Playing Dress-up ~Tomarry~

Chapter 14 ✅

~Parseltongue
——

Harry gathered his courage as he sucked in a deep breath. He was standing outside the white tent that he and the other champions where to meet in to be informed of the task. Although all of them already knew about the task, well most of them at least, Harry didn't know if Cedric knew but right now it was every student for themselves. Harry shook his head and drew back the tent flap and walked in, trying to hold his composure. However it quickly disappeared when he saw what the other champions were doing. Cedric Diggory was furiously pacing the length of the tent with hands in his pockets. Fleur Delecour was walking around in a small circle and looked to be reciting some words of a ritual to herself. Viktor Krum was sitting on one of the beds with his head in his hands, shaking his head as if he was talking and replying to himself.

'Well there goes my composure.' Harry thought dejectedly as he went and sat in one on the three unoccupied beds. 'Now, what exactly do I saw to this bloody dragon?' 'Oh Hey Mrs Dragon would you mind letting me climb through your best so I can get the golden egg, without using your talons or fire breath. Please?'

Harry was internally laughing like there was no way in Merlin that the dragon would ever let him anywhere near her eggs... 'but what if she gave it to me? That could work. I just need to persuade her.'

After Harry reassured himself that his plan would work he decided that he would lie down and relax and try not to let the other champions nerves get to him. He could feel their eyes on him, in fact everyone stopped whatever they were doing and stared. Harry lifted his head up from his pillow and glared at the three champions, "What? Just because you guys are all pacing and worrying doesn't mean I have to do the same."

Cedric, Viktor and Fleur turned away from the harsh glare that they had received from the youngest champion, looked at each other shrugged their shoulders and sat down on the nearest bed. The room was silent but everyone was anything but focused. Just then the tent opened and a blonde haired reporter came through the flap, eyes of all the champions locked on her's instantly. She smiled 'sweetly' but as she went to open her mouth the Durmstrang champion shouted at her, "Get out!"

The woman, shocked by the tone of the Bulgarian champion's voice rushed back out the flap of the tent and didn't come back.

Harry was quite surprised at the Bulgarian champion's outburst, he'd never expected to see that from him. From what Harry had seen the 17 year old had always been calm and collected, but I suppose that since he was around the press all the time you could easily get irritated by the crowds.

Harry himself, even though he was the boy-who-lived, had never had any real exposure to the press. He had come to realise that he'd been incredibly sheltered when he was younger and suddenly missed it, that was probably the only thing that he could thank his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon for. Must to his dismay.

About 5 minutes later the tent flap opened again and Harry lifted his head off the pillow case to tell the person to go away, except this time it was the Headteachers and Ludo Bagman. Harry sighed inwardly and lifted himself off the comfortable bed. The other champions done the same and they all ended up standing in the centre of the room. Ludo Bagman cleared his throat, "When the audience has assembled, I'm going to be offering each of you this bag"- he held up a purple silk bag -"from which you will each select a small model of the thing you are about to face! There are different varieties, you see. Your task is to collect a golden egg from the clutches of this thing that you are about to face!"

The champions nodded, showing that they understood, but their nerves were clearly showing. Fleur was chewing on her nails, Viktor scratched the back of his neck violently, whereas Cedric was visibly shaking.

Ludo wasted no time in encouraging Fleur to reach her hand into the purple silk bag., she gasped slightly before she pulled her hand out of the bag, "The Welsh Green. Fleur looked as if she was going to be sick, but Bagman didn't take any notice and quickly moved onto Viktor.

The Bulgarian didn't wait a moment and stuck his hand in the bag and pulled out a model dragon by it's tail, "The Chinese Fireball." Krum's face remained blank as he stared at the tiny fire breathing dragon.

Bagman moved on and held the silk bag out to Cedric, who hesitantly put his hand in and plucked out a model dragon by it's foot. "The Swedish Snort-Snout." Bagman gave Cedric a half smile as he turned away from him to look at Harry.

Harry inwardly sighed, he knew that there was only one left and it was the most deadly out of them all. Curse the infamous Potter luck! Harry reached his hand into the bag, recoiling a bit when the hot breath of the very real looking model hit his fingertips. "The Hungarian Horntail." The dragon had the number four around it's neck so Harry assumed that he would be going last.

A cannon blew off jolting Harry out of his thoughts, he could hear the crowds cheering outside for Cedric as he reluctantly left the safety of the champions tent. Harry returned to laying on the bed that he'd been laying on before, to wait for his turn.

——

Harry stood at the exit flap of the tent as he waited for the cannon to go off, signalling his turn to leave the tent. Anxiousness started to creep in the longer he stood waiting, situations on where he would be burnt to a crisp or eaten by the mother dragon.

He breathed in as the cannon sounded and left the safety of the tent. The crowds cheered, not as loud as when they did for the rest of the champions, but he couldn't care less. They quietened down as he stepped further into the rocky arena, he could hear a sort of hissing. "Protect... Nasty humans... Burn them... Protect..."

Harry hissed loudly over the top of the dragon, "I don't want to hurt you, nor your children! I want to help you." He stepped into the view of the spitting dragon, just out of reach of her fire breath.

The dragon crouched low over her eggs, protecting them with her body, "The humans that put you here are weak, bad. Putting your babies in danger, I want to get rid of the danger. Let me help." Harry knew he put parselmagic in through his words, making the dragon submit to him. She relaxed a bit but didn't move. "Let me through." Harry hissed feeding his words with more of the powerful magic that parseltongue gave.

The dragon reluctantly moved away from her eggs and Harry stepped forward a few steps cautiously. Once seeing that the dragon made no attempt to come at his he rusted forward to lift the golden egg, as he got closer the dragon growled, but didn't move anywhere closer. Harry left the nest and walked to the dragon to let her sniff the egg, to reassure her that he hadn't lifted the wrong one. "You can go back to the nest now." Harry said as he went to leave.

The dragon rushed back to her eggs and curled her body around the nest as Harry left, he hadn't even realised that the commentator hadn't spoken during his performance, until he started taking after he'd left.

Harry was immediately rushed to the medical wing by madame Pomfrey, even though he insisted that he didn't have a scratch on him, but the medi-witch was insistent so he left without further fight.

~1370
——

A/N - I know that the chapter is late... I may have fell asleep finishing it off last night. So here it is.

-THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS DIALOGUE FROM 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'.