𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐍 - 𝐡.𝐩.

23 | The Unexpected Compliment

There was a deafening clamour; Gemini's lips split into a grin. The first of the four dragons appeared before them: the Swedish Short-Snout. The silver-blue dragon was low on its belly, like a predator preparing for a sly attack on its prey. Looking closer, she discovered it was guarding a clutch of eggs, one of which was golden. The dragon nuzzled her eggs protectively at once, including the golden one.

Gemini looked askance at the ploy.

The challenge was cruel, not for the champions, but for the dragons. The nesting mothers would be tricked into believing that the golden egg was theirs, like the rest of their real ones. They would fight tooth and nail to defend their eggs and though they themselves were too strong to get hurt in the process, the smallest of accidents could damage the real eggs. That was too high a price for mere entertainment.

The crowd gave another roar as Cedric Diggory entered now, his wand out. He looked very green as he caught sight of the ferocious Short-Snout, which blew a stream of blue flame toward him. The crowned screamed as the fire nearly singed him. The dragon snorted and snarled as he came closer. It shot another torrent of fire and the crowd yelled again.

"Oooh, narrow miss there, very narrow..." Bagman's commentary continued on in the background. "He's taking risks, this one!"

What Diggory did next was a rather admirable bit of Transfiguration. Pointing his wand at a rock on the ground, he turned it into a dog. This successfully diverted the dragon's attention. The dog barked fiercely and backed away from the dragon while Diggory crept toward the egg.

"Clever move —" started Bagman.

Much to Diggory's disadvantage, the dragon seemed to change its mind halfway through and decided it would rather have him than the Labrador. It roared furiously as it found that he had the golden egg in his arms and shot a powerful, scorching flame right at him. The crowd gasped like a single many-headed entity.

"— pity it didn't work!" ended Bagman's comment.

After fifteen minutes of the Hufflepuff ducking behind boulders, dodging fire, running, sneaking, and shooting spells, he finally got away to a safer distance, sending the students into a frenzy. He did get a terrible burn on his face in the process however and was led, presumably, to the nearest healing facility.

"Very good indeed!" Bagman was shouting. "And now the marks from the judges!"

The judges all shot up numbers from their wands and the total score was fairly average. Everyone broke into applause, the Hufflepuffs were particularly loud.

"One down, three to go!" Bagman yelled as the whistle blew again. "Miss Delacour, if you please!"

Trembling from head to toe, Fleur Delacour's fluttering blue robes caught Gemini's attention. Despite the obvious fear, she had her head held high as one of her shaky hands tightly clutched her wand. Before her was the Welsh Green, which snapped its jaws at her and wrenched against the chains with all its strength.

From what Gemini had observed about them, Beauxbatons wasn't quite famous for dealing with creatures as erratic and dangerous as the ones they learned about (though a majority of that credit went to Hagrid's wild ventures rather than the entire school). They seemed to value art and literature invariably above all else and studied them more intricately, which, while fascinating, appeared a little lacking to her. The school's reputation preceded it only due to crafty wizards like Nicholas Flamel and Vincent Duc de Trefle-Picques.

Grey eyes growing sharper and more curious by the minute, she looked at Fleur, to find some of that craftiness in her, and was not disappointed to find her performing an odd sort of charm that was making the Welsh Green weaker by the minute. It didn't take her long to realise that she was trying to send the dragon into an enchanted sleep. Unfortunately, the dragon didn't seem to like this at all.