Hopefully there's no direct duels.

That'd be a good use for the Animagus form, though.

She's still working on the spell resistance.

Of course. But 'sudden dinosaur attack' has a nice psychological factor, there.

Ah, good point.

Giggle.

Of course, better if it doesn't come up.

Ellie's not allowed to find out whether or not it will, though.

True. Doesn't stop her from hoping, though.

Nod nod.

Grin.

And, a few mornings later - no first block today, so they're spending it in the Dragon Room studying -

Anathema rather cheerfully announces, "So! You are not dueling another Champion for the First Task! Incidentally there are four dragons currently being held in the Forbidden Forest, drugged in cages and stuff - I'm almost tempted to let them out - anyways. There's a Swedish Short-Snout, a Common Welsh Green, a Chinese Fireball, and a Hungarian Horntail. All definitely female, I'm pretty sure actively nesting - the eggs have also been transported, kept with the moms. I'm not sure what's the deal with the eggs yet, that seems risky... But the dragons are all in really good health it looks like and young, but not, like, so young they auto-char everything."

"Also dragon sounds are like apparently enough like Parseltongue that I kept feeling like I'm listening to a frustratingly thick accent that I can't actually understand. It's kind of distracting."

"What fascinating information that I absolutely did not ask for in any way. Unrelatedly, does that mean you're done with the cloak?"

Hum. "If you don't need it back yet, I might still have some definitely unrelated uses for it... Just further secret shenanigans."

"No pressing business, no."

"I'll get it back before the task next weekend, though."

"Thanks."

Shoulder bump. "No problem. But dragons are... Possibly tough."

"Less so if it's possible to talk to them. I can't imagine fighting would be the primary purpose. Hypothetically speaking."

"...Fighting dragons seems likely to break the safety rules, yeah. Though I dunno if you can learn the dialect in... Nine days... Maybe just yell at them until they stare at you confused about what sort of weird hick you are..."

"Were there a lot of people guarding the dragons?"

She hums. "There were some dragon handlers - but not actually a ton. I saw like, four people? And they weren't doing security stuff - they all slept at night, though I think they might've had set shifts to go out and check on the dragons. And no one was... Establishing a perimeter or anything? I think they're mostly doing security through obscurity. There haven't been any rumors or anything among the students, but the snakes were chattering about disturbances from stuff moving around and big predators suddenly in the area, and the basilisk was agitated about big magical predators, and then I asked Scarlet to help me look 'cause I thought that might be related to the Tasks, since all of the past tournaments have included impressive magical creatures at some point..."

"...Also we still need to name the basilisk..." The basilisk is really disinterested in the entire concept of names, though, and Anathema's not exactly good at coming up with those.

"I might want the cloak back before the task then. For at least a couple nights."

"You can have it back tonight, and we can just trade off who's using it, then. I think my shenanigans will be more useful in the day, anyways."

"That works."

"Yeah."

"Though we don't have long to prepare... Still, we can make it work."

"And you could ask Professor Reynolds what she'd do if she had to distract a dragon."