The dragon continued flying in our direction. And now I could see another one following it.
Merlin! Were there others too, flying at some distance from the first one? Had all of them escaped? How had they escaped? There had been several enchantments to keep them from breaking free. What in the world had happened? I needed to help controlling them right away. But first I had to get Adelaide to safety. She had come to meet me and if anything happened to her, it would be my fault. I had to protect her from getting injured.
That was a problem. I looked down; we were at quite a distance from the ground. Flying downwards and then back up would be a waste of time and also dangerous. If there was some other way... and then I saw other workers on their broomsticks and realised what I could do.
‘Hey, Chang!’ I called out to the youngest man in the group who had joined recently. It was suicidal coming here to help when he had barely spent any time with these creatures. But now that he had come, he would solve my predicament.
The Chinese flew towards me. ‘Yes?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Could you please help me, Chang?’ I asked, looking at him as if my life depended on his answer, which it kind of did.
‘Anything, Mr Potter,’ he committed, eyes gleaming. No doubt, he knew who Harry Potter was. Sometimes, being his son did have an advantage. But only sometimes.
‘Could you please take this lady,’ I gestured towards Adelaide, ‘and carry her down to the ground on your broomstick?’ I asked.
He blinked. He had definitely not seen that one coming, and the way he was staring at Adelaide, it seemed as if he had just noticed her.
He turned and looked longingly at the other tamers, shooting spells furiously at the dragons. Whizzing here and there on their brooms to miss the fire being aimed towards them. He would love to be part of the group but it would do no good to him or the team. You needed experience in these situations; bravery wasn’t all that mattered. I had learnt that the hard way, being the Gryffindor that I am.
It would do no good trying to explain to him that it was the situation and not him which was faulty. So I nudged Adelaide, who had been staring at the dragons in awe, and whispered to her to act as the ‘damsel in distress’.
Surprisingly, she didn’t argue but faced Chang and said in a high voice, ‘Oh, Mr Chang! Please take me down there or I’ll get burned by these... these... evil creatures.’ She sobbed in her hands.
I laughed inwardly. Her acting skills had greatly improved over the time, no doubt about that.
Her voice recovered Chang. ‘Oh, yes, ma’am. Please...’
Between Chang and me, we shifted Adelaide to his broom and I thanked him profusely. Blushing, he flew down to safety.
Now, the dragons had to be taken care of.
I focussed my full attention at them and saw that now; two of them were fighting with each other. Dear, Merlin! This would take time and energy.
Determined, I swooped to the group of dragon tamers, all ready to do my part.
I slowly opened my eyes and the previous day’s events came rushing into my mind. Adelaide visiting, the ride on the broom, dragons escaping, trying to gain control of them, and one of them falling.
One of the dragons had died.
We had been on our brooms, throwing spells at the two dragons, trying to bring them under control, but the dragons had been too fast. And then, the head had had the brilliant idea of distracting them. I offered to be the bait immediately and he reluctantly agreed. It wasn’t as if he had a choice anyway. Someone had to divert the dragons, and I did have experience after all.
I had followed the plan and the others had successfully managed to stun the first dragon, and slowly levitated it to the ground. It had taken the power of eight wands and intense concentration to bring down a creature as huge as that dragon. They had then tied several chains to it and performed numerous charms so that when it would wake up, it would be unable to set itself loose again.
Then we had flown to the skies to tackle the second dragon, leaving a few tamers behind with the other dragon just in case. He had managed to break loose once, he could do it again.
The dragon was still flying towards the town and we had no time. It was either managing it or being prepared to let everyone know about the wizarding world, which was unacceptable and unthinkable. Using all my power, I had rushed to it and tried to revert his direction to me so that the others could stun it, too and bring him down and it could be all done and over with. But that creature, apparently, had other plans.
He thrashed his tail and blew fire towards us, refusing to stay still. He also set a few trees on fire and some of the workers got busy in trying to extinguish it. We did not need another disaster in our hands anyway. A rebel of a dragon was more than enough; we didn’t need a whole forest burning.
I had then thrown caution to the winds, ignoring the plan, I flew right towards the dragon. We stared at each other. Face to face. Eye to eye. That had surely caught his attention. He remained still for a moment. The tamers took opportunity of it and bombarded it the stunning spells and he had become stiff. But before that, he had managed to breathe fire towards me. If I hadn’t moved fast, I would have been burnt to death, but I did manage to receive quite a few burns though they were not life threatening. I flew downwards, confident that the other tamers would handle the dragon well. Not that I would’ve been any use now.
I had just reached the ground and Adelaide had started coming towards me when I heard shouts and looked up to see the dragon falling down from the sky. It was clear that he was dropping and not being levitated down. Before I could react, it had reached the ground and I felt the bones of my right leg breaking and screamed out loud in pain.
I heard the cries of ‘It’s dead!’ and then blacked out.