Wade finished his training and returned to school from Hogsmeade. He knocked twice on the Vanishing Cabinet, and the door slid open silently, letting in a stream of light from outside.
But it wasn't Zoe—the one Wade had arranged to open the door—who opened the door. Instead, it was Harry, who should have been asleep in the Gryffindor dormitory.
"You're finally back!" Harry blurted out before Wade could speak. "I've been waiting for you for over half an hour."
Wade closed the door of the Vanishing Cabinet behind him and asked, "What happened?"
Harry frowned and his knuckles went white from clenching his fists. The hem of his robe was stained with dirt, and there was a cobweb tangled in his hair.
"Dragons!" Harry said with a pale face. "Hagrid came to find us tonight. Since you weren't at school, he took me to see what's going to appear in the first task… Dragons!"
His voice was filled with despair. "We're finished, Wade… I saw it with my own eyes—even for adult wizards, it takes seven or eight of them just to barely restrain a dragon. The fire from its nostrils can shoot out forty feet!"
"Oh."
Wade replied casually, casting a quick Cleaning Charm on Harry, making him look far more presentable.
"Oh? Just an 'oh'?" Harry said incredulously. "Wade, are you so scared you've gone dumb?"
"Harry, if you'd studied the history of the Triwizard Tournament, you'd know that dragons aren't appearing for the first time. There have been creatures even more dangerous than dragons in the past."
Wade walked calmly to the table, sat down, grabbed a drink from the cupboard, and handed another to Harry, gesturing for him to sit as well.
Harry froze for a moment before asking, "What could possibly be worse than a dragon?"
"There are plenty. Take the Nundu, for example—lightning-fast, and its very breath is poisonous. It's said that it takes at least a hundred wizards working together to subdue one. Doesn't that sound a lot harder to deal with than a fire-breathing lizard?"
Wade took a few sips of hot water and continued: "Or the Chimera, equally dangerous. History records only one wizard who ever successfully killed a Chimera. And dragons? Most of them are now raised in captivity for potion ingredients."
Harry shuddered. "Nundus and Chimeras actually appeared in the tournament before? How did the champions even survive?"
"Oh, not a Chimera. But yes, they did use a Nundu once—one raised in captivity since it was young—to test a champion's abilities," Wade said lightly.
"And then what happened?" Harry asked nervously.
Wade countered, "Do you remember why the Triwizard Tournament was discontinued?"
"Because… too many people died…" Harry muttered.
"Exactly." Wade shrugged. "So compared to that, doesn't a dragon seem acceptable?"
Harry: "…"
Dead is still dead, isn't it?
Instead of feeling reassured, he only felt his life sink into deeper gloom.
"I don't think I'll live past next Tuesday…" Harry mumbled. "A dragon's scales and hide are steeped in ancient magic. Only the strongest spells can pierce through them. I don't think I can manage that."
"You're overthinking it. Do you really think the others will be capable of defeating a dragon either? The purpose of this task is to test our abilities, not send us to our deaths."
Wade said, "My guess is, when the time comes, we'll need to get past the dragon somehow—or retrieve something from it. In short, there'll definitely be tricks we can use."
Wade had a calm and composed expression on his face. That steady demeanor clearly rubbed off on Harry, even making him feel a little ashamed of his own fear.
"You're right, it must be like that… I think I'll go ask Sirius. He might know how to deal with a dragon."
Harry pulled open the Vanishing Cabinet and asked, "Wade, are you coming with me?"
Wade shook his head. "I already planned ahead for what to do if it turned out to be dragons. I don't need last-minute cramming."
"All right, then I'll be back tomorrow morning." Harry didn't press Wade for details about his strategy. He still decided to seek Sirius's advice.
"Harry?"
"Mm?" Harry, already with one foot inside the Vanishing Cabinet, turned back.
"The Summoning Charm is a very useful spell," Wade said with a smile.
Flying around taunting a dragon in midair might look cool, but that was Harry's style, not Wade's. He wasn't particularly good at Quidditch anyway.
"…All right, the Summoning Charm." Harry nodded somewhat absentmindedly, then slipped into the Vanishing Cabinet.
Wade stepped out of the Room of Requirement where the cabinet was kept and called softly, "Zoe?"
"Here!" came the answer at once, as the little elf appeared by his side.
"Harry went to Hogsmeade. Remember to help him open the cabinet tomorrow morning."
"Yes, sir," Zoe replied in her tiny voice.
Wade then made his way through the corridors, crossed to the other side of the castle, opened a window, and transformed into a peregrine falcon before taking flight.
He soared into the sky, circling the castle from afar. As he swept over the Forbidden Forest, he suddenly saw the pitch-black night flare with a burst of light, as if a giant bonfire had been lit in the distance.
With a beat of his wings, the falcon turned toward the glow—he wanted to see with his own eyes what kind of dragons the Ministry had brought in this time.
The place was already very far from the castle, and Wade wondered if it was even within the range of the castle's protective enchantments. As he drew closer, the deafening roars of dragons reached his ears, mingled with the shouting of people.
In a fairly open clearing, dozens of wizards were struggling to calm a group of dragons. Seven or eight Stunning Spells hit a black-scaled Hungarian Horntail at once; the massive beast opened its jaws wide before crashing heavily to the ground.
Several other dragons were already lying asleep in the field, each one as large as a mountain.
The falcon perched atop a towering pine tree with its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the scene.
There were more dragons here than in the original story, which was only natural—after all, the number of champions had multiplied. Still, it wasn't as many as thirty-three; it looked like only seven.
The black Hungarian Horntail, capable of breathing fire up to fifty feet, the very opponent Harry faced in the original;
The fiercely aggressive Chinese Fireball, the swift Swedish Short-Snout, and the relatively mild Welsh Green—all familiar from the original as well.
But now, three unexpected newcomers had joined the scene—
The Scottish Black, fiercely territorial, with jagged spines running down its back; The Romanian Longhorn, with its pair of golden horns; And the Ukrainian Ironbelly, largest of them all, with armor-like scales and unmatched bulk.
There weren't enough dragons for each champion to face one individually, and the rules of this tournament would clearly differ from the original. Still, as long as he knew the dragons' abilities, Wade could always figure out a way to deal with them.
He admired the sight of the slumbering dragons for a while. Seeing that no more were being brought in, he was about to return to the dormitory to sleep when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a stealthy movement in the forest.
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