After the golden egg had roasted in the flames for fifteen minutes, six cracks appeared. At twenty minutes, the tightly shut shell finally began to open slowly, like a strange, enormous flower.
Yet to everyone's surprise, there were no written clues or slips of paper inside. Instead, there was a little golden dragon statue.
Harry used a piece of firewood to rake the opened golden egg and the little dragon out of the fireplace, then cast Aguamenti to cool them down. Once cooled, the golden egg actually began slowly closing again.
Before that happened, however, the little dragon statue had already come free of it.
Harry picked up the little dragon. It was still slightly warm, but no longer hot enough to burn his hands.
After raising it to his eyes and studying it closely for a moment, Harry felt somewhat disappointed.
Before the First Task, Harry and the others had each drawn the dragon they would have to face from Bagman's pocket. Harry still remembered that little dragon vividly.
Compared with the real dragon Hagrid had raised, Harry thought that little toy dragon was much cuter. Although it could not fly, it could crawl around in his hand and even breathe fire.
The fire it breathed was not hot at all, though.
Harry's Horntail had been especially bad-tempered, just like a real Horntail, and had even bitten his finger while in his hand. But with its tiny size, the little dragon could not actually hurt Harry. He had only found it amusing.
To Harry's great disappointment, however, a staff member had taken the little dragon back before he actually stepped into the arena.
No magical items other than wands were allowed into the arena. Even Harry's vest and Wrist Guards had been stripped off, so naturally the little dragon