Harry Potter: Don't touch

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***

It was time to choose his opponent. Bagman was untying a silk pouch.

- Ladies, please," he announced, offering the pouch to Fleur.

She put her hand inside and fumbled around. The fourteen champions watched her closely. There was a mask of intense excitement on Fleur Delacour's face, bordering on horror, which increased as she studied the inside of the pouch.

- Don't try to identify your opponent by touch, it's forbidden, pull out the first one you see! - Bagman hurried the champion.

It was amazing how he managed to make remarks to the champions with a happy face. Fleur heeded the warning and pulled out her hand, which contained a tiny green dragon with the number seven tag around its neck. Upon seeing her opponent, Delacourt turned even paler and immediately went to the other end of the tent. It looked like she was crying there.

Harry understood her completely: fighting a dragon as a first trial was probably the hardest thing to think of. Potter himself wasn't too sure how he himself would have reacted if he had pulled a dragon out of the pouch. Probably the same way.

The second choice was the kid from Durmstrang, the one with the tame bear. He got a red dragon with the number fifteen.

- Fucking bitch! - commented on this choice Granny.

When Cedric Diggory pulled out the blue-grey dragon number one, Harry had some misgivings:

- Mr Bagman, it's not just dragons in there, is it?

- No, Harry, just dragons," Bagman said with a happy smile. - 'All champions should be on equal footing.

- But you said that each one would put down his hand in turn and get the one that fate sent him!

- Yes, that's right, everyone has a different kind of dragon. Mr Diggory's is a Swedish blunt, Granny's is a Chinese fireball, and Delacourt's is a Welsh green. The dragon has a queue number around its neck.

It was now that Harry realised the scale of the trouble he was in. A dragon! He would be fighting a huge fucking dragon? What was he doing in the middle of nowhere? Why did he even bother with the Tournament? How's he gonna handle a dragon in his fourth year? They're breathing fire!

The choice of opponents was in full swing. Fred Weasley had got the Hungarian Tail with the number two. Finch-Fletchley got an Estonian white with the number six. George - a Siberian Black with the number nine.

Finally it was Potter's turn. Apart from him, George Hypotenuse and Evet Roux were not drawn. There were three free numbers too: three, thirteen and fourteen. Harry would prefer to perform as late as possible - maybe he'd have time to work something out. He slipped his hand into the bag and quickly felt the three remaining dragons, they were similar in feel, except one was slightly smaller. That was the one Potter pulled out.

- A Norwegian humpback. Number three.

Harry took the dragon and quickly stepped away from Bagman. Three. He had very little time to strategise. He needed to come up with something right away! However, no brilliant ideas appeared.

- Now that you've sorted out your opponents, I'll leave you to it. I'm also the commentator today. Mr Diggory, on the whistle, you will enter the paddock first, understood? Next up is Fred Weasley, I think you can handle that, don't you? Harry, can I have a word?

- Yes, I can," Potter said hopefully. Perhaps Mr Bagman had come up with an ingenious scheme where he wouldn't have to fight against a dragon.

Potter followed Bagman out of the tent. He stepped behind the trees and addressed him with fatherly concern in his voice:

- 'How are you, Harry? Is there anything I can do to help you?

- Of course! - Harry rejoiced. He had not expected any help from this side. - What I'm really interested in right now is how can I defeat a dragon without getting fried?

- I can give you some tips," Bagman lowered his voice conspiratorially. - A dragon's weakness is its eyes, but a blind dragon is a fierce dragon, and if you want to take a chance, you can try to blind it. I would advise you to outwit the dragon," Bagman lowered his voice to almost a whisper. - The most appropriate tactic would be to transfigure a living creature and distract the dragon. More...

A whistle sounded.

- God! I've got to run! 'Transfigure something living,' Bagman sprang to his feet and hurried away.

When Potter returned to the tent, the atmosphere was terrible. Cedric was gone, and Juliette Laurent and Fleur Delacourt had wet eyes. Even the Weasley twins were dejected.

- Do you want to switch? No-one can tell us apart anyway. If you go second instead of me, no one will notice," Fred suggested.

- No, I'm fine in ninth," George disagreed.

Justin felt more or less normal. He was sitting on the floor next to Anton Nana, wrinkling his nose and drinking some clear liquid from a glass. Noticing Potter's return, he stood up.

- Harry, I'd like you to meet Anton Gran. Anton, this is Harry Potter," Finch-Fletchley introduced them.

- Nice to meet you," Harry sat down next to Justin.

- Would you like a vodka? - Anton offered.

- No," Harry shook his head. - I wouldn't recommend it.

- It's just for courage," Finch-Fletchley excused himself. - We've got a battle with a dragon coming up, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a drink. As it is, I wouldn't drink vodka.

After these words Anton stared at him in surprise. Obviously, he was amazed by the use of the phrase "didn't drink" and the word "vodka" in the same sentence.

- He's from Russia," Justin whispered to Potter.

Harry looked back at Nana. He was completely wrapped up in his down jacket and drinking vodka straight from the neck of the bottle. Behind him, a bear was peering out from under the tent.

- I've already figured it out," Harry said and retreated deep into himself. He needed to work on tactics to defeat the dragon, not get distracted by bullshit.

- Listen, is it normal that we can't hear the spectators or the commentators? - Finch-Fletchley asked.

- Justin, don't distract me!

* * *

Professor McGonagall came out and announced that Diggory had succeeded in grabbing the golden egg. Five minutes later, the whistle blew a second time. Fred Weasley went to fight the dragon.

Fred fought the dragon for about twice as long as Diggory. Soon McGonagall reappeared in the tent and notified that Fred Weasley had failed and was unable to get hold of the golden egg. And so the whistle sounded for the third time.

Harry stepped out of the tent and reached the corral. At the other end was his rival, a huge dragon, black eyes staring at Potter: a scaly tail like a lizard, an elongated muzzle with a huge neck. Harry stared at the dragon, and the dragon stared back at him. A moment later Potter was already hiding behind a rock.

There Harry sat for about five minutes. He pondered. The onlookers were not thrilled with such actions and expressed their outrage.

- Hey, Harry Potter, fight! - shouted someone from the lowest bleachers.

- You fight," Potter shouted back. - You go up against the dragon, and I'll use the wait-and-see tactic.

The wait-and-see tactic was to sit behind cover, hoping the dragon would die of old age. After a couple more minutes, Harry gave up on that tactic and finally came out of hiding. He had a thousand and one ideas on how he should try to get hold of the egg.

- Accio, the golden egg! - Harry exclaimed.

Nothing had happened. Too bad, and it would have worked out so easily. Minus plan A. Harry didn't get upset at the failure of the very first attempt. He had known from the beginning that it was unlikely that those who had devised the challenge would not have allowed the possibility of someone taking advantage of the tantalising charms.

- Sleep! - Potter pointed his wand at the dragon.

The dragon didn't care. Minus plan B. Time to take Bagman's advice.

- Serpensortia! - a snake emerged from Potter's wand.

- Go left, I'll go right," Potter hissed as quietly as possible. - Try to distract the dragon, okay?

Once the snake got a little closer to the dragon, it was immediately incensed. Norwegian humpbacks could exhale fire very far. This is all very bad. Minus Plan B. Bagman's advice didn't work, but then there was Lupin, what was he saying? Use your powers?

- Aktio Nimbus 2000! - Harry exclaimed.

As the broom flew, Potter looked closely at the dragon. Who did he remind him of? A snake, perhaps? I wonder if dragons can't be related to snakes? And if they can, do they speak the snake language?

Potter took a few steps closer to the dragon.

- Hey, let's be friends! - hissed Harry quietly, hoping he couldn't be heard from the podium. - I wish you no harm.

Seeing the man approaching him, the dragon turned away in the opposite direction. I wonder why? Does that mean he understood the words and agrees to be friends? Or was he simply bored of trying to set fire to a distant target and decided to ignore the petty intruder?

As Harry approached the spot where the snake had died, the dragon's intentions became clear. It was a trap! The Norwegian humpback turned sharply and breathed fire.

- Spanjifai! - Harry quickly exclaimed. He urgently needed to retreat.

The spell began to push him out of range of the dragon flames, but with insufficient speed, the dragon flames were approaching faster. The dragon was very far away, he should have let Potter get closer and his flame would barely reach where Harry had been during Spangifire's action, but it would still get there, just a little, but it would get there. It wouldn't burn it, of course, but it would almost certainly set the mantle on fire. There had to be some way to repel the dragon's flames!

- Hydralis! - Potter pointed his wand at the dragon fire in flight.

The Hydralis spell was supposed to extinguish any fire of magical origin. However, the dragon flames didn't care deeply about that. The fire coming from the dragon's mouth had no magical origin. After Spangifaya, Potter was hit hard on landing on the rock he was hiding behind. Only his left arm was injured, thankfully, but still quite seriously.

"Doesn't seem to be a fracture, as the arm was moving - more like a sprain."

Potter examined the damage to his arm and stood up. He felt a searing pain around his heel and only then discovered that he was burning up. Fighting the urge to panic, Harry recalled all the fire-saving spells he had learnt.

- Aqua Eructo! - no effect.

For some reason, the fire spell didn't count the dragon fire on his robes as a fire. The urge to panic grew stronger.

- Fontis! - Water spray flew out of Potter's wand, but once it touched the flames, it evaporated.

Harder still.

- Reflecto! - no effect. The fire was still burning and had already spread to the top of his robes, which slowly began to melt, the pain becoming almost unbearable.

- Fuck! Devastatio!

Now that helped. About time. The fire didn't disappear, but the robe stopped melting and the pain disappeared, not completely, of course, the burn was still there, but compared to the events of Potter's childhood this burn wasn't even worth mentioning.

Potter didn't know how long the Devastatio spell lasted. When he studied this spell, he was afraid to experiment and didn't even properly test the spells work. So Devastatio should have been renewed at least every three minutes, just in case. How to put out the fire was also a question. It didn't hurt, but it wasn't extinguished like a normal flame. That's a problem.

Still, if one applied Devastatio every couple of minutes, one could avoid the negative effects of the fire. Except for the psychological discomfort, that one did nothing, and psychological discomfort could be controlled. Potter examined his robes and mentally thanked Madam Malkin profusely. She knew how to make clothes, there were no holes anywhere, just blackening, which didn't bother the boy much. If the robe burned completely, Harry would have a serious problem, he didn't know how to transfigure a new robe.

- Trickster..." Harry looked at the dragon. - Moody would have approved of your stunt with ostentatious indifference.

To think Potter had been tricked by a dragon. The dragon couldn't hear Potter's words, but it could obviously detect the movement of his lips, and as if in response, it let flames shoot from its throat, which predictably didn't reach Harry.

Plan D had failed. Apparently dragons were not related to snakes, or this dragon just didn't learn the language. There was no way to negotiate with the Norwegian Humpback, he had to be defeated. But how?

"Okay, it's not all lost yet," Potter encouraged himself. - I still have options."

Just then, his Nimbus 2000 flew into the paddock.