"And see if she challenges anyone to a duel before the Task."

Ellie laughs.

Bump.

Well, 'dragons' changes the research they're doing a lot... Of course figuring out how to talk's good, but they need backup plans, more information about the tasks, ideas to subdue or distract or hide from a dragon... (Fay suggests not blinding one - they'll just breathe fire everywhere. Getting potions into an alert dragon you're not the usual feeder of is hard... They can be enticed to chase prey, especially if it's moving faster or more temptingly than you - a lot like cats, actually. Zig-zag motions like deer use are more tempting than the straight run of a predator that might claw back, and dragons tend to be leery of chasing anything not acting afraid of them. A nesting mother's unlikely to chase something very far, though - she might lunge at anything that gets too close to her nest, but she's more likely to hunker down and breathe fire... Though Fay's experience for dealing with nesting mothers is 'Do Not.' Anathema of course relays this all faithfully.)

So probably she's going to have to get past a dragon or maybe retrieve something from a nest, if the mother's guard instinct is so strong...

At night, Ellie sneaks out invisibly to try eavesdropping on the dragons.

She gets the same uncanny feeling that they're all speaking an extremely weird dialect of a language she knows, or else a language just similar enough to hers that her brain keeps pinging some words as actual words and not just streams of noise. They're woozy and not very talkative, though, and are plausibly slurring their speech a bit.

Hmmm.

On the second night, she tries eavesdropping in her Animagus form.

...Understandable! Still slurred, and still accented a bit - the dragons all have different accents and dialects, actually, and none of them are quite hers -

The dragons all seem mostly annoyed and scared and agitated about being somewhere different than they're used to. They don't like feeling poisoned. They don't like each other. They don't like that they each only recognize one human here. They're worried about their eggs, especially the non-Isles ones - it's cold and wet here and that can't be good, and they're feeling so very woozy, which is making maintaining enough fire for the eggs hard...

It's too bad she can't tell anyone about this without giving the game away. They don't seem very happy.

Still, it's plausible she can just shift forms at the task and ask nicely for whatever she's supposed to do, especially if she promises to see to a change in living conditions. In which case she maybe shouldn't introduce herself now.

She sneaks back to the castle to tell Anathema she probably won't need the cloak for the other nights.

She nods. "That's good... I still haven't found more, but I'm also running into free time pressure now."

"The other tasks aren't going to be until the new year. They might only be prepping one at a time."

"Yeah, I figured - I mostly want to know right now what your actual task will be, but no one's gossiping."

"I think I'll already have a pretty big leg up with this."

Lean. "Yeah. Just - over prepared's better than under."

"Don't get yourself caught though, okay?"

"I'll be careful. And if you're - confident. I might leave off for this one."

"Yeah, I think I can do it. Whatever it turns out to be."

"I'll trust you, then."

Shoulder bump.

Lean.

It's a few days still until the First Task... Anathema spends it a bit antsy, but she does believe in Ellie - and Saturday morning, Ellie's asked to report to a tent outside the Quidditch Pitch. There've been people traveling in already, though it sounds like the Champions will be at the pitch for a while as set up is finished.

Ellie gathers up her supplies (mostly just her wands and the cloak, which she keeps tucked away) and shows up right on time.

They're ushered into a large tent. They can't see or hear anything outside of it from within. The three officials are in it, but none of the school heads. Britain's official, Bagman, seems to be taking the lead, because once everyone arrives he cheerfully explains their Task today will be retrieving a golden egg from amid a clutch of real dragon eggs - guarded by a real dragon. Points will be deducted for injuries to themselves or for damage to the real eggs. No points will be rewarded or deducted for time taken, though there's a time limit of one hour for each Champion. If they don't retrieve the golden egg before the challenge ends (due to the time limit or it being called early for safety reasons), they'll lose points. The task's meant to test their cleverness, magical skill, and daring, and each champion will be emerging and facing their dragon alone.

There's different kinds of dragons, and which one they face and in which order will be quasi-randomized - they'll need to draw a statue from this magical bag, here.

(More or less what she thought. This shouldn't be too bad.)

She takes a statue from the bag when it's her turn.

Her statue depicts a Hungarian Horntail with a little sign with the number '4' around its neck.

Oh. Joy.