The curtain swung closed behind Viktor Krum and Harry Potter was all alone - just as he had been for most of his life.

He fell numbly into Fleur's stool. He ran his hands through his hair anxiously, looking around the tent. He supposed it was supposed to be a comfortable place, probably somebody had put a lot of thought into the decorations and such. There was a board of wizard chess and a table of finger foods that not one of them had even noticed existed. There were four desks, too, and he noticed a lot of books on dragons sat on the shelves - nearly everyone from the library he had searched in the Library with Hermione. On the desks lay fresh parchments and quills.

It was bizarre, surreal. Like maybe the decorator didn't know what the tent would be for. Like they had no clue a bunch of teenagers being sentenced to fight some deadly dragons would be forced to sit in here as the others were led off to a possible slaughter one by one...

Like any of them would be studying at a time like this. This was not the time for catching up on one'd correspondences,

Although - Fleur had said she had written letters to her family, Harry remembered.

He inched over to the desk nearest him.

He didn't know why he felt so embarassed about it - it wasn't as though anyone else was there to see him.

Harry sat at the desk and reached for the quill.

Dear Padfoot,

Fleur Delacour said she wrote her family before she came out here to the tent. I didn't think of it until she said it, but I ought to have done. Now I haven't much time left but I wanted to write something out, just in case. Dunno how it'll get to you, I can't just leave it laying about the tent, so I suppose I'll carry it with me and hope for Hermione to get it to post.

The dragons sound horrible. I can hear them shrieking and roaring and the ground actually shakes when they stomp about. I can't see what's happening out there but it certainly doesn't sound like anything I want to go and do. But I've got to. In just a few short minutes it'll be me out there getting scorched and trampled on and I'm having a rather good panic to tell the truth.

I wanted to tell you before I go out there that I'm really glad you're my godfather and I know we didn't get a lot of time before this whole Triwizard thingy came about but felt better just knowing you were there.

If I make it through all this, I hope we can spend some more time together perhaps. Sirius I don't even care if we're on the run all summer, I'd rather be on the run with you than back at the Dursleys. Please let me come with you wherever you are? We could stay anywhere really then, nobody's going to expect a kid and his dog to be secretly a wanted wizard murderer, not in a hundred years, do you reckon?

Also I wanted you to tell me about my parents more. I'll bet you had loads of great times with them. I just want to know the most boring stuff, Sirius, like what sort of jokes they told and what their smiles were like.

Blimey, how do you miss someone you never even met before so much?

Well, Mr. Bagman's just called my name and I have to go and see my lot. I've gotten the Hungarian Horntail and she's the most ferocious of the bunch, so I'm definitely a goner. But it would've been nice to be on the run with you if it had worked out.

Sincerely,
Harry J. Potter

He sat staring at the parchment even as the whistle blew.

Get up, Harry, he told himself.

He rolled up the parchment and shoved it into his pocket, took up his wand, and walked out the door of the tent. Everything felt surreal and too colorful, large and overly clear but blurry at the same time. He could feel the gravel under his trainers and there was a ringing in his ears, as though the whistle had never ceased.

His blood was screaming.

"It's alright, it's alright," he whispered as he walked through the tunnel, the light at the end felt like a thousand miles away.

The sun enveloped him as he stepped through onto the ledge.

The Horntail was crouched over a nest of eggs across the enclosure, her beady, yellow eyes glowed and stared at him as he stepped out of the tunnel. Her hearing and smell were so accurate she had focused on him long before he had come into view. She was already protective, blowing steam from her sharp nostrils that left the ground in front of her crackling from the heat.

Harry had been practicing all week at the summoning charm, but his hand shook as he raised his wand. He wished he could accio some more courage. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the sound of the crowd, the sound of the snorting dragon, and the shouting voice of Ludo Bagman. He had to concentrate.

The key to concentration is to shove everything else away, Harry, Professor Lupin's voice entered his mind then, a memory from the Dementor lessons the year before. Find a memory or thought that so purely encapsulates you that you can all but fall into it entirely, like a pool of cool water on the hottest summer day.

Harry thought about that elation of the broom, the feeling of straddling it high above the quidditch pitch, of the wind in his hair and the cares of the world just left behind, specks far away.

"Accio firebolt!"

His heart beat was a throb, his entire body pulsated with it. The crowd could probably hear it. Everything swam around him, a haze rising off the stones where the Horntail's breath had scorched the earth.

The firebolt seemed to be taking forever.

Please let it be coming, please, Harry prayed. Mum? Dad? Help. Help me.

The dragon's breath was smoky and she whipped her tail against the stones, as though challenging him, as though she were mocking him. The horns on her tail gouged three foot deep gashes into the rock bed, and she dragged it, making little canyons. Harry couldn't help but think of some awful muggle artifacts housed in display cases in the library at Hogwarts - tools of war and torture from the Roman Empire. The horntail was easy inspiration for such nasty things.

That could be how I die, Harry thought grimly. If the firebolt isn't coming, I'm going to be crushed by that tail.

He felt sick.

He closed his eyes.

Focus, Harry, Professor Lupin's voice echoed in his mind.

He drew a deep breath.

If the dragon's tail did kill him, what then? What? He'd be with his parents, wouldn't he? He wouldn't have to go through any of the other two tasks, would he? He wouldn't have to go home to the Dursleys. He pictured Albus Dumbledore in his magenta-and-stars robes showing up at Number 4 Privet Drive to tell the Dursleys he was so very sorry for their loss. They'd throw a block party, there would be crackers and a fireworks show. Aunt Petunia would dance on the hood of Uncle Vernon's car and Dudley would cram the rest of the bag of Hagrid's baking-soda-free rock cakes that Harry hid under his floor boards into his mouth and break all his teeth.

Suddenly, there was a whirring, a whistling, familiar. Harry turned and there it was. His Firebolt. He'd ever been so relieved to see it in all his life - not even last term, when Professor McGonagall had taken it for inspection and he'd thought it would be ruined before he got it back. His heart soared as energetically as the broom itself did - a bit of hope, a small little bit, just a ray like the morning sun coming in through mostly closed curtains, but enough to cut through the gloom that had built up. Maybe Aunt Petunia wouldn't be dancing on Uncle Vernon's car hood after all, he thought, as he reached out and the handle slid into his palm as affectionately as a dog greeting her owner after a long day's wait. He swung his leg over the broomstick, the sounds of the crowd and Ludo Bagman and everything nothing but white noise as he hung onto that hope. He kicked off from the ground and as he soared upward, the crowds upturned faces were mere flesh-coloured pinpricks below, and the Horntail shrank to the size of a dog, and Harry felt free. The fear melting away as he looked over the enclosure from above.

This was where he belonged - up here, on his broomstick, away from gravity.

This was just another Quidditch match, that was all... just another Quidditch match, nd that Horntail was just another ugly opposing team.

A glint of gold caught his eye. He thought at first it was the bell in the Bell Tower - sometimes the sun hit that just right and it shone so brightly it was like a beacon - but it was the egg. He saw it as easily as he might've done the golden snitch during a game and he grinned. It sat in the center of a clutch of egg-shaped stones, balancing delicately. The Horntail stood over the clutch, hunched down, the eggs tucked safely between her front legs.

"Okay," Harry murmured, forcing himself to think of the ugly brute of a dragon as though it were just Draco Malfoy or some other dumb Slytherin. It wouldn't be so hard to get past them - he could do it. "Diversionary tactics," he said, nodding to himself, "Let's go." And he dove.

The dragon's eyes hadn't stopped following him the entire time - he could feel them on him now as the Firebolt carried him in an arch toward the round, the wind whistling over his ears, hair rippling with the air. He gripped the broomstick and pulled up just before hitting the ground and a great burst of dragon fire struck the ground where he would have been as he swerved away in a graceful arch.

No matter. No scarier than dodging a bludger, really, Harry thought.

"GREAT SCOTT, HE CAN FLY!" Bagman was shouting as the crowd's shrieks and cries echoed around the enclosure, thunderingly loud - louder than they'd been for any of the other champions. "ARE YOU WATCHING THIS, MR. KRUM? THIS KID'S GIVING YOU A GO FOR YOUR MONEY!"

Harry circled around and around the dragon's outstretched neck as she reached... reached... She revolved her head, following him, straining, trying to get him in her eye, but he was orbiting her, tighter and tighter - he could almost have reached out and touched her scales, for Merlin's sake. She was getting dizzy, he could tell in her eyes as she glowered at him irritably, her yellow eyes with their slitted pupils dilating and retracting as she focused - drew a breath and Harry plummeted, expecting the flames, diving down along the length of her neck, along her back, safe from the line of fire. But her tail - her tail came whipping up and struck him, glancing off his shoulder, ripping his robes, and blood burst out from the tear in the seams, spinning him in mid air so he did a few accidental barrel rolls and nearly crashed into her back, pulling up with his good arm at the last second as the crowd screamed and groaned.

Harry leveled out and swept along the wall of the enclosure, out of the dragons reach, steadying himself and glanced at his shoulder, trying to see how bad the wound was. It hadn't hurt nearly as much as he thought it might to be struck by that tail. Honestly, it barely seemed to be stinging at all. Perhaps death by dragon tail wasn't the worst thing that could happen, he thought. But at any rate, the gash was nasty and oozy but not deep, he didn't think. It had hurt a lot worse when he'd lost all his bones in that arm to Gilderoy Lockhart's healing work back in Second Year. This was nothing. He could keep going.

However, intricate maneuvers were going to be more difficult with only one arm properly functioning - it did hurt to pull up on the broom handle with the gashed arm, he found, testing it gingerly. Harry looked down at the clutch of eggs as he came 'round the side of the Horntail, wondering if how he would manage to get the egg. He'd been planning to dizzy the mother, and bring her in a tight twist so her head was turned to the back before diving and weaving between her legs to scoop the egg up from the clutch, but with is shoulder like this, he reckoned he'd be more likely to crash into the stones around the egg than to pull off gripping and withdrawing the egg from the clutch. So that plan was foiled.

What to do? What to do? It wasn't like the mother was going to just abandon the clutch and leave him easy access to it. She was far too protective, hunching over the eggs and only straining so far to reach him...

But if he could get her to lift off the eggs... just enough he wouldn't have to maneuver around her legs... maybe that could work. He could dive slower at more of an arching angle - that wouldn't be so bad to pull off with his arm, would it? He tested the angle, just out of the dragon's reach, getting as low to the ground as he'd need to in order to catch the egg and then pulling back up. It would be close to the enclosure wall, but he thought he could just about do it.

He had to.

So Harry started flying back and forth before the dragon, just out of the reach of her flames, just close enough to pose a continuing threat... The Horntail hissed and steamed, smoke coming up from her nostrils angrily as her neck curved this way and that, eyes following Harry with distrust, groaning and hissing with irritation.

"Come on, come on..." Harry taunted under his breath.

The Horntail thrashed her tail, but he was beyond reach. She breathed a column of fire into the air, the heat glazing Harry's forehead with sweat, but not actually reaching him. He swirled, tantalizingly close but too far to reach... and the Horntail stretched her neck to full length and snapped but her teeth were far below Harry, not even a worrisome distance, and he murmured, "Yeah? You want me? Come and get me, you great beast." She was straining and smoking more and more and blew another column of fire that Harry dodged effortlessly, eliciting a great roar of frustration from the dragon.

"Come on, up you get now..." Harry urged her, and he did a loop-de-loop just around her snout and backed away again, back out of reach, and the dragon shrieked with anger, her wings unfurling. "Yesss," Harry hissed, "That's it, come on."

And then she reared, up onto her back haunches, her snout lunging forward, snapping for Harry desperately but her mouth closed on empty air for Harry Potter had dropped into a dive, fast as lightening, down, down, in a graceful arch under the behemoth's belly and he held onto the stick with his injured arm, good arm striking out, then both arms... grabbing the egg as the firebolt roared by, transferred it to his hip, injured arm steadying it and pulled violently up on the broomstick handle just in time, skidding so close to the wall of the enclosure that he had to tuck his legs closer to avoid his trainers scraping the stone.

"YES!" Harry shouted as the crowd erupted into cheers.