And then, late at night, five students gathered in front of the Forbidden Forest, myself included, Ron Weasley. Hermione, Malfoy, Daphne Greengrass, and Pansy Parkinson were there as well.
"Why are Malfoy and the others here too…?"
"Elaina is a fellow Slytherin. You're the one who should explain why you're here despite being a Gryffindor."
"She's our friend too!"
"Should I teach you the phrase 'none of your business'?"
"Enough already, let's go."
As Hermione spoke with exasperation at our bickering, Pansy snapped back at her.
"Why is Granger trying to take charge here?"
"Oh? If you don't like it, feel free to go on ahead."
"Hey, all four of you, hurry up or I'm leaving you behind!"
While all this was going on, Daphne kept moving farther and farther ahead.
We hurried after her, and before long the surroundings were swallowed by pitch darkness. In the silence, sounds like the distant howling of wolves occasionally reached our ears. I had come here two years ago to meet Aragog, but it was still unbearably eerie.
After we had been walking in silence for a while, Malfoy muttered, as if he could no longer endure it.
"…I never thought I'd end up back in this forest again."
"Draco, we'll be all right, won't we?"
To Pansy, who looked anxious, Malfoy replied in a calm, whispering voice.
"You never know what might happen in the forest. That's the only thing we know…"
He was clearly trying to strike a pose with a line that sounded like something a seasoned hunter would say, but when you listened closely, it was completely empty. I had no idea why Pansy, standing beside him with a girlish look that said, "Oh, how wonderful…," found that appealing at all.
While I was thinking that, Malfoy suddenly spoke in a low, sharp voice.
"Get down!"
The next moment, a deafening roar echoed through the air.
"…What was that?"
The savage roar reminded me of Fluffy, the three-headed dog.
"L-let's go back!"
Pansy clung to Malfoy with tears in her eyes, and Daphne's face had gone stiff as well.
"Maybe… um, we should head back."
Unlike Hermione and me, who had grown used to monsters after dealing with trolls, three-headed dogs, acromantulas, basilisk, and werewolves, the three Slytherins were thoroughly terrified.
Pansy in particular looked as though she might burst into tears at any moment, her usual bravado nowhere to be seen, while Daphne and Malfoy seemed to be barely maintaining their composure by watching her.
Even so, Malfoy spoke quietly, his face pale.
"No, let's go on."
As we stared at him in surprise at this uncharacteristic remark, Malfoy lowered his eyes in embarrassment and offered an awkward excuse.
"Well, you see… if Elaina and Krum are there, we need to warn them about the danger."
"Since when did you become a good guy?"
He was basically unpleasant, but it seemed he at least possessed a minimal sense of camaraderie and ethics. If only he'd extend that to people outside Slytherin.
"Yeah… let's go after all."
Daphne nodded, and we cautiously moved through the trees. As we advanced while keeping our guard up, another roar rang out, and suddenly the forest lit up as if it had been bombed.
And then we saw it.
A dragon.
Five enormous dragons, each looking ferocious, were chained inside an enclosure surrounded by thick wooden barriers. With their necks stretched fifty feet into the air, their jaws gaped wide to bare terrifying fangs as they spewed pillars of flame into the dark night sky.
One silver-blue dragon with long, sharp horns was especially massive, fiercely threatening the dragon handlers on the ground. A green dragon with smooth scales writhed its entire body and stamped its feet. A red dragon that spat mushroom-shaped flames had fine golden spikes framing its face. A huge black dragon looked more lizard-like than the others, and the last one had pearlescent, iridescent scales and shimmering, multicolored eyes with no visible pupils.
Beside me, staring in stunned silence, Hermione gasped sharply.
"A Swedish Short-Snout, a Welsh Green, a Chinese Fireball, a Hungarian Horntail, and even an Australian–New Zealand Opaleye…"
As Hermione pointed them out one by one, Pansy said with exasperation,
"Granger, do you really need to get full marks on Care of Magical Creatures even at a time like this?"
Hermione blushed slightly, clearly not displeased. That was the face of someone happy about getting every answer right. I knew it.
"Hey, don't get shy now."
Seeing Hermione like that, Pansy couldn't help teasing her as if she were one of her Slytherin friends. A moment later, she looked startled, then turned away as if to cover it up. She really wasn't honest with herself.
When I looked back at Hermione, she was staring at the dragons, muttering to herself.
"Still, who on earth would bring dragons to a place like this…?"
Malfoy narrowed his eyes in exasperation.
"Why don't you use that brilliant brain of yours a little more? Who else could it be besides that barbaric gamekeeper, Hagrid?"
"But the motive—"
"Does he need a motive to love monsters?"
Despite wanting to deny it, an image sprang vividly to mind of Hagrid, eyes shining as he rubbed his cheek against a dragon. Given his past with Norbert, Aragog, and Blast-Ended Skrewts, Malfoy's theory that Hagrid was responsible was, by common sense, fairly convincing.
As I was thinking about how to argue back, support fire came from another direction.
"If it's a motive, maybe it's that. The first task!"
Daphne snapped her fingers as if she'd just had a revelation, prompting Pansy to grimace.
"You're joking, right? People would die."
But this was the Triwizard Tournament. And in fact, it had happened before.
"You're kidding… right?"
"Even Dumbledore wouldn't have the leisure to mobilize nearly forty dragon handlers as a joke."
Where Hermione was looking, about eight wizards per dragon were shouting as they tightened the chains they held. Thick leather bands were wrapped around the dragons' necks and legs, with chains attached to restrain them.
"That's…"
Looking closely, I spotted my brother Charlie among them.
"Good, good girl… it's all right, there's nothing to be afraid of."
Charlie carefully placed several enormous eggs, wrapped in blankets, near the dragon. When he removed the blankets, a particularly striking golden egg slipped in among the dragon eggs.
"What's Charlie doing?"
"It looks like he's mixing in a fake egg," Hermione said.
"That's probably the task."
"So they don't have to defeat the dragon?"
"Probably not. I think it's something like outwitting the dragon and taking the golden egg."
"Wow, how generous of them."
I tossed out a casual remark, but a different anxiety crept in. Having unintentionally learned the first task, it suddenly felt like staying here any longer would be a bad idea.
"Hey, isn't this enough? Maybe we should leave now—"
That was when it happened.
"Who's there!"
A sharp voice rang out from behind us. A figure approached through the darkness with a wand raised, a goatee coming into view. It was Karkaroff.
Then another voice followed.
"…What are you all doing in a place like this?"
Behind Karkaroff stood Elaina and Krum. Elaina pulled back the hood of her large robe, wearing an expression that was neither quite surprise nor quite exasperation.
"We were… no, what are you doing here?"
"Uh…"
Elaina looked at Krum, then at Karkaroff.
"Headmaster Karkaroff invited us to go moon-viewing."
"The moon…?"
I instinctively looked up at the sky. Malfoy and the others followed suit. With the trees covering everything, it was a night where you could barely see even the moonlight, let alone the moon itself.
"Isn't it a beautiful moon?"
Karkaroff went along with Elaina's sloppy tall tale. It seemed they had decided to make eye contact and agree that this was "the story." Still, both of their gazes were darting around, or rather, staring intently at the dragons.
So that was how it was.
"...…""...…""...…""...…"
As the general truth became clear, four icy stares slowly converged on Daphne.
"…What? Got a problem with that, huh?"
Daphne tried to bluff with a sudden, inexplicable delinquent persona. Pansy approached her with a smile, then took a deep breath and promptly began strangling Daphne.
"You idiot!"
"That hurts! Stop it, I'm gonna die!"
"Idiots don't learn unless they nearly die!"
Apparently, the rumor about Elaina and Krum having a secret rendezvous had just been a misunderstanding on the part of the noisy troublemaker right in front of us, Daphne Greengrass.
And the truth, as plain as day, was that for some unknown reason, Elaina and Karkaroff had simply teamed up to sneak a look together. That was a problem in its own way, though.
When pressed for details, it turned out Karkaroff had once been quite heavily indebted to Elaina's mother in the past. He refused to elaborate beyond that, but it was probably some sort of backroom deal.
After we explained why we had been there, Elaina looked utterly exasperated.
"So that's what this was about. An unbelievably trivial story…"
"I agree," I said.
Krum remained taciturnly silent, while Karkaroff put on an awkward, forced smile.
"Well, for young people your age, I suppose it feels like a major incident. In any case, it's quite late now. Go back to your dormitories and get into bed at once."
Just as Karkaroff was urging us to leave and wrapping things up, Hermione stepped forward, shattering the cordial mood.
"Ah, but I don't think cheating is acceptable."
Karkaroff froze, his smile still plastered on his face.
"…Young lady, listen carefully."
Speaking in a coaxing tone while rubbing his hands together, Karkaroff continued,
"If I were to inform Professor McGonagall that you were here, Gryffindor would suffer a severe loss of points."
"And if I told Mr. Bagman about you and Krum, that would be a serious problem too."
"Exactly. That's not something either of us wants, is it?"
"But the bigger problem would be on your side."
"That's where my proposal comes in."
Karkaroff raised his index finger as if making a suggestion.
"You will forget what you saw here. We will also forget. However, for some inexplicable reason, you accidentally let it slip to your boyfriend, Harry Potter."
He must have been taking Rita's article at face value. Seeing Hermione's strained expression, Karkaroff seemed more convinced than ever.
"If Potter hears it from his beloved girlfriend, he won't doubt it. The risk of him being seriously injured in the first task will be greatly reduced."
It wasn't a bad deal, was it? Faced with Karkaroff's words, Hermione could only nod reluctantly.
"Are you sure about this?"
After Karkaroff and Krum left, I asked. Hermione shrugged.
"We didn't really have a choice. Look who we were dealing with."
"Still, Karkaroff backed down more easily than I expected…"
Hermione snorted.
"He's underestimating Harry. He thinks there's no way Harry can last long against a dragon."
By normal reasoning, that was true. Even an adult wizard facing a dragon alone was practically committing suicide.
But…
Harry was about to fight that monster.
As a champion, he had to face a dragon all by himself. In the worst case, Harry could even die.
That's right…
My best friend was literally putting his life on the line in this tournament. Even if it didn't end in death, he could lose an arm or worse.
And yet, I…
"Ron!?"
By the time I realized it, I was already running.
"I have to tell him… I'm going to Harry!"
I could hear Elaina and the others saying something behind me, but my legs wouldn't stop. I had to tell Harry about the task as soon as possible.
My petty pride, or my best friend's life. There was no comparison.
Am I an idiot or what?
When I returned to the Gryffindor common room, Harry was reading a book by the fireplace. When he noticed me approaching, his surprised expression quickly hardened.
"…What do you want?"
"There's something important I need to tell you."
Harry looked like he was about to make a sarcastic remark, but seeing how pale I was, he must have sensed something was wrong. Without a word, he followed me up to the dormitory.
"Listen carefully, Harry. Your opponent is a dragon."
Harry frowned.
"Wait, what are you talking about? My dance partner?"
"No. The first task."
"I see. The first task is a dragon…"
At first, Harry nodded repeatedly with a vague "uh-huh, uh-huh" expression, but his movements gradually slowed until they stopped completely. The color drained from his face.
"…You're joking, right?"
As if he'd forgotten our arguments over the past few days, Harry asked in genuine disbelief.
"A dragon, you mean the one with wings that breathes fire? Like Norbert, but bigger?"
"Yeah. That kind of dragon."
His mind clearly reeling from the shock, all expression drained from Harry's face.
"…Is the tournament staff insane?"
"I think they are."
As Harry let out a dry laugh, I continued.
"There are five of them. One dragon per champion, and you have to outwit yours."
Harry stared at me intently.
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. I saw it myself."
"Then how do you know? We're not supposed to know…"
I hesitated over how to explain, then decided to be honest.
Daphne Greengrass's misinformation, going to the Forbidden Forest with Malfoy and the others to confirm it, everything.
"…Why are you telling me this?"
I looked at Harry in disbelief.
If Harry himself had seen those dragons with his own eyes, he would never have asked that. No matter how bad the fight between them had been, he would never let someone face a monster like that without preparation.
And more than anything else…
"I realized something."
I met Harry's eyes, having made up my mind.
"No matter who put your name into the Goblet, I think that person is trying to kill you."
It felt as though the past few days had simply melted away. Time rewound, and it was like we were meeting again right after Harry had been chosen as a champion.
"…So you finally noticed, huh? Took you long enough."
"Sorry. I should've realized sooner."
Silence fell between us. The fireplace crackled a few times, and then Harry muttered quietly.
"It's fine. Don't worry about it."
"But—"
"I said don't worry."
Harry shrugged, as if to say it couldn't be helped. I couldn't help relaxing too, and when I smiled, Harry smiled back and lightly patted my shoulder.
We didn't need any more words than that.
(End of chapter)
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