Chapter 1

A Lesson from the Past

Edited/Proofread by Demon Ging

Harry snapped the latest book shut with a grunt loud enough to get him kicked out of the library if Madame Pince were in earshot. Seeing as she wasn't, he only had to contend with the glares of his fellow students.

He must have poured through every book on dragons in the entire castle but only learned better ways to care for or improve the health of deadly beasts. This was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. The only helpful information he could glean were things he already knew, and unless he found some spell to create corporeal and sentient doppelgangers of himself AND conjure functional wands for them (both impossible feats of magic) then the prospect of having eight other people cast stunners at it alongside him was about as likely as Rita Skeeter renouncing her muckraking ways and madame Rosmerta picking up a bible before donning a nun's habit and chastity belt for the rest of her days.

Or would it be a celibacy belt? Whatever.

Even the killing curse, which he recalled was only illegal to use against other people, took a minimum of six simultaneous casters to take down a dragon. And that was on a good day.

While Moody had been helpful with his suggestion to try and out-fly the beast, a bit more research showed him that this was a stupid idea on account of it being a motherfucking dragon! As good a seeker as he was, dragons were creatures purely of the sky. He would lose such a contest and lose it badly.

All that time practicing the summoning charm and its counterpart had gone to waste. Good thing he learned them so quickly.

With such a rich history of dragons being used in their capacity for war, as referenced in most of these books and Professor Binn's long-winded lectures, you'd think somebody would have developed a simple method for killing or countering them. Just look at the patronus and ridikulus charms did for Dementors and Boggarts. They were solely designed for countering a single creature each, and while in his heart of hearts he preferred dragons to dementors, it was definitely a toss-up.

Knowing his luck, he'd probably run across a World War Two military manual detailing exactly such a method, along with proper foot care and the mechanisms of a rifle. But only after the task was completed. Actually, that might be a good place to look.

He checked the reference cards near the mouth of the library for any books on the great wars and, finding the section containing them, loaded the nearest table with a dozen volumes from each war. A table occupied by a lonesome Ravenclaw girl. Harry recognized her from class. She was in his year, but everyone figured she was a mute, and an ice queen to boot. She was oriental, much paler than even Cho - who somehow managed to keep a light complexion despite being on a Quidditch team - and she was dangerously skinny. This coming from him was saying something.

He whispered an apology when he dropped one of the books a little too carelessly, causing her to jump at the noise. She probably hadn't even noticed him setting up shop beside her until then.

He put aside the war specific medical manuals, which he grabbed because "why not?", and started on the glossary of each book. Thirty minutes later, he was back where he started with no mention of dragons. Now he'd have to read them properly or, more likely, just skim through them.

The only thing keeping him from cursing loudly was his reluctance to disturb his classmate's reading. It did look like a rather complicated transfiguration book.

Actually, she might be able to help him. Stereotypes exist for a reason, right? And Ravenclaws deserved their reputation as denizens of the library.

"Excuse me." Harry whispered across to her.

She didn't turn an inch to acknowledge him, only putting in the minimal effort to move her eyes from the book to stare blankly at him instead. Creepy.

"Hi, um..." He floundered for her name. "Sue right?"

She gave the slightest of nods.

"I don't suppose you know a spell that searches for a specific word in a book, do you?"

She gave him an 'Are you serious?' expression and withdrew her wand. He must have insulted her pride with the question.

She tapped the book in his hands three times with her wand and—barely above a whisper and almost impossible to make out—uttered the incantation.

"Sermo revalio, Grindelwald."

She had a very pretty voice. Like a low organ note. Why she hid it so carefully from the world was beyond him.

"Thank you." Harry whispered back as several pages of the book began to glow with a faint blue light.

She gave him that same non-committal nod and went back to her own reading. He supposed she was being rather rude, but he let the slight pass as she had just done him a huge favor and it was in all likelihood unintentional.

He turned to the first page made blue by her spell and as he did so the glow faded. He found the mention of the long-gone dark wizard instantly, it having been highlighted the same blue by Sue Li's spell. It too disappeared when his eyes landed on it.

He repeated her earlier actions with his own wand.

"Sermo revalio, dragon."

That got her attention. She seemed to consider him and the book in his hands, Wizarding Factions of World War Two, and must have decided he was more interesting than living to non-living transfiguration.

She closed her book and daintily placed it on the table in front of her before taking to watching him.

Harry studiously ignored her.

The only mention of dragons in the book was of a group of Romanian dragon riders who had recreated - through supposedly unknown means - the artificial species of dragon known as Tendrilled Sky Serpents. The dragons and their riders were wiped out by focused artillery fire when the allied forces were tricked into firing on their base. Good riddance. The mutant species was described as being legless and wingless with a long, bulging body covered in venomous, whip-like tendrils. Even the fire they breathed was uninviting, which they spat as a spherical inferno that exploded on impact and seeped into everything like napalm.

The book's use of the word 'supposedly' greatly concerned him.

He couldn't exactly conjure and operate heavy artillery, so he put that book aside and switched to a tome on World War one. He switched back and forth between books on the two wars, wanting to give equal attention to both conflicts. On his fourth try he struck gold.

In world war one another group of Tendrilled Sky Serpents (Why do people keep creating these things?!) was wiped out when the Paris Gun, which itself was so indescribably fuck-awesome that it made his groin ache just reading about it, was fired on their nest, thus trapping them inside. From there the mutant dragons were killed when pre-planted explosives inside of their nest were set off, releasing...

"Interesting." He couldn't help but say out loud as he closed the book and leaned back in thought.

It was dangerous. Liable to kill both him and the beast, not to mention a few bystanders if he wasn't careful. Yet it was brilliantly simple. He could make it work.

Remembering the socially stunted girl across from him - again, rich coming from him - who was still watching him intently, Harry pitched another question her way.

"Do you know where I can find a spell on transfiguring or conjuring salt?" He asked.

If she found the question odd she showed no sign of it. Sue Li stood up, turned her back to him and walked away. She made no indication that he should follow her, but he did anyways.

She kept watching him closely as he used the word finding spell on the book she directed him to. Continued to do so as he read and re-read the theory behind it and practiced the wand movement. It was very distracting to be observed so intently when reading warnings about why eating transfigured or conjured salt - which like all things tended to revert back into what they were transfigured from after being incorporated by the bodies biological processes - was a bad idea.

Good thing he had no intention of eating it.

She clapped when he cast the spell successfully on his first try, turning the glass of an inkwell—the only inorganic thing around—into salt and back again. She even clapped weird. Instead of a mocking golf clap or silent clapping movement she held her hands together as if in prayer and clapped with her fingers.

What a strange girl.

A quick trip to the charms section equipped him with the other spell he needed and he was on his way outside to practice. He was halfway to the school grounds when he remembered that he didn't put his pile of war books away but was dissuaded from returning to the library when he noticed the obsidian-haired girl was still following him.

"Can I, um,... help... you?" He asked as rudely as he could manage.

She bowed her head in what might have been an apology and spoke more words in one moment than all the others he'd heard from her over the last three years put together.

"You intrigue me." She confessed. "I wish to watch whatever it is you are attempting to do. I won't be a nuisance."

He was surprised by her lack of an accent. He could have sworn she was foreign-born and raised. At least the rumors said she immigrated to England to attend Hogwarts.

"I promise not to pester you with incessant questions." Sue swore.

Was that a jab at him? That was a jab at him.

"Yeah, all right. I think I can trust you not to go gossiping about it. You don't seem like the talkative type." He jabbed back.

Oh. She could smile. Well, it was more of a smirk. But still, it was nice.

Sue Li was very tempted to plug her ears to block out the screaming crowd.

The first task had been unbearably boring up until that point, yet somehow the layman around her had nothing but enthusiasm about it. The stupid did tend to be easily entertained, didn't they?

Dumbledore, or whoever was in charge of such things, was a fool to put an age restriction on the tournament. The current seventh and upper sixth years of Hogwarts and Durmstrang must have been a pathetic batch because both of their so-called champions had been incredibly weak. The Bauxbatons girl was at least creative and effective, and strong in her own way. While she hadn't killed the Welsh Green she at least managed to knock it unconscious, which was far more than her peers had managed. She very well could have killed it while it was down if she felt like it. That she got the lowest score of the bunch, when the best Krum had managed to do was anger his own dragon after doing what amounted to throwing sand in its eyes, was an injustice most profane.

Yes. She was strong. If only she had the drive.

Shame she wasn't a Quidditch star. Favoritism seemed to be king in this sham of a tournament. Shy of sleeping with all of the male judges she had zero chance of winning the tournament. Save for Dumbledore, who was the most flamboyantly gay wizard to ever go unnoticed as a homosexual by most, and he at least gave her a fair score of eight, as did her own headmistress. Sadly, that was nowhere near enough to overcome the pair of threes and the two she received from the other three judges.

Oh, was that a Hungarian Horntail? Excellent! It wouldn't do for Potter to be bored. He was the only reason she bothered coming to watch. She just had to scratch her itch that went by the name of curiosity. Whatever he was planning would either be a once in a lifetime miracle, or a spectacular failure. She couldn't decide which one to hope for.

The lady reptile didn't look too happy with the accommodations provided by her handlers and the school organizers. To be fair, the rocky outcropping they chained the mother dragon to looked none too comfortable.

When Harry walked out into the enclosure, he looked every bit the supremely over-confident hero that rumors made him out to be.

She regretted her promise to not ask him questions as soon as he got to work a week earlier. Watching him cast third year lightning spells at the lake - creating and igniting pockets of hydrogen in lovely jets of fire as he did so—was certainly entertaining, but what use would a fire and lightning spell be against a dragon? Especially the weaker version she watched him slowly adapt the spell into.

She couldn't hear the first spell he cast but she recognized the wand movements as a summoning charm. What he attempted to summon was a mystery, but the Horntail wasn't taking any chances. She drove Harry behind cover with her own jet of fire. She had some impressive lungs on her too, because she kept it up for a while.

Harry took this time to transfigure one of the other strategically placed boulders into salt.

Sue half expected it to cartoonishly turn into a perfectly square block of table salt - because Harry Potter - but it was a slower transformation. It started with small fractal salt crystals jutting out at random and ended with an entire slab of multicolored salts filling the space where the boulder had once been. The product of the different elements in the rock being transfigured slightly differently by the spell.

When he let loose a stream of lightning at the block his intentions became clear. A few onlookers even gasped or screamed in horror as the sickly yellow gas congealed into a cloud.

As soon as the Hungarian Horntail paused to take a breath Harry leaped into action, roaring a depulso to the heavens.

What most people didn't know about the summoning and banishing charms was how much control over trajectory they give the caster. It took an immense amount of concentration to control the path of something liquid or, in this case, gas. Harry clearly had mental discipline to spare as he directed the noxious cloud into a twisting serpent of death. He directed it straight into the dragon's mouth and nostrils, forming a dome around its head with the excess just as it took a massive gulp of air to recover from its earlier onslaught.

What few onlookers had been cheering up until now closed their annoyance-induction holes as Harry's foe gasped like an asthmatic child. It was a sad, desperate and high-pitched sound. Like a cross between a dog's yelping in pain and the screeching of metal on metal. The beast couldn't clear its airways of the burning gas and couldn't inhale fresh air to clear its lungs with the dome of chlorine gas around its head.

It crashed to the cold, uncaring stone a few moments later. It was very dead.

Silence reigned as Harry walked calmly past his fallen opponent. Bile-colored mist still billowed out of its mouth and nostrils like a smoking bullet casing.

Nobody cheered when he retrieved the faux egg, nor all the while as he walked back out of the arena. To be fair, he didn't make any movement or sound indicating he wanted any. No cry or leap of victory to court attention or praise.

Harry Potter just killed a dragon. By himself. In less than a minute and thirty seconds.

It only took him four spells to do it, although the purpose of that first summoning charm eluded her. It was then that the seeker's Firebolt came whistling into the arena before he banished it back to wherever it came from. Ah. A backup plan. So, three spells then? It took him three spells to kill a member of the deadliest breed of dragons known to wizardkind. Three incredibly simple spells that any fourth year could pull off.

The gaggle of dragon handlers, wisely equipped with bubble head charms, rushed in and tried to clear the Horntail's airways and resuscitate it. Tragically, the magical resistance dragons were blessed with prevents the effects most magic-based medicine just as effectively as offensive spells.

"Sue? Are you okay?" The Girl next to her asked.

Sue turned to Padma. The Indian girl was giving her the oddest look of concern. They weren't friends; Sue made damn sure of that. The sudden familiarity was most unwelcome.

"Your, um... Your face." The more tolerable Patil twin touched her own mouth to indicate what she meant.

Sue mirrored the movement and discovered what was so shocking about her own. She was smiling. Not smirking, smiling. A full toothy grin stretched her cheeks as far as they could go. It was a strange and uncomfortable position for them to be in.

Sue Li does not smile. Ever. Everyone knew that. She somehow suspected her smile would become a common enough sight in the months to come, but for now she pulled her scarf up to the bridge of her nose to obscure her face. Most of the crowd with a passing knowledge of Muggle chemistry were doing the same thing, so the gesture would go unnoticed.

Four years of torture were finally paying off. The countless hours she spent learning this gutter language, putting up with superfluous school politics and the sad excuse of a curriculum this institution supplied had all been worth it.

Finally! Something interesting in this country. Somebody competent in this wizarding world. And here she had thought they'd all have to wait for Voldemort's return before teh action would start up again.

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