Girl Who Escaped {Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire} [BEING EDITED]

[9] Dragons

EDITED

January 5, 2014

If you find any grammatical/spelling errors, please politely let me know. I am not a professional, nor do I claim to be an experienced author. I do make mistakes that I am trying to clean up.

   ...

[Chapter 9: Dragons]

Early Sunday morning, after freshening up, Hermione and I hurried off to the Great Hall. We sat with Ginerva Weasley, Ron's younger sister, and gulped down the food hungrily. It was a sunny day, but with the perfect amount of clouds dipping in and over the Sun. Hermione finally finished her porridge, and I was done scarfing down my scrambled eggs. We looked up to see Harry, waving us over to where he stood. He dragged us out onto the grounds, and it was there, that he told us that dragons were the first task, and about everything this 'Sirius' person had said, while we took a long walk around the lake.

     Alarmed as Hermione was by Sirius's warnings about Karkaroff, we still thought that the dragons were the more pressing problem.

     "Let's just try and keep you alive until Tuesday evening," she said desperately, "And then we can worry about Karkaroff."

     We walked three times around the lake, trying all the way to think of a simple spell that would subdue a dragon. There was not a single spell that occured to me, so we retired to the library instead. Here, Harry pulled down every book he could find on dragons, and all of us set to work searching through the large pile.

     "Talon-clipping by charms... treating scale-rot... This is no good, this is for nutters like Hagrid who want to keep them healthy..." muttered Harry.

     "Hey!" I said indignantly. He gave me a sorry glance and returned to the books.

     "'Dragons are extremely difficult to slay, owing to the ancient magic that imbues their thick hides, which none but the most powerful spells can penetrate...' But Sirius said a simple one would do it..." Hermione sighed.

      "Let's try some simple spellbooks, then," said Harry, throwing aside 'Men Who Love Dragons Too Much.'

     He returned to the table with a pile of spellbooks, set them down, and began to flick through each in turn, Hermione whispering nonstop at his elbow, while I continued shuffling through pages and pages of spell books on magical creatures.

     "Well, there are Switching Spells...but what's the point of Switching it? Unless you swapped its fangs for wine-gums or something that would make it less dangerous... The trouble is, like that book said, not much is going to get through a dragon's hide... I'd say Transfigure it, but something that big, you really haven't got a hope, I doubt even Professor McGonagall... unless you're supposed to put the spell on yourself? Maybe to give yourself extra powers? But they're not simple spells, I mean, we haven't done any of those in class, I only know about them because I've been doing O.W.L. practice papers...."

     "Hermione, I really don't think they'll be actually slaying the dragon... That would be harming a magical animal, and you know Dumbledore would want no part in killing a living breathing thing." I told her, leaning back laxly in my chair, "It's not exactly orthodox."

     "That is true... But what then? What could they possibly need a DRAGON for, if not to slay it?"

     "Guys," Harry said, through gritted teeth, "Will you two shut up for a bit, please? I'm trying to concentrate."

     But all that happened when Hermione and I fell silent, was that this blank buzzing, which didn't seem to allow room for concentration.

     "Oh no, he's back again, why can't he read on his stupid ship?" said Hermione irritably as Viktor slouched in, cast a surly look over at us, and settled himself in a distant corner with a pile of books. "Come on, Harry, we'll go back to the common room... his fan club'll be here in a moment, twittering away..."