going to die even with a day of preparation."
"Well… try not to," she didn't entirely disagree. After a long moment's consideration, she noted, "The organizers have done their best to make it not automatically fatal. You were warned this was for the oldest students."
"They're freaking out too," he assured her.
She led him to a large canvas pavilion tent that had been erected at the edge of what Harry knew to be the "clearing" with the convergence, but blocking his view of anything but temporary bleachers that had been set up around the space. The tent itself was done up in colors he'd seen at the Ministry. "Seriously, Potter, be careful," she told him, before leaving him to enter the tent on his own.
Inside, there was a small buffet table set with the breakfast foods that he hadn't had time to get. Fleur and Viktor were already there, as were their headmasters. It was good it was such a large tent, since Madame Maxime was able to stand (in the middle at least) without stooping, talking quietly with Karkaroff. His two fellow challengers had similar robes in black-accented orange that he didn't think was for stealth against the terrain of Muspelheim, unless it was a lot more fiery than he expected. "Is there an audience? Are they going to watch us somehow?" he asked the room.
"Big projection screen, just inside the portal," Viktor gestured vaguely into the clearing with a fork heaping with sausages, obviously himself not afraid to eat before a big activity. "Oona figured out old dark elf camera technology. Works on other worlds."
"You should eat, 'arry," Fleur gave him a kind smile, over her own plate full of fruit. "It might be…"
"Our last meal, got it," he nodded a bit grimly, and grabbed a couple of pieces of toast. Since it was about the only breakfast food his aunt could cook, he'd learned to eat it no matter how sick he was feeling.
Moments later, the tent opened again and Dumbledore entered, leading both Cedric and the Ancient One. Harry gave her a genuine smile of welcome, glad she'd been able to make it, and managed a bow over his toast. She nodded back, but conveyed without a word that she disapproved of him risking his life for a simple competition. Instead, she noticed Durmstrang's headmaster and said, "Ah. Igor. We had wondered where you'd gotten to."
The middle-aged man rolled his dark eyes and nearly snarled, "I haven't broken our deal. My feet have not touched Midgard since we agreed."
"And yet your hands still seem to fall upon the children of Earth," she said, looking significantly at Viktor.
"If you will not expand your search to the entire planet, what would you want done instead? Would you have them discover their gifts without training? Perhaps dig themselves into a hole only allegiance to Kamar-Taj can save them from?"
"So instead you offer them allegiance to any entity willing to proffer power," she sighed. Seeing that Viktor was finishing his mouthful of breakfast meats somewhat angrily, she said, "I apologize, Mr. Krum. Master Kaecilius spoke well of your meeting. Please remember that you have other options, should your fate remain in your own hands."
"Durmstrang is good education," he managed, after swallowing both his food and his angry retort. "I just want to race cars."
"Who's that lady? The headmaster didn't introduce her," Cedric asked, looking a little wild-eyed as he carefully selected only the nicest-looking items from the breakfast tray.
"I 'ad wondered, as well," Fleur added. The four challengers had found their own quiet side of the tent to talk while the headmasters verbally sparred on the other end.
"The Ancient One, Earth's Sorcerer Supreme," Harry explained. Fleur nodded, recognizing the name, and Cedric just looked a little more surprised. "You okay, Cedric?"
He finished a pristine strawberry and asked, "Why wouldn't I be? We're just going to go fight a dragon!" He reigned himself in and admitted, "Sorry, I'm on a pain potion to get through this. So I actually feel the best I have in a while. But it's a lot."
They managed to mostly finish their breakfasts before the crowd noise outside ramped up and Bagman and Crouch ("The old firm?" Harry wondered to himself) entered through the front of the tent. Behind them, Harry caught a glimpse of what must be the whole school (plus everyone that had come to Hogsmeade for the event) filling the bleachers, and the wavering form of the convergence in the light of the rising sun.
"Right! Everyone about ready?" Bagman asked. "We were going to do this one at a time, but I hear that we might not have time for that before the convergence closes. So instead, we just won't have a team in there to wrangle the other one. That should make it fair with four of you."
"You're speaking as if they know what they are doing," the Ancient One said with some distaste. "At least I see you've provided them with fireproof clothing." Harry glanced down at his tournament robes and appreciated that they did seem to have some runes woven in and he could feel a bit of magic in them. He regretted that he'd had to leave his cloak, pouch of tricks, and wand back in his room. Not that most of them would have proved a help. Maybe the broom.
He was beginning to realize that the problem with an invisibility cloak was that it wasn't useful as often as it should be if you didn't want everyone to know you had an invisibility cloak.
"Good point!" Bagman was saying. "Let's sum up quickly. Convergence out there goes to a valley in Muspelheim. There's a brooding mother dragon in a shallow cave at the end. We've put some golden eggs in with hers. Get one of the eggs and get back. How is up to you."
"Ze other one?" Fleur asked.
"Did you know dragons mate for life?" Bagman grinned. "Fascinating stuff. Males are a little smaller, or at least this one is. What am I forgetting?"
"The photography devices and scoring," Crouch stepped in. Rather than waiting for Bagman, he curtly explained, "The shiny black oblong orbs spaced along the valley are visually recording your actions, so we can observe from behind. At the end, you shall each receive a score based on your daring, good tactics, and magical proficiency. Since we are letting you go at once, you are not to deliberately interfere with or sabotage one another."
"Can we work together?" Harry asked after a moment. He had been waiting for Cedric to voice the question, as the resident Hufflepuff, but he was polishing off a shiny black plum as if he'd never seen one before. Hopefully whatever the pain potion was doing to give him the munchies wasn't going to throw him off enough to get killed.
The two Ministry officials looked surprised at the question, clearly expecting them to try to assassinate each other on the field rather than hug it out. "I… suppose so," Crouch admitted after Bagman shrugged. "Your scores will still be individual, so take care to let us see your best efforts rather than letting teamwork carry you."
Harry glanced over and got nods of agreement and relief from the other three, especially Cedric, who didn't seem to have expected a Gryffindor celebrity to make the Hufflepuff suggestion.
"If our judges could finish their breakfasts and head to their box, we'll call you four out in a moment," Bagman said, leading the adults out of the tent into the roar of the crowd.
They could hear his amplified voice playing to the crowd as Harry glanced at Cedric to see if he was going to take strategic control, as he had at the battle in Hogsmeade. Cedric, still loopy from his pain meds, had found a perfect pancake and was scarfing it down. Shrugging Harry stated, "Okay. Two dragons, mated pair. They can't fly and breathe fire at the same time. They will try to eat you. We need to get the mother from the nest long enough to snatch the eggs. I don't trust the fireproofing charms against a full blast, but hopefully it will keep us safe from spillover. I can do a shield that protects against fire, and I can probably snag the eggs with a whip if we get close. What can the rest of you do?"
"I vas planning to blind one," Viktor offered.
"Distractions," Cedric said through a mouthful of pancake. "I thought about transfiguring a dog?"
"I zink I should be all but immune to fire in zese robes," Fleur said. "I was going to try to put one to sleep."
Harry nodded, furiously calculating what he had to work with. He barely knew what magic Viktor and Fleur were capable of other than the little he'd seen them use. Cedric was Vanir, so there was no telling what wandless magic he'd mastered. After a few seconds he suggested, "What if Viktor and Cedric try to distract the father, while Fleur and I go in for the eggs? Hopefully Fleur can calm the mother enough for me to snatch the golden eggs from her nest. I doubt she'll actually care, since they're not really hers."
Since he'd folded in what they had planned anyway, nobody objected. And that plan was just in time, since Bagman's amplified voice was saying, "...and I present, our challengers!"
The four of them walked out of the tent and Harry finally got a look at the full tableau in the daylight. He wasn't sure whether the convergence had arrived explosively, a fire had spread and finally been extinguished, or dragon sallies at the portal had had detrimental effects, but the forest was cleared back over a dozen yards from the hole between worlds. Bagman hadn't been wrong: the gap they were counting on to get to Muspelheim and back was visibly smaller than it had been on Sunday evening. Through the ripple in space he could make out what seemed to be the surface of a dormant volcano: gray, jagged rocks and smoky, yellow sky.
And then there were the several-hundred people waiting to watch him hopefully not get eaten or burned to death, who began to thunderously cheer and applaud as the four of them exited the tent. It was a good thing he'd come to terms with his celebrity. It was a lot.
The stands were oriented facing them and the tent, backs to the unburned forest, so Harry assumed that the portal must be bi-directional, and that whatever kind of Svartalf-tech digital projector they'd set up was facing the crowd from the opposite side of the convergence. He generally preferred portals that were fixed to a vertical surface, so you didn't have to wrap your head around what it meant for one to just be floating in midair. Master Wong had showed them some teleportation tricks that summer, and he was starting to understand why they didn't trust sling rings to teens. It was very confusing.
"And… go!" Bagman's amplified voice ordered once they all got within ten feet of the portal, and Harry could vaguely spot him standing with Crouch and the four headmasters in a box opposite them with a good view of the projected screen.
"Catchphrase!" Harry joke-shouted, charging ahead, at least happy that this convergence clearly showed the other side so he knew he wasn't running directly at a dragon.
The other three were close behind him, and they all leaped through the tear in reality into a furnace. Just seeing it wasn't the same as experiencing it. The entire surface of Muspelheim really was like being in the caldera of a volcano that was just shy of erupting. Since his face and his hands registered a temperature greater than the rest of him, Harry had to assume the fire-protection charms were working. Without magic, just being in a place hotter than any reasonable location on Earth or Vanaheim probably would have exhausted them before long.
Harry ducked down to look underneath the corresponding hole in reality, and did think he saw the bottom of a pretty standard film-projection screen. Hopefully the stands were getting a good show. He glanced around and spotted the cameras—foot-long black lozenges hovering with dark elf technology and orienting to focus on them. They seemed to be spaced out to get a good look at anything that happened. The floating was cool. He absently considered asking Oona and Viktor if he could steal one to give to Tony. That would probably show the benefits of dating an alien.
The ground was fairly even, if coated with a thick carpet of lightweight volcanic dust. It didn't seem to affect his footing, jagged enough on a molecular level to provide traction. There was no easy way to tell where the sun was, since the sky was just one big yellowish cloud of dust that scattered any possible shadows. Mountains rose to either side, newly-forged of dark rock and strangely fragile-looking in their sharp spines.
Cosmology class had suggested that Muspelheim was a major source of Earth's conception of Hell, and he could believe it.
"Eyes up for big daddy," Harry suggested. "They must have pointed us at the right end, yeah?" As he got used to the cyclopean landscape, it was clear the distance ahead was greater than the space before either side started to rise into jagged escarpments.
"You're sure you're only fourteen?" Fleur asked.
"This isn't my first rodeo," Harry grinned, more at ease in the hellscape than was reasonable. "Shall we?" It was weird how actually being in a terrifying and life-threatening situation eased his nerves compared to the anticipation.
Following his lead for lack of plans of their own, Viktor and Cedric flanked left and right, their heavy feet leaving deep prints in the volcanic dust as the lighter Harry and Fleur headed straight at the diminishing end of the valley. The fact that they couldn't actually see the dragon yet began to play on nerves. Even with the strange footing it was an easy walk. There might not have been time for them each to go individually, and that was probably because of the distance. Harry was sure they'd been going for fifteen minutes, cautiously proceeding nearly a mile through the sulfuric haze. The hovering cameras paced them as they strode.
"I feel bad about the second date," Harry said, just to break the tension. "I really should have looked at the reviews before suggesting this place."
"Novelty is well and good," she joked back, "but I zink zis might not be ze right season."
"There was supposed to be a cool restaurant. Breakfast all day."
"Anybody can serve eggs. Ze real key is ze wine list."
"Dragon!" Harry realized, before he could continue the banter. They were coming up on where the flatland of the valley narrowed into a claw of a mountain trying to stab the sky. As promised, but slightly to their right, a rocky overhang protected an immense creature glowing with her own red-orange light. Was there any actual weather on Muspelheim, or did even mostly-elemental creatures still prefer protection from the sky? An immense, serpentine neck lifted as she glared at them. They were still at least a football field away, and stealth didn't really seem possible.
The dragons of Muspelheim, like all of its denizens that they'd been educated about, were a strange intersection of living creature and an elemental formed of fire and rock. While they knew from cosmology class and their studies of dragons in specific that there was some kind of biology within, on casual inspection the mother dragon was a titanic statue of black basalt lit from numerous points by seething flame.
And she was just spoiling for a fight.
With a roar of challenge, she uncurled herself from the cavelet that was her nest and planted one mighty foot after the other. At least the ground was solid enough that they couldn't actually feel the massive impacts, though they could hear them and see puffs of dust erupt from each step. "Close the distance!" Harry yelled, breaking into a run and hoping the others were following his lead. "We're sitting ducks for a fireball out here!"
Sure enough, a hellish light began to accompany the dragon's roar, and a burning flume pitched forth. It fortunately only had several yards of reach, but she swept it across the ground between them as if to mark territory, fusing the dust on the ground into hot glass. Cedric was rushing further right to take up position in the uneven wall of the valley, likely seeking materials to transfigure. Viktor, the most exposed on their left, began to gesture and form his magic, orange laced with purple, to weave the dust around him into some kind of obscured firing position. Harry and Fleur charged, banking a bit right to hopefully, like Cedric, have some of the valley wall to hide behind when the dragon started to attack for real.
Seeing the tiny beings weren't intimidated by her flaming display, the dragon stepped further out so she could get all four legs on the ground and ready to move. "Sleepytime?" Harry suggested to Fleur.
"I really 'oped we'd 'ave gotten closer!" she argued, beginning to move her hands through the air as they ran, gossamer trails of glamour streaming through her fingers as she wove some kind of spell.
And then an answering roar echoed across the valley, along with the rocketlike sound of a dragon in flight. They'd seen the baby dragon Norbert attempt it some years earlier, but a fully-grown dragon was significantly louder. Harry chanced a look above, and saw the father incoming from behind and to his left. Muspelheim dragons didn't really have wings, they simply manifested their internal fire along their backs, allowing them to soar like reptilian missiles. It made as much sense as anything about their physiology.
A lot of things happened at once.
With Harry and Fleur at a dead sprint, it only took them a dozen seconds to get close enough to the mother dragon to be in danger of her fire breath. Meanwhile, the father was streaking down and distracted from flanking them with his mate by Viktor flinging bolts of orange-and-purple energy at him. Meanwhile, Cedric was… somewhere, presumably working his transfiguration.
Harry and Fleur's dragon sucked up air like a bellows, the patches of flame on her exterior dimming as she moved all of her heat internally. Really hoping he was able to make his training with Moody count, Harry quickly wove perhaps the largest magical shield he'd done wandlessly before to protect him and Fleur, slightly behind.
They also dove behind an obsidian outcrop that was helpful cover near the wall of the valley.
The cone of flame was extremely akin to the blast of a space shuttle taking off, but Harry's shield held: the trick that Moody had taught him was that it was difficult to impart a ton of force to fire, so it was more important to layer the shield to make it work as a strong insulator. Still, without the resistance built into their robes, even the heat that washed around the shield would have been overwhelming.
They heard the father crash to the ground behind them. While he held his own shield against the torrent of fire and gave Fleur time to charge her enchantment, Harry was able to glance back to make sure the other side of the fight was under control.
The dragon looked like he was having trouble spotting who had been shooting at him, Viktor's cloud of dust seeming at a distance like just one more black boulder on the terrain. Before the dragon could make the distinction, a trio of baying, human-sized hounds forged of the local stone came bounding after it. Somehow, Cedric had even managed to get their eyes and mouths to glow like the Muspelheim natives as they ran to menace the dragon.
Tail whipping and claws raking at the constructed attackers, the dragon seemed to lose interest in Viktor for long enough to let him charge another shot.
In front of them, the mother's breath weapon petered out, leaving their rock cover glowing with heat and now just one more piece of obsidian slag in a veritable pond of the stuff. "Hot ground," Harry warned Fleur, probably needlessly: even if she didn't consider it, she was much more resistant than he was.
He broke left around the seared patch, away from the wall. He didn't think the dragon could breathe again immediately, so he was trusting in his ability to dodge in the open if she charged him rather than getting hung up on the terrain.
Behind, hair starting to become birdlike in her battle form, Fleur had managed to craft a mandala of illusory light. Unlike the precise arithmantic geometry of the magic taught at Hogwarts and Kamar-Taj, Fleur's spell was more like a piece of calligraphic art scribed with a scintillating rainbow. As the mother dragon's head began to track Harry charging obliquely toward her, Fleur unleashed her spell.
The magic didn't blast so much as unravel, flowing through the air and caressing the dragon across the face that was trying to figure out how to make a mouthful of Harry. That head cocked to the side and shook, as if trying to wake itself up, but the dragon listed to the side, its weight suddenly more than it could bear. It stumbled as if exhausted or drunk, making a choking grunt of confusion.
Harry didn't pass up the distraction. Ready to shield just in case it wasn't fully out, he sprinted around the dragon's bulk and scrambled for the nest. Sure enough, as soon as he bounded up the scree leading to the shallow cave, he spotted glimmers of gold amidst the oblong black orbs that were the actual eggs.
The mother was still shaking her head as if to clear it, but had sunk down to her knees. One baleful eye tried to focus on the threat to her eggs, and Harry saw Fleur weave her arms to tighten the effects of the spell. Not imminently in danger of getting burned to death, Harry threw out a magic whip, one-by-one fishing out the golden prizes and letting them fall to the dust next to him.
With the last one free, he almost reached down to just grab one, but then had a moment of realization: dragon eggs needed a lot of heat to hatch, and mama dragon butts were presumably skin-searingly hot. Testing gingerly, he confirmed the immense warmth still radiating from the gold (probably an alloy, honestly, since pure gold might deform under that much incubation).
They hadn't given them gloves. Each egg was roughly the size of a football. He could maybe wrap one in his robes and not burn himself, but getting everyone's… "I don't know 'ow much longer I can 'old it!" Fleur shouted at him.
"Sorry. Hot eggs!" he yelled back, working out a solution. While he'd been practicing to make his magical constructs sturdier—a whip into a solid pole—could he do the opposite? He carefully sketched a simple shield facing down and touching the ground, and tried to get its magical threads to relax. Gingerly kicking all four eggs onto the platform, when he pulled up, it sagged into a holographic bag. For a moment he was worried he was going to lose it, but he focused and it held. "Got it. Coming to you!"
As he ran back around the staggering mother dragon, he had a clear view of Viktor and Cedric tangling with the father. The smaller dragon was flailing about, purple light swarming over his blinded eyes. His tail whipped and he let loose gouts of fire, but both boys were moving. Only one of Cedric's dog constructs had survived, but it was letting loose frantic barks to try to draw the dragon off, and Viktor's peculiar purple-and-orange shield rose to catch a stray blast of flame.
"How long will mom stay out?" Harry asked, as Fleur began to run slightly-sideways, keeping it in view.
"I've never used zis on a dragon?" she shrugged, right hand still tracing mystical commands in the air to try to reinforce her spell as much as possible as they ran.
Viktor and Cedric could hardly miss them returning, especially with the enhanced silhouette of four large metal eggs clanking together in Harry's makeshift conjured bag. As they were getting close, Cedric made one forceful gesture to command his remaining hound to bay loudly and then sprint up the edge of the valley, barking the whole way. The father turned and tried to blindly give chase, clearing a path. The older boys joined in the run as Harry and Fleur got within range.
"Are ve done? Is a vin?" Viktor asked.
"Depends on how long they're out," Harry huffed, grateful to Dean for forcing him to do so much cardio. "I'm not going to assume it's safe to walk, though."
Harry was impressed at Cedric's pain potion, as the still-healing boy managed to pull ahead during the run back. Harry thought he might have won, if he weren't encumbered by the golden eggs and maintaining the spell to keep them in a bundle; at least it was easier than holding a rigid shield against gunfire. As it was, both Fleur and Viktor were out ahead of him, the clanking of the eggs pulling up the rear.
They were within easy sight of the convergence when the roars of anger came from behind them. Around them, the dark globes of the floating cameras were pacing along, withdrawing from their positions throughout the valley. "They weren't kidding about not having a lot of time!" Harry yelled, realizing that the hole between worlds was markedly smaller than it had started. "Go! Go! Go!"
With one last burst of speed, the four of them made the sprint and came piling back into Vanaheim, cameras clanking to the ground behind them as their power failed within a few moments of traveling into the electricity-proof world. On the other side of the hole, someone summoned the viewscreen through the rapidly-dwindling egress.
A very-angry mother dragon dropped out of the sky and roared, but after her hasty flight could not immediately charge another massive breath. By the time she had, the dragon handlers had coated the remaining convergence in shields.
"A wonderful showing from all of our challengers!" Bagman's voice rang out over the cheering stands. "Should we start awarding points?"
Harry was just enjoying the cool air and soft ground as he let his magical bag expire. He wasn't especially concerned with the points, but he would really appreciate a nap.