The rest of September passed in a blur for Harry and Hermione. They spent all of their time outside of classes in the Room of Requirement completing their homework, preparing for the tournament, and for Harry, learning to dance. They were both sitting on the couch in the library section that the room had provided when Winky popped in.
"Hello Winky." Harry and Hermione called at the same time to the tiny elf.
Winky gave a small curtsy and began speaking. "Good afternoon Sir and Miss. Winky has found out what the first task is from Professor Moody when he was talking with the Headmaster. Master Harry Potter has to get by a dragon and retrieve a golden egg." Winky was clearly agitated as she stood there wringing the hem of her apron in her hands.
"Dragons!" Hermione practically shouted. Standing up and beginning to pace around the room she began muttering under her breath about "Irresponsible adults." and "Insanely dangerous tournaments."
Coming out of his stupor, Harry knelt down in front of Winky and he gave her a hug. "Thank you very much Winky. You did a great job."
The surprised elf patted Harry on the back and gave a muttered "Thank you." before popping out of the Room of Requirement.
Getting up from his spot on the floor, Harry walked over to Hermione and pulled her into a hug. After a few moments of listening to her mumble about crazy wizards and their stupid tournaments, he spoke softly to her, "Hey, its okay. Now that we know what I need to do we can start focusing on getting that golden egg."
Hermione gave Harry's waist one last squeeze before she pulled back from the embrace and went over to her bag to retrieve the communication mirror. She called out "Remus Lupin." as she sat down next to Harry on the couch.
After a few seconds Remus' face appeared in the mirror and he said; "Hello Harry; Hermione." He turned his face to the side and called out "Sirius come here, Harry and Hermione are calling."
When Sirius had joined them, they both listened as Harry and Hermione explained the first task. It turned out that Remus was a veritable fount of knowledge when it came to dragons but in the end, it was a suggestion from Hermione that caused everyone to pause and look at her in bewilderment.
Getting a bit nervous Hermione cried out "What? Nowhere did the teachers mention anything about having to battle the dragon. You should summon the egg. That way you don't have to get too close to it."
Grinning like a lunatic Harry had a look of pride and joy on his face. "You are absolutely brilliant! Do you think that it will work?" Harry asked hopefully.
"I do, but in case that the egg is spelled against summoning we should come up with a back up plan." Hermione stated simply.
Remus and Sirius were both grinning at the pair of them and thinking to themselves that Hermione was really a lot brighter than they had guessed. The plan was so simple that most wizards would overlook it. After some deliberation between the four of them, they decided that if the original plan did not work Harry would summon his broom and use that to get by the dragon.
The last Friday of November brought forth a completely new batch of problems for Harry. Their Defense against the Dark Arts class was good because their instructor, Alastor Moody, was actually teaching them useful offensive and defensive hexes, charms, curses, and counter curses. However, today they were covering the three unforgivable curses. What no one had expected was that Moody would actually demonstrate the curses. He Crucio'd one spider into mindlessness and only stopped when Hermione cried out because it was affecting Neville so badly. Afterwards he demonstrated the killing curse on the poor arachnid. To top it all off he used the Imperious Curse to make another spider do what ever he wished. Then, to the absolute horror of the class, he informed them that he was going to place each of them under the curse so that they could feel the effects and to try to fight it off.
Harry was the only one in the entire class to throw off the spell. As they were leaving the class, he could not help but hear the mutterings of his year mates and he knew that before the end of the day the entire school would know what he had done. To make matters even worse Harry had spotted the Slytherins, and quite a few members of the rest of the houses, sporting "Potter Stinks" badges.
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