Chapter 9 - 9 Toying with Dragons

The morning of the first task finally came around and breakfast was filled with conversations and bets. The redhead Harry played chess with said his older brother worked with dragons and sent him a letter that four dragons were being sent to Hogwarts. Harry wondered how many older brothers the boy had.

This did at least clue Harry in that the first task involved dragons which gave him time to prepare a few plans.

The only interesting thing to happen since Harry's Basilisk encounter was the edition of the newspaper that had Harry's interview. Luckily Harry's lies had been strange enough for the woman to not change much except for some heavy exaggeration on Harry's emotional state.

The entire article had been mostly about Harry as, officially at least, that was the first interview ever obtained for Harry Potter. It included details mentioned about Harry's supposed life before and hinted that Harry mentioned that his Godfather was both responsible for Harry's vanishing for a year and his entry into the tournament. However it only gave vague clues as to the identity of said godfather.

It also included several paragraphs of quotes which Harry thought impressive as he only gave four lines of dialog. Harry at least appreciated that those lines were in fact included.

The story at least went in the direction Harry intended. It gave an outline of a young child way over his head with the weight of the wizarding world crashing down on his shoulders.

When questioned about the story Harry would laugh and tell everyone he'd never met the woman though he appreciated her imagination. Some had doubts but when Harry mentioned that his godfather was Sirius Black and that he was in Azkaban, no one took the article seriously anymore.

Several students, especially that bleach blond slytherin Snape seemed to treat as royalty, attempted to insult Harry or demean him on several encounters. Harry would simply ask if any of their parents would contribute their own funds to Harry's funeral and what they intended to wear and if they were going to get white lilies or something else.

When Harry didn't bother denying that he was going to die, they didn't really have much more to work with. That and the fact that the first year blond, Mofo? Yeah, Mofo was squeamish so when Harry started describing the possible gruesome ends he was likely to face with a flat, emotionless tone, the blond would usually back away and find somewhere to heave into a bucket. Harry wondered how many purebloods would retain their sanity if forced to watch a day or two of television. Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors anyone?

The classes of the second half of the day had been cancelled and everyone was waiting at the Great Hall. McGonagall later showed up and said Harry was due in the stadium for the first task. Harry nodded and said to the Great Hall, "We who are about to die, salute you!"

Harry wondered if defeating a dragon would be easier or harder than slaying a basilisk, but since Dragons weren't artificially created creatures with such bizarre weaknesses, Harry figured the dragon would be harder.

Harry was taken to a tent near the stadium that had been set up over the last three weeks.

Within the tent Harry met his three fellow champions and Ludo Bagman who explained their first task was to get a golden egg and they would have to face a 'thing' which would be decided by pulling it out of a bag.

Snatching an egg from a nesting dragon was not the worst case scenario Harry had in mind but it really wasn't that far off. It was not however impossible if he used a few tricks and showed off a little of his skill.

Suddenly Harry had a really, really stupid idea which caused an unstoppable grin to appear on his face.

*Ping*

[Warning, taking items out of the inventory during a task constitutes cheating.

Taking items other than a wand into the first task constitutes cheating.

Cheating will cause Goblet of Fire Perk to change to Broken Contract Perk.]

It seemed the system thought his idea was no good. What about...

Harry thought of a slight alteration to his really stupid idea. No warning popped up this time. The plan wasn't all that different, it just required him to use the summoning charm. It would reveal he could use a fourth year spell, but Harry doubted that would be what people paid attention to once Harry was done.

The tent itself was not monitored so Harry snuck out and took all the items he needed out of his inventory and set them near the tent where no one would notice them.

The open area had various levels of terrain and just on the other side of a rock was Harry's dragon. The exotic energy Harry could sense off the thing greatly eclipsed the basilisk which answered his question from earlier. Then again it could have been that the basilisk was weakened after a few centuries of hibernation so comparing the two might not be fair.

In either case Harry found a place to hide and watched the dragon through his senses. Luckily the dragon wasn't investigating him. Harry was using the masking technique he usually used to prevent his exotic energy from destroying electronics which basically meant his magic wasn't leaking. Harry's various libraries all told him dragons could sense magic for no other reason than the fact that dragons preferred to eat food that contained magic.

The hard thing however was that the dragon would sense when he cast one of the only two spells he was going to use as the masking technique couldn't be used while casting magic.

"Accio Controller," he called out.

The black controller Harry set outside the tent launched off the ground and flew towards the stadium and into Harry's hand.

Harry prepared himself for the dragon's inevitable attention.

Which never came. Harry suddenly remembered that for some reason his magic was invisible. He still didn't know why. Something to find out later. Even when Harry fully removed the masking technique the Dragon's attention didn't turn to his direction.

A number of the audience was impressed that Harry used the summoning charm but perhaps a dozen or less of the audience had any idea what he had summoned.

The remote control was not a simple store bought one, but one Harry built and designed himself using a kit. Several kits actually. It controlled not one, but seven different heavy duty electric helicopters.

For a few minutes nothing happened. The dragon's chain was long enough for it to reach half the arena near the eggs but unless attracted elsewhere it wouldn't leave the area close to the nest.

Suddenly a whirring sound approached and six different dog sized RC Helicopters flew into the arena. Each had two shopping bag sized sacks strapped to them

A seventh Helicopter flew over from a different side of the stadium. This was Harry's special one which was only cat sized and ran silent. None of them had more than a single spell's worth of magic, so though the dragon heard them approach, wasn't too interested in them.

The seventh one came to Harry who cast his second spell on a sponge tied to a long string to the helicopter. The sticking spell.

Harry piloted it back into the air and had the other six approach the dragon in formation from a few different directions. The dragon was getting annoyed and breathed fire at one which promptly exploded with a loud bang.

That got the dragon's attention. Though it was just the flour Harry stuffed in the sacks that flash fired, it made the Dragon classify the flying objects as things which couldn't get close to its nest.

The helicopters' smooth hovering ended at that point and they started moving around very fast left and right. One flew right at the egg batch which earned the dragon's fury. The hungarian horntail was not known as one of the nastiest dragons around without reason. The dragon swung its tail at the chopper but the mechanical toy swerved in a spiral and dodged the strike. The dragon's ire had reached its limit and it jumped at the helicopter and crushed it with its jaws.

The four remaining helicopters the dragon could see were flying around and two charged at the dragon thus challenging its authority. The dragon leapt away from the nest to destroy the remaining helicopters giving Harry the chance he needed now that its attention was away from the eggs.

While simultaneously flying his four distractions around the arena, Harry flew the silent chopper above the nest and carefully lowered the sponge with the sticking charm on a string down. The area of the nest was enclosed so Harry didn't have to deal with any wind so it was basically a very complicated and moderately dead claw game.

The sponge landed on the golden egg and Harry rose the helicopter into the air, lifting the egg with it causing Harry to silently thank the heavens the egg didn't seem to be that heavy. The reason Harry was able to aim so well was his liberal use of pausing. He'd pause, walk over as close to the egg group as he could and check the accuracy of the sponge before unpausing and making an adjustment.

The silent chopper delivered the egg to Harry who took the lighter than he thought egg off the sponge and flew the very expensive toy back into the air. Harry then flew all the remaining helicopters at the dragon in a group and charged them forward to their doom. Seeing the whole flock line up, the dragon let loose a storm of flame turning the entire group into ashes with an impressive explosion.

Harry quietly took the egg and his controller and returned to the exit. Each of those toys cost several hundred pounds but it was certainly worth it. The man at the gate saw Harry with the egg and looked like he'd swallowed a fly. Harry figured the man didn't expect to see Harry return.

Harry had to clear his throat to get the stunned man to register that he was supposed to open the gate and let Harry out of the arena.

The announcer eventually realized the golden egg was missing from the nest and when he called it out the audience exploded into a frenzy. Very few people appreciated what Harry had done and plenty of them had no idea he used muggle toys to do it.

A minute or so later McGonagall showed up only now noticing Harry had already left and gotten his egg.

"Mr. Potter, are you alright? What were those things?"

She was more than a little relieved that not only was Harry not dead, he didn't have a single injury despite getting the most vicious dragon.

Harry pointed at his controller and said, "I've spent the last few weeks practicing the summoning charm and summoned this muggle toy," he showed the controller, "that was able to use muggle means to control the other flying muggle toys."

"Wouldn't that be against the rules?" She asked worriedly. If Harry cheated, he would face the consequences.

Harry shook his head and said, "Nope, the rules said I can't bring anything but a wand into the task. There is no rule against summoning outside tools and using things outside the arena."

Harry used a levitation charm at a nearby chair to pick it up and set it down to prove his magic wasn't affected.

Mr. Bagman showed up a moment later and repeated McGonagall's question, "Mr. Potter, can I ask what you did? I seem to have missed it."

Harry explained once more, "I used magic to summon some complicated muggle toys and used them to distract the dragon while I used another muggle toy to retrieve the egg. I still have my magic so none of that was against the rules."

The Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports looked intrigued, "Those were muggle toys? Fascinating. I've heard rumors that the Muggles had some rather sophisticated toys, but I've never seen one work before."

Harry nodded and said, "You wouldn't. Magic makes muggle toys break or act weird. I made those toys myself so they could work around magic."

This was true. In order to finally get his Crafter Path rank, Harry had to make something but he couldn't just buy and ȧssemble from a kit. Sure, he did that at first, but since it didn't work, he had to spend almost a whole weekend using the parts from several kits and some extras to ȧssemble his remote control. He also had to use a computer to write his own software for the helicopters. There was no actual way a single controller could manually operate a half dozen helicopters perfectly so he actually wrote twenty or so different programs onto his controller that would do most of the detailed stuff on its own.

Bagman looked impressed and said, "You controlled them yes? Why did you fly them at the dragon in the end?"

"Because I challenged a dragon and if they left, the dragon would remain angry and would be harder to handle later."

Bagman hadn't considered this but it was true all the same, the Hungarian Horntail seemed quite pleased with itself after destroying the toys and for such an aggressive dragon, it had been nowhere near as riled up as the other contestants left their dragons at the end of their tasks.

Of course the actual reason was that Harry didn't want the rune schemes he set into the choppers to be examined by others. The helicopters were a loss to be sure, but 95% of the work Harry had put into this project had gone into the controller. The helicopter drones were just ȧssembled and engraved. The controller on the other hand was where he put the real work into.

After a few more clarifying questions the man left Harry to return to the judges panel. Sure Harry hadn't used magic beyond the summoning charm and the use of muggle toys did go against the spirit of the tournament if not the letter. But on the other hand, Harry was eleven years old and had been set against a dragon.

The Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports had in fact ȧssembled twenty dragon wranglers on standby once Harry had been incapacitated to save his life if possible which, as long as he was unable to continue, was not against the rules though he would of course not be scored well and wouldn't get the clue for the next task.

Harry was quickly accosted by the school nurse who for the third time this year checked him over to find no injuries. The nurse was more than a little skeptical at this first year's level of being danger prone yet after falling from a broom, defeating a troll, and stealing an egg from a nesting dragon, he still didn't have a single injury.

He returned to the tent from before where he had to await the judges scoring and was met with the disbelieving eyes of the other three contestants, all of which were injured or had damaged clothes except for him. Harry didn't see what they did but since Harry was last, they all saw what he did.

Cedric shook his head and said, "I don't know whether to be impressed or ashamed, Potter."

Harry ċȯċked an eyebrow and Fleur answered the unasked question in a french accent, "Mr. Diggory transfigured a stone into a dog for a distraction, but ze dragon lost interest and shot fire at 'im." Harry did notice the orange burn paste over his fellow's student's face but was polite enough not to stare. Fleur's dress also appeared quite singed.

Krum said, "The seventh flyer vas silent and your dragon didn't notice it. Even I only noticed because I am seeker and I saw it carry egg on string. Why was it silent but not the rest?"

Harry wasn't surprised someone spotted the last one, it wasn't like he made it invisible or anything. That was another project altogether. He thought of the best way to answer someone who likely didn't know any muggle terms but as the man was a seeker, he likely knew a lot about brooms. Harry said, "The last one was a different model. It could not go as fast or as far but it could go quietly."

They asked a few more questions and exchanged stories. Fleur it seemed, used a powerful spell to put her dragon to sleep. It mostly worked, save the Dragon's flaming snore singed her dress. Krum actually fired a spell at the dragon's eye to blind it but the dragon crushed some of its eggs in the confusion. That would have worried Harry had he not felt that the eggs were all fake. How they convinced a dragon to guard a nest of fake eggs though he didn't know.

The scoring came out with Cedric in first place with forty-four points, Krum in second place with forty, and Fleur with thirty-nine. Harry was in last place with thirty because Krum's headmaster gave him zero points while Crouch and Fleur's headmistress gave him six a piece. Dumbledore gave him eight and Bagman gave him ten. Harry wondered if Bagman had bet on Harry's victory.

The moment Harry left the tent Hermione ran past Neville and straight for him before almost shouting, "Why didn't you tell me you were going to use RC Helicopters?! I thought my hair would turn grey watching the other students face those dragons worrying about you!"

Harry smiled at his friend's concern and easily admitted, "I came up with the idea at the last minute so even I didn't know. It was only when they told us we had to retrieve an egg did I come up with that idea."

Hermione shook her head for a moment to get her bearings before asking, "How did you get muggle electronics to work here? I brought a calculator which didn't even turn on when I took it out of my bag on our first day."

"A side project I've been working on. Didn't think it'd be that useful. Wonder if I can do the same for the next two tasks."

Neville chipped in his two cents, "Not a bad idea. You were the only one who didn't get hurt so a repeat performance or two wouldn't be bad. You won't get the highest score and you won't win the tournament, but you'll survive."

Hermione only took a moment to consider this before saying, "He's right, survival is the most important."

Harry noticed a magical being approaching and turned to see Rita Skeeter show up with a predatory smile.

"Congratulations, Harry!" she said, beaming at him. "I wonder if you could give me a quick word? How did you feel facing that dragon? How do you feel now, about the fairness of the scoring?"

Harry paused for a few minutes to consider the best way to address the witch. After coming up with the craziest believable story he could, he unpaused and said, "Of course I don't mind Ms. Skeeter. I almost couldn't breath when I saw that dragon, everyone kept telling me before entering how it was the biggest, meanest, nastiest one so I was terrified. I don't know how fair the scoring was, but other than Mr. Bagman and Headmaster Dumbledore, I don't think the others had any idea what I actually did or how impressive it was so they scored on their ignorance."

Skeeter took a look at her quick quill notes to confirm the exaggerations they jotted down at least had the pertinent details. She continued, "About that, why did you use muggle toys in a wizard tournament and why do you think that was impressive?"

Harry figured the woman wanted to write down that Harry was looking down on the tournament and that he was spitting in the face of tradition and yada yada. Nothing Harry said or didn't say would stop her from writing that, but Harry could redirect who she said that about.

Harry said, "It was actually my godfather's idea. He's a terrible prankster and told me I had to use muggle toys for the competition. I told him it was impossible, but he told me to find a way. The reason it was impressive is because no one has ever applied wizard magic to fancy muggle toys before. No one. I'm the first. It wasn't cheating either. A sword is a muggle toy but if you cast magic on it it is a magic tool. Those toys were the same. If they weren't, I couldn't have used them since everyone knows muggle toys don't work around magic."

A small group of teachers was heading towards them so Skeeter thanked Harry and parted.

Hermione used the moment before the teachers got there and said, "You did tell that woman those lies about Sirius Black!"

Harry said, "Yup."

At this point Neville had to fight to hold back his laughter.

Professor McGonagall saw Harry and said, "The Headmaster would like to have a word with you Mr. Potter."

Harry nodded and followed her. He had been wondering when this would happen.

The silent awkwardness of the walk back to the castle was broken when the professor said, "I'm pleased to see you made it out in one piece considering how little confidence you showed earlier."

Harry shrugged, "If I told anyone I wasn't going to die they'd call me a liar, a fool, or accuse me of being in denial. I was just saving myself from being insulted until after I survived my imminent death."

McGonagall didn't really have a response to that so the silence resumed until they had entered the castle and made their way up to the Headmaster's office.

The ancient wizard noticed their arrival and said, "Thank you Minerva, you can return. Mr. Potter, please sit."

Harry sat on the chair before the man's desk and for a moment neither said a word. Dumbledore broke the silence first, "This would be our first meeting, yet up until now I've done so much damage to your life Harry, and I cannot ask you to forgive me. I tried to correct my mistakes, I wanted to keep my distance, allow you to live your own life, but it seems such is more difficult than I first had hoped."

Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the obviousness of that last part. But it did answer Harry's questions. The man did, and rightly so, consider himself responsible for Harry's death.

Dumbledore moved to open a drawer and took out a silver cloth and a wand. He said, "This is, or was, a Cloak of Invisibility that belonged to your father. And this was the Elder Wand. Two of the three Deathly Hallows of legends."

Harry quickly went over the tale of the Three Brothers, a copy of the Beetle and the Bard was in the Potter library. His father did in fact tell Harry about his family cloak, but for some reason never mentioned its location as if he didn't intend for Harry to get it. Harry decided to ask the question the headmaster was waiting for, "Was?"

"Yes Harry. On that terrible night last year, this wand lost its power and this cloak no longer rendered its wearer invisible. The third Hallow, the one said to be capable of bringing those from the other side back to this realm I suspect has also lost its power. And I have my suspicions why."

Harry was certainly interested in this so he waited for the old man to continue.

The headmaster said, "Harry, when you summoned your muggle invention, I nearly cried out in terror and could only wait until the dragon noticed where you were. But it didn't. It wasn't until that moment that I noticed that your magic appears to be invisible to the senses of others. And then there is the fact that it is so simple for you to cast magic, powerful magic I suspect, without a wand. And of course there is your remarkable return from the other side. Invisible magic, magic that can be cast without a wand, and the gift of returning from the other side. You see where I am going with this Harry?"

Harry was curious to know where Dumbledore's certainty that Harry had died was coming from, but Harry supposed the man may have had his ways which was why he knew that Harry had died which meant Harry had returned from death.

As for the implications, it was certainly interesting. The power of the Deathly Hallows had vanished when Harry died and seemed to become a part of him. Invisible magic? It could still damage electronics which meant that his magic would still affect things but it just couldn't be sensed actively or directly. Indirectly however it could be. Something to consider. It certainly explained why he didn't need a wand.

Harry asked, "So what now?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I would be willing to personally teach you if not for the Goblet of Fire. It would take my magic if I tried to tutor you this year, something I would not regret if I could help you, but I am far too old and would not last long enough without magic to teach you much if I tried."

Harry thought on it for a moment and asked, "Can I borrow your library for a week?"

Dumbledore's brows rose on that statement and considered it. However a moment later he let a small frown followed by an amused smirk. He said, "As it is my personal library, granting my permission to loan any book would constitute ȧssistance and risk my magic. Therefore if you ask," he said emphasizing the word, "I cannot allow it. Now if you excuse me, I have to meet with some of my fellow headmasters."

Dumbledore twirled his wand and cast a petrification charm on the portraits in the room. He then got up and said, "You may rest here as long as you wish, and on an unrelated note, if you come across any book of my private collection around the castle, please hand them to Professor McGonagall when you can and she will ensure I get them back. My memory is not what it used to be and I don't recall if they have gone missing or not so do keep a lookout for them in case they have."

A moment later and Harry was alone in the Headmaster's office. Harry decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and proceeded to nab every book from the headmaster's shelf. Stealing certainly didn't qualify as ȧssistance rendered. Once his inventory was stocked, Harry returned down to his dorms where there had been a party waiting for him, congratulating him on not dying. As he had the lowest score, Harry figured that was just about the best thing they could think of congratulating him on.

The nameless redhead handed Harry the golden egg he had forgotten at the tent and Harry decided it would be best not to question why the redhead had it.. Time to see what the clue for the next stage was.