In Between Two Worlds (HP/PJO Crossover)

Chapter 137: The First Task.

I got up on Sunday morning and dressed so inattentively that it was a while before I realized he 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 Bailey, locating them at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, where they were eating breakfast with Ginny. I wanted to tell Ginny about the task but...I don't know...I guess I didn't want to drag her into my problems. Feeling too queasy to eat, I waited until Hermione and Bailey had swallowed their last spoonfuls of porridge, then dragged them out onto the grounds. We an into Harry in the Entrance Hall. Apparently he was trying to do the same thing as me.

Once we were outside, we told them 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, they still thought that the dragons were the more pressing problem. Which was probably true.

"Let's just try and keep you two alive until Tuesday evening," Mione 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 all of us 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..." I groaned.

"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..." Bailey said.

"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. I grabbed some too.

"Well, there are Switching Spells...but what's the point of Switching it?" Mione said. "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? I m trying to concentrate."

I understood his frustration, but when Hermione fell silent 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 Krum slouched in, cast a surly look over at us, and settled himself in a distant corner with a pile of books. "Come on, we'll go back to the common room...his fan club will be here in a moment, twittering away..."

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

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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.