The stands roared so fiercely it seemed the earth itself trembled. Cold November wind whipped the flags bearing the schools’ crests, yet the thousands of fevered spectators appeared oblivious to it.
Hermione forced her way through the dense crowd, elbows working with desperate energy as though her life depended on it. Her heart hammered in her throat, ears still ringing with the sickly-sweet voice of that *Daily Prophet* journalist — Rita Skeeter. The woman had ambushed her right outside the champions’ tent, probing whether Harry had cried inside or if his hands had shaken. It had taken every ounce of Hermione’s self-control not to curse her on the spot, and now she felt wound tight as a spring.
‘…and Fleur Delacour completes the task!’ Ludo Bagman’s magically amplified voice boomed across the stadium. ‘Brilliant use of sleeping charms, though I believe her skirt caught a bit of singe!’
‘So Fleur’s done,’ Hermione noted to herself, finally spotting Ron’s red hair in the sea of robes.
He stood right at the railing, pale as parchment, gripping the wood so hard his knuckles showed white. Beside him, arms folded and eyes fixed downward, stood Kieran.
‘I’m here!’ she gasped, squeezing between them. ‘How is it? How bad—’
‘You missed the French girl,’ Ron muttered without turning. His voice trembled. ‘The dragon fell asleep, but it snorted fire at the end. She got the egg. Diggory’s next.’
Hermione leant over the railing and immediately felt nausea rise in her throat.
The arena was a vast artificial stone crater strewn with boulders. Far below the stands, tiny figures of dragon-handlers were chaining a new monster — a grey-blue Swedish Short-Snout. The dragon roared, and a jet of blue flame burst from its maw, scorching the rocks.
‘Merlin…’ Hermione whispered. From this height the dragon looked enormous, yet she shuddered imagining standing on the same ground as it. ‘They’re under charms, aren’t they?’
‘Heavy sedation,’ Kieran nodded. He didn’t look frightened — rather intensely focused, like a surgeon before an operation. ‘Otherwise they might charge the spectators. Small comfort for the champion down there, though.’
A whistle blew. Cedric stepped into the arena.
Hermione watched through her fingers, squeezing her eyes shut again and again. It hurt physically to see Diggory dart between rocks, dodging fire. When he Transfigured a boulder into a dog to distract the beast, the stands roared approval.
‘Clever,’ Kieran assessed quietly. ‘Very clever.’
The dragon took the bait, but at the last moment, as Cedric seized the golden egg, it changed its mind. A wall of fire engulfed the boy.
The stands gasped as one.
‘Is he alive?!’ Hermione squealed, clutching Kieran’s arm.
‘Alive,’ Ron muttered from her other side. ‘Singed, looks like. There — he’s leaving.’
Cedric, smoking and limping, exited the arena to thunderous applause. The dragons changed. Now a red Chinese Fireball strained at its chains.
Krum emerged. Stooped, grim, resembling a large bird of prey. He didn’t run or hide. He simply hurled a spell straight into the monster’s face.
The dragon bellowed in pain, thrashing its head and trampling its own clutch.
‘Conjunctivitis Curse,’ Hermione identified automatically, though her thoughts were elsewhere. ‘Brutal.’
Krum slipped past the blinded beast, snatched the prize and departed as swiftly as he had arrived. The judges scored; the crowd cheered; Bagman commented on ‘bold tactics’ — but for Hermione it all blurred into noisy background.
All of it was merely prelude. The real nightmare began now.
Below, more dragon-handlers appeared. A dozen wizards struggled to restrain a gigantic black bulk covered in spikes. The creature’s spiked tail lashed the ground, shattering stone like nuts.
Hungarian Horntail. The most dangerous. The most aggressive.
Hermione gripped the cold wooden railing until her nails dug into the varnish. She was shaking. The broom plan now seemed pitiful and unreliable in the face of this killing machine. How could anyone outwit such a murder engine?
‘It’s huge,’ Ron whispered. His face had turned greenish. ‘Harry won’t manage. We’re idiots. We should have told him to refuse.’
‘Calm down, Weasley,’ Kieran said through clenched teeth, eyes never leaving the arena. ‘Panic’s too late now. Watch.’
‘And now…’ Bagman’s voice seemed quieter — or perhaps Hermione’s ears were blocked with tension. ‘Our fourth and youngest champion! Harry Potter!’
The entrance to the crater opened.
A tiny figure in school robes stepped onto the black gravel. From above Harry looked so small, so defenceless before the mountain of scales and muscle towering over him. The Horntail swung its spiked head towards him and exhaled a plume of smoke.
Hermione leant forward over the railing, forgetting to breathe. The whole world narrowed to one point below.
‘Come on, Harry,’ she whispered with her lips alone, pouring every scrap of hope into the words. ‘Just do it.’
Hermione watched the tiny figure of Harry raise his wand at the crater’s bottom. She knew he was shouting, though the wind and crowd roar drowned the words.
*Accio Firebolt!* she mentally screamed with him.
Harry lowered his wand and froze, staring skyward.
A second passed. Two. Ten.
Nothing happened. The sky remained empty, grey and indifferent.
The stands, expecting instant magic, began murmuring in confusion. A disappointed hum grew like a snowball.
‘Oh-ho-ho!’ Bagman’s voice rang across the stadium, tinged with obvious bewilderment. ‘It seems our young champion is having technical difficulties! Has he forgotten the spell from fright? Or has his wand stopped working?’
The discontented buzz of thousands of voices evidently became the final straw for the sensitive hearing of the dragon. The Horntail — until then merely lashing its tail in fury — suddenly snapped up its spiked head. Its vertical pupils narrowed, fixing on the only moving object in the crater — Harry.
The dragon opened its maw, and hellish fire kindled in its throat.
‘Harry!’ Hermione cried in horror, hands flying to her mouth.
But Harry didn’t freeze. Instead of fleeing he flicked his wand sharply — not at the dragon, but downward at the rocky ground beneath the beast’s paws.
A thunderous crack drowned the crowd’s roar.
*Depulso!* Hermione recognised the gesture. The very one they had drilled yesterday to exhaustion.
The massive stone slab under the Horntail’s forelegs split with a groan and sank. The dragon — already drawing breath for a fiery blast — lost footing. Its front half dropped; its head jerked; and the jet of roaring flame meant for Harry shot vertically into the sky, scorching clouds.
‘Yes!’ Kieran barked, slamming his fist against the wooden railing. ‘Good! Keep distance!’
‘Incredible!’ Bagman bellowed. ‘Did you see that? Potter’s decided to dismantle the arena stone by stone! The dragon’s thrown off balance!’
Harry didn’t waste the moment. While the beast scrabbled to regain footing, clawing at rock, he flicked his wand again. Several enormous boulders around the perimeter tore free. They didn’t fly like cannonballs but rolled heavily, inexorably across the ground, obeying the wizard’s will, forming a rough barricade between him and the monster.
Because the dragon thrashed, trying to right itself, eggs rolled from the clutch. The golden egg glinted in the dust, but the Horntail instantly covered it with a wing, hissing furiously.
‘What’s he doing?’ Bagman shouted. ‘It looks as though Hogwarts’ champion has taken up construction! He’s building a wall! A most unusual approach, ladies and gentlemen, but will it get him to the egg? So far he’s only buying time!’
Harry ducked behind the stone pile. He breathed hard, but his pale face kept turning skyward, anxiously scanning the horizon.
The Horntail finally regained balance. Enraged that its prey resisted, it charged the barricade. A swipe of its spiked tail shattered one boulder to rubble, but Harry had already rolled behind the next, rebuilding the wall with fresh slabs.
‘Where is it…’ Hermione whispered, feeling her heart skip beats. ‘Come on…’
And then she heard it.
A faint, rising whistle like a falling bomb. It grew louder, shriller, slicing the air.
‘Look out!’ someone yelled from the upper rows.
Hermione instinctively ducked. Right above their heads — narrowly missing scalps — a blurred streak flashed past. The slipstream tousled Hermione’s hair.
‘And here comes reinforcements!’ Bagman roared.
The broom dived into the crater. Harry saw it and stopped hiding. He broke from cover and ran — not away from the dragon, but towards it, to where the Firebolt hovered.
The Horntail, seeing its prey exposed, opened its jaws.
Harry leapt.
In one instant the clumsy small teenager on the ground became king of the air. His fingers closed on the broom handle; he swung a leg over — and vanished.
Where the boy had been remained only a blurred streak. Harry shot skyward like a rocket, escaping the jet of fire by a fraction of a second before it would have turned him to ash.
He banked sharply, forcing the dragon to crane its neck. The Horntail reared, roaring, exposing its clutch.
That was all Harry needed.
He entered a dive at such speed Hermione’s head spun. Past snapping jaws, past the spiked tail, straight to the ground.
‘He’ll crash!’ Ron screamed.
But Harry didn’t crash. At the last instant he pulled out of the dive; his hand darted down, snatching the golden egg; and he rocketed skyward again, leaving the furious, outwitted dragon below.
‘HE’S DONE IT!’ Bagman’s voice drowned in the deafening roar of the stands. ‘The fastest! The youngest! Incredible!’
Harry hovered high above the arena, clutching the egg and waving to the crowd. He was alive. He was whole.
The tension that had gripped Hermione for days vanished so suddenly her legs turned to water. She swayed and sank heavily onto the rough wooden bench, coloured spots swimming before her eyes.
Strong hands caught her at once, keeping her from striking the backrest.
‘Hey,’ Kieran’s voice sounded close to her ear, concerned and warm. ‘You all right? Breathe, Hermione. It’s over.’
She lifted her eyes to him, trying to focus. Kieran held her shoulders, searching her face. Beside them Ron was yelling something incoherent with joy, jumping up and down.
‘Yes…’ she whispered, feeling tears of relief stream down her cheeks.