evelyn | h.potter

30

[CHAPTER THIRTY]
THE FIRST TASK

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"Do you want that?" Evelyn peered over at the single sausage on Ginny's plate. Ginny looked up at her and nodded, slowly taking a bite from the sausage. Evelyn frowned. "Here" Hermione nudged Evelyn and placed a sausage on her plate.

"You're the best" Evelyn grinned happily. Hermione hummed and continued to spoon her porridge.

Harry entered the Great Hall a few minutes later and sat next to Evelyn at the Gryffindor table. "Morning sunshine" Evelyn chirped. "Morning, Ev" he yawned.

"Nice badge Harry" Ginny teased, pointing out the I LOVE EVELYN badge clipped onto his clothes.

Harry grinned and looked over at Evelyn. She was looking back at him in surprise, she didn't expect him to keep it. "Rita Skeeters going to have a blast writing about this one" Hermione sighed and swallowed her last spoonful of porridge.

"Whatever" Evelyn shrugged. She continued to bounce her leg up and down restlessly. "Can we go take a walk or something" Evelyn sighed. "Yes! Great idea." Harry shot up from his seat and dragged her up, they both looked at Hermione expectedly while Ginny left to go talk to a few girls in her year.

Harry, Evelyn and Hermione got to the grounds. There, Harry and Evelyn told Hermione 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's 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."

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 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,

"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. . . ."