Natsu Dragneel and the Goblet of Fire

Jason Skeeter's Scoop

Everybody got up late on Boxing Day. The Gryffindor common room was much quieter than it had been lately, many yawns punctuating the lazy conversations. Juvia's hair was messy again; she confessed to Natsu that she had used liberal amounts of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion on it for the ball, "but it's way too much bother to do every day," she said matter-of-factly, scratching a purring Plue behind the ears.

Gray and Juvia seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement not to discuss their argument. They were being quite friendly to each other, though oddly formal.

Gray and Natsu wasted no time in telling Lucy about the conversation they had overheard between Madame Maxime and Gildarts, but Lucy didn't seem to find the news that Gildarts was a half-giant nearly as shocking as Gray did.

"Well, I thought he must be," she said, shrugging. "I knew he couldn't be pure giant because they're about twenty feet tall. But honestly, all this hysteria about giants. They can't all be horrible... It's the same sort of prejudice that people have toward werewolves... It's just bigotry, isn't it?"

Gray looked as though he would have liked to reply scathingly, but perhaps he didn't want another row, because he contented himself with shaking his head disbelievingly while Lucy wasn't looking.

It was time now to think of the homework they had neglected during the first week of the holidays. Everybody seemed to be feeling rather flat now that Christmas was over - everybody except Natsu, that is, who was starting (once again) to feel slightly nervous. The trouble was that February the twenty-fourth looked a lot closer from this side of Christmas, and he still hadn't done anything about working out the clue inside the golden egg.

He therefore started taking the egg out of his trunk every time he went up to the dormitory, opening it, and listening intently, hoping that this time it would make some sense. He strained to think what the sound reminded him of, apart from thirty musical saws, but he had never heard anything else like it. He closed the egg, shook it vigorously, and opened it again to see if the sound had changed, but it hadn't. He tried asking the egg questions, shouting over all the wailing, but nothing happened. He even threw the egg across the room - though he hadn't really expected that to help.

Natsu had not forgotten the hint that Simon had given him, but his less-than friendly feelings toward Simon's sister Kagura just now meant that he was keen not to take his help if he could avoid it. In any case, it seemed to him that if Simon had really wanted to give Natsu a hand, he would have been a lot more explicit. He, Natsu, had told Simon exactly what was coming in the first task - and Simon's idea of a fair exchange had been to tell Natsu to take a bath.

And so the first day of the new term arrived, and Natsu set off to lessons, weighed down with books, parchment, and quills as usual, but also with the lurking worry of the egg heavy in his stomach, as though he were carrying that around with him too.

Snow was still thick upon the grounds, and the greenhouse windows were covered in condensation so thick that they couldn't see out of them in Herbology. Nobody was looking forward to Care of Magical Creatures much in this weather, though as Gray said, the skrewts would probably warm them up nicely, either by chasing them, or blasting off so forcefully that Gildarts cabin would catch fire.

When they arrived at Gildarts' cabin, however, they found Mr. Mine standing before his front door.

"Hurry up, now, the bell rang five minutes ago," he barked at them as they struggled toward him through the snow.

"Who're you?" said Gray, staring at him. "Wheres Gildarts?"

"My name is Professor Wakaba," he said briskly. "I am your temporary Care of Magical Creatures teacher."