Butterfly Effect ; H. Potter

35. against dragons.

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 Antheia, 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 they had swallowed their last bite of food, then dragged them out into the grounds for another walk. There, he told them all about the dragons, and about everything Sirius had said, while they took another long walk around the lake.

Alarmed as she was by Sirius' warnings about Karkaroff, Hermione 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."

"How are you supposed to defeat a dragon with a simple spell, though?" Antheia wondered out loud.

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 all 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 check out some spellbooks; maybe they'll show some simple spells ..." said Antheia, throwing aside Men Who Love Dragons Too Much.

She returned to the table with a pile of spellbooks, set them down, and began to flick through each in turn, Hermione whispering non-stop. "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 ..."

"You could possibly Transfigure it, but a dragon's much too difficult ... even Professor McGonagall might not be able to," Antheia muttered, flipping frantically through the pages.

"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 ..." whispered Hermione continuously.

"Hermione," Harry said, through gritted teeth, "will you shut up for a bit, please? I'm trying to concentrate. And Antheia, stop flipping through so quickly - I'm trying to read."

Antheia dropped the book on the table annoyedly and Hermione fell silent. 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 increase 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 them, settled himself in a distant corner with a pile of books. "Come on, 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 in the library, one of them wearing a Bulgarian scarf tied around her waist.