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Aurora Areli
"I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE they're making you compete," I said to Harry, as he, Hermione and I walked around the lake. Harry and I had just explained the whole dragon situation to Hermione, and everything Sirius had said.
"I agree, but there's no helping it now," Hermione said. Though she was alarmed by Sirius' warnings about Karkaroff, she thought that dragons were the most pressing problem. "What we need to focus on now is keeping Harry alive until Tuesday evening. Then we can worry about Karkaroff."
"Right," I nodded. "How are we going to do that, again?"
We walked three times around the lake, trying to think of a simple spell that would subdue a dragon all the way. Nothing whatsoever occurred to us, so we retired to the library instead. There, we pulled down every book we could find about dragons, and the three 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 . . ."
"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 . . ."
"Then let's try some simple spellbooks," I said, and Harry nodded before throwing aside Men Who Love Dragons Too Much, and standing to retrieve more books.
He returned to the table with a teetering pile of spellbooks a few minutes later, set them down, and began to flick through each of them in turn. I worried my lip as I skimmed the pages over Harry's shoulder, feeling more hopeless as Hermione whispered nonstop.
"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 OWL practice papers . . ."
"Hermione," Harry said, through gritted teeth, "will you shut up for a bit, please? I'm trying to concentrate."
Hermione instantly fell silent. I grew tired of waiting for Harry to turn the pages of his book, so I reached over and took the next book out of the pile, Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed. There were spells inside like instant scalping . . . but dragons had no hair . . . pepper breath . . . that would only increase a dragon's firepower . . . horn tongue . . . because the dragon definitely needed another weapon . . .
