Trial by Fire

Chapter 41: Trial by Fire

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

The last week of November left in a capricious flutter of brown leaves and late nights. At mealtimes, he drilled curses and jinxes with Harry and Hermione until his palm ached. In the evenings he ran through batches of Sleeping Draught until he could brew it blindfolded by touch and scent, and then he ran through a dozen more, experimenting with stray rats that Crookshanks fetched him from the Owlery. The night before, Ron and Harry snuck down to the kitchens and brought back a raw slab of beef for a more palatable infusion. This was wrapped in paper and twine, and tucked in a satchel, which made him feel like nothing so much as the village errand boy.

The preparations distracted him from the assurance of doom that loomed over his head. Or, at least, this was what he told Harry, who kept badgering him not to do it, as if some part of him understood that this was the one way to assure that Draco inevitably must.

“It’s not safe.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You shouldn’t do it.”

“I fully agree.”

“I won’t let you.”

“That’s a good joke.”

“You could get hurt.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“Of what?”

“Keeping you alive,” he said irritably, and twitched the hangings of his bed shut.

December of 1994 was born on a bright, beautiful morning, and Draco woke up wanting it dead. He dressed in silence while Harry did the same, avoiding awkward eye contact at all costs. At breakfast, they had a formal standoff: everyone agreed that everyone should eat something, but no one wanted to touch a bite.

To get the ball rolling, Hermione took two slices of toast and started buttering them with enough force to skin a rabbit. “So. Harry. How are you feeling?”

“Excellent,” said Harry. “Might pop down to the pitch and have a quick friendly before.”

Hermione poured herself a cup of coffee. The pot rattled. “Think of it this way. In 1871, the First Task was to capture a Giant Boar in the Forbidden Forest. The champions disappeared for three weeks. One died, one went mad, and the boar was never found.”

She took a bite of toast and held it in her mouth, pensively.

“Hey, Hermione?” said Ron. “If I ever seem like I need a pep talk, just remember: I don’t, okay?”

“No, it’s good,” croaked Harry. “Maybe the boar will come back and take out the dragon for me.”

She turned to Draco. “What about you? How do you feel?”

“Ready to embark on a promising career in animal control.”

But this was a poor bluff. He’d woken up at four with his stomach in knots and staggered to the bathroom, where he spent an hour resisting the urge to empty his guts of what little dinner he’d managed the night before. Sleep deserted him, and so he dressed and waited with Harry in the common room, turning his wand over and over in his hands, while people trickled down to breakfast with excited choruses of “Good luck!” and “Don’t muck it up!” and “Thrash ’em!”

At five minutes to nine, Cedric Diggory came over to the Gryffindor table, trailing a coterie of moon-eyed Hufflepuffs, and shook Harry’s hand.

“Good luck, Harry,” he said warmly. “Everyone’s terribly excited to see you show up today. Give ’em the old what-for, for Hogwarts, yeah?”

“Thanks,” said Harry awkwardly. “I — listen, Ced, it should’ve been you.”

“Nah,” he said, smiling with only a touch of regret. It really was disgusting, thought Draco, how fair he was being about the whole business. “If it should’ve been, it would’ve been. And anyway, now I get to have a bit of a sit while you and Warrington do the hard part.”

“Warrington’s not going to win bugger-all,” said Ginny. She forked a kipper across the table and popped it in her mouth. The letters R-Y and P-O marched in bright red paint across her freckled cheeks; Fred and George, on either side of her, wore ‘H-A-R’ and ‘T-T-E-R.’ They had all constellated around Harry at breakfast like a praetorian guard of redheads. Fred was busily piling eggs onto Harry’s plate, while George fussed with the strap on his glasses.

“I like to think it’s not about putting anyone down,” said Cedric. “Everyone’s just trying to do their best for their school.”

“Maybe the others are,” said Fred, shoving a tray of kippers at Harry. “Harry’s here to thrash them.”

Cedric gave a polite laugh and he turned back to Harry. “Hey, listen. It’s easy to feel sort of alone out there,” he said. “But we’re all on the same team. You’re still the Hogwarts champion, and we’re behind you. I’ll be cheering for both you and Warrington.”

“Oh. Thanks, mate.”

Draco privately thought that it was kind but utterly addled of Cedric to infer that Harry was nervous about feeling insufficiently supported by his schoolmates; a fat lot of good school spirit would do him, if he got ripped limb from limb. They shook hands again, and then Cedric crossed the Great Hall, to the Slytherin table.

“Merlin, what’s he doing?” said Ginny incredulously. “He’s not going to—”

“He’s trying to shake Warrington’s hand, too,” said Hermione, who didn’t sound much surer than Ginny did. “I suppose he’s — trying to be a good sport.”

The operative word was trying. Cedric reached Cassius’ seat, said something, and extended his hand — and there was a long, dangling beat, where no one at the Slytherin table moved a muscle — and then Cassius slowly, painstakingly stood up, enclosed Cedric’s hand with his fingers, and gave it a jerk.

“He’s making a hash of it,” said Ginny crossly. “You can’t support both. You might as well be on Warrington’s team, at that point.”

“Warrington doesn’t have a team,” said Hermione primly. “That was Cedric’s whole point, wasn’t it? That we’re all here for Hogwarts.”

“If he thinks so, he’s fooling himself, Mione,” said George sagely. He sealed the end of the strap with a knot and settled the glasses carefully back over Harry’s ears. “You look around and tell me there’s not teams. It’s like Christmas in here.”

It was: red and green peppered the four house tables like Christmas baubles, hanging from the necks and shoulders of bedecked supporters, stamped in paint across the faces of eager young Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, some of whom Draco didn’t even recognize, and must have been too young to know who Harry or Cassius even were. It was a horse race for them. A competition, fun for fun’s sake. Pick a team and cheer. Place your bets.

Draco wasn’t sure why it felt like more than that. It shouldn’t have. For all that it was dangerous, it was still only a game. An extracurricular activity. Like quidditch. Like the House Cup.

But he’d never seen a Ravenclaw wear a Slytherin scarf, before, either.

Professor McGonagall appeared behind them. She wore a pair of red earrings, which by her standards was an outrageously political move. “Potter, the champions have to come down onto the grounds now. I shall accompany you.”

Ron leapt to his feet in a seizure of silverware. “Can we go with him?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Weasley.” To her credit, she did sound it. “Champions must receive instructions alone.”

“Okay. Just to the pitch. I can come with him to the pitch, can’t I?”

“If Mr. Potter allows—”

“Yeah,” interrupted Harry. “I mean yes. He can come. Please.”

He got up and floated after McGonagall with a strange, distant expression, like he was sleepwalking. Ron followed half a step behind, with an anxious spring in his step. As they passed under the archway, McGonagall placed her hand on Harry’s shoulder, and he leaned towards her, as if to ask a question. Then they were out of sight.

“That means — we haven’t much time,” said Hermione, haltingly. “If you’re finished—?”

“God, yes, this is intolerable. Let’s go.”

As they walked into the bright December sunshine, he wondered how his father felt on the morning of his trial.

The thought dropped errantly into his head, and lingered there, troubling the waters. He didn’t think about his father often. He thought about him abstractly, as the person to hold the Malfoy title before him, and as a personage whose dignity and reputation was to be maintained, and, occasionally, a tall and pine-scented presence lingering in the background of several fond memories. But he hadn’t often considered how Lucius would have felt about something. The idea of him as real, as a person that lived and breathed and sweated from nerves, was so foreign it was like the Hogwarts castle having a personality.

“Did you sleep?” said Hermione. Her voice broke the monotony of leaf-crunching.

“No.”

“Neither did I.”

“Why not?”

“I felt sick.”

“Whatever about?”

She folded her arms and scowled.

“What? Not me, surely.”

“Of course I did,” she said tautly. “If you got hurt, I’d be a perfect mess.”

The morning light was falling warm and buttery on her hair, which she had bound back in elastic, and she had rolled up her sleeves for some reason. It was like she’d prepared herself for battle.

“A perfect mess?” he repeated, and was dismayed to find it didn’t sound mocking at all.

“Yes, obviously. You’re— oh, of course it’s here. I have come to altogether hate this place, you know.”

The Quidditch pitch had been repurposed for the occasion. From a distance, he could hear the spectators rumble, the floodlights up and blazing to cut the sun. A tent had been erected around the players’ entrance, leading through the enclave under the stands usually reserved for smoking cigarettes and whatever it was Fred and Angelina did after practice.

“I’m what?” he said, but the moment was lost, gone, strapped to the tracks while her train of thought thundered over it.

She darted up to the side of the champion’s tent, and crouched down, out of sight. He bent next to her, his knees brushing the wet sheen of dew. After a moment, the flap flickered, and Harry slipped out.

Hermione piped a short whistle around two fingers. Harry ducked down with them in the grass.

“Alright,” he said queasily, rubbing his hands. “I haven’t got a lot of time, they think I’m out to piss.”

“That’s fine, just tell us which one you’ve got.”

“The Hungarian Horntail. It’s black, with these big barbs—”

“The big one?”

“Draco, they’re all big,” he said, speaking from the bad edge of panic. “Krum got the Shortsnout, and Warrington got Norberta. Fleur got the nice green one without any teeth. Think she might’ve passed out from relief.”

“That’s the Welsh Green, and they spit acid, in addition to breathing fire,” said Hermione. “She won’t be celebrating for long. When’s your turn?”

“Last.”

“Perfect. Alright. Harry, you remember the key is to keep moving, right? Don’t stop moving. Ever. If you can do that,” she said, “all you have to do is—”

“Battle the dragon?”

She lurched forward and hugged him.

Harry yelped in surprise and toppled over on his bum, which led to: “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” and “No, my fault,” “I thought you’d be stronger,” and, finally, “Oi.”

Harry grabbed Draco’s shoulders. “Don’t die,” he intoned, and then, to Draco’s surprise, did something he’d only ever seen Harry do with Ron: he delivered a short, hard headbutt to the top of his skull.

If this was meant to convey fraternal love and affection, it failed. It hurt like hell. He was left yowling and clutching his head while Harry hurried back into the tent.

“This is the thanks I get for risking my life? You get a full embrace, and I’m stuck with a concussion?”

“Boys,” she said fondly.

“Disaggregate me from that category immediately. I did not consent to that interaction.”

“Not so loud, you’ll hurt his feelings.”

“He hurt my frontal plate!”

“You’ll recover.”

They skulked around to the back of the dragon paddock, where they scaled a hastily erected wooden fence, dispelled a few Repulsor Charms, and a minute later stood on the edge of a wide, sandy hollow in the earth, as if someone had reached down and scooped out a place for the dragons to roost. Iron bars lay over the hollow, sealing the winged creatures off from any escape to the sky, and if that failed, the chains that shrieked and rattled as they prowled around their shaded chamber ought to have done the trick. Everything reeked of sulfur and charred flesh, except for his mouth, which suddenly tasted like metal.

Hermione drew her wand and leaned out over the edge. The height must have impressed itself on her quickly, because she drew back with a squeak. “You’ll — er — need your broom,” she said faintly.

Apparently she wasn’t going to offer him a hug, like Harry; that was fine. He didn’t like them.

He withdrew a small case from his pocket and cast Finite Incantatem. The Nimbus swelled to its usual size, and he carefully removed it from its berth.

“You can drop it from a height,” she added. “They’ll smell it. You don’t have to get too close, is what I mean.”

“And here I was trying to conduct a dental inspection.”

He slung the satchel around his shoulder and mounted the broomstick. It hummed to life under him, lifting up, and he braced himself with one foot on the grass. Hermione shook out the Invisibility Cloak, and he draped it over his shoulders. When he looked down he saw nothing but the ground under his broomstick, and the sight brought with it a bleary wave of unreality, like dreaming.

“Where are all the attendants?” Hermione murmured. “I don’t like this.”

“Moving Fleur’s Green into the arena, I’d wager. We’re not rich in time.”

“Yes, but — Draco, be careful.”

He looked at her. She had pressed her fingers into a tiny knot and was applying pressure like she was trying to achieve nuclear fusion inside it. Drawing on the slender reserves of his remaining confidence, he smirked.

“Ready to be amazed, Granger?”

“No!”

“Too bad.”

The Horntail sighed a huge curtain of smoke. Now that he was above it, he could see the glitter of embers in its throat and nostrils, the places where magic met chemistry and became death. It was bigger than the others, damn him, the poor sot couldn’t have drawn anything else. Bigger and more horrifying, with ashen filmy bat’s wings crested with bone-white claws, trunk-like legs covered in fat hanks of plated muscle, a trapjaw of teeth that jutted out of its very skull for want of space. It sniffed the air and gave a mournful shriek.

Air rippled past in a bath of heat. Draco instinctively veered, but it was only breath, no fire, all sound. The other dragons heard it and took up shrieks of their own, chains groaning and warping the metal fastenings.

He circled the Horntail, considering his approach. The good news was that the dragon didn’t seem to see him, between the smoke and the Cloak and its tiny pathetic rage-filled eyes. It knew something was there, but it couldn’t find him, and it worked itself into agitation snaking its head to and fro. The bad news — and it was very bad news — was also old news: it was, in fact, a dragon. A big old ugly fire-breathing dragon. And as it reared back his head, an electric jolt informed him that he was about to find out why.

A column of fire erupted from the pit. It broached the bars and leapt skyward like it sought to melt the sun. Draco threw himself sideways, almost lost his grip, and veered away from the Horntail’s chamber. This saved his life. Unfortunately, it also brought him veering over the other dragons, who gave screams of their own, and let out a pair of answering jets of fire.

He looked over the guttering geysers, blinked, and saw a row of floating yellow cones, rising through the pale morning fog of a brutal six o’clock practice. Blinked again, and they were gone.

He had never been so grateful in his life for Oliver Wood. He’d have to buy out Puddlemere and give him a raise.

He hauled his broom sideways and wove between geysers of fire. The air was a blur of red and yellow and white. The heat crackled against his face and he could smell something burning — the best he could do was pray it wasn’t him — as he rounded the last flame column and shot back to the Horntail along the side of the pit. Heat prickled the back of his broomstick, but the wind whisked it away.

“Draco!” Hermione cupped her hands around her mouth. “It’s not a continuous jet! They need time to accumulate ethylene in their bronchi, remember? From Egg to Inferno?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what’s on my mind—”

He swept past her and rounded in for another drop, but there was so much smoke that the Horntail was barely more than a shadow swirling around in the pit. Smoke curled and billowed around his ankles. When he crept out over the Horntail pit and there was no fire forthcoming, he took a deep, bolstering breath — stupid goddamn mistake, now his eyes were watering — and sank down over the pit.

“The longer it stops, the bigger the jet!”

He wished dearly that she would shut up. Dragons didn’t have great vision, but their sensitive ears could most certainly pick up the shrilling of a noisome fifteen-year-old girl who apparently wanted him dead.

A muffled roar came from the stands. The indistinct prattle of commentary echoed behind it. Fleur had done something. Get eaten, possibly.

He was about to ask Hermione what was so damn important, anyway, when the Horntail lunged. It seized the bars of its cage and beat itself against them like a rabid engaged animal. Draco shouted and whipped up into a breakneck incline while the dragon’s clubbed tail battered itself deafeningly against the bars and its claws carved great glistening slivers of metal from the lattice. A premonition of heat on the back of his neck was his only warning. He hauled backwards into a hairpin U-dive, cutting down towards the pit, while a bellow of flame roasted the air where he’d been a moment ago.

“Wait for it to end,” Hermione was shouting. “Wait! Wait!”

For the first time he heard what she was saying. Ethylene buildup from their respiratory processes produced the fuel for their breath. Discharging created a temporary vacancy where the flame would be inert. He’d have an opening. Ten seconds of one, at least, which was an opening in the same way that a fourth-story window was technically a fire exit.

When the flame ended, he took another foul breath, put self-preservation out of his mind, and dove. The smoke parted like shredded silk.

The Horntail peeled open the bony clamp of jaw and screeched at him, drenching him in heat so thick it stung his skin like acid. A bead of red glowed at the back of its throat. Its mouth yawned. The Horntail screamed, and the crowd bellowed, and though he knew the two were unrelated for one glowing moment he imagined they were cheering for him.

The bead of red spread to a glitter, and then started moving, wobbling like flame.

He wound back and pitched the bag like he was making a shot on the goalhoop.

It plummeted between the shipwrecks of its teeth and winked out of sight down the tunnel of its throat. He bent low on his broom and wrenched sideways as a final pillar of fire pierced the gray clouds behind him.

Self-preservation, which had been hammering furiously on the door to his brain ever since he ejected it, battered down the door and stumbled drunkenly back in. Fear followed belatedly, like a tardy partygoer trying to overcompensate, and wracked his body with an involuntary shudder, which entirely ruined his suave landing. He stumbled badly on the dismount, tripped on the Invisibility Cloak, and dropped hard into the dirt. His Nimbus skittered to the side and gave a hiss of steam where it connected with the dewy grass.

People were applauding. Someone was shaking him. He rolled over onto his back and got a full eyeful of sky for three honestly comforting seconds before it was occluded by a faceful of hair and panic.

“Draco! Are you alright?”

“Mmgh,” he said, as his body downshifted from immovable terror into fear-drunk jitters. “Mmhgrnyn.”

“You’re on fire!”

“Thanks,” he said distantly.

A harsh word slipped between her teeth, and she was wrestling out of her cloak, despite the windchill. She threw it down over his leg and tamped it down, and when the sensation returned to his legs he realized that the only thing he felt below the right kneecap was pain.

“Merlin’s f—”

“Hold still.” When she peeled back the cloak, there was a mess of char and something sticky along his leg and he gave a wild, high sound of shock more than pain — he couldn’t actually feel it too well — and she slammed her hand over his mouth.

“Quiet!”

“You keep quiet! My leg—”

“It’s not a bad burn,” she said. She was a good liar. He always forgot that, somehow. “Hold still. I can heal it.”

“Are you bloody well sure?”

“Yes, but you’ve got to let me work. Molly showed me this one, it’ll fix the tissue better than Episkey.”

“Suppose those came in handy,” he said thickly, “raising the twins.”

“She really is a very powerful witch, you know,” said Hermione, as if that were even in the first fathom of things he could give a damn about. “I mentioned her to Professor Moody the other day, and he said she was one of only three Order members who ever beat him in a duel. The others — you might want to hold on to something, if you’re squeamish. Ascepiomys.”

A strange bubbling sensation rolled up his ankle, and he flinched away from it — or would have, if she hadn’t braced her weight on his thigh with her knees. “That’s horrid,” he gritted, arching his back against the ground. She patted his stomach absentmindedly.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “It’ll be more horrid if we have to amputate, though.”

“What.”

“Joking! Joking. Trying to relieve the tension.”

The prickling sensation abated, and he sat up in a bruising crunch. His trouser-leg had been shredded to ashy thread, but the skin underneath it was smooth, with only a thin bridge of scar tissue where the worst had been.

“How does that feel?”

“Fine.” He rolled it this way and that. It was a remarkable job. Almost no stiffness at all, though the skin was faintly shiny, and when it pulled, his leg twitched oddly.

“I couldn’t see you.” Hermione seemed to be having trouble getting enough air. Her lip was bleeding. She said unevenly, “I had no idea where you were. Or what was happening.”

“Your loss. Just picture someone devastatingly attractive and fantastically daring, and add fire—”

“Shut up. I didn’t distract you, did I?”

She had, a little.

“For some reason,” he said, “the dragon was remarkably good at holding my attention.”

“Oh, good. God, that was so much worse than quidditch. Broomsticks are actually evil. I’m sorry about your trousers, by the way.”

“I’ll put them on Potter’s tab.”

A bout of applause echoed from the stands, and Hermione swayed to her feet. He clasped her hands and hauled himself upright, an exertion mostly on his part, because she lacked the strength Merlin gave a house-elf.

The gate to the enclosure shrieked open, and shouts swelled. Wizards swarmed the Shortsnout’s enclosure and hauled back the gridded ceiling of its cage. One with bright red hair jogged around the others, shouting and directing with his hands, and they lifted the dragon, flapping and thrashing out of its pit.

“Charlie,” gasped Hermione. “Hide—”

“Cloak—”

“Quickly!”

She threw the cloak around their shoulders, but it tangled in her haste, falling short-ways instead of long — there was an ungainly scramble of limbs and elbows in bad places — and she shoved them together and whipped the hood over their heads. At their age the Cloak was quite simply not big enough for two people, and she solved this problem by crowding into his chest like she intended to camp in his ribcage, apparently forgetting there were quite a few tender organs who had the idea first.

“Ow. Ow! Quit!”

“Then move!”

“You move!”

“I’m trying!”

The dragonkeepers wrestled the Shortsnout out of the paddock. His back connected painfully with the fence. There was an elbow in his spleen and a hipbone digging into his pelvis and hair bristling all up the side of his face, and it was hot, both residually, from the dragonfire, and inevitably, from the juxtaposition of two warm bodies in a tight space.

After the gate shuddered closed, Hermione sagged like a loosed bowstring. “Thank Merlin,” she murmured, mostly into his collarbones. “They didn’t see us.”

“Suppose they were rather busy with the creature trying to kill them,” said Draco, “good mate, that dragon,” and then she chuckled and looked up at him and his stomach vanished to another dimension.

He had failed until now to appreciate certain details of their physical situation. She was all spread up against him like jam on bread, connected from their tangled ankles to the flush of their chests, and his hands, which had grasped her elbows to extricate them from his kidneys, still braced her loosely by the arms. Under the Cloak it was muggy and acrid and somehow it still, impossibly, smelled like her hair, citrus and flowers and a tang of salt from sweat, cutting through the fug of smoke. It was so close he couldn’t see her face altogether clearly, but through the haze of curls he could see the vague shape of her hard, intense little face, her passionate eyebrows, the bloodied flower of her mouth. A stroke of ash grazed her cheek.

His hand twitched, for no reason he could understand — inside his skull it was warm and humid and he was focusing on the suddenly difficult task of breathing — but in an apocalyptic feat of good fortune, this snapped her to attention, and she tore away like she was ripping off a bandage.

“It’s a curious sensation,” he said, surprised and pleased by the ease in his voice, “having one’s pancreas introduced to one’s appendix.”

“You are such a baby.”

“They’re getting along, I think, but only because of induced fusion. Your elbow was doing a glorious job of mediating.”

“An utter baby, at that. And about the oddest things, too.” She sounded relieved. She picked up the cloak and looped it over her arm.

“I beg your pardon. I think facing a dragon entitles me to whinge.”

“By all means, whinge away. You won’t, though,” she said, with offensive confidence. “If you happened to amputate yourself and stub your toe at once, the whole country would know about the toe by sundown, but it’d take a week for the arm to even come up.”

Which was such a forthright and blatantly disrespectful analysis of his character that he retracted into sullen silence, reflecting on the severe disadvantages of allowing oneself to be understood.

---

The pitch brimmed with people. He’d never seen it so packed, even for a championship game. It oughtn’t have fit that many people. Surely there was lap-sitting concerned somewhere.

On the way into the match, they were nearly flattened by a stampede of people coming up the stairs — the interlude between champions had been taken as license for all of bloody Europe to hurtle its way to the loo — and Draco nearly turned Theodore Nott into a green stain on the floor.

They scuffled apart, Theo’s hair tousled, Draco’s — it didn’t bear thinking about.

“What happened to you?” Theo demanded, with extreme and offensive judgment. Hermione twitched her robe to cover his ripped trouser leg, but he suspected it might have been too late, because Theo’s eyes lingered.

“Detention,” he snarled. “With Hagrid. Rectal exams on a blast-ended skrewts. Nott, excuse me—”

“Did you see what happened to the Frenchwoman?” he interrupted.

“What?”

“Delacour. Her strategy. I don’t think it falls within the parameters of wizarding magic. Pans was suggesting she should be disqualified; me, I take a more sanguine approach. I say, let her do the next one without a wand, if she doesn’t need it.” He glanced at Draco, searchingly, and Draco flattened his expression. Theo couldn’t read what they’d been doing. The whole place smelled like smoke, anyway.

“No, we didn’t see it,” said Hermione loudly, “since, as Draco pointed out, we were in detention. Pardon us, but if we don’t move soon we’re going to miss Krum—”

“What’d you get detention for, brains?” said Theo casually, leaning against the wall. Hermione set her jaw.

“Chronic lateness,” she said, and sidestepped him neatly into the stairwell.

Ron had done his best to save as much space as possible for them, but these advantages were on the order of inches, not seats, and they ended up crammed against the front of the spectator’s box, jostled by the slightest quiver of the crowd.

Gone was the slate of grass and three-pronged posts. There instead lay a barren rock pit, undulating and pitted like a lava field, sculpted at one end into a kind of nest. The only glimmers of green were strains of browned moss that laid thin over some of the rocks, smoking faintly. The sun had mounted the sky and fell in blinding waves over everything, making it impossible to see above the uppermost box.

“OI! YOU MADE IT!” Ron had to bellow to be heard. “GLAD YOU’RE NOT DEAD — FLEUR NEARLY WAS!”

“How’d she do it?” Hermione shouted, wedging her fingers in her ears.

“WHAT?”

“HOW DID SHE—”

“CHARMED IT! SHE SANG A SONG AND IT CALMED DOWN! MIONE, I THINK SHE’S PART VEELA!”

“Yes, Ron, we all know you think she’s pretty!”

“NO, I MEAN LITERALLY, SHE — never mind, talk later — LET’S HAVE A HOLLER FOR HARRY POTTER—”

The Gryffindor students had rallied into a group and were having a skirmish with the Slytherins: for each roar of “CAS-SIUS WAR-RING-TON,” followed by clapping, Fred and George launched into another, louder rendition of Harry’s theme song, which after several repetitions acquired the same quality as ‘A Hole in My Bucket.’

A podium of judges sat beneath the judges’ box, stocked with three unhappy faces and one equanimous Albus Dumbledore, who alone among the headmasters appeared undisturbed by the presence of several dragons in immediate proximity to his students. The fourth judge was the senescent Mr. Crouch, who seemed to have aged considerably since Draco had seen him at Halloween, though perhaps the light was merely less forgiving.

Ludo Bagman took Lee Jordan’s usual seat, his cheeks stretched like taffy in a cosmetically preserved grin. “LADIES! AND! GENTLEMEN! I TAKE YOU NOW FROM THE SUMMER FIELDS OF FRANCE TO THE FROSTY VISTAS OF THE HINTERLANDS… PLEASE! PUT YOUR HANDS! TOGETHER! FOR—”

He was cut off. All words vanished in a boom of cheers as Viktor Krum strode into the arena, his wand outstretched in the hostile grip of an advancing duelist. A red firework boomed and detonated over the pitch.

“VIK-TORRR KRRRRRRRRRRUM!”

The Shortsnout, aggravated by the noise, leapt into the air and shrieked. It had a thinner scream than the Horntail’s, close to a whistle, and it was feathered along the back and tail with a row of pale quills. Krum’s eyes went very wide, then constricted to slits.

“What’s he got to do?” shouted Hermione.

“YOU SEE THAT EGG THERE? UNDER THE LEGS? HE’S GOT TO GET IT!”

“Why can’t he just Summon it?”

Apparently Krum had the same thought, because after a moment, he lassoed his wand in a textbook execution of a Summoning Charm. The egg gave a thrilling leap toward him, but the Shortsnout slammed its foot down and crushed it to the ground with another piercing scream.

“THAT’S WHY,” said Ron.

The dragon did not take kindly to having its eggs jostled about. It bulked its throat and issued a jet of blue flame. Instead of dodging, Krum swept his wand and deflected them into a nearby rock, which blazed red from heat.

When the jet dissipated he broke into a breakneck run across the field, clearing a hundred yards of pitted ground with unexpected grace.

“There he goes! There’s the athlete of your generation, dear fellows, the seeker for the Bulgarian National Team, as you well know, and damned fast, I suppose they keep them fit over there. My, but he’s getting close to it! Very daring! Watch out, though!”

The dragon had flicked its tail, and a row of quills thudded into the rock behind Viktor. He ducked and slipped to the side, taking cover, and lashed two jinxes over his shoulder. They ricocheted off its scales and shattered two nearby rocks to rubble.

“WICKED!”

“Ron!”

“What? I’m still rooting for Harry!”

Krum flipped over the rock and scrambled up the side of the shelf. Another volley of quills narrowly missed him, and he sidestepped a jet of fire, rolling effortlessly under its wing. He was so close that he had to leap over its tail and dodge the sweep of its hind foot, deflecting it away from his head with a Locomotor Curse, and now he was out of its eyeshot it gave a snarl of aggravation. He danced back from another volley of quills, and it chittered forward, snapping its jaws at him.

“Luring it out! Getting it off the egg! That’s one way! But it takes some nerve!”

He snapped his wand like a whip, and ropes lashed around his wing, pinning it down. While it wrestled against the ropes, he dove for the egg, but then it gave a yowl and whipped its head around to snap at him, faster than vision, its teeth snapping. Bagman didn’t have time to do more than gasp.

Draco’s vision flickered and for a heartbeat he left the stands and watched a werewolf sink its teeth into Daphne’s neck, and then he was back and it was still happening, it was going to happen again, not again, not again.

Krum barked and punched it squarely in the nose.

The crowd bellowed. The Shortsnout recoiled, more stunned than hurt. Bagman was making noises of incoherent joy. Krum dodged a swipe of its claws and shot a red curse straight into its eye. Then he slid under its belly, vanishing for a moment under the curtains of its wings.

It tipped over in a squealing thrash, and slipped from its nest, falling thunderous to the ground. The shockwave sent Krum tumbling off his feet, and it looked like his head clipped the rock; someone screamed; it was impossible to make out what happened to him.

“DID YOU SEE THAT!” Fred, George, and Ron were all shaking each other like maracas. “DID YOU SEE IT? HE PUNCHED IT! HE PUNCHED IT IN THE FACE—”

“IN THE FACE!”

“IN THE FACE!”

Gasps erupted. Hermione seized Draco’s arm and squeezed until he could count the individual tendons under her thumb.

When Krum scrambled up again, he had a cheek full of blood, a leg full of quills, and two hands full of egg.

He raised them and gave a shout. A klaxon split the air. So too did a thundering roar from the stands, and no one stayed on their feet, not even Draco, for there was no hard-hearted Hogwarts loyalist who could fail to appreciate such an incontrovertible spate of badassery.

“He’s got it!” cried Bagman. “And in good time, too! A tidy five minutes, seventeen seconds, to Miss Delacour’s nine thirty-four! Of course, time won’t be dispositive — the judges score holistically, and he’ll lose a point or two for injury, I think — but nevertheless, well done! We’ll have a moment, while they take care of the beast…”

Dragonkeepers scurried onto the field and lured the Shortsnout away. As it staggered under one of the gates, another slid open, and the Ridgeback exploded onto the pitch with a shriek and a burst of fire.

“Good Lord, it’s hideous,” said Draco.

Ron cuffed him gleefully. “Don’t be rude! That’s Hagrid’s daughter, you git!”

“RETURNING YOU NOW TO THE BONNIE LOCHS OF SCOTLAND… THE FIRST HOGWARTS CHAMPION… I GIVE YOU… THE IRREPLACEABLE CASSIUS WARRINGTON!”

The champion’s gate opened, and Warrington strode onto the pitch, his wand held in a perfect western underhand. Slytherin all but put its voice out cheering for him. He smiled and tapped his temple in a salute to the judges’ box, though Dumbledore gave no sign of having seen him.

He ignored, or perhaps did not near, the small contingent of Gryffindors that had started jeering. A few Hufflepuffs, including Hannah Abbott, joined in.

Cassius made it two steps inside and he leapt aside to dodge the flames.

When they abated, Norberta closed her mouth with a sort of satisfaction, and raked her claws over the rock in violent invitation, skittering sparks. Cassius took two quick steps back, eyes wide, and twitched his wand in an almost instinctive shield, over his chest; it was oddly human, for someone so polished. Then he rallied and shook out his hand, grimacing.

The first slash of his wand erected a wall of rock in front of his body, intercepting a jet of flame before it could charbroil him. The flames surged and burst against the black stone like a wave breaking on a dyke, flickering in a wide ring, and the edges blazed red. Cassius stepped around the side of his shelter and lashed his wand again, and something small and black began to pour from the air in front of it: a fluttering, writhing mass of feathers and claws that gradually took form as a flock of ravens.

“AVIS!” Bagman seemed perplexed. “That’s a N.E.W.T.-level Conjuring spell, very dynamic, quite complex, and by all means, impressive — easily the most sophisticated spellwork we’ve seen yet — but it’s not clear what he wants to do with them, unless it’s to owl for help!”

Laughter pittered from the Gryffindor stands. Cassius sent a sour look at the judge’s box, but shook it off and finished conjuring the flock, which rose in a fluttering cacophony of rancid shrieks. As the Ridgeback gave another scream, he ducked around the other side of the rock wall and lashed his wand at it.

The flock lifted, like it was of one mind, and soared at the dragon. The Ridgeback arched its neck and issued a yellow ribbon of fire that seared a full flank of the flock out of existence; but there were still more left, and they swarmed its head, their small bodies slipping through the irked lashes of its claws and tail.

“Oppugno!” Bagman had transformed from confusion to delight. “Well, there you are! Quite clever! Just the thing, too! Now she’s well and distracted.”

Cassius darted across the field, making good time over the uneven surface. Slytherin was roaring for him; Ravenclaw was roaring for him; even most of Hufflepuff, at this point, was pleased at the elegance with which he had distracted the dragon, which swayed and snarled, trying to claw away the black cloud of feathers that encircled her head. They were pecking at her face, claws scrabbling on the hard lacquer of scales, beaks jabbing around for a chance at the eye — the leathered skin of her eyelid snapped shut, and she gave a shriek, struggling back from the ravens’ claws.

“And there he goes! Off to the races, right up the rock face, and the dragon still distracted, but he’ll still have to get the egg, and time’s a-ticking, Mr. Warrington!”

Cassius was scaling the nest: neat short flicks of his wand carved footholds in the stone, and he mounted them, quickly, each crumbling at the touch of his foot. At the top he dropped to the ground as the dragon’s tail came whipping around and nearly beheaded him; the stands gasped; but he staggered up again and pointed his wand at the eggs, his mouth moving.

Norberta snapped up the last of the birds in her mammoth jaws, and then whirled around, in time to see Cassius’ spell shatter the entire nest, scattering shards of egg like shrapnel.

Only the gold egg remained untouched, sitting in a white bed of rubble.

“No,” said Hermione faintly.

Norberta nosed at the crumpled shells and gave a panicked scream. She whirled and spat a spear of flame that almost grazed Cassius, but he did a neat deflection with a backhand flick of his wand and pointed his wand over his head, conjuring something — a shimmer in the sharp morning light — resolving gradually into the misty shape of an egg.

“He’s conjuring a decoy!” Bagman was speaking in a whisper, like the dragon might hear him and catch on. “Luring her away… that’s another piece of very hard magic, illusion magic… Mr. Warrington is giving us a bit of an exhibition, isn’t he? Hogwarts’ best and brightest, to be sure!”

“It’s not that difficult,” muttered Draco. “Bagman’s a quidditch player, how would he even know?”

But Hermione appeared not to hear him; she was still shaking her head.

“He destroyed the eggs,” she said thickly. “That’s not—”

“They’re not real eggs, Granger.”

“I know that! She doesn’t!”

Norberta screamed and surged, but Cassius twitched the illusion out over the cliff face. She buckled and gave a low, almost plaintive whine, her tail thrashing here and there, but as he lowered his hand, her head dipped with it.

“Dragon taming!” Bagman was thrilled. “That’s a technique right out of Darrian Dragonsbane’s classic compendium! Clever as anything! Of course, a dragon has terrible eyesight, so they’re very susceptible to illusion! Shows a real appreciation for the history of the thing, too.”

Norberta scrabbled through the shards of her false eggs with her claws, wailed, and made a sudden leap for the illusion. Cassius waved it out of existence, pivoted, and cast it again in the air to her right; she beat her wings and rose, her shackle rattling, to desperately swipe at the retreating illusion of her egg, which was thin and disappearing in the bitter midmorning sunshine.

When she had strained her shackle to the very limit, baying and flapping her wings, Warrington calmly strode forward and collected the egg from the nest. He twitched his wand over his shoulder.

The illusion disappeared; Norberta gave a scream of grief.

“It’s horrible,” said Hermione thickly. “It’s just — horrible.”

“It’s all fake,” said Draco tightly. “He got the egg.”

“Yes, but she’s heartbroken!”

“Nonsense. She’s a dragon.”

“Listen to her,” she said, and she wasn’t wrong: the sounds coming from Norberta’s throat were miserable and vile. She sank in a crumple of wings and scales to list on the broken nest, nosing desolately at the shards beneath her, while Warrington hopped down from the nest and strode over to the mediwizards, who barely gave him a once-over: he hadn’t taken a single hit.

“At five minutes, twelve seconds, that puts Warrington in the lead, with respect to time — again, not dispositive, but certainly looks good for him, doesn’t it? With zero injuries, and flawless execution on every spell, methinks the judges will have quite the hard time finding a reason to deny Mr. Warrington his due!”

“Listen to him, he’s drooling.”

“He shouldn’t speculate,” said Hermione, frowning.

“He’s not incorrect,” said Draco. Both of them shot him dirty looks, but he rolled his eyes and shrugged them off. He was right. Cassius hadn’t done anything they could dock him points for.

“A hard act to follow… But not impossible! Let’s have our last champion of the day, and we saved the best for last — well, in the dragon department, the jury stays out on the champion — but our second Hogwarts contender, you know him and I know him, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the man you’ve all been reading about in the papers: HARRY POTTER!”

Harry tottered out of the gate on none-too-steady legs, gazed stupefied at the audience above him, and then took his wand out, apparently as an afterthought. Gryffindor gamely screamed for him.

Hermione turned around and put her hands over her eyes.

The Horntail limped in at the other end of the enclosure and hunkered over its clutch of eggs. It might have been wishful thinking, but it was slower than the others had been. Its eyes were lidded. Its tail dragged listlessly over the stone, and when it snorted fire, it came out in tiny puffballs, not the long bursts.

“It worked,” whispered Hermione. She was peeking through the lens of her third and fourth finger.

“Well, now you’ve jinxed it.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Merlin. Joking.”

The Horntail cracked its jaws and spat a bolt of flame at Harry. He dropped on his belly and popped back up with a springy push-up that would have made Oliver Wood applaud. Three years of square meals and a summer of work at the Burrow had started to give him Wood’s sort of frame, and when he straightened up, hard-faced and squinting, it suddenly seemed remarkable that he could have ever been small.

Bagman cleared his throat. “He’s got strength! That’s clear enough!”

Harry was avoiding his wand like there was some sort of fungus on it. He darted across the pitch with remarkable agility, flexing the full suite of his athletic skill, which would have been impressive if the Tournament was a tumbling competition, and there wasn’t anything that he actually needed to do. It was possible, to Draco’s very credulous dread, that Harry had been so flabbergasted by the piss-worthy fear of Big Bloody Dragon that he’d forgotten about the Task altogether.

“I don’t think they let him take coaching, Granger.”

The pressure of her nails left pink splotches on her face. “What’s he doing? Why won’t he just use his sodding wand?”

“Performance anxiety,” he suggested, gripping the handrail. “He didn’t land it, those last few times.”

“That doesn’t count. By then the mice were all dotty anyway, you could hardly tell. Oh!” Harry leapt over a lazy swipe of the dragon’s barbell tail. He soared through the air and landed neatly in a crouch, hopping across the lava field with quick canny footwork.

“Fun fact about Harry Potter, he’s also a seeker,” said Bagman conversationally, as Harry fled the Horntail in a vaguely slapstick chase around the arena. “Youngest player on the Gryffindor team in some years, and recently a champion of the House Cup, a natural prodigy, as I’m told… ooh, good jump… by jove, the Horntail doesn’t seem quite bothered with him, does she?”

This, in Draco’s opinion, an insulting understatement. The dragon very much wanted him dead, but it was having some logistical trouble getting there. It limped after him, wobbling drunkenly on her legs, and sent weak snarls of fire that always flickered out shy of his feet.

Harry took a flying leap and slammed against the side of the nest, hauling himself up by his arms. The Horntail limped after him, groaning sluggishly.

When he reached the top he spun around, and the Horntail reared up on its hind legs, shuffling forward. Finally, finally, Harry lifted his wand.

The tail whipped around and caught him in the side.

“POTTER!” roared Bagman, leaping out of his seat. “Great Scott! Someone get him! Please! Look out! No!”

He sounded beside himself in distress. Mr. Crouch leaned over and said something sharp to him, frowning, and Bagman cut himself off, hands wringing anxiously.

Harry flew. The stands screamed. He caught a full ten feet of air and then slammed against the rock, a bad landing. When he stood up there was a rash of blood running from his temple to his neck and the right side of his uniform lay in tatters. He swayed, hard, and then dropped to his knees and fumbled for something on the ground—

“Glasses,” moaned Hermione. “The strap— I told him—”

The dragon shuffled over towards him, grunting and nosing the ground.

“POTTER! UP, BOY! MOVE!”

This, in Draco’s opinion, was far beyond the pale of a commentator’s purview; Bagman had the microphone in one fist and appeared to be trying to swallow it; he was not really commentating so much as attempting to give Harry directions.

Harry fumbled across the rock.

“THAT’S RIGHT!” Bagman was hysterical. “THAT’S RIGHT! JUST THERE! NOW GO, GO ON — WATCH IT THERE, POTTER— LEFT! LEFT! GO LEFT!”

There was a squeal of feedback, and his voice died; Barty Crouch sat back with a cold expression, holding the severed cord of the microphone in one hand, while Bagman mouthed furiously and silently into the inert mouthpiece, his voice swallowed by the roar of the stands. The two men immediately bent towards each other and started arguing.

Always receptive to good coaching, Harry rolled left, and narrowly avoided another sweep of the creature’s tail.

The Horntail flicked open its leathery wings, swept its head down and opened its jaws. The telltale ripple of heat twitched the air before her face, blasting back the hair on Harry’s head. But it was slow. Just slow enough.

Something glinted on the ground under the Horntail’s wing. Harry dove for it and threw himself into a somersault. When he came up, he was holding a wand in his hand, and his glasses sat on his nose.

The dragon swiveled its head, and now he was so close that even a weak jet of fire would immolate him.

He shouted something, and a yellow jinx darted into the center of its throat.

The dragon reeled back drunkenly and fell, swiping feebly at the air. It rolled to the ground, and was still, its side moving in the slow deep breaths of unconsciousness.

Harry scrambled into the nest and snatched up the egg.

“…YES! YES! YES! HE DID IT! AND THE FIRST TASK IS FINISHED!” Bagman’s voice swelled back into being, projected from the tip of his wand, while Crouch bellowed at him and tried to repossess it; but Bagman gleefully danced out of his reach. “Harry Potter, coming in with a time of six minutes and twenty-one seconds, with the strongest magic we’ve seen yet today! To think! Fourteen years old, with a Stunner that takes down a Hungarian Horntail — I’ve seen four men try the same, folks, with no such results — haven’t seen its like since Dumbledore himself — a remarkable, remarkable thing!”

A surge of movement hurled Draco against the railing. The fresh scar on his leg twinged stiffly, and he threw an elbow with juvenile menace at the nearest head. Gryffindor was screaming. So were the other houses, mostly. It was hard not to.

Professor McGonagall was rushing onto the field, along with some more dragonkeepers, who had not the slightest trouble shepherding the dizzy Horntail back to its paddock. Behind her, Professor Karkaroff followed with Krum in lockstep, and Madame Maxime and Fleur kept graceful stride; at the rear of the pack, Cassius strolled along, waving indulgently at the roar that greeted him.

McGonagall reached Harry first. She bent over him, saying something fierce and quick that was lost in the roar, and Harry nodded back. Then she clapped his shoulder like she was driving a spoke into the ground, and he stumbled into the arms of the mediwizards, grinning.

Cassius shouldered his way to the front of the pack and extended his hand to Harry, ignoring the coat of grime and moss on it. He said something; he wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t seem angry, either. After a beat of palpable confusion, Harry shook it. Somewhere, a flashbulb ignited.

Once the handshake was completed, Cassius pivoted and did not look at Harry again, though perhaps that was because McGonagall had hauled him back into the arms of the mediwizards. Krum and Fleur were chatting in a sort of idle way behind Karkaroff, Fleur gesturing with her wand, Krum nodding; both of them seemed rather relieved to have it all over with. Every so often Krum had to swipe a dribble of blood off his forehead, with such absentmindedness that it seemed more a nuisance than injury.

Students were flooding out of the stands, now, and while teachers blocked most of them from entering the pitch, a few slipped past and managed to duck the bouncers: a sleight girl of perhaps ten shot out of the competitor’s tent, her golden hair bouncing, and draped herself around Fleur’s shoulders like a delicate porcelain mantle. A few Durmstrang students came out and formed a fluttering cocoon around Krum, who batted off their attentions awkwardly. Dumbledore remained at a distance. He dipped his head at Harry and Cassius, each, in turn, but he did not come forward, as the other headmasters had done, to comfort either champion; and Draco was grateful. He wasn’t sure which would have been worse.

Then Crouch, Bagman, and the headmasters had drawn away and bent their heads together. At first, there was much collective nodding, as if there were little disagreement. Karkaroff said something; Dumbledore seemed to agree. Maxime, though obviously displeased, shrugged and nodded. The next round of deliberations made Karkaroff’s expression grow pinched, but when he raised his voice, Crouch looked at him and said something that made everyone in the circle fall briefly silent.

“I wonder what’s taking so long,” said Hermione intently, watching them. “I don’t suppose there’s any way for us to hear…?”

“Fleur scored low,” said Draco, watching Maxime sulk and pluck at her shawl. “Krum did well, but not as well as Karkaroff wanted him to. They’re trying to decide Potter’s score.”

“How do you know?”

“Just look at them. Besides, Potter’s the only one they haven’t had time to grade yet.”

Dumbledore broke the tension with a calm remark to Bagman. Crouch began saying something else, but then Bagman interrupted him, once, then twice — they broke off into a private conversation, and had a brief, heated argument of whispers, while the headmasters gazed on in confusion — and then they turned back to the circle. Crouch said something.

Maxime let out a high, furious cry. Dumbledore reached out to touch her shoulder, but she slapped it away, and stalked off, leaving the judges to stand awkwardly in an incomplete ring. When they broke apart, none of them looked particularly happy.

“The judges have come to a conclusion,” said Bagman brightly. “Scores are allotted out of fifty; each judge has ten points to give. I will note that the outcome is terribly, terribly close! This is still very much anyone’s game, as they say.

“In fourth, with a composite score of thirty-six: Fleur Delacour.” The Beauxbatons students applauded weakly and jostled their champion. “In second, with a score of thirty-nine points: Viktor Krum.”

Ron was bellowing again before Bagman had finished with the second-place announcement. Draco sighed and delicately inserted his fingers into his ears.

“And tied for first, leading by two points, with a score of forty-one points each: Cassius Warrington and Harry Potter!”

Krum’s mouth puckered. Karkaroff scowled and broke into a heated exchange of whispers with Crouch.

“Embarrassing, Potter,” shouted Draco. “Underperforming, as usual!”

Harry whirled around, clutching his head, and made a spastic gesture with his hands. Ron was so excited that he had to start slap-boxing Seamus.

“Well done, all of you!” Bagman cried. He was beaming. Draco got the feeling he would’ve worn the same expression if the dragon had eaten them. “You’ll get a nice long break before the Second Task, on February twenty-fourth. Whereas the First tested your courage and daring, the next will test your reason and ingenuity. If you look down at those golden eggs you’re all holding, you’ll see that we’ve already furnished you with a clue.”

Fleur raised her hand. “Excusez-moi,” she said clearly, pointing at the egg. Her voice was faint, and tinny, but clear. “What eez zis for? Why do I ‘ave to carry it?”

“Well, I can’t tell you that,” Bagman said indulgently. “It wouldn’t be much of a puzzle if I did! Any other questions?”

“The egg’s a puzzle?” breathed Hermione.

“Down, girl,” he said. She turned pink.

Fleur had handed off the egg to Madame Maxime, apparently uninterested in it. Krum had shuffled away from the group and Karkaroff followed him, muttering aggressively, though Krum didn’t seem to pay much attention.

“No?” said Bagman. “Well, good! Off you go, then! And congratulations, again, to every one of you!”

They were bundled up in the gridlock of the crowd and swept down the narrow wooden staircases, caught in a frenzied babble of theories and verbal replays, reenactments, and exhortations of joy. A trio of third years were singing Harry’s song. A pair of Ravenclaws were furiously debating the technique of Cassius’ illusion. Fred and George were passing out POTTER POWER pins for three sickles apiece, and Draco was quite sure Harry would never see a knut of it.

And as they were spilling out into the sun-drenched afternoon, he overheard Lavender Brown saying to someone: “Not that I’m not happy for him, but it was a bit lame, wasn’t it, Harry’s dragon? Thing was practically falling asleep.”

---

“First place! Not bad, Harry! Not bad at all! Tens from Dumbledore and Bagman, a nine from Maxime, seven from Crouch, and a five from Karkaroff. Five!” Ron tossed a bit of popcorn in the air and caught it in his mouth. “An’ he only wen’ tha’ low because Dumbledore gave Krum an eight—”

“Which, frankly, is more than he earned,” interrupted Draco. “Trying to wrestle a dragon down is like using a sledgehammer when the task is opening a door.”

“They’re nutters!” Harry lolled back in his chair. His legs sprawled over the armrest, and he nursed a flagon of butterbeer and a sported paper crown lopsided on his head, like a heavily discounted young Arthur. “I thought Warrington would take it for sure!”

“For what? Between Warrington breaking the eggs and your Stupefy of the century, things must have shaken out even,” said Draco. He had stolen a hot toddy from one of the seventh years and was enjoying it in the comfiest corner of the leather sofa, with his feet sprawled on an ottoman firmly in range of the fireplace. He was wearing a silk lounge robe and altogether enjoying himself tremendously. The party in Gryffindor Tower had petered out around one or two in the morning, when Fred and George performed a rendition of “Save a Broomstick, Ride a Seeker” that brought McGonagall hammering on their door.

“Nah. Bagman loved you. As for Karkaroff and Crouch, they don’t even pretend to be fair. Five points off for timing? Don’t make me laugh.”

“I’ll say Bagman loved him,” said Draco. “I think he was about to leap in and try his hand at the dragon, himself.”

Harry grinned and scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah. I dunno — he tried to give me advice ahead of time, too,” he said. “He was telling me this story about using the Conjunctivitis Curse to deal with a ‘fire wyrm,’ and he’d expect a fourth year could do it, no problem — really not subtle at all, I reckon he thinks I’m pretty thick.”

“But that’s against the rules,” said Hermione, aghast — so caught up in her indignation at maladministration, apparently, that she appeared to forget she had conspired to cheat.

“What’s more, it doesn’t make sense,” said Draco. “Potter’s no one to Bagman; if anything, he should be pulling for Warrington. He’s the Ministry favorite.”

“Maybe he likes me,” said Harry. “I’m a likable person.”

“Oh, I know,” said Ron, sounding surprised as anyone. “Gambling. Ludo Bagman’s a huge gambler. I bet he’s got money riding on Harry.”

Hermione made another scandalized noise.

“Apart from how horrendously unethical that is,” she said, “it doesn’t make any sense — I mean, I love you, Harry, but you’re not exactly the safe bet—”

“No, that’s consistent,” said Draco abruptly, nodding to Ron. “You can get better margins with the underdog. Hardly anyone will wager against Warrington, he’s slated to win—”

“—and you pay a premium if you bet on the favorite,” agreed Ron. “Since it’s likely. But with the underdog, if there’s an upset, you can get really big payouts — two-to-one, three-to-one, even, the more unlikely it is — and you don’t necessarily have to bet on Harry to win it, either—”

“Just to lose it by no more than a certain threshold of points.”

“Right, yeah. Fred and George went through all this for the World Cup,” explained Ron. “This is how they made all that money on Ireland. Of course, Bagman still hasn’t paid them back—”

“Oh, well, that’s it, then,” said Draco lazily, gesturing with his drink. “I expect he’s got outstanding debts from the Cup, and he’s put his money on Potter to get them back. No wonder he’s so eager; it’s been months. His creditors will be rather anxious.”

“I don’t think they should be judges at all,” said Hermione firmly, wrapping her arms around her knees. “If you’re right, Bagman is breaking the law egregiously, trying to bet on an activity he’s moderating. And why are three of five judges British? That’s hardly fair.”

“Thank God they are, if it gave Harry a leg up,” said Ron. “But I reckon we should keep an eye on Karkaroff. He’ll be judging again for the Second Task, and I bet he’s got it in for you, now, Harry — since you beat Krum.”

“Potter will have to simply perform so well he can’t mark him down without showing himself corrupt.”

“Easier said than done,” Harry pointed out. “Hey, speaking of the Second Task.”

He handed the egg to Hermione. “Merry Christmas,” he said. “I fought a dragon for it. Dunno how to open it, though. I dropped it, but it didn’t crack.”

“You dropped it?”

“Sometimes I despair of you entirely,” said Draco. He reached for it, and she handed it over with proprietary reluctance, as if she’d laid the thing herself. “To be clear: the judges said it was a test of reason and ingenuity, and our daring champion’s first move was to whack it against something.”

“Hey, it’s an egg,” said Ron. “How do you open eggs? You crack them.”

“Am I to assume you gave counsel on this strategy?”

“Nah, Seamus came up with it. Anyway, it didn’t hurt, see? Hasn’t got a scratch. That tells you something, doesn’t it?”

“Most certainly,” he said. “Now we know it’s idiot-proof.”

“Bad luck for you, then, since you’ve got to open it,” said Harry. Draco made a rude gesture, which he returned. “I don’t want to think about it. In fact, I’ve got three months before I even have to think about the Tournament. It’s lovely.”

“And it’s that kind of enterprising spirit that will steer us to victory, Potter.”

Harry stuck out his tongue.

“If you ask me, it’s a riddle,” said Ron. “‘How do you open an egg? You crack it.’ Makes enough sense, I reckon.”

Hermione wrinkled her nose. “That’s not a very good riddle,” she said. “And I hope it’s not, in any case. It’d make the whole thing much more difficult. Riddles are notoriously opaque. ‘How is a raven like a writing desk?’ I don’t know, because the author wanted to sound clever.”

“Thought swots liked riddles,” said Ron, tweaking her ear.

“Not particularly. Most of them are illogical and meant to make you feel stupid. Case in point: how do you open an egg?”

“I dunno,” he said, “maybe the Second Task’s to make an omelet—”

He was interrupted when Hermione gave the clasp a hard wrench. It gave with unexpected ease, and the egg drooped open along its glowing fissures. Inside a small blue bulb like a pearl radiated an intense iridescent glow, like a small concentrated bead of moonlight, surrounded by a fan of golden petals that had been its eggshell.

Draco marveled at its beauty for several pleasant seconds before it attempted to deafen him.

It was the screech of several hundred cats being slaughtered by several thousand angry violinists. It was the screech of something that absolutely hated whatever it was screeching to, and the sentiment was well taken and reciprocated. Hermione slapped her hands over his ears.

The moment she released the clasp, the egg snapped back together, and thunked into the carpet.

It lay innocently in a puddle of Turkish embroidery. Draco loathed it afresh.

“That was the worst riddle I’ve ever heard,” said Hermione. Ron gave a hoarse laugh.

Draco snatched up the egg and peered at it. “What the devil is wrong with it? Potter, is it defective?”

“How should I know!”

“Merlin, that was awful. Should plant that in Filch’s office, it’s not fit for anything else.”

“Do you see those marks?” said Hermione curiously, crawling across the sofa to peer at it over Draco’s shoulder. “All those little engravings? They must be the clue to decoding it. I think we have to solve them first, and they’ll tell us how to use the egg. They look runic.”

“They’re not runes from our alphabet.”

“It just reminded me of a runic circle, because it goes around—”

“I know what you mean, but it doesn’t translate.”

“We should go to the library. I know some books that’ll start us off.”

“I quite agree. First thing in the morning.”

“I thought you’d want to get a head start,” she said innocently, “before Warrington swoops in and steals some more books.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. She was getting cheekier by the day, was Hermione.

“But,” she sighed, peeling herself off the couch, “if you’d really rather sleep, we can manage with his leftovers. It worked the first time.”

“Listening to you attempt manipulation is almost embarrassing enough to be its own compellent.”

“What do you mean, stealing books?” said Harry.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Draco,” trilled Hermione, while he glowered, “is of the opinion that Cassius Warrington is trying to sabotage you.”

“Damn, really?” said Ron. “Git.”

“Ron, don’t be silly—”

“Nah, but I reckon Draco’s right,” he said, to Draco’s immense gratification. “That’s the right thing to do, innit, from his perspective? He’s a Slytherin. He’d probably go for Harry’s kneecaps, if he could get away with it.”

“But he shook my hand,” said Harry, frowning. “And he told me — he said, ‘That was well-done.’ He seemed to mean it, too.”

“Oh, well, if he gave you a compliment,” said Draco acidly. “And in front of the press, too? Surely he’s a good egg. Suspicion retracted.”

“Hate to say it, but he makes a point,” said Ron. “He’d want you to think he was a good sport, right? To throw you off.”

“Or,” said Harry, stubbornly, “and get this: he might actually be, you know, a good sport. Not all Slytherins are bad, are they? You know—”

“Lord help us, he’s getting into the politics.”

“—just talking about it, but isn’t it a bit possible that Warrington might not be a total git, if the Goblet chose him to represent Hogwarts? Anyway, Daphne’s a Slytherin,” he said, “and we all agree she’s not a git.”

“They’re right, Harry,” said Hermione, and Draco enjoyed the double gratification of being recognized, twice over. It very nearly compensated for not getting any applause. “We’re not dealing with Cedric here—”

That put him right out again. “What’s this and your obsession with Cedric? He would do the same.”

She cut him a narrow look. “I was going,” she said, highlighting the part where he’d interrupted her, “to make a point about sportsmanship, which we know Cedric has, since he tried to forfeit the match against Gryffindor last year.”

“But he didn’t, did he?”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t forfeit,” said Draco, folding his arms. “Hufflepuff won the match.”

“So what?”

“He didn’t exactly pitch a fit, did he?”

“He caught the snitch before he saw Harry fell! That’s not his fault!”

“Right, and he just happened not to see Potter falling out of the sky, I suppose—”

“It was raining! And pitch black!”

“Nah, mate, you’ve lost me,” said Ron, yawning. “Ced’s a Hufflepuff. Warrington’s a Slytherin. Totally different case.”

Hermione rolled his eyes, and shot a knowing look at Draco, who received it with a minimum of smugness. It didn’t do to gloat.

Much, anyway.

After more rounds of drinking and post-round congratulations, Hermione announced her intention to retire, and it was another hour of conversation after that before she got anywhere with it. All told, it was almost three o’clock when Draco stumbled back to bed, and the very residual pearls of adrenaline still skittered around his system. In his limbs there was a lingering weightlessness, and when he laid back in his four-poster, his whole body was loose and easy, like he was breezing along on a strong tailwind.

---

-Hello! And that wraps on the First Task. I remember this chapter took like three weeks to write, because there were so many different set pieces.

-In which Hermione realizes that the Invisibility Cloak is not so large as it used to be, and deals with the consequences. The consequences being, namely, a simultaneous case of “Oh Boy I Hope This Won’t Awaken Anything In Me.”

-I can’t remember because I don’t think it comes up until OOTP, but I was unsure whether Mad-Eye could see through the Invisibility Cloak. Supposedly the eye can pierce all surfaces, but the Invisibility Cloak is a Hallow, so there’s an argument to be made for it being a special case. Not that it’s relevant in this chapter. (Probably.)

-Dear, dear Cedric. He really is such a good sport, it’s just he’s in rather the wrong story for it. I’m hoping to bring him more to the fore in coming chapters.

-For every comment, a very beautiful slice of seven-layer cake, with buttercream frosting and candied roses. The kind that Dobby would make.

-Next chapter goes up on Friday — it’s called “The Viennese Affliction.”

-A.K.A. “we’re finally doing the Yule Ball arc.” Je vous aime, mes amis. À bientôt!

---