On Thursday morning, Ron received a letter by owl over breakfast.
It was not the usual roll of parchment, but a tightly sealed envelope-even though the envelope felt very thin, as though it held only a single slip of paper.
Yet Harry and Ron immediately gave it their utmost attention.
Because the sender was Charlie Weasley.
Charlie had previously written to Ron with a few hints, saying that he and his colleagues would be coming over before the First Task. This suggested that the First Task would most likely have something to do with dragons.
For that reason, Harry and the others had spent some time researching ways to deal with dragons.
The truth, however, was that they had not come up with any decent solutions.
Dragons were extremely powerful, well-rounded magical creatures.
They were enormous, but that did not make them clumsy in the slightest. On the contrary, healthy dragons had very quick reflexes and moved very fast. Although different breeds varied, every one of them had a breath attack.
And those breath attacks were far more powerful than most magic, or even most Dark Magic. The breath of the strongest breeds could even melt rock.
Nor were dragons with weaker breath necessarily easier to deal with.
They tended to be smaller, but were even more agile. A few were also venomous-the Norwegian Ridgeback, for instance.
Speaking of which, they wondered how Hagrid's little dragon, formerly Norbert and now Norberta, was doing. If Charlie and the others really were bringing dragon fruit, would Norberta be among them?
Well, two years was not enough for a dragon to reach full maturity, but it was enough for one to grow into an enormous beast.
Besides their powerful means of attack, dragons also had virtually flawless defenses.
Dragon hide was one of