The First Task
Severus watched as Harry carefully sliced the dandelions' roots in perfect pieces and silently cursed himself that he never had asked himself why the boy had had such trouble with ingredient preparation before. It would naturally be exceptionally hard to prepare ingredients properly when your hands were incapable of holding the knife correctly because of so many badly healed bones in his hands. But Severus had been too blind and bitter to see and realise that.
He only tossed one sharp glance over at Tonks who made a huge batch of Burn Salve. He sincerely hoped that they wouldn’t need it, but it was better to have it and not need it, than to not have it and desperately need it. Severus himself made the best fire protection potion he knew. It had taken him exactly two minutes to realise what the First Task most likely was, after Harry had told him that Mister Weasley had told him that his older brother, Charles Weasley, was visiting for his work. And he was still absolutely livid that those dunderheads from the Ministry thought it was a good idea to put young magicians up against dragons, for Salazar's sake! That could have been Harry! Harry might have had to confront a dragon, a bloody huge dragon that could eat him in one bite!
“You are steaming again, Severus!” Tonks chirped while delicately stirring her cauldron.
“I do not believe that I will stop for as long as this Tournament is ongoing, unfortunately,” Severus said between his teeth, before he began to Occlude harder and took a deep breath.
“Are you … are you regretting taking my place?” Harry whispered without looking up from the ingredients he prepared for them.
“No, never!” Severus snapped.
Harry jerked his head up and looked at him with big eyes.
“No one should be put up against dragons, Harry, no one, but most certainly not anyone underage! I’m furious at the idiots who decided to do this, but I’m not at all afraid for my own part. I actually know how to deal with a dragon. I have made five different plans and if none of them works … Well, the Unforgivable Curses are only unforgivable when used on humanoid beings. Unless the administrators ban killing the beasts, they can only thank themselves if I end up killing a dragon from a most likely endangered species. They shouldn’t have used them anyway.” He sneered.
“Are you going to tell that to the three other Champions too?” Tonks asked.
“Yes, but teaching someone to cast the Unforgivable Curses is actually against the law,” he looked at her and smirked, she smirked back, silver eyes gleaming and her lavender hair flashed to fire red and back.
Tonks was an Auror and she took her job seriously, but she was also a Black who now considered Severus as family. The Black’s had a peculiar view on family and a skewed judgement on what was allowed to do or not when protecting said family, like aiding and abetting a known fugitive that had escaped prison. Tonks would uphold and protect the laws, until said laws made trouble for her family. Then she no longer looked at them as carved in stone, but more as something slightly inconvenient that she could take or leave by her own volition. When setting one of her family up against a dragon, Tonks had no trouble looking the other way, even if said family member planned on casting an Unforgivable Curse in front of many, many witnesses, mostly children.
Severus approved of her shifting morals; it was very much like his own. And she reminded him of another young woman that had viewed rules and laws as loose guidelines that she could ignore if they became inconvenient for her, at the very least if she wasn’t caught breaking them. How Lily Evans ever had become a Gryffindor, Severus would never know. But then, Tonks certainly had some very un-Hufflepuff-like qualities, too. Or maybe, those qualities had become so strong in her that they no longer seemed like something a Hufflepuff should have. Because, what made Tonks willing to outright break laws for her family, if not the loyalty Hufflepuffs were so famous for?
“So, I won’t be able to do more than inform them of the possibility of using the Killing Curse as a last resort,” Severus said. “It’s better to get a hit on the scores from the judges and a reprimand, than end up hurt or worse.”
Tonks nodded. “Absolutely.”
“You are certain you won’t get in trouble for that?” Harry asked timidly.
“He won’t,” Tonks hurriedly assured, “not with the law. I already checked. Dragon Handlers are allowed to cast the curse too, if they get in a bad enough situation, like if a dragon runs amok. Though, they seldom do, they prefer the loss of human life to the loss of one of their precious dragons. And I can understand that, when the humans in question are people who are there willingly, and willingly put themselves in danger. This is different.”
Harry nodded, just as there was a knock on the door. Severus told the ones outside to enter and watched as three pale teenagers entered. Miss Delacour’s hands were shaking, and Mister Diggory’s hands were clasped so hard that they were white. Mister Krum closed the door behind them and all three looked at Severus.
“Am I to assume that you all already know about the dragons?” Severus asked, because if they didn’t already know, he wasn’t about to keep it from them.
“Yes, sir,” Mister Diggory said with a shaking voice.
Mister Krum nodded. “My Headmaster told me last night.”
“Madame Maxime told me this morning,” Miss Delacour said.
“Mister Krum just told me. I don’t … I don’t think anyone from Hogwarts was going to tell me,” Mister Diggory whispered. “Unless … unless the Headmaster asked you to …?” He looked at Severus and trailed off, his eyes huge and the hope in them barely there. He already knew, or at least heavily suspected, that his own Headmaster wouldn’t help him at all.
“No, Mister Diggory. I found the dragons through other means, and the Headmaster has been very tight lipped about the whole ordeal since I took my Omegas place in the Tournament. He likes to pretend to play fair. Maybe especially when no one else does. He believes that leaves him on the high ground,” he said, brutally honest to the young magicians in front of him.
Mister Diggory drew in a shaky breath and nodded. Tonks went to him and gave him a hug.
“Not to worry, Ced, you aren’t alone, remember? Master Snape will help you, he has already begun several nifty potions. And I’m here, too. Hufflepuff’s stick together!”
Mister Diggory let out a wobbly laugh. “Yeah, I remember. Thanks. I thought it would be challenging and difficult, but ultimately a fun contest and mostly harmless, or at least not deadly, you know. Not … not dragons!”
“Come on, you lot. Master Snape is going to begin a new potion in half an hour, to help all of you, so you can all help with the ingredients prep. Harry has been working on it alone for a while now. While we do that, we can discuss options to get through this safely. We will brainstorm to get ideas, then each of you can choose one of those ideas, or something entirely different, and work on that on your own for a day or two, and then ask the group for help if you need it.” Tonks led them to different tables and handed out knives and chopping boards while Severus gave out the ingredients and told them how he wanted them prepared and how much he wanted of each.
“This potion,” Severus made a motion towards the one in his cauldron presently, “together with what I’m going to brew next should lower the danger of being burned alive considerably. The combination will still let you get burned, unfortunately, but not killed by the flames or the heat alone. The smoke is something else, as are the claws and teeth. But as their flames are their best long-distance weapon, I have been focusing on that so far.”
All the other Champions nodded, washed their hands and began the preparation.
The next half hour they all discussed possible strategies and Miss Delacour soon got the idea that she could use her Veela charm and sing her dragon to sleep. She would also be a bit more protected against the flames than the rest of them, as Veela were beings of fire, just as the dragons were. Mister Krum and Mister Diggory were still considering options when there was another knock on the door to the potion lab and almost all of Harry’s friends trooped in.
“What did you find out?” Harry eagerly asked the Weasley twins.
“Charlie thinks that you are supposed to get past the dragon to get something from their nest, as all the dragons are nesting mothers,” presumably Fred Weasley told Severus with such a pale face that his freckles looked black against his white skin.
Tonks swore viciously and the teen Champions that just had gotten some colour back in their face, paled again. Apparently, they knew enough about dragons to know that no dragon was more fierce and more dangerous than a mother dragon defending her nest. Severus pinched the bridge of his nose hard; the stupidity of people would never cease to amaze him.
“Uhm,” Harry chewed on his bottom lip and looked hesitantly at Severus. Severus of three months ago would have snapped at him to spit it out and that he didn’t have the time for childish foolishness. Severus of today met Harry’s gaze calmly and encouraged him silently to say his piece. “Dragons are somewhat serpentine, aren’t they? I mean … I could try to talk to them beforehand, to tell them about the Tournament and that you aren’t going to harm their eggs or anything? That might make them calmer and less deadly, right?”
“Let me think about it for a little while,” Severus said, and Harry nodded agreeably.
The first time Severus had asked for time to consider something, Harry had reacted like Severus had denied him outright. Since then, he had learned that when Severus asked to think something over, he really would consider it. Harry now waited to object until he was certain that Severus would refuse to do, or refuse Harry to do, whatever it was Harry wanted. Which was still not ideal, Harry being a child and Severus’ charge, but it was nevertheless a lot better, and quite natural, as Harry was a teenager and teenagers were supposed to rebel now and again, unfortunately.
Miss Granger then presented the culmination of the research into Ancient Runes that could help against dragons and fire that Mister Ronald Weasley, Mister Longbottom, and she herself had done.
“We will not be allowed anything but our wand,” Mister Krum noted when Miss Granger was done speaking. His accent was still very much present, but his pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary got better and better for every week that went by. Severus suspected some kind of language magic at play. No one got that good in a language that fast, not even by immersing themselves completely in the language, as Mister Krum had done when coming to Hogwarts.
Miss Granger blushed, but steeled herself and said evenly: “Even if you get a uniform to change into before the Task, surely that uniform won’t encompass all your clothes? Only three or four rune arrays will help a lot.” She held up the parchment with the arrays she had pieced together. “With an undershirt with even more arrays, you will be able to protect your vital organs. I know that there are only four days to the Task, but still … I hope that it can be of help.”
Miss Delacour nodded eagerly. “I have bought wool stockings; it is so cold here! I can sew runes into them as well as my undershirt. This is a great idea!” Her sharp accent became sharper with her restored energy and hope.
All the three teenage Champions had some experience with runes and were comfortable with sewing them into their chosen garments. Severus would do the same. He was not about to begin taking unnecessary chances with his life when Harry depended on him, even if he highly doubted that a dragon could seriously hurt or maim him at this point.
The next evening Severus escorted Harry into the Forbidden Forest. He wasn’t overly happy about it, but it was worth a try. He needed to eliminate as much danger as possible, as the administrators had done their very best at making the Tournament as deadly as it could conceivably be. He had made himself Undetectable with several different spells and Harry was under his invisibility cloak. The meeting with the dragons had soon turned into something far more interesting than Harry trying to hiss at the dragons in the hope of being understood.
Harry quickly learned that he only marginally understood one of the four roaring dragons, the most snakelike one, the Chinese Fireball. They went over to her and when Harry started to speak to her and the dragon answered, Severus suddenly realised that he understood much of what they were saying. The more Harry and the dragon spoke, the more he understood and soon Harry paused and made a confused sound before he looked up at Severus, with only his head visible. His eyes were an oily black and there were veins of black on his now paper white skin. His human skin had begun to slip, but this time Severus doubted it was because of distress, so he didn’t let it bother him. It most likely happened when Harry began to wield some of his Other-powers, more precisely, his Other-speak, just as Severus unconsciously had.
“To start with she sounded like she spoke with an extremely heavy accent,” Harry chittered, “and then she got easier and easier to understand, and now I understand all of the dragons equally well.”
“You slipped from Parseltongue to Other-speak,” Severus hummed. “You are speaking it now.”
“Huh.” Harry wrinkled his nose.
The dragon made a rumbling noise, something of a laugh. “The little Maker needs practice before he understands his powers.”
There were similar rumbling laughs from the other dragons, and Severus became acutely aware that the humans now knew something was going on with the dragons.
“Why are you here, Builder, with your little Maker? You did not help endanger our young, did you?” The Hungarian Horntail bellowed.
“No, no, never!” Harry snarled. “Never!”
Severus began to explain about the Tournament, but only got so far as to tell them about the arena and the young Champions that would have to face them, before they finally were spotted by one of the Dragon Handlers.
“Professor Snape, Mister Potter, what are you doing here?” Charles Weasley asked with a sigh.
Harry blushed. “We only wanted to explain to the dragons …” he began to chitter and Mister Weasley flinched visibly, but didn’t move to cover his ears like most humans would.
Severus remembered that Mister Weasley had presented as an Alpha, or Warder, a year after graduating. He also remembered that he and his older brother, William Weasley, had made some waves in the international magical community when it became clear that both of them were Alphas. It was apparently the first time two Alphas had been born into the same family, in the same generation. Even with all the research Severus had done the past few months, he hadn’t come across something like that happening before, not even a hint of it.
“You need to change your language for the humans, little Maker,” the Fireball rumbled. “They cannot understand my sisters and me anyway, but their minds try to parse what you are saying from your human mouth, and it hurts their heads.”
“Thanks,” Harry thrilled at the dragon and then made an obvious effort to change his language before looking at Mister Weasley again. “We only wanted to explain about the Tournament to the dragons to try to make it as safe as possible, for all parties. I mean, how many breeding Horntails are there and how many Horntail eggs hatch each year and how many of those survive to breeding age?”
Severus smiled inwardly at Harry’s Slytherin tactics. Even if Mister Weasley and his colleagues should feel like it was alright to put a fierce mother dragon up against a teenager, they would without a doubt worry about harm coming to the eggs. Dragon Handlers were a species unto themselves and often did not consider the world as the rest of them did.
Mister Weasley eyed Harry for a long moment, then cast a glance at Severus before saying:
“Please wait here.”
Then he went up to a bigger group of Handlers and Severus realised that Mister Weasley had been chosen to make contact with them on his own. Most likely because he was both the brother of one of Harry’s friends and a recent student of Severus’ and both Severus’ and Harry’s human skin had been slipping so none of them looked quite human now. That could be quite disconcerting and alarming, even for a group as brash and hard headed as Dragon Handlers. On the other hand, few knew how to handle danger as a Dragon Handler.
There was a short and intense conversation before Mister Weasley and one of his colleagues, an older woman with many burns and scars on her face and arms, came up to them.
“You can really speak to the dragons?” she asked, without any kind of introduction.
“We can,” Severus answered.
“Yet another thing the books never told us about Alphas and Omegas,” she grumbled.
“Indeed,” Severus said, because they truly never had hinted at as much and it made him wonder how many surprises were still in wait for Harry and him.
“We would be criminally stupid to refuse help to keep all parties safe from this budding disaster,” the woman said. “We never wanted this and only said yes because if we did, we could at least try some safety measures that other Reservations might not even want to consider. Also, we didn’t have a choice. The Ministry controls our income. Well, our potential plans have all been negated at every turn. We wanted to bring some of the more mellow male dragons, and got told to bring nesting mothers! Then we again tried for some of the more experienced and calm dragons and races, and we got bloody told to bring first timers and a Horntail!” She spat on the ground. “We will welcome whatever advice or help you can give.”
“Let us inform the mother dragons why they are here, then we can plan together,” Severus said.
The woman’s eyes widened and looked from the close Fireball to Severus and back, before she nodded. “I guess you are telling me that they are far more than just beasts with a bit more intelligence than other beasts?”
Harry screeched in offence and Severus put an arm around his shoulders to both calm him down and hold him back. The woman stumbled back in shock, but Mister Weasley's eyes just widened a bit, and he opened his hands in front of himself.
“Mister Potter, we can’t speak with the dragons, no matter how much we want to. We have no way of knowing what they know and can do, and we judge them from that. After all, the word barbarian stems from the fact that people didn’t understand each other’s language and thus didn’t know what the other knew. We would very much welcome to be instructed otherwise.”
Harry just snarled, his mouth a maw full of needle-sharp teeth, but then he subsided, and he agreed to sit by Severus when Severus transfigured a handkerchief into a couch. Harry still should not stand for prolonged periods of time. Mister Weasley summoned a straight-backed chair, sat down on it with the back towards the couch and rested his arms on top of the back of the chair.
In short order it was agreed between the dragons and the Handlers, with mostly Severus as a translator, that the Handlers would transfigure stones into replicas of the eggs and that the dragons that did not perform during a Task, would look after the eggs of the one in the Task. They would all oversee both the transfigurations and the protection spells that would be cast over the real eggs to assure their absolute safety, even if they would not be moved anymore before they went home again. In turn for the safety of their eggs and some food delicacies that the dragons never had been able to ask for, the mother dragons agreed to put up a non-deadly show in the Task.
They were as ready for the First Task as they could be.
When the day came, Severus found Harry filled with a nervous energy that rivalled even the teenage Champions’. He was down in Severus’ quarters before breakfast and asked if Severus really was ready, if he really would be safe, if Severus really believed that the dragons would keep their side of the bargain and never go in for a kill. The questions continued until Severus went to the Head Table to eat his breakfast. He could feel Harry’s eyes on his back and he met those glowing green eyes every time he looked up from his food the whole meal. Nothing he said or did could calm Harry for more than a moment.
He had to be stupid not to realise that while Harry truly worried for him, a lot of the worry originated from the fact that Severus was the first adult, since his parents had died for him, to ever fight for Harry, his life and his happiness. No matter the fact that he had been a horrible bully in Harry’s first three years at Hogwarts. Harry was willing to forgive that because Severus had proved that he would never do something like that again, and because Severus let Harry be an actual teenager with only the general problems of teenagers everywhere. Or mostly only the general problems of teenagers everywhere. He was still Harry Potter and still a trouble magnet, hence the Tournament.
None of the Champions in the tent where they waited for the Task to begin, challenged Harry and Tonks when they came to keep Severus company. The Tournament managers and judges had left to oversee the Task and all the Champions had changed into their uniforms, with their special rune-covered garments underneath. All of them had also downed the two potions that would make them much more protected against flames. The dragons had promised to try not to aim their flames at the Champions during the Task, but better safe than sorry.
Severus was content with having chosen the Horntail and to go last. It was for the best, he was just a stand-in, let the real Champions show their skills first. His performance would be boring in comparison, he was sure. Mostly because he had made an agreement with the dragon that was chosen by him, that his solution would be boring. It would have been so, even without the agreement of the dragon, but now the dragon could pretend to be overcome instead of actually being overcome. He had brought the plans for all the Champions to the dragons, so when the dragons saw which Campion they would fight, they knew what would happen and how to react.
The dunderheaded Bagman ‘oh-ed’ and ‘ah-ed’ and shouted and cheered on all the Champions, but it never sounded like things went bad. That was a good sign.
When the whistle sounded for the fourth time, Severus gave the little figurine of the Horntail over to Harry, kissed his forehead, smiled at Tonks and let Tonks help him to pry Harry off him. He waited a moment to see if Harry’s human skin would slip off in distress, but Harry let Tonks move him out of the tent and towards the stands. Tonks nodded at Severus when it was clear that Harry was willing to move, and mouthed the word ‘hurry’, before wishing him good luck.
The Hungarian Horntail was much more dramatic than Severus thought anyone, much less a bloody big dragon, ought to be. She roared and bellowed and threatened and spewed flames towards him, without actually managing to hit him even once. Her tail crashed into the earth so hard that it shook beneath his feet, and her bout of flames reached high up into the sky.
He actually had to move quite a bit to get out of her range, as she herself did not stop moving, before he managed to cast the enormous Bubble Head Charm over her head and fill it with a spell that coloured the air in the bubble to a noxious green. Without the bargain with the dragons, that spell wouldn’t have been a colour changing spell, but a spell to actually knock someone out, even a dragon. A spell he had made himself during the war, inspired by Muggle war tactics. The dragon careened and stumbled around before she hit the ground hard. It was truly difficult not to roll his eyes at her dramatics, but he managed; she should have been on the stage. The more he had spoken to the dragons, the easier it had been to see that they were all young and still quite silly as young people, and beings, often are.
He went over to the nest and picked up the Golden Egg that was the goal for this Task and he had only been looked over by Poppy and been allowed to leave the Medical Tent again, to get his scores, when Harry assaulted him.
“That was scary!” Harry said into his chest. “I’m so happy that we were able to make a bargain with the dragons, because even knowing that we had that deal, it was bloody scary!”
Tonks, who again had followed Harry, nodded emphatically behind him. Severus hugged the boy close and gave Tonks a thin smile.
“It’s over now, and there will be no more dragons for any of us.”
“We hope!” Harry uttered.
Severus patted his hair and asked Tonks to go out and get his scores for him, because he was not going to force Harry to let go again and he was not going to let the whole world see Harry when he was this vulnerable. Tonks picked up the Golden Egg that he had lost hold off, smiled and patted his shoulder as she went out. The only reason why he cared to notice that he was in second place, was that Tonks had done him a favour when she went out in his stead, and that it would be impolite of him to not listen to her telling him his scores when she had done so.
The rest of the day was spent with Harry and Tonks in Severus’ quarters, relaxing and talking and eating an exquisite meal that Harry had asked his house elves to make for them. The day after his quarters were invaded by teenagers, Harry’s friends, and the other Champions, to celebrate that they all got through the Task relatively unharmed, and figure out if anyone had any idea what to do about the Egg. Severus had opened it once, the night before, and while Harry and he had heard the words behind the screeching, Tonks had held her hands over her ears and complained loudly at the infernal noise. Thus, Severus knew what kind of creature they were dealing with. He didn’t tell the Champion that, only that they would need to listen to the song in the correct element, which wasn’t air, and if they hadn’t figured it out in two weeks, to come and ask him about it. He wanted them to be prepared for the next Task, but they had volunteered for this and as such should be ready to do some work themselves.