Chapitre 17: Chapter 16

"A dragon, mate?" Ron asked, his blue eyes wide with incredulity as he started at his best friend. "Are you having a laugh? Do you know how much training my brother went through before they let him anywhere near a dragon? He told me once about an intern over in Romania, you know- at the reserve- named Bob. Know where Bob is now, Harry? Bloody Bob's dead, man, because a dragon fucking ate him. Merlin, mate, you're gonna die!"

Harry did his best to interpret his redheaded friend's words as encouragement, failed, and replied, bitingly, "Thanks a lot, Ron. This is why we're such good friends, you know? You're always just a fucking fount of level-headed reassurances! If I'm ever forced to choose between you and Hermione, consider yourself fucked buddy!"

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were tucked away deep inside the Hogwarts library, perching atop one of the long, wide window sills hidden clear in the back of the enormous labyrinth of books. It was lunchtime, the day after the incubus had learned of the nature of the First Task, and he was only now finding the time to meet with his closest friends to formulate a game plan. By the time he'd eaten the night before, he'd been too tired to do anything, much less study up on dragons. The tense atmosphere seemed to suggest that the rest of their meeting would not go any smoother than it had started. Luckily, Hermione.

"Shut up, the both of you," she ordered, her eyes never leaving the pages of the book laid open on her lap. She continued to robotically scan up and down the book's yellowing insides as she spoke. "Tomorrow you're going to have to survive an encounter with a dragon, Harry. It's our job to make sure you don't embarrass yourself, or worse." Looking up at the incubus sitting in front of her on the ledge, her eyes darted around before she slowly asked, "I assume you've already seen to your needs for the day?"

Harry flashed a thumbs-up, and when a suddenly less depressing Ron held his fist out, bumped his against it.

Groaning at the display, Hermione nevertheless nodded, satisfied that her friend would have no extra distractions when the time to compete arrived.

"Good," she said, returning to her reading. "That means you have almost a full sixteen hours to study up on dragons and figure out how to defeat one, factoring in an even eight hours of sleep."

"Defeat one?" Harry asked incredulously, pulling back his fringe for a moment of thought. Sighing, he released his hair and hedged, "It is the worst-case scenario, I guess."

Hermione dipped her chin, still reading. "Exactly."

"If worse comes to worst, you could always cheat your way through," Ron suggested, although by the down turning of his lips, he didn't find the idea very tasteful. Cheating didn't mesh well with the redhead's way of life, but for his friends' safety, any exception could be made. "Summon your invisibility cloak, poison the dragons tonight, get yourself a muggle anti-tank weapon- there are plenty of ways that I can think of to stack the odds in your favor."

"How do you know about muggle weapons Ronald?" Hermione asked, puzzled once again by the freckled boy's knowledge of her world.

Lifting his pointer finger to rest against the bridge of his nose, Ron mysteriously answered, "The nose knows…"

Hermione reflexively balled her hands into fists to whack the difficult teen, but with Harry's pondering form sat between them on the window sill, she relented, settling for grinding her teeth together instead.

"They're good ideas," Harry began after a moment, staring upwards at nothing as he spoke, "but I can't cheat my way to the Triwizard Cup, or through any of the tourneys either, for that matter." Angling his head back down to spare his friends a quick glance each, he explained, "There's a reason I'm taking on all these different challenges this year, despite my body's new needs: if I can win, or at least demonstrate my skills before the public's eye, then just maybe, when the time comes, and Voldemort finally makes his return, they'll think, 'Harry Potter has a chance'. I'm going to need that support from the public. He's out there, right now, still doing everything he can to return to the land of the living and pick back up where he left off."

"Harry…" Hermione began softly, though he merely waived her off and stood up to pace.

"We all know what the first thing on his agenda will be. He'll make proving to everyone that what happened fourteen year ago was a fluke." Pausing to look at his friends, both of whom were tracking his pacing form though narrowed eyes, the incubus balled his hands into fists. "The quickest way to convince everyone of that is to kill me- in as grand and bloody a fashion as he can manage, which is probably quite bloody, and quite grand…"

"Fuck that!" Ron said, slamming his fist against the ledge, swiveling his reddening face jerkily from Hermione back to Harry. Leaning in towards his incubus friend with his chin raised, he repeated quietly, through clenched teeth, "Fuck that."

Hermione's reaction was more composed, though her nostrils flared wildly and betrayed her emotions despite herself. Very, very deliberately, she spoke to Harry. "There is not a situation where we ever let that happen, Harry. I want to hear you say that you already know this."

Unaffected by his friends' anger, Harry's eyes softened as he stepped towards them, pulling softly at the backs of their heads till all three were pressed together at their hairlines. Closing his eyes, Harry simply said, "I know. Thank you." Pulling back, he was satisfied with the looks of reassurance on his friends' faces. "Still," he continued, confident that they would let him explain his reasoning this time, "he will try. That's why it's not enough for me to just survive these tasks; to compete in these tournaments. I can't just do well in them; I have to destroy these competitions, and any doubts that the people around me have along with them." The green-eyed incubus' muscles tightened, and his jaw set. "I absolutely have to believe that Voldemort can be defeated- but at the same time, I know that I'll never win against him alone. He's too much older; he knows too much more than me. We're going to need all the help we can get, and that starts with proving to everyone that I'm worth supporting." His impromptu speech coming to an end, Harry sighed and reclaimed his seat, sinking back against the charmed glass. His voice was softer, with the faintest hints of desperation, when he finished. "I just want you guys to be safe. I want everyone I care about to be safe. No matter what that means. There's already enough shit to muddle through, you know?"

Hermione and Ron shared a look over Harry's hung head. After a long moment, they shifted closer to the incubus between them, with Hermione squeezing Harry's hand and Ron nudging him with his elbow.

"Best get back to figuring out this dragon business, then," Ron suggested after another few moments. "Fuck Voldemort, and fuck ol' Bob too. If your plan is to impress people tomorrow, we can't spend the rest of today with our thumbs up our asses, now can we?"

Hermione giggled at the redhead's reasoning, to her own immediate chagrin, but Harry simply smiled, hearing the unspoken words of solidarity loud and clear.

"I don't know…" He began, even as he pulled Hermione's book over onto his lap, "Passing the days with butt stuff has been pretty fun for me in the past."

Ron turned red even as he laughed.

Hermione blushed clear passed her forehead.

Harry just grinned, settling in between his friends, and began reading.

"Ooh! The Hungarian Horntail- quite a beast, that one is, Harry," Ludo Bagman commented with unnecessary theatrics, nodding to himself knowingly as Harry withdrew a miniature version of the spiked, menace-of-a-dragon from the proffered sac. Then, much more quietly, the aging man leaned in towards the boy wizard and whispered, "I could offer you a few suggestions, if you'd like… seeing as how you're by far the youngest contestant and all… It would only be fair."

Sparing an annoyed look at the man, Harry just shook his head distractedly and excused himself from the ministry official's presence. Even if he wasn't so focused on the upcoming task, there wasn't likely to be anything he'd be interested in hearing from the crook. The man still had yet to honor his wager with Fred and George.

Turning and walking away, Harry ambled slowly towards the other side of the tent, closer to his competition.

Both Fleur and Viktor saw Harry approaching them, but surprisingly it was the Bulgarian Seeker who moved to speak to him first, his English thickly accented but still understandable.

"It vas you?" he began, foregoing any pleasantries. "The one who sent the letter?"

A second ticked by in silence as Harry processed the Bulgarian's words. "Yeah," he eventually said, his voice subdued with distraction. "Figured you deserved to know and stuff."

"I knew for veeks and did not tell you," the older wizard confessed readily, his face stoic and unreadable.

Harry blinked and looked up at the stocky teen as if seeing him for the first time. "Huh," he offered, "I guess I can't really blame you…"

"I vill answer your offer of good-faith and sportsmanship in the future, if I get the chance."

"Cool," Harry accepted with a quiet smile. "That's good to know."

The older teen nodded gravely, and after a brief moment, stepped around Harry's shorter figure to lay claim to an unoccupied length of the threadbare tent, pacing it with steady strides while studying the miniature dragon he'd drawn.

Losing interest in the qudditch superstar, Harry turned and refocused his eyes on the last remaining member of the Triwizard Tournament, greeting her with a more genuine smile as he closed most of the distance between them.

Fleur's shoulders were tensed, and her otherworldly blue-silver eyes stared at him as he approached, noticeably wider than normal.

"Hey," the incubus greeted quietly, a few silent moments after reaching her. "How're you holding up?"

"Hello Harry," Fleur replied after a moment. Her previously unfocused eyes cleared as they locked onto him. She failed to respond to the second part of his greeting. "Thank you for telling me the secret of the First Task. Gabrielle and I have been up all night trying to formulate a plan."

Harry very carefully didn't react to Fleur's mention of Gabby. He couldn't afford any distractions right now.

You need to talk to her.

Later.

He blinked at Fleur, a twinge of guilt in his guts, but she didn't seem to notice anything had happened at all. "Ron and Hermione stayed up helping me do the same," he finally shared with a nod. Placing a companionable hand on her shoulder and squeezing, he asked, "Did you have any luck?"

Fleur's moonlight blonde head bobbed slowly in the positive, as though she doubted her own response. Harry frowned when he noticed a tremble in her lips, but stayed silent when she asked, "You?"

"More or less," the incubus admitted with a calm smile. "We'll see soon enough, now, won't we?"

She didn't answer his question, asking one of her own instead. "Your Smallguide is somewhere safe?"

"Of course," Harry assured her. "She's with the gang."

Fleur nodded, her eyes drifting off to stare unseeingly to the side.

Another squeeze on her shoulder from Harry led Fleur to look back to him, and once he had her attention again, he smiled easily and encouraged, "Have faith in yourself, Fleur. The Goblet of Fire chose you for a reason- don't forget that. If it's your dream to prove yourself as more than just a pretty face, then rejoice- you'll probably never get a better chance to show off than this."

Looking at him with an unreadable gaze, Fleur realized aloud, "You're not afraid at all, are you? How is that possible?"

It isn't.

Harry just shook his head at her and withdrew his hand, turning to spare a look at the tent's flap that would lead him straight to the dragon's nest.

"I only believe I can do this because I have to," he revealed, looking from his miniature's belly, which had the number one painted onto it, to Mr. Crouch, who nodded towards the exit. Not sparing another look back as he began making his way towards the exit that would lead him to the prepared arena, Harry slowly drew his wand, and left.

When he stepped free from the threadbare tent's flap, he entered into a world of massive, jagged boulders, each the size of him or larger, with bleached gladiator-pit sand filling the short distances between the visually obstructive stones. Still, even with the uneven terrain that had been crafted for him, Harry was able to find his hulking opponent immediately.

She sat half a quidditch pitch's length away from him, her thickly armored body curled protectively around what must have been her clutch. Her scales, each at least as large as both of Harry's hands put together, were colored a rocky grey, and the young incubus was unhappy to note that there was something of a camouflage effect between her coloring and the slabs surrounding her. Spikes covered the length of her spine like a line of dominoes, rising and falling in tandem as she surveyed the crowded stands looming overhead with poisonous yellow cat-eyes. Her head, too, was wreathed in bony protrusions, in a likeness similar to a crown, though it was her tail that drew Harry's narrowed emerald eyes the most. He was reminded of one of the dinosaurs he'd learned about as a boy, a stegosaurus, as he studied the four, meter long spikes that jutted free from the dragon's club-like tail.

This is bad.

In an instant, Harry's careful observing came to an end as the postpartum lizard queen's eyes abruptly zeroed in on his lone, intruding figure. A low, dangerous hiss, like superheated iron lowering into water, filled the otherwise noiseless stadium, and with a great outward bowing of her mammoth chest, the Hungarian Horntail shrieked her offense at him, the bulging muscles in her neck and pectorals straining as the whole dragon shook with malice.

Good God…

Harry's eyes widened and his heart began working at double time, and almost subconsciously he began flexing his knees in preparation of the nesting mother's attack. When the dragon instead held her position above her quaffle sized eggs, one of which was golden and his intended target, Harry slowly began working on the first step of his plan, lowering the tip of his wand down and burning the symbols for his telekenis spell onto his hands. His skin began blackening into the familiar patterns, and Harry had to grind his teeth together to keep from crying out at the pain- the smell of his cooking flesh making his face screw up in revulsion all the while. To guarantee the spell's integrity, he forced himself to sear several layers deeper than might usually be necessary, ensuring that a simple scratch to the palm wouldn't cancel the magic's effect and leave him defenseless.

With the intricate symbols blackened into his palms, Harry could 'safely' begin the next phase of his plan. Looking towards the boulder closest to him, Harry took a single step in its direction.

The very instant his foot twitched, the Horntail was wrenchingherself forward, propellingtowards him like a slingshot, eliminating the distance between them almost too quickly to see.

She must have weighed more than five fully grown elephants put together, yet it was with an almost dancer-like grace that the Horntail passed parallel to the ground as she flew an arrow's flight towards Harry, the paler colored scales of her belly passing mere inches above the jagged tips of the countless stones littering the colosseum. Her prey proved to be nimble as well, though, as in the instant before her great, yawning maw could close around his tiny form, he was gone, diving forward, beneath her sailing form, and narrowly avoiding her.

The bulk of the hovering masses in the stands above reacted almost an entire second later, such was the speed of the beast's untelegraphed attack. Their muddled mix of shrieks, gasps, and shouts formed together into a deafening buzz that Harry did his best to ignore, along with the bestial screech of outrage the dragon behind him let out when it crashed bodily into the stadium wall, unable to halt its explosive momentum. Gritting his teeth and pushing himself up, his hands digging deeply into the cold, loosely-packed sand beneath him, Harry forced himself to abuse the narrow window of time he'd earned. As quickly as his legs could carry him, he began sprinting from stone to stone, spending less than a second branding each as he went with the same symbols that blackened his hands- the telekinesis spell. Moments after he'd moved passed them, the marked stones began to sluggishly rise into the air.

By the time the furiously hissing dragon finally reoriented herself, Harry had already managed to brand nearly two dozen of the wet-grey boulders. Said incubus was reminded of the theorized intelligence of dragons when the one a hundred meters opposite him failed to immediately fly back in for the kill, instead turning its poisonous yellow orbs to the floating stones, studying their peculiar behavior.

"Come on," Harry whispered, bringing his hands to just below eye-level as he laced his fingers together. "Work!"

Slowly, the hovering stones began moving, meeting up just ahead and to the side of Harry's position. They began to form together into the rough shape of a man. The process was slow, but the Hungarian Horntail seemed unwilling to rush in again, instead using the moment of downtime to begin circling around Harry and his gradually forming golem, repositioning herself so that he no longer blocked the quickest route back to her clutch of eggs.

Feeling his face and chest beginning to flush from the strain, Harry clenched his jaw and focused, staring through his dark bangs at the rocky titan as it finally finished forming.

It was a sight to behold- with the height of five men, and a great, V shaped stone for a head, the golem emitted terrible, growl-like sounds as its rocky body ground against itself, the incredible weight of the construct sending a ripple throughout the pit as it took a single, lumbering step forward. Sand flew upwards from the impact, drawing awed comments from the spectators above, but Harry and the dragon only had eyes for one another.

Without warning, the Hungarian Horntail charged again- ignoring the golem entirely as she sped forward along the rocks.

"Fast!" Harry realized, alarmed, an instant before her claws gored the sand he'd been stood atop moments ago.

Sprinting wide around the nesting mother as she crushed the granules between her claws into dust, Harry's interlocked hands tightened, and his golem made to crash its fist into her bowed head.

She slithered out of the construct's range long before it even got close to her, and continued to avoid its groping hands, which were just too slow to pin the unnaturally agile creature down.

An intentionally missed swing blocked the dragon's eyes, resulting in a glancing blow to its chest. That was the only contact Harry managed on the lizard queen, however, as she seemed to wise up to his misdirections afterwards.

'This isn't working,' Harry realized after a minute of trying everything he could to tag the Horntail again, far enough back from the beast and his avatar to study the difference in speed between the two. While the return strikes the Horntail kept scoring against his golem didn't cause much damage, he was already beginning to pant from the strain of controlling such a heavy mass, and doubted his body would outlast the dragon's. 'I need a distraction,' the incubus realized, although he knew the moment he unlaced his hands, his control over the golem would fail.

"Fuck it," he spat to himself, out of options. Hoping its end could double as a distraction, Harry sent his golem flying at the dragon. He took his enemy juking to the side as his que, and dropped his hands in response, scattering the golem's body mid-flight. The Hungarian Horntail was blindsided by the move, and three of the massive stones struck her in her side and leg as the stoneman crumbled. She screeched out in agony, and Harry used her distracted state to put his new, half-baked plan into motion, casting a harshly spoken, "Engorgio!" on his robe as he banished it towards the injured dragon.

The rapidly expanding cloth was the size of a house by the time it reached the oblivious creature, and true to Harry's aim, it wrapped itself around her horned head multiple times. She thrashed- disoriented, when the cloth started to harden into stone, and began unleashing blind gusts of angry red fire into the air.

Panting heavily, with sweat dripping from his brow, Harry marveled at the fact that he could feel the inferno's oppressive heat from as far away as he was. Still, even with the stone muzzle's tip melted off, Harry felt some sense of safety now that the beast had been restrained. Turning away from the thrashing dragon to look towards her nest, Harry began a slow pace in its direction, his body sore from the telekinesis spell's overuse.

Sensing that the action below was coming to an end, the stands above began roaring in approval- suitably impressed with the teenage wizard's display of magical might. Few, if any, had expected to bear witness to such a dazzling clash of titans, especially coming from the youngest contestant, and the vigor with which they cheered lifted Harry's spirits as he finally reached his golden prize.

Their sudden gasps of horror made his heart lurch as he spun around.

The Hungarian Horntail had dug a deep pit in the earth, and was unleashing a focused torrent of fire downwards against the sand-turned-glass. Her stone helmeted head was buried in the pit, and thus suffered her inferno's full power and heat as well, and was already beginning to transform, the molten slag dripping down and uncovering more and more of the dragon's unharmed head.

Stumbling backwards, Harry managed to save himself from falling with a quick twist, instead catching himself with his hands, which had found purchase on either side of his shining target. He knew he didn't have it in him to tangle with the dragon again. Scooping the false egg up, Harry nearly fell again as he began sprinting towards the closest exit he could see- some hundred meters away.

He could still hear the Horntail's flames behind him, and took that as a good sign, not daring to look back. The path from the nest to the exit was clear and sandy for the first twenty-five meters, and he cleared that distance quickly. Once he reached the rocks, however, he realized that it would be more difficult to escape than he'd hoped. The knowledge that he wasn't going fast enough taunted him, and having to maneuver around the giant, jagged stones every few feet wasn't helping. Harry estimated that he'd only managed to cover half the distance he needed to when the sound of spewing flame abruptly ended. Remembering the dragon's first lunge, and how it had taken the beast less than a second to cover the distance between them, Harry still refused to turn around, fear and the knowledge that he had nothing to follow a dodge up with anyway urging him forward. Grabbing at the sharp rocks for extra speed, the boy wizard ignored the increasing number of cuts on his hands, panicking and moving as fast as he could, until he finally rounded the last boulder between him and the exit. Safety was less than five sandy meters away, and Harry cried out in relief despite himself.

Screams and the briefest silhouette of a shadow on the wall in front of him saved Harry's life as he tried to roll to the side, avoiding a tail spike through the back of his head but not through his thigh.

The pain was instant and unbearable- a million, million times more intense than anything else he'd ever felt in his life. It was like the limits for what a person could feel had been removed from his brain- the thresholds that were supposed to keep people sane nowhere to be found. He was screaming, he knew, and absolutely had to do something if he wanted to live, but as the dragon flung him through the air like so much rubbish, her spike ground against both of the edges of his messily bisected femur, and shock set in. When he landed, with his leg kicked to the side at an impossible angle, a mere foot beneath his hip, the incubus deliriously realized that he was absolutely, one-hundred percent going to die.

He watched from his back through unfocused eyes as the Horntail took flight; watched as his friends and professors stood to help, far, far too late; watched as she began her dive bomb; and watched as victory filled her poisonous yellow eyes.

A shock of silvery-blonde in his peripheral vision brought a seed of sense back to Harry.

Screaming for all he was worth, the incubus clapped his hands together with a wet splash of red, straining his broken body and faltering magic like he'd never managed before as he seized the colossal fire wyrm directly, just before her claws could come into range.

The power needed to suspend the thrashing dragon was more than Harry could properly channel, and his nose began to leak out even more of his rapidly dwindling supply of blood as he strained desperately to keep the beast at bay. Her shrieking, writhing form fought hard against his psychic hold, and Harry found that he couldn't both breath and maintain his grip on her at the same time, and so held his breath, praying that someone would help before his strength finally failed him.

Even that small hope was dashed, however, when hateful, yellow eyes locked onto him, and the light of a great fire appeared in the back of the dragon's throat, rushing towards him.

In a last, desperate attempt to save his own life, Harry wrenched with everything he had, twisting the dragon's head away from him one way, and her body the other.

With a sickening, hollow crack, the dragon's neck snapped, and all life left her body.

Using the very last bit of his magic to try and heft her limp carcass to the side, blood loss and magical exhaustion finally claimed him, and Harry Potter's world went black.