It was around 11 o'clock when Venus left the castle. Mel had told her to meet her to follow Hagrid on his date under the invisibility cloak. They had been walking for around 20 minutes before Venus heard something. Men were shouting up ahead. . . then came a deafening roar. Hagrid led Madame Maxime around a clump of trees and came to a halt. Venus hurried up alongside them, then - for a split second, she thought she was seeing bonfires, and men darting around them - and then her mouth fell open.
Dragons. Four fully grown, enormous, vicious-looking dragons were rearing onto their hind legs inside an enclosure fenced with thick planks of wood, roaring and snorting - torrents of fire were shooting into the dark sky from their open, fanged mouths, fifty feet above the ground on their outstretched necks. There was a silvery-blue one with long, pointed horns, snapping and snarling at the wizards on the ground; a smooth-scaled green one, which was writhing and stamping with all its might; a red one with an odd fringe of fine gold spikes around its face, which was shooting mushroom-shaped fire clouds into the air; and a gigantic black one, more lizard- hike than the others, which was nearest to them.
At least thirty wizards, seven or eight to each dragon, were attempting to control them, pulling on the chains connected to heavy leather straps around their necks and legs. Mesmerized, Venus looked up, high above her, and saw the eyes of the black dragon, with vertical pupils like a cat's, bulging with either fear or rage, she couldn't tell which... It was making a horrible noise, a yowling, screeching scream, which made her heart call out to the beast, not wanting it to be in pain any longer. "Keep back there, Hagrid!" yelled a wizard near the fence, who Venus recognised as the handsome Charlie Weasley, her mate's soulmate, straining on the chain he was holding. "They can shoot fire at a range of twenty feet, you know! I've seen this Horntail do forty!"
"Is'n' it beautiful?" said Hagrid softly.
"It's no good!" yelled another wizard. "Stunning Spells, on the count of three!" Venus saw each of the dragon keepers pull out their wands.
"Stupefy!" they shouted in unison, and the Stunning Spells shot into the darkness like fiery rockets, bursting in showers of stars on the dragons' scaly hides.
Venus watched the dragon nearest to them teeter dangerously on its back legs; its jaws stretched wide in a silent howl; its nostrils were suddenly devoid of flame, though still smoking - then, very slowly, it fell. Several tons of sinewy, scaly- black dragon hit the ground with a thud that Venus could have sworn made the trees behind her quake. The dragon keepers lowered their wands and walked forward to their fallen charges, each of which was the size of a small hill. They hurried to tighten the chains and fasten them securely to iron pegs, which they forced deep into the ground with their wands.
"All right, Hagrid?" Charlie panted, coming over to talk. "They should be okay now - we put them out with a Sleeping Draft on the way here, thought it might be better for them to wake up in the dark and the quiet - but, like you saw, they weren't happy, not happy at all -"
"What breeds you got here, Charlie?" said Hagrid, gazing at the closest dragon, the black one, with something chosen to reverence. Its eyes were still just open. Venus could see a strip of gleaming yellow beneath its wrinkled black eyelid.
"This is a Hungarian Horntail," said Charlie. "There's a Common Welsh Green over there, the smaller one -- a Swedish Short-Snout, that blue-gray -- and a Chinese Fireball, that's the red.
"Four. . ." said Hagrid, "so it's one fer each o' the champions, is it? What've they gotta do - fight 'em?"
"Just get past them, I think," said Charlie. "We'll be on hand if it gets nasty, Extinguishing Spells at the ready. They wanted nesting mothers, I don't know why. . . but I tell you this, I don't envy the one who gets the Horntail. Vicious thing. Its back end's as dangerous as its front, look."
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𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕷𝖎𝖋𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕷𝖎𝖊𝖘 𝖔𝖋 𝖁𝖊𝖓𝖚𝖘 𝕻𝖔𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗
Fanfiction"Okay, got it! So your Minnie," She begins, pointing to the woman, "And you're Sevy" She says, pointing to the man. It is at this point that the two adults almost look like they are going to break down into tears. "After all these years..." Sevy mu...
