The Black Lake was smooth like glass, reflecting the mountains and hills surrounding it. Not even the Giant Squid was out to play. It was probably because it was too cold, Aria thought, as she reapplied a Warming Charm to the blanket she was sitting on and then the thick winter cloak she wore. She did not try and offer Harry a Warming Charm. He had declined her first offer, rather hotly too, and his mood hadn't improved in the hour they had been sitting on the shore of the lake.

It was clear that the talk with Dumbledore after breakfast had put him in a mood, and it had not improved as the day went on. Aria had thought Harry would go off to his dorm room for some peace and quiet, but he had all but dragged her out to the Black Lake for "fresh air". When it became apparent that all he wanted to do was stare moodily across the water, Aria had pulled out a book she had borrowed from the secret room in the Restricted Section. The little room was a fountain of old knowledge, and it had become a haven of sorts for her, Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Even Draco came when she and he wanted a little alone time, though most of the time they did their homework, sometimes while holding hands!

The book she had chosen to read was fascinating. It was in Middle English, so she had had to find a translation charm for it, curtesy of Professor Flitwick, but it was a journal written by a wizard who, around 1250. There were a few dates at the beginning of the book, but then stopped. She was not sure if she kept reading if more dates would appear or if this entire book was written in one year. Regardless, this unnamed wizard, had also been looking for a cure for lycanthropy. Apparently, he knew a werewolf named Agnes and was trying all sorts of things to help her. Aria thought that the prejudice was bad now, but there were a few entries of where he described a pack of werewolves living in Sherwood Forest being hunted by both Muggles and Wixen. Aria got a bit queasy reading the descriptions of what either side did to werewolves. The writer and Agnes were friends, and he did not want Agnes to suffer such a fate.

It was rather romantic.

The most interesting thing of note so far, was that the man had a whole entry comparing lycanthropy to another condition that he called the "fear of water" or the "bite of madness" which mostly showed up in dogs, but sometimes in people who were bitten by dogs. He was thinking that this "fear of water" or "bite of madness" was a Muggle-version of lycanthropy.

This seemed to be one of the first kind of leads Aria had come across in her research. Most of the books she had read over the summer supposed that lycanthropy was a unique problem, and that there was nothing else like it. A lot of books referred back to the mythical origins of the disease, usually citing one of three Greek sources that traced the origins of the werewolf to Arcadia. There was Ovid, Pausanias, and Pliny the Elder, all of which attributed the curse to come from humans eating human entrails or from attempting to feed Zeus human entrails. Either way, turning into a wolf was punishment.

Aria quite liked this unknown man's theory better. It was grounded a bit more in reality and there was something she could go after. She could not go after human entrails sacrificed to the ancient Greek gods.

First, though, she needed to identify wat this "fear of water" sickness was.

Rocks crunching under feet caught Aria's attention. She and Harry turned as one to see Ron and Hermione approach. Ron looked sullen, as he was in the habit of lately. Aria knew that Ron thought Harry had put his name in the Goblet and was upset that Harry hadn't shared his secret of how he had done it with him. Harry, she knew, was upset that Ron thought he was lying. They had existed in frosty silence for a while, Hermione and Aria acting as messengers between the two, though Ron seemed to be just as angry at Aria and she could not, for the life of her, figure out why.

Ron whispered something to Hermione and she huffed, walking over to Harry and Aria.

"Ron says that Hagrid wants to see you tonight," Hermione told Harry. "That you're to bring your Invisibility Cloak."

"Why?" Harry asked. Hermione shuffled back to Ron and there was a whispered conversation. She came back.

"He doesn't know. Just that Hagrid wants to see you."

"Well, can you tell Ron—,"

Whatever it was Harry wanted Hermione to tell Ron was never said. Hermione burst into tears and stamped her foot.

"I'm not an owl!" she shouted, tears springing out of her eyes, hair growing as if it could feel her agitation. "I hate how you're fighting. Both of you need to get over yourselves!" She ran off sobbing.

"Now look at what you've done!" Aria hissed, scrambling to collect her things. She raced after Hermione, grabbing her arm once she had caught up with her, and together, the two of them went on a nice calming walk down to the stone circle and cairns. The magic of the area was always soothing, and Aria had Hermione lean against one of the standing stones, guiding her through some exercises that the centaurs had taught her on drawing in magic from the surrounding nature.

"Sorry," Hermione finally muttered. "I'm just so tired of those two fighting!"

"It does feel like a nasty divorce," Aria agreed. "Though Ron seems equally mad at me for some reason."

"I have no idea why," Hermione told her. "He won't tell me why about that. Keeps insisting he's not mad at you, but even Seamus picked up on it in class and commented on it."

"Well, he's a big boy," Aria concluded. "If he's got a problem with me, he can just come out and say it. I've heard worse things, I'm sure, from my housemates. Now forget about the boys for a minute, let me tell you what I've been reading!"

Aria filled Hermione in on the journal from the secret room.

"Fear of water?" Hermione repeated. "Bite of madness?" She frowned, clearly thinking hard. "I'm sure I've heard of that before . . . maybe something from my parents' medical textbooks? I'll write to them and ask."

"Would you? That would be great! Thanks!"

After dinner Aria followed Harry down to Hagrid's hut.

"Ron said you wanted to see me?" Harry asked as Hagrid ushered them into the hut. "I brought my cloak."

"Good. That's good." Hagrid glanced out the window. "Listen . . . I'm 'bout to 'ead into the forest now. I want you to follow me, real quiet like, all right?"

"What're you going to show us?" Harry asked.

"Can't tell ya," Hagrid answered, looking out the window again. "Quick! Under the cloak!" Aria pressed against Harry's side as he flung the cloak around them. Thankfully, neither of them had yet to have too much of a growth spurt and the cloak still dragged a bit on the ground. Hagrid dusted off his coat and patted his beard down, much to their confusion, just before there was a knock on the door.

"Olympe!" Hagrid cried, smiling widely as he flung open the door. "A pleasure as always." The headmistress of Beauxbatons blushed as she held out a hand for Hagrid to kiss. Aria shared a slightly horrified look with Harry. Hagrid? And Madame Maxime? How had he managed that?

"I think tonight's an excellent night for a bit of a stroll," Hagrid said, giving just enough space for Harry and Aria to shuffle around him and the headmistress and out the door. "You're not scared o' creatures in the forest are you?"

"Me? Frightened? My dear Hagrid! What a notion!" The two overly tall individuals began to walk into the forest and Harry and Aria hurried to keep up. They were on a familiar path, one Aria had traversed many times before to get to the centaur camp. Usually she would veer off the path and follow a centaur through the trees, but this time, she stayed on the path behind Hagrid and went towards a part of the forest she had not been to. She half expected there to be the usual silence of quiet noises of the night, but the deeper they got, the more rumblings and roars could be heard.

"Oh mon Dieu!" Madame Maxime suddenly cried. Hagrid and she hurried off the path, making a wide circle towards a clearing just ahead. Through the trees, Aria could make out flickering lights as if there were bonfires ahead. They could hear roars of several creatures, and the creatures sounded big!

"Are those dragons?" Madame Maxime cried. She and Hagrid crouched behind a tree to peer towards the clearing. Aria and Harry camped out behind another tree.

In the clearing were four large cages, each one holding a dragon. A dragon!

Wait until her dad heard about this!

On the other hand, Aria thought, maybe her dad shouldn't know about this. He'd probably find a way to storm Hogwarts and withdraw her even though she was not the one going to go face dragons.

Dragons!

"Let sneak closer," she urged Harry. Harry hid a groan but together, they made their way closer, barely avoiding a sculking Karkaroff who was staring wide-eyed and terrified at the dragons from behind a bush.

Well, Aria thought as they inched closer, at least Harry was not the only one finding out about the First Task before the First Task. So much for it being a secret.

There was a sharp tingle to the air the closer they got, like a hum or buzz of electricity. Aria felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

"Can you feel that?" she whispered.

"Feel what?"

"The magic? There's so much in this clearing! I think it's from the dragons themselves."

"I don't feel magic like you do, Aria," Harry reminded her. "But I can feel something. Like a weight? Like the air's getting thicker maybe?"

"It's beautiful," Aria breathed, staring out at the closes cage where a beautiful green dragon was finally settling down. The dragon curled around a next of eggs and began to croon, a strange high-pitched rumbling that was not as pleasant as phoenix song, but it was as interesting and alluring.

"Look over there!" Harry drew Aria's attention to one of the dragon keepers. He was tall and stocky, clearly muscled, and had the same bright red hair as Ron.

"I bet that's Charlie," Harry said. "I've seen pictures, and he works at a dragon reserve in Romania."

"Well, he and the dragons are a long way from home if that's the case," Aria said. "But why couldn't they just get dragons from the Welsh Reserve?"

"Maybe Norbert scared them," Harry joked.

Aria itched to get closer, but Harry seemed perfectly happy being twenty yards away, so she had to content herself with viewing the other dragons from her current vantage point.

Besides the green dragon in front of them, there were three other dragons. One was bright red with a golden underbelly and ridge scales along the back. Another was silvery-blue with a purple color on the underside of its wings. It was around the same size as the red dragon, though the red dragon maybe had a few feet on it. A few times it blew fire out of its nostrils, the flames blue and ethereal in the night of the Forbidden Forest. The final was truly terrifying. The dragon had to be at least 50 feet long, and it had great yellow eyes that glared out from between the bars of its enclosure and the entirety of its body from wings to snout and tail were pitch black. If it weren't for the torches set up around the clearing, Aria would have thought that there were a pair of yellow eyes floating in the dark.

For one breath taking moment, those yellow eyes met Aria's own dark ones and she felt her breath flee. A groaning filled her ears, like that of old doors swinging open after a long time being closed. A vast cavern opened up before her and she felt that if she stepped forward she would fall . . . fall . . . fall . . .

"Aria!" Harry's sharp hiss and even sharp shake jerked Aria back to the present. She blinked, the moment now gone, and the yellow eyes of the monstrous dragon were now turned away.

"Cedric doesn't know!" Harry whispered, shuffling them away from the dragons. "I've got to make sure he knows!"

"Well, it's a bit late for that," Aria managed to answer, still feeling a bit sideways from whatever experience she had just had. "Sorry . . . something's happened and I'm not sure what it was."

"Besides you going into a trance staring at the big dragon?" Harry asked. "I'm unsurprised now whenever something weird happens with you. This is why we're such a great pair. I'm the Boy-Who-Lived and you're the Little Muggleborn Slytherin with Big Magic!"

"You better thank Merlin we're hiding under this cloak and trying not to get caught," Aria snapped, stepping on Harry's foot. Harry cackled quietly as they left the Forbidden Forest, carefully making their way back to the castle before pulling the cloak off themselves.

"Where've you been?" Daphne asked once Aria arrived back in the dormitory. All the other fourth year girls were on Tracey's bed, fawning over the newest editions of Teen Witch and Witch's Weekly.

"Out with Harry," Aria answered, coming over and sitting beside Tracey. Pansy and Millicent only scooted over a few inches, which Aria took as a win. "Visiting Hagrid."

"So why do you smell like smoke?" Millicent questioned.

"Hagrid's hut," Aria answered. "He burnt his rock cakes."