Everyone’s in place half an hour in advance; about five minutes before the time, a distortion starts to grow, and at the moment of solar midnight, the dragon approaches. Gertrude tries to talk to it, but it breathes at Sir Archibald (part-blinding the magical senses); his apparatus works (or perhaps it’s the brandishing of the baton), and the flames are diverted. Bessie hits the dragon with a poker, which becomes hot and slightly soft in the instant of contact; Audrey shoots, and the bullets melt before they hit. Gertrude talks again, and this time it responds; it’s not speech, exactly, just a sudden and solid certainty in everyone’s mind. It is attacking knights, it says, because this is the proper business of dragons; it’s not been doing so before, because (complicated concept to do with the positions of the stars), and plans to continue for (similarly complicated concept) – Audrey does her best to memorise the details. It gives a name, or at least a long and random-seeming string of syllables, then retreats through the hole (and Bessie measures the distortion, this being the freshest example they’ve found).