Chosen & Hated (HP) {Book 2 of the Wild & Free Series}

20. The First Task

I got up on Sunday morning and dressed so inattentively that it was a while before I realised I was trying to pull my hat onto my foot instead of my sock. When I'd finally got all my clothes on the right parts of my body, I hurried off to find Hermione and Harry, locating them at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, where they were eating breakfast with Ginny. I noticed Harry hadn't eaten anything. Feeling too queasy to eat, I waited until Hermione had swallowed her last spoonful of porridge, then dragged her out onto the grounds, followed by Harry and Lucy. There, Harry and I told Hermione and Lucy all about the dragons, and about everything Sirius had said, while we took another long walk around the lake.

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

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

We 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 us, so we retired to the library instead. Here, we pulled down every book we could find on dragons, and we all set to work searching through the large pile.

" 'Talon-clipping by charms... treating scalerot..." This is no good, this is for nutters like Hagrid who want to keep them healthy..." Harry said.

"'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..." Lucy told us.

"Let's try some simple spellbooks, then," I said, throwing aside Men Who Love Dragons Too Much.

Harry, Lucy and I returned to the table with a pile of spellbooks, set them down, and began to flick through each in turn, Hermione whispering nonstop at our elbows.

"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 doing O.W.L. practice papers..."

"Hermione," Harry said, through gritted teeth, "will you shut up for a bit, please? We're trying to concentrate."

But all that happened, when Hermione fell silent, was that my brain filled with a sort of blank buzzing, which didn't seem to allow room for concentration. I 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 I 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 us, and settled himself in a distant corner with a pile of books. "Come on, Harry, Lucy and Liana, we'll go back to the common room... his fan club'll be here in a moment, twittering away..."

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

I barely slept that night. When I awoke on Monday morning, I seriously considered for the first time ever just running away from Hogwarts. But as I looked around the Great Hall at breakfast time, and thought about what leaving the castle would mean, I knew I couldn't do it. I still had friends there; Lucy, Rowan, Harry, Hermione, Fred, George... I couldn't let them down.