One side of Cedric's face was
covered in a thick orange paste, which was presumably mending his burn. He
grinned at Harry when he saw him.
"Good one, Harry."
"And you," said Harry, grinning back.
"Well done, all of you!" said Ludo Bagman, bouncing into the tent and looking as
pleased as though he personally had just got past a dragon. "Now, just a quick few
words. You've got a nice long break before the second task, which will take place
at half past nine on the morning of February the twenty-fourth - but we're giving
you something to think about in the meantime! If you look down at those golden
eggs you're all holding, you will see that they open. . . see the hinges there? You
need to solve the clue inside the egg - because it will tell you what the second task
is, and enable you to prepare for it! All clear? Sure? Well, off you go, then!"
Harry left the tent, rejoined Ron, and they started to walk back around the edge of
the forest, talking hard; Harry wanted to hear what the other champions had done
in more detail. Then, as they rounded the clump of trees behind which Harry had
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first heard the dragons roar, a witch leapt out from behind them.
It was Rita Skeeter. She was wearing acid-green robes today; the Quick-Quotes
Quill in her hand blended perfectly against them.
"Congratulations, Harry!" she said, beaming at him. "I wonder if you could give
me a quick word? How you felt facing that dragon? How you feel now, about the
fairness of the scoring?"
"Yeah, you can have a word," said Harry savagely. "Good-bye."
And he set off back to the castle with Ron.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - THE HOUSE-ELF LIBERATION FRONT
Harry, Ron, and Hermione went up to the Owlery that evening to find Pigwidgeon,
so that Harry could send Sirius a letter telling him that he had managed to get past
his dragon unscathed. On the way, Harry filled Ron in on everything Sirius had
told him about Karkaroff. Though shocked at first to hear that Karkaroff had been
a Death Eater, by the time they entered the Owlery Ron was saying that they ought
to have suspected it all along.
"Fits, doesn't it?" he said. "Remember what Malfoy said on the train, about his dad
being friends with Karkaroff? Now we know where they knew each other. They
were probably running around in masks together at the World Cup.... I'll tell you
one thing, though, Harry, if it was Karkaroff who put your name in the goblet, he's
going to be feeling really stupid now, isn't he? Didn't work, did it? You only got a
scratch! Come here - I'll do it -"
Pigwidgeon was so overexcited at the idea of a delivery he was flying around and
around Harry's head, hooting incessantly. Ron snatched Pigwidgeon out of the air
and held him still while Harry attached the letter to his leg.
"There's no way any of the other tasks are going to be that dangerous, how could
they be?" Ron went on as he carried Pigwidgeon to the window. "You know what?
I reckon you could win this tournament, Harry, I'm serious."
Harry knew that Ron was only saying this to make up for his behavior of the last
few weeks, but he appreciated it all the same. Hermione, however, leaned against
the Owlery wall, folded her arms, and frowned at Ron.
"Harry's got a long way to go before he finishes this tournament," she said
seriously. "If that was the first task, I hate to think what's coming next."
"Right little ray of sunshine, aren't you?" said Ron. "You and Professor Trelawney
should get together sometime."
He threw Pigwidgeon out of the window. Pigwidgeon plummeted twelve feet
before managing to pull himself back up again; the letter attached to his leg was
much longer and heavier than usual - Harry hadn't been able to resist giving Sirius
a blow-by-blow account of exactly how he had swerved, circled, and dodged the
Horntail. They watched Pigwidgeon disappear into the darkness, and then Ron
said, "Well, we'd better get downstairs for your surprise party, Harry - Fred and
George should have nicked enough food from the kitchens by now."
Sure enough, when they entered the Gryffindor common room it exploded with
cheers and yells again. There were mountains of cakes and flagons of pumpkin
juice and butterbeer on every surface; Lee Jordan had let off some Filibuster's
Fireworks, so that the air was thick with stars and sparks; and Dean Thomas, who
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was very good at drawing, had put up some impressive new banners, most of
which depicted Harry zooming around the Horntail's head on his Firebolt, though
a couple showed Cedric with his head on fire.
Harry helped himself to food; he had almost forgotten what it was like to feel
properly hungry, and sat down with Ron and Hermione. He couldn't believe how
happy he felt; he had Ron back on his side, he'd gotten through the first task, and
he wouldn't have to face the second one for three months.
"Blimey, this is heavy," said Lee Jordan, picking up the golden egg, which Harry
had left on a table, and weighing it in his hands. "Open it, Harry, go on! Let's just
see what's inside it!"
"He's supposed to work out the clue on his own," Hermione said swiftly. "It's in
the tournament rules. . . ."
"I was supposed to work out how to get past the dragon on my own too," Harry
muttered, so only Hermione could hear him, and she grinned rather guiltily.
"Yeah, go on, Harry, open it!" several people echoed.
Lee passed Harry the egg, and Harry dug his fingernails into the groove that ran all
the way around it and prised it open.
It was hollow and completely empty - but the moment Harry opened it, the most
horrible noise, a loud and screechy wailing, filled the room. The nearest thing to it
Harry had ever heard was the ghost orchestra at Nearly Headless Nick's deathday
party, who had all been playing the musical saw.
"Shut it!" Fred bellowed, his hands over his ears.
"What was that?" said Seamus Finnigan, staring at the egg as Harry slammed it
shut again. "Sounded like a banshee ... Maybe you've got to get past one of those
next, Harry!"
"It was someone being tortured!" said Neville, who had gone very white and
spilled sausage rolls all over the floor. "You're going to have to fight the Cruciatus
Curse!"
"Don't be a prat, Neville, that's illegal," said George. "They wouldn't use the
Cruciatus Curse on the champions. I thought it sounded a bit like Percy singing . ..
maybe you've got to attack him while he's in the shower. Harry."
"Want a jam tart, Hermione?" said Fred.
Hermione looked doubtfully at the plate he was offering her. Fred grinned.
"It's all right," he said. "I haven't done anything to them. It's the custard creams
you've got to watch -"
Neville, who had just bitten into a custard cream, choked and spat it out. Fred
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laughed.
"Just my little joke, Neville.. . ."
Hermione took a jam tart. Then she said, "Did you get all this from the kitchens,
Fred?"
"Yep," said Fred, grinning at her. He put on a high-pitched squeak and imitated a
house-elf. "'Anything we can get you, sir, anything at all!' They're dead helpful...
get me a roast ox if I said I was peckish."
"How do you get in there?" Hermione said in an innocently casual sort of voice.
"Easy," said Fred, "concealed door behind a painting of a bowl of fruit. Just tickle
the pear, and it giggles and -" He stopped and looked suspiciously at her. "Why?"
"Nothing," said Hermione quickly.
"Going to try and lead the house-elves out on strike now, are you?" said George.
"Going to give up all the leaflet stuff and try and stir them up into rebellion?"
Several people chortled. Hermione didn't answer.
"Don't you go upsetting them and telling them they've got to take clothes and
salaries!" said Fred warningly. "You'll put them off their cooking!"
Just then, Neville caused a slight diversion by turning into a large canary.
"Oh - sorry, Neville!" Fred shouted over all the laughter. "I forgot - it was the
custard
creams we hexed -"
Within a minute, however, Neville had molted, and once his feathers had fallen
off, he reappeared looking entirely normal. He even joined in laughing.
"Canary Creams!" Fred shouted to the excitable crowd. "George and I invented
them - seven Sickles each, a bargain!"
It was nearly one in the morning when Harry finally went up to the dormitory with
Ron, Neville, Seamus, and Dean. Before he pulled the curtains of his four-poster
shut. Harry set his tiny model of the Hungarian Horntail on the table next to his
bed, where it yawned, curled up, and closed its eyes. Really, Harry thought, as he
pulled the hangings on his four-poster closed, Hagrid had a point.. . they were all
right, really, dragons. . . .
The start of December brought wind and sleet to Hogwarts. Drafty though the
castle always was in winter. Harry was glad of its fires and thick walls every time
he passed the Durmstrang ship on the lake, which was pitching in the high winds,
its black sails billowing
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against the dark skies. He thought the Beauxbatons caravan was likely to be pretty
chilly too. Hagrid, he noticed, was keeping Madame Maxime's horses well
provided with their preferred drink of single-malt whiskey; the fumes wafting
from the trough in the comer of their paddock was enough to make the entire Care
of Magical Creatures class light-headed. This was unhelpful, as they were still
tending the horrible skrewts and needed their wits about them.
"I'm not sure whether they hibernate or not," Hagrid told the shivering class in the
windy pumpkin patch next lesson. "Thought we'd jus' try an see if they fancied a
kip . . . we'll jus' settle 'em down in these boxes. . . ."
There were now only ten skrewts left; apparently their desire to kill one another
had not been exercised out of them. Each of them was now approaching six feet in
length. Their thick gray armor; their powerful, scuttling legs; their fire-blasting
ends; their stings and their suckers, combined to make the skrewts the most
repulsive things Harry had ev