Kapitel 327: 16
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So of course shit was lost over Harry being in the trials.
I personally lost my shit (privately) over Hermy being in the trials.
"Harry, Hermione. Did the two of you use Ash to place your names in the goblet of fire?" Dumbledore asks calmly. CALMLY, I say. He is a man of many years and doesn't scare easily.
I also do like how he immediately jumps to us being the most likely culprit of this entire issue. He's not wrong to make that assumption.
"How did he get his name into the Goblet?" Fleur accuses. "He's obviously not old enough!"
Must snark. "But I was smart enough."
We get glares from everybody not aligned with Hogwarts.
…yeah, probably wasn't the best thing to say. Worth it though.
The organizers get huffy that somebody tricked the Goblet, yadda yadda…hang on. "How does the Goblet determine entrants?" I ask.
"Would you accept 'magic' as an answer?" Dumbledore replies conversationally.
In other words, don't ask, huh? "Absolutely."
Hermione brings up a good point. "Why are you interested in that now?"
"Well, I figure that knowing exactly how the Goblet decides in contestants is a pretty good place to figure out how it was tricked in the first place." I shrug. "Muggle science is good."
Karkaroff goes "Pah, muggles."
Snap. "Well none of you seem to know what's going on and all of you are literally the people who's supposed to know what's going on, so whatever system you're using it's not doing you much good. Figure your shit out."
The one thing I hate the most is when people in authority have no fucking idea what they're doing.
Pointing it out is likely not going to endear you to the people in authority. Also, it is not the one thing you hate.
Probably not, and definitely not. I am a very biased person. I'm a little bit teed off at Hermy being here and it's affecting my mood.
Karkaroff doesn't appreciate my shit (though the giantess was bemused). Dumbledore's presence is what likely stops him from cursing me to high heaven.
Ultimately they don't have a way to stop the tournament (which is in itself kind of sad) so we're going ahead. Woo!
…
[Reactions]
…
The student body didn't quite know what to do. Unlike the event proper, where Harry was assumed to have pulled some shenanigans to get himself into the tournament, it was brutally obvious to everybody involved that I did pull something to get myself (and others, unsuccessful as it may have been) into the tournament.
Harry and Hermione were not among the people who gave their names to me to rain over the fire, but nobody believes them even if they deny it. That being said, most didn't believe that Hermy would do a thing like this, so…eh? It evens out somehow?
Also, Ron's relationship with the two of them is less strained than it would be in canon, if only because he did give his name to me and it didn't come up from the goblet. Fair chance, and all that.
The Slytherins are on an anti-Gryffindor warpath, with signs and banners supporting just Cedric. Hufflepuffs do the same, criticism of their all-encompassing nature notwithstanding, and Ravenclaws jump on the bandwagon just because.
And of course the correct thing for us to do in this situation was to show up to class with buttons and a flag that supported Cedric. Everybody got really confused because some of the stuff I chose to wear explicitly slandered me.
Our official response was "I rolled dice and Cedric came up."
This caused the rest of the Gryffindors to support Harry/Hermy, and (most of the) teachers to support me.
The students believed that I was a traitor for supporting Cedric (obvious self-deprecation aside) and the teachers believed that I care about good sportsmanship or something.
…
[1st Event]
…
Dragons.
My first instinct was "Oh, boring."
And then I took a step back and went "wait we're still fighting dragons, this is not boring."
Moody picked on Harry to use his cape so the two of them can go cheat and learn about the dragons.
Harry goes to visit the dragons and warns us later that we're going to be dealing with dragons somehow.
Cue strategy meetings, which I got barred from. They kicked us out of the Gryffindor common room.
Felt a little bad about that, not gonna lie.
...
[Preparations]
…
So the biggest hurdle I have is: this is a sporting event and thus I cannot kill the dragon I'm up against. In other words, no full power Prismatic Beam.
Apart from that, I can rough it up a little and be good to go.
I've done a little practice with the spell I'm going to be using, and it turned out ok. The casting time is approximately five minutes, which is…y'know, unpleasant, but hopefully I can stand around and not be murdered by the dragon until that time clears.
…
Also I've looked into some other spells, because as Hermione noted, "It seems like you don't pay much attention to protecting yourself."
And we listened to Hermy's offhand comment because…?
Because she's right. I've devoted way more resources to offense rather than defense and what defense spells I picked up were purely accidental or are repurposes of attack spells…using the sucker punch wind spell to break an enemy's wand posture, for example.
…
So, the first on the menu: Protego. Shield spell.
It's…good but bad for defense.
Protego is based on three things: spell power, will power, and confidence.
And proficiency. And intent, but intent is a given for all spells.
Alright, four things. Of the four things, spell and willpower are lacking for me as an innate limiter.
This means that, compared to Harry, my shield spells will always come out weaker given similar casting conditions.
In terms of defensive ability, Protego has an inherent design flaw in the confidence and willpower requirements…and that flaw ties in with its usefulness against something big.
So let's make two examples: getting hit by a 155mm Howitzer shell and the Avada spell.
That's a little specific.
It's a good place to start.
So: Protego's weakness comes from the fact that if the confidence in blocking doesn't exist then it won't block at all. As in, if you know about the 155mm and it's coming at you, and don't believe you can't block it by waving a small stick around (like any sane person) then the shell will happily eat your face. But if you do, then it goes into straight math for damage mitigation.
By this logic, it can be assumed that Voldemort will be immune to small arms fire.
The only way I'm going to test that assumption is if I'm shelling Voldemort's immediate surroundings with the Firepower of America moments afterwards.
That aside, it means that the Shield Charm needs to clear three hurdles (intention to cast, intention to defend, actual spell power) before it can be effective as a defensive mechanism. Which means it suffers from the same problem as most conventional muggle defensive measures in the sense that an effective attack is a better use of limited resources. For me, it means that the shield charm will always be an impractical mess to use at best, a quick self-kill at worst.
…which means that after all the experimentation, creating a handful of glitter through transfiguration and tossing it between me and whatever's coming at me is an objectively better option.
After experimenting with Protego our answer to defense is to use a Blasting curse on the ground and then transfigure the dust into cotton or some other space-filling material.
Or else use the cards we pack and turn them into hardened shields against incoming attacks. Obviously it will not stop a howitzer, but the best defense against an artillery bombardment is to be nowhere near said bombardment in the first place, so I'm not that worried.
Also, I came across an interesting dilemma to which nobody had the answer to (granted I asked like 3 people, but still.)
So the problem I had was Gamp's Law on Food creation, namely, no food can be created.
My question was "So what is food?"
And then everybody thought I was stupid. The end.
…
Though in all seriousness, if I had the spare time I would test this to hell and back, because quite literally what qualifies as "food" and makes it impossible to create?
I mean, if I created a lettuce, is that food? Probably. If I create a basket of maple leaves, is that food? I can eat it, right?
Yes. Should you eat it? No.
I know I can't create chicken with Avis and eat that, because I've tried it already and the chicken just turned back into the base dirt pile I made it from when it was killed.
You can't create food, but food can be multiplied (one sandwich can become ten sandwiches), so there's no sense of preservation of caloric content…unless the ten sandwiches are only one tenth of the caloric intake of a full sandwich apiece.
…I can probably make a shitton of money selling this as a diet fad if this is the case.
Hmm…oh well. The answer is probably more mundane than I'm giving it credit for. Moving on!
…
[Wand Weighing]
…
Ah, penis jokes.
We had to contain a smirk for the entire event. Everybody else did not share our crude humor.
Olivanders was in attendance. He did not like me very much. Man knows how to hold a grudge.
Rita Skeeter was also in attendance. She has…peculiar, tastes in fashion.
Note that the only person she tried to pull into a closet was Harry. Keyword being 'tried'.
Of course I had something to do with it. "Stop!"
She stops, largely due to the two crystals ramming themselves into the door she intended to open.
"Competition aside, I am Harry Potter's assigned bodyguard due to the existing threat known as Sirius Black, and he should not leave sight of at least two other people." I say formally. "As such, if you have something you need to ask him, do it here."
"Oh darling, I'm just going to ask him some easy little questions." Skeeter says with a nice little smile. "It's not like I'm going to eat him."
"Then there should be no problems with conducting the interview here." I reply (as coldly as I can manage). "In the future, please alert the staff before conducting a private interview and kindly show professionalism in your conduct."
Now obviously everybody else's response (including Rita) is like 'who the hell is this idiot?' but the entire point of this declaration is to make my stance clear. That way, if she decides to do some weird shit I'll have a justification for beating her down…though given the possibilities I'd rather be allies than enemies, but take what we can get.
Skeeter herself seems to think this over a bit before attempting to go into the broomstick closet with Harry again.
I think she chose to ignore everything I said.
The door to the broomstick closet then melted itself onto the walls.
Escalation is such a pain… "I believe I have made my point clear." I sigh. "Any more attempts to disregard Harry Potter's freedom of refusal will cause you to be removed from the premises."
Skeeter looks at me with a "this kid is joking, right?" type of confused smile. It may have something to do with how I'm actually aiming my wand at her.
Eventually she relents (or at least opts to try this again some other time). Until then, we'll need to teach Harry about interviewing rights and ESPECIALLY the art of keeping an impartial transcript. It probably won't help, but still.
I noticed this wasn't very conducive to your ability to get along with Skeeter.
Yeah, that might cause problems down the road.
But we got bigger fish to fry right now, because it's…
…
[Day of Competition]
…
So the competition rolls in, and we're all suitably fake-shocked that we're going to be dealing with Dragons.
I think I got Barty to like me the most because I went "Oh SHIT" when he announced Dragons and then had my dumbass grin™ on my face, which he (I guess) felt was an appropriate reaction for being told to face off against Dragons.
It is a little disappointing that our trial is basically "work as a team, get golden egg from dragon" and no other changes are in play…though realistically we're likely going to lose points for not working together or some other trivial shit.
I wish I could see the playing field though.
What's the deployment order?
Durmstrang, Harry, Beaubaton, Hogwarts.
And what of the Dragons?
Chinese Fireball, Hungarian Horntail, Welsh Green, Samael.
…Wait.
The dragon we're up against is apparently from Central America. It has a snake-like supple body with three pairs of wings, and is blood-red in color. It looks like Samael from the Shin Megami Tensei series, ergo, it's Samael.
What's its real name then?
It…it had a lot of Ls in its name, but otherwise I was a little too distracted by the figurine trying to eat my finger.
That being said, I'm keeping the figurine and I'm going to name it Sammy.
Anyways.
…
[Not Our Tasks]
…
Note that quite a lot of this information is learned after the fact.
So one of the major key differences between canon and now is that 1: the civilians watching are protected behind multiple layers of enchantments (probably a flight ceiling as well), and most importantly 2: the dragon to fight is not restrained in any way. Oh and also 3: There is only one egg (the golden one) and it's strapped onto the dragon's back.
The dragon not being restrained is only different against the movie, not the books. In the books they used real eggs to help pin the Dragon to position.
And all of this is exacerbated by the fact that the combat field is utterly flat. No cover, no place to hide, no place to run.
Have fun!
So Krum starts first, and like canon he tries to mess with the dragon's eyes with the conjuctawhatever curse, the one that hurts its eyes. Unlike canon the dragon isn't on the defensive trying to protect a clutch of eggs, so Krum had a hard time aiming for its eyes.
He and his teammate basically then split and try to circle around the fire breathing dragon.
Newsflash: it's a fire breathing dragon.
The Fireball homed in on Krum's teammate and forced said teammate to quickly throw up dirt walls between it and the angry lizard. Barriers of dirt can't stop an angry Chinese, and the dragon lands on and crushes the poor kid's legs with just its weight.
Krum then conjured some thick-ass rope and tied the dragon's mouth shut before hitting it over and over again with stunners until it moved off of his buddy. The two of them then created some seriously solid poles in the stadium and just conjured miles and miles of rope to tie the dragon down long enough to get the egg.
The mission only ends if the egg is brought to the 'safe area' designated, so Krum carried his buddy (who carried the egg) and ran like a bat out of hell, because the dragon had broken the rope on its mouth in a few seconds and burned everything to the ground.
They were ok though, apart from, y'know, the guy having his legs crushed into a bloody splatter.
They scored 38 out of 50.
Fleur and her buddy…did better? They scored 39, but at the same time…
Canonically Fleur drugged her Welsh Green and then snuck around it, which is pretty neat all on its own, since Dragons have inherently high resistance.
Here, her attempts to drug the dragon got her booed (which confused her greatly), until the commentator—same guy who does the Quidditch matches—noted that she was copying me.
My Wind of Sleep is just better, because whatever Fleur did wore off even before she and her buddy went halfway across the field.
The Welsh Green doesn't care about having eggs to guard, so it immediately charges the incoming team while shooting fire the entire way.
Fleur creates a cloud of something. I think her intention was to let the Dragon fly through it and breathe it in.
I don't think she remembered that it was breathing fire or that fire burns.
The Dragon vaporized the entire cloud with no worries.
Fleur's buddy spent his time shifting the ground so it wasn't as flat and gave Fleur cover against the incoming fire. The two of them spent the rest of their match trying to drug the firebreathing dragon to sleep while trying hard not to be roasted.
It looked a lot like guerrilla warfare. The two created a massive network of trenches and angled defensive installations and would move all around the field while taking their shots, so no two shots came from the same place. Based on Creevy's pictures it looked pretty cool.
Despite taking longer, they scored better due to taking no damage.
Oddly enough (and this extends to Krum's team too) both teams complained about the lack of cover and said it threw off their plans. Though I guess that's not really odd.
…
[Harry and Hermione]
…
"Norbert would have grown into that?" Hermione gulps. "I'm glad Hagrid decided to get rid of it when it was young."
"I'm glad we talked him into that, yeah." Harry agrees fervently. "Can we go over the plan? One more time, just to be sure."
"We tie him up like the big walker thing and pluck the egg from its back." Hermione says.
Ash had shown the Gryffindor house Empire Strikes Back the night before the big event.
"You just distract him until then." Hermione didn't sound nearly as confident as she tried to appear. "We'll work it out somehow."
"Ok." Harry stretches. "Let's do this."
…
The instant their round started the Ridgeback decided that it really hated the two kids in the ring and charged at them at full power.
"Oh bloody hell." Hermione grumbles and raises a wall of steel.
Harry silently summons his Firebolt and adds to the wall with his own layer of steel.
The Ridgeback slams into the wall and folds said wall flat onto the ground with no effort.
"We didn't build that well enough." Hermione says while frantically backing up from the Ridgeback, which notices her and rears its head to breathe fire.
"Shield up!" Harry yells (and mentally checks off an item in 'things he wanted to yell before he died').
Hermione creates a slanted barrier of earthen triangles and throws herself behind it just as the fire hits. The fire washes over the barrier and deals no real damage.
Hermione then creates an army of small, explosive birds and directs them into the Ridgeback's wings.
The Ridgeback, seeing the incoming birds, launches itself into the air with a powerful beat of its wings.
The birds, by virtue of possessing incredible homing abilities, veer a full 90 degrees upwards and explode into the dragon's wings anyway. Cue a chain of explosions (because Hermy made like fifty of these in one go).
While the explosives push the Dragon upwards a good ten feet or so they do no significant damage. The spectacle causes the commentator (Lee Jordan) to go insane and spew forth a mountain of compliments for the Brightest Witch of the Year. The Dragon itself, damaged, becomes maximally angry and has eyes only for her.
"I don't know what I expected." Hermione sighs and transfigures her little makeshift shield into a mobile bunker that floats between her and the dragon.
Harry by now has received his Firebolt, to the general surprise of non-Gryffindors in attendance.
"Wait, what did he do?" Durmstrang Student A whispers to his buddy.
"He probably summoned his broom." Durmstrang Student B whispers back.
"He can do that as a nonverbal spell?" Durmstrang Student A whispers. "How come?"
"Your students are quite accomplished, Albus." Barty Senior praises. "For them to have learned to use a fourth year spell so quickly, and so effectively."
"So Harry uses a summoning charm and gets his Firebolt." Jordan comments with a bored tone. "No big deal, I mean, we all know how to do that." He throws out his arm and summons a jug of juice. "Just woosh and it's here."
The Durmstrang and Beauxbatons student bodies, which had whispered amongst themselves about the difficulty of what Harry did, were surprised into silence.
Harry didn't hear the discussion nor did he care, he simply kicked into the air and zipped towards the Ridgeback.
The Dragon, now just a touch murderous and thoroughly unwilling to deal with the small-fry, slashes at Harry with its hind legs while reorienting itself in flight.
Harry zips past with no issue, sprinkling it with stunners on the fly-by. They do nothing but attract attention, letting Hermione get room to breathe.
The Ridgeback, seeing Harry in the corner of its eye, tries to smack him with its tail. It whiffs, and the dragon is forced to take into the sky to maintain vision on both potential threats.
It gets three beats into the air before a beam of concentrated light slams into its wing. Again, no lasting damage, but this one hurt.
"Maybe I shouldn't have done that." Hermione comments to herself while the angry Ridgeback drops like a rock. "Definitely not." She concludes and hides behind a new multilayer wall of angled dirt.
Then she fires more Prismatic Beams (low power version) at the Dragon, because obviously the best thing to do when hiding is to tell the target exactly where you are.
The Ridgeback homes in on her and counters with blasts of fire. Blasts that are diverted by the sloped defenses she had built.
Harry takes this time to cast the rope making spell that Fred taught him (by force), and descends upon the Ridgeback like a flying spider.
Harry attaches the loose end of the rope to the Ridgeback's head with a sticking charm and prays it wouldn't detach prematurely. He then waves his wand to create a massive cordon of rope and ties down the Ridgeback's mouth, earning himself a retaliating slash from its claws in the process.
Hermione blows the claw's attack path off course with a beam.
Harry then proceeds to tie the Ridgeback's left leg to the ground through use of magical rope and transfigured harpoon ends.
The Ridgeback, now struggling violently, doesn't notice Harry's wide arc over its head, and though the top part of its body was so violent it was unapproachable, the bottom half was quite well grounded, allowing Harry to sneak the egg out of its binding with little difficulty.
Hermione, seeing the egg taken, sinks a section of the ground into a small, sloped trench and bails from the fight, crawling on all fours at max speed.
"That went well." Harry breathes as the Ridgeback tries to scream bloody murder through its still bound mouth.
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
So they got a 40 out of 50. I think Karkaroff was trying to play favorites with his own kids because he docked soo many points for them copying Krum's rope making scheme.
Still, a really good score.
Incidentally the headmaster of Beauxbatons would take away points from Fleur for copying Hermione's trench digging, though in both instances both teams came up with similar solutions independently from each other.
Now it's our turn.
"I hope that grin on your face means you have a cunning plan." Cedric says to me.
Well I mean, "I do have a plan. Jury's out on if it's cunning or not." My idiot grin is indeed at full power (largely because I'm happy that Harry and Hermy did so well). "Can you buy me five minutes of time?"
"Five minutes?" Cedric repeats with a scowl. "What do you plan to do in five minutes?"
"I plan to win it in five minutes." I say in my "whatever could you mean?" faux-innocence voice.
Cedric can read tone well enough to know that whatever I have planned may not be good for his health. "Alright, five minutes. Don't get roasted." He says firmly.
The boy has balls. The man, has balls.
…
The two of us step onto the field.
"Taking to the field now, last but definitely not least, is the Hogwarts Champion, Cedric Diggory!" The announcer kid roars. "Plus this other guy." He adds like an afterthought.
"Jordan." McGonagall reminds him. Quite tiredly.
It's true though.
Anyways…we got a scary flat dirt field to play on, so let's dig trenches as the first thing we need to do.
…
And why aren't we digging trenches?
Because we haven't gotten the
"BEGIN!"
Start signal no don't just unchain the d oh fuck it
The handlers in charge of the undragon-like Dragon release it from its chains and it immediately beelines for us.
"All you, Ceds." I mutter and depress the ground beneath my feet.
Jordan commentary: "Oh, he's hiding? That's a surprise."
I drop about three feet down…just three feet? That's not enough to stop the top half of my body from being removed from existence.
So let's throw up a sloped wall to cover the other three feet of my body. And let's add spikes to it.
Jordan: "That's more his style."
The Dragon's serpentine body hits the wall and smashes it like it's not even there.
Also I've now been injured by my own spikes. Fuck.
Cedric has been attempting to gain the focus of the dragon with little success.
He's created some dogs out of stone blocks and the flying dragon really doesn't care. It's coming after us specifically and I'm skating around with wind to the best of my ability…
But this guy doesn't seem to have a spine. I'm taking the sharpest turns I can do without losing balance and the giant Fucking Serpent is just twisting in the air and coming after me and uuuugh
FINE PLAN B THEN
…
[3rd Person Camera]
…
Ash creates a metal rod and begins to draw into the ground while skating around the Dragon.
Jordan's commentary: "I have no idea what he's doing."
"Their teamwork is nonexistent." Karkaroff sneers. "Your illegal fourth years were better, Albus."
Dumbledore merely smiles serenely as they watch Cedric finally catch the Dragon's attention with a well-placed stunning spell.
"About damn time!" Ash snarls and continues to draw his circles with greater speed.
"You didn't give me much room to work with!" Cedric snaps back while conjuring iron chains that launch themselves at the flying dragon. While they don't hit, they do cause the Dragon to break off its planned attack on more than one occasion.
"If you can keep it from landing on my circles, that'd be great." Ash notes to Cedric.
"What is that thing he's doing?" Maxime (Beauxbaton headmaster) inquires. "He's drawing circles in the ground?"
"He is a mystery." Dumbledore answers in good cheer. "He confuses us on a surprisingly frequent occasion."
"Sounds like Hogwarts needs better staff." Karkaroff jabs.
Dumbledore pays him zero heed and simply watches as Cedric continues to pelt the Dragon with iron chains and transfigured dogs to keep it from touching the ground.
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
Circle, 60 percent done.
This is incredibly difficult because I'm improvising my circle a little bit.
What?
I'm not smart enough to remember how to draw the entire thing from the top of my head. I got the basics down ok, though.
As we finish the touches on the outer layer of the circle, the Dragon gets bored of Cedric and homes in on us again.
Unfortunately, the active mind is too focused to notice the Dragon.
"I lost him!"
You what
OH SHIT
The active mind notices the Dragon swooping down on him just in time to duck.
"Sorry." Cedric says after our near death experience.
I am not happy. "Fucking hell." Largely because the threat of death is a little too real for me to enjoy this event the way I wanted to.
So!
Counterspell time! Plan B point five!
Is that a number or a letter?
Yes. The Dragon's pulling up from its sweep and oh right it's pullup is shorter 'cuz it's more limber
Uh
UH
Summon Explosive Birds!
We create two birds around the size of our hand and send them zigzagging towards the Dragon.
They explode on impact and the Dragon…well he doesn't seem to care one way or the other see this is PRECISELY why I wanted to spend time gathering mana 'cuz I don't have the DUCK stockpile to just shoot off powerful spells like this
Cedric seems to take inspiration from our attack. As the dragon twists in the air to prepare itself for another dive, Cedric creates a wall of ice between it and us.
I'll assume he's a smart boy and knows what he's doing, so I'm not gonna ask.
…seriously though what are you doing
The Dragon, contrary to expectations, just starts shooting fireballs from its perch in the sky. The ice wall doesn't stand a chance.
"What…what were you hoping to accomplish?" I ask when we both put up a wall.
"I was hoping to blind it." Cedric says. "With that ray of light you always do."
…Well, sure, but…
Why ice?
…
Well, whatever.
We're back to our original problem, which is: if I'm spending magical power to fight, I'm not charging it up, and if I'm not charging it up, I'm not doing what I'm planning on doing.
ETA to charge: 2 minutes.
I get Cedric's attention with a small spark. "Think you can keep him occupied for two minutes?"
Note that it's been ten minutes since we started, and all I wanted was five.
Cedric grins. "I can manage that." He summons two birds and…wow, are they made of pure light?
They're birds around the size of his hands and glow with a dull brilliance.
It looks like they would be pure light.
He sends those birds out against the source of the fire. I may want to be looking at the ground with my eyes closed now, so let's do that.
Things then get dim slightly.
Jordan commentary: "MY EYES! MY EYES!"
…So Cedric may have just flashbanged the entire school.
I can hear the Dragon losing its shit in the sky and it's very loud.
I can also hear the student body losing its shit and it's also very loud. Judging by Cedric's face, he didn't quite consider the effects of bright lights upon eyeballs.
Either way, I got my two minutes.
…
[3rd Person Camera]
…
When the student body and the dragon both recovered from the effects of the flash, they saw a large, glowing magic circle glowing around the entire arena.
"Oh, he's a fan of the olden arts." Barty Senior says in a slightly condescending manner. "How quaint."
"Leave it to him of all people to figure out how to work a large scale spell circle." McGonagall sighs while Flitwick claps at a lighting pace. Her tone, however, showed that she was far from disappointed.
"I haven't seen someone try to use a circle, Minerva!" Flitwick exclaims excitedly. "This is so exciting!"
"Can you check the protection charms on the stands, Filius?" McGonagall asks him. "As we all know, he's a bit rambunctious at the best of times."
Flitwick calms down some and gets to work reinforcing the enchantments placed on the student stands.
"Wand magic became standard because inscribing circles was impractical." Karkaroff scoffs. "He's a performer of a fool."
"I think you mean a 'fool of a performer'." Crouch Sr. says slyly.
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
You know, of all of the reactions that I heard from my place down here, McGonagalls makes me smile the most, because she knows what about to go down.
Time to command. "Alright, let's do this right. Ceds, fall back and get ready to grab that egg once I have the dragon pinned."
He then makes a very good point. "Couldn't you just have, I dunno, put it to sleep?"
My response is to make my idiot grin. "Yeah, but it would be boring." Also I don't see a nose.
Alright, talk over.
Cedric goes "of course" in a defeated manner.
We raise our wand into the air, and a small copy of the circle in the ground forms around the wand.
We bring our wand down and 'toss' the circle into the ground.
Explanation time?
Explanation time.
I've been doing a little bit of diving into magical history (to follow up on the idea of turning my wand into something like a bracer) and uh…as we go further into the history of the wizarding world, and as documentation gets sparser and sparser…
It seems like olden mages (think at least a millennia old) used to be staff wielders. Like, spell casting was an immensely time consuming process that required a lot of preparation and foresight to use correctly.
Eventually (at around the same time gunpowder was introduced into muggle warfare, actually) wands became more commonplace, and this caused a paradigm shift in how magic was taught. So instead of focusing on memorization and note taking, wands caused the modern system of Internalization (that is, practice with the magic until the chant becomes second nature) to take root and eventually replace the old system.
I do kind of wish the shift didn't cause the art of documentation to be abandoned either, but eh…
Explanation time over, the circle has activated!
The earth trembles at my command! I! AM! IMMORTAL! AHAAHHAHAA
So while the active mind is on a power trip…
The spell circle collects massive amounts of the earth beneath it and carves a hole into the combat area. The dirt coalesces into the space above the circle and expands into a vaguely chicken-like shape.
Why yes, I am making a giant war chicken. But not just any war chicken.
You know how Avis only works on birds?
Well, it also works on what eventually became birds.
The rock shape elongates and then takes form.
…
[Reactions]
"Oh my god." Seamus, a child who grew up as a muggle breathes upon seeing the scaly beast standing in his presence.
"Oh my god." McGonagall rubs her temples. "Is he insane? He has to be insane. That is utterly absurd."
"Is…is that?" Ron elbows Seamus. "What is that? Is that a saddle on its back?"
"It's beautiful." Seamus sighs dreamily.
…
[End Reactions]
I have created my golem. It is a magnificence of eight meters (24 feet or so) and has enough meat on its bones to throw down with the best of them. Gaze upon its sharp-ass claws.
"Alright, boys and girls!" I yell happily and mount my giant armored war T-Rex. "Let's get this party started!"
Question: how do you plan to reach the flying Dragon with your Dinosaur?
Oh, easy. I added rocket engines to the T-Rex. Also I gave it extended grappling claws for its otherwise useless-looking two front legs so it can hug.
…you what?
Yes. It's a Flying Armored Combat T-Rex. FACTR. Or something.
The controls are a touch wonky, but integrating the rocket engines with the T-Rex's golem brain seems to allow the T-Rex to control it better than I could.
Also, I named it Daisy.
You named the golem.
From our saddle on her back we have access to a control panel and a targeting mechanism (much like a laser pointer). We arm the designator and lock onto Samael.
Daisy the T-Rex spins up her rocket engines and leaps at the flying red serpentine dragon, intent on hugging its flying prey out of the sky with one sweep of its mechanized claws. The Dragon, not about to be outdone, spews fire into the face of the incoming flying King. Through the fire and flames the T-Rex charges forth and spreads its arms wide, before finally embracing its prey in a deathly hug and carrying it back to the earth.
So the above paragraph is entirely factual.
With only slight embellishment.
We should never be allowed near any historical events ever again.
Yes.
Aaaanyways, Daisy manages to snag Samael out of the sky and drag it back down to earth with a mighty roar. The Dragon savagely squirms against the mechanized claws to…not no avail. Shit that thing is way stronger than I thought it would be quick plan B plus one
We leap from our seat with the help of a good wind spell, allowing us the precious seconds required to target the dragon and break the straps holding down the egg to its back.
Takes me a few Diffindos but it comes off clean. The harness-egg combo comes free at about the same time as Samael breaking free from the mecha claws. It takes back into flight after beating Daisy over her head with its wings.
Now that I have the combo, I should oh shit
We're still on the extremely lithe dragon, and as it flies up we slide off and the egg slips from our grasp.
Cedric snaps out of the T-Rex induced stupor and catches the egg-harness combo before it hits the ground. He levitates the harnesses (the egg is enchanted to be a nonvalid cast target) for extra time and then grabs the whole deal at the bottom of the crater we made.
He goes "oof this is heavy" upon doing so.
So while Samael is busy trying to deal with Daisy (via just swiping at her), the two of us head back to the safe zone with the egg, signaling the mission's completion.
It takes a lot of coaxing before Samael was willing to come back down again.
And how did we restrain Daisy?
I…tried to unsummon her.
And I say tried, because for whatever reason it wasn't working. So I used my amazing powers of forward planning to make a leash for Daisy.
Forward thinking. Right.
Well I mean the leashed T-rex scared the shit out of people, but overall the public reception was positive.
So. Not being to unsummon Daisy. Like…she's supposed to go 'poof' when the magical power used to create it is exhausted, but uh…for whatever reason it's not poofing.
As McGonagall wants nothing to do with this, Flitwick promises to investigate. In the meantime I install a dog AI into its brain (in the sense that the golem now has a slightly doglike behavior). A Newfie, if anyone's wondering.
Newfoundland. Reason: it's a dog breed that's good with children and schools have lots of children. We based it off a dog we saw back in the states. It loved physical contact.
…
So the Dragon event ended with a boom. I scored 30 out of 50.
We lost points for: using Cedric as a distraction, showing zero teamwork, and potentially harming the audience. All very valid points that don't detract from the fact that I now have a giant T-Rex dog.
I am very glad that it is only doglike and not, y'know, dog. Because I think a 2-ton lapdog will kill all of us.
Welp, event over. Next up: the water level.
Dun dun dun.
…
So what's Daisy doing now?
It's a golem and technically doesn't need to eat or sleep, so I just have it set to wander the castle grounds. The fact that it's a dog at heart now means it has a tendency to chase down the first years, which…uh, isn't exactly good for their sanity. Not like it does anything upon reaching them, but still.
…
A few days later, Flitwick found the problem: the circle I drew for the transfiguration screwed up on one major point. Instead of the transfiguration having either its own energy supply (the normal explosive birds) or drawing power from the wielder (see: Dumbledore's fire whip in book 5) I accidentally hooked Daisy up to the Earth.
So the problem here (in so far as there is a problem) is that the connection to the Earth makes Daisy indestructible and unable to be unenchanted. Reason being it would require a mage to supersede the energy of the Earth (i.e. to counteract the heat of the Earth's core). It is also an additional drain on the Earth's energies, so we can expect about fifteen years shaved off of Earth's service life.
Out of however many billions that may be.
In completely unrelated news, I now have a T-Rex as a familiar. Daisy's a little on the big side but I think we can all grow to love her for the 188 miles per hour top speed apex predator that she is.
So are we not worried about what comes before the water level?
What comes before the water level?
…
…
Oh.
Oh right.
The shipping event. The ball.
…
Can't I just take Daisy to the ball?
No.
Darn.
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein