𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒-ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪 ℙ𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣❥

𝐆𝐎𝐅 𝟏𝟕

Harry got up on Sunday morning and dressed so inattentively that it was a while before he realized he was trying to pull his hat onto his foot instead of his sock.

When he'd finally got all his clothes on the right parts of his body, he hurried off to find Hermione and Emily, locating them at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, where they were eating breakfast with Ginny.

Feeling too queasy to eat, Harry waited until Hermione and Emily had swallowed her last spoonful of porridge, then dragged them out onto the grounds.

There, he and Emily told Hermione all about the dragons, and about everything Sirius and Eric had said, while they took another long walk around the lake.

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

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

They walked three times around the lake, trying all the way to think of a simple spell that would subdue a dragon. Nothing whatsoever occurred to them, so they retired to the library instead.

Here, Harry pulled down every book he could find on dragons, and both of them 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. . . ."

"'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. . . ."

"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, Emily whispering nonstop at his elbow.

"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 do- ing O.W.L. practice papers. . . ."

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

But all that happened, when Emily fell silent, was that Harry's brain filled with a sort of blank buzzing, which didn't seem to allow room for concentration.

He stared hopelessly down the index of Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed.

Instant scalping . . . but dragons had no hair . . . pepper breath . . . that would probably in- crease a dragon's firepower . . . horn tongue . . . just what he needed, to give it an extra weapon . . .

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

And sure enough, as they left the library, a gang of girls tiptoed past them, one of them wearing a Bulgaria scarf tied around her waist.

Harry barely slept that night. When he awoke on Monday morning, he seriously considered for the first time ever just running away from Hogwarts.