บท 49: CH 49

Immediately behind the red dragon was another cage; it contained the largest of the four dragons. It appeared as little more than a shadow even when the nearer was not breathing fire. Black, jagged scales, tattered, ebony wings that were furled around a vicious-looking, serpentine body, and a back and tail covered in cruelly curved spines.

That is a dragon to avoid.

Its head snapped round when the red dragon rattled its cage and Fleur found herself looking straight into a set of bright, yellow eyes. She had never seen so much malicious intent in the eyes of any creature. Underneath its malevolence was a wild, furious intelligence in the glowing, golden orbs that glowered out from under the shadows of four, bronze horns. It hissed with rage and lashed its tail through the bars, scoring a deep scar into the ground. Fleur glimpsed a set of spikes that coated its tail like barbs when the dragon retracted it.

Definitely a dragon to avoid.

All of the creatures were enraged and dangerous, but there was something hungry and feral about the black one that made the rest seem rather less scary.

The other two were further away and Fleur was not foolhardy enough to try and tiptoe past the cages to see them closer. She had seen more than enough of what was to come tomorrow.

She crept back from the glade, keeping well away from the circle of scorched earth and charred leaves that surrounded the ash filled clearing.

Madame Maxime was waiting a few minutes walk back through the forest.

'What do you think?' she asked.

'I think whomever gets the black one is going to regret putting their name in the goblet,' she answered honestly, still a little disturbed by the malice of those yellow eyes.

'The Hungarian Horntail.' Madame Maxime gave the malevolent creature a name. 'I'm not sure it's even tame, from what I was told by Hagrid and his dragon-keeper friend they had to send a fourth on very short notice.'

It's the boy's fault that thing is here, Fleur realised. If I have to face that beast I will hex him halfway to death afterwards. It was probably an empty threat. The contest between any fourteen year old wizard and a dragon was likely to end very swiftly in favour of the magical creature. Fleur would have to settle for hating him posthumously.

'Do you have a plan?'

'My enchantment, the sleeping one,' she answered.

'The one that makes use of your veela nature,' Madame Maxime remembered. 'A solid plan, but I might suggest having a back up idea, just in case.'

'I know to go for the eyes,' Fleur considered, 'and I know enough curses and hexes that once I hit it will stay blinded for long enough.' 'Practice,' her headmistress insisted firmly, 'and don't mention the dragons. I was not really meant to show you, even if the others will all know by the end of the day.'

They had reached the carriage, so Fleur took her leave of Madame Maxime and quickly returned to her room to read up on the creatures.

Dragons have few weaknesses, if faced with one it is best to distract it and flee. If fighting is the only recourse then its weak spots are the eyes and, on some weaker breeds, the softer scaled belly and armpits.

Fleur somehow doubted that the ebony monster with its glaring yellow eyes was one of the weaker species. It looked like it had sprouted straight from one of Gabrielle's nightmares. Her enchantment was her best bet if she actually had to face the dragon down. There was a faint hope that the task could be accomplished by more subtle means. Distracting the dragon, or preferably even avoiding it completely. Since there was one for each of the champions it seemed unlikely they would all be part of the event together so she could not allow the others to deal with the creature and then face her competitors instead.

Retrieving her wand from her waist Fleur decided the best spell to use against the dragon if her sleeping enchantment failed was probably the conjunctivitis curse. It would swell the eyes of the dragon shut and give her a chance to lure it or distract it away. She doubted the task would be to actually defeat the creature. It took ten wizards to deal with an adult dragon at the best of times. 'Conjuncto,' she snapped, jabbing her wand towards one of the small floral patterns on her pillow.

The curse was flickered across the room and struck its target dead on, tearing a small hole in it. Satisfied, Fleur mended the pillion and tucked her wand back through the belt of her uniform.

There wasn't a great deal else she could to prepare for a dragon at such short notice. The first task was tomorrow, close enough that she could almost hear the cheers of the Beauxbatons students.

They will probably be cheering the dragon.

She sniffed disdainfully. It would not matter who they cheered or if they did not cheer at all. They would still be there to see her bypass the monstrous creature and witness her victory. Even the boy would have to be watching her, especially if he needed ways to get past his own dragon without dying.

Fleur did feel a little sorry for him now. At first his reluctance to participate had felt like an insult to her and their schools, but now she realised it was more likely to be a healthy survival instinct. It did beget the question, once again, of how his name had come from the goblet when he was so disinclined to participate, if it had at all.

Albus Dumbledore's glimmer of worry and pride over his student at the wand-weighing ceremony came to mind immediately.

Is there some larger game afoot? she wondered. Beauxbatons might be in France, but the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived was just as prevalent there. The headmaster was old, very old, truth be told, perhaps he was grooming his successor. A wizard he hoped would continue his legacy and ideals after Dumbledore was gone.

The Triwizard tournament did strike Fleur as a good way to toughen anyone for a dangerous road ahead, but fourteen was far too young to compete, liquid core wand or not.

It does not matter, she reminded herself. I have my own dragon to worry about.

The memory of malevolent yellow eyes and a bone-barbed tail lashing across ground reduced to cinders by fiery breath was more than enough to redirect Fleur's pity back to herself.

Any dragon but the Horntail.