I keep running through the first and second gates, and a wave of heat hits me in the archway as I’m about to step onto the drawbridge. A wall of hot breath. I hold my arm in front of my face and feel Penny grab the back of my shirt. She reaches her ring hand over my shoulder. “U can’t touch this!”
“What’s that?” I shout at her.
“Barrier spell. It won’t work unless the dragon knows the song.”
“How would the dragon know that song?”
“I’m doing my best, Simon!”
“I can’t even see it!” I shout. “Can you?”
I can’t see it, but I can hear it, I think. Flapping. A river of fire pours onto the Lawn and I look up—it’s diving towards us. It looks like a red T. rex with yellow cat eyes and big rubbery red wings.
Penny’s still casting spells over my shoulder to try to ground it.
“What’ll we do with it on the ground?” I ask.
“Not get bombed with fire!”
I try to remember the last time I fought a dragon, but I was 11 then, and I’m pretty sure I just blew it up. Come closer, I think at the monster, so I can blow you up.
The dragon twists in the air without firing on us, and I think for a minute that one of Penny’s spells is working. Then I see its target—a group of kids, maybe third years, crouching under the yew tree.
Miss Possibelf is with them, and I see her casting spells at the dragon with her walking stick. I run towards the tree, pulling my wand out of my back pocket and shouting as loud as I can at the dragon. “Your attention, please!”
I throw the weight of my magic into it.
The dragons stops mid-zoom to look at me, hanging in the air for a moment like it’s been paused. Then it rears its head back and thrusts forward in my direction.
“Oh, blast,” Penelope says. She’s a few feet away. She reaches out to the school—not the dragon—and yells, “There’s nothing to see here!”
“What are you doing?” I scream, breaking right to lead the dragon away from the buildings.
“Your attention spell worked on everyone!” Penny says. “They’re all coming out to watch! There’s nothing to see here!” she shouts again at the gates. “As you were!”
I glance back and see kids standing on the drawbridge and running to the edge of the ramparts. The dragon is diving again, and I decide to run at it. A ribbon of fire shoots over my head. I drop at the last moment and roll away—its teeth scrape at the ground beside me.
It pulls up, snorting in what I think is frustration, then lunges towards me, snapping its jaws. I swing my sword at its neck, and the blade catches and sticks. The dragon heaves up again, and I go with it, holding on to my sword and using the momentum to swing onto the beast’s head, my knees tucked behind its jaw.
This is better. Now I can just throttle it.
The dragon’s trying to swing me loose—and I’m trying to get my sword out of its hide, so that I can stab it again—when I hear Baz calling my name. I look up and see him running along the ramparts.
He must have cast some spell on his voice to make it carry. (I wonder if it’s a Hear ye, hear ye—I’ve never managed that.) “Simon,” he’s shouting, “don’t hurt it!”
Don’t hurt it? Sod that. I go back to yanking on my blade.
“Simon!” Baz cries out again. “Wait! They’re not dark creatures!” He gets to the end of the ramparts, but instead of stopping, he leaps up on top of the wall, then out over the moat—just takes a running jump off the building! And doesn’t fall! He floats out over the moat and lands on the other side. It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
The dragon must think so, too, because it stops struggling with me and follows Baz with its head.
Its wings are beating less furiously. It almost lolls in the air, dipping in Baz’s direction and snuffling little puffs of fire.
Baz runs towards us, then stands with his legs apart, his wand in the air.
“Baz!” I yell. “No! You’re flammable!”
“So is everything!” he shouts back at me.
“Baz!”
But he’s already pointing at the dragon and casting a spell:
“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire, and your children are gone.”
The first line is a common spell for pests and mice and things like that. But Baz