The New Trio and the Goblet of Fire

by MaraRiall

Summary:

It's year four for Harry and his friends, and Voldemort has returned with a sinister plot to gain more Death Eater followers through the Triwizard Tournament. There's only one problem: Sirius has put his significant political clout to good use by insisting that an external committee entirely made up of parents oversee the tasks and make sure they are as safe as possible, and that the goblet of fire be altered to allow forfeits, and different school champions be selected for each of the now seven tasks.
With Severus risking his life spying on Voldemort once again, Sirius and his friends and allies intend to make the most of the information he gains.
The year is not going to be as smooth as everyone wants, though, with an unexpected creature inheritance and new powers for someone, and teenage hormones really messing up the emotions of every one of the trio and their friends.
~~~~~
Book four of my series rewrite, with more tasks and champions as promised. Almost totally different to canon now, except that Dumbles is still manipulative and intent on making Harry a martyr, whether he's a Horcrux or not.

Chapter 1: Metamorphosis

*Neville's POV*

Neville Longbottom woke up slowly, languidly, with absolutely no idea that life as he knew it was over, and that he was forever changed. He vaguely remembered that today was his birthday, and that he and one of his best friends, Harry Potter-Black would be having a joint birthday party later that day. They had swapped between their birthdays as the party day for as long as they'd known each other, which was about as far back as he remembered.

He rolled onto his back and groaned. What had he done last night? His whole body felt like it was aflame in pain at his slightest movement. He opened his eyes, then immediately shut them again at the blinding light that was coming in from the window above his bed. Stupid house-elf, he thought. For at least five years now, his grandmother has insisted that the house-elves were to stay out of his room unless she said otherwise, so he could learn how much effort went into cleaning and maintaining his room to the level he was used to. If he slept in, he wouldn't get any extra time in his greenhouse that day. Now, for some reason, his curtains were open after he distinctly remembered closing them the night before. The explanation his sleepy mind came up with was that a house-elf had, for some reason, decided to open his curtains.

Neville sighed and opened one eye to try and accumulate it to the amount of light in the room. Ever so slowly, he opened his other eye as well and looked up at the window. He blinked, and looked again. The curtains still covered the window. How odd. Confused at this discovery, he turned his attention to the rest of his room, and gasped. Everything had somehow become a thousand times more defined, and had far more detail than he'd thought possible. Like over on the bookshelf that contained all his old school books and his other Herbology texts, was a small amount of dust on every shelf, which was odd because he'd just dusted it the night before, and his desk seemed to have more ink stains than he remembered. This explained why he'd thought his curtains were open; his eyes were somehow far better than they'd been last night, and therefore were more sensitive to light.

Wondering whether his eyes had visibly changed in the mirror, he got out of bed and went to the mirror in his ensuite bathroom. When he locked eyes with his reflection, he screamed.

 

*Augusta Longbottom's POV*

Being woken up at 4 in the morning after staying up past midnight the night before was never fun. Waking up to a child screaming at this time of night is something every parent experiences at least once. Augusta had gone through this experience twice before; once when her son was a baby, and once when her semi-orphaned grandson was a baby, but between those two times, she'd gotten used to waking up at a far later, and more reasonable, hour. When her grandson started sleeping through the night, she rejoiced, and knew that the only times she'd be woken up at an unreasonable hour was either when her grandson had a nightmare, or on Christmas morning, both of which were perfectly acceptable reasons, as she'd experienced them before when Frank was younger.

However, Neville was fourteen today, and waking her up with his screams were certainly not acceptable. However, as she was a good grandmother, she groaned pitifully and made her way to see what had her grandson in such a kerfuffle. She found him, not in his bed, but in his bathroom, starting at his… somewhat altered reflection. “Neville?” she asked, and when he turned to her, she gasped, for it had not just been his reflection that had been altered, but also his own appearance. All of his baby fat had vanished overnight, and his button nose had morphed into a Grecian one, straight and aristocratic. His hair had changed slightly from the sandy blond hair he'd gained from his father to have darker blond highlights, making it resemble very light tree bark, and his eyes were an incredibly complex matrix of leaf green and dark brown, making an astonished Augusta think vaguely that it resembled a forest canopy.

“Oh dear,” she said faintly. She had of course heard the rumours of the Longbottoms being part creature before she'd married into the family, but she'd dismissed it when she'd fallen hard for Geraint Longbottom. After she'd married him, her mother-in-law had informed her that it was indeed true, that there had been a Dryad in the family five generations ago, and this meant that there might be a Dryad born into the family in the next five to ten generations, as the Dryadic magic stayed in a magical family for ten to fifteen generations before eliminating itself if it decided that no one worthy of the magic was born to the family.

With Neville’s affinity for all plants, magical and Muggle alike, and his difficulty making close friendships with anyone other than the most trustworthy people, she really should have seen this coming.

She was brought out of her reverie by Neville’s choked up and fearful voice. “What's happened to me, Gran?”

This was going to take a lot of explaining.

 

*Harry's POV*

Harry was shocked at the change in his friend. He'd Flooed over early with his godfathers to help set up for the party, but had been pulled into a shaking hug by a very different-looking Neville. Madam Longbottom bade them sit down, then started explaining.

“A male Dryad?” Harry asked, dumbfounded.

“Yeah,” sighed Neville. “A Drus. I'd never heard of a male Dryad before, even in Care of Magical Creatures, but Gran said that's because Hogwarts only teaches about the Celtic Dryads, who are an all-female species, and not about the Greco-Roman ones, who are mainly female, but there's a one to twenty ratio of Dryads to Drus.

Madam Longbottom took over again. “Since there used to be so many more of them, and the majority of the female ones are pansexual, the ratio made sense. Drus often have more than one chosen mate, usually two or three, and each of their mates exemplify a different element. Only a Drus-Dryad pairing can produce a pure Dryad or Drus, which is one from birth, unlike Neville, who unknowingly underwent a creature inheritance.” Madam Longbottom blushed slightly, but soldiered on. “Drus and Dryads reach sexual awareness and maturity at fifteen years of age. Prior to this, they may still search for potential mates, but it is only at fifteen that they feel a pull towards certain people or creatures. These pulls are towards potential mates, so do not worry about being destined to mate with a horrible person, or one already in a committed relationship, Neville.”

Harry saw Neville relax slightly, and realised this must have been one of many problems that his friend was worried about. Harry had a question of his own. “If their sexual maturity is at fifteen, why did Neville get his creature inheritance at fourteen?”

Neville perked up, interested in the answer his Gran would give. “They have some sort of power over plants and nature, it differs from one to the next. The only thing I can think of is that the extra year might give Neville a chance to learn to control his power before being overwhelmed with the need to get as many mates as his instincts tell him he needs.”

*

Luckily, the party only had their close friends and family invited, and all of them accepted the change relatively well. Once it was over, and all but the Marauders’ Recruits, who were staying overnight, had left, poor Neville was all but swamped with questions from his well-meaning but curious friends. Harry ended up stepping in and reminding them that Neville didn't know much more than they did. Draco suggested asking the Room of Requirements for books on Greco-Roman Dryads once they got back to Hogwarts, and the others reluctantly agreed, and they all focused on the reason why they had stayed overnight, other than planning pranks and talking about the Quidditch World Cup Final in two weeks. Fred and George had overheard their mum and dad talking about some sort of ancient competition that was happening at Hogwarts called the Triwizard Tournament. None of them knew anything about it, but they were going to look for books on it in Flourish and Blotts when they went to get their school supplies in a week or two.

A day after they'd all finished purchasing their Hogwarts things, they Portkeyed to the camping grounds around the World Cup Stadium. As it was late in the day, the first thing to do was to get water for tea and set up a campfire large enough for the Weasley, Lovegood, Black, and Prince families to fit around comfortably. Sirius took it upon himself to teach Arthur how to set up the campfire the Muggle way, and the Weasley kids wandered off to see what kinds of souvenirs they could get, so Harry, Draco, Neville, Luna, and Hermione allocated themselves the water-fetching job.

The Quidditch World Cup Final Match was the most incredible experience of Harry's young life. There were witches and wizards from every imaginable country and walk of life, and there were different and exotic smells in the air when he, Draco, Luna, Neville, and Hermione walked through the assigned districts of people from other countries in order to fill up the teapot with water from a Muggle tap that the map they'd been given said was nearby. Harry had heard at least seven different languages during that short time alone, as well as some hilarious discussions from English witches and wizards who had tried and failed to appear Muggle. There was one man dressed in a frilly pink nightgown who refused to wear anything else because he liked feeling the breeze around his privates, and someone who had decided that a neon lime green Muggle suit with coattails was perfectly acceptable. There was a mother scolding her toddler for stealing his father's wand and accidentally enlarging a slug to the size of a small flobberworm, which the witch had stood on.

Eventually, the four friends, red-cheeked and eyes twinkling from laughter, got back to Sirius and Remus’ magical tent, which was next to the Weasleys’ and Professor Snape and Narcissa’s tents.

With their return, tea was set up and a simple meal of sausages over the fire was prepared and eaten amidst excited chatter from the kids about the final, and more sedated talk from the adults about the most recent news from the Daily Prophet, and speculation on how long it would take for Voldemort to show himself.

Soon enough, a loud gong sounded, and the spectators made their way to the stadium. Mr Weasley had won a competition at work, getting tickets to sit in the Minister's box, so Sirius had pulled some strings and had managed to obtain tickets for his family, the Lovegoods, the Princes, Neville, and Hermione in the Minister's box too.

Harry had seen professional Quidditch games before, and had even been to the last World Cup Final, but the match they watched that night was the best one he'd ever witnessed. The Irish Chasers were so in sync it was like they were reading each other's minds, and the Bulgarian Seeker, Krum, barely seemed to need a broom as he soared around the pitch, easily flying circles around the Irish Seeker.

The Bulgarian Veela mascots made him feel a bit odd, but he shook of the effects a second later to Draco peeking at him surreptitiously. Somehow knowing what was on his boyfriend's mind, Harry turned to face him, winked, and kissed him deeply. Breaking away, Harry whispered, “I'm not going anywhere, luv.”

For a split-second, he was worried about what he'd said, for Draco's face showed clear shock. Despite being boyfriends for about a year and a half, they'd never really talked about using or allowing pet names, or if what they felt for each other was indeed love. Looking back on it now, Harry realised that though they'd had feelings for each other, they were a bit too young to really understand what they were getting into. He didn't know when it had happened, but sometime in the last month or two, after an embarrassing talk with Sirius and Remus, he'd realised that what he felt for Draco was love.

He forgot all about what he was talking about when Draco basically tackled him and kissed him breathless. “You-you love me?” Draco asked.

Harry nodded. “Yeah, I do. Sorry I didn't tell you when I first figured it out.”

Draco laughed softly and brought his forehead to rest on Harry's. “Well I forgive you. I love you too, you prat.”

Now it was Harry's turn to laugh softly. “Git. Did you see Ron's reaction to the Veela?”

Draco nodded, and then just like that their romantic moment was broken as they giggled like children as Fred and George pulled Ron back from pitching himself out of the Minister's box to get closer to the Veela.

In no time, the match finished when Krum caught the Snitch despite Bulgaria being more than a hundred and fifty points behind. Both teams flew to the Minister's box and the Irish team got the trophy. Just before both teams left, Harry noticed that Krum was staring at George, who was staring back, and then Krum winked and flew off. George whispered to his twin, “Was he… flirting with me?”

Chapter 2: Simultaneous Visions

It was as Harry and his friends were returning to their tents that they began to get an inkling that something was wrong. Luna stopped in the middle of the path, and when Harry touched her arm to name sure she was okay, he stiffened and gasped, his unseeing eyes flicking back and forth as he unknowingly tapped into Luna’s gift.

The two stood there, immovable, as their friends and families took up places next to and around them to prevent any strangers from witnessing two Seers having visions.

As quickly as it started, it ended, and both Harry and Luna took deep breaths to ground themselves in the present. Sirius quickly ushered everyone into his tent so the two children could reveal what they'd Seen. Remus rushed to the small kitchenette and made some hot chocolate for the kids and some hot Butterbeer for the adults. When everyone was settled, Severus took it upon himself to start the questioning. “What did you see?”

Luna answered, “Lucius Malfoy made the decision to join his friends in a revel tonight, because he saw how happy Draco was with people he considers Mudbloods and Blood-Traitors, and that it didn't look like he'd be abandoning us to join him any time soon. He wants to remind his son of the power Pureblood wizards have over Muggles.”

Draco gaped. “B-but I'm not—I don't see him as my father! Through blood and magic, my father is Severus, and I'm a Prince! And—”

“Calm, Draco,” said Narcissa softly. “Your birth father sees things very differently to the way the majority of the wizarding world sees them. Merlin knows Lucius desires power above all else, and that means he constantly seeks out ways or views that prove that he is better than everyone else. His own father was the first one to teach him of the superiority of Purebloods, and Malfoys above all. Voldemort was the second, and by the time Harry defeated him the first time, Lucius was arrogant and powerful enough to seek his own power in the Ministry.”

Draco still looked incensed, but seemed to have accepted what his mother told him, then he decided that Lucius was basically insane, and beyond anyone's help.

Sirius then shifted the conversation to his godson. “Did you see the same thing Luna saw, Harry? I mean, I didn't know you could join her visions, since you have a completely different kind of Magesight to the one she does.”

Harry shook his head. “It actually makes sense that I could join her in her visions, since she's attuned to me, Draco, and Neville. She told me that the second time we met. But no, Luna doesn't normally have visions, she divines knowledge and motives of people up to three degrees of relationships away from us. When I touched her, she mentally passed her knowledge onto me, which caused me to have a flash-vision about what the revel is going to be like. Muggles and Muggleborns are in danger, as are Blood-Traitors and people who are part-creature, although to a lesser degree. If we want to be sure we're safe, and our tents aren't destroyed, we need to pack them up and leave.”

The tent was filled with silence for a few long minutes as everyone digested what they'd been told. Eventually, Sirius spoke up. “I can understand packing up, but I'm an Auror, Harry, I have a duty to protect those who can't protect themselves. I'd prefer it if we moved all you kids to the Burrow or something, and I'll gather backup by saying that it seems likely that we'll have a riot or something with the alcohol flowing and temperatures high. Muggles have that problem with some of their sports games, don't they?” He asked Hermione.

“Yes. I haven't been to a game where that's happened before, I've heard it can happen in the aftermath of most sporting events, although football and rugby games, and tennis cups, seem to get the most reactions. I've heard it can get even worse with baseball, ice hockey, and American football,” she answered in a matter-of-fact voice.

Sirius blinked. “Well, there you have it. The wizarding world hasn't really had that many Quidditch riots, but it isn't unheard of in the World Cups.” Sirius quickly counted how many adults there were compared to the number of children, and fell one short. Biting his lip, he said, “Well, I'd intended on each adult Apparating a kid out, but we're one short.”

Luna spoke up. “Blaise and his mother are here as well, one row back and ten tents to the left. If they're found, they will likely be hurt, both being part Dark Veelas.”

“I knew they were part Veela,” said Neville, “Blaise told us in second year. What's the difference between Veelas and Dark Veelas?”

“Their skin, feather, and wing coloring, as well as their powers and weaknesses, are different,” explained Phil, for once not pretending to be dotty. “Veelas are light and silvery everywhere, and when transformed, they can shoot fireballs out of their hands, and have some control over other fires, and are natural enemies with water creatures. Dark Veelas, on the other hand have bronze and black colouring, and can shoot balls of electricity from their hands. They actually get along well with water creatures; it is earthen creatures and golems that they don't get along with.”

“Excuse me if I did not understand something correctly,” Severus’ acerbic tone broke up the conversation instantly, “but are we not meant to be finding a way to protect our children from a Death Eater revel?”

Then Harry saw something he never thought he'd see: every adult but one in the room blushing at being reprimanded by the remaining adult.

“Why does that tone make me feel like I'm eleven years old again?” whined Sirius, and everyone in the room laughed, breaking the tension.

“Years of practice,” teased Severus.

Draco said, “Dad, you gave me that Portkey to Prince Manor a while back. I can Portkey there, then Floo to the Burrow. That way, there'll be an even number of adults and kids.”

Severus raised an eyebrow, then nodded in agreement. Arthur said, “The Department of Magical Games and Sports set up anti-Portkey and anti-Apparation wards to prevent non-paying people from getting entrance. The one place you can leave here from is the spot we all got here. I suggest we all pack up our things as quickly as possible and go there. Did either of your visions indicate what time it might start?”

Luna and Harry shook their heads, and Harry elaborated, “it was really dark out, but the Irish fans hadn't stopped celebrating, and the moon was behind a cloud bank.”

“Well then,” Bill said, clapping his hands together. “Let's get moving!”

Everyone departed the tent quickly, Harry and his friends putting out the fire and dismantling the wood pile, the men dismantling the tents, and Narcissa went to warn Blaise and his mother, Marianna. In a record time of twenty minutes, they were all at the Apparation/Portkey site, the bigger party having met up with Blaise and Mrs Zabini on the way. After some arguing between Sirius, Arthur, and the appointed checkpoint wizard, the latter grudgingly allowed them all to leave with their children, then come back with a group of Aurors to keep the peace.

Draco went first, disappearing in an instant after muttering something and holding onto a small pendant, followed by Remus, who took Neville, Severus with George, Narcissa with Hermione, Arthur with Ron, Phil with Luna, Bill with Ginny, Charlie with Fred, Marianna with Blaise, and lastly Sirius with Harry, the former of whom quickly Apparated to the Ministry to try to get Auror help. All but Draco arrived at the Burrow, and Narcissa elected to stay behind and explain what was going on to Molly, who had ushered them all inside and plied the children with hot broth and freshly baked bread. Before the explanation started, Draco came rushing through the Floo and hugged his father tightly. “You got here safely, thank Merlin! I was worried they might have started early or something!”

“Well, we’re all fine, Draco,” Severus said. “Now, why don’t you sit next to Harry, Mrs Weasley will bring you some broth and bread, and you can relax with your friends.”

Draco took a deep breath and did as his father suggested, sitting down at the table and placing a kiss on Harry’s cheek. Harry looked over at him, grinned happily, and took Draco’s free hand, holding it as they ate. It helped that Draco was left-handed and Harry was right-handed, or this wouldn't have worked. Severus turned to the rest of the adults with a raised eyebrow. Clearly something had happened between the two of them, as they were not normally as physically affectionate when simply sitting next to one another. The other adults, he noticed, had also seen the kiss and hand-holding, and were just as clueless as he was, so he decided to unobtrusively question his son when they got back home tomorrow. He would be the first to know; Draco was his son, after all.

Half an hour later, Sirius Floo-called the Burrow and told everyone that he’d managed to find some backup that wasn’t already at the game, and that if one of them felt like they could be of some help, to please return to the campsite. Severus stood and reassured his son that everything would be all right, then exited the Burrow, followed by Remus, Phil, Marianna, Arthur, Charlie, and Bill after they’d reassured their families. Charlie got a bit of a surprise when Blaise ran over and hugged him, whispering in his ear that he needed to tell him something important when he got back.

All the determined defenders walked past the edges of the wards and Apparated away, one by one, leaving enough time for the departed to get out of the way so the next one could arrive.

They all arrived in darkness, as the moon had become hidden behind the clouds. Around them was total chaos.

Notes:

Bwahaha! A cliffy! (a bit of a pathetic one, but still)
Happy Halloween to you all! I've started to realise that although this book might have more chapters, it's mostly going to be because I want to elaborate on events much more, and I also have quite a bit planned for those times when JK just decided to do a time skip in canon.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

Chapter 3: Taking Control of the Situation

Notes:

Here's chapter 3! To be honest, I had no clue I was gonna add some of the stuff I did, it just kinda happened when I wrote it. I'm happy with it though.
Enjoy!

Sirius rushed through the Ministry of Magic, taking the stairs to the DMLE instead of the lifts, as one could never be sure when the next one might turn up—some empty lifts were even known to go missing on occasion, only to show up weeks later right on schedule. Arriving outside the office of his boss’ boss, Amelia Bones, he frantically knocked and barely waited ten seconds before storming in. Madam Bones was on her feet in an instant, her wand pointed at the intruder to her office. “Auror Black! What is the meaning of this interruption?”

“Sorry Madam Bones,” Sirius said, breathing heavily from his dead-sprint run. “I got word from two reputable Seers, there’s going to be a Death Eater attack tonight in the World Cup camping grounds.”

Madam Bones snorted and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know about you, Black, but for me, it’s 1994, and Death Eater attacks are a thing of the past, as is You-Know-Who.”

Sirius groaned quietly. He’d been trying to convince the other adults of their little group to include Madam Bones, but they were, for lack of better words, a democracy, and he hadn’t been able to convince enough of them. However, he considered this was an emergency. “My godson has Magesight, Madam Bones, and one of his friends, Luna Lovegood, has an extremely rare variant of it with which she can see the emotions, motivations, and possible futures of people who are within three degrees’ of relationships to Harry, Neville Longbottom, and Draco Prince. Luna had a vision that Draco’s former father had decided to take part in a Death Eater revel at the World cup for old times’ sake, and Harry somehow got pulled into it. Ma’am, if we do nothing, the Muggles at the campground will be tortured, thousands of galleons’ worth of property will be destroyed, and likely any people the Death Eaters decide look enough like Muggleborns will be tortured too.”

Madam Bones had sat through Sirius’ speech with a horrified expression, growing steadily paler as each revelation was laid before her. When she heard that Lucius Malfoy was one of the Death Eaters looking to re-live their glory days, her expression became firm and determined. She had never had any magical proof, but she knew that Malfoy had been one of the Death Eaters to accompany You-Know-Who to her brother Edgar’s house when he’d tortured and killed her parents, Edgar, and his family; that he’d been present during the destruction of the majority of her family, leaving only herself, her younger brother, Robert, his wife, and his daughter, Susan, although Robert and his wife had died of Dragon Pox two years later, leaving her the sole guardian of her niece.

How did she know Malfoy had been there? Amelia had been a junior Auror at that time, and had been the first responder because there had been so many other attacks that night that she was the only one available. After the Magical Forensic Specialists had left, she’d discovered they’d left a piece of evidence behind: a long, white-blond hair. When she’d asked them why they’d left it behind, they said that the inherent magic within hair disappeared an hour after the hair had detached from the head, and their magical analyses showed that their unit had arrived a good two hours after the hair had been left there, so there was nothing they could do to trace the magical signature of the hair’s owner. Devastated, she’d returned to the house, collected the hair, and sealed it in a stay-fresh magical field in her Gringotts vault. It was years later, once she’d been promoted to the Head of the DMLE position, that she’d discovered that the Muggles had developed a method for identifying people through their hair—they called it DNA testing. The only thing she needed in order to prove that Malfoy had been present, and therefore get him under Veritaserum and convicted as a murderer, torturer, rapist, and Death Eater, was a hair that had definitely come from his head, and compare the DNA in both hairs. She knew, as the Head of the DMLE, she should care about more than personal revenge, but in this moment, when Black told her Malfoy would be committing a crime, she was simply a woman who had been left orphaned and without any other family but one, and she wanted one of the men responsible to pay.

She looked at Black, who was desperately trying to remain hopeful that she would allow some Aurors and Hit-Wizards to help him, and nodded gravely. “You have what you came for, Auror Black. Ten each of Aurors and Hit-Wizards should do the trick, and I’ll be there as well. Now let’s go and pick out two teams.”

Sirius released the breath he’d been holding and nodded fervently, making for the door.

“And Auror Black?” said Madam Bones. Sirius turned to face her again. “I expect a more thorough debriefing after this is all over. I have a feeling that’s not all your godson and his friend have had visions of, and as the Head of the DMLE, I believe I have the right to know.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sirius gulped. The others were going to kill him.

*

As soon as Severus arrived at the Apparation site, he could tell it had already started. Gone was the drunken singing of the Irish celebrating their historical win, and in its place were high-pitched screams and the sound of hundreds of people running around, trying to find a safe place to hide. He moved to the side and waited for the six others to join him one at a time, cataloging the sights and sounds of his surroundings so he could accurately bring the others up to speed.

By the light of the few fires that were still burning, he could see people were running away into the woods, fleeing a crowd of hooded, masked figures who were emitting odd flashes of light, and noises like gunfire. The Death Eaters were jeering loudly, laughing and yelling drunkenly as they cast spells to humiliate and torture the Muggles they’d levitated upside down above them. Severus grimaced. The spell they were using was a variant of the Levicorpus spell he’d invented when he’d been in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

Finally, the others had arrived and were trying to come up with some sort of tactical plan to save the Muggles and defeat the Death Eaters, when there was the strange sound of multiple cars backfiring simultaneously. “Hands up!” shouted one of the newly arrived purple-robed Aurors.

Severus and the others did as told, but a strong voice from the middle of the group belayed that. “Stand down, Samuels. These are our informants.”

“But, Madam Bones, Snape is a well-known Death Eater, he very well could be—”

“Samuels, enough. Team one, follow me. We’re taking down those Death Eaters. Team two, you and the informants set up general anti-Apparation and anti-Portkey wards around the campsite using the wardstone here within ten minutes, then come after us and be prepared to step in if things get nasty.”

“Yes, ma’am,” came the quiet affirmation from everyone.

*

Bill ended up being the one to alter the wardstone. Being an accomplished Ward-breaker for Gringotts, he knew the ins and outs of setting up and taking down wards better than anyone other than his coworkers, and apparently this meant Aurors and Hit-Wizards trusted him enough to do their job for them by setting up the required wards. In no time at all, he was done, and his group and team two were on their way to being backup for the accomplished Aurors and Hit-Wizards that made up team one.

However, Bill was lagging behind because he was still putting his rune-carving kit away in his warding pack, which never left his side unless he was at home, when he heard a cry for help. “No, pleeze! Help! Is anyone zaire?!”

Being the person he was, he turned in the direction of the shout and ran towards it. He came across what was clearly a Death Eater who had split from the rest of his pack and cornered a silvery blonde-haired girl. The Death Eater was luckily facing away from him, and hadn’t seemed to notice his arrival. “Shouting won’t help you, half-breed. Neither will begging for mercy. There’s only one thing your kind are good for.”

The Death Eater raised his wand to fire a spell, but Bill got there first. “Stupefy!”

The figure crumpled to the ground, and the girl looked for her saviour, and when she saw him she gasped. “Mate!” she exclaimed, and ran over to him, flinging herself at him and sobbing. Bill’s arms automatically snaked around her waist and held her safely while he, bewildered, wondered what to do. As the girl—no, young woman; he could feel that much against his chest—continued to sob in combined horror and relief, he transferred her from both arms to his off arm and levitated the knocked out Death Eater behind him as he strode off towards the shouts and flashes of red and green light in the near distance.

He arrived just as the last Death Eater was downed, and an Auror bound him before placing a Portkey to the Ministry cells on him. Of course, it didn’t activate, but none of the others had either, which was why Madam Bones had sent one of her Aurors to deactivate the anti-Portkey ward.

Sirius was the first to notice Bill’s appearance. “There you are! I’ve been looking for you. Nobody knew where you were, and your mum would’ve killed me and danced on my grave if anything’d happened to any of her family members. Wait,” Sirius squinted through the darkness and saw Bill was holding someone while floating what was clearly a Death Eater behind him. “What happened?”

Bill explained his actions to a bewildered Sirius and an impressed Madam Bones, who had seen the floating Death Eater and come over to investigate. Madam Bones approached Bill and addressed the still-sobbing young woman who was clinging to him desperately. “Excuse me,” she said softly. When the young woman didn’t respond, Bill shook her a bit, which caused her to look around, confused. Madam Bones continued. “What is your name?”

“Fleur Delacour,” she said hesitantly.

“May I ask what happened before the young man holding you got to you?”

“Oh, eet was terrible! I lost track of my parents and my seester in the stampede, and… and zen zis ‘ooded and masked man appeared out of nowhere! ‘E pushed me into a corner, and I knew what he wanted from me. Eet is what all men want from Veela. I called for ‘elp, but ‘e said—‘e said shouting would not ‘elp. Neizzer would begging… zaire was only one zing zat my kind was good for,” Fleur spat out, her accent becoming more pronounced the more agitated she got. “Zen, before ze man could do anyzing, zaire was a flash of red light, and zen I saw my mate had saved me. Somehow, against all ze odds, eet was my mate who ‘eard my call, and ‘e rescued me.”

Madam Bones blinked a few times, then cleared her throat. “I see. I will endeavour to reunite you with your family as soon as possible, Miss Delacour. In the meantime, might I suggest explaining to Mr Weasley here what exactly it means to be your mate?”

Fleur nodded, and explained what it meant to be a Veela’s mate to Bill, and Arthur and Charlie, who had seen him and wandered over. “Veelas ‘ave predestined soulmates, Monsieur Weasley, wheech zey are able to find once zey reach ten years of age, but are unable to bind to zemselves until zey are sixteen. As ze soulmate is predestined, ze Veela and ze mate will find each ozzer early in zaire lives, normally before ze Veela turns twenty-five. A Veela’s mate is always immune to any Veela’s allure, and ze Veela will feel very… strongly about zaire mate when zey first see zem. I recently turned seventeen, and although I knew I was likely to meet my mate before I turned twenty-five, I despaired of ever finding him, as I had never met any male besides my fazzer who was immune to allure entirely. You are my mate. Zis does not mean we must bond, now or ever, but neizzer of us will be truly ‘appy if we are apart from each ozzer, but we would be if we were togezzer,” Fleur finished, clearly nervous.

Bill was speechless. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, not knowing what to say, when he simply decided on, “Please, call me Bill. If I’m your mate, then you can call me by my first name.”

The smile that lit up Fleur’s face took his breath away.

Chapter 4: The Dark Mark

Notes:

Hey guys, so I'm not going to be posting a chapter next week, since I've got three exams that week, and I really need to study for them. However, I hope you like this chapter, since I think it's actually nicely written. Any feedback would help though, since I'm always keen on getting better at writing.

Just so you know, the tiny bit of speech in bold is in French, since I'd rather not butcher the language, as I know what it feels like to have my mothertongue of German butchered by people.

Enjoy!

In the end, it didn’t take very long for order to return to the campsite, and for Fleur to be reunited with her parents. Amelia Bones strode to the edge of the forest, cast a Sonorous Charm, and spoke in her magically magnified voice, “To all hiding from the Death Eater attack in the forest, fear not. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement received a tip that this was likely to happen, and a team of Aurors and Hit Wizards responded to the threat as soon as we received word of the attack. We have detained the Death Eaters responsible for this attack. If you please, come out of the forest and report to us so we may know you are safe and unharmed. If you find your property has been damaged, leave it where it is and inform us so we may fine the responsible parties. Finally, to Monsieur Delacour, Head of the French DMLE equivalent, your eldest daughter Fleur is safe with us. Please come to us so we may reunite you with her.”

In less than ten minutes, there were long lines of those who had attended the World Cup in front of every Auror and Hit Wizard, and Monsieur Jean-Pierre Delacour had burst out of the forest with his wife Apolline and younger daughter Gabrielle in tow, desperate to see that his little girl was okay. When he saw her contently being held by a young man with long red hair and a dragon fang earring, he was unsure as to what was going on. It didn’t look like he was ensnared by Veela Allure, since his eyes were clear, and he was not drooling, but his daughter had only recently gotten out of a short phase most Veela went through where she experimented with her Allure to see what it did to people, and which levels were safe to use to simply use to make herself look more beautiful, compared to the ones which caused all males in the vicinity to become focussed only on her, even disregarding her wishes just to get what they wanted.

When his daughter opened her eyes and saw him, she squealed happily and ran over to him, pulling the red-haired man after her. She let go of the man’s hand and threw herself at him, babbling, “Papa! I was so frightened when I lost you, Mama, and Gabrielle in the crush! I was cornered by a Death Eater, but Bill saved me! He’s my mate! I finally found him!”

Jean-Pierre blinked rapidly, trying to assimilate the rapid-fire information his daughter had babbled at him. He was horrified that his daughter had been cornered by a Death Eater, and wondered what exactly this Bill had been doing near the area, when everyone else was deep within the woods. That the man was his daughter’s mate only assured him that the man would be somewhat accepting of Fleur’s nature, but told him nothing of the man’s character. There were horror stories of men who accepted that they were the mates of Veelas and accepted them, but had then turned around and either abused the Veela horribly or had sold them into slavery rings to pay off debts or some other horrible thing.

His wife, apparently, had no such qualms about starting an interrogation of Bill. “What are your intentions towards my daughter?”

Bill’s eyebrows raised. “Well, I haven’t quite wrapped my head around me being her mate yet, but I can assure you that I mean no harm towards her, or any of you as her family. This may be a mateship, so happiness in the relationship is practically guaranteed, but Fleur and I do not know anything about each other, and we’ll be taking it as slowly as she wants. I pride myself on being an honourable person, like my parents taught me to be, and on my control over myself in all situations, as I need to be in my work as a Curse-Breaker for Gringotts.”

Jean-Pierre raised an eyebrow. Bill was well-spoken, clearly well-educated, and seemed to have realistic morals. Throwing in his job as a Gringotts Curse-Breaker had also prevented his wife from asking the next obvious question of how he would be able to provide for her, and it showed that Bill was neither a psychopath or a sociopath, as the goblins had a magical test which would show whether an applicant was either one of them, or dangerous for them to hire in any other way. At least there was that. Mentioning his parents also indicated that he had a good relationship with them. So far, so good.

*

Severus woke up in the middle of the night with his left forearm burning. His sleep-addled state cleared up in an instant when he looked at the offending limb and realised that he was being summoned by the monster that had killed his only friend, the master of the man who had so terribly abused the woman who was now his wife, and isolated the boy who was now his son so terribly that he was beginning to despair he would never be free of the man. As the burning increased by a small amount, he hissed in pain. The skin surrounding the Mark was now an angry red, which, combined with the level of burning sensation he was experiencing, Voldemort was absolutely incensed.

He, Narcissa, and Draco had all elected to stay in Grimmauld Place for the night, along with the Lovegoods, Hermione, and the Longbottoms—Draco because he wanted to spend the night with Harry, making sure he didn’t suffer from any nightmares or other side-effects from merging with Luna and Seeing a vision alongside her; Neville had stayed with them for the same reason until it was time to go to sleep, staying in the room across from them; Hermione was sleeping in Luna’s room, doing the same for her; and Severus and Narcissa had stayed up with Sirius, Remus, Phil, and Augusta, talking about what might happen with the three different sides of the war: the Ministry, the Order, and the Death Eaters.

Severus’ hiss had apparently woken Narcissa, for she stirred next to him and turned to face him, only to gasp when she saw what had caused him to be in pain. “Oh dear,” she whispered. “We never did get around to talking about what would happen if He called you, did we?”

Severus shook his head mutely, then winced as the pain went up another notch. Voldemort was pissed. Narcissa looked down at the Mark on her husband’s arm, her eyes narrowed in thought. “I don’t want you to go back to Him, Severus. Not to spy on him, and not to spy for him either. Do you remember the incantation the Dark Lord used? Perhaps Bill came across some mention of a similar spell during his travels for the goblins.”

Again, Severus shook his head. “The incantation was a very short one, and spoken in Parseltongue. I fear we don’t have the time to go find Bill, get him back here, and possibly make him research similar curses or ones he’s come across.”

Narcissa tilted her head to the side, as a dog was wont to do if it was confused or didn’t understand what a person was trying to tell it to do, then her eyes lit up. “Accio small potions phial,” she incanted, and as soon as the crystal phial was in her hand, she turned to him again. “Severus, Harry is a Parselmouth. He will know what the Dark Lord says, and then we might be able to do something about it. If the pain gets too bad, I can Stupefy you. I remember being pregnant with Draco, and I was in a horrible mood just as the Dark Lord called Lucius. I Stupefied him, and his Dark Mark stopped being hot to the touch, and the skin around it stopped being red. We can work out a solution before you wake, I’m sure of it.”

Severus closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady and calm himself, then nodded and said, “All right. I can see how that would work. It is very likely though that only a Parselmouth can counteract the Dark Mark, so if Harry is not powerful enough to cast the counter-curse, we may need to try to find a different option. Specialised numbing charms or something.”

Narcissa agreed, and held her wand to Severus’ temple, collecting the memory he called forth. Severus Accioed a Pain-Relieving Draught and downed it as he and Narcissa exited their room and headed for Sirius and Remus’. Luckily, they were asleep, and were woken quickly when Severus explained what his wife had come up with while Narcissa headed downstairs for Harry’s room. She found him in the middle of a nightmare, with Draco wrapped around him, trying to calm him down or wake him. Her eyes widened, and she hastened to the side of the bed Harry was closest to. She laid her hand on his forehead as his limbs thrashed uncontrollably, and she did the only wandless magic she was able to do, the one all witches could do once they gave birth to a child. She pushed calming magic through her hand and into him, causing him to relax back into a peaceful state almost instantly. Then, once she was satisfied he wasn’t having a nightmare anymore, she woke him by brushing his hair back from his sweaty forehead and softly calling his name.

Groggily, Harry sat up, helped by a still-worried Draco and Narcissa. “Wassappened?” he slurred.

“You had a nightmare, Harry, and you wouldn't wake up,” said Draco. “Mum came in and relaxed you somehow, then woke you up.”

Harry’s brows furrowed. “It wasn’t a nightmare, exactly. I’ve only had a few True dreams, but I’d say this was one of them. Voldemort is really mad about what the Death Eaters did at the World Cup and is calling in a full assembly.”

Narcissa nodded gravely. “Severus is being called as well, but he won’t be going. The Mark is causing him more and more pain as he resists His call. We were wondering if you might agree to watching a very short memory of Severus receiving his Dark Mark so we can come up with a way to get rid of it. The incantation was in Parseltongue, otherwise we wouldn’t have involved you.”

Harry nodded, eager to help with something that would both enrage Voldemort and prevent Severus any more Mark-related pain. “Of course. Show me the way.”

Harry, still being helped by (or rather fussed over by) Draco, made his way down to the kitchen, where the other adults of the house were. Narcissa quickly told Phil to go see if his daughter was having a True dream, since she’d just woken Harry from one, and the man hurried upstairs.

On the kitchen bench was the Black Family Pensieve, in which a single memory floated around. Taking a deep, although unneeded, breath, he touched the memory and was sucked in. All he saw was Severus, and some other black-robed people he didn’t recognise, kneeling with their heads bowed before a disgusting reptilian-faced humanoid thing. So that was what Voldemort had looked like after lots of Dark and Black magic rituals. Gross. He got closer to the monster and listened intently as Voldemort grabbed each recruit’s arm and simply hissed, :Morsmordre: as he held his wand to the desired spot.

Then, just as quickly as he went in, he was pushed out again, and saw the expectant and hopeful faces of the adults he trusted. “Well, er… Sirius, what did you have to do to get rid of the Dark Mark that floated over attacked houses?”

Sirius blinked. “Finite Incantatem, or if that didn’t work, Deleterius, since the amount of power they put into it would prevent it from disappearing after the first one.”

“And the incantation was Morsmordre, wasn’t it? I heard you say that once to Moony a few years ago.”

Sirius simply nodded, then blinked again. “The… the incantation for Severus’ Dark Mark was Morsmordre in Parseltongue?”

Harry nodded, and Sirius and Remus simultaneously slapped their foreheads, while Severus pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “People always talk about how great and terrible Voldemort was, but they never said he was particularly smart. Obviously, he considered himself both too much of a genius to invent more than one spell since it had multiple uses, and the last living Parselmouth, even though there are many Parselmouths in India, as it is where the trait originated from. Many believe Slytherin himself was half-Indian and half-Egyptian, since he was a Parselmouth and incredibly gifted at both curses and defensive magic, in which Egyptian magic specialises.”

Draco piped up. “Not that I don’t appreciate a good History of Magic lesson now and again, but we do have more serious things to do.”

Harry shook himself and took out his wand, then gently took Severus’ arm and placed the tip of his wand on the mark. :Finite Incantatem,: he hissed, but nothing happened. :Deleterius,: he continued, and although the Mark didn’t disappear, Harry thought it was a bit lighter than before. Gathering up as much magic as he could, he forced it through his wand as he once again hissed, :Deleterius.:

The Mark was gone from Severus’ arm in the blink of an eye, and Harry vaguely heard a concerned shout as darkness consumed him.

Chapter 5: Revelations and Truths

Harry was unconscious for two days from extreme magical exhaustion. Narcissa, who had wanted to be a Healer before Lucius took over her life, had determined that Harry had a magical core as large as the average seventeen-year-old, after they’d gone through their magical inheritance, most likely making him the most powerful fourteen-year-old wizard in Great Britain, if not Europe. She couldn’t say if he was the most powerful one in the world, since the USA was extremely secretive, Canada never internationally published its magical core averages, the small wizarding settlements in South America were too remote, as were the ones in Oceania and Africa, the Asian countries tended to have even more of a Dark Lord problem than Britain had, and Russia had an entirely different system of measuring magical power. Therefore, even though Harry was not Merlin-level powerful, he was still extremely powerful for his age.

During the time Harry was unconscious, there were two additions to the group of people who had been banded together when Harry, Draco, and Neville became friends and started to accidentally pick up strays who didn’t really fit in anywhere else. The two additions were Amelia Bones and Minerva McGonagall.

Amelia Bones was an obvious choice; not only was she Sirius’ boss and had gained his respect years ago, but she also politically powerful and a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. Sirius had been ordered to inform her of everything that had led to him bursting into her office the day of the Quidditch Cup, and inform her he did. He invited her and her niece Susan over to Grimmauld Place, where he’d given her mountains of evidence which pointed to, at the very least, Dumbledore’s incompetence and impending senility. As she observed hours of Pensieve memories from Harry as he was introduced to numerous life-threatening situations every year but the previous one, and how Dumbledore reacted to them, she became convinced that Dumbledore was attempting to lead Harry through impossible situations in which the only possible solution was some sort of self-sacrifice, leading her to the conclusion that he expected Harry to sacrifice his life for freeing Wizarding Britain from Voldemort. Horrified and disgusted, she promised both herself and the adults supporting and protecting Harry that she would give her all in this, and that she would make sure Dumbledore was taken down to prevent his so-called ‘greater good’ from having Harry, and likely most of the people in this group, dead.

Susan, on the other hand, was led away from the adults and into a room containing Blaise Zabini, an eight-year-old blonde girl, two snakes, an owl, two horses, a lion, a small rodent, and a currently unconscious Harry Potter. Confused as to what exactly she was seeing, she turned to Hermione, but didn’t see her until she looked down and found a barn owl in the place Hermione used to be. Eyebrows raised so high they had almost disappeared into her hairline, she said, “Well, this is unexpected. I suppose Potter is an illegal Animagus as well?”

The red, black, and yellow snake shifted into Draco Prince, who watched her with the same intense expression his snake form had had, then he blinked, and the intensity was gone. “Being in our animal forms is helpful at the moment, since our emotions are dulled as animals and we’re not as worried about him, so we don’t do anything stupid, and some of us can sense or scent that he’s okay, so it’s reassuring. Yes, Harry is an Animagus, an ermine to be exact, but none of us are illegal Animagi. We’re privately registered with the ICW, and if someone goes looking for the records, they’d find either our forms, but not our names, or the other way around, since the combined records of name and matched form can’t be released until we’re seventeen. Our parents trust your aunt, which means we trust her, and that makes it possible for us to trust you.”

Zabini continued, “However, that does not mean you are instantly trustworthy. We all decided to allow you to see the Animagi among us, which is a relatively small secret compared to some of the others we have. If we hear rumours, we will know you are not trustworthy, and will tell you no more. You may find this a bit manipulative, or think it resembles a bit of an ultimatum, but we do not know you, and we couldn’t simply exclude you when your aunt and guardian is a part of the adults who protect us from Voldemort and Dumbledore.”

Susan understood exactly what was going on. She’d always thought that Potter’s group of friends were more than they appeared, even if her best friend Hannah Abbott didn’t think so. Now that she was proven right, she knew that if they hadn’t given her the ultimatum, it was very likely that she would have spilled her guts to Hannah, and although she loved her, she knew that her best friend was the Hufflepuff’s gossip queen, rivalled only by Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil from Gryffindor, Pansy Parkinson from Slytherin, and Marietta Edgecombe from the year above them in Ravenclaw. What was more, Susan respected Potter and his friends, and knew that whatever they all ended up doing later in life, they would be doing it with as much conviction as they were showing right now.

So, knowing her only choice at the moment was to accept the group’s decision, she sat down across from Zabini, engaged him in a conversation about the Potions summer homework, and began to plan a way to prank the self-professed pranking masters. It had to be something that showed that she accepted what they had decided, but that she would not stand for being treated this way in the future. Perhaps Potter wouldn’t mind helping her, as he seemed to be the type to de-escalate any extreme plans his friends made.

*

Minerva McGonagall’s introduction to the manipulations of Albus Dumbledore was during her seventh year at Hogwarts, where she had recently been selected as that year’s Head Girl. She’d been aware that Dumbledore was watching her closely, due to her talent for Transfiguration, but had assumed that to be all he was paying attention to. On her acceptance of the Head Girl position, Dumbledore saw fit to start instructing her in advanced Transfiguration, including the Animagus transformation. However, the more she saw of him, the more she realised he was interested in how magically powerful she was, as she was quite powerful for her age. Then, shortly before she graduated, he called her into his office and explained that a power such as she commanded should not be available to her, as she was liable to succumb to the Dark Arts, which he said drew the more powerful people in very quickly. Following a short rant on how no one but he should have such power, and that he suspected someone by the name of Tom Riddle to be trying to usurp the power he so rightfully deserved, Dumbledore bound a quarter of her magic and Obliviated her. Or, rather, he’d attempted to Obliviate her—he’d put too much power into binding her magic, and didn’t know his Memory Charm had failed to take.

Shaken, she’d left the office, and had tried to never be alone with him in the few weeks remaining until she graduated in case he realised her memory hadn’t been erased. In those weeks, she’d taught herself some rudimentary Occlumency, which she had continued to perfect as she worked in the DMLE as a Hit-Wizard for two years. Then, dissatisfied with her job, she decided to protect magical children as best she could. She became a Transfiguration teacher, and then later the Head of Transfiguration and Gryffindor House when Dumbledore became the headmaster. During her teaching job, she kept an eye out for powerful children, and if she noticed Dumbledore begin to pay attention, she would take the student aside, explain the truth about Dumbledore, show them the memory of Dumbledore binding her power, and teach them ways to prevent attention. Through this, she helped many powerful students barely pass under Dumbledore’s radar, protecting them from a similar fate to hers. She remembered the names of every child she’d protected from the old coot, and she had a list at home in case she forgot any, as well as Pensieve memories, just in case Dumbledore Obliviated her.

Two of the students she’d helped were James Potter and Lily Evans, both of whom had shown powerful magical cores, though in differing areas and subjects. She had in fact been the one to suggest to James that he pass his power off as a pranking ability, and that he pull in his dorm mates, whom he was already good friends with. She’d privately tutored James in advanced Transfiguration, and had ‘accidentally’ left a book on the Animagus transformation on her desk to allow him a power outlet. Lily, on the other hand, had already established herself as a bit of a bookworm, and although Minerva knew that Lily’s friendship with Severus was worrying for Dumbledore, Lily truly believed in the Muggle saying of someone being innocent until proven guilty, which appealed to Dumbledore’s nature of offering unending second chances to the undeserving, and she no longer bothered him.

Therefore, when she was Floo-called by Sirius Black about needing to talk about something extremely important, and being given hints that it had something to do with Dumbledore, she felt so relieved that she would finally have one or two people to talk to about the manipulative old goat. She was then surprised when she saw the group of eighteen people, which consisted of Sirius, Remus, Amelia, Phil, Marianna, Severus, Narcissa, four Weasleys, four muggles she recognised as the parents of Hermione Granger and Colin and Dennis Creevey, the Head of the French DMLE, and his wife and oldest daughter. Overall, a very impressive group. When Sirius started informing her of some of Dumbledore’s transgressions that he knew of, she merely blinked, then informed him of all the ones she knew of, which numbered in the hundreds, and the number of students she’d saved from her fate.

*

Blaise was nervous. In fact, he was pacing, which he’d never done before. Charlie had been needed in the adults’ meeting, to discuss plans and to convince Madam Bones and Professor McGonagall of Dumbledore’s true nature, but had promised that once the meeting was over, he would have time to have that important discussion Blaise had talked about shortly before the World Cup riot. As Blaise paced the room for the 275th time, the door opened and Charlie entered the room, raising his brows as he saw the agitation on Blaise’s face.

“Are you okay, Blaise?” he asked. “If whatever you need to say is making you this uneasy—”

“No,” interrupted Blaise. “I must say this, because I fear that if I don’t tell you, you will be lost to me in one way or another.”

“Lost to you?” Charlie asked, confused.

Blaise nodded weakly, then sat down in a nearby armchair, trying to find a place to start in his jumbled thoughts. “You know Fleur? Bill’s mate?” he asked, and Charlie nodded. “Well, were you surprised when she revealed her Veela Nature?”

“Yeah, a bit I guess. I mean, she has the typical Veela beauty and the hair and eyes to match, but I didn’t feel anything… Veela-ish from her, you know, her allure.”

Blaise exhaled. “That’s because you can’t be affected by a Veela’s allure, Charlie.”

Charlie’s brows furrowed. “But I was listening to Fleur when she told Bill that only Veela mates are immune to Veela allure, and that they normally meet their mates before they turn 21. I’m already 21, so if I am a Veela’s mate like you’re suggesting, that would mean my Veela mate is almost certainly younger than me.”

Blaise nodded, and said quietly, “You’re seven years older than your mate, to be exact.”

Charlie froze and looked over at Blaise, who looked so small, so defeated, as though about to cry. Blaise was hugging himself, and Charlie suddenly knew it was in an attempt to comfort himself from what he saw as an inevitable rejection. His heart broke seeing Blaise, who was normally such a bubbly and confident person, in such a state of anguish. To make it worse, Charlie could see Blaise curling further in on himself with every second he said nothing. He made up his mind.

Kneeling down before the now tiny seated form of Blaise, he pulled Blaise’s arms away from his abdomen and held them in one hand while the other tilted his chin up. “Seven years is nothing, Blaise.”

Blaise was now staring, wide-eyed and hopeful, at Charlie. “Sure, it may seem like quite a big chasm at the moment, but we can live until we’re a hundred and fifty, probably more with your Veela vitality feeding us both through our bond, and seven years isn’t going to feel like much when I’m a hundred and fifty and you’re a hundred and forty-three. We’ll both just be old,” Charlie said, smiling at the last bit. “The only thing we need to be concerned about is the rate that our relationship will unfold. Even though we’ve known of each other for a bit, we don’t really know one another. If you’d like, we can start off as friends, and work it up slowly from there.”

Blaise nodded, and happy tears began to fall as he said, “Yes. I think I’d like that very much.”

Chapter 6: The Triwizard Tournament

Notes:

Hey guys! Sorry about the slightly late posting, but I totally forgot it was Tuesday today until about ten minutes ago, and I'd been watching CSI re-runs and Game of Thrones theory videos all day. I'm going on a holiday tomorrow for nine days, and although I may have Wi-Fi access sometimes, I can't guarantee I'll be able to post the chapter on Tuesday, so it might be a day or two late. It's getting closer to Christmas and I can't wait! Enjoy reading the chapter, even if it is a little shorter than I would have liked. The chapter really didn't want to get written, which is a bit unusual for me. I hope you like my idea for how to change the Tournament to have more champions, but you'll see how else I'll change it as the chapters go on. I also need to know if you're interested in seeing Harry & co's fifth year, since I don't know if I can realistically delay Voldie's defeat for another year after this one considering he's back in corporeal form and has next to no Horcruxes left. Leave me your opinions on whether you want to see how they handle Umbridge, or if you want to just end The New Trio series when Voldie's gone.

Again, Enjoy!

Harry groaned as he regained consciousness, feeling as though he’d been crushed by an elephant. In an instant, there was a cacophony of assorted animal noises, and something scaly detached itself from where it had wound itself around his wrist. A moment later a soft hand was being held to his forehead, and Draco’s voice said, “Harry! You’ve been unconscious for two days! We were all so worried about you! You missed Colin’s visit yesterday. He has a little brother, Dennis, who’s going into his first year of Hogwarts this year.”

Harry opened his eyes and tried to sit up, but Hermione was suddenly beside Draco and gently pushed Harry back down. “Careful, Harry. Narcissa said you’ve got extreme magical exhaustion, and that when you woke up, you basically shouldn’t sit up or walk around, let alone do magic, until she says you can.”

He sighed exasperatedly but nodded, then looked around the room. He blinked. “Why are all of you in your Animagus forms? And… er, Susan… it’s nice to see you again, but what are you doing here?”

It took the group half an hour to explain everything that had happened in the two short days since he’d successfully removed Severus’ Dark Mark and fallen unconscious, but when he found out what Blaise and Draco had said to Susan, and that the others had allowed it, Harry was incensed. “How could you?” he almost yelled. “We are not Death Eaters, nor are we supposed to act like them! We are fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen-year-olds who occasionally prank our schoolmates, and let our parents and guardians handle the serious stuff!

“Okay, sure, you feel better in your animal forms so you know I’m okay, but that doesn’t give you the right to out me too! At the most, it would have been acceptable to have Enya, and maybe you Draco, to check on my health, because everyone and their grandmother knows I have Enya, and thus it would be feasible for me to have another snake. Just like everyone knows about Hedwig. But a lion, horses, and a common degu, are really pushing the supposed menagerie I have; and Hermione, transforming into your owl form where Susan can easily see it is completely unacceptable. Then, to top it all off, you go and threaten—threaten—a potential ally, who just so happens to be the niece of the Head of the DMLE, and expect her to allow you to get away with it? When she pays you back—and she definitely will—as long as it’s not too extreme, I will stand aside and let her, because you will all deserve it.”

Harry fumed for the rest of the day, and didn’t talk to any of them until they’d each apologised; first to Susan, then to Madam Bones, then himself. The first to apologise was Draco, who couldn’t take the angry looks Harry was sporting. Then, slowly, the rest of the group followed his example when they saw how tenderly Harry and Draco held each other after they made up, and realised that they’d accidentally caused the first fight between the couple that they all secretly held up as sacrosanct. Oops was far too little a word to describe how bad they all felt about the anguish they saw they’d caused the two of them.

*

Harry sipped on the second Pepper-up of the day. Narcissa had said that due to how badly he’d drained his magical core, he’d need to take at least two Pepper-ups each day for a month. When he’d complained and said that since he didn’t have a cold, he didn’t need the potions, Narcissa had explained that a wizard’s magical core was linked to their immune system; as the magical core emptied, the possibility for magical and Muggle illnesses went up. The Pepper-ups were to prevent all low-level illnesses from harming him when his magical core wasn’t completely able to handle them.

He was sitting in their regular compartment on the Hogwarts Express, reading a book Ollivander had recommended on wand core theory, and petting Draco’s hair, as his boyfriend had his head laying in his lap. Hermione was reading One Hundred and One Unusual Charms, Spells, and Enchantments for Pranking, with Fred and George reading over her shoulders, Luna was reading the latest issue of the Quibbler, and Neville, Blaise, and Ginny were playing Exploding Snap. Other than the telling off Blaise had received for issuing the ultimatum to Susan, he’d been ecstatic for days after Charlie had accepted their mate status for each other, and had yet to come down from his emotional high long enough to actually tell them what they’d talked about.

Their peace and quiet (other than the occasional guffaw from the twins and Hermione, and the explosions from the Exploding Snap game) was broken by their compartment door being opened by Pansy Parkinson, who was followed by the hulking forms of Crabbe and Goyle. “So,” the girl said, her usual whining voice attempting to drawl, “I heard that you were sitting with a bunch of blood-traitors, Blaise dear, but… of all the blood-traitors on the train, why these particular ones?”

Blaise paled, but Draco cut in from where he was lazing on Harry’s lap. “Oh do shut up, Parkinson. You’re not fooling anyone. The only reason you have the use of Crabbe and Goyle’s… talents is because I am no longer a Malfoy, and as the Malfoy alliance with the Crabbes and Goyles supersedes that of the Parkinsons with them, you thought that meant you could take my place at the top of the hierarchy in our year’s Slytherin cohort. Only… it hasn’t been working for all the time I’ve been a Prince, because one, my father is the Head of Slytherin, so he and his family are superior to the hierarchy, and two, Daphne Greengrass is both more vicious and more politically savvy than you are, so she took the top spot. Then again, considering how inbred the majority of purebloods are, and how every three generations or so the Parkinsons marry their own cousins, you never had a chance.”

Parkinson’s face was a dark red in embarrassment and anger. “Why you filthy little bloot-traitor! How dare you say that! You, who betrayed your father, Lord Malfoy, by being sorted into the scum house that is Gryffindor, then making it worse by actively shunning those of us who should be your allies! You know nothing of power! Greengrass may think she’s top dog in our year, but she’s not, I can promise you that! You don’t know what this year will bring! There are dark times ahead for you, Draco Prince, and your dear mother and stepfather will beg for death before their wish is granted! Have fun this year, Draco, because everyone you hold dear, especially your little boyfriend Potter-Black, will die right in front of you because you betrayed your blood!”

With that, she stormed off, and the two hulking masses of muscle followed her. The shocked silence of the compartment was broken by Luna. “That went well! Draco, get your memory of this conversation to your father. He’ll be able to make sure we’re all as safe as possible.” She tilted her head. “Harry, you’ll need to find out how to become fireproof, how to breathe underwater, and navigate through mid-air obstacle courses. Then, learn how to defeat various creatures that Hagrid’s fond of. If you look up how to safely break binding magical contracts, your path will be far less safe, and it will be much less likely for any of us to survive the school year, so I suggest you just go with it. Make it clear you didn’t put your name in, make a vow to that effect in front of the school, but don’t try to get out of it too much. I’ll send the adults what I’m telling you, so they’ll understand.”

With that ominous note, the five minute warning sounded, and Hermione, Ginny, and Luna were left in the compartment so they could change into their uniforms, before they swapped places with the boys so they could do the same. The ride up to the castle was rather subdued compared to all the past ones they’d experienced in the last few years, but their behaviour soon gave way to excitement at the prospect of the brilliant Welcoming Feast food.

After they’d all eaten their fill, they listened to Dumbledore explain how the Quidditch Tournament wouldn’t happen that year due to Hogwarts hosting the Triwizard Tournament, which caused an outrage among the Quidditch-heads, but this was quickly swallowed up by the rest of the school’s excitement at seeing the other schools who were participating, as well as getting to watch all seven of the tasks which were planned. Dumbledore explained that there would be two Tournaments taking place simultaneously, each having three contestants, one from each school, and going through three tasks, then the top two from each Tournament would participate in the final task, and the winner would receive glory and riches beyond imagining. Harry silently groaned; he suddenly knew what Luna’s warning had meant, and he was not looking forward to having to repeatedly risk his life for the entertainment of the masses. So much for having a somewhat peaceful year like last year.

Chapter 7: Unorthodox Teaching Methods

Notes:

Er... Hi! *ducks* I'm really sorry about the week-long delay, but I only actually got internet access once on my whole holiday, and I only had enough time to check my email before it cut out again. However, Papua New Guinea was absolutely worth it! The people are wonderful and friendly, the views were absolutely stunning from some of the mountain peaks, and scuba diving in the best place I've been to in my life was divine. So, I give you this chapter that was due a week ago with sincere apologies. Enjoy it!

Harry did not trust Moody. The problem was that he couldn't quite put his finger on why, even though all his instincts were telling him to run, and never look back. When Harry asked Luna, she frowned and said he wasn't who he seemed to be, but everything else was hidden behind a dense curtain of fog and confusion. This was extremely worrying for the entire group, as normally the only reason why Luna held back information was because in that situation forethought would cause worse outcomes than ignorance.

Their first class with the man started out well enough, although slightly demeaning. Moody talked about how far behind they all were in knowing hexes and curses, and that obviously none of the previous teachers had been worth the title. Moody was of the opinion that there were dark forces afoot, as evidenced by the increasing number of vampire and werewolf attacks lately, because dark creatures became stronger the more the local magical aura darkened. Therefore, it was necessary to be able to defend yourself. “After all,” the man growled through his disfigured face, “when you’re in a fight against a dark witch or wizard who doesn’t care which curses they use as long as they hurt or kill you, you shouldn’t either! It's a life-or-death situation; you shouldn’t have to worry about stupid things like what the current Ministry deems illegal! The next Ministry might declare all spells illegal but the one to turn a chicken into a pig, and the one after that might make no spells illegal except that one! And that, boys and girls, is why I have managed to convince Dumbledore to let me teach you all about the worst spells in the eyes of the current Ministry: the Unforgivables.”

Professor Moody took out a spider from a jar filled with them. “What you must all understand is that unless you have special permission, such as an Auror during a time of war or explicit permission from the Minister or another high-up Ministry figure, it is illegal to cast any of these three spells on a fellow human being. First, and perhaps the most invasive of the three is the Imperius Curse, like so. Imperio!”

The last was cast at the spider, which immediately began to dance on the tabletop it was scuttling around on. Ron, sitting in the very back, whimpered, and Harry remembered that Ron was deadly afraid of spiders because of some incident involving the twins and a beloved teddy of Ron's…

As the spider danced, Moody lectured. “The Imperius feels like you're floating on a cloud, and as long as you do what the voice in your head says, everything will be fine and dandy. It takes an incredible will to consistently fight it off, or a substantial amount of time, years, in fact, of trying to fight it. I called it the most invasive of the Unforgivables because it takes away who you are, locks it away in an unknown place in your head, and leaves a shell of a person, willing to do whatever its master orders it to. Want to rape and murder someone without them putting up a struggle? Easy! Want them to rape and murder their entire family then kill themselves? They'll do it with a smile on their face! How about having someone hand over their entire fortune, and leaving them with nothing? All it takes is a trip to Gringotts and a signature, and even though the goblins may suspect what's happening, unless they take you through Thief’s Downfall, which strips of all spells and enchantments meant to control or conceal, there's nothing they can do about it. It was said to have been used on a great many influential people in the last British Wizarding War, apparently all by the Dark Lord Voldemort, but that is impossible. Back when this curse was invented, about five hundred years ago, the tests using it proved that the more people one individual had under the curse, the less possible it was for either the caster or the many victims to function because much of the caster’s attention must be on the subject.

It's also not possible for an already Imperiused person to Imperius someone else, because, as previously said, the Imperiused person is a shell and therefore has no attention span or concentration. The problem now, lies with sorting out the liars from the true victims, if there even are any.”

Moody looked directly at Draco when he said that, and Draco’s face became hot in anger and embarrassment. Sure, he knew his biological father hadn't been under the Imperius, but that didn't mean Moody had to single him out in class for all to see! Harry grabbed his hand under the desk and held it as Draco regained control over himself.

Seemingly unconcerned with the effect his words and actions had had on Draco, he let the spider go, picked it up, deposited it in the jar again, and took out another. “The second Unforgivable is the Cruciatus curse, incantation Crucio. This one causes all your nerve endings to send your brain pain signals at the same time, overwhelming the body and brain with mind-breaking pain.”

As he said the last sentence, he non-verbally cast the torture curse, and the spider started writhing in place, too overcome by pain to even attempt moving away from its attacker. Everyone in the class seemed to know that if the spider could make a sound, it would be screaming for release. Neville became deathly pale as Moody continued to lecture without seeking to pay attention to the pain he was causing to a living creature.

“Sir, please stop it,” Hermione said, worried about Neville.

Moody ignored her. “If left on for too long, as has been seen in a few cases, the mind shuts down in some parts to protect itself. Think of it as a fire in the tunnels of Gringotts; they have choke-points where they can cut off the rest of the mines from a raging fire so it can burn itself out, then afterwards the salvage crews move in and begin to see what they can collect that hasn't been completely destroyed. What can happen in Gringotts that can't in humans who've been Crucioed is that the goblins can chip away the damaged rock and let the undamaged rock underneath it replace it.” Harry, Draco, and Hermione had been practically begging the obviously insane professor to stop since he'd started taunting Neville with knowledge of what had happened inside his parents’ minds, but with that last statement, Moody finally ended the curse, but Neville’s white-knuckled grip on his desk didn't slack, and his expression didn't fill with its normal colour. Again, Moody was unconcerned, and simply replaced the cursed spider with a different one.

“The last Unforgivable is the only one that is meant to be unstoppable, the only one that causes death in every single correct hit; yet the only survivor of the curse is sitting in this room with us, entirely alive and unharmed. The Killing Curse, or Avada Kedavra. It stops the heart and forces the soul to separate from the body, meaning that even if the Muggle method of CPR is performed, the person will not regain life, as in almost all other deaths, the soul unconsciously stays near its body for round about half an hour, before departing for parts unknown, as the Unspeakables determined in 1880. Therefore, no one is meant to survive it, and it will cause instant death if a person is hit anywhere on the body, even a single toe or finger. Avada Kedavra!”

There was a sickly green light, just like the one Harry still dreamt of sometimes, and the spider curled up in a ball, dead. Harry felt frozen. Was that really what had happened to his parents? Just a light and death rushing inevitably towards them, and then falling to the ground?

Draco saw the effect Moody had had on his boyfriend and his best male friend, as well as (to a far lesser extent) the rest of the class, and stood up, absolutely pissed off. “What kind of monster are you, to show these curses first-hand to a class of fourteen-year-olds? You clearly don't care about what it makes them feel like! Are you intending to show them to the first-years too? I can understand teaching the theory and history of them, but many of the kids in this school would either not recognise the horror of what you're doing, or they have family or friends who were directly affected by them! It's only been thirteen years since the end of the war, so other than Muggle-borns, almost every witch or wizard was directly or indirectly affected. Besides, you didn't tell the class the best part: in order to cast the Killing Curse, you need to feel overpowering hatred towards the victim; for the Cruciatus it's an almost insane desire to cause the subject pain; and the Imperius needs the caster to desire control over the person above all else in that moment— all of that is what twists the caster's soul into insanity the more they're cast. How much hatred and desire for control and causing pain do you feel, professor?”

Moody's face was brick-red in anger by the time Draco was finished with his tirade. “Fifty points from Gryffindor for speaking out of turn and berating a professor for his structured lesson plans, and a week's detention with Filch! Thinking so much of yourself is so very much like your father—old acquaintances, your father and I are—and I assure you, you don't need to worry about the ickle firsties’ innocence.”

Moody then cast a non-verbal spell at Draco, and where he once stood was now a small white-blond ferret, which was immediately forced to bounce around the room like a bouncy ball. This snapped Harry out of his daze, and he threw himself into Moody's wand’s path, hoping to at least transfer the spell to him, if not stop it entirely. Instead, Draco turned back into himself again, and Moody briefly became a scarred brown ferret, before turning back into himself as the original caster was no longer casting a spell.

Enraged, Draco all but stormed out of the classroom, with Harry hot on his heels in an attempt to calm him down. However, all Harry's efforts were for naught, because Lavender had spread word of what had happened in the class, and judging by the whispering that followed Draco for the next few days, everyone knew.

The only upside to this was that Susan forgave Draco, mostly because she felt sorry for the stress and embarrassment he was almost certainly feeling, and Blaise with him, and she sat down with Harry, Draco, and Blaise and discussed Susan's introduction into the group, and where they'd all gone wrong. Blaise took the blame for issuing the ultimatum, but Draco insisted that Blaise had been worried about Harry, as well as his upcoming conversation with Charlie, so there were extenuating circumstances. Both Harry and Susan apologised for overreacting, but were quickly forgiven because Harry had basically been blindsided when he'd woken up, and Susan had been brought up to respond harshly to anyone who tried to blackmail or coerce her. She still got free reign for one prank on both Blaise and Draco, though. So, she pulled off a complex prank that had Draco speaking in pig-Latin for five hours, and Blaise entirely backwards but the same amount of time. What made the prank so genius was that Draco and Blaise thought that everyone else was speaking the way they'd been pranked to speak, and that they were each the only ones to be speaking normally. Luckily, it was the weekend and no one besides the odd Gryffindor (or Slytherin, in Blaise’s case) noticed until they both dragged their fellow Marauders’ Recruits into the Room of Requirement so they could wait it out. The rest of them quickly decided to use the prank again, but on the entire school, and using different languages as well as pig-Latin and speaking backwards. They carried it out the following day at breakfast, causing a cacophony of voices and languages to fill the Great Hall in near-panic. What was interesting though was that people started searching for people whom they could understand, and eventually there were ten groups of people containing members of all four houses, and at least one member of the faculty, who could understand one another. This time, instead of five hours, the prank only lasted for half an hour, after which a formerly Mongolian-speaking Dumbledore addressed the school. “I congratulate whomever carried out this incredibly complex prank, but I am afraid you have caused many of us to lose valuable time, so if you step forward now, you will only receive a twenty point loss and a detention with Professor Snape. If, however, you do not, and we ever find out who you are, you will receive a fifty point loss and two weeks’ detention with Professor Snape, for every month you do not confess.”

Shocked at the severity Dumbledore warned of, the school, still in their ten little groups, muttered about their Headmaster having overreacted about an honestly brilliant prank. What they didn't know was that Dumbledore had been the only one to be pranked with speaking Mongolian, and Dumbledore was under the impression that no one had had any idea what anyone else was talking about, and that the ten groups were because some people understood parts of others’ speech because of similar language roots.

Another thing no one knew was that everyone would retain the knowledge and understanding of the language they'd been using, although they wouldn't know it until someone else spoke the language. Each one, besides backwards and pig-Latin, would be appearing in the form of students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang: Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, and German for Durmstrang; and French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Swedish for Beauxbatons.

The Recruits had purposely done this, and had somehow inadvertently caused the school to unite against what they saw as an incredibly unfair punishment. None of the students would tattle if they discovered those responsible, and many of them made mental notes to hang out with their new acquaintances they'd met, as some of them had seemed pretty cool.

Up in the Headmaster’s office, the Sorting Hat smiled. Inter-House Unity was properly starting, and hopefully the Tournament would unite them even further.

Chapter 8: Imperio

Notes:

Okay, one more chapter until the two schools arrive, and then a bit more until you find out how I've changed the first task from canon. If you all remember, there will be seven tasks and six champions. As an explanation of my idea, the champions are split up into two groups, with one from each school. Each group participates in three tasks, which will be different for the groups, and then there'll be a final task where the two best from both groups need to attempt to reach the Triwizard Cup, together with their other group member, or separately. The theme I went with was elements, as well as some sub-elements to make the number up to seven. I hope that when it comes to each of the tasks, you'll like what I've done.
Anyway, I hope you all had an awesome Christmas, Hannukah, Yule, or anything I haven't covered, and enjoy the chapter!

A day after the successful language prank, the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor sixth-years and seventh-years came down to lunch in an extremely quiet and shocked mood. Fred and George didn’t make a single joke throughout the entire meal, only to be cornered by their younger friends after everyone had finished their sandwiches. “What’s wrong, guys?” started Draco.

“We… we had history,” said Fred.

“Of course you did,” Hermione said. “I know your schedules back to front.”

“Myrtle’s gotten really serious about her teaching role since we appointed her,” explained George. “This year, she’s had us watching war movies, like Gallipoli and Das Boot, to get us to see how horrible war really is, and that Muggles can be just as vicious, if not more so, than witches and wizards.”

“Today, Myrtle said that a new movie came out last year that we all had to see at least once in our lives, which showed all the horrible stuff that Grindelwald made the Muggle dictator Hitler believe when they ran into each other, which caused Hitler to go insane. The movie was called Schindler’s List, and there was a lot of death and horrifying stuff in it. Myrtle said that she knew it was really shocking for all of us, so History classes are cancelled for the rest of the week, and we need to hand in an essay about what was the one thing that truly shocked us about the stuff from Schindler’s List, and some things we think the Ministry should do to prevent something like that from ever happening again.”

Hermione and Colin looked at each other. As the only two Muggle-borns in their group, they alone had heard about Schindler’s List and the horror it had evoked in everyone who had watched it, although neither of their parents had let them watch it. Their mothers and fathers had respectively decided that thirteen and fifteen were too young to watch such a shocking movie, especially since it was a true story.

At dinner, the Slytherin and Hufflepuff sixth- and seventh-years were just as silent, Myrtle having showed them the movie as well. Harry thought it showed what an incredibly strong stomach Myrtle had to have watched such a horrifying movie four times in a row; he was sure that, from what little Fred and George had told them, he would’ve been crying buckets from just watching it once. He supposed that if Dumbledore still hadn’t managed to exorcise Myrtle from the living plane, and therefore fire her, by his sixth year, then he’d find out.

The next day, the sixth- and seventh-years were talking a bit, but instead of their conversations being split along house lines, Harry came down to breakfast to find that all the students who’d seen Schindler’s List yesterday had commandeered half of the Hufflepuff table and were having a serious, yet lively debate about how they, as future flourishing members of the wizarding world, could prevent anything like concentration camps from ever happening again. It seemed to be shocking the majority of the other students, and all the teachers, to see Gryffindors getting along perfectly with Slytherins and vice versa, as well as Ravenclaws debating obscure blood-purity and child protection laws with eager Hufflepuffs. Dumbledore seemed to be smiling with his usual grandfatherly twinkle, but Harry grinned as he noticed a large number of his fellow students sneak occasional wary glances at the old coot whenever his smile got too strained or his eye twitched. Inter-house unity was working, and there was nothing Dumbledore could do about it.

Another thing to look forward to today was that it was the day before Halloween, and the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang contingents were due to arrive that evening. The whole school was beyond excited, and other than the sixth- and seventh-years’ discussions, the other schools were the main topic of discussion.

However, Harry’s good mood was put on hold by Draco groaning and reminding their group that their first class was Defence. To their horror, as soon as they arrived, they were told by Professor Moody that he would be casting the Imperius Curse on each of them in turn, to demonstrate its power and to see whether they could resist its effects.

“But-but you said it’s illegal to cast on a human being, Professor,” exclaimed Hermione uncertainly, hoping that what the class had just heard was just a bad joke. Moody temporarily ignored the question as he cleared the desks to the side of the room with a sweep of his wand, then deigned to answer her.

“Dumbledore wants you taught what it feels like,” he growled. “And if you remember, Missie, I said that if you have permission from a high-up Ministry official—like, say, the Supreme Mugwump for example—then you can use any of the three Unforgivables in a way that’s specified by said official. I just so happen to have written permission from your dear, beloved Headmaster stating that I can cast the Imperius on students ranging from fourth to seventh year to let them know what it feels like, and to see if any of them can fight it.”

Harry, Draco, Hermione, and Neville looked at each other with dread. This was not going to go well. Moody started to beckon students to the front in turn, in some random order Harry couldn’t see, and put the Imperius Curse on them. The four friends watched in growing horror as, one by one, their classmates did the most extraordinary things under its influence. Dean hopped around the room three times, making what Moody said were orangutan noises, Lavender imitated a squirrel, Ron skipped around the room and sang a common wizarding children’s song in a little girl’s voice that no one could have predicted he was capable of, and Seamus performed a series of quite astonishing acrobatics that no one but a professional would have been able to do. None of them seemed able to fight the curse off, and each of them recovered only when Moody had removed it, although Ron skipped back to the group afterwards.

Then was Neville’s turn, which consisted of being forced to do ballet moves, including leaps and twirls, until, suddenly, Neville stopped dead as he had one leg in the air in an arabesque position. “Ah! Finally, some potential! This can happen if your mind has the capability to ignore the commands, but doesn’t quite have the strength to throw off the curse entirely. This is actually more dangerous than partially or entirely throwing off the curse, since if the caster sees you frozen, they will immediately know something is wrong and kill you.” Moody ended the curse. “You’ve got the start of some formidable mind-shields, Longbottom. I suggest you look into fortifying them more, since if you reach Journeyman stage, it’s likely you’ll be able to throw me off entirely. Five points to Gryffindor.”

Red-faced in embarrassment, Neville walked back to Harry, Draco, and Hermione. Then, Moody turned to Harry. “Potter,” he growled, “you’re next.”

He moved forward into the middle of the classroom, directly in front of Moody, and calmly said, “It’s Potter-Black, sir.” As if in slow motion, Harry saw Moody grimace, as if in disgust, raise his wand, point it at Harry, and say, “Imperio.”

It was the most incredible feeling. All worries and thoughts floated off on a breeze going away from the cloud he was on, and a vague happiness replaced it. Then, he heard a voice, echoing in his empty brain: Jump onto the desk… Jump onto the desk…

Harry was about to comply, he had moved his arms backwards and started to ready himself for the jump, when a different voice spoke up: Why?

Jump onto the desk…

Seems like a stupid thing to do, really, said the other voice, which Harry suddenly recognised sounded very similar to Draco’s. No, I don’t think I will.

Draco.

Suddenly, the haze around his mind broke when flashes of Harry’s memories with Draco barged into his head, and the curse shattered.

“Ha! Now that’s more like it! That didn’t even take ten seconds—faster than any Auror trainee’s attempt I’ve ever seen, Potter! I dare say you’d make the bloody best Auror in the DMLE since I worked there! Five points to Gryffindor. Mal—Prince, you’re up.”

Harry saw Draco grit his teeth and come towards them. As they crossed paths, Harry whispered in his ear, “Think of me, and only me. You’re what got me out so fast.”

Draco’s eyes widened, and he blushed minutely before getting control of his expression and walking the rest of the way to Moody. Before Draco was cursed, Harry shared his method with Hermione and Neville, and Hermione whispered that she’d try thinking of Fred while Neville moaned quietly that he wouldn’t have any real romantic interests for almost another year.

Moody said, “Imperio,” once again, and Draco’s face blanked, which frightened Harry, as normally his boyfriend was such an expressive person. “Now, let’s see if you’ve got a singing voice.”

Draco suddenly struck a pose, and belted out the first verse of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, surprisingly in perfect pitch. Moody looked extremely shocked at Draco’s singing, and just as Draco drew a deep breath to continue the song, he blinked rapidly and he relaxed his pose. “Well done, Mr Prince. Take another five points to Gryffindor.”

Once Draco swapped places with Hermione, who was the only one remaining that hadn’t been under Moody’s Imperius yet, Draco whispered, “Moody told me to sing the first song that came into my head… Dad introduced Mum to Muggle music this summer, and Cyndi Lauper is now her favourite singer. She plays her songs almost non-stop; you wouldn’t be surprised at how much those songs stick in your head after you’ve heard them a few hundred times. She’s a good singer and all, but that was a new form of torture.”

Harry snorted softly, just loud enough to be heard by Draco and Neville but no one else, and they turned their attention to Hermione’s attempt. Moody gave the morbidly curious fourth-year Gryffindors no other explanation than “Winter’s Tale. Act III, Scene 2.”

“Since what I am to say must be but that / Which contradicts my accusation and / The testimony on my part no other / But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me / To say ‘not guilty’: mine integrity / Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it, / Be so received. But thus: if powers divine—” Hermione froze for a few seconds, then came back to herself, blushing fiercely.

“Four,” said Moody. “Only four of you have a chance to free yourselves if you’re ever cursed with the Imperius by a Dark Witch or Wizard. Considering you’re fourteen or fifteen years old, that’s pretty good for the four of you. For the rest of you, bad luck; you’ve probably been ordered to kill your families. I want a two-foot essay from all of you on the history of the Imperius Curse, the sensations the subject feels, and commonly-used ways to defend against it.”

Chapter 9: Beauxbatons and Durmstrang Arrive

The Great Hall was absolutely packed with students. Instead of the original ten to fifteen students each that Beauxbatons and Durmstrang would have been able to choose, had the idiots in the Magical Games and Sports Department been allowed to make the decisions, there were instead thirty students from each of the two visiting schools. These sixty students were all at least seventeen, and were currently crowded around a table in the Great Hall which ran parallel to the four house tables. For this feast, as well as the one the next day, everyone would have to sit at their house or school tables, but Dumbledore had declared at lunch that day, that for any other meal, they could sit wherever they wanted so as to encourage international magical cooperation and put the other schools at ease with their informal attitudes.

Some people, namely Parkinson, Crabbe, and Goyle, had not been happy with the prospect that they might soon have Hufflepuffs, or worse, Gryffindors, sitting at the table they viewed as theirs. However, Severus had noticed this, and had managed to pull those possibly troublesome people aside and remind them that they needed to present a peaceful face to the so-called foreigners in order to fool them into believing that there wasn’t a chance of an upcoming war, lest the ICW send people to neutralise both sides of the equation. The majority had grudgingly agreed, but Pansy had simply shrugged, nodded, and walked off, so he knew there would be trouble from her.

What was sure to heighten the stress in the Hogwarts students was the future presence of all the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students in the Hogwarts classes equivalent to the ones they were taking. This meant that all the prefects, as well as the Head Boy and Girl, had met together to agree to a cease fire of all inter-house rivalry, because otherwise there would be a very high chance of one of the foreign students being hit with a jinx or hex, thereby turning a simple act of pranking or rivalry into an international incident, which would not look good. Luckily, it looked like the non-prefect students had all agreed to at least tone it down, if not stop all together, for the year. Furthermore, some multi-bed guest chambers had been aired out in a rarely used part of the castle for their visitors, which meant that this particular corner of Hogwarts, a popular spot for snogging couples, was practically off-limits to the Hogwarts students now in order to give the visitors some sense of privacy.

It had been a horribly cold evening for the student body, since they’d all been forced to go outside, stand in perfect lines, and wait for the other schools’ arrivals. They’d had absolutely no idea how the two schools were going to get there, and it had been mind-numbingly cold and boring waiting for them… unless you happened to be a Marauders’ Recruit, in which case you’d be all snug and warm, because Fred and George had taught the rest of the group how to do proper warming charms last year, and this happened to be the first opportunity they felt like using them.

Eventually, there had been a commotion as several students had noticed a large shape in the air, with one young boy even speculating wildly that it was a dragon, and the noise had turned into a hubbub of excitement as the shape began to become more distinct; finally becoming the recognisable, if very odd, form of a giant carriage being pulled by huge winged horses, known as Abraxans. The need for such a large travelling carriage became obvious when the clearly half-giant Headmistress of Beauxbatons, Madame Maxime, stepped daintily out of it and introduced her gaggle of students. The seventeen-year-olds, all clothed in blue satin or silk uniforms, couldn’t stand the cold the evenings in the Scottish highlands were known for, and quickly made their way inside. Professor McGonagall, in her duties as the Deputy Headmistress, followed the blue-clad students and directed them to their seats, then explaining how mealtimes would work, both during a feast and a casual meal.

Meanwhile, the Hogwarts students had lost their excitement after remembering how cold it was, and were now either looking at the sky expectantly, or grumbling about the nice warm Great Hall. Those looking at the sky immediately had their attention drawn towards the odd gurgling coming from the Black Lake, and the grumbling students were distracted from their thoughts of happier times soon after as the gurgling got louder, revealing a water vortex forming in the middle as though a plug had been pulled in a bath. From that vortex ascended a majestic ship, which made its way near the edge of the Lake before a very long gangplank appeared, connecting the deck of the ship and a spot close to the gathering of Hogwarts students. A group of surly-looking Durmstrang students, dressed all in black and furs, followed Headmaster Karkaroff as he made his way to Dumbledore and shook his hand.

“Albus! Good to see you, it has been quite a while, has it not?” Karkaroff appeared to be very cheerful about everything, but the smile he wore clearly didn’t reach his eyes. He also looked very… oily, as his small goatee seemed drenched in grease to look more intimidating, but it failed to do so because it didn’t quite hide his weak chin, nor his gaunt cheeks; his teeth were also very yellow and crooked, making Hermione fight to hide her grimace of disgust at improper tooth-cleaning techniques.

“Yes indeed it has, my dear Igor,” Dumbledore said, just as jovially. “Please, come inside out of the cold. We have provided a place for your students at a table they share with the Beauxbatons students for feasts, but they can feel free to sit with any friends they make for any other meals.”

“Ah, good. Yes, we must get out of this weather, as Viktor here has developed a bit of a head cold on the trip.”

Anyone who was in Ron’s vicinity heard him choke. “It’s Viktor Krum!” he whispered loudly in awe, and those who heard him face-palmed at the boy’s obvious sports-hero worship. Then again, several of the other students were also whispering to each other, albeit much quieter. It also seemed that Krum had heard Ron’s statement, and George saw that the neutral, if faintly hopeful, expression on Krum’s face drop, quickly being replaced by one of frosty broodiness which was so typical of any photos people were used to seeing of him. He felt sad for the guy, for not being able to simply have a normal interaction with anyone due to his fame. He was also sure Krum and Harry would probably become friends over their similar reactions to the fame they had.

The Durmstrang students also made their way to the Great Hall, followed by Hogwarts’ students and staff, and sat down at their assigned table. After Dumbledore’s opening words of welcome, which was slightly interrupted by a Beauxbatons girl wearing a muffler laughing derisively at Dumbledore’s words of enjoying their stay, he waved his hands, and the food appeared. The Hogwarts tables had mostly English food, with some French and Bulgarian dishes mixed in so they might try some, and the remaining table had food from the eight main nationalities the people of those two schools came from, as well as the odd English dish. Everyone dove in, either incredibly hungry from their trip, famished due to having to expend so much energy shivering and keeping warm, or, in Ron’s case, alternating between staring at his Quidditch hero, staring at the girl who’d laughed in an almost drooling manner, and eating like a pig. People had learned long ago not to sit directly across from him, and probably not on either side of that open space either, so as not to get splattered with cast-off from Ron’s eating habits.

Part of the way through the feast, the Beauxbatons girl made her way to the section of the table where Draco, Harry, Hermione, and Neville sat across from the twins, Ginny, and Colin. “Excuse me, are you wanting ze bouillabaisse?” her soft voice asked, and they all looked up to find the girl who’d laughed at Dumbledore was, in fact, Fleur Delacour.

“Fleur!” exclaimed the group simultaneously. After they all laughed a bit at how they’d all said her name at the same time, Harry continued. “It’s good to see you again! And no, we’re fine without the bouillabaisse. You can take it if you’d like.”

Fleur smiled, happy at having realised she would have friends during her stay, and it seemed a large number of boys in the vicinity were suddenly drooling, including Ron, who had abandoned his other two ‘tasks’. “Thank you, eet is good to see you all again as well. Bill ‘as been ‘elping me a bit to eemprove my Eenglish. He is to be ‘ere zis year, to ‘elp with putting up ze wards for ze tasks, so I am glad I will be near him for my last year of school.”

“That’s great, Fleur!” said Hermione. “You know, any one of us would also be willing to help you with your English, if Bill is too busy or something.”

Fleur smiled wider. Ron, who was sat not too far from them, turned purple. “I would like zat. Anyway, I weel bring zis back to my table. Au revoir!”

“Au revoir!” the group returned, and went back to talking about their last classes of the day, interspersed with talking about not knowing that Fleur was going to be there.

“She’s a Veela!” exclaimed Ron, and they rolled their eyes.

“Honestly Ron,” said Ginny. “How can you not remember that from when she and her family were with us in Grimmauld after the Quidditch World Cup? Or, how about the whole Bill-is-her-mate thing?”

Ron continued to stare, dumbstruck, at Fleur’s retreating form, as though he hadn’t heard her.

Now, Viktor Krum had just so happened to be watching as the Beauxbatons girl braved the formidable sight of another table full of people who didn’t speak her native language, because he could tell she was a Veela due to the surrounding males’ reactions, and he was hoping she’d find someone who would be kind to her, but not entranced, on the off chance that they might be okay with him doing the same. His best friend, Miroslav Bachev, saw what Viktor was planning, and nudged him. “That group seems to have been friendly to her,” Miro murmured in Bulgarian. “Didn’t even react at all to her allure! Why don’t you go ask for that plate of Kapama near them?”

Viktor looked sufferingly at his friend. “Just because they didn’t react to her allure, doesn’t mean they’ll act like that disgustingly messy eater near them when I get near them.”

Miro nudged him again. “If that’s the case, you can say ‘I told you so’ when you get back. In the meantime, try to make some new friends!”

Viktor sighed, but got up and went in the group’s direction. However, shortly after he got up, all the food was replaced by desserts, and he was tempted to sit back down again, but he noticed they happened to have his favourite dessert in between some sort of chocolate cake and some multicoloured ice cream, so he continued. When he got close enough, he noticed the messy eater had choked on the piece of pie he had been shovelling into his mouth, and he held back another sigh. “Excuse me,” he said politely, if a bit gruffly. The group looked up at him, and he suddenly noticed that one of the two red-headed twins was the cute one from the World Cup. What were the chances? “I vas vondering if you vanted any of the kiselo mylako? My schoolmates have already eaten it all.”

“Er,” said the cute twin, “no, I think we’re good. You can take it if you like.”

The others in the group agreed, and Viktor noticed that one of them was Harry Potter-Black. “Thank you. It is my favourite dessert.”

The cute one grinned. “Well, enjoy it then! Say, you seem to have gotten over your ‘head cold’ rather quickly.”

Viktor shook his head. “I never had one. Karkaroff vanted to get inside quickly because his knees hurt in the cold, but he also vanted to make sure the whole school knew I vas his student.”

“That sucks,” said Potter-Black sympathetically. Viktor realised he might have some things in common with the boy. He’d have to talk to him some time. “Don’t worry, it’ll only take a couple of weeks until the rumour mill is over you.”

Viktor groaned, and the cute one’s twin said, “Well, we could always help speed the process along with a nice, all-school prank or two. Who’s up for it?”

“Ooh! What about if we enlist the House Elves’ help to transform the Great Hall into a Muggle picnic area, complete with barbecues, park benches, picnic blankets, and a playground?” exclaimed the blond-haired boy sitting next to Potter-Black.

“Good idea!” said the red-headed girl. “I’m sure Luna would love to provide some music. You know how unconventional her taste in music can be, which would add to the prank-like atmosphere!”

Bemused, Viktor took the bowl of kiselo mylako, which had banana and strawberry slices on top, as well as a sprig of mint, as it was handed to him by the cute twin. “I’m George, by the way, and this is my twin, Fred.”

“Viktor,” he said, although he knew George already knew his name.

“Good to meet you. I’ll look forward to seeing you around.”

“So vill I.”

Chapter 10: According to Plan

Soon after dessert had finished, Dumbledore stood to address the room. “The moment has come, and the Triwizard Tournament is about to start. As this is a modified version of the Tournament in order to keep all participants as safe as possible, I would like to say a few words of explanation before we bring in the casket, just to clarify the procedure which we will be following this year. But firstly, let me introduce, for those who do not know them, Mr Gabriel Avery, the recently appointed Head of the Department of Magical Co-operation—” there was a smattering of polite applause, even as there was muttering of the mysterious circumstances that the previous Head, Crouch, had disappeared in. “—and Mr Ludo Bagman, Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports.”

A much louder round of applause greeted the other man’s introduction, either due to his past fame as a Beater for the Wimbourne Wasps, or due to his appearance being far more likeable than Avery’s, as the man looked as though the only two expressions he could possibly portray were a stern look to rival McGonagall’s, or one of sneering superiority.

“Mr Bagman and Mr Avery, as well as several Wizengamot members, have worked tirelessly over the past few months to ensure everything intended for the Tournament was indeed ready for its champions,” Dumbledore continued, “and they will be joining myself, Headmaster Karkaroff, and Madame Maxime on the judge’s panel.”

At Dumbledore’s mention of champions, there was an outbreak of excited whispering amongst all the students. “Ah yes, I can see you are all extremely excited! Now, there will be two champions for each school, and they shall be split up into two… groups, so to speak, with one champion from each school per group. These groups do not determine someone you must work with, but rather your competition.

“Each group will face three tasks, and the two champions who have accumulated the highest scores from their tasks will face off against the two best from the other group, in an ‘every man for himself’ style task. The theme for this tournament is ‘elements’, with the first group being allocated lightning, ice, and illusion elements, and fire, water, and air will be for group two. The final task will be earth.” Dumbledore paused for a moment, then seemed to remember something. “Ah, and as an extra precaution, no one under the age of seventeen may enter the Tournament, and I will be casting an Age Line around the casket to that effect. Mr Filch, if you could bring over the casket?”

Mr Filch had been waiting in the shadows of the far side of the hall, and when his name was called, he brought a heavy wooden chest, which was encrusted with jewels, to the front of the room. The hall was instantly filled with a feeling of excited interest. “These tasks have already been looked over by Mr Avery and Mr Bagman, and the necessary arrangements have been made. They will test the champions in various different ways… their magical prowess, their powers of logic and deduction, their knowledge of mythology from different parts of the world, their daring, and, of course, their ability to cope with danger and the unknown.”

As Dumbledore said the last word, the Great Hall fell into an absolute silence; Harry wasn’t even sure anyone was breathing. “The champions will all be chosen by an impartial selector: the Goblet of Fire.” He took out his wand with a swish that was audible in the dead silent room and tapped it on the casket three times, causing the lid to creak open slowly. He then he reached inside and pulled out what would have been an unremarkable, roughly-hewn wooden cup, had it not been for the beautiful blue-white flames dancing atop and within it.

Dumbledore closed the lid of the casket and set the Goblet on top of it. “Anyone wishing to enter the Tournament must clearly label a piece of paper with their name and school, and toss it into the fire. You have twenty-four hours in which you can submit your name, and tomorrow night, on Hallowe’en, the Goblet will return the names of the six students it has judged to be the most worthy to compete for their schools. The order in which a name comes out compared to the other champion of the same school will determine in which of the two groups that person shall compete in. Finally, the Goblet will be placed in the Entrance Hall tonight, to allow equal access to all those wishing to submit their names, but I must warn you all that entering into this competition is not to be done lightly by any means. Once a champion is selected, they must compete. Placing your name into the Goblet means you are consenting to a binding magical contract, and there can be no turning back, no second thoughts, once you have become a champion. I implore you all to be very, very sure that you are whole-heartedly ready to compete against those who may be more magically capable than yourself, before you put your name in. Now, off to bed, I think. Good night!”

The sudden way Dumbledore dismissed everyone confused them, as they had been paying very close attention to his warnings, only to be thrown off by his joviality at his last statements. As Harry and his friends were making their way out of the Great Hall, Fred and George were whispering fervently behind the rest of them, causing Hermione to sigh. “You’re going to try to get in, aren’t you?” she asked, fondly exasperated of her boyfriend and his twin.

“Well, of course!” exclaimed Fred, his eyes glinting.

“I mean, an Age Line is a big deal and all—” said George.

“—but that should be fooled by an Ageing Potion, shouldn’t it?”

“And, once your name’s in the Goblet, it can’t tell whether you’re seventeen or not!”

Hermione just sighed in exasperation again, but Draco piped up. “Remember what Luna said on the train, though. I’m positive now that Harry’s going to end up being somehow entered against his will, and he’ll need our support to stop anyone from turning against him. I don’t think either of you will get in, but I won’t stop you from trying.”

“Me neither,” said Neville. “I’m looking forward to what’ll happen when your plans backfire too much to try to stop you.”

The four of them laughed at that, while the twins put on offended airs. “Well I never!” huffed Fred. “I didn’t think we were friends with such doubters!”

“Neither did I, Gred,” said George, wiping away a fake tear and sniffling. “After all these years! I think I’m going to cry!”

They all rolled their eyes as George collapsed onto Fred and started bawling huge crocodile tears; when Fred joined in, they just started laughing again, then laughed harder when they spotted none other than Viktor Krum standing not far from them with complete confusion on his face. Ginny, who was near them and had been chatting with Colin on the way back, spotted the situation as well and smirked before standing behind them and clearing her throat loudly in a McGonagall-esque manner. Fred and George shrieked exaggeratedly and turned in the direction they thought McGonagall had come from, with George now being held bridal style by Fred.

Instead of an irate Head of House, though, they found the large majority of Gryffindor House now laughing helplessly at their shrieks and the position they were now in, and a very confused Viktor staring at them from not too far away. “Er…” George got out of Fred’s arms. “Nothing to see here, folks!”

“Just a bit of a misunderstanding with our very… dear… sister,” said Fred in a predatory manner.

Ginny gulped. It was not often that she could get one over the twins, but she’d only just remembered that the few times she had, their retaliation had been way worse than anything she’d come up with. As the two slung their arms around her and led her up to the common room, she couldn’t quite hold back a whimper. She could only wait and hope that it wouldn’t involve public nudity.

Viktor was left scratching his head and wondering whether the group he’d befriended, especially George and his twin, Fred, were completely sane.

*

The day of Hallowe’en seemed to have gone incredibly fast when Harry thought back on it. Breakfast had passed by in a blur of eggs, bacon, and hot tea, and was interspersed with the odd bout of clapping and cheers from one group of people or another as someone got up and confidently put their name into the Goblet of Fire, which was still in the Entrance Hall and surrounded by a thin golden line which he assumed was the Age Line. Then, almost as the meal had finished, Fred and George showed up, claiming to have just finished brewing the Ageing Potion. “Just took one drop each,” George said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “We only need to be a few months older, after all.”

“I’m almost positive Dumbledore will have thought of Ageing Potions before he drew the age line,” said Hermione, rolling her eyes.

“Aww, Mione, baby,” groused Fred, hugging her around the middle and resting his head on her shoulder. “Have faith in us, even if it’s just pretend, please? I promise you can say ‘I told you so’ as much as you want if our plan backfires, but until then, cheer us on, would ya?”

Hermione’s sceptical face had morphed into one with a happy little smile at his nickname, and she giggled at being allowed to say that phrase, so she relented. “Okay, Fred. Good luck.”

Fred kissed her on the cheek. “That’s my girl.”

The twins linked their arms and approached the Age Line. With the eyes of everyone in the room on them, they looked at each other, quivering in excitement, and stepped over the age line simultaneously. For a moment, it looked like it had worked, and they gave identical yells of triumph—but the next moment there was a loud sizzling sound, and they were both hurled out of the golden circle like being fired out of a cannon, and ended up landing painfully on the floor, some feet away. Then, to add insult to injury, there was a sudden popping noise and the two pranksters sprouted identical, long, white beards.

Everyone in the Entrance Hall burst into laughter, including Fred and George once they’d stood up and seen each other’s beards. “I did warn you,” said Dumbledore in an amused manner as he exited the Great Hall. “I suggest you venture to the Hospital Wing, as Madam Pomfrey is already tending to Miss Fawcett of Ravenclaw and Mr Summers of Hufflepuff, who both attempted the same method you did, although neither of them sprouted as lovely beards as yours.”

As the twins were escorted to the Hospital Wing by a cheekily grinning Hermione, Harry just happened to notice offhandedly that Dumbledore’s beard seemed to have been braided in some places. Odd.

The only other thing of note that happened at breakfast was the entirety of the Beauxbatons contingent entering their names, one by one, under the watchful eye of Madame Maxime. This was followed by Fleur sitting with Harry and his group for the meal, while Ron sat nearby, staring and nearly drooling. Sadly, it seemed certain that Ron was one of the many who were so heavily affected by Veela that they could barely think around them, even if they had their allure screwed up as tight as they could.

After breakfast, Harry, Draco, and Neville decided to introduce Fleur to Hagrid, since she seemed interested to meet the one who was taking care of their Abraxans. Apparently, Fleur was top of the class in her year’s Magical Creatures class, and she found being around them soothing. However, she was somewhat horrified as Hagrid showed her the Blast-Ended Skrewts, and silently vowed she would never get into experimental cross-breeding, as she would very much prefer to keep all of her fingers, thank you very much.

All too soon, the Hallowe’en Feast was upon them, and Fred, George, and Hermione had finally returned to the student populace, the former two beard-free. Once everyone was hyped up on too much sugar, as well as mounting excitement about who would be picked, the desserts disappeared and Dumbledore stood up, causing the volume in the hall to die down instantly.

“The Goblet will be ready quite soon,” the man said. “I estimate it only requires one more minute. Now, when the champions’ names are called, I would like those in group one to stand on my left,” he indicated in that direction, “and those in group two to stand on my right. Once all champions have been called, if they would make their way along the staff table and go through into the next chamber, still in the groups as allocated. There, they will receive their instructions for their respective first tasks.”

Dumbledore took out his wand and dramatically swept it around him, causing all the candles except those in the carved pumpkin heads to extinguish. This caused the Goblet to shine more brightly than any other light source in the room, being almost too bright now.

Suddenly, the flames turned red, and sparks started to fly out of it. Then, a tongue of flame erupted from the rest and brought with it a charred piece of parchment, which Dumbledore caught as the whole room gasped. He held it out and said, “The first champion for Durmstrang, is Viktor Krum.”

“No surprises there!” Harry heard Ron yell amidst a storm of applause and cheering.

“Bravo, Viktor!” boomed Karkaroff, and Harry only just saw Viktor roll his eyes as he made his way up to the spot Dumbledore had indicated earlier.

The cheering died down, and everyone’s attention was, once again, focussed on the Goblet, which turned red again seconds later. The piece of parchment which came out was again caught by Dumbledore, who read it and intoned, “The second champion for Durmstrang, is Miroslav Bachev.” A boy who had been sitting next to Viktor stood proudly, as well as excitedly, and went to Dumbledore’s other side.

Shortly following this, the fire turned red again and the third piece of parchment fluttered out. “The first champion for Beauxbatons, is Margaux Bernard,” Dumbledore exclaimed, and many of the other Beauxbatons students looked on enviously as a young woman with curly, dark brown hair walked up and over to Viktor, standing a bit too close for his liking.

The fourth parchment exited the cup after the flames turned red once more, and Dumbledore said, “The second champion for Beauxbatons, is Fleur Delacour.”

“They all look upset,” noted Ginny as Fleur practically floated up to stand next to the second Durmstrang champion. Indeed, the rest of the Beauxbatons students did look quite upset that they hadn’t been picked, but that was soon forgotten as the fire became red again.

“The first champion for Hogwarts,” Dumbledore called out, “is Cedric Diggory!”

The uproar from the Hufflepuff table was immense as they all jumped to their feet, screaming and clapping for a broadly grinning Cedric as he made his way past them to the now completed first group of champions. The applause from the Hufflepuffs went on so long that they were only quietened when Dumbledore once again called for silence after he’d caught the final piece of parchment.

Harry already knew he’d been picked when Dumbledore froze upon reading it; apparently, the name was not at all what the man had been expecting. Then, clearing his throat, he read out, “Harry Potter-Black.”

Chapter 11: A Sadly Expected Outcome

Deafening silence. Not a single person in the Great Hall made a sound at Harry’s name being called out, all staring at an equally shocked Dumbledore as though hoping he’d simply misspoken or played a prank on them. Then, there came an odd banging noise from the direction of the Gryffindor table, and everyone turned to the source of the noise, which turned out to be none other than Harry, who was taking out his exasperation by repeatedly banging his head against the table, making the nearby dishes clatter. There was an audible sigh heard as Draco gently covered Harry’s forehead with his hand and prevented him from doing it again. “Harry, we knew there was a high chance of something like this happening,” echoed throughout the Hall. “Something dangerous happens at the school, you end up involved whether you want to or not.”

Next to the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore cleared his throat. “I couldn’t help but overhear, Mr Prince, but are you suggesting that Harry didn’t put his name in the Goblet?”

“Sure he couldn’t,” Draco snorted.

“Very much so,” said Harry, answering over Draco’s muttered words and preparing himself for giving the vow Luna had told him to make ready on the Hogwarts Express what seemed like years ago. “In fact,” he pulled out his wand, “I swear upon my life and magic that I did not put my name into the Goblet of Fire for any reason, nor did I have someone put it in for me. This I say, so mote it be.”

His wand tip flashed three times to signify that his vow was taken, and he incanted, “Lumos,” showing for all in the room to see that he was still alive, and he still had his magic, so he hadn’t even partially lied. A great wave of murmuring arose as students and teachers alike recognised the validity of his words. Then, Dumbledore spoke once again. “As good as that is to hear, Harry, I’m afraid that this does not change the fact that you are now a Hogwarts champion in the Triwizard Tournament. From the few times I have seen your handwriting and your signature, I’m afraid that whomever entered you somehow managed to obtain yours and submitted it. A signature holds the inherent magic of the signer, and it is the magic which the Goblet responds to, not the name.”

Harry visibly gathered himself from snarling out that he didn’t care, that he wasn’t going to compete in this farce of a competition, but held back, knowing that the Goblet would see that as him breaking the binding magical contract he’d been unwillingly entered into, which would lead to losing his magic. Instead, he took a deep breath. “Fine! I’ll compete in this stupid tournament, but I’m only going to do the absolute minimum I need to!”

He made to storm out of the Great Hall as the students erupted into sound, gossiping about the turn of events, but was stopped short by Dumbledore clearing his throat again. “I’m afraid you can’t leave just yet, Harry. Take your place beside your fellow champions so the other students may leave, and I and the other judges may give you and the others your instructions for your respective first tasks.”

Harry clenched his jaw, but did as told, slowing down near his friends, who reassured him that he wasn’t in this alone. With a quick kiss to Draco’s cheek, he walked the rest of the way to the dais and ascended it, standing with the group made up of Fleur and the other Durmstrang champion whose name he couldn’t remember. The rest of the students in the Hall exited in a fashion which clearly told of their reluctance to leave the unfolding drama behind, and besides, they wanted to know more about the first tasks too! However, the teachers ushered them out bit by bit until the only people left in the hall were the six champions, Dumbledore, Madame Maxime, Karkaroff, Bagman, and Avery. With a satisfied exclamation, Dumbledore tossed off the strife of the evening and turned to the others. “I do believe it might be more beneficial now to simply give out the instructions here, rather than in the antechamber as we had originally intended.”

Avery rolled his eyes. “It matters not to me, Dumbledore. I am not the one imparting said instructions, but rather to explain rules, and I can do that anywhere. It is up to Ludo here to decide.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter to me either, Dumbledore!” Bagman exclaimed cheerfully before turning to the first group. “Now! As you undoubtedly already know from last night, your task has the theme of lightning. It will be on the twenty-fourth of November, so you have time enough to get ready. It’s a test of knowledge and logic, and although it will be relatively short compared to some of the later tasks, it’s just as interesting! Study your themes, and anything related to them, and you’ll do well.

“As for you three,” he said to the second group, “your task is to do with fire and heat, and will take place on the fifteenth of December, and it will also be a knowledge- and logic-based task. Now, the second task for group one, the ice task, will be on the fifth of January, followed by task two for group two, water, on the twenty-sixth of January, then task three for group one, illusion, on the sixteenth of February, then task three for group two, air, on the fourth of March. After that, the best two of each of your groups will all have quite a bit of a break to get ready for the final task, earth, which will take place on the twenty-fifth of April. That will leave enough time for the two visiting schools to get back home for their exams—quite ingenious planning if I do say so myself! Any questions?”

Viktor grunted, “Are we prohibited vrom helping the other champions vith their tasks or research?”

“Indeed,” insisted Fleur. “Zis ees, after all, meant to be about eenternational cooperation, no?”

The other Beauxbatons champion flicked her thick, curly raven hair behind her shoulder as she snorted. “You can help ze helpless leetle fake-champion eef you wish, Delacour, but I eentend to win zees competition.”

“Whoever said I was helpless?” asked Harry. “I may not be as old or as experienced as the rest of you, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t dealt with my fair share of dangerous adventures.”

“The young one has a point,” said the other Durmstrang champion. “Viktor, do you remember that time in second year vhen a yeti ended up breaking into our dorm and eating all our sweets?”

Victor chuckled. “Da. I also remember coming back from the Creatures class, vhere ve had just been studying yetis, and arriving in time to see it eat one of Hans’ prank sweets, and then yelling out, ‘cheese for everyone!’ for some reason. Hans later said it temporarily induced madness, but I never did understand that vun. Did you, Miro?”

The other Beauxbatons champion sniffed and interrupted what Harry was sure would have been a hilarious story. “Zese leetle ‘adventures’ as you call zem, are of no use eef I am ze one winning all ze tasks. Besides, Bagman never did answer ze question.”

Bagman blinked rapidly a few times, as he had also been enjoying the story. “Er… ah! No Viktor my boy! You aren’t prohibited from helping any of the other champions, or even working together for that matter, but for the majority of the tasks, you simply won’t be able to work together, since you’ll be doing the tasks separately. The only exceptions are the air task, the water task, and the earth task, although those of you in the ice task will be allowed to take a friend with you to help you complete it.”

“Fair enough,” said Fleur. “I do not zeenk we ‘ave any more questions, Meester Bagman. You explained everyzink very well.”

Bagman puffed up at that, as the other champions agreed with Fleur, other than the other Beauxbatons champion, who rolled her eyes and looked bored.

Dumbledore piped up. “It’s getting quite late, and so I think we should all be heading to bed. Good night all.”

The Beauxbatons girl sniffed a final time and strolled out of the Great Hall, followed by Madam Maxime, who was reassured by Fleur that she would follow as soon as she’d made friends with the other champions. Karkaroff made to usher Viktor and Miro out, but they declined and approached Harry, who had started to talk to Fleur. “What’s the name of the other Beauxbatons girl?” he asked.

Fleur smiled. “‘Er name ees Margaux Bernard. Eet is a shame she does not like zose weeth creature inheritances or backgrounds, as she is quite ze talented witch. She ‘as made eet ‘er mission to ostracise me evair since she first came to Beauxbatons. She transferred in from one of ze smaller schools en France een our second year, you see.”

“Huh. Well, that’s just stupid! Just because someone’s part creature, or they have a creature inheritance, it doesn’t change who they are, just like it doesn’t change anything if someone has a form of the sight, or if they’re an Animagus or a metamorphmagus!”

She sighed. “You are preaching to ze choir, I am afraid, Harry. She ees… biased, and I ‘ave tried many times to try to make ‘er see differently, to no avail.”

“That is preposterous,” said Viktor as he and Miro sidled into their conversation. “I have many friends who are part creature, and I vould never judge them like that Bernard girl has been doing!”

“Nor vould I,” said Miro. “It vould be quite hypocritical of me, as I myself am both a metamorphmagus and part werewolf through my father’s side. It has been difficult for me to make many friends, but Viktor became my friend the second we met.”

“You are lucky,” Fleur said. “I had some friends, and I zought zey were good ones, but zey abandoned me when I turned twelve, as zat is when a part-Veela comes into zair first growth spurt, and zey gain a limited use of zair allure.”

“That sucks!” Harry said. “It was pretty hard for me when I got to Hogwarts, because I suddenly realised how difficult it was to know who was only friends with me because I was the Boy-Who-Lived, or because they genuinely liked me.”

“Da, same vor me,” agreed Viktor sagely. “Only, of course, my troubles started vhen I became Qvidditch star. Suddenly, all the girls who had ignored me because I vas unimportant in their eyes vanted to date me, and the boys vere jealous of me. I vos so glad I already had Miro as my best friend. He didn’t care I vos famous.” Viktor slung a friendly arm around Miro, who just grinned and returned the gesture. “So,” he continued. “I vos vondering about your friend George and his tvin Fred. Are they alvays so…”

“Hyper?” Harry finished, noticing the order Viktor had said the twins’ names in. “Yeah, they’ve always been like that. They’re one of the main reasons why my friends and I are the main pranksters of the school, except no one but us knows it’s us. We go by the name Marauders’ Recruits, since my dad and his friends were the Marauders when they went to Hogwarts, and they were also pranksters. The three of you can always come hang out with us whenever you want. Who knows, you might even get to work on a prank or two.’

Miro’s eyes lit up at that. “Oh, I think I vould like that,” he said gleefully. “Here, no one knows of the pranks we did in Durmstrang, and no one there knew who it vos either. I vould be honoured to be a part of your pranking crusade.”

Harry grinned. “Then welcome to the Marauders’ Recruits, Miro. Anyway, it’s been good talking to you three, but I’m a bit tired from all the drama today, and Hallowe’en isn’t exactly my favourite day in the first place. Good night, Fleur, Viktor, Miro.”

He headed off to the three other champions saying their own good nights back to him and to each other. He had a boyfriend to reassure, since he knew that Draco was almost certainly on the verge of panicking with how long he’d spent getting his instructions, then talking with the three friendly champions.

Chapter 12: The Plot Thickens

Notes:

Sorry about this update being a day late, guys! I came up with this awesome fic idea, and I've just been writing non-stop at it for the past four days, and I completely forgot I needed to upload yesterday. Here you go, though. Enjoy!

As it turned out, it took a good half an hour to reassure Draco that everything was fine, that he was just making headway in getting friendly with three of the five other champions. When he explained everything that had happened, Draco had a question. “Where did Cedric go? One moment in your story, he was standing near Viktor, but he didn’t say anything about that Bernard girl insulting you, which is unlike him, since he likes us enough to defend us from getting detentions for any pranks he knows about, even when he knows that we’re behind them, and then he just up and disappears as soon as the instructions are over? Where did he go?”

Thinking back on it, Cedric had been rather quiet during the whole thing; he hadn’t even waved to his friends after he’d been chosen as he made his way up to the dais. Yes, the situation was fairly uncharacteristic of him, which was concerning. So, the next day after breakfast, Harry, Draco, and Neville caught up with him just as he made to go down to the Hufflepuff common room. “Hey, Cedric!” said Harry. “I missed you after the rules were finished. Viktor, Miro, Fleur, and I talked for a bit, but you just left so quickly.”

“You talked to them?” Cedric asked, then continued in an oddly hollow tone. “What did you talk about?”

Harry furrowed his brow in confusion. “Er… just about how it sucked to have lots of pressure or prejudice focussed on us because of various things, like mine and Viktor’s fame, or Fleur’s Veela heritage. Why?”

“No reason,” said Cedric, his voice even more hollow. “I must be going. I have Defence Against the Dark Arts now, and I need to arrive early.”

Cedric was being quite creepy now, since not only had Cedric actually fully said ‘Defence Against the Dark Arts’ instead of just ‘Defence’ or ‘Dah-dah’, like he was prone to saying, but Harry had suddenly noticed that Cedric’s eyes had a slightly glazed look to them.

“It’s the weekend, though,” said Neville slowly. “Saturday, remember?”

“No. I have Defence Against the Dark Arts now. I have to go.” Cedric made to push past them, but Draco and Neville both grabbed an arm and anchored down so he couldn’t move as much.

Harry scrambled for his mirror, knowing Sirius was at the school in a teaching role, so he could help them quickly. “Sirius!” he exclaimed at the mirror, which misted over for a split second, then cleared to show Sirius’ face. Sirius was about to say something, but Harry butted in. “We think Cedric has been Imperiused! We’re just off the Entrance Hall on the way to the Hufflepuff common room; come quick!”

Sirius’ eyes widened in shock before he stood up from where he’d been sitting and ran for the door as he answered, “Okay, pup. Be right there, I’m on my way. Just try to prevent him from doing whatever he’s been ordered to do, but be careful—sometimes they can be programmed to respond violently to someone doing that. Use a spell that will contain him, whichever one you’re better at.”

Harry agreed and disconnected the call, then turned to Draco and Neville, who were now slowly being dragged behind Cedric as he attempted to get closer to the stairs that would lead him back to the Entrance Hall. “I mus—t go!” shouted Cedric. “Let—m—e leave! I—have—cl—as—s!” Cedric’s words were getting more and more disjointed, which showed that he was able to fight the spell to a certain extent, but not well enough to either stop doing anything or break the curse entirely.

“Sorry, Cedric,” said Harry. “Petrificus Totalus!”

Cedric instantly became stiff as a board and fell forwards onto his face. Neville stood and helped Draco stand up as well. “Phew! That was hard! Thanks, Harry.”

“So who do you think cursed him,” asked Draco curiously.

“I don’t know,” answered Harry. “It could have been anyone. Him saying he needed to go to Defence could just have been a random class his attacker had told him to say when something he was programmed to look out for happened to tell them.”

“So it was something to do with you, Fleur, Miro, and Viktor talking?” asked Draco.

“Or only one of them,” offered Neville. “For all we know, Cedric might be meant to keep an eye on what you do, Harry. He’s obviously our friend, so that means you tell him stuff the rest of the school won’t hear about.”

“Good point,” said Harry. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

At that moment, Sirius arrived in his Animagus form, panting and out of breath. He shifted back quickly and saw Cedric had been Petrified. “Good work, kids,” he said. “I’ll bring him to Madam Pomfrey, and she can dispel the curse. You can come with, if you want. I know he’s a good friend of yours.”

Draco and Neville agreed, but Harry said, “This might affect three of the other champions, since I mentioned them too just before the curse kicked in.”

Sirius nodded. “Good idea, can you go and get them then?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll meet you all in the Hospital Wing,” he said, and rushed off towards the Great Hall in the hope the three were still there.

He was in luck, since Fleur was deep in a discussion with Hermione about creature rights and Viktor and Miro were under a silencing charm with the twins, obviously laughing about something. “Fleur, can you come with me to the Entrance Hall? I need to explain about something to you, Miro, and Viktor where there are less people,” Harry whispered.

Fleur nodded and stood at once. Hermione looked confused, so Harry repeated what he’d said, then tacked on, “Actually, you and the twins might want to come along as well.”

Hermione’s eyes widened and she turned to her boyfriend, leaning through the silencing charm and saying something to all four inside it which had them no longer laughing and looking at Harry in worry. They walked to the Entrance Hall with him, where Fleur was waiting. “Cedric has been Imperiused. His instructions involve something to do with one of us four champions, since I told him about our chat last night and the curse kicked in. He’s in the Hospital Wing now and Madam Pomfrey is probably removing the curse as we speak.”

That made Fleur and Hermione cry out in alarm and the boys to hiss or gasp. The group of seven ran up the nearest stairs and to the Hospital Wing, getting there just in time to see Cedric bury his face in his hands and moan. “Cedric!” all of them exclaimed, and his head snapped up to look at the big group.

He gave a weak smile. “Hey, guys.”

“Are yoo alright?” asked Fleur in concern.

“Yeah, I mean… I don’t know. I wasn’t made to do anything bad—so far—but I’m horrified that it happened. I don’t even remember who cursed me!” he said angrily. “All I know is that I was meant to look out for anything about the tournament and the champions, especially you, Harry. If I found out anything at all, I was to say something about going to Defence, then go report to… someone. I wasn’t told whom to report to, just that once I was alone, more instructions would be given to me.”

“That’s expected,” butted in Madam Pomfrey. “The Imperius Curse has a built-in effect that acts like a Memory Charm, erasing the identity of the caster and the circumstances in which it was cast, often including the location and time. Now, Mr Diggory. Drink these; the first one is a Magical Core replenisher, since you used up quite a bit of magic trying to fight off that curse, and the second is a Calming Draught.”

Cedric sighed, knowing she would likely force them down his throat if he didn’t comply, and obediently drank both potions, making a face after swallowing. A moment after, Cedric slumped back in the bed he’d been given, unconscious. “Oops,” said Madam Pomfrey, not sounding sorry at all. “Was that a Sleeping Draught? My bad. They do look quite similar in a certain light.”

Everyone in the room snorted, knowing full well that a Sleeping Draught was purple and a Calming Draught was sky blue, so the ‘certain light’ was darkness. Cedric must be either overly trusting or he just hadn’t taken many of either potion before to know the difference.

“He needs to rest,” Madam Pomfrey explained to them. “His mind has been through quite a bit of turmoil since the curse was applied. A few hours’ sleep will help his mind re-establish itself properly.”

“Were you able to detect the magical signature, Poppy?” asked Sirius.

Madam Pomfrey shook her head sadly. “I have the magical signature saved on a piece of parchment in my office. You’re not going to like this, Sirius, but from what I was able to determine, the magical signature’s parental root is half Black, so the caster is a descendant of your family. However, your family tree is so extensive that there is no way to narrow it down any further than belonging to your family. I couldn’t figure out the other half, but I’ll look through my files. I take a magical signature sample of every person I treat the first time they come in, so if the caster was ever a student of Hogwarts, or was simply treated by me for some other reason, I will almost certainly find them.”

Sirius was gobsmacked. “Someone from my family did this? Actually, I’m not surprised. The majority of my family was as dark as they come. At times, it felt like I was the only good egg amongst a sea of rotten ones.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harry.

Sirius’ demeanour softened. “Oh, pup, don’t be. We have no idea who did this or what their motives are. We don’t even know when he was cursed! Cedric was at the Quidditch World Cup, so he could have been cursed by any number of people! So many Ministry workers knew about the Triwizard Tournament, so any one of them who was there that night could have cursed him. Probably about a third to a half of those are half Black, so that only narrows it down a tiny little bit. We don’t know anything, and until we do, we can’t do anything about it.”

Notes:

Bwahahaha! Who noticed Cedric not saying anything during the rules, or him just not being mentioned during the convo between Harry, Miro, Viktor, and Fleur? There was a reason! There is always a reason! Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

Chapter 13: The Weighing of the Wands

The next few days were… confusing. No one really knew what to think or how to feel about Harry’s entrance into the Tournament, even though he’d made it very clear that he was only cooperating with the judges and other officials because they had basically refused to even attempt to find him a way out of it. Harry’s obvious friendship with four of the five other champions had gone a long way to diffuse any possible antagonistic behaviour towards him from the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang contingents, and the Hogwarts upper years had apparently unanimously decided to lay aside house rivalries to support their two champions.

The Hufflepuffs were the most confused, as was made obvious in his first class with them since Hallowe’en, Herbology. Most of them, namely Susan Bones, Justin Finch-Fletchely, and Ernie MacMillan were overly friendly to him, as though their first thought was to be cold-shouldered towards him, and their second thought was to be ashamed of their un-Hufflepuff behaviour, so they overcompensated. Zacharias Smith was downright rude, but only slightly more than he normally was… Harry had no idea how he’d made it into Hufflepuff in the first place. Then there was Hannah Abbott, who seemed stuck between the two extremes. Even Professor Sprout seemed more distant than her usual cheerful self, but then again, she was the Head of Hufflepuff, and her champion was somewhat of a competitor to Harry.

Care of Magical Creatures was simply horrible. Parkinson was making increasingly snide and cruel remarks, the other Slytherins present, Crabbe, Goyle, and Nott, simply laughed with her and jeered at Harry. Hagrid’s Skrewts had also gotten worse, since they’d apparently started to kill one another. Hagrid said it was just pent-up energy, but Harry and his friends silently disagreed, believing instead that the cross-breeding of Fire Crabs and Manticores simply made for horrifyingly cruel creatures who liked to kill things for fun.

The cruelty of those particular Slytherins was made worse when they had Potions on Friday. Snape was being somewhat kinder to non-Slytherins since his Dark Mark had been removed, no longer having to play the part of the devoted undercover servant of the Dark Lord, but he was still being preferential to his house. This included ignoring any nasty things they said to the Gryffindors across the room, as long as they didn’t become louder than a loud whisper; he was still pretending that he hated James Potter, after all, and if Dumbledore got wind that this was no longer the case, he might decide that Snape was no longer useful to him. How Snape had managed to spin getting his Mark removed, he didn’t know, and he didn’t think he wanted to know, either. Mostly, he got through that class by muttering smart comebacks under his breath and listening to Hermione, who had intoned, “Ignore them, ignore them, ignore them,” under her breath repeatedly.

The next Potions class was a double, which was sure to be absolute torture. For a start, every Slytherin except a visibly angry Blaise was wearing a large badge on their robes, whose glowing red messages read:

Support CEDRIC DIGGORY —

The ONLY Hogwarts Champion!

“Like them, Potter-Black?” screeched Parkinson in glee as Harry approached. “This isn’t all they do—look!”

She pressed the badge, and the message swirled around, becoming green words:

POTTER STINKS!

The participating Slytherin howled with laughter and pressed their badges as well. Hermione gasped in outrage, Neville and Draco growled, Dean made to move towards them with his fists raised, but Seamus held him back even as he screwed up his face in hatred, and Blaise clenched his jaw and held back a fountain of insults, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. Harry, too, wanted to insult and curse them, and he intended to act on it, damn the consequences. Before he could, though, Draco grabbed his arm to stop him just in time, for Professor Snape had opened the classroom door. “And what is all this noise about?” he asked in a quiet, deadly voice.

“We were just showing our school spirit to Potter-Black and his friends, Professor,” Parkinson simpered.

Snape raised an eyebrow and looked at the badges as though only just noticing them. “As much as I appreciate that you support your school, Miss Parkinson, I will not have any advertisement of that disgusting Tournament in my classroom. It is bad enough that it is the only thing talked about at the moment.”

“Yes, Professor,” chimed in the badge-wearing Slytherins, doing as told before making their way inside the classroom.

Harry and his friends passed Snape on his way in, and the man gave a miniscule nod, which they returned in thanks. Harry had noticed that Ron had been strangely quiet and hadn’t seemed to react at all throughout the drama, so when he sat down, he twisted so he could see Ron sitting down at the very back of the room. Ron saw him looking and pointedly looked away, which hurt a bit. Sure, Harry and he had drifted away from their friendship slowly during their time at Hogwarts, but he hadn’t thought that it was so bad that Ron couldn’t see past his jealousy that Harry had something that he didn’t to realise that Harry hadn’t wanted it in the first place.

He sighed and turned back to the front, where Snape began his short lecture on antidotes. “You should have all prepared your recipes by now. I want you to brew them carefully, and then we will be selecting someone on whom we will be testing theirs to see how effective it is. For a failed antidote, you will receive a Bezoar, and a Troll for the day, and a successful potion’s grade will depend on how difficult your selected antidote was. You have one hour, and if it is not immediately obvious to me which antidote you have started, you will receive a Dreadful for the day. After that, you will have half an hour to finish your brew. Begin.”

Antidotes were really quite fascinating, since the umbrella term covered such a large range of potions that, technically, a Calming Draught was an antidote to both a Cheering Charm and mental trauma, and a Blood-Replenishing Draught was an ‘antidote’ to extreme blood loss. Subsequently, the four had each chosen a different potion that was classified as an antidote which interested them—Draco had chosen an Elixir to Induce Euphoria, an antidote to depression, which, even though it was a sixth-year potion, had posed no problems to the future Potions Master; Neville had chosen a Tincture of Courage, which cured shyness and contained two Mimbulus Mimbletonia flowers; Hermione tried for the Wiggenweld Potion, as it was also quite difficult; and Harry had decided upon the far easier General Love Potion Antidote, since he figured that even though it was simple, it had the word ‘antidote’ in it, and he was positive he could do it well. Harry had only just added his base liquid and turned up the heat to simmer, when Colin knocked timidly on the open door and edged into the room.

“Yes?” Snape said curtly.

“Please, sir, I’m supposed to take Harry Potter-Black upstairs,” Colin almost whispered in fear.

“Potter is here for my lesson, and here he shall stay. He will come upstairs when the class is finished.”

Colin went pink. “But—sir, Mr Bagman wants him. All the champions have to go, I think they want to take photos or something…”

“Very well, very well,” Snape sneered. “Mr Potter-Black, leave your things here. I want you back down here later to test your antidote.”

“Please, sir—he’s got to take his things with him,” Colin squeaked. “All the champions—”

“Very well!” said Snape harshly. “Take your bag with you. You will be completing and testing your antidote tonight, at seven o’clock.” He turned to Colin and mocked, “Is he allowed to do that?”

Colin only gave a terrified squeak in answer and fled the classroom, Harry stifling his amusement as he followed him. As they made their way upstairs, Colin whispered, “I don’t get why you find him funny. He’s so scary!”

Harry grinned. “Well, when your boyfriend is his adopted son, you learn to look on the funny side rather than being terrified by every little thing he says.”

“Oh, Merlin, that’s worse!” Colin squeaked. “Remind me to look into how scary any potential boyfriends’ parents are, will you?”

Harry thew his arm over Colin’s shoulder. “Sure, Colin. Just remember that you can’t let fear of anyone or any consequences prevent you from finding love.”

Colin grinned back at him. “I’ll remember, Harry. Merlin, you’re like a big brother to me! I never expected to find someone like that at Hogwarts, now I just need to learn how to be just as good a big brother as you, so I can be the same for Dennis. Oh, here we are!”

They had arrived at a classroom, and with a final, “Good luck,” Colin departed, and Harry was left to enter. Inside, he found all but three of the desks had been pushed to the back of the room, and the left-over ones had been covered by a length of deep purple velvet and moved to be near the blackboard, leaving a small gap between the desks and the blackboard. Also within the classroom were Bagman, Rita Skeeter, her photographer, and the five other champions; Viktor and Miro were conversing in low voices in the middle of the room, Fleur and Cedric were chatting happily about some of the secret passageways in Hogwarts, and how they’d discovered them, and Margaux Bernard was standing alone by the window, shooting small, disgusted looks towards Fleur.

At Harry’s arrival, Bagman spotted him and got up quickly to get to him quickly. “Ah, here he is! Champion number six! In you come, Harry, in you come… nothing to worry about, it’s just the Wand Weighing ceremony, the rest of the judges will be here in a moment—”

“Good to see you again, ‘Arry,” Fleur butted in, embracing him quickly. Margaux snorted, but was ignored by everyone.

Viktor came up and shook his hand, followed by Miro and Cedric.

Bagman decided to try to get back control of the situation. “This is Rita Skeeter,” he gestured to the woman in introduction, “she’s doing a small piece on the Tournament for the Daily Prophet…”

“Maybe not that small, Ludo,” Skeeter said, hungrily staring at Harry. “I wonder if I could have a little word with Harry before we start? The youngest champion, you know… to add a bit of colour?”

“Certainly!” cried Bagman.

Harry, however, had been prepared by Luna for this. “Actually,” he said, drawing himself up slightly, “you’d have to take that up with my publicist.”

“Your publicist?” asked Rita, puzzled. “Whatever would you need a publicist for?”

“Well, I am famous, no matter how much I wish I weren’t. I’d rather not be maligned by someone just out for a bit of easy money, so it’s her job to protect me. After that, I’ve got my lawyers to help me,” he finished happily.

“Er—well,” Rita stammered, “who’s your publicist?”

“Oh, Luna Lovegood.”

Rita blinked. “Lovegood? The daughter of the owner of The Quibbler?”

“Of course!”

A decade ago, The Quibbler had sued the Daily Prophet for stealing one of their more realistic articles and running it without paying a Knut for it, and the Daily Prophet had ended up paying well over a thousand Galleons because of the brilliant, if slightly bizarre, case that Xenophilius Lovegood had presented to the Wizengamot. It was a fact that had been covered up by the Daily Prophet as much as possible, but it was well-known by those who knew about the case that Luna had been taught her father’s techniques, and had shown her proficiency by presenting the ending speech of the case.

Rita shivered. No way was she going to cross a Lovegood. “Erm, I might get into contact with her some time soon… How about pictures, are you allowed to be in those without her consent?” she asked desperately.

Harry shrugged. “I guess, but Luna would probably insist on having some sort of magically binding contract that no solo photographs be taken of me.”

Rita nodded fervently. “Of course, of course! No contract needed!”

“Are you sure?” he asked innocently. “I have one she gave me earlier.”

With a shaking hand, Rita took the contract he held out and read it, shivering at some of the… inventive punishments that magic would do to her if she broke the contract. Well, that made it impossible for her to sneak around him in her Animagus form—the contract specifically stated that if she tried to get a photo or information off him for an article while she was in any form, including, but not limited to, her normal self, under a glamour, transfigured various ways, Animagus forms, or Polyjuiced, she’d be stripped naked, covered in raspberry jam, forced to sit on an anthill, then run through Diagon Alley singing ‘Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off’. Boy, was this family horrifying.

She signed it promptly, and it glowed golden then copied itself once. The original stayed with Harry, and she got the copy.

At that moment, Dumbledore and the other judges arrived with Ollivander in tow. “Ah, are we all here?” Dumbledore said cheerfully. “Good! We can get started, then.”

First up was Viktor, who handed over his wand for examination. Ollivander took it and hummed. “This is a Gregorovitch creation, unless I’m mistaken? A fine wand-maker, though the styling is never quite what I… however…” He examined the wand closely, then spoke again. “”Hornbeam and dragon heartstring, yes?” Viktor nodded. “Rather thicker than one usually sees… quite rigid… ten and a quarter inches… Avis!”

Viktor’s wand let out a loud blast, and some birds flew out the tip before flying out the window.

“Good, good,” the man said, before gesturing to Margaux. “You next, my dear. Hmm, ah, yes… Walnut and phoenix feather! Slightly bendy… seven and three-quarter inches…” He transfigured his own hat into a white rabbit and back again. “Quite lovely wand, that.”

Cedric was next, and after a tale of the unicorn that had provided the ash wand’s core, Ollivander produced some silver smoke rings across the room.

Miro approached Ollivander at his behest. “Another Gregorovitch wand, yes? Sycamore, with a dragon heartstring core… twelve inches… flexible.” A comfy chintz armchair appeared was conjured in the middle of the room, and Dumbledore immediately made a happy exclamation and sat down in it, immediately pulling out some knitting from somewhere. Perhaps the old goat had gone slightly senile?

“Mademoiselle Delacour, come forward, if you please,” said Ollivander. She did so, and handed over her wand. “Nine and a half inches, inflexible… rosewood… and containing… dear me…”

“An ‘air from ze ‘ead of a Veela,” Fleur said. “One of my grandmuzzer’s.”

“Yes, well I’ve found Veela hair to make quite temperamental wands, so I’ve never used it myself… but to each his own, and if this suits you… Orchideous!” a bunch of flowers burst from the wand, and he handed them and the wand to Fleur.

“Good. This leaves Mr Potter-Black.” Harry walked over and handed his wand to the man. However,  Oliver was fairly quiet for his wand, merely saying, “Aaaah, yes. Yes, yes, yes, Morwenna told me about this one… not what I would have chosen for you, but it seems to have worked rather nicely for you...”

He took quite some time studying it, saying nothing, then handed it back with a perfunctory, "English oak and a dual core of thunderbird feather and phoenix feather, eleven and a half inches, quite supple.”

After that, all the champions were clustered together for a series of photographs, in which Rita Skeeter kept moving him further towards the back in fear of Luna’s consequences, and Fleur was moved further forwards by the photographer. Then, it was suddenly over, and Harry, Fleur, Viktor, Miro, and Cedric made plans to have lunch together, then study for their first tasks in the Room of Requirement that weekend.

Chapter 14: Pranks and Emerging Passions

Notes:

I am, once again, very sorry for missing a week. I somehow managed to get a really bad case of the flu in the middle of summer, and I could barely roll over in bed without feeling extremely nauseous, let alone manage to drag myself to my computer and publish a chapter. Luckily, I started feeling better yesterday, so to make up for the lack of a chapter last week, I'm going to publish this chapter today, and I'll get another one out tomorrow. Also, if anyone has any ideas for what might happen in fifth year, like pranks or more ways to rebel against Umbridge, feel free to comment them! No matter how ridiculous they are, I promise to try to incorporate some part of them somewhere. I have a feeling the fifth book might devolve into a bit of a crack fic, but then again, Umbridge just gives so many opportunities to make fun of her!
Enjoy the chapter!

In the week between the Weighing of the Wands and the first task, the Marauders’ Recruits, plus Viktor, Miro, Cedric, and Fleur, carried out a number of small pranks in order to keep everyone’s spirits up and their minds away from feeling pity towards Harry as the youngest (and unwilling) champion, but it was also an attempt to alleviate some of the stress that Viktor and Cedric were having with trying to study as much lightning-related mythology and creature information as possible. On the fifteenth of November, a Sunday, they started the fun off with a bang by getting an invisible Dobby to cast some spells on each of the champions at breakfast. These spells would activate whenever the people they were attached to started walking, and, in effect, gave each of them their own theme song. Cedric was the first of the champions to stand up, and he started laughing when the Rebel Fanfare theme played as he made his way over to his girlfriend. Cho was giggling up a storm when Cedric decided to walk to the tempo of the theme music, and she blushed happily as he dramatically bowed to her and asked her to go on a date with him to Hogsmeade that weekend, even though he already knew she’d accept, as she had for every Hogsmeade weekend since his fourth year. Viktor was next to stand, and his neutrally dour look he always wore when in public fell away into one of almost childish glee as the Imperial March announced itself with every step he took. As Cedric and Viktor had opposing themes, they’d planned ahead of time to look up a ‘lightsaber spell’ of sorts, both because the lightsabers in Star Wars could somewhat deflect the dark lightning so it might be useful for their task, and because they wanted to do a lightsaber battle that had no chance of hurting either of the so-called duellists.

As Cedric and Viktor conducted a mock battle with their lightsabers, their theme musics letting off a dissonant cacophony as they circled one another, Miro got up to ‘help’ his best friend. As it so happened, Miro was on the right side of the battle, because as soon as he started to rush over to join in the lightsaber fight, the Stormtrooper theme started playing, showing everyone in the hall he was on the ‘dark side’ in this battle. The battle broke apart not long after, because not only was everyone in the Great Hall laughing at the scene, but the three fighters were too caught up in hysterical laughter to do anything more than the odd lightsaber swipe which achieved nothing.

Margaux Bernard was the next to stand, but her reaction to the Obi Wan theme was an annoyed sniff as she made her way out of the hall. Before she got halfway to the giant golden doors, Fleur had stood up, and she glided towards her three fellow champions to the tune of Princess Leia’s theme, motioning to Harry to do the same. When he moved, however, it was not a Star Wars theme that played; instead, it was the Indiana Jones main theme, and he grinned to himself as lurid orange writing appeared on the wall:

One of these is not like the others.

We hope you enjoy a very musical day!

Love, the Marauders’ Recruits.

The music lasted for the whole day, as promised by the words on the wall, and only stopped as each of them sat down to breakfast the following day, as was proven when, once again, Cedric stood up first. The majority of the students gave a small sigh of relief at the lack of loud music coming from their champions, even if they privately admitted to themselves that this prank had almost certainly made them like the movie trilogy even more than they had previously.

On the seventeenth of November, exactly one week before Margaux Bernard, Cedric, and Viktor were to have their task, and only the day after their theme music prank, the picnic prank they’d planned was pulled off. The more studious Ravenclaws were the first to see the park that the Great Hall had been turned into. The floor was now lush green grass, the walls had been given an illusion to make it look like there were no walls, only a wide meadow, there were approximately forty picnic blankets, which were spread out throughout the hall, some appearing to be under trees, and ten picnic benches, each of which was near a barbecue. There were also some buffet tables which were laden with breakfast foods, for those who didn’t feel like barbecuing anything, and in the place of the teacher’s table was an enormous playground. The teachers entered the room, absolutely gobsmacked at the change to the room, but they were quickly pushed to the side, almost bowled over, by a bunch of eager Muggleborn firsties who were eager to see if the playground was real.

Of course, the house-elves would never have wanted to disappoint any of the children in their care, so the playground was indeed real, and it saw quite a bit of use from everyone except the majority of the teachers that day. Sirius, being the big kid he was, had managed to drag Remus onto it with him, and the two cheered as they slid down one of the huge slides.

The only other prank they pulled off that week was another house elf-aided one; they’d convinced the little creatures to put animated googly eyes on every bit of food at dinner on the twentieth. It had quite a hilarious reaction, as several people shrieked while others simply burst out laughing at the strange sight.

Then, the day after that was the first day of the Hogsmeade weekend, and Harry, Neville, and Draco saw several new couples out and about on dates. The first couple was Colin and Seamus, the former with a huge stick of fairy floss from Honeydukes and the latter with an absolutely besotted expression as he jokingly attempted to get a bite of the fairy floss in Colin’s hand. Colin’s fit of giggles at Seamus’ behaviour was absolutely adorable, and Harry hoped their date went well; he couldn't wait to hear all about the embarrassing things Seamus had done from Colin when the Marauders’ Recruits next met up. They spotted Cedric and Cho in Madam Puddifoot’s through the misted windows, which was fairly normal to see on a Hogsmeade weekend, but what wasn’t normal to see was Angelina Johnson and Lee Jordan making out on the next table over, and the table next to that one was occupied by Katie Bell and Padma Patil, who were holding hands and snickering at Angelina and Lee’s actions. It seemed to be that this weekend was one with just as much romantic success as the one that was normally scheduled on or near Valentine’s Day, even with the slightly stifling presence of several Aurors, who were patrolling the area to protect the carefree students in response to a Death Eater attack of a small magical village just outside of Ipswitch.

Harry and Draco had decided not to go on a date, because they didn’t want Neville to feel isolated due to everyone else in their group having made their own plans for the day. Fred and Hermione had wandered off in the direction of the used bookshop, George had dragged Viktor off towards Zonko’s, Fleur had been distracted early on by the glinting and glimmering of the jewellery shop, Miro had decided to take a look in Dervish and Banges because he was in need of a new wand holster, and Blaise had spotted Dean, whom he’d struck up an odd friendship with during Arithmancy, in The Three Broomsticks and had snuck off for some butterbeer with him. So, the trio wandered around the small village, refilling their sweet stashes and their parchment and quills, then going to the bookshop to see if a book, which was a part of a series Draco had been reading, had come out yet, running into Fred and Hermione there—luckily they weren’t snogging—then, after Draco had delightedly paid for the book, they made their way to The Three Broomsticks to catch up with Blaise and Dean.

On their way there, they noticed Miro walking a ways ahead of them, who was holding what looked like a very large sneakoscope in his hand. Before they could call out to him, he was waylaid by an Auror tripping over her feet and knocking into him, sending both of them to the ground.

“Oh, I’m so, so sorry!” exclaimed a voice that sounded familiar.

“That’s all right,” said Miro gruffly. “I vosn’t quite looking vere I vos going.”

He helped up the Auror, and Harry saw her hair flash from a modest brown to hot pink in embarrassment. Tonks was here!

“You are Metamorphmagus also?” Miro asked her excitedly, his dark hair becoming sunshine yellow as he momentarily lost control over his emotions.

Tonks grinned as her hair changed to match his. “Yeah. I had no idea that any family lines other than Black had the blood-trait. What’s your name?”

“Miroslav Bachev, but my friends call me Miro. I am actually descended from a Black, my great-great-great grandmother vos one. I do not know vot her name vos, but there you have it.”

The smile on Tonks’ face was almost blinding. “Well, it’s good to meet you, Miro. I’m… well…” she blushed slightly before soldiering on. “My name is Nymphadora Tonks, but if you use my first name, you will regret it. I just go by Tonks.”

“It is nice to meet you, Tonks,” he said, then paused, obviously thinking something through. “I vos just about to go to The Three Broomsticks for some butterbeer. Vould you like to accompany me, or are you still on duty?”

Both Tonks’ hair and her face was now bright red, which was quite an achievement on Miro’s part, since it was incredibly difficult to get a Metamorphmagus so flustered that they blushed slightly, let alone the full-out blush she had. “Y-yeah, um… I just got off duty, and I was actually on my way to The Three Broomsticks myself, so I don’t think it’ll be too much of a hardship to go with you.”

Miro puffed up slightly in success, then held out his arm to her, which she took.

“Oh, this I gotta see!” exclaimed Neville quietly, glee clear in his voice.

“I agree,” said Draco. “It’s not every day you have the chance of seeing something that’s bound to be an adorably awkward yet interesting first date.”

Harry rolled his eyes fondly. “You two are incorrigible,” he sighed. “Let’s go, I needed some butterbeer anyway.”

The two cheered and linked arms with him, dragging him towards the famous pub.

Chapter 15: Thunderbolts and Lightning

Notes:

Here you go, we're finally up to the first task! I hope you all like where I've gone so far.
Enjoy!

The twenty-fourth of November came all too soon for Viktor and Cedric’s liking, as Harry and his friends witnessed when they entered the Great Hall to find the two alternating between frantically quizzing each other on lightning-related mythology and magical creatures, and glaring up at the ceiling, which showed a weak November sun and wispy clouds.

Margaux Bernard was sitting alone at the visiting school table, and she seemed to only be concentrating on eating a healthy breakfast and occasionally sneering in Viktor and Cedric’s direction, obviously believing them to be fools who were beneath her for leaving their preparation to the last minute.

“So,” said George, sitting next to Vikor, “how are you two holding up?”

Viktor thunked his head on George’s shoulder and groaned. Harry mentally cooed at how adorable they looked together. “Not very vell, George. I haven’t been this nervous since my first professional Quidditch match! The vorst thing, though, is that Bagman and Avery did not tell us very much about vot vos to come, only that it vill test our knowledge and logic. Vrom vot Dumbledore said the night bevore ve vere picked, the ‘knowledge’ part refers to knowing about mythology vrom different parts of the world.”

Cedric nodded in agreement, his cheek currently resting on his propped up hand. “So we scoured the library for lightning mythology, for lightning casting and deflecting spells, and magical creatures that have some sort of connection to the element, but there are so many myths and creatures, though! True, some of them sound and look way too dangerous to have in a tournament for seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, but you never know with the Wizarding world.”

“Okay, well, what sorts of creatures have you got on your list?” asked Hermione.

“From Asia we have the thunderclap dragon from Mongolia and the raiju and kitsune from Japan,” started Cedric, leafing through a sheaf of parchment. “Then five giant and six cyclops subspecies—all of which have some sort of connection to lightning, thunder, or storms—and the thunderbird.”

“Don’t vorget the storm crow vrom some native North American tribe. Ve have at least one creature vrom each major continent, except ve couldn’t vind anything on African or South American myths or creatures,” grumbled Viktor. “It seems counterproductive to have champions go through so much useless research vhen vot ve need is not in the library, so ve do not think they vill have anything vrom there.”

“Good thinking,” said Draco, trying to bolster their downed confidences. “Besides, don’t forget that you entered the Tournament of your own free wills; you should have expected some hard work this year since you got the chance of having your end-of-year exams automatically passed.”

“I didn’t quite understand that,” admitted Neville. “I mean, Cedric’s okay, since he’s in sixth-year, but what about NEWTs for the seventh-years? Wouldn’t just getting a pass not be good enough for some jobs?”

“Da,” agreed Viktor. “That vould be the case if seventh-years only had one set of end-of-year exams, but they don’t. There are the mock NEWTs vhich take place a month bevore NEWTs, and the vormer only count vor the school marks. The NEWTs are valid throughout Europe, and hold a lot more influence than school marks, vhich are only valid vor your country. So, you automatically pass the mocks, but you still need to take the NEWTs so that you can get a job anyvhere in Europe you vant. If you vant to vork outside of Europe, you need to apply to the ICW, vhere you can take the International NEWTs.”

Neville blinked at the large amount of information that Viktor had uttered, almost sounding like he’d just memorised an informational pamphlet. “Oh, okay then.”

Harry decided to change the subject. “So, what have you two not finished revising, then?”

*

As he stood in the tent, dressed in his Triwizard Champion outfit, Viktor still hadn’t managed to completely shake his nerves. He and his fellow champions had had a Portkey thrust under their noses, instructed to take hold of it, and yanked off to somewhere in the English countryside. That, he had managed to see before he and his fellow group one champions had been ushered into a dark blue tent that had animated lightning flashing over it occasionally. Inside, Bagman, Avery, and the three heads of the participating schools had gathered them together. “Now,” exclaimed Bagman, rubbing his hands together in excitement. “When the first plan for the tournament was scrapped as being too dangerous, we felt we had to come up with another idea that was just as impressive so that the viewers wouldn’t be disappointed. The task that you three have before you now is nowhere near as dangerous, but still dangerous enough to get you motivated to succeed and get your blood pumping.”

Avery had so far looked utterly bored by Bagman’s attempt at waxing poetic, and butted in with a roll of his eyes. “Only one champion will participate in the task at a time, in a predetermined order. The first champion to enter the task will be the Durmstrang champion, then the Beauxbatons champion, and finally the Hogwarts champion. Your objective is to collect the Japanese runic puzzle box, which you will need to solve and open by your second task on the fifth of January. Any questions?”

“Oui, Monsieur Avery,” said Margaux, who sounded almost like she was… simpering. “‘Ow long would you say zis task will take, approximately?”

Avery’s bored expression seemed to soften slightly. “It should take you somewhere between half and hour and forty-five minutes. Any longer than that will get you a half-point deduction per minute. Anyone else?”

Neither Viktor nor Cedric said anything; Viktor too caught up in internally panicking that he was going to be first, and Cedric that he was going to be last. Both regretted wanting to be a part of the tournament. Avery continued. “Good. Now. Krum, you have ten minutes to get ready, and at the sound of the cannon, exit out that door,” he indicated the tent flap opposite the one they’d first entered through, then left through the first door with the other judges following behind them.

Viktor grabbed Cedric and sat down on one of the three beds, ignoring the eye roll Margaux sent at them. For the remaining ten minutes, the two quizzed each other in low whispers, and when the sound of a cannon pounded through the quiet tent, Viktor stood on shaky legs, faintly green about the face, and exited the tent through the correct flap.

Before him stood two beautiful Japanese women who were wearing Kimonos, but he could see that they were, in fact, a kitsune and a nogitsune in their semi-human forms, because they each had fox ears in place of human ones and three fox tails were flicking around behind them. He knew that one was a kitsune and the other a nogitsune because the former’s tails were pure white and the latter’s were a blood red colour; all forms of kitsune had pure white tails, and nogitsune were the odd ones out, having their coat and tail colours darken the more they allowed their inner fox spirit to take over. Both of the creatures blocked a path.

The kitsune smiled kindly and tilted her head. “Welcome, Champion. One of the paths behind us leads to hardship, and the other to prosperity. In order to pass us, you need only ask one question, but you may not ask more than that. To aid you on your way to figuring out which question to ask, I can tell you that I will only speak the truth, and my friend will only speak lies.”

Viktor’s stomach gave a small flip. This, he supposed, was where the “logic and powers of deduction” that Dumbledore had talked about came in, but even though he enjoyed riddles, he always took ages to figure them out, and he had a limited amount of time. He had actually heard of some form of this one before, but it involved being in a windowless room with only two doors, and in front of each door stood a man, but he didn’t quite remember what the correct question had been.

He spent some time pacing back and forth in front of the two women, growing more and more anxious as no answer was coming to him and he was wasting time. He looked around at the landscape in an attempt to see whether there might be some sort of clue, and only then realised that it was almost entirely silent. No huge stands full of yelling and screaming students, no biased and unhelpful commentary by Bagman, which must mean that either there was some sort of recording device hidden or Disillusioned near him that projected what happened on a screen back at Hogwarts, or he was currently under a dome of wards that prevented him from seeing or hearing the watchers. If it was the former, then he had no knowing how big the arena for the task was, and if it was the latter, then he could possibly feel around to see if there were any barriers that he could feel along to figure out which way was the right one.

He sighed. Miro was a real riddle and mystery buff; he loved hearing and telling all sorts of riddles, so he could probably tell him exactly which question to ask. Oh. That… actually gave him an idea. He bit his lip and sidled over to the two women, whose attentions immediately snapped to him. If he ended up walking the wrong way, then he supposed he’d realise eventually, since it would lead to hardship. He addressed them both, “Which way would your friend tell me to go to get to the prosperity?”

The two women simultaneously grinned with their sharp little teeth and pointed to their right.

If Viktor’s logic was working correctly, then the nogitsune would lie and point to the opposite path to the prosperous path, because she’d know that her friend would point her to the correct one, and the kitsune would know that her friend would lie and point to the wrong one, so she’d truthfully point to the wrong one. So, with this thinking, since they were both pointing to their right, his left, as the wrong path, he needed to go right. He thanked them and took the right path.

Some time later, when the kitsune and the nogitsune were out of his sight, he came across an odd, lightning bolt-shaped rock, which had what looked like a small ball of electricity resting atop it. He walked closer cautiously, and the ball of lightning formed into the shape of a sleeping black wolf with small arcs of electricity coming off it. He shuddered at the sight of the sleeping raiju. It was a vicious creature in its first stage of life; when there was a lightning storm in Japan, the first bolt of lightning to touch the ground would solidify into a first-stage raiju, which would quickly retreat into the sewers or the nearest body of water to mature for a month. After that, it would fall into a coma-like state that would continue until the next lightning storm occurred. At that point, it would go into a frenzy and seek out the nearest magical person, and when it found them, it would attempt to enter the person’s body through their navel three times before going in search of another. More often than not, they could be warded off on each attempt with a high powered shield charm, but if the raiju succeeded at getting to the person’s navel, it would transform into a bolt of pure electricity and enter the body, becoming a parasite that fed on the victim’s body’s natural electrical pulses. When it became strong enough, it killed the host and would try to find another matured raiju to mate with. This was considered harmless enough? What had their first idea been to make the inclusion of a raiju seem harmless?

He crept past it, despite knowing that it currently posed no danger to him as there was no lightning storm, and continued on his way. Soon enough, with the lightning rock the length of a Quidditch pitch away from him, the path skirted around a massive boulder and he was suddenly before a thunderbird. Next to it was a sign that said, If fed the incorrect thing, the thunderbird will start a lightning storm. Well, now he knew why the raiju was still so near to him. Between him and the enormous golden bird were three buckets of meat, one had dark, red meat that looked like either beef or lamb, one had a far more pale meat which was possibly chicken, and the third clearly had fish in it.

From what he knew of the large avian magical creatures, they absolutely refused to eat red meat, as the bacteria within was detrimental to their digestive systems, and he didn’t think they would eat chicken, since they were known as the protectors of all flying creatures, so that left the fish. He just hoped the fish in the bucket wasn’t the magical variant of flying fish, which could actually fly and not just jump out of the water for a time. He walked slowly towards the buckets and picked up the fish bucket, taking out one of the fish within it and offering it to the thunderbird. It sniffed at the offering, then made a pleased sound and snatched it from him before stepping aside, off the path.

He put the bucket down, wiped the sweat from his brow, and continued onwards, where he quickly came across a huge humanoid shape. By its one eye, he identified it as a cyclops, and by its dark blue skin colour, he further recognised it as an artisan cyclops. “Hello,” the cyclops greeted in a voice that reminded him of a rockfall.

“Hello,” he returned politely, remembering that the artisan subspecies prided themselves on etiquette, and would become aggressive at rude behaviour.

The cyclops smiled, which was not a very pretty sight due to the mouth being more of a red slash and the presence of only one tooth. “Would you like to see what I have on offer today?”

“Yes please,” Viktor said, bemused. This was indeed a very bizarre situation.

The cyclops laid out five items on the table between the two, and Viktor immediately identified one of them as the puzzle box he needed to get. “In order to have one of these items, you need only block two bolts of lightning that I conjure. Do you accept this challenge?”

Viktor gulped. The six cyclops subspecies that he and Cedric had identified as belonging to the lightning element had an excess amount of electrical impulses throughout their body, and when threatened, they could use the excess to conjure extremely powerful bolts of lightning, which could sometimes be so powerful that one bolt was known to incinerate a hundred-year-old tree into ash. However, this appeared to be the only way to get the puzzle box, so he bravely nodded and said, “I accept.”

Immediately, he pulled up the most powerful shielding charm he could cast, and he chanted the short incantation needed for the lightsaber spell. He hoped this worked. The cyclops looked mildly impressed, and put out one hand in front of him, which started to glow menacingly. The electricity flowed from the cyclops’ hand towards him, and he held his lightsaber-spelled wand so that the electricity hit it and was conducted away from him, flying off the tip and landing on a bush, which instantly caught fire. Winded, Viktor steadied himself once more, just in time for the second bolt to hit his lightsaber and dart off onto a nearby tree. After that, the cyclops bowed and gestured for him to pick which item he desired, so he disabled the lightsaber and the shield charms and walked over to take the puzzle box. As soon as he touched it, he felt a jerking behind his navel and he appeared in the Great Hall, where the whole school seemed to be on their feet, cheering and clapping for him.

He sat himself down next to his boyfriend—and wasn’t that just incredible that George had agreed to be his boyfriend after only one date! George slung an arm around his shoulder and pointed to the projected image on the far wall, showing that Margaux Bernard had just entered the arena.

He furrowed his brows in suspicion as he watched her traverse every obstacle incredibly easy, with only a roll of her eyes or a raised eyebrow to show she acknowledged the obstacle’s presence. However, when she got to the cyclops, the disgust at having to interact with a creature showed clearly on her face, and the cyclops saw the expression, his formerly open face hardening. Margaux then had to deflect ten lightning bolts for her impolite expression, all of which looked more powerful than the ones he’d had to block, and she only just managed the feat. Once she had, the cyclops simply threw the puzzle box at her and stormed off. Margaux appeared where he had, and she sniffed in a derogatory manner before taking the same seat she’d occupied at breakfast.

Cedric’s run was less successful than his own, as he asked the incorrect question of the kitsune and nogitsune, going on the wrong path until he entered a silver magical field. As soon as he touched the magic, a lightning storm started, and a sign emerged from the ground that told him he’d gone the wrong way. Cedric ended up backtracking and when he got to the raiju, it was awake and in a fury. However, he successfully managed to prevent it from getting in his navel, and the storm stopped instantly, allowing him to continue on. The thunderbird was correctly fed, and the artisan cyclops seemed happier again, especially at Cedric’s good manners. Cedric also only had to block two bolts of lightning, and then he showed up in the Great Hall moments later after touching the puzzle box Portkey.

Cedric sat with him and their friends, and they waited anxiously for the judges to score them. After ten minutes of deliberation, the judges faced the audience and Bagman spoke, “Krum chose the correct path for the first obstacle, but he took long enough that I’m afraid we had to deduct two points; he did not enrage the raiju at all, so he receives full points for that; the thunderbird received the correct food, so full points again; the cyclops was impressed with his manners and his method of defence against the challenge, meaning full points; finally, along with the style with which he conducted himself gives him the total of twenty-five of thirty points.”

Bagman went through a similar spiel with Margaux’s points and with Cedric’s, giving them 23 and 20 points, respectively. Viktor grinned. He was in first place.

Chapter 16: When the Insect Bites

Notes:

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Mara, happy birthday to me!
I hope you all enjoy this interesting chapter!

George Weasley was incredibly happy. The guy he’d had a huge crush on for a little less than a month had asked him out for a Hogsmeade weekend, said date had gone so incredibly well that they’d both agreed to continue their relationship, his now boyfriend was in first place in the Triwizard Tournament, and he and Fred had made a killing on the betting pool they’d started, which meant their goal of opening up their own joke shop when they left school was right on schedule. The day after the First Task was even better, because he came down to breakfast with his twin, not expecting anything, and was pleasantly surprised at the bunch of red flowers Viktor gave him when he sat next to him. “What’s this?” he asked.

“They are red camellias, they tell you that you are a vlame in my heart. Also, it is an invite to go on a picnic lunch date vith me today.”

George’s stomach flipped happily. “I-I’d love to! I’ll be looking forward to lunch!”

Viktor grinned. “Good. I vill meet you in the Entrance Hall, yes?”

“Sure!”

He was happy for the duration of his three morning classes--even when Moody decided to show several projected pictures of inferi and the remains of their victims, even when he simply couldn’t get the hang of non-verbal spell-casting in Transfiguration, and even when it seemed he and Fred had been allocated the most aggressive Venomous Tentacula in the greenhouse.

When lunch arrived, he was practically bouncing up and down in excitement like an overeager puppy ready for a walk. Fred had by this point stopped laughing himself silly and was now faking concern over whether George had caught too-much-energy-ism, which was, according to him, a fatal disease that only occurred in one in a thousand people before an important event.

George rolled his eyes, elbowed him happily, and continued on bouncing.

Once he saw Viktor waiting for him in the Entrance Hall, he shoved his things onto Fred, who gave a fake “Oof!”, and almost skipped over to his waiting boyfriend.

“You seem excited,” Viktor smirked.

“Well, yeah! It’s our second date! The first one on the weekend was really nice, so you’ve put up the bar really high. I hope you can handle the pressure,” he said, winking.

“Of course I can!” Viktor boasted. “I am most romantic boyfriend ever!”

They burst into laughter and walked outside onto the grounds, hand in hand.

On their way to the spot Viktor had picked out earlier that day, the two young men laughed and talked, going over Viktor’s attempt of the First Task yesterday. Once they’d sat down next to a willow tree near the Black Lake (George had made doubly sure that the willow in question was not a Whomping Willow), the conversation turned to their speculations on what the next task might be, and how the second group of champions might fare. “I am certain it vill be creature-based,” Viktor said. “My task vos, and vith how the Tournament seems to have been made to be as sensible and fair as possible, it only stands to reason that creatures vill be there.”

“I think so too. I just hope they use ashwinders. Harry will have an advantage that way,” said George.

“How vill ashvinders give Harry an advantage?”

“Oh, that's right, you don't know yet. Well, Harry is a Parselmouth, he has his own snake familiar and everything. Her name is Enya, and Harry's had her since his first year at Hogwarts. The boys in his dorm, besides Neville and Draco, who already knew, were pretty freaked out at first, but she's really quite adorable and easy to love, so they got over it quickly. Seamus Finnegan, one of the dormmates, is actually pretty disappointed that Harry didn't take her this year, but she's a metre long now or something, and Dumbledore refused to allow such a ‘dangerous and venomous beast’ anywhere near the ‘poor, defenceless first-years’. As if Enya would ever hurt a child! According to Harry, she thinks of the first-years as hatchlings that she needs to protect.”

“That does seem foolish of Dumbledore,” Viktor agreed. “My great-uncle vos Parselmouth also, and bevore he died, he told me some great stories that snakes had told him. But, I am vondering, how is Harry a Parselmouth? My great-uncle had an Indian voman who vos a Parselmouth for a mother, but vrom vot I know of Harry's ancestry, he does not have any Indian or Egyptian ancestry close enough to explain his blood trait.”

George sighed. “You know the whole Boy-Who-Lived thing? Well, the night his parents were killed, when the killing curse rebounded and destroyed Voldemort’s body, Harry basically inadvertently conquered the House of Slytherin, which gave him the ability to speak Parseltongue. Harry's pretty open with this information, and I know he considers you a friend, so I'm positive he wouldn't mind me telling you.”

*

Those words were regretted by George the very next day, for the front page of the Daily Prophet screamed:

 

OUR SAVIOUR A PARSELMOUTH!

A confidant speaks out

Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent

Dear readers, what a horrifying secret has been uncovered to lurk within the supposedly safe walls of Hogwarts! An anonymous friend of Harry Potter-Black's has broken their silence and blown the whistle on a terrifying sequence of events that occurred when our beloved Boy-Who-Lived was attacked by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named that Hallowe’en night. “The killing curse rebound and destroyed [You-Know-Who’s] body,” the anonymous source says. “He conquered the House of Slytherin, which gave him the ability to speak Parseltongue.”

The source went on to explain that Dumbledore was the only reason why Hogwarts is not host to a metre-long snake due to her dangerous and venomous nature, and that said snake had been smuggled in to Hogwarts for each of his three prior years.

Harry Potter-Black is also reportedly in an exclusive romantic relationship with none other than Draco Malfoy, now Draco Prince, who had been Sorted into Gryffindor in the greatest Pureblood scandal in ten years.

Was this Sorting merely a ploy on behalf of the notorious Death Eater Lucius Malfoy to lure in the already Dark Boy-Who-Lived and secure his place as the right hand of the next Dark Lord? Was the disownment of his son even real? Have he, Severus Snape, and Narcissa Malfoy been in a three-way relationship since the former two were in You-Know-Who’s service in the last war?

I promise to try to find out these answers, and more, for my next article.

 

George could see that Harry, Snape, and Draco were shocked and livid at the blatant scaremongering in the article, and he immediately tried to apologise. “I'm so sorry, Harry! That stuff in the article is all my fault! I was talking about it to Viktor because we were talking about the Tournament and that there was a possibility of ashwinders in your First Task, because of their fire affinity, and the subject of your Parselmouth ability came up. I have no idea how she found out! Neither of us saw her, or heard her; the most we saw of anything living near us, besides the grass and trees and stuff was the giant squid's tentacle and a swarm of beetles, I swear!”

Harry held up his hand in an attempt to halt George's panicked words. “I believe you, George,” Harry soothed. “I'm just concerned that maybe Hogwarts grounds aren't safe to talk anymore, and if the grounds aren't safe, then in all likelihood, so are the hallways. One of us will need to keep an eye on the Map when we all meet in the RoR, which will be the only place that we openly talk about anything, agreed?”

There were nods from all of them, and George calmed somewhat. If Harry was angry at you, you would know immediately, so since Harry wasn't shouting at him in a rage, it was pretty safe to say Harry really didn't blame him. Harry turned to Luna, who had been doodling pictures of the ingredients in a Forgetfulness Solution in the margins of her completed Potions essay. “Luna, is there anything we can do about this in regards to the contract?”

She smiled absently and nodded, getting out a small sheaf of parchment from her school bag which turned out to be the contract Harry had made Skeeter sign. “Section three, subsection five, states that if she publishes any information or photographs she gained from anyone about Harry James Potter-Black using clandestine or covert methods including but not limited to Animagus forms, Disillusionment, or invisibility cloaks, then she will be seen as having broken the contract. She obviously didn't read it very well, but I suppose that could be the fault of the Nargles and the Gitterbibbers fighting for dominance in her head. Those two species never can get along very well.”

No one was quite sure what to say to that, but Luna continued on obliviously. “Still, that doesn't make a lick of difference in regards to the contract, since it states quite clearly in section fifteen, subsection twenty, that no exceptions can be given due to external factors or extenuating circumstances, including, but not limited to, an infestation of various creatures, such as Nargles, Gitterbibbers, Blibbering Humdingers, and Polyglottal Parakeets.” She paused and looked up at the staff table for no discernible reason before continuing. “I'm looking forward to tomorrow's Prophet.”

With a pleased sound, Luna tapped her wand on the contract, which glowed a lurid neon pink, and went back to her doodling.

*

Resting on a rosebush on Hogwarts grounds, a small, ugly beetle with antennae shaped like somewhat fashionable glasses suddenly got the horrifying urge to strip naked, cover itself in raspberry jam, sit on an anthill, and run through Diagon Alley singing a song that, until recently, it had never heard of, let alone know all the lyrics off by heart.

*

Barty Crouch Jr had been a loyal marked follower of his Master, the Dark Lord Voldemort, ever since he'd graduated from Hogwarts. He was currently on an extremely vital mission for his Master, which involved getting that Potter boy into the Triwizard Tournament, manipulating him and the other contestants so he would win easily, and being the one to be known as his Master’s most faithful and useful by doing the most to help his Master to regain a human body.

He had honestly thought that Lucius Malfoy, while a spineless coward, was truly loyal to their Lord. However, if this Skeeter woman was right, then Malfoy was only loyal to the Dark Lord with the most political power, through the Slytherin Lordship. Also, if Malfoy and Snape were lovers, then it was almost certain Snape was a traitor as well, and not a spy in a deep undercover mission for the Dark Lord as he'd thought.

His mind, which had already been so incredibly fragile from his time in Azkaban and later his years under his father's powerful Imperius Curse, snapped. He jumped to his feet, pulled out his wand and pointed out at Snape, bellowing, “ TRAITOR! The Dark Lord will make you beg for death in the end for this!”

He lunged out of his seat and at Snape, completely forgetting that he was surrounded by formidable witches and wizards who just so happened to teach at the school. Before he could even fire a single spell, ten Stunners hit him from various directions, and he dropped instantly.

Chapter 17: The Interrogation of a Dead Man

Severus had very much enjoyed levitating the unconscious form of Mad-Eye Moody up to Dumbledore’s office, mainly because he was behind everyone else and, consequently, could bash him into the odd wall without anyone else noticing. Once he got into the office, he dropped the man into McGonagall’s conjured chair and searched him for his wand and any other weapons or Port-keys, then bound him to the chair tightly.

“I trust you have Veritaserum, Severus?” Dumbledore asked jovially, and Severus rolled his eyes. How the man could have this attitude when Moody, who was supposed to have been Dumbledore’s good friend for over two decades or some such, was unconscious from ten Stunners, was beyond Severus’ understanding.

“I do, Headmaster,” Severus agreed, “but as this was witnessed by the entire school, and we have the Heads of three schools and two Ministry officials in this room, I think it would be better if we Flooed for an Auror or two.”

“I do not think it is entirely necessary, Severus, but if you feel it is the right thing to do, then go ahead.”

Severus rolled his eyes again and wondered if the man had gone senile; this was not the first odd occurrence he’d noticed. Nevertheless, he diligently stalked to the fireplace, threw the Floo powder onto the fire, shouted out his destination, and stuck his head into the flames. A bored receptionist answered. “Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Auror’s Office. How may I help you?”

“Headmaster Dumbledore is in need of two Aurors, preferably high up ones, as there has been an incident that has led to someone being Stunned by ten people simultaneously.”

The receptionist had wide eyes. “Y-yes, of course, Professor Snape, sir! Two Aurors are on their way, so keep the connection open.”

“Very well,” Severus said, and withdrew his head from the Floo. He found that Karkaroff and Dumbledore were discussing something or other, Madame Maxime had sat herself down in a comfy chintz armchair next to McGonagall and they were politely drinking some tea that a house elf had probably brought them, and Bagman was nattering away at Avery, who wasn’t paying attention to him, instead glaring at Moody darkly. Severus could understand the look, since Moody had been the one who had captured Avery’s eldest son and Heir, having him placed in Azkaban for being a Death Eater. Avery’s other son was also a Death Eater, but was such a lazy layabout that he’d never had the possibility of being caught. Avery himself was also a Death Eater, but he had been in the inner circle and was rumoured to have known the Dark Lord since they were in school together. He didn’t know whether Avery was still loyal to the Dark Lord, but considering the fact that Avery was calm and not dead, he probably was. Karkaroff, on the other hand, refused to leave Hogwarts’ confines, and was constantly pestering Dumbledore to strengthen the wards.

After a few minutes, Madam Bones stepped out of the green flames, followed by a pink-haired witch that had Severus groaning inwardly. Nymphadora Tonks had been the bane of his existence when she’d been his student, because even though she’d been the best at memorising potions instructions and explaining potions theory, letting her around a cauldron was akin to signing your own death certificate. How she’d managed to get an O in her OWLs and NEWTs potions practicals, he couldn’t fathom.

“Right then,” barked Madam Bones. “What was the incident that occurred? From Mad-Eye being unconscious and tied to the chair, I take it he was the one Stunned?”

“Indeed,” Severus said, stepping out of the shadows. “One moment he was calmly reading the Prophet, the next he lunged at me, screaming that I was a traitor and that the Dark Lord would make me beg for death before he killed me. I don’t know what set him off.”

“Well, I suppose we could just ask him. Is he in a coma from the Stunners, or merely unconscious?”

McGonagall spoke up, “Madam Pomfrey was able to determine that all the Stunners were rather weak, so he is unconscious.”

“Good. I’d hate to see a man of Alastor’s calibre in a coma,” Madam Bones said, and Reenervated the retired Auror. “Alastor, what caused you to attack Professor Snape?” she asked once he’d regained his senses.

“I… er…” Moody looked around the room, seeing all the occupants. “Is this an interrogation, Madam Bones?” he demanded.

Madam Bones raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t called me that since I became Head of the DMLE, Alastor, and seeing as you were the one who mentored me, you hadn’t called me that before then either. Why the change of address?”

Moody blinked several times. “Figured if it was an interrogation, it would be better to be formal.”

Madam Bones’ eyes narrowed, as did Severus’. Moody’s gruff manner was gone, replaced by a shifty demeanour. His eyes kept flicking from Madam Bones to Bagman and Avery and back again. “Yes,” Madam Bones decided, nodding, “this is an interrogation, but I’m afraid I don’t have any Veritaserum on me, so I’ll need to return to the Ministry to fetch some.”

“Is that really necessary, Amelia?” asked Moody, trying for annoyance but failing as his question was seeped in panic.

“Of course it is, Alastor. All interrogations require Veritaserum, remember?” Madam Bones said.

“R-right. Go ahead then,” Moody said. Severus saw the man had begun to sweat.

“Madam Bones,” he said before she grabbed some Floo powder, “I happen to have some Veritaserum handy, as well as the antidote. Do not trouble yourself with returning to the Ministry.”

“That is most welcome, Professor. You don’t know how horrible the paperwork is to sign out a single vial of the stuff,” Madam Bones said in a faux-calm voice. They were playing a risky game in an attempt to prevent the fake-Moody—for clearly the man bound to the chair before them was not the real Alastor Moody—from realising something was off.

Severus fished around in his inner pocket for the required potion and found it, handing it to the woman with a flourish. Madam Bones cheerfully walked back to Moody. “Well then, Stick your tongue out please, Alastor.”

Moody squirmed uncomfortably in his bindings and looked over to Bagman and Avery again, then acquiesced without argument. Madam Bones carefully allowed three drops of the truth serum to fall on the man’s tongue, then stepped back, handing Severus the vial. “Now. What is your name?”

There were gasps from McGonagall, Madame Maxime, and Bagman, whereas Dumbledore simply looked perplexed. “Now see here, Amelia, this man is clearly Alastor Moody, why would you need to ask him such an obvious question?”

She ignored him, and was rewarded when the drugged man answered in a monotone voice, “Bartemius Crouch, Jr.”

Again, there were gasps, but this time Amelia herself had gasped as well. “How are you still alive?” she asked.

“My mother was mortally ill, and she made my father promise to free me from Azkaban. She Polyjuiced herself as me, and I as her, and we swapped places. She died in my place, and my father took me back home where he kept me under the Imperius Curse constantly to try to prevent me from escaping and looking for my Master,” Crouch Jr said.

“I… you… oh, that bloody hypocrite!” she cursed, then regained control over herself. “Where is your father?”

“Buried in the graveyard of Little Hangleton.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“I needed to get back to my Master. I had broken free from the Imperius Curse when my Lord’s Mark started darkening, and when my father attempted to enslave me under that vile curse once more, I attacked him and choked him to death. Did you know it takes over five minutes to properly kill someone through choking them?” Crouch Jr said, sounding incredibly eerie with the monotone voice while describing the murder of his father.

“What did you do after that?”

“I searched for my Master and found him, then I planned his resurrection ritual with Bellatrix Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, and Peter Pettigrew, then I participated in it with Bellatrix and Dolohov while Pettigrew attempted and failed to infiltrate the Weasley family using his rat Animagus form, then I served my Master, then I—”

“That will do, Crouch. What have you done with the real Alastor Moody?”

“I have imprisoned him in his own trunk. I needed him alive for the Polyjuice Potion I had to keep on making.”

“How did you prevent anyone from realising who you really were?”

“I had studied him from afar for two weeks, learning his quirks and habits, then doused him in Veritaserum and questioned him on anything I thought would be useful to know. I tied a Confundus Charm to his fake eye that was keyed to anyone who noticed something atypical of him, or anyone who found out who I really was. I needed to impersonate him successfully for my mission, so I did everything I could to carry it out.”

“Why did you need to impersonate him?”

“Moody was due to teach at Hogwarts, and my Master told me to take his place and enter Potter-Black’s name into the Tournament. All I needed to do was Confound the Goblet of Fire and enter his name as a definite champion for Hogwarts.”

“Why did Potter-Black need to be in the Tournament?”

“My Master said I needed to do it, so I did. I did not ask. All I was told was to enter him, make sure he won everything, and report back to—”

Crouch stopped, his still-Moody face turning red, then purple from the effort of fighting the Veritaserum. Then, suddenly, nearly black blood erupted from his mouth and flowed down his bound body.

Severus cursed and rushed over, forcing open the man’s mouth and grimacing in disgust as a large chunk of muscle fell out amidst the blood. The man had bitten off his own tongue to prevent any more truth from revealing itself, meaning that there was some secret that Crouch had that he felt was more important than ever being able to talk again; there were potions to regrow muscles, true, but the tongue was the only muscle that they would not regrow, and there existed no potions to specifically regrow it. If he were the only one in the room, he might have attempted Legilimency to uncover whatever secrets the man was hiding, but he was afraid it might be detected by Madam Bones, and that would end very badly.

Instead, he cast several healing spells to stop the flow of blood and close the wound Crouch had gained from biting off his own tongue, then, once Crouch was in no danger of death by exsanguination, he turned to face the others in the room. “I dare say there was something he did not want us to know, but he will never be able to tell us, let alone say anything ever again.”

An ashen Madam Bones nodded faintly, and Tonks dropped to the floor in a dead faint. Why in Merlin’s name was she an Auror if she couldn’t stand the sight of this amount of blood?

Chapter 18: Curses, Foiled Again

Notes:

Sorry for being a bit late, I've started a new job and University has started up again, so I'm having a difficult time trying to fit in everything and still write and post a chapter every week. Does anyone mind if I slow my updates down to one every two weeks until I've got my time management worked out?
As a result, this chapter's a bit short, but it's still got some good stuff in it. Enjoy!

The fallout of the discovery that Mad-Eye Moody was in fact Barty Crouch Jr was enormous for the Ministry, but almost a non-issue for the rest of wizarding Britain. Had Crouch Sr been alive, it was certain he would no longer have any possibility of working anywhere ever again, but as it was, he was given a post-mortem trial and sentenced to fifty years in Azkaban… for all the good it did. Then again, no one ever said the bureaucrats who ran the Ministry were intelligent. Given that the political positions on the Wizengamot were hereditary, not democratic, and the Minister for Magic was elected by the Wizengamot, the average witch or wizard in wizarding Britain was stuck with a bunch of idiots in power who didn’t know the first thing about what the public wanted. However, with the Daily Prophet in the Ministry’s pocket, this fact was covered up entirely. The newspaper instead had extremely weak compulsion charms applied to each of its articles to believe in what the articles said, thereby reinforcing the ‘sheep’ mentality the Ministry desired. Therefore, when the Daily Prophet ran its next edition the day after Crouch Jr was discovered, the discovery was delegated to a tiny section near the back with a notice-me-not charm on it.

Instead, the front page was filled with an enormous headline of:

RITA SKEETER SHAMED, CONTRACT WITH POTTER-BLACK’S PUBLICIST BROKEN

This was followed by an incredibly in-depth and truthful account of Luna’s contract, Rita’s punishment when she broke it, the revelation of her illegal Animagus form, and, incredibly, a personal apology from the editor, Barnabas Cuffe.

Luna had been right to look forward to that day’s Prophet, but she couldn’t properly enjoy it when she was still beating herself up that she hadn’t known about Crouch Jr. She eventually gave in and brought it up with Harry, because as her fellow Seer, he might have some insight as to how neither of them had sensed something was off about the man.

“Well, I remember you saying two months ago that Moody wasn't who he seemed to be, that everything was hidden behind a dense curtain of fog and confusion. Do you remember that?”

Luna blinked. “Oh. Yes, I think I do. Do you think he had some sort of spell on him that confused anyone who might guess who he really was?”

“We know so,” said Draco. “I’ve been having Dobby spy on Dumbledore for the past few weeks, because he’s been acting so weird lately, kind of senile, you know? Anyway, Dobby was in the room during the interrogation, invisible, and Crouch Jr said that he’d tied a Confundus to Moody’s magical eye to prevent anyone from finding out.”

“So really,” continued Harry, “there’s no way either of us could have known. The fact that you managed to see past it well enough to know he wasn’t who he appeared to be just proves how incredibly powerful you are.”

Luna blushed and smiled.

*

“That damn, idiotic fool!” exclaimed Avery, hitting the wall of the abandoned classroom with a clenched fist. “Everyone knows Skeeter’s articles aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on! He should have just ignored it, but nooo, I’ll just go and attack that traitorous bastard out in the open! What was he thinking?”

“You ought to be careful,” said a voice from the doorway. “Anyone could ‘ave ‘eard you.”

“Oh, go away,” he half-moaned piteously. “I can’t deal with your complaining right now. The whole reason why you came to this school was to help me to capture Potter-Black and get him to the Dark Lord. If I had it my way, I’d have been doing this mission alone all along. I wouldn't have had to cooperate with that insane little brat Crouch, just to watch him self-destruct and almost give away our plan!” He turned to face the person in the doorway. “I would have rather had you back in Beauxbatons where you belong. All throughout the time I was preparing for this mission, you never once expressed interest in participating in the Tournament, and then the next time I saw you, you were biting at the bit to be a part of the group visiting Hogwarts so that you could ‘do your part’ for the cause!”

The figure rolled their eyes and walked closer to Avery, pulling out a rather short wand. “Let me see your ‘and. You wouldn’t be able to explain it being broken, would you?”

A swish of the wand and some muttered words later, Avery’s hand was as good as new, but his temperament was dark. “Whatever gave you the idea you could do that to me without my permission? I am perfectly adequate at performing my own healing spells, and I am an adult; you are still a child, and I know your parents would be sufficiently disappointed in you if I were forced to recommend you be brought home to your Headmistress. You have no part in this mission, and all I need to tell your parents is that you’ve started to become a bit too friendly with some Hogwarts students, or even that half-breed bitch Delacour, and they’ll demand from Madame Maxime that you come home at once and deny you the chance to see Hogwarts and everything else you want to do here.”

“You wouldn’t! The Tournament!”

“Your parents’ authority supercedes that of anyone or anything else in matters of what you can and can’t do. This includes participating in the mission and watching the Tournament.”

“You know I was not talking about—”

“Enough! Once again, you are complaining about your pathetic lot in life, and I told you before: I can’t deal with it right now! I need to contact the Dark Lord and inform him of what has happened, and that cannot happen when you attempt to stick your nose into everything I do. Leave!”

The now sulking figure left, and Avery sighed before striding out of the room and making his way to Hogsmeade, where he could Apparate to his Lord’s hiding place.

*

Albus was currently being strong-armed towards the Hospital Wing by his very dear friend Sirius Snape… well, at least he thought that was his name. It had been getting rather difficult to remember very much for the past few weeks, but that didn’t mean he needed to go to the Torture Room! Pippy was sure to poke and prod him so much his arms would fall off! As he was escorted into the room, the Dragon Lady made her presence known. “Severus, why have you brought the Headmaster in to see me? Your Patronus said very little.” Ah, that was the man’s name. Why had he thought it was Sirius? That was that werewolf chap he’d hired five years ago, wasn’t it?

“I have reason to believe, both from my observations and others’, that his mental state is questionable, which is very troubling for the school’s future, and even more so for the rest of the wizarding world, what with Voldemort back.”

The Dragon Lady nodded and turned to Albus, who had been fiddling with a string that had come loose from his violent orange and purple robes. She waved her wand and frowned worryingly at the information on the parchment that appeared before her, then spoke to him. “Headmaster, could you please state your name and age for the record?”

Albus’ head shot up from where he’d been staring at the piece of string with fascination and looked at the Dragon Lady. He wondered if she really was a dragon, and had been disguising herself as a witch for all of these years somehow. “My name is Albus Pyramus Wolfie Brie Bumblebore, and I am one hundred and eleven. Really, Pippy, you know this.”

Both Severus and the Dragon Lady stared at him. He did have a long name, he supposed. No one said anything more to him, so he went back to the string. If he pulled on it for long enough, would the entire robe fall apart?

Soon, he was distracted again, this time by a man in lime-green robes. Why in Merlin’s name would someone wear robes in such a nasty colour? “Headmaster, I am Healer Mitchells, and I’m afraid you will need to come with me back to St Mungo’s.”

“Whatever for?” he asked, confused.

“Your Mediwitch, Madam Pomfrey, diagnosed you with Senility, which is also known as Dementia, due to dark magic. Have you been having trouble thinking or remembering things, especially in the evenings?”

“Well, of course, but doesn’t everyone at my age?”

“Madam Pomfrey told me that you said you gave a completely wrong name when asked, and that you were one hundred and eleven? You are one hundred and thirteen, and your name is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. You also called your Mediwitch ‘Pippy’, when her given name is Poppy. You admit you are having trouble in both the ways I asked, and Madam Pomfrey found you to have what is most likely an incredibly nasty curse that causes Dementia-like symptoms, but is designed to make you appear more humorous than the true condition would make you. You’ve had it for about a month, I’d say, and we’re very lucky that the curse can still be broken at this stage. The next stage would have you start seeing hallucinations, and all studies on this particular curse suggest that it cannot be broken once you hit that stage. If you come back to St Mungo’s with me now, I can make you be able to think clearly and remember everything again. Would you like that, Headmaster?”

Albus’ eyes had more or less glazed over at the onslaught of what he considered useless information, but the question the Healer asked him caught his attention again. He had no idea what it was that he was being asked whether he would like, but he supposed he most likely would. He nodded and took the Healer’s offered hand.

Chapter 19: Playing with Fire

Notes:

Hey guys! Just want to say thanks for your continuing support and your reviews—they really make my day!
Enjoy the chapter!

When it was discovered that Dumbledore had been cursed in a way that made him look senile, the majority of people had mixed reactions. They knew that Dumbledore had been humorous while under the curse, and knew they’d miss the odd things he’d done, like braid his beard, sing nursery rhymes as though they were the most heartbreaking ballads, or show up in robes that were somehow even more outrageous than those he normally wore, but at the same time they were terrified. If someone could manage to get this close to someone as great as Albus Dumbledore just to curse him in some way, then anyone could be next. Of course, when Dumbledore returned to Hogwarts, completely cured and therefore apparently entirely sane, the mixed feelings died down and those who had been terrified that Voldemort would attack Hogwarts because Dumbledore wasn’t there quietened down, eventually finding something else to worry or complain about.

Then, it seemed as though the time between Dumbledore’s return and the first task for Harry’s group of champions flew by, with Harry, Miro, and Fleur becoming as informed as possible about various fire-related myths, creatures, and spells. Viktor and Cedric were also a great deal of help, since Viktor was a self-professed mythology buff, so he knew quite a bit about myths from all over the world, and Cedric was intending to open up a magical creature sanctuary in Wales when he graduated. Far too soon for their tastes, the fifteenth of December arrived, and the three champions found themselves Port-keyed to a seemingly deserted stretch of marshland in rural Scotland and shepherded into a small tent that had fire-like patterns all over it. Inside was quite sparse, only having a bed and a chair for each of them, three small changing booths, and outfits laid out on the beds in their school colours. Once they’d dressed in their ‘school champion’ outfits, they moved the chairs together and talked about what they’d learned, listening to the sounds of hundreds of adults and children chattering excitedly about the upcoming entertainment. Harry was reminded of the Roman gladiators that were forced to fight against each other and vicious, wild animals in order to stay alive and provide entertainment for everyone else. At least no one was actively trying to kill someone else in this Tournament.

The tent flap they’d come through was moved aside as Dumbledore, Madame Maxime, Karkaroff, Bagman, and Avery entered the fire-patterned tent. Bagman started, nearly bouncing up and down with how animated and excited he seemed. “The first task we originally wanted wasn’t accepted by many, and was eventually deemed as too dangerous,” Bagman scoffed. “Your first task was still considered dangerous, but not enough for us to have to go back to the drawing board again. All of you will enter your tasks at the same time, but you will be escorted to different arenas. You see, your task will take place in a sort of large, high-walled pit, and you’ll need to get past your obstacles while being able to hear what your fellow champions go through not too far away from you, but you can’t see how they’re doing. Your goal is to obtain the golden egg, which is actually a remnant of our first attempt at the first task, so don’t read too much into the treasure being a golden egg.”

Avery stepped forwards and folded his arms over his chest in a superior manner. “This task should not take you more than an hour; for every ten minutes over the hour mark, you will have one point deducted from your final score. Be warned, we will be rounding up the time to the nearest ten minutes as much as possible, as in the real world, deadlines are final, and going over them can mean quite detrimental end results.”

With that cheerful point made, Avery strode out of the tent, and Bagman piped up again. “At the sound of the cannon, go out the other tent flap, where your guide will lead you to your arena. Good luck to you all.”

The rest of the judges exited the tent, leaving the three champions within to go over the majority of their knowledge once again before the cannon sounded. Harry, Fleur, and Miro left the tent and found themselves in what appeared to be an underground passage where they were greeted by three Hogwarts professors—Snape for Harry, Sprout for Miro, and McGonagall for Fleur. “Good luck,” Harry offered to his fellow champions, and they both wished him and each other luck as well before they were separated by their guides.

Snape briskly walked with him away from the other two, but slowed down quickly once the others were out of sight. “Do you feel prepared enough, Harry?” the man asked.

Harry nodded. “As prepared as I can be, considering that I’m at least three years younger than any of the other champions. They’ve helped me quite a bit with this stuff, and it helps that I’m apparently pretty powerful for my age, so I know loads more spells than I think I’ll really need.”

Snape smirked. “At least, with so many fire-related spells in your arsenal, you will likely be fairly well-prepared should you find yourself facing an inferius or two. Their weakness is fire of any kind, but Fiendfyre is the best when going against them. Few people know how to use the spell, just like few know how to do those bluebell flames your friend Hermione likes so much, but where bluebell flames cannot burn anything and are considered a light spell, Fiendfyre is quite a dark spell and will cause the most agonising burns known in the magical world.”

Harry shivered. “I’ll remember not to go near Fiendfyre, then, sir.”

“Good. I would prefer my son’s boyfriend to remain whole and healthy… unless he hurts my son.”

Harry forced back a grin. Snape hadn’t done the ‘don’t hurt him or I’ll kill you’ speech until now, and he didn’t know why he was surprised that the man had done it in such a unique way. As they had apparently arrived at the door that was the entrance to Harry’s arena, he simply turned his head and said, “If I ever did hurt him, I’m pretty sure Draco would kill me before anyone else could get to me, sir. Then again, I can assure you that I never intend to hurt him, so if I do, I’ve probably been cursed or something, so I’d appreciate it if you check me for that before you let Draco kill me.”

Snape snorted and rolled his eyes, but before he could continue the threatening—well, discussion, really—a second cannon noise sounded, and he opened the door for Harry and gestured him through. Harry took a deep breath and crossed the threshold, hearing the door close behind him. The underground passage soon opened up to become an enormous twisted chamber of sorts that was open to the sky, letting in the sounds of people cheering and Bagman commentating animatedly.

Harry immediately took stock of the situation, and the first thing he spotted was a dark reddish-brown salamander pacing agitatedly before him. He knew that salamanders would get aggressive if they didn’t have a fire to gain energy from, and would attack you instantly if you put out their fire. However, he also knew that they took up the properties of the fire they considered theirs in small ways, and Snape’s example of Fiendfyre sprung to mind. If a salamander decided Fiendfyre was its fire, it would feed off the excess, unstable magical energy pouring off it, and would likely go mad before long and attack anything moving in sight.

He shivered. He definitely wouldn’t have cast the Fiendfyre spell for the salamander, even if he’d known the incantation. Then, he remembered the other spell Snape had mentioned and grinned again. Such a subtle bit of advice and cheating that it barely counted as such, but Snape was pretty much the ultimate Slytherin from Harry’s point of view. Without further ado, he incanted the bluebell flames charm in a circle on the ground, and watched tensely as the salamander waddled over and looked at the fire. It was possible that the salamander might reject the bluebell flames as being too nondestructive and attack him. Luckily, it didn’t, and quickly made itself at home within the blue flames.

Harry continued on his way, jogging slightly to get out of range of the salamander, lest it decide to shoot fireballs at him, but it seemed too preoccupied with its new fire to care that there was someone nearby. From one direction, he heard what sounded like Miro shout, “Ignis!” and shortly thereafter Fleur’s voice called out, “Incendio!”

A few seconds later, there came twin shouts of alarm, and Bagman’s voice shouted for all to hear, “Ooh, seems like the salamanders got aggressive for both Bachev and Delacour, as they both apparently picked fire spells that are clearly aggressive by nature. Harry Potter-Black seems not to have had such a problem, on the other hand!”

There were some cheers to Bagman’s words, but Harry tuned everything else out as he walked past a tombstone, then stopped and doubled back. Everything in these tasks was supposed to mean something, nothing was meant to be there to be aesthetically pleasing, so why was there a tombstone in a fire tournament? Snape’s remarks of inferi flashed through his mind, but he dismissed the thought immediately. Inferi were incredibly dangerous, not to mention they were far too dark magic for the Ministry to allow in a tournament for children. So again, why the tombstone? He looked at the area surrounding the tombstone, and his eyes alighted on the grave itself. Instead of being either a fresh grave or overgrown with weeds and grass, the grave was a simple rectangle of evened-out dirt. Next to it, almost obscured by a tall bunch of grass, was a small leather satchel designed to be worn like a necklace. He bent down to pick it up and noticed the graveyard dirt had tiny black and white specks in it.

This triggered his memory of something completely unrelated to fire: Goofer dust. If graveyard dirt, salt, pepper, sulfur, and ashwinder snake-skin were combined, the resulting mixture of dusty substances could act as a powerful talisman against various darker creatures. Some people had been selling goofer dust two years ago, during the Petrifications that had occurred due to the Chamber of Secrets being open. He scooped up some of the speckled graveyard dirt and poured it into the satchel that he hung around his neck, then stood and continued walking the path laid out before him.

He rounded a corner and stopped, almost all thought suddenly gone from his head at the sight of the beauty before him. A stunning flame-haired fire nymph holding a flickering torch gestured for him to follow her off the path into a yellow maze. Somewhere in the back of his mind he absently noted that the yellow was sulfur rock. That absent-minded voice continued to calmly state that maybe he should get some, for his goofer dust bag, which was for the Tournament that he had been unwillingly forced into, and that reminded him of how worried Draco had been, even though they’d known about it for almost two months beforehand because of Luna, and that Draco was counting on him to get through the Tournament in one piece.

Once again, it was his overwhelming love for Draco that caused him to regain his mind from a spell designed to control it. The high-powered Confundus shattered, and the formerly beautiful fire nymph suddenly looked far older and more haggard, the torch looked sinister, and the flames on the torch flickered violently. A lampad then, also known as a fire hinkypunk. He needed to put out the torch’s flames to stop the Confundus charm from trying to affect him again, and to get the lampad to go away.

“Aguamenti!” Harry exclaimed. The torch was extinguished instantly from the flow of water from Harry’s wand, and the lampad shrieked in rage and flew off. He cast a low-powered Diffindo at a section of sulfur rock, followed by a Confringo, which blasted apart the bit he’d broken off. Harry crouched down and gathered up a small amount of the sulfur powder and deposited it in his leather satchel, then carried on his way, absently listening to Bagman’s cry of, “Oh, it seems Bachev is having a bit of trouble with the lampad!”

He moved on, and it wasn’t long before he started to hear some sort of canine growling. He panicked slightly, since whatever was in front of him was clearly dangerous and aggressive. Before he was confronted with whatever the growling was coming from, he heard the sing-song cry of a phoenix above him just as he came across a grapevine. The phoenix song got closer and closer to him, and then Fawkes settled down on the grapevine and looked down at the grapes, then back up at Harry expectantly.

Harry blinked, then shrugged and proceeded to feed the softly warbling phoenix several grapes. Then, once Fawkes had obviously had enough, he flew off, leaving Harry shaking his head in bemusement as he started to walk towards the dangerous creature again. Before he could get much farther, though, Fawkes returned and settled on his shoulder, a quickly dissipating snake-skin clamped in his beak. Recognising it as the skin of an ashwinder, he took it from the happy phoenix gently, stuffed as much as he could into the leather satchel, and winced slightly as Fawkes’ claws dug into his shoulder as the bird took off.

Harry turned the corner and came face to face with a huge blood-red hellhound. This had obviously been where the growling had come from, and the satchel full of freshly made goofer dust now made sense, because one of the only ways to defend yourself against hellhounds was by carrying goofer dust on your person somewhere. Hellhounds wouldn’t attack you if you had the stuff on you.

Nevertheless, he cautiously inched his way past the hellhound to the golden egg lying on a pedestal, the huge demonic canine growling the whole time. As soon as he touched the golden egg, he felt a tug behind his navel and he appeared outside the pit, next to the judges. “Harry Potter-Black is the first one to finish the task!” Bagman exclaimed. “Completely unharmed, I might add! The judges will deliberate over his score as the remaining two champions valiantly battle their ways to the end points!”

Harry barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes. A few minutes later, Fleur appeared, appearing flustered and out of breath, then Miro appeared some ten minutes later, looking a bit singed, but triumphant.

The judges all huddled together behind a silencing charm for a few minutes, before Bagman applied another Sonorus to his throat. “Harry Potter-Black, as the first to finish the task in a near-flawless manner, receives twenty-seven points out of a possible thirty! Mademoiselle Fleur Delacour, second to finish, receives twenty-four points due to her only realising the need for goofer dust when she came across the hellhound and having to run back to fetch all the ingredients! Finally, Mister Miroslav Bachev, who became quite entangled in the lampad’s Confundus and therefore was ensnared into following it temporarily, is in last place for group two with twenty-two points! Their first task is over, and I’m sure they’re going to want to celebrate!”

The audience cheered, but all that mattered to Harry was Draco flinging himself at him once he emerged from the judge’s box, and practically suffocating him with the hug and kiss he received. One task down, two, possibly three, more to go.

Chapter 20: Preparations

The week after Harry’s first task was the Yule Ball, and when McGonagall informed the Gryffindors about the Ball five days beforehand, the remaining time left before the dancing debacle was filled with girls giggling at the idea of the Ball, and horrified boys trying to buck up the courage to ask out someone they felt they could have a good time with. Luckily, Draco had attacked Harry as soon as McGonagall had left and demanded they go together, which of course Harry had agreed to. He was actually looking forward to spinning around on the dance floor with his boyfriend all night.

Cedric had immediately asked Cho to be his date, and she had agreed immediately while her nearby friends had started giggling and whispering to each other. Well, all but one of them had; Marietta Edgecombe, Cho’s best friend, had seemed sullen and jealous, and Cedric made a mental note to watch out for any retaliation from the girl, though up until he’d seen her expression when he’d asked Cho, he hadn’t had any idea that Marietta might want to replace Cho as his girlfriend. Why were some girls so willing to back-stab their supposed best friends?

Fleur had known about the Ball before the Hogwarts students had, and had been beyond upset when Madame Maxime had informed her that Bill could not be her date because she needed to pick someone who was still in school to minimise the need for extra security, which was fair enough, but Bill was her mate, so clearly there had to be some sort of exception for this situation! Unfortunately, nothing she said could convince Madame Maxime to change her mind, and when she moaned about it to the group in the Room of Requirement the day after the Ball had been revealed to them, Blaise had offered to go as her date because if she couldn’t have Bill as her date, then the likelihood of him being able to have Charlie as his date was next to impossible. “We can be miserable together,” Blaise had said, and Fleur had smiled.

Miro had managed to find a loophole that allowed him to take the lovely Tonks as his date. Karkaroff was a paranoid man who was nearly always drunk in an effort to drown his fear that Voldemort could get past Durmstrang’s or Hogwarts’ powerful wards to kill him, and Miro knew for a fact that Karkaroff had no real idea of which of his students were at Hogwarts with him, so he’d asked Tonks to the Ball, and told her that if she looked vaguely German, Bulgarian, or Russian, then no one would know better. Sensing both the mischief they could have with this idea and the brilliant opportunity to serve as extra security without anyone except the group Miro hung out with the wiser, she agreed, and immediately Flooed her mother to beg for help in picking out an appropriate dress robe.

Viktor had asked George to be his date the day after the fire task. George had blushed and agreed, then gone to find Fred to tell him about the Ball, since he knew his twin would want to do some sort of big romantic gesture to ask Hermione. In the end, Fred had asked Hermione in the most sensational way he knew how: he’d asked the house elves to put all of her favourite foods near her at dinner, then serenaded her with “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and asked her if she would do him the grand honour of going to the Ball with him. Hermione had been stunned speechless, never having had a poem recited to her as a romantic gesture before, and it had taken a few seconds for Fred’s question to permeate her mind, which had melted into a pile of Hermione-goo and gone on vacation. When she finally realised what he’d asked, she squealed in happiness and launched herself at him, kissing him soundly on the lips when he caught her. “I’ll take that as a yes, then?” Fred had asked cheekily, and Hermione smacked him lightly on the shoulder.

“Of course it’s a yes! How could I have said no, when you did all that?” The poem flashed through her mind again and she squealed once more and hugged him tightly.

Neville had been torn between asking Ginny or Luna, since if no one asked them, they wouldn’t be able to go. When he’d explained his dilemma to them, Luna had put his worries to rest by revealing that Justin Finch-Fletchely had asked her because, despite her being a year behind him in classes, she was his tutor in Transfiguration, Potions, and Charms. Neville had been stunned that Luna was so far ahead of her own course load that she could find the time to tutor an older student, but then he became relieved when he’d realised that this meant that he could ask Ginny to be his date without making Luna feel left out. Ginny happily accepted, saying that she’d been lucky enough to manage to convince her mother to buy her a dress that looked formal enough to be used for the Ball.

Finally, Colin had been ecstatic when Seamus had asked him to the Ball. It was kind of funny, up until Seamus had asked him out on a date the last Hogsmeade weekend, he’d thought that Seamus and Dean had been a thing because he’d seen them making out last year during a post-Quidditch match party, and they’d always seemed so close, but Seamus had confessed that Lee Jordan had slipped them a few bottles of Firewhisky, meaning they’d been drunk for the first time, and Katie Bell had dared them to make out, even going so far as to offer them ten galleons if they made out for a full minute. Apparently, Dean was completely straight, and actually had a thing for Parvati, so when they’d woken up with enormous hangovers and had remembered what they’d done the night before, Dean had been understandably angry at Lee for giving two thirteen-year-olds strong alcohol, and at Katie for taking advantage of his and Seamus’ first time being drunk. Both the culprits had been cursed bald for a week in retaliation.

*

When the Yule Ball finally arrived on Christmas Day, the castle awoke to copious amounts of snow and ice covering everything outside. The lake was completely frozen over, meaning that the Durmstrang ship could no longer move from one bank to the other, as it had done every week for seemingly no reason. In fact, the ship itself was covered in icicles and frost; the windows had gone from opaque to completely white because of the amount of frost covering it, the ropes were covered in small, sharp spines of ice that looked quite dangerous, and icicles hung off every protruding surface. Hagrid’s small hut now looked like a cosy gingerbread house covered in frosting, and the Beauxbatons carriage resembled a large, blue pumpkin.

Within the castle, it was surprisingly toasty warm. Usually the castle corridors were all freezing during the winter, and the dungeons were even more so, making Potions an absolutely torturous class because Snape refused to heat the room due to some ingredients being sensitive to spontaneous combustion if they were heated to a certain temperature without being in a potion. Draco took one look at the corridor outside the Gryffindor common room and told his friends that it looked like the house elves had weaved warming charms onto the walls for Christmas Day. None of them knew for certain whether this was true because they hadn’t been at Hogwarts over the Christmas holidays so far.

Of course, there was also the matter of presents to unwrap. Harry had received the traditional Weasley sweater and fudge, an oil painting kit from Sirius and Remus, as he’d mentioned to them a few months ago that he was running low on oil paints and they’d somehow remembered him saying that, a book on Muggle history from Hermione, a plant that would whistle at seven in the morning until it was petted every day from Neville, a bunch of personalised prank items from the twins, some photos of Harry and his friends from Colin, a miniature Firebolt model from Viktor, some cologne from Fleur, a book on lesser known seeker techniques from Miro, a do-it-yourself broom care kit from Cedric, and finally a journal from Draco that had numerous love notes to him that Draco had never sent or given him. Harry had given Draco a glass rose that would tint pink if Harry was thinking of him in return, which Draco had loved because it had immediately turned pink as Harry had explained it to him.

Three hours before the Ball would start, Hermione had burst into their dorm room and dragged Draco away, saying she needed his help for something to do with the Ball, and to take the things he would need to get ready, much to Draco’s bewilderment. Harry didn’t understand how it would take three hours for her to get ready, but when he went down into the common room to read a bit by the fire, he noticed that there were no girls anywhere to be seen. Maybe it was a girl thing then?

Half an hour before the Ball, he groaned and got out of his chair, took a long, ten minute shower, dried himself off with a simple charm, and put on his forest green dress robes. He liked these, since they had silver dragons embroidered on the sleeves, and they were the exact reverse of Draco’s robes, which were a stunning liquid silver with dark green dragons on the sleeves. He hadn’t seen Draco wearing his robes yet, but he’d seen the robes; his mental image of Draco wearing them had taken his breath away, and he couldn’t wait to see the real thing.

When he was done, he went down to the common room again to wait, and within five minutes, Draco came down the girls’ stairs wearing the robes. Harry couldn’t breathe, the sight before him was too beautiful. The vision walked toward him, smiling shyly, then bent towards him and waved his hand before his face. Harry snapped out of the trance-like state he’d been in and saw Draco was grinning impishly. “Like what you see, do you?”

“Um—er—I—you—” Harry garbled out. Draco let out a snort, and Harry gathered his wits about him. “You—you look absolutely incredible, Draco!”

Draco’s smile was shy again. “So do you,” he said.

Then, a thought that had been inching its way towards the front of his mind suddenly succeeded. “Wait a minute… how did you get up the girls’ stairs?”

“Apparently, you either need to be taken up them by a girl, or you need to be gay. Hermione told me that the slide thing is a defence mechanism to prevent any ‘unscrupulous males from trying to sneak in after curfew and attempt dishonourable things’. If a guy is taken up there by a girl, then the defence thing doesn’t start because it assumes the girl is entirely willing, and gay guys wouldn’t want to do that with girls, so they’re an exception to the rule.”

Harry blinked. “That… makes a surprising amount of sense. What about if the girl is under the Imperius or a love potion?”

“Hermione already researched that. All love potions are detected by the defences, and the slide turns on, so even if the guy’s under one, they won’t get up there, and the defences were updated when the Imperius curse was invented. If someone is under it, they become unconscious and the mediwitch is notified.”

“They think of everything, don’t they?” Harry said, grinning as he led Draco out the portrait hole.

“Yep,” Draco agreed. “So, how much are we going to dance tonight?”

“As much as we can, so I’d say the whole night, except for one or two dances so we can rest and get drinks. Maybe one or two times we can swap with our friends just for the heck of it?”

“Of course! I can’t wait until you see Hermione—she looks absolutely divine. Fred’s going to be just as dumbstruck as you were when you saw me.”

“I was not dumbstruck!” Harry said in mock offence.

Draco simply laughed.

Notes:

I know, I know, I'm evil for ending it just before the Ball, but I want to get more of the event in, and when I was writing this chapter I realised it would be much longer than I want if I tried to fit the Ball in too. At least you have something to look forward to in two weeks!

Chapter 21: Yule's Tidings

The Great Hall looked absolutely beautiful. The walls were covered in sparkling silver frost, the ceiling was festooned with garlands of ivy and mistletoe, and the four house tables and the Head table had been replaced by around a hundred smaller, circular tables that sat twelve, each of which were lit by lanterns, making their surfaces to sparkle like ice being hit by the morning sun. Harry and Draco were the last to enter the hall, as McGonagall had ordered the champions and their dates into the order the champions had been picked by the Goblet of Fire. Viktor and George had entered first, and it was immediately obvious to everyone in the hall that Viktor only had eyes for his date; George had to steer them to the table the Heads of the three schools were occupying because Viktor refused to take his eyes off George’s breathtaking form. Margaux Bernard entered the hall, her nose up and walking slightly in front of her date, Roger Davies, who looked quite put out that he wasn’t able to have his stunning date on his arm. Cedric and Cho were arm in arm as they practically floated into the hall, waving and smiling at everyone they were friends with; Harry hadn’t really registered how popular Cedric was until that moment. Miro and a disguised Tonks strode through the crowd that was gathered on either side of the champions’ entrance with grins on their faces, and Tonks’ innate clumsiness almost kicked in when she managed to partially trip over nothing, but Miro managed to catch her and swept her into a dip, making her clumsy mistake seem planned. As the crowd burst into applause and light laughter, Fleur and Blaise entered, causing the majority of the hall to choke on their spit. Both Fleur and Blaise had allowed a small portion of their Veela allure and otherworldly looks out, and this almost unearthly beauty was matched by the incredible dress robes they wore; both were made of acromantula silk, but while Fleur’s were dyed a forget-me-not blue which faded into white the further down they got, Blaise’s were such a deep blue they appeared black. Harry knew the two Veela had purposely gone for such breath-taking dress robes because they knew neither of them would get distracted by the beauty of the other, so they could wear robes that their inner Veelas approved of, and not be drooled over by their mindless dates. Then, Harry and Draco entered side by side, holding hands, and waved to their friends before making their way up to the table reserved for the Ministry officials and the second set of champions.

Harry was surprised by the presence of Percy and Oliver seated at the table, and since they hadn’t been able to catch up in a few months, when he and Draco sat down, Harry sat down on Percy’s left, and Draco sat on Harry’s left. “Hey, you two!” said Oliver. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Percy rolled his eyes fondly. “Mr Avery had a prior engagement that he unfortunately couldn’t call off, so I’m the Ministry’s bright idea of a replacement, even though I’m way too low-level in the Ministry to really be able to represent them properly.”

“At least you’re here,” Draco reasoned. “We haven’t seen you two since last year! Were you really too busy to go to the World Cup?”

Percy blushed. “Er… yes. You see, Ollie had booked that night for us to go out to dinner, and I was confused because we all know he’s such a Quidditch nut—”

“I asked him to marry me,” Oliver said bluntly, grinning at the huff from his fiance, whose blush had deepened. “I told him that just because there was a Quidditch World Cup, it didn’t mean I would automatically want to go watch it and not spend time with him, so I got down on one knee and said, ‘To prove I love you far, far more than any old Quidditch match, I figured I’d ask you to marry me, because I do, and I want you to be mine for the rest of our lives’.”

Fleur cooed. “Zat is zo romantique! Oh, when is ze wedding? Have you picked a date yet?”

Oliver and Percy looked at each other, and Percy spoke, “It’s… actually in a bit less than a week, on the thirty-first of December. Ollie and I have been so busy trying to organise everything for it that we completely forgot about the invites, so for the past week we’ve been going around to everyone invited and personally giving them the invitations. It was actually really lucky that we got to come here, because we had no other way of giving everyone still in Hogwarts their invites. We tried to send them in by owl, but the owls just flew around a bit and came back looking confused. Is there a Mail Ward around Hogwarts for some reason, do you know?”

Harry blinked. “Not to my knowledge, but I don’t know much about wards. Maybe you could ask Bill if he could come and take a look? He would be able to find out if there is one, who cast it, and then pass that on to the Ministry, and I’m sure Fleur won’t mind a visit from Bill.”

Fleur blushed at Harry’s insinuation. “Bill and I ‘ave not entaired a proper relationship yet, ‘Arry. Eet would be too stressful with him being in work full time, and with me still being in school, and in ze Tournament, no less, and my NEWTs at ze end of ze year. Non, we are exchanging owls and getting to know one anuzzer slowly, so while I would not mind a visit from him, nuzzing ozzer zan talking weel be ‘appening,” Fleur finished, her French accent becoming more pronounced the longer she talked.

Harry held up his hands in surrender while Draco playfully whacked the back of his head. “Honestly, Harry, show some decorum,” he joked.

Harry rubbed the spot Draco had hit with a fake-hurt expression for a moment, then stopped and grinned at Percy and Oliver. “We’d love to come to your wedding! I just hope you remembered to invite Angelina, Alicia, and Katie, because those are three women you do not want angry at you.”

Everyone at the table who knew the three girls in question shivered. “No, we definitely invited them, didn’t we, Ollie?” Percy said half fearfully.

“Definitely,” agreed Oliver. “I distinctly remember writing their names on their invitations and knowing that if I forgot them they’d kill me and dance on my grave, then resurrect me in time for the wedding.”

Miro blinked. “Are these vomen you speak of truly so terrifying?”

Tonks nodded. “I haven’t even met them, but from some of the stories Harry and Draco have told me, it really would be a bad choice to piss them off.”

With that last statement on their minds, they finally ordered their meals and ate in near silence, only two or three quiet conversations being struck up. Harry heard Tonks asking Miro if he’d managed to get anywhere with his golden egg, and at the negative reply he resolved to get the champions in the second group together to try to work it out. All his egg did was screech at him and give him a headache when he opened it, although Neville swore he’d heard something like it before. Maybe it was some sort of bird, like an Augurey? Phoenix song could be as constant as the screeching in the egg was, but it was more melodious, and an Augurey was better known as an Irish Phoenix. However, their next task was water-themed, and the only connection he could see between an Augurey and water was that they cried when it was about to rain. Perhaps not an Augurey then, since he didn’t think an entire task would focus around a rainstorm, so maybe it was some other type of creature?

Harry was brought out of his musing by everyone around him standing up, so he quickly did the same, startled to find that he’d managed to consume his dinner while on autopilot. Once everyone was standing, Dumbledore waved his wand, making the tables zoom up and arrange themselves along the walls to leave the floor clear, then after a second wave of his wand, he conjured a raised platform along the right-hand wall.

The Weird Sisters walked onto the stage amidst heavy applause from the students in the hall, and set up their instruments, ready to play. Harry noticed Draco scrunching his nose and sniffing in distaste and hid his grin. All the band members were extremely hairy and dressed in ‘artfully’ ripped and torn black robes, giving them an incredibly unkempt appearance. No wonder Draco sniffed like that—Narcissa had instilled him with an incredible sense of cleanliness and fashion, and since Snape’s marriage to the woman, he’d cleaned up reasonably well, probably through force on Narcissa’s behalf.

A mournful tune was struck by the Weird Sisters, and Draco turned to him expectantly. Harry smiled and bowed teasingly. “Would you care to dance, good sir?” he asked, barely managing to keep a straight face.

“Indeed I would, good sir,” Draco answered with an air of giddy excitement. He knew Draco had missed the yearly Yule Balls at Malfoy Manor despite his birth father’s depressing presence because it meant he was allowed to get all dressed up, act posh, and dance the night away, so that was exactly what Harry intended on giving Draco tonight.

Harry took Draco’s hand and led him onto the dance floor, twirling him once to start. An almost girlish giggle emerged from Draco’s mouth, and Harry had never been so glad that Sirius and Remus had insisted on teaching him how to dance than at that moment. The mournful tune developed into an odd sort of waltz, and with that, Harry led Draco through their first formal dance, making doubly sure to avoid stepping on his boyfriend’s feet.

Blaise and Fleur were incredibly well-suited in their dancing styles, despite both being the natural submissive partners in their relationships, and Harry remembered overhearing them coming to an agreement that they would swap who was leading every dance so they could both have fun; Viktor and George danced gracefully, which was quite incredible, considering Viktor was usually quite uncoordinated on land; Cedric and Cho waltzed perfectly in time with one another, and Harry could see why they were so well-suited to one another; Margaux Bernard seemed to be having trouble relaxing from her rigid posture, and Roger Davies had already stepped on her toes twice in two minutes; Miro and Tonks were dancing in a quirky fashion that suited their personalities perfectly; and Draco was having so much fun finally dancing after far too long without that it was a miracle he wasn’t floating in the air due to happiness.

The first song ended, and other couples got up to dance. He saw Dumbledore dancing with Madame Maxime, quite a funny sight considering Dumbledore’s pointy hat barely came up to her chin; Hermione and Fred were dancing and talking about something animatedly, probably some theory Hermione had come across and thought Fred might be able to use it for a joke product, as that had happened several times before; Neville was dancing with an elated Ginny, who wouldn’t stop smiling—Harry was positive her crush on Neville was still going strong—Luna, who was dressed in a frilly dark green dress robe that almost made her look like a Christmas tree, was prancing around to her own beat with an extremely bemused Justin Finch-Fletchely; Ron and Lavender Brown were dancing in a way that told Harry that Ron was stepping on Lavender’s toes frequently, but she didn’t seem to mind all too much; Seamus and Colin were waltzing around in a circle, their eyes only for each other; Dean and Parvati seemed to be gossiping about something or other; Katie Bell was dancing with a delighted Padma, who looked stunning in her turquoise and gold sari-style dress robes; Angelina and Lee were laughing about something too hard to be properly dancing, but were clearly having fun; Alicia, in garnet-red dress robes, was being nearly drooled on by her date Ernie Macmillan; and finally, Percy and Oliver, who seemed lost to the world.

Harry didn’t know how long he and Draco had been dancing when they stopped to get some drinks, but when Draco handed him a flute of sparkling apple juice, he suddenly realised how parched he felt. Gulping the drink down, he grabbed another off the nearby tray and sat down in the nearest chair, now able to sip the drink contently. Draco sat down next to him in a perfectly poised manner until he abandoned etiquette to lean on his shoulder and yawn. Harry reached his arm around Draco and pulled him in further, relishing in the sigh and snuggle his action evoked. “How long have we been dancing?” Draco asked tiredly.

Harry cast a Tempus, absent-mindedly realising that his wand was still in his wrist holder as he did so, and blinked at the time. “Draco, it’s eleven at night! We’ve been dancing for five hours!”

Draco shot up at that. “We’re out past curfew!”

“Nonsense, Mr Prince,” said Dumbledore’s voice from the next table over. “Tonight is quite a lovely night, and as it is a part of the Triwizard Tournament, the curfew for all attending the Yule Ball has been extended to midnight. I dare say if you wanted to have a nice stroll in the fairy grotto, you would likely still have time to slowly make your way to your common room… perhaps stop to inspect a broom closet or two, if you can find one that isn’t being inspected, that is.”

Both Harry and Draco blushed red and averted their eyes from their Headmaster. If they’d been intending on ‘inspecting a broom closet’, as Dumbledore put it, they wouldn’t have wanted to any more—Somehow, Dumbledore’s inconspicuous wink after his statement just soured any mood to the contrary. Imagine that!

So, to get away from the chuckling Dumbledore, Harry escorted Draco back up to the common room, and their dorm, where he was snogged senseless before Draco left to have a quick shower and get ready for bed. In a daze, he threw off his dress robes and pulled on his pyjamas, then slipped in to his bed. Just before he nodded off to sleep, he heard Draco enter the room, still humming the melody of the last song they’d danced to.

Chapter 22: A Wedding

Notes:

Hi guys, sorry for posting this later than I should. I got some rather bad news over the weekend, and I've been trying to deal with it since. It seems my parents are getting a divorce, and I was completely blindsided by it because their marriage always seemed so full of love.
Anyway, I guess it's kind of ironic that I get that news, then I post a wedding chapter, since I'm not sure if it came across as well as I would have liked it to be, nor as long. However, it's still a nice wedding, and it's one that I've had planned since book one when I decided I wanted the Percy/Oliver ship.
Enjoy!

There was a sort of last-minute rush to find appropriate dress robes and gifts in the five days before Percy and Oliver’s wedding, but in the end, everyone invited had managed to pull together all they needed. At dawn on the thirty-first of December, the families of the husbands-to-be arrived at the small cottage Percy and Oliver had been living in since they’d graduated, and knocked on the door. Percy opened the door, smiling anxiously, and stepped aside to allow the Weasleys and the Woods in. Although relatively small compared to most wizarding households, the interior was expanded enough to comfortably allow all the family members to spread out and start a battle plan. Mrs Weasley and Mrs Wood, along with Fleur and Ginny, had brought the decorations for the spot the couple had chosen for the service, which was a large clearing in the forest near the cottage, as it had a pair of trees that had somehow naturally grown towards each other, fused together, then continued to grow upwards, forming a natural arch. Mr Weasley, Mr Wood, Bill, and Charlie were going back to the Burrow to set up a tent-like gazebo to hold the reception, and Fred and George had been trusted to set up a fireworks display to end the reception with a bang. Percy was going to stay in the cottage to get ready, and Fleur was going to check in occasionally to make sure everything was going well, to give him updates on the setup, and to help if needed. Oliver’s older sister, Yvaine, was performing that role for Oliver by taking him to their family home to help him get ready.

The wedding set-up group disappeared from the cottage quickly, going to the clearing and vanishing most of the snow. They made sure there was no debris that might trip people up as they walked around, then warded the area to prevent a change in the weather from ruining the day. From there, they proceeded to decorate the trees on the border of the clearing with white, golden, and pale blue ribbons, they conjured seats for the guests that looked as though they were made up of beautifully carved bleached driftwood. They then pulled some lily-of-the-valley and snowdrop flowers, for fidelity, sweetness, and purity, and new beginnings and hope respectively, out of Mrs Wood’s magically extended handbag and planted them along the isle they’d created. For the final touch, they released a bunch of snow fairies, who giggled and flew around the warded area, inspecting the flowers and sitting in the chairs.

As for the reception group, they made quick work of setting up the gazebo and placing the tables just as Mrs Weasley and Mrs Wood had specified, then spent an hour moaning about how quickly the two boys had grown up to be having a wedding already. Bill and Charlie found it hilarious when the two older men started crying over baby photos of Oliver and Percy, but Mr Weasley and Mr Wood retaliated by claiming that the younger men would do the exact same thing when their children were getting married and leaving home.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Oliver arrived in the clearing, wearing a pale blue robe, the traditional colour of the Wood family. The women in the clearing rushed over to him and gestured for him to take his place next to the arch—as Percy was marrying into the Wood family, Oliver was taking the ‘traditional’ groom’s place while Percy was taking that of the bride. Even though they knew that their relationship was one of equals, so they could both have walked down the isle or both met up at the arch, Percy had really wanted to be given away by his dad after walking down the isle, and Oliver hadn’t, so they compromised by delving into one of the traditions of a Muggle wedding.

Half an hour before the wedding was to start, the guests began arriving. Sirius, Remus, and Harry arrived, the former two wearing royal blue robes to represent the House of Black, and Harry wearing silver and black robes with gold accents for the three houses he was the Heir for. Severus and Narcissa wore dark wine-coloured robes for the House of Prince, and Draco wore wine and black robes for his two Heirships. The remaining Weasleys showed up in dark, burnt-orange robes. Apparently, there was a reason why Ron liked orange so much, other than his favourite Quidditch team and trying to find the most violent shade of it possible; it was the colour of House Weasley. The three Gryffindor Chasers showed up next in Gryffindor red robes with gold accents, and Blaise, who was wearing navy blue robes, had tagged along with them. Several other guests arrived, including Madam Bones, who was acting as the wedding officiant, Luna and Phil, who were dressed in brilliant yellow robes that shimmered like sunlight on water for the House of Lovegood, and Cedric and Cho, who were the last to arrive, then it was just a waiting game for all those in the clearing.

At precisely midday, the sound of Apparation sounded in the clearing from the side opposite the natural arch, and Percy appeared in robes of pure white with burnt-orange embroidery on the sleeves and the hem. Percy was smiling so much that combined with his white robes, he was glowing in an ethereal manner. The fairies who were flying around started humming and singing a unique song as Percy, on Mr Weasley’s arm, made his way down the isle towards Oliver, who was struck speechless, Madam Bones, who was smiling in encouragement, Bill, who was Percy’s best man, and Yvaine, who was Oliver’s maid of honour.

When Percy had arrived at the arch, Madam Bones took her wand in her right hand and raised her left for silence from the fairies, who obliged by lowering the volume of their music and now simply humming the tune quietly, adding to the atmosphere. “We are here as witnesses to the bonding of Percival Ignatius Weasley and Oliver Sean Wood, so they may start their married life together surrounded by the people most dear and important to them. In the eyes and hearts of all gathered here today, I, as officiant, shall call upon these two men and upon magic to bind them in marriage.” She looked at Oliver. “Do you, Oliver Sean Wood, take Percival Ignatius Weasley to be your bonded husband, to guide, comfort, and provide for him, and be his equal partner in all things?

“I do,” said Oliver.

Madam Bones turned to Percy. “Do you, Percival Ignatius Weasley, take Oliver Sean Wood to be your bonded husband, to guide, comfort, and provide for him, and be his equal partner in all things?”

“I do,” said Percy.

Luna, who had been asked to be the ring bearer by the couple, stepped forward with two dark platinum rings engraved with the runes for love, eternal happiness, and fidelity in a repeating pattern on the outside, and Forever on the inside, and handed one to Oliver, then the other to Percy, before stepping back and sitting down again. Oliver took Percy’s left hand and slid the ring on his ring finger, saying, “Bound to one another by magic that shall never be torn asunder.”

Percy repeated the action with Oliver’s ring and said the same phrase before taking both of Oliver’s hands and holding on for dear life. The level of magic in the clearing was nearly overwhelming, as always happened during bondings. Madam Bones spoke again. “Let us bless this couple with love and happiness for the remainder of their lives, for they are bonded in the eyes of Magic.”

“So mote it be!” came the chorus from the guests as they stood and showered the couple in gold and silver sparkles.

“You may kiss,” she said to Percy and Oliver, who did so as the guests clapped and cheered.

“I present to the world, Oliver and Percy Wood!” Madam Bones finished and stepped out of the way so the families of the couple could take their pictures.

*

An hour later, after many congratulations to the newly wedded couple, everyone was having a belated lunch of roast beef and chicken, steamed vegetables, and pumpkin soup in the gazebo which had been constructed in the Weasley’s orchard, followed by Percy and Oliver having their first dance as a married couple. The guests got up for the next dance, and although Harry danced the majority of the songs with Draco, he had no idea how many times he ended up dancing. Once it was dark enough, the twins brought everyone out of the gazebo to watch the firework show they’d put together. It went on for half an hour, with enormous wizarding photos in firework form showing the two men as babies, then toddlers and children, followed by ones where they’d been in full Hogwarts uniform for the first time, and some of Oliver playing Quidditch, or Percy reading a book in the corner of the Burrow living room. The second last one was one they’d only just taken—their marriage photograph, which looped through them holding hands and kissing twice before it dissipated, and the space was taken up by a firework that said, in lovely script, Percy & Oliver, together forever!

With that, the wedding reception was over, and the guests handed Percy and Oliver the wedding presents they’d picked out for them one by one, said a mix between congratulations and goodbyes, and went out of the wards to either Apparate back home or to Hogwarts, depending on whether they were adults or students.

As the moon rose, Percy and Oliver Apparated back to their little cottage and watched the stars for a while, at peace, then headed inside so they could finish packing for their honeymoon.

Chapter 23: On Thin Ice

Notes:

I am so very sorry that this chapter is a few days late again, I got caught up in my family's problems again, and university is really kicking my ass since I'm in my last year and it's close to exams. I actually had a lot of fun researching for this chapter, since there are so many interesting ice-related creatures in mythology. Enjoy!

Three days before the second task for the first group of champions, Viktor and Cedric had succeeded in opening the puzzle box they had been given by the cyclops craftsman, and in the enlarged space inside each box were two pairs of ice skates with some runes on the blades, and a note stating that they could pick one person to be their companion on the task, but that this companion could not be a champion from the second team. Viktor, who had taken advanced runes classes, quickly deciphered the ones on the ice skate blades and discovered the skates had been enchanted through the use of the runes to prevent the wearer from falling down.

The day of the task, the two champions were approached by their heads of school and were told that they and their companions had half an hour to get ready before they were to be transported to the site of the upcoming task. Both young men had chosen their respective romantic partner to be their companion for the task, not only because they knew they would work well together, but also because both George and Cho were smart and powerful in their own rights, so they would be able to help them if any trouble arose.

When the time came, Karkaroff slouched over to where Viktor was sitting with his friends, going over the ice-related magical creatures he and Cedric had been able to research; Dumbledore was strolling along right behind the odious ex-Death Eater, looking as though nothing could please him more than waiting patiently for the Headmaster from the other school to depart with his first champion and his companion. “Viktor, come. It is time. Whom have you chosen as your companion?”

Viktor stood and gestured to George. “I have chosen George Weasley, Headmaster.”

Karkaroff began to sneer, but aborted the action when Dumbledore called out from behind him. “What a wonderful choice, Mr Krum! I hope Mr Diggory has chosen a similarly formidable companion?”

Cedric and Cho stood. “I’ve chosen Cho Chang, Professor Dumbledore.”

Dumbledore clapped his hands together. “Excellent! Let us leave for the task’s location, then!”

From their vantage point just outside the castle, the two champions and their companions could see that the Great Lake had been frozen over and turned into a tundra which had been separated into three equal sections by five metre high walls of ice. Dumbledore and Karkaroff led the way down to an ice blue tent on the very edge of the newly created tundra, and the two champions and their companions were greeted by the incredibly odd sight of Bagman hanging off the arm of a stone-faced Avery. “—please, please, please? You know as well as I do that it would be fun!”

“Enough!” said Avery harshly, shaking a now pouting Bagman off him. “Our champions and their companions have arrived, and you need to explain the task.”

“Oh! Er… hello, all. Mr Avery and I were just… having a discussion?” Bagman said, finishing in a questioning tone, and Avery rolled his eyes. “Right, so I believe we’re just waiting on Mademoiselle Bernard?”

As if on cue, Madame Maxime and Margaux entered the tent, and Bagman nodded to himself. “Your task is to retrieve two stone tablets, one is about the length of your forearm and is covered in an intricate runic puzzle, and the other is rather small, only the size of the palm of your hand, but as it is blank, the only thing distinguishing it is a small, circular hole in one of the corners. Other than that, I think the most important thing to remember is to keep on applying warming charms, because if one of you gets frostbite, Madam Pomfrey will have my head.”

Avery continued, “You will need to make your way past various creatures, either stealthily or loudly, depending on the creature, and you will need to be able to stay calm in the face of danger and panic. You will all enter the task at the same time, but in a different section of the tundra, and you will not come into contact with the other two parties. Are there any questions?”

There was silence in the tent for a few awkward moments before Bagman cleared his throat. “Brilliant! Champions, when your head of school fetches you and your companion, you will be led to your section, and at the sound of the cannon, you may enter your task. Good luck to you all!”

With that, the five adults left the tent. All too soon for Viktor’s taste, the three heads of the schools were back, and Karkaroff led him and George out of the tent and to a hole in the giant ice wall. He couldn’t make out much, as a nearly opaque wind was blowing across the tundra before them, but he thought he saw a… well, it looked like a moose or a reindeer, far off to the side. He couldn’t think of a magical species of either creature, though, so it was likely the moose was bait for some sort of ice creature.

The cannon sounded off in the distance, and Viktor and George looked at each other nervously before holding hands and stepping over the threshold of the hole and onto the tundra. Immediately, the visible wind started buffeting them around, and even with the anti-fall rune enchantments on their ice skates, it was incredibly difficult to stay standing and move in a straight line. The whiteness of the wind had transformed into a blizzard, and Viktor could barely see George even though they were only about an arm’s length apart. It was a good thing they’d been holding hands before they entered, since they would have lost each other if they hadn’t.

An animal call sounded nearby through the biting, white wind, and the two immediately froze before Viktor identified the sound. “It’s just the sound of the reindeer ve saw bevore coming in!” he shouted, trying to be heard over the howling of the wind.

George held out a thumbs up to let him know he’d heard, but all of a sudden, their hands were ripped from each others’ grip by an immense force pulling on George, who disappeared into the whiteness surrounding Viktor. “George?” Viktor shouted as loudly as he could, but he heard no reply. “Vhere are you? George!”

He was alone.

*

George was not ashamed to say that he was currently screaming his head off. Or rather, he would not have been ashamed to say it if he hadn’t been terrified out of his mind because he had just been kidnapped by, and hauled over the shoulder of, what appeared to be a half-man, half-reindeer creature. What was even more odd was that the point where the human legs met the reindeer torso was moving upwards—the fur covering the creature’s back was receding beneath the skin, and he could feel the same thing happening with the other parts of the creature that he was touching.

After a few minutes of the shifting in appearance, the creature deposited him roughly down next to an odd pile of rocks. “You. Stay,” growled the creature in a voice that made it sound like a bear. In the next moment, the creature that had taken on the form of a human male had turned into a polar bear and run off back into the blizzard. Perhaps it was some sort of shape-shifter? It was certainly possible, but he couldn’t think of any shape-shifters which preferred icy environments, except for… Oh. That made sense. The creature had been an Ijiraq, a shape-shifter which inhabited the northern-most regions of Alaska and Canada and was known to kidnap children and then abandon them far from home, disorientate unwary travellers, and could take on the form of whatever living creature it chose in order to do those two things. The fact that it had looked like a mish-mash between a reindeer and a person probably meant it had disguised itself as the reindeer they’d seen, and had then transformed into that form to kidnap him.

George peered through the surrounding whiteness to try to discern where he was, or whether he could spot Viktor anywhere, but it was no use. He pulled himself up using the rocks, still uneasy using the ice skates despite spending a few hours in the Room of Requirement yesterday with Viktor, Cedric, and Cho, practising their skating in the created ice rink. His hand touched a loose rock and he jerked backwards, expecting the structure to fall down instantly, but instead the rock he’d touched just swung around on a bit of string as though it were a pendant.

He looked more closely at the rock and noticed that it was, in fact, the small, blank slab of rock they’d been supposed to look for! He grabbed it and put the bit of string looped through the hole in the rock around his neck. It was almost like an amulet.

Being who he was, he decided to simply pick a direction and stick with it, hoping to reach one of the walls of ice so he could re-orientate himself somewhat. Suddenly, there came a howl from right next to him.

*

Yetis. Viktor had discovered a wall of ice and walked along it for ten minutes before discovering it had a hole in it large enough for him to fit through, only to be greeted by the sight of at least twenty Yetis sleeping in small huddled piles throughout the cave he’d just entered. As he saw it, he couldn’t go back out the way he came because who knew how long it would take him to find something else in that blizzard, so the only option was to sneak between the piles of huge Yetis and get to the equally large hole on the other side of the cave, through which it appeared the blizzard was less intense than the one he’d just been in.

So, without further ado, he put a silencing charm on the ice skates and tiptoed through the Yeti cave as much as he could while wearing the skates. He was more than half-way through when he misjudged how low he would have to duck under a large icicle, accidentally nudging it instead. The shard of ice wobbled dangerously and fell to the floor, where it shattered instantly, making a rather loud noise to Viktor’s hypersensitive ears. He held his breath and closed his eyes, hoping beyond hope that he wasn’t about to be torn apart by vicious Yetis.

A nearby Yeti snored a bit louder than it had before.

He let out the breath he’d been holding and inched forwards again, this time double- and triple-checking how far he had to duck under the approaching icicles before doing so. Finally, he made it past the last group of Yetis and was about to proceed out of the cave when he noticed a small niche carved out of the cave wall which had a yellowed piece of parchment on it. He waved his wand and muttered a magic detection spell as quietly as possible, looking for signs that it was a trap, but found none. He picked up the parchment and saw it was a map, with an X marked in a shaded area that had a small W on it. He checked the legend and gulped. The X marked the location of a treasure, presumably one of the stone tablets they had to find, and the shaded area with the W represented a Wendigo cave. Who in Merlin’s name had come up with the stupid idea of having a bunch of school-aged children face a Wendigo that could slice off their faces with one swipe of its poisonous claws?

However, there was a chance that it had been the Wendigo that had kidnapped George, since they preferred to hunt people for their meals, so he had to go! With new determination, he cast another warming charm on himself and stepped out into the less intense blizzard.

*

George had been confronted by an enormous wolf. Well, actually, it had been an Amarok, which was the creature the Curse of the Werewolf had been based on when Morgana had first cast it on a scorned lover. Amaroks were usually quite placid creatures, but they were incredibly intelligent, being able to spot deceptive or secretive behaviour instantly, and they had the capability to learn to speak multiple human languages.

The Amarok had begged him to help her to rescue her three pups, which had been taken by a Wendigo that lived nearby. Thinking this was probably a part of the task, he agreed, and asked her to lead the way. It only took a few minutes of walking, or in George’s case skating, before they came to a hole in another ice wall. The wall was incredibly thick, but the hole didn’t have any dangerous creatures inside it, so they passed through fairly quickly. On the other side, the blizzard seemed to have died down some, making it easier to see where they were going. Almost immediately, he spotted the familiar form of Viktor, who was hunched over against the wind and looking at a piece of parchment in concentration.

“Viktor!” he called out, and Viktor’s head snapped up towards him. Grinning, he rushed over to his boyfriend and embraced him.

“Vot happened? Are you hurt?” Viktor asked quickly.

“I was kidnapped by an Ijiraq, but escaped when it left me next to a pile of rocks. One of the rocks was the small tablet we were supposed to look for, so I’ve got that with me,” he said, showing him the amulet-like thing, “and then the Amarok here asked me to help rescue her pups from the Wendigo that kidnapped it, so here we are.”

“My tale is different,” Viktor said. “I had to try to get through the blizzard, and I found a hole in the ice vall, vhich vos actually a cave vull of Yetis that I had to sneak through to get this map and out on this side. The map leads to the Wendigo cave.”

“Well then,” George grinned. “We better go there then. All we need is a bit of fire.”

George pulled out what looked like a bobby pin from the pocket of his robe, and transfigured it back into its original form, that of one of the fireworks he and Fred had worked on ages ago for the Gambol & Japes summer job. “You are incredible!” said Viktor, happy that his boyfriend had thought ahead.

They got to the entrance of the tunnel and peeked in to find it was fairly well-lit, so they could easily see that the Wendigo was sleeping in a corner while the Amarok pups were huddled together in a crude enclosure. On a pedestal in the middle of the cave was the second tablet they needed.

“Ready?” George asked Viktor, who nodded. George cast an Aguamenti charm at the firework, which made it fizz and smoke. He hurled the firework into the cave and at the Wendigo, which howled and yelped in pain and fright when the ground next to it seemed to catch fire. The creature ran out of the cave and into the blizzard, yelping as it got further away from its cave.

The Amarok rushed inside and freed her pups from the enclosure, then turned to the two boys and spoke in a gravelly voice. “You have my thanks, humans. May the stars rise above us many times and provide you with good fortunes.”

The Amarok then returned to the blizzard and left them alone with the tablet on the pedestal. “What do you reckon, Port-key?” asked George.

“Most definitely,” replied Viktor. The two reached out and touched the tablet at the same time, being whisked away to the Great Hall by the Port-key.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 4 of It Begins and Ends With Love