Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [4]

⚡️ Chapter 37 ⚡️

Once both Vega and Hermione had finished with their breakfast, Harry dragged the two of them and out to the grounds outside so they could discuss the issue at hand. Vega stared out to the Great Lake as the three of them walked along its length while Harry explained to Hermione everything that they had found through Sirius, as well as the dragons that Hagrid had shown them the previous night.

It was very clear from Hermione's expressions that she was quite alarmed by Sirius's warnings about Karkaroff – how he had been a Death Eater, how he could still be working for them, and how he wanted them killed. Yet still, Hermione thought that the dragons were the more pressing problem.

"Let's just try and keep you alive until Tuesday evening," Hermione said desperately, turning to look at Vega and Harry, a deep frown etched on her face. "And then we can worry about Karkaroff,"

Following this, the three of them walked three times around the lake, spending the long lengths to think of a simple spell that would subdue a mothering dragon to allow them to get past them.

"I have never really thought about subduing dragons," Vega admitted. "And all the subduing spells that I know would require about a dozen of people to perform it simultaneously,"

When nothing more whatsoever occurred to the three of them, they retired to the library instead.

Vega browsed through Magical Creatures' section of the library, checking out the shelves that were dedicated to dragons. She picked out a few books and brought them over to the table that they had taken up and passed a few to Harry and Hermione so they could browse through them for answers.

"'Talon-clipping by charms... treating scale-rot...'" Harry said as he checked out one of them. "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...'," Vega read. She looked up. "But Sirius said a simple one would do it... probably very advanced spell or something,"

"Let's try some simple spell-books, then," Harry said, throwing aside 'Men Who Love Dragons Too Much' and Vega gave him an annoyed look at the way he was acting with the books.

Harry soon returned back to the table with a pile of spell-books, setting them down so they could flick through each of them in turn. Vega finished other books and picked one as well, slowly looking through the spell-book, her eyes tracing spells with Hermione whispering nonstop at their side.

"Well, there are Switching Spells..." Hermione muttered. "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, even you, Vega – 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 spoke up finally, through gritted teeth as he glanced over at the insistent brunette. "Will you shut up for a bit, please? I'm trying to concentrate,"

Vega ignored the two of them, quietly trailing her finger down the list of endless spells. She could consider a lot of them to be used against a dragon but the trouble was the size of the dragon and the amount of people needed to successfully cast those spells on a dragon. It was biggest issue.

Suddenly, I'm not sure if I like how big dragons can be.

They could do a lot of things – Transfigure something or themselves to distract the dragon somehow, they could attempt putting it to sleep for the duration of the task, they could turn themselves invisible – but would any of that work in case they ended up with a restless dragon?