The Red Rose That Has Green Thorns

I had never seen anything quite like the monster that reared ahead of us. At first, he seemed like he was morphing into another dream gargoyle or something, but I soon realized that he wasn’t. The creature facing us looked like a dragon, to some degree, with a stocky body and highlighter green scales. It had a deep forest green mane, like a lions, and fluorescent yellow and glowing eyes. It had two tails, both so spiky I wondered to myself stupidly if he ever cut himself with them, and his claws were at least eight inches long apiece. He had six legs and six claws per foot. So there were thirty-six eight inch long claws to deal with.

“That thing…” Scorpius breathed, and with a sideways glance I saw that the hand clenching his wand was turning white from the pressure.

“A ‘doozy’, eh?” I imitated the commentator, and he snorted, but never took his eyes off of this new, daunting adversary. I didn’t even want to know why its teeth were stained such a dark yellow.

“Rose and Scorpius seem to be awestruck at the beast looming in front of them! What will they do next?”

“What will we do next, indeed,” Scorpius muttered, scowling. I just shook my head, staring up at the beast as it grew a few more inches in height and then stopped abruptly. It growled, showing two top rows and three bottom rows of jagged yellow teeth, and I couldn’t help but take a half a step back.

“Let’s…circle it?” I suggested weakly. “I’ll take this way, and you go to the left. Use the…conjunctivus curse at its eyes. Conjunctivus…is that the right word? Oh, I’m sure you know what I mean…”

“I know what you mean,” he nodded. “Why don’t you use it, and I’ll use a hex or something to distract it?”

“Okay,” I agreed, taking a step to the right as he took a step to the left.

The action was slow and careful, but seemed to take only a fleeting second. We had unwittingly confused the beast, which was now turning its head this way and that, trying to decide which one of us to go for. Part of me hoped it wouldn’t come for me, but then I realized its only other option would be to go for Scorpius, and so I decided I’d rather it went for me - but then that cycle of thought restarted. I suppose it’s only reasonable that I didn’t want a creature fifty times my size to attack me or my boyfriend, but I’d rather the beast attacked me than him.

We had just managed to fire our spells when the beast came to a conclusion, and with a motion faster than either of us had thought possible, it ducked its head beneath the spells and lashed its head at Scorpius.

The tails came flying toward me.

Unable to think of a more solid shield, I threw up a nonverbal Protego, hoping it would be enough in the split second I had to cast it. And when the tails hit my barrier, I was thrown back more than twenty feet, rolling across the ground and undeniably very lucky that nothing broke. It was then that I looked up fearfully, wondering what had become of Scorpius while I had been otherwise occupied. I got her answer when he landed hard on his back five feet in front of me, his arm bleeding and the wind knocked out of him but it seemed as though that was the worst of the glancing bite the creature had landed.

The commentary kept going, the shouts of the crowd in disbelief and shock and worry all at once rising and falling.

I rose and quickly got to Scorpius, helping him up with my free hand on his good arm.

“Thanks,” he murmured, eyes once more focused on our dangerous adversary.

“Not a problem,” I said, letting my eye scan the tatters of his sleeve and the blood coming from his arm.

“Stunners,” he whispered then, leaning closer to me as the creature took one slow, lumbering step our way. “I don’t know if it’ll be enough, just two of us, but I figure it’s worth a try. On three?”

“Sure,” I nodded, standing with my wand at the ready. “One?”

“Two.”

“Three!” we said together, and again nonverbally, we both cast our spells at the dragon-lion-thing. It stumbled, but didn’t go down.

“Again!” I suggested.

“Three!” Scorpius said, and so we both threw another set of stunners at the beast. And to our surprise, it fell. Cheers erupted in the stands and the commentary filled my ears once again - now that my attention wasn’t otherwise occupied.

“And they’ve done it! Rose and Scorpius are the first team to finish their task! Their total time ended up being one hour over the time limit, and there’s going to be some point deduction for injury, but can you blame them? I wouldn’t want to face that thing any day!”

As it turns out, there was a point deduction. But we still got forty-six out of fifty points, which kind of - okay, utterly - flabbergasted me. That was the highest score.