All of the champions ended up staying the night in the hospital wing. Even those of them that had escaped more serious injury had fallen victim to Madam Pomfrey's belief that any injury, no matter how slight, needs a night in the hospital wing for observation if she can get away with it. Not that Harry was able to have a conversation with any of them, as the privacy screens they each had around their beds also had one way silencing charms on them that were meant to keep any emergencies or loud patients from disturbing the rest of any other patients, but also still let Madam Pomfrey hear any sounds of distress that a curtained-off patient might make.
What Harry did have was Hermione. After she had learned what Harry went through the last time he had needed his bones regrown, she had argued that just because Harry couldn't have a pain relief potion with the Skele-Gro didn't mean that he had to sit alone with nothing else to think about apart from how much it hurt. A distraction, even a non-energetic one, would help Harry get to sleep sooner and have a more restful night. This led to something that was a first for Harry, but something he should have expected from his adorable bookworm girlfriend. Hermione rushed back up to their dorms and came back a few minutes later with her copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book Harry had heard of but had never read. Hermione then seated herself next to his bed, opened the book to Chapter One, and started reading it out loud to him.
Harry had to admit that the experience was a lot better than the last time he had regrown the bones in his arm. The pain was the same, but with something else to focus on he was able to ignore it a lot easier. Because of this, as well as the fact that he had used a lot of magic on the dragon, he was able to fall asleep quite early.
When he awoke early the next day, Hermione was gone and his arm felt a lot better. Madam Pomfrey was already up and about checking on Cedric's burns, so he didn't have to wait long to be discharged. Harry checked his watch as he walked through the school corridors and felt it was early enough that he didn't think Ron or Hermione would have gone down to breakfast yet, so he made his way up to the common room and collapsed into one of the more comfortable chairs were he could see both sets of stairs that lead up to the dorms.
Surprisingly, it was Ron who came down first, and once he saw Harry he flopped down into the seat next to him. "You alright mate?" Ron asked, nodding to Harry's arm to indicate what he was asking about.
"Good as new." Harry showed off, flexing the arm to show it was working again.
"Good." His best friend grinned at him, but then fell silent. After about a minute of silence for the two of them, Ron finally broke it. "Listen Harry, you need to talk to Hermione." He sounded uneasy.
"Why, what happened?" Harry was a little worried now. Had he done something to annoy Hermione? Was she planning to break up with him? Was she arguing with Ron again? Was she getting too pushy with Ron and his homework?
"Once she got back from the hospital wing she was in tears, mate. It's seeing you hurt all the time. She is worried that one day soon you're not going to walk out to the hospital wing after another of your adventures." Ron didn't look at Harry as he said that, but Harry felt the words like a physical blow. Hermione was hurting and it was in part his fault. While he couldn't really be blamed for the dragon, there were plenty of things that had happened where he could have chosen better. Yes, some of the things they had done were important, but others (like transporting a baby dragon through the school in the middle of the night) were stupid - what was stopping Hagrid from taking the dragon himself? Also, agreeing to the damned wizards duel with Malfoy. That was two examples from just his first year. He briefly considered the injuries he got playing Quidditch, but decided that was different. Quidditch was a known risk, and while he was likely to break a few bones the chances of more than that were slim.
"What can I do?" Harry asked, hoping his friend would have some advice.
"Don't ask me mate, you know I'm not good at this type of thing. But Sirius and Charlus both said they would be here this afternoon to talk to you about stuff, so maybe you can ask them?" Ron suggested. Harry considered Ron's words; he agreed the redhead probably wasn't the best one to ask, but his suggestion to speak to his grandfather had merit. Grandfather Charlus was happily married for a long time, and if anyone would have advice on how to keep a lady happy it would be him.
It was another hour before Hermione appeared at the foot of the girls stairs, and in that time Harry had what felt like all of Gryffindor come up and congratulate him on his performance against the dragon. He was flattered by a lot of what was said, but some of it seemed to go too far; phrases like "amazingly powerful" and "unstoppable" didn't really fit him in his own mind. 'Bloody lucky git' seemed to fit much better. Though, Harry did admit to himself that he liked the title 'Dragon Slayer' that everyone seemed to now want to call him a lot more than 'The Boy-Who-Lived.'
As soon as Harry saw Hermione, he sprang across the room and pulled her into a hug. She seemed to melt into his arms, and when she looked up at him for a quick kiss he could see a few signs that she hadn't slept well. Harry could only guess, but given what Ron had said he wouldn't have been surprised to find Hermione had nightmares all night where the task yesterday had gone a lot worse. He thought about asking her but didn't want to push her eather so instead asked, "You ready to go down to breakfast?"
"Sure." Harry put his arm around her, holding her close and trying to reassure her that he was still here and that he wasn't going away. He called over to Ron that it was time to go down to breakfast, and their friend quickly caught up to them. On the way down to the Great Hall, they bumped into a few Ravenclaws, who like the Gryffindors seemed rather impressed by Harry taking down his dragon the day before. Some even asked him if he would be willing to teach them the spell he used, but he used the excuse that he would be too busy preparing for the next task to teach anyone anything. And neither Ron nor Hermione felt like volunteering that they were also able to do the spell.
As soon as Harry walked into the Great Hall, the sounds of everyone talking died down and people turned to stare at him. He sighed as he took a seat at the Gryffindor table. It looked like he was going to have to deal with the staring again. As he was eating his breakfast the morning post was delivered, and Harry was a little surprised to have an owl deliver him a copy of the Daily Prophet, considering he wasn't a subscriber. He understood as soon as he unrolled it and looked at the headline.
Boy-Who-Lived now Dragon Slayer!
Underneath that was a picture of Harry standing in front of the dragon, the tip of his wand glowing as he walked away from the carcass behind him. His new basilisk hide duelling robes added to the look. He didn't think he had at any point looked as badass as the picture was making him out to be, so he suspected that someone at the Prophet had charmed the photo to look more dramatic. He started to read the article.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is of no surprise to those of you who keep abreast of the happenings of our world that the first task of the Triwizard Tournament was yesterday. And as you have no doubt deduced by the title of this article, each of the four champions was matched up against a dragon. Now the first impression I had when I saw the dragons was I wonder how Mr. Potter will measure up to the older, more advanced students. At least, until I saw the dragon Mr. Potter was to face. This dragon was noticeably larger than any of the dragons the other champions had to face, and I made a note to look it up later.
I was able to confirm that the dragon was a Hungarian Horntail and was the only dragon involved that is classified as a 5X creature by the Ministry. That's right, my dear readers, the national treasure that is Harry Potter, the youngest champion by three years (half of the amount of Magical education) compared to all the other champions who entered that arena, was given a creature classified as a known wizard killer and impossible to train or domesticate. His fellow champions were only given 4X dragons, creatures considered dangerous and require special knowledge, and only trained wizards should attempt to handle them.
This disparity in dangers faced by the champions has called into question just how impartial and fair the tasks are. There are even rumours flying around that this is a deliberate attempt by Bartemius Crouch to kill young Mr. Potter, given that Mr. Potter's ties to Sirius Black, the man Bartemius Crouch sent to Azkaban without a trial.
Now all this isn't to say that the Boy-Who-Lived wasn't up to the challenge, especially as young Mr. Potter walked into the arena wearing what I since learned to be basilisk hide duelling robes made for him recently from the hide of a basilisk he killed. [A basilisk is also classified as a 5x dangerous creature]. Young Mr Potter then showed off an emergency power, talent, and ruthlessness by immediately setting out to kill his dragon. And he succeeded. Mr. Potter is now the only person in almost two centuries to slay a dragon in single combat.
The article went on to do a complete recap of each of the champions and how they went about retrieving their eggs, praising each champion for their efforts, and also went over the scores, taking the time to question Karkaroff's ability to judge such a competition.
-ϟϟϟ-
Charlus had spent the morning in the Ministry arguing Harry's claim on the dragon corps. Despite the law being clearly on Harry's side, the Ministry was determined to claim the beast to sell and recover the gold it had lost insuring the beast. Even threatening to take the matter before the Wizengamot hadn't been enough to get Bagman to relinquish their so-called claim on the dragon.
Luckily the Ministry wasn't the one holding the corpse. They had outsourced the job to the goblins, and goblins were sticklers for following laws and weren't too fond of the Ministry as well. Though Charlus had to admit, when the Ministry office for leasing with the goblins was part of the department for 'Control of Magical Creatures', then he could understand why the goblins could feel more than a little insulted. He had sent a letter to Gringotts explaining Harry's claim on the dragon and how he had stated it to the Director of Magical games and sports. The bank wouldn't just give Harry the dragon, but they wouldn't give it, or more accurately the profits from selling its parts, to the Ministry either. They would take great pleasure in forcing the Ministry to send a representative to an arbitration meeting where they could determine the true owner of the dragon.
Luckily, whoever it was who got to say what happened to the harvested materials didn't stop the rendering from being done. Sure, the Ministry wanted to sell it all and Harry wanted to keep some of it, but it didn't stop them breaking it down ready to sell off or move to storage. Hopefully the disagreement of ownership could be dealt with before the rendering was finished. If not, well, it's not like Harry needed it any time soon, and the longer it was kept out of the Ministry's hands the more it was going to hurt them. Charlus would just need to send a letter off to Gripsack - Anne Twist and inform them what was going on. He was seriously considering putting the duo on retainer with the amount of work Harry was generating for them.
-ϟϟϟ-
By lunch, most of the school had calmed down. There were still some elements that were too excited, Colin and Dennis Creevey were as always overly impressed by anything Harry. On the other hand, there was the section of the school population that was against Harry and as he tried to enjoy his lunch one of them came walking over.
"Hey Potter. You think you are something special, don't you? Well, just remember you got lucky. We all saw you running from the dragon like a coward. How did you get into Gryffindor when running away seems to be your go to option?" Malfoy said loud enough for his voice to carry through the hall.
Harry set down the sandwich he was eating next to his bowl of soup and looked over at the Slytherin. "Mauvaise-foi, you seem to not understand the true meaning of courage - not surprising from you. What does surprise me is your complete lack of cunning, a trait that all Slytherins are supposed to possess. How cunning can you be when your first instinct upon seeing someone whom you saw slay a dragon only yesterday is to try and provoke him? After all, you can't capitalise on any perceived advantage you could get, on the off chance you do somehow manage to provoke me, if you are too preoccupied spending the next month drinking your meals through a straw."
"You think I'm afraid of you, Potter? You're nothing. Just another half blood with delusions that you actually matter," Malfoy said while looking down his nose at harry.
"Why would I care if you're afraid of me? You act like these little verbal spats mean something to me when you are the one always seeking me out. Just go back to your lunch and leave us alone. It would make everyone happier," Harry said.
"Well, everyone but the rest of Slytherin, but you're their problem and not ours," Ron quipped at the end, causing a bunch of the people around them to laugh at the blond Slytherin who turned and walked off in a huff.
After lunch, Harry, Hermione, and Ron met up with Sirius and Charlus in the entrance hall and made their way up to the empty classroom they had been using. Once they were in grandfather Charlus turned to Harry and said, "First things first, I know I said it yesterday before Madam Pomfrey kicked us out, but I'm proud of you. You did amazingly well yesterday, and killing a dragon in single combat is the sort of thing they will be talking about for years. But now that the first task is over, there are things we need to talk about."
"Well that sounds ominous," Ron said as he and the other teens tried to work out if it was going to be good or bad news.
"The Ministry has decided to contest your right to the slain dragon's carcass. They have given it to the goblins to render and I have served them with notice that ownership of the harvested materials is contested. They will schedule a hearing at some point and you may well need to attend it, but given that the fact you slew the beast is national news you can probably get away with sending them a sworn statement saying that you claimed the dragon," Charlus told them.
"I'm not surprised Bagman is trying to claim the dragon, he always was the selfish type. I used to read about his antics in Quidditch Weekly," said Sirius. "And speaking of Quidditch Weekly, you need to remember you agreed to give them an interview once you finished the first task."
Harry had forgotten that, but Sirius was right, he had given his word. "Can you please set that up Sirius?" Harry asked.
"Nope pup. Setting up the appointment is well within your ability. I have the name of the bloke you need to send the letter to, here." Sirius dug around in the pocket of his robes for a second before pulling out a letter and handing it to Harry. "Try to schedule it during one of the Quidditch matches. You can then watch the match and answer questions at the same time," his godfather suggested.
"Now, getting back to more important topics. I have a final valuation for your basilisk from the rendering team. After taking the parts out you wanted to keep, you are looking at a little under seven hundred and sixty thousand galleons," Charlus told Harry.
The three teens' jaws dropped at the sum. Both Harry and Hermione quickly converted that into pound sterling in their heads as they were still more familiar with the mundane currency, and their minds boggled at the number they came up with. It was just a little under three point eight million pounds, a staggering fortune to them. A little nervous, Harry started asking his grandfather questions. "You said this would be my money, right, so that means I get to decide what to do with it?" He was obviously still overwhelmed by the amount of gold. It was "never needing to work a day in your life" money if you were careful.
At his grandfather's nod, Harry did some quick mental math. "I want to take a hundred and eighty thousand of that gold and use it to compensate the victims and the person who helped me go after it. So twenty thousand each to Mr. Filch for his cat, Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Penelope Clearwater, and Hermione. The same to any family of Sir Nick and Myrtle, and of course Ginny and Ron. Ginny was just as much of a victim as everyone else, and I couldn't have gotten down there and back without Ron's help." Harry half expected his grandfather to shout at him over the idea of wasting money, but he was just beaming a wide smile at Harry.
Hermione, however, seemed to have other ideas. "No Harry, you can't go wasting your money on me like that. It's too much, you should keep what you want to give me for your future. Twenty thousand galleons can buy you a house in some parts of the country. You shouldn't waste it on me."
Harry pulled Hermione into a hug to get her to stop rambling. If they were alone he might have given her mouth something else to do instead, but with his grandfather and godfather in the room Harry didn't feel anywhere near comfortable enough to try and pull that off. "Hermione, there is no way I could treat you any worse than all the other people who got petrified, you out of all of them deserve it more than any of them. You stood by me when everyone else thought I was some type of madman setting a monster loose on the students. You are the one who found the information on the basilisk. You deserve more than the others, but if I gave my girlfriend more then there would be an allegation of favouritism."
"But what about you and your future?" Hermione tried to insist.
"Did you miss the part where I'm keeping over half a million galleons? And don't forget that I will probably also have quite a bit of gold from the dragon, though I was thinking about having the hide turned into a cool coat and accessories. If Grandfather wants people to be intimidated by me killing a dragon, then casually wearing its skin everywhere seems to be the best way to get that done. Plus a long dragon leather coat will be really cool."
Ron was specifically keeping his mouth shut about the gold. Harry knew his friend well enough to know why, Ron didn't feel like he deserved it either but also didn't want to give up enough money that would be a major advantage to him and his sister when they finished school. But still, Harry turned to Ron and said, "And before you can even start. I never would have survived the Acromantula without you, and you had to deal with Lockhart. I say you earned every knut."
"I didn't say anything mate," Ron said, but the smile on his face said everything Harry needed to know.
"It's your gold Harry, if you want to donate some to the victims then i think it's a brilliant idea. Just remember that it's gonna take a while to sell the entire basilisk, if you want to get the most gold possible for it. So it's unlikely that you'll be sending out any gold any time soon, I would be thinking maybe over the summer. Now I have a lot more to talk to you about," Charlus said. "First is Snape. He is going to be informed in the next few days that his mastery is under review, so I want the three of you to keep out of his way. He has already shown he is not the most even tempered with the students, and I don't want him targeting you three in retaliation."
"Next is Dumbledore. I had it confirmed last week that Dumbledore is also under investigation and his suitability to work as an educator will be questioned. Some of his decisions in the last few years have been extremely risky. As the school's headmaster, his primary responsibility is the safety and well being of the students, and some of the things he has done are most definitely not in the interest of student safety. Hiding a magical artifact from a known criminal in a school, for instance, is absolutely too irresponsible a thing for a school headmaster to do."
Hermione chewed on her lip as she was incredibly nervous at the idea of going after Dumbledore. Ron however just whistled and said, "Damn Mr. Potter, you don't do anything by half, do you?"
"No, Mr. Weasley I don't, but please I have more to say. Harry, you know the book series that was using your name? Avalon Publishing has dug its heels in, and we are taking it before the Wizengamot in two weeks."
"Two weeks? That's not a lot of time to get ready," Harry said, sounding offended.
"Ah…the truth is I have known about this for a few weeks, but I didn't tell you before now because after we found out the first task was a dragon I didn't want to risk drawing your attention away from your training," Charlus admitted.
Harry didn't like that at first, it felt like his grandfather was manipulating him in the same way he had come to feel Dumbledore had been. Yet he also had to admit to himself that his grandfather had a point, he probably would have gotten distracted by the idea of the trial. Would he have let his training suffer? He doubted it, he was looking at a fight with a dragon after all. Yet at the same time, would he have taken the risk if he was in his grandfather's position, or would he have done the exact same thing? He honestly didn't know, and that was what was keeping him from feeling angry at his grandfather right then. "Tell me what's going on."
Charlus nodded and said, "Gripsack - Anne Twist is handling everything. You won't need to do anything, and for the most part all I need to do is sit at a table during the trial and let them do the talking. There really is nothing for us to do that hasn't already been done. There is some documentation both you and I need to sign next week, but that really is all."
They continued to talk for a bit about what they had all put off for the last few weeks while they had been focusing on preparing for the tournament, Before Sirius pulled the topic back to the main reason why they were there. "So pup, have you done any work on your egg yet?"
"No, I'm not even sure where it is right now," Harry admitted feeling a little sheepish. He had been so focused on getting his arm sorted out that he had forgotten about the egg.
"I have it, Harry," Hermione admitted as she started to dig into her ever-present school bag. "You left it in the hospital tent after the first task, so I grabbed it then. I…had a little trouble sleeping last night so I had a look at it. There are no marks at all on it, it's just a smooth egg that has a groove going around it as a hinge on one side, so it looks like it opens. I didn't want to open it in case there was something that would only happen once and I didn't want to risk Harry missing it." She pulled out the egg and held it up.
Harry took the egg and had a look at it. Hermione was right, apart from the groove where two pieces of metal had been fitted together and the small hinge that connected the two, there weren't any visible marks on the egg; it was just a smooth gold surface. The egg was soon passed around to everyone to see if they could see anything, but it eventually was passed back to Harry and they all encouraged him to open it.
Harry dug his nails into the thin groove and pulled the two parts of the egg apart, and immediately dropped it as he clamped his hands over his ears to shield them from the extremely loud screeching and wailing that came from inside the egg. Acting completely on instinct, Charlus whipped his wand towards the egg, and with a quick jabbing motion the noise cut off. Everyone let out a sigh of relief as they tried to get the ringing out of their ears.
"What the fuck was that?" Harry asked, only to have Charlus and Hermione admonish him for his use of the swear word in stereo. He picked up the egg and he could feel it vibrating slightly from the sound it was still making, even if none of them could hear it because of the silencing charm. As he picked it up, he noticed that the inside had a mark engraved on the inside of the egg. "Hey guys, look at this." He pointed out the mark to them. It was a small engraving of a simple equilateral triangle.
"It could be a rune of some type," Hermione suggested. "Unfortunately it's so basic that it could be from a few different rune sets. I will help you find out what it is." Harry smiled at her, knowing the rune was as good as found with Hermione helping him.
-ϟϟϟ-
Later that same evening, Harry was able to get Hermione alone so they could talk, and the two of them took a walk up to the Astronomy Tower. Due to the fact that it was just before curfew and the December cold had arrived a few days early, the tower was free of students except the two of them. Hermione had dug her way into Harry's cloak and was snuggled up to his side. She said it was to stay warm, but her hand also squeezing Harry's ass told him that it was at least in part more an excuse to get her hands on him. The fact that Hermione could easily cast a warming charm or her bluebell flames for warmth only confirmed his suspicions.
A part of Harry wanted to put off the conversation he was about to start, but he had talked with Grandfather Charlus earlier and the advice he received was to talk about it early rather than letting it build up.
"Hermione?"
"Hmm?"
"Ron told me you were upset last night when you returned from visiting me in the hospital wing." Harry pulled her in a little tighter as he said that trying to reassure her that everything was fine. "Uh… do you want to talk about it?"
"It's nothing Harry, I was just being silly." Hermione tried to brush it off.
"You know I was scared as well. Not in the hospital wing, I knew I would be fine by then, but during the task I was terrified. I wanted to be anywhere but in that arena, and when that dragon came after me I was sure that my luck had run out. It wasn't the idea of dying that got to me, it was never seeing Sirius or Grandfather or Ron again that scared me, and the idea of never seeing you again terrified me." Harry told her. "Grandfather told me earlier that part of being in a relationship was being open and honest with each other, and I didn't want you to think I wouldn't understand."
Hermione leaned in and kissed Harry on the cheek before saying. "Uncle Charlus is right, and yes I was afraid of you dying, but I knew what I was getting into when we agreed to give our relationship a try. Heck, we had just come out of another life-threatening situation the night before. But as much as being with you feels right, sometimes I just need to cry out the fear and frustration. Just promise me one thing, Harry."
"Anything," Harry said, and he meant it. Hermione wouldn't ask him to promise more that he was able to.
"Do your best to keep out of stuff like this in the future. I know it's not always something you have any control over, like the tournament, but I want you to do your best."
Harry, who had already made a similar promise to himself earlier that day, readily agreed to the promise. It wasn't long after that the two teens forgot everything else but each other, hands and tongues quickly got involved as the two ignored the stresses of the tournament and started to act more like the teenagers they were.