The first task
Albus Dumbledore had no idea what to expect from their fourth champion. The Diggory boy managed rather well, but his transfiguration was a bit sloppy and he took quite some fire damage. He definitely wouldn’t score first place here, but not last either. Delacour’s magical sleep was a smart idea, but Ludo was a very avid commentator and she hadn’t bothered to put up a silencing ward. Good plan, but flawed and horribly executed. Last place for sure. And Karkaroff’s star pupil had tried his best to temporarily incapacitate the dragon with a Conjunctivitis curse. Krum definitely had good aim and was quick. Very quick. But he was a professional seeker, so no real surprise. Dumbledore hadn’t expected anything else from the Tournament. The French were brilliant, but in comparison to Durmstrang they were much too theoretical to be the favourites in such a challenge. And Hogwarts… they were a nice balance between theory and practical application. With a more ruthless champion, instead of an honourable boy like Cedric Diggory, they would have top chances.
But now it was Harry’s turn. The wildcard, the unexpected champion. Everything could happen, from the boy’s death to him slaying the dragon and taking first place. That was unlikely though.
He looked around the audience and tried to find Harry Potter’s friends. The Weasley family was easy to spot, but Ronald and Ginny hadn’t been very close to Harry the past weeks - or so he heard. This meant that Miss Granger wasn’t sitting with them, and they had no idea of young Harry’s plans. The two young Weasleys did appear to be rather upset though, and Molly eyed them with frustration every now and then. Interesting. But he didn’t really care much about people's private lives. Unless their name was Harry Potter and they had to die for the world and its people to survive. Or it was meddling with things like making sure people forgot Sirius Black’s trial so Harry would stay at the Dursleys. Truth be told, he hadn’t known that Sirius was innocent, but he didn’t bother checking and made sure whatever the Potters had decided regarding potential guardians was ignored. Blood wards were strong and Petunia Dursley was bound to feel resentment and disgust regarding the young Potter child. He’d stay safe yet neglected until Hogwarts, and then Dumbledore would swoop in - by proxy though - and make Harry’s life better. He would be a perfect mentor figure and once Harry had to die, then maybe the boy would accept his verdict.
Honestly, it hadn’t been his greatest plan, but back then he thought it was logical. If Tom didn’t just kill Harry, it might be necessary to tell him (after all Horcruxes are destroyed) that he would have to walk to his death at Tom’s hand. And if Harry is a poor tormented soul, lonely and broken, with the only good things being the Wizarding World and Albus Dumbledore saving him, showing him something good, then he might just be so broken that he will do it. He isn’t worth anything either way, and he couldn’t possibly be so selfish to save his life, when instead he could save the only good thing in the world.
He hated that plan, but a living Horcrux had to die. And he, the great Albus Dumbledore, was the man to make the hard choice. He already had to defeat his beloved partner and imprison him permanently, he could make another hard choice. And now he was curious about what was about to happen here.
Harry stepped into the arena and was met with so much noise. The stadium was massive and there were so many visitors. It was loud. So loud. And after taking another step or two it got even louder.
No, it wasn’t the dragon, it was the audience. Nearly all recognised the gryphon on his armour, many recognised the armour itself, and almost just as many spotted a lot of other details. There were big projections of the task hovering in the air, and so the walnut wand with intricate carvings, the daggers and a rune-master belt were clearly visible. That was one hell of a statement.
Albus Dumbledore was stunned. No, not by a stunning spell, but by surprise. This shouldn’t be possible. Harry Potter should not have access nor even knowledge of these items. This… this was wrong. Maybe Remus or the bloody fool Sirius Black had done something. Or… then he saw Miss Granger cheering. Next to Longbottom, Bones and Amelia Bones. They didn’t appear surprised. Damn. This was completely out of control. Maybe something would be salvageable, maybe not. It was out of his hands now.
Then the dragon roared.
Harry didn’t flinch.
Oh no, instead he drew his wand and quickly cast several spells. Among them was a spell to mask his scent and an additional shield to defend himself from dragon fire. Yes, the armour tanked a lot, but the more protection the better. But there was not much time for any sort of further preparation, because the bloody huge beast lunged forward and tried to swipe Harry off the surface of the earth.
The Horntail was a vicious species, attacking with both flames and physical force, utilising the tail which gave it its name and its very big and sharp claws. For this dragon the plan had always been to move quickly, strike hard and fast and don’t hesitate to give a killing blow if needed. It was that sort of Dragon which would never give up killing you.
Harry quickly moved backwards to avoid the hit, a move he knew all his life. Quidditch and the recent training had improved his reaction time much since the schoolyard rounds of ‘Harry hunting’ and he’d already been fast back then. His second move was to toss a few small stones on the ground, close to the dragon’s face. They were the magical equivalent of a flashbang (Dudley and his computer games…) and only Harry having prepared for that saved him from losing his eyesight for several seconds. This time was wisely used to create more distance between him and the creature and conjure a few boulders of rocks all across the arena to hide behind.
Well, he didn’t actually conjure them, that was advanced stuff and he could only conjure relatively small things so far. A chair would probably be the upper limit of his skill at the moment (which already was fifth year material), but half a dozen boulders the size of Hagrid were way beyond his power levels. So what he did was to enlarge small stones he conjured up and spread them across the arena.
The judges were taken by surprise and neither of them had any protection against the light, so all they could perceive were the huge stones appearing out of nowhere and Potter being gone. It was clear that he was hiding, but both the audience and the dragon had no idea and looked around in confusion.
Albus Dumbledore scribbled down a few notes about Potter’s performance, including the rune stones, the conjuration and the proper application of masking charms. Smart. Very smart. He somehow doubted that Harry Potter had the raw energy for the conjuration at that point, so it was probably conjuring and enlarging. Good move. To be completely honest, for once Albus Dumbledore wasn’t unhappy about losing control because he hadn’t seen a truly surprising and delightful performance of magic in years. Yes, it completely messed with his plans but the first impression he got was that this would be a terrific show.
Harry took a deep breath. This was going to be complicated. He raised his wand and began drawing a rune scheme into the air. The glowing symbols made sense to only a few in the audience, and Hermione could observe several raised pairs of eyebrows among all the people in attendance. Harry was utilising Elder Futhark runes, the underlying language was a dialect that had long since died out, and the story he told with them was something close to the greek tale of Narciss. Like Henry had explained to them, the more detailed you wrote something, the stronger it worked. Many layered enchantments or wards actually told stories. Harry told a story of a dragon that got captivated by its own mirror image, but other than Narciss it didn’t fall in love but felt threatened by it. A giant predator that you can’t take your eyes off… a brilliant illusion.
He knew he didn’t have much time so he limited himself to five sentences, which should be enough. Sure, he never tried it out until now but theoretically it should work. And if that illusion wasn’t enough his newest backup plan would still work.
The text was done and Harry looked at the floating letters one last time before getting up from the ground and stepping out of the boulder’s shadow. The dragon noticed the movement immediately, even with the masked scent. It took a deep breath but Harry grinned, put his wand in its holster and snapped with his fingers while making eye contact with the Horntail.
Albus Dumbledore, a man who was gifted in magics few have ever dared to study and who had talents beyond measure, felt the enchantment getting activated immediately. The pull on the ambient magic was noticeable - to him at least. It was a magnificent feat and Harry Potter would surely be celebrated by his classmates all evening. The glowing words vanished and a mirrored image of the Horntail took their place. The real dragon immediately forgot all about its surroundings and its nest. Somehow the power of the enchantment overpowered the protectiveness of a nesting mother - for now at least.
The Horntail roared.
And Harry Potter was seen facepalming himself in the arena while carefully heading towards the nest. Dumbledore hadn’t yet understood what the young wizard had just realised.
Harry felt stupid. His bloody reflection didn’t make any sounds so his dragon illusion was silent. That was such a stupid mistake and would break the focus of the dragon. Unless…
He pulled out a blank runic stone and began etching a few simple runes on it. With professional tools this was almost as easy as drawing on paper. There, not complicated. He couldn’t really adjust the enchantment on the dragon, at least not with his current skill level and in such a stressful situation, but he could just create a recording stone that would save the next roar of the Horntail and replay it in sync. This would probably give him about forty five seconds - if he was lucky. Dragons were smart.
There, the Horntail roared and Harry recorded it before banishing the stone across the arena to where the illusion was located. Now, just one more rune stone with a notice-me-not enchantment (yes, it interfered with the enchantment field on his armour, especially the protection, but he could just toss the stone away the moment the illusion failed. Until then he was relatively safe from direct attacks), and he could begin walking to the nest.
The audience couldn’t believe it. Harry Potter just walked towards the nest with the eggs while the Hungarian Horntail faced down a mirror image of itself. The small mishap with the sounds of the illusion was quickly forgotten - most hadn’t even understood what happened, but it seemed like an impressive piece of magic. Even Karkaroff and Maxime were already complementing the boy’s success.
Harry Potter, bold and seemingly free of worries (that actually wasn’t the case though), strolled through the arena, eyeing the golden egg and repeatedly glancing back at the dragon. His left left hand held two more stones and the engraving tools were in his pocket in case anything went sideways.
He reached the nest without much trouble and took the golden egg while trying to avoid contact with the real eggs. Dragon mothers had a sort of telepathic connection to their eggs and would notice intruders - this would surely destroy the illusion. The issue was that the egg was heavy. Carrying that back through the arena was going to be an issue - unless he shrank it somehow. Or better, he could enchant his pocket with an extension charm. Wouldn’t have to be the fancy undetectable and probably illegal one, just big enough a space expansion (including some anti-weight runes and a field dampening magical effects of the stored objects to avoid a magical mess).
Hm. The armour was too resistant and it would lead to potential catastrophic failures of enchantments. No extended pockets then. So the next best option was to quickly conjure a pouch and go with a very basic Mesopotamian enchantment. Writing with chalk was the quickest and was considered to create temporary yet stable results. For fifteen minutes of an enlarged pouch this was more than fine enough.
Just as Harry pushed the golden egg into the rudimentary enchanted pouch, he accidentally touched one of the eggs. Barely, but nonetheless.
The nesting mother turned around quickly, shaking her head in confusion, attempting to remove the entirety of the illusion from her mind. It wasn’t easy for the dragon to concentrate again, but then the worst possible scenario happened. Upon turning around, its huge tail went right through the illusion and bashed into a boulder.
“Fuck.”
Harry adequately summarised the situation. The dragon had now realised that there was no enemy, that this was just an illusion, nothing corporeal. It roared.
He had to act quickly, so Harry tossed the first one of the rune stones towards the dragon and yelled the activation phrase. It was a variation of something Henry had invented, a rune set called Thor’s Hammer which would create a lot of lightning, striking the enemy. The original wasn’t entirely controllable and only wise to use if you’d toss the stone between enemies and there were no friends nearby because it just targeted life signs by proximity. Sure, it was only Harry and the dragon, with a good toss he could have done a lot of damage, but this was not his plan. His variation acted as a sort of magnet for lightning, instead of hitting enemies nearby the lightning would strike down into the stone.
The envisioned effect, a huge crater and a lot of debris hitting the dragon while disorienting it via the noise, worked perfectly. Harry had shielded himself simultaneously and then drew his wand, pointing at the dragon.
Albus Dumbledore had no idea what to expect next. His young student had the golden egg in his possession (very smart with the pouch by the way) and the powerful lightning strike took him by surprise. Quite a lot of magical energy. Harry Potter certainly made a spectacle. If only he were to cast some good wand-based magic too, then he could surely leave this arena with the most points.
And indeed, the boy drew his wand and… What?
“Bombarda!”
First off, that spell was beyond his age, very impressive. Secondly, what… oh. The dragon easily evaded the spell, but it then hit the boulder behind it, causing it to explode. The judges were able to see several cuts and open wounds along the dragon’s wing and belly. Very smart move by Potter.
Harry had hoped that this injury would slow down the dragon, but it didn’t. Horntails were little more than mindless beasts, even Newt Scamander agreed with that. Other dragon races were smarter, some could even communicate with Parselmouths, but the biggest predators like the Horntail, the Chinese Fireball or similar beasts like Nundus were not intelligent. They were violent and destructive.
And so the Horntail lunged forward and tried to attack Harry. Once more he evaded getting hit but his luck would run out soon, that was a given. Okay, so strike harder.
Inspired by what Tom Riddle had done in the Chamber of Secrets Harry began writing into the air with burning letters. Demon of the burning planes, protect me from this dragon! It wasn’t actually a demon, because there were no such things. Death was a real supernatural entity that certainly existed, but demons didn’t. Raising the dead, summoning ghosts… all that worked, but demons were actually fiction. What the spell did was to create a semi-sentient being made from flames that would defend him and attack the dragon. There were dozens of variations of this spell across many languages. Call it a demon, an atronach, an angel of heavenly fire, a spawn of Muspelheim… basically the same result, it came down to preference and language used.
The fiery creature appeared in a flash and leaped forward, punching the dragon hard. The creature would not manage to hold it off for long, but at least it would be fuelled by the dragon’s flames. It didn’t have an actual physical form and the dragon’s violent punches would go right through it, but this drained the magical construct's energy nonetheless… no one really knew why. There had to be some sort of physical binding, but whether the magical energy was like a force field containing the flames or whether the binding was on a molecular level or something completely different was unknown. Not many magicals utilised muggle physics. The fact was that the physical force slowly chipped away the magic keeping everything together. The Arithmancy was a bit unclear, simply due to many uncertain factors, but between three and five hits from a dragon should be the maximum durability. The dragon fire didn’t fuel the durability but only the power the fiery creature could utilise.
He couldn’t run. The dragon would focus on him immediately, so he slowly walked towards the exit, trying to stay out of its field of vision. Harry knew he didn’t have enough time as soon as he saw the dragon’s speed. Not unexpected but frustrating.
In this moment he knew that he had to choose a plan. His original strategy included a violent attack that could kill the dragon. He wouldn’t feel particularly bad, but it was still a nesting mother and he didn’t really desire getting another nickname. The boy-who-lived was annoying enough, he didn’t need the name Dragonslayer.
As alternative to the rune stones and memorised rune magics he had the very creative backup plan devised just moments before the task began. Oh and it was a good idea.
Okay, he saw that his fiery creature took a fourth hit… just a few seconds left, definitely under half a minute.
Albus Dumbledore watched Harry Potter’s summoned creature beat up a dragon, but this wouldn’t last for long. He was amazed… like everyone else. Even Igor had a delighted smile on his face and cheered. Death Eater or not, he was a skilled wizard who respected impressive magics.
They saw the young contestant pull a silver engraving pen out of his pocket and… well, to be honest, they couldn’t make out what he was doing. It didn’t look like a rune stone, but he was etching runes onto a small object. Dumbledore assumed the boy was going to kill the dragon - which, to be honest, the majority of smart wizards would do in such a situation. It was a Horntail after all. This would be unnecessary cruelty nonetheless, the challenge was to get past it, not kill it.
The flaming creature fell apart and the dragon roared. It looked across the arena and spotted Harry. But then the impossible happened and another dragon stormed towards the approaching Horntail.
Why would Harry use another illusion if the previous one had already failed?
Hermione Granger was asking herself the same question as the judges. Why? But she then noticed something no one else had yet. It made noises. No, not like the roar Harry had forgotten earlier, but stomping noises. This was no illusion.
And indeed it wasn’t. Harry assumed that the Horntail wouldn’t take the threat seriously, which made his plan even better. The small dragon figure he drew earlier was a beautiful piece of magic and made by a master of the craft. Many high-end toys in the wizarding world were like that and perfectly imitated a creature’s behaviour. That was why they usually had anti-enlargement enchantments on them, simply because it was dangerous. His great-grandfather had patented that rune scheme, so Harry immediately recognised it in the tent and knew how to circumvent it. Within seconds he disabled the anti-enlargement enchantments and the trait inhibitors (because they obviously tamed down the traits of the animals a bit), for him it wasn’t hard to do. He had learned that while Henry explained and demonstrated complex commercial runic enchantments. They had a very wild mini hippogriff toy running around for a while after that session until they caught it and Harry reactivated the runes. Quite funny.
What happened now was actually rather amusing. The real Horntail flinched for a second but then just kept running towards Harry… intending to run through the illusion. Obviously, this failed and the dragon got stopped pretty suddenly. Thank god magical toys were artificially strengthened. Honestly, probably a bit too much, the dragon looked like he ran into a massive wall and got a concussion. And what was the instinctual reaction of a dragon after an attack? Fight back.
Under great delight that his plan worked and the dragon would probably survive he jogged out of the arena. The moment he exited and officially ended the task he turned around, just to see “his” dragon knock out the Horntail.
He snapped his finger (honestly, just coolness, this simply was his usual activation phrase for the rune schemes) and the dragon shrunk back to toy size and seized his violent behaviour. One whispered Accio with a flick of his wand later and he pocketed the toy. He’d keep that one around.
Even before Hermione could come and hug him, and even before Albus Dumbledore could come and question him, Poppy Pomfrey snatched him and made him undergo a full exam before she determined that he was actually in perfect health. Cedric Diggory and Fleur Delacour didn’t look that well (nothing Pomfrey couldn’t fix in a few hours though) and hadn’t seen Harry’s performance, but Viktor Krum had and he was impressed. Very impressed. But instead of joining the mob that was certainly going to overwhelm Potter he just made eye contact with him and nodded with a smile on his face. Harry responded in a similar manner.
He saw Albus Dumbledore coming his way with a very troubled expression but before the old man could even get near, Harry was nearly tackled off his feet by Hermione. Gosh, this girl was adorable.
“You are mental, Harry. Brilliant, but mental. Oh, I am so glad that you are alive. And you did so great!”
She kissed him on his cheek - and blushed. Heat of the moment, you know.
The next person to congratulate him, even before Neville, was Amelia Bones. The Head of the DMLE had followed Hermione, Neville and her niece so she could shield Harry from Dumbledore.
“That was brilliant, Harry. Nicely done.”
“Thank you, Lady Bones. It means a lot coming from you.”
He then high-fived Neville with a grin and got a brief yet sincere hug from Susan, who had been just as scared and worried as Hermione. In the meantime Amelia Bones had words with Albus Dumbledore, who insisted on talking to Harry. Well, Amelia wasn’t too happy with the old man and sent him away with very clear words warning him of further manipulation. Bystanders would later report that she said “Give me one reason not to put you on trial later today, the Wizengamot is already scheduled to meet. You’ve been negligent, manipulative and outright cruel. Don’t even think that there is any way Harry will accept some bogus reason as to why you put him with his truly horrid relatives, left him ignorant and didn’t give him access - let alone inform him about what his family left behind. He didn’t know the first thing about the Noble and Most Ancient House of Potter or even his grandparents’ names. He is my ally and you will stay away from him. Don’t even try or I’ll ruin whatever of your legacy is left standing after today.”
That statement shut the Headmaster up and began to start rumours among students and adults. And it earned Amelia a hug from Harry. For a long time he didn’t have any adults standing up for him, now it seemed like all the adults were trying to outdo each other in being great and caring.
Before the judges announced the scores, Hermione gave Harry a brief summary of the other champions’ tactics and what she believed they would score. It turned out that she wasn’t wrong. Fleur Delacour was in last place with 27 points because while her plan was good, she failed massively. A silencing ward could have changed a lot for her. Diggory placed third with 38, good plan but too many injuries. Krum got 40 points, he performed pretty well but suffered a few scratches and took his time, because he had to curse the dragon multiple times.
Then it was Harry’s turn and - much to his surprise - he scored 48 points. Dumbledore, Crouch and Bagman literally applauded him for the brilliant performance (after explaining that he was indeed allowed to take all these items with him) in such a short time, but Karkaroff took one point because he felt Harry relied a bit too much on prepared runes instead of casting or engraving in the arena. One or two rune stones less and a few more impressive spells he surely knew and he would have gotten full marks. Madame Maxime also took one point because she felt using the toy dragon was a bit too easy an escape in the end, and while she respected how quickly he deactivated the rune scheme, she didn’t like it. But she stressed that not killing the dragon instead was the honourable thing to do, she just didn’t like his alternative.
Believe it or not, Hogwarts cheered for their second champion. No, most of the audience actually cheered for Harry. There were primarily pureblood parents and ministry officials in attendance, they obviously liked what they saw, a boy embracing his family’s roots. The students were completely losing it and many (the Weasley twins probably started it) jokingly bowed to Harry and called him "mighty wizard” and similar terms. Krum encouraged the Durmstrang students to cheer and yelled things that would later be translated to “cheer for the crazy little rune master, you bloody idiots! He damn well deserves it.” Even the French students cheered along. It was nice. For once they all lived the true spirit of the Tournament. Friendships and international cooperation.