Chapter 37: The Triwizard Tournament
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
The carriages rattled through thick gauntlets of mud, swaying in the wind. Through the mirrored darkness of the window, he watched Hogwarts swell out of the rain, its golden windows blurred into watercolor shine.
Lightning flickered behind Gryffindor Tower as the carriage shuddered to a halt at the foot of a huge stone staircase, which unfolded from an enormous pair of oak doors. Draco jumped down from the carriage, splattering mud, and held out his hand for Hermione, who had hesitated to climb down with an armful of cat. After some deliberation, she tucked the moaning Crookshanks under her robes, planted her hand in his, and hopped down.
“Evening, Hagrid,” Harry hollered. The giant groundskeeper stood by the doors, lantern aloft, to count the students as they hurried into the warmth behind him.
“All righ’, Harry?” Hagrid bellowed back, waving. “Goin’ ter get the firs’ years. See yeh at the feast if we don’ drown!”
“They can’t be going on the lake in this weather,” said Draco, horrified.
“It’s tradition!” said Harry cheerfully. “They’re all wet anyway.”
Draco shared a glance with Hermione, who silently shook her head at him, shrouded in her cape like a nun.
The Great Hall always seemed especially lustrous at the start-of-school feast. A host of floating candles poured light like melted gold light from a bespelled ceiling, the shining host plates and goblets catching the light on each long table, and festive garlands glittered on every window. After the storm, the dry warmth of the Great Hall enveloped them like a welcome embrace.
The Heads of House stood at the doors to the Great Hall, ticking them off on rosters. Draco caught the eye of Professor Snape, for whom a summer of sun and rest had done nothing but make him paler and more tired; he exchanged a nod with his godfather before reporting to Professor McGonagall, who was wearing a festive new red-feathered hat and a tiny gold Ireland pin.
“Draco Malfoy, Professor.”
“I know quite well who you are, Mr. Malfoy,” she said, with a hint of mischief. “And Mr. Potter. A belated happy birthday.”
“Thanks,” said Harry, grinning. “Er — you wouldn’t happen to know anything about a broom-polishing kit, would you, professor? One of my presents came without a note.”
McGonagall peered at him severely over her spectacles. “I know nothing of the sort. Of course, if you have a broom-polishing kit, you should endeavor to use it; old brooms require more care than new ones. But anyone would tell you the same. Miss Granger, hello, and I apologize for ignoring your letter about partial transfigurations — stop by my office tomorrow, I have an article I think would interest you.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Hermione rapturously, and Draco had to tow her into the Great Hall to stop her from starting a symposium right there in the doorway.
At the Gryffindor table, Colin Creevey had high hopes for his brother Dennis, who would be sorted that year.
“Got his letter in May! Two in a family! Isn’t that mad? And I told him Gryffindor was it! The place to be! The only place! Best house by a mile! This is the house that’s got Harry Potter in it! Oh! Hello, Harry!!”
A flashbulb snapped, and Harry, who had been wringing out his socks, gave a groan. “Not now, Colin, look at us.”
“Oh! Yeah! Course! Didn’t realize! Sorry!!”
Draco threw himself down and raked a wet coif of hair back from his forehead. “The other one had better get Hufflepuff,” he said grimly, “or I’m transferring to Durmstrang.”
“‘The house that’s got Harry Potter in it,’” muttered Ron, throwing himself down with bad grace. The bad mood had carried over from the train ride, understandably, since harsh rain and bitter cold were not known for softening tempers. “Yeah, no, a thousand years of wizarding history, a top quidditch team, four Head Boys in the past six years, but no, we’re Harry Potter’s house. No offense, Harry.”
“None taken. That guy sounds like an arse,” said Harry.
The first years were late that year, straggling in soaking wet and goggle-eyed with wonder nonetheless. To the disgruntlement of many, Dennis Creevey was Sorted in Gryffindor.
“Guess what! Guess what!! I fell in!” he announced, throwing himself into an empty seat. “It was brilliant! And something in the water grabbed me and pushed me back in the boat!”
“Cool!! That was probably the giant squid, Dennis! They feed first years to it, if you’re late to class.”
“Wow!” said Dennis. “Cool!!”
“Dennis! Dennis! See that boy down there? The one next to the brown-haired girl? See him? Know who he is? That’s Harry Potter!!”
Harry cringed and turned his head. Draco, on the other side of Hermione, cut a lazy salute at Dennis.
“No pictures, please,” he drawled. “It’s hard enough, saving the wizarding world, but I’m just trying to enjoy my evening like the rest of you.”
Dennis’ eyes turned wide as moons. “Sorry, Harry,” he gasped, and whipped his head around to stare at his plate.
No sooner had the first course been cleared from the table than the doors to the Great Hall swung open again, and a clap of thunder sounded from the torrent outside. Draco, who had more important concerns related to achieving the ideal gravy-to-mashed-potato ratio on his fork, didn’t look up until Hermione elbowed his ribs.
“Oi, look,” said Ron, startled. “It’s Mad-Eye.”
Draco disengaged from his mashed potatoes in time to see the man silhouetted in the doorway. He threw back his hood and strode with military precision toward the teachers’ table.
“What’s he doing here?” wondered Hermione.
“Additional security?” suggested Draco.
“Doubt the Ministry would send Mad-Eye, if it were,” said Ron absently. “He was in the Order of the Phoenix. Leftie as they come, but a bit of a crank. Bet Runcorn hates him. Dad says he’s not popular.”
“What’s the Order of the Phoenix?” Harry wanted to know.
“A rogue militia, back in the war,” said Draco quietly. “They fought Death Eaters. Hunted them.”
“…Didn’t the Ministry do that?”
“Ostensibly, but who knows,” he said, flourishing his fingers in a don’t-ask-me gesture. “The books describe most of the fighting as taking place between the Order and the Death Eaters.”
Hermione turned to him. “Did the Ministry do anything to try to end the war?”
“One: yes, assuredly, but you can’t go running around committing government-sanctioned extralegal killings, so if your enemies can, it’s useful to leave some things to private enterprise. And anyway, for two: when you say things in that tone, it makes me hesitant to talk to you about them, because I worry you’re going to go blow up a building or something.”
“Maybe it needed blowing up,” she muttered.
He considered this, and admitted it was true.
Mad-Eye reached Dumbledore. He stretched out a hand that was as badly scarred as his face, and Dumbledore shook it, murmuring something inaudibly. He seemed to be making some inquiry, to which Mad-Eye shook his head and replied in an undertone. Then Dumbledore gestured to the empty seat on his side, and Mad-Eye sat down.
“May I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?” said Dumbledore brightly into the silence. “Professor Moody.”
There was a slightly confused spatter of applause.
“He dropped out to teach?” said Harry, confused.
“I don’t think so,” Ron said, frowning. “Maybe he’s on sabbatical. I don’t remember. He’s only been working part-time at the Ministry recently, anyway.”
“What happened?”
“There was a scandal, I think. Don’t know if it ever came out just what… Dad would know.”
“We could just ask him,” said Hermione. “We’ll have him for Defense, after all.”
“You do that,” said Ron meaningfully. “He looks like he’d take a chunk out of me for trying.”
As the Feast wound to a close, the plates vanished from each table. Full and content, they turned with the others to the staff table, where Professor Dumbledore had risen. The buzz of chatter dimmed to a burble, and then a silence, as the headmaster took the podium.
“I will not erode your evening with overelaborate welcomes, though I must insist on my prerogative to issue one, most warmly, to all who return! I hold too great a respect for your time, as students, to deliver a commencement address that includes any but the most immediate points of import, for which I require a brief loan of your absolute attention.”
If anyone had been murmuring before, they stopped now.
“I remind you, as ever, that the Forbidden Forest — contrary to the beliefs of many — was not named ironically, and any students inclined to brave its depths should be wary of the dangers that lie there. The village of Hogsmeade, our neighbor, is similarly barred to all below third year. Filch begs me to remind you that he will enforce this rule with every instrument of punishment at his disposal, which — though he has been denied the pleasure of the thumbscrews — are nevertheless, if I do say so, quite sufficient deterrents. Thirdly,” he said, amidst rising titters, “the Inter-House Quidditch Cup will not take place this year.”
There were many loud and profane objections to this, and none more loud nor more profane than Harry’s, who had to be hauled down by his robes to prevent him from standing up in protest. Draco thought for a moment that real violence was going to break out. He considered joining in.
It was unfair, verging on cruel. Quidditch was one of his few hobbies that didn’t involve sitting at a desk and arguing with Hermione. Without it, he really did worry that they’d kill each other.
Ginny clung to George’s sleeve. “He’s joking, isn’t he? They can’t do that! I mean, it’s — it’s quidditch! Quidditch!”
“It doesn’t sound like he’s joking,” Hermione said happily. She was smirking like none had smirked before. She was smirking like she held a monopoly on the expression. She smirked like the smirking market was about to go up in flames, and she was liquidating all her stocks.
“Quiet, please,” said Dumbledore kindly, and in a ripple of what could only have been magic, the students’ protests broke off like someone had ripped out a speaker. “We have the honor of hosting an event of much greater importance this year, as for the first time in a century, we have been granted commission from the Ministry to hold it. I announce, therefore, with no small degree of gratitude and honor, that Hogwarts will be hosting the Triwizard Tournament this year.”
“Holy shit,” said Fred.
Belatedly, he remembered that the Great Hall was dead silent.
Laughter exploded from the Gryffindor table, dissipating the remains of the Silencing Charm. Professor Snape drew his wand to repeat the enchantment, his face a dour rictus of disapproval, and most of the faculty looked like someone had forced them to gargle a lemon. Professor McGonagall delicately lifted her nose.
A groundswell of chatter swelled in the wake of Fred’s announcement. Excitement surged through the Hall like an electric current. There was much whispering and speculation, largely positive, though there was no small amount of dismay — Marcus Flint, the Slytherin captain, was swearing furiously, which probably marked the first time in his life he shared common cause with Ginny Weasley.
Snape had to cast three more Silencing Charms before the assembly regained any semblance of decorum.
“The selection of the three champions will take place at Halloween. An impartial judge will decide which students are most worthy to compete for the Triwizard Cup, the glory of their school, and a thousand galleons.”
Now there was no way to suppress the excited murmuring.
“I am sure every Hogwarts student is in some way worthy of the honor,” Dumbledore said, which made Draco chuckle, he had to admit. “However, the heads of the participating schools, along with the Minister’s delegation of tournament administrators, have agreed to impose an age restriction. Only students of seventeen years or older may put their names forward for consideration.”
Fred and George groaned a duet: they were seventeen in April. Complaints broke out, but Dumbledore raised his voice above them. “This is a measure we feel necessary, given that the tournament tasks will require some of the most difficult magical handiwork any of you have ever done, and we are not so overrun with underclassmen that we feel the need yet to cull them. Please, for your own sake, do not attempt to enter; it will not work, and you should not want it to.
“The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will arrive shortly. That is all,” said Dumbledore politely. “Good night!”
Chairs scraped on the stone as a vast, slow-moving mass of chatter lumbered towards the oak doors. Throngs pooled in the antechamber, babbling excitedly about the announcement, while prefects tried in vain to corral them. It was somewhat strange not to have Percy Weasley peering down his nose and prattling endlessly about the architecture of the hallway; and indeed, Peeves seemed somewhat put out that his favorite target for water ballooning was gone. Draco thought, with a strange resonance, that at least half the people who had been at Hogwarts in his first year were gone, and thoughts of this strange changing-of-the-guard preoccupied him as they returned to the familiar grueling stairwells.
Ron and Harry were calculating how much quidditch gear you could buy with a thousand galleons. Hermione, who neither could nor would ever spend a galleon on quidditch, was rattling off facts about the Triwizard Tournament at top-speed, perhaps in the fear that someone else would get to them first.
“…and they used to invite other schools, Ilvermorny and Koldovstoretz and the ones from North and Central Africa, and the European schools, of course — what’s the German one called? It’s only called ‘tri’-wizard because the first one ever had three in it. They’ve gone back to those competitors now, for tradition I suppose, though it’s a shame — I’d just die to see how they did things at—” She said a word that Draco didn’t understand, with clicks in it. “But who do you think the champion will be? It’s likely a Ravenclaw, they tend to do best in exams… or a Slytherin, I imagine they’re the type to want the prize…”
“Yes, wanting a thousand galleons, a notorious Slytherin trait,” said Draco.
“You know what I mean. Eternal glory, ambition, cunning, those things. It’s not an insult.”
“Glory is a Gryffindor value,” he remarked, but she didn’t seem to hear him, for Ron had an epiphany.
“Hey! Angelina’s seventeen, she could do it! She’s a tough nut. Plus she’s got an O.W.L. in Charms.”
“I hope she doesn’t,” said Hermione fervently. “Champions have died during the Tournament before. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. You don’t think they’ll make us watch, do you?”
“No, but you’d better, if Angelina gets it.”
“The best money is on Cassius Warrington, for what it’s worth,” he drawled, trotting the last few stairs.
“The Slytherin?” said Harry, betrayed.
“Naturally. He’s the new Head Boy. Top grades, top breeding, spotless record. It would help his career, and he’s got the skills. It makes sense.”
“He’s a bit of a prat,” said Hermione, tactfully.
This was undeniable. Cassius had a fervor for taking points and a scrupulous eye for dress code violations. Lavender Brown had once lost fifty points to him in a week.
“Even so. Dumbledore never said that the judges ruled on moral character. Personally, I wouldn’t want the Hogwarts champion to be some soft-hearted team player.”
“In that case, why not Marcus Flint?”
“First, because Flint thinks his fists are hammers and every problem is a nail, and second, you don’t have to be an utter toad to have an edge,” he said patiently. “Whoever goes in for Hogwarts ought to be properly ruthless.”
“That’s quite nearsighted, don’t you think?” she said thoughtfully. “You don’t even know what the challenges are. You’re assuming they’re going to be feats of athleticism or daring.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know, but there’s more to being a wizard than being good at magic.”
“A good wizard is by definition someone who’s good at magic,” he said, aggrieved. “That’s the whole point.”
A fire crackled in the common room, scattering light on the leather armchairs and dark wooden tables. Hermione and Ginny said goodnight and disappeared up to the girls’ dorm, while Draco, Ron, and Harry retreated to the same small room full of four-posters they had inhabited for three years.
A house-elf had lit a fire in the grate and left a warming pan between the sheets, so the bed was warm as a bed of sun-baked gossamer. He donned black pajamas and crawled under the coverlet, listening to the storm run itself ragged against the windows.
“I hope the twins find a way to get their name in,” Ron said sleepily, his voice coming soft through the dark. “They’d be bloody good. I bet they’d win the whole thing.”
“Go to sleep, Weasley,” said Draco, but he imagined it nevertheless. The Hogwarts banner flying over a crowd of devastated Frenchmen and Bulgarians, a silver cup the size of Dennis Creevey, overflowing with galleons; though in his imagination, the champion’s hair was not red, but white.
And the crowds were going hoarse for cheering, and Hermione, who was sitting in the front row, was surprised and envious, but smiling, as if she had to admit that after all, she had been wrong, and he had been right, he could do it, she had believed it all along — and as she came up to the stage, saying something about how brilliant he was, her hair flew in her face, and he knelt at the side of the podium to speak to her — when she brushed it back, she was still smiling, and he was smiling, too — and then the scene dissolved into a quidditch pitch, and he was flying, and with the typical thoughtless logic of dreams, he couldn’t remember where or what he’d been doing a moment ago.
He slept, in his warm corner of Gryffindor Tower, and for once he did not dream of monsters.
By the middle of September, one couldn’t last an hour inside the castle without hearing mention of the Tournament. Speculation about the nature of the champions’ tasks ran wild (Seamus Finnigan, whose uncle worked for the Ministry, claimed that there had been talk of manticore jousting, which the public received with unanimous and unqualified delight). Wilder still, however, ran speculation about the nature of the other schools. Where fact failed, the rumor mill hastened to supply. On different occasions, Draco heard it said that Beauxbatons was a delinquent school for troubled girls (no comment), a convent (untrue, and no comment), and a training program for young Veela (no comment, for the communications representative committed ritual suicide on the spot). Durmstrang, as Draco had suggested, caught a lot of flak for the crime of being somewhere cold and Soviet.
“That’s hardly fair,” he pointed out. “It’s just because they’ve got a share of unsavory alumni, which everyone does, including Hogwarts. And their academic program is robust. My parents considered sending me to Durmstrang.”
“Understandable. Counterpoint,” said Hermione. “Your parents did not, historically, consider the practice of the Dark Arts to be a complete deal-breaker.”
He gave an unkind laugh. One of the nearby Ravenclaws turned around and stared at him. He sobered up and scowled at the little swot until she squeaked and turned around again.
“Granted,” he said, sprinkling some doxy wings into their cauldron. “But they don’t teach Dark Arts, they teach about them. There’s a difference, though apparently the nuance is lost on some people.”
“Seems sort of dodgy.”
“Only if you consider ignorance a form of safety.”
She drizzled Essence of Murtlap in small concentric circles. “I’ve always wondered about why we call them the Dark Arts. As if ‘good magic’ and ‘bad magic’ are just different sorts of spells, and not fundamentally a question of how the wizard wields her power in relation to others… and it’s not as if any form of magic is inherently corrupt, is it?”
Their potion smelled like cinnamon and honey, and with the addition of the doxy wings had turned the color of hot chocolate. He prodded it with a stirring wand. “You’re asking me, or the Ministry?”
“Either,” she said, shooing his fingers away.
“Then no, it’s not. I’ve lived in a house full of Dark heirlooms for years, and it hasn’t done anything to me.”
“The opportunities for jokes here are unbearable.”
“Watch it. Anyway, Durmstrang hasn’t produced any more Dark wizards than Hogwarts. What they do produce more of is competent and high-ranking aurors, which should give us all something to think about. You think it’s done?”
“Yes. Let’s see if we can supersaturate it.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Other classes proceeded with a sense of queer anticipation. In Defense Against the Dark Arts, Mad-Eye proved irascible and animated, full of what could only be described as a bloodthirsty joie de vivre, and impressed them all by demonstrating the Bat-Bogey Hex on Neville’s pet toad during the first lesson (“for morale,” or so he claimed, when Professor McGonagall chased him down the hallway bellowing about pedagogy). Arithmancy had progressed to first-order derivatives, which Draco only accepted because it freed him and Hermione from the tediums of Double Divination on Mondays, which Ron and Harry reported consisted mostly in gazing at a crystal ball and portending vaguely of one’s own doom, until you left, having secured the O, but depressed.
There was another difference between their schedules. On Tuesday mornings, instead of bundling up and crossing the lawns to the groundskeeper’s hut, they went to a sunny, cozy classroom on the second floor, near the Hufflepuff Common Room, where a smiling, large woman named Charity Burbage sat in a plush armchair and taught Muggle Studies. In fourth year, this mostly consisted of learning about electricity and some newfound muggle fruit called a McIntosh.
It took no more than the first day of Care of Magical Creatures to assure him of his choice. Ron and Harry came back with charred fingertips from handling Blast-Ended Skrewts.
“Hagrid asked for you,” Harry said, somewhat accusingly, as Hermione cast Episkey over his blistered palm. The skin stitched itself together and flushed to a healthy brown. “We told him you were sick.”
“And what did you do that for?” sighed Hermione, flipping his hand over to do the other side. “He’s going to find out eventually.”
“Tell him yourself, then! He was holding an explosive slug, I wasn’t going to tell him you’re not coming back.”
Draco leveled his quill at him. “Statements like that are why we dropped the class.”
“He’s our friend,” said Harry stubbornly. “He’s still finding his stride. He only just got his certification this summer.”
“It was no picnic, if you ask Charlie,” muttered Ron. He shuffled forward for Hermione to repeat the spell over his hands. “He’s not, er… academically-minded, is Hagrid.”
Draco threw up his hands. “Of course not. Why on earth would that be a quality you’d want in a teacher?”
On a Wednesday in late October, a gigantic rust-colored barn owl dropped in the middle of Draco’s omelet. It waddled over to Harry, who lit up with excitement.
“It’s from Padfoot,” he said. “And Moony. They’re in Egypt!”
Draco, surveying the fallen kingdom of his breakfast in gloom, failed to celebrate.
“‘The news about your scar is the latest in a series of strange rumors that have reached us here. If it hurts again, go straight to Dumbledore… they’re saying he’s got Mad-Eye out of retirement, which means he’s reading the signs, even if no one else is. We’re traveling north, so we won’t be able to write again for a bit. Our best to Ron, Hermione, and Draco.” He held it out to Hermione, who snatched it at once and began scanning for double meanings. “All our love,” he finished, somewhat thickly, “P and M.”
“You didn’t tell us your scar’s been hurting again,” said Ron.
“It isn’t. I mean — not much.”
“Damn. Does it have something to do with the Cup? All those Death Eaters together… say, you don’t think you’re psychic, do you, Harry?”
“Yeah, reckon so. Hang on, there’s one coming on now: Ronald Weasley, you are about to lose something dear to you, which you will never recover.”
He stole Ron’s cinnamon bun and popped it into his mouth.
“HEY!”
Draco peered at the letter over Hermione’s shoulder. “They’re coming north?”
She tilted her head so he could see better. “North could mean anything. If they’re in Egypt, ‘north’ means all of Europe.”
“Or they could be coming to Hogwarts,” Ron suggested, through a mouthful of Harry’s toast. “Trying to see Harry. They might think — oi! Easy!”
Harry had just pounded himself in the forehead.
“I’m an idiot!”
“I understand your disappointment, Potter, but you’ve got other good qualities,” said Draco, with great sympathy.
“I shouldn’t’ve told him! It’s made him think he’s got to come back!”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “Or maybe he’s just coming for the climate. Either way, Padfoot is his own man, and he’ll go where he pleases.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with me!”
“You’re very thoughtful, Harry,” said Hermione. “But whatever Sir—”
“Padfoot.”
“—whatever Padfoot does, thank you, isn’t your responsibility. He’s a fully grown man, and so is L— Moony. God, these names are stupid. Why couldn’t they have come up with better ones?”
“‘Mione,’” said Draco.
She pinked. “Shut up.”
“I think we should have cool nicknames,” said Ron thoughtfully. “Say, we’ve already done worse than they did. Bet they never broke the law.”
“They became animagi at thirteen,” said Hermione, deeply skeptical.
“So we’re a little behind, but not by much. Say, it’d be bloody cool to transform into an animal, innit? Wonder which I’d be. Hate to go through all that effort and get stuck as a rat or something.”
“You can choose,” said Draco, mopping pumpkin juice irritably. “It’s not like a patronus. I expect Wormtail chose his form so he could scout for them.”
“Blimey, how do you know that?”
“There’s this funny thing that happens when you open a book, Ronald, where your eyes start moving and information goes into your brain.”
“We talked to Professor McGonagall about it,” Hermione added, spoiling his quip. He gave her a look of betrayal as she passed the letter back to Harry. “She offers an elective on becoming an animagus to seventh years, but she won’t teach the method to anyone who’s not of age. I think she’s quite right, too, she makes it sound incredibly dangerous, and positively horrific if you get it wrong. She had pictures. Eugh.”
Those pictures had cured him of any desire to follow the Marauders’ footsteps. He shuddered.
“Well,” said Harry, “that just makes it metal.”
“It is metal,” agreed Ron, decisively, and took a bite of pumpkin-juice sodden toast.
Beauxbatons and Durmstrang arrived on an overcast evening in early October, and the school piled onto the lawns to watch.
Draco drew his cloak tighter about him in the crisp air, and jostled with the other tall students for a better view. Since none of them were exactly clear where they were meant to be looking, this meant a lot of friendly shoving in no particular direction, more or less to pass the time. The wind snaked around their ankles and raked its teeth over any bare inch of flesh.
“There!” shouted a sixth year, pointing.
The ground near the lake trembled and bulged. It shuddered. It frothed. The grass vanished under a tide of upturned dirt, which rose around the growing maw of a yawning crack in the ground. Students scrambled back from the crevice, shoving and climbing over each other in their haste not to fall into the gap. Several unlucky bystanders had to be Wingardium Leviosa’d to safety by a professor; one poor swot caught a Levicorpus.
Out of the crevice rose a tall black spire. It rose to a height of ten feet, then twenty, and then a cone of green-copper shingles emerged from the earth beneath it, rotating gently while the earth around it shuddered and quaked. At first, Draco thought it was a strange sort of metal tent, but when the lip finally crested over the earth he realized it was the roof of a carriage. Beards of ivy, somehow perfectly preserved despite their recent subterranean state, trawled over the metalwork and hung in flattering curtains around the windows, dotted with pink flowers. The windows glinted under a pearlescent blue sheen, and nary a speck of dirt clung to the immaculate white flank, as if someone had ripped the picture straight out of a vignette by the Brothers Grimm.
Ron couldn’t resist elbowing Draco. “Do you see that? Look! It’s enormous!”
Draco, who had hidden his hands in his sleeves like a monk to keep them warm, glanced cursorily up at the carriage and snorted. The snort turned to fog. “Tacky,” he said. “Filch will spend a myriad repairing the turf.”
“The turf! Where’s your sense of childish wonder?”
“I lack a sense of ‘childish’ anything,” said Draco, a child.
Indeed, the doors to the carriage had swung open, and people had begun to spill forth from within. At the front of the crowd stood a tall, lightly muscled woman with pale hair in a receding half-moon hairline, tamped down to her scalp under a suffocating lacquer of gel. Sometime in her clearly numerous years, her bodily reserves of fat and muscle had resigned from poor working conditions. She was a woman of some age, but handsome enough, if you were into giants and also skeletons.
“That’ll be Beauxbatons, then.”
“How can you tell?”
He jumped. “Where did you come from?” he demanded of Hermione, who had materialized at his elbow.
“The library,” she said breathlessly.
“You were doing Runes without me?”
“Not Runes,” she said impatiently. “Another thing. Who’s the tall woman?”
“The Beauxbatons headmistress. Olympe Maxime.”
Behind her trailed an ordered line of students from Beauxbatons. They were shivering, which wouldn’t have been surprising except that it revealed nobody had told them to wear more than a silk shawl on a visit to Scotland in October. Their uniforms were identical sets of cornflower blue, with pleated skirts for the girls and white pants for the boys. The boys wore busboy caps, and the girls wore cloche hats.
Dumbledore and Madame Maxime traded a few words, and then she made a lazy, indolent, well-go-on-then gesture at her students, and they started up towards the castle. Filch hurried forth to guide them, his lantern aloft in the dimming twilight.
“Aw, piss,” sighed Ron. “I thought we’d get to talk to them.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for fraternization. I imagine they’re just as eager as we are to get out of this bloody cold.”
“Oi, who’s ‘fraternizing’? I want them all to eat it in the Tournament. I’d just like to meet them first, is all.”
A small smile bent Draco’s mouth. “Even if our champion is a Slytherin?”
“Scratch that, disclaimer: if Warrington’s champion, I’m transferring.”
“You wouldn’t possibly,” said Hermione, yawning. “They don’t have a quidditch team, Beauxbatons. You’d be miserable… although honestly, that might be better for you and Harry’s grades. Do you hear that?”
“Between your prattle and the sound of my own teeth chattering, I can actually hear very little,” said Draco.
“Shut up, then,” Hermione said absently, cocking one ear. “Listen, I think there’s something coming from the lake.”
She was right. Down by the shores of the lake, the air shimmered like a heat mirage over black-top, only it couldn’t have been heat, since the temperature dipped closer and closer to freezing with every moment. A strange humidity weighed the air, turning every hair on Draco’s arms upright. Static skittered along his clothes.
A neon black line opened in midair, like a wound in the universe. It sprouted a second dimension and swelled to a black square, approximately two meters tall and across, sending billows of wind across the lake. Small bursts of lightning sparked and fizzled out on the edges. It remained there, suspended a few inches above the ground, unchanging for the better part of the minute. As the seconds ticked by, Draco worried that something had gone wrong.
Then a black dragonhead mast glided out of the void. It was long, gleaming lacquered wood, with teeth carved from whalebone and a body that wrapped seamlessly into the head of a ship.
The vessel was a love letter from Gothic splendor to baroque extravagance, written in a beautiful and ornate hand: a rail of wrought-iron lattice, sculpted into the shape of flowers and plants and small animals, rimmed the dark slate of the deck, atop which rested four vast sails so white they almost glowed green through the fog. Smoky silver glass rimmed the cabins, and ornamental struts of age-tarnished gold formed clawed feet from which the rigging protruded. Up and among these riggings climbed a hundred animated skeletons, skittering here and there to bring the ship into dock.
An anchor in the shape of a whale’s skull tumbled from the side, and then a plank lowered like an outstretched blade to the beach.
A man marched out. He was small, but the sleightness of his build was somewhat hidden under the enormous ruff of his mantle, which pooled at his ankles in a foam of red and black. He wielded a long dragon’s-head cane whose point seemed a fair bit sharper than any walking stick should require.
Behind Karkaroff, the students of Durmstrang had dressed in similarly appropriate winter wear, hidden under fur coats and thick leather cloaks. Many of them wore tall coonskin hats. Unlike the Beauxbatons students, they appeared in more or less good spirits, and chattered amicably to each other as they filed out of the ship (which must have been bigger on the inside, or else the students of Durmstrang were very well-acquainted with each other). Some of them were laughing. A couple pointed at Hogwarts and gave audible exclamations of delight, as in: My God! That’s a big castle!
“Dumbledore!” said the headmaster, shrilly. “How are you? Are you well? I’m wretched. I hate traveling. One of my students threw up on the ship.”
“A crime of passion, no doubt,” said Dumbledore serenely.
“I would have turned him into a dormouse,” said the headmaster grimly, “but your man at the Ministry was very clear about the restrictions of British law. Well? Shall we stand here and stargaze, or will you invite us in?”
Dumbledore stepped aside, and Karkaroff stalked into the light cast by the open doors to the Great Hall. He paused, and snapped his fingers at the crowd of Durmstrang students behind him. “Hello! Come! Bez provolochek, Viktor!”
A student hurried out of the crowd. He was swarthy and short, almost drowned in the thick overcoat of his school uniform, but when the wind raked back his hood it revealed a short crop of black hair and a face that drew gasps from the crowd of Hogwarts students.
Ron gave a war cry. He shook Harry’s arm.
“Harry!”
“Yeah! I know! I saw him!”
“What is it?” demanded Hermione, whaling on Draco’s cloak. “I can’t see! Did something happen?”
“No,” said Draco, who was so distracted he forgot to be annoyed at her. “That’s Viktor Krum.”
“Oh,” she sighed. “I thought it was someone interesting.”
The doors to the Great Hall swung closed with a thunderous creak. The staff followed the students to their seats, herded in file by Dumbledore, Maxime, and Karkaroff. At the sight of Madame Maxime, the delegation from Beauxbatons jumped to its feet with a great scraping of benches and shuffling of feet.
(Both Hogwarts and Durmstrang found this move to be a rank bit of lick-arse, and the collective groan of irritation was shared.)
The Beauxbatons delegation took no notice, and did not sit until their headmistress had assumed her seat to Dumbledore’s right. Karkaroff flanked him at left. A fourth chair remained empty to the right of Madame Maxime, and halfway through the meal it was occupied by, of all people, a harried Barty Crouch.
Along with the regular fare, the kitchens had seen fit to prepare an additional variety of foreign foods for their guests. A vat of some shellfish stew sat next to a casserole dish of aubergine. Puffed and golden-brown pastry sandwiches rose in a pyramid from a large platter to Draco’s left, while a tray of roasted snails sat untouched between enormous tins of shepherd’s pie.
When they had eaten their fill, Dumbledore rose from his seat.
“Hello! Welcome! I extend you all my warmest thanks for coming, both on my own behalf and that of the school.
“A word about the Tournament before selection begins. There will be three tasks, spaced throughout the school year, and they will test the champions in many different ways. One champion will be reaped from each of the participating schools. They will be marked on how well they perform each of the Tournament tasks and the champion with the highest total after task three will win the Triwizard Cup. The champions will be chosen by an impartial selector: the Goblet of Fire.”
He nodded at the casket. Wandless, without so much as an incantation, the lid slid back and a large white goblet rose from its depths, its bowl hewn from an ivory so pale it could have been bone. But short of a giant’s skull, there was no creature large enough to yield a bone that could be carved into a goblet this size: it would require manipulation of the sort that even Hermione struggled to master.
“Ahem,” said Dumbledore, and blue flames erupted out of the cup.
Gasps ricocheted around the chamber. Draco wasn’t altogether impressed — conjuring flames was relatively easy, especially if one wasn’t too picky about the quantity or where they went after you made them.
“All students of age seventeen or older wishing to submit themselves for consideration must write their name and school clearly upon a slip of parchment and drop it into the goblet,” said Dumbledore. “Aspiring champions will have two weeks in which to put their names forward. At the end of that week, the Goblet will return the names of the three it has judged most worthy to represent their schools. The Goblet will be placed in the entrance hall tonight, where it will be freely accessible to all those wishing to compete.
“Both I and the Ministry wish to impress upon all of you that this tournament is not to be entered lightly. Once a champion has been selected by the Goblet of Fire, they are obliged to see the tournament through to the end. The placing of your bid constitutes a binding magical contract. There can be no change of heart once you have entered your name. Please be very sure, therefore, that you are wholeheartedly prepared to compete before you submit your name. Good luck to you all, and may you judge wisely what you do.”
The students from the other schools filtered out of the Great Hall, shepherded by their respective headmasters.
Crouch remained and sipped from a small cup of coffee. To his right, Mad-Eye Moody was staring at him with the most furious frown he’d ever seen on a member of the faculty, and he’d seen Professor McGonagall after Slytherin won the House Cup.
“What’s his problem, I wonder?” said Hermione.
“Who knows,” said Harry.
“Who cares?” said Ron. “Draco, look. Warrington’s putting his name in.”
This was indeed enough to distract Draco from the staff table. Cassius Warrington had crossed the hall and was approaching the Goblet. A knot of fellow Slytherins stood off to the side, cheering him on. He got caught behind one of the boys from Durmstrang, who trotted up to the cup, dropped his name in, and strolled away. When Warrington succeeded, the Slytherins gave a little cheer.
“What are the twins doing?” Hermione said sharply. Fred and George had lined up behind Warrington, and both held slips of paper in their hand. “They can’t, they’re not seventeen!”
“Tell that to them,” said Harry.
The twins were next in line. They linked arms, grinned at each other, and lifted their hands together to drop their names into the cup. But as their hand passed over the blue flames, they let out a twin cry — Ron half-rose out of his seat, startled — and snatched their hands back. Nearby students shouted and recoiled from the sight: their fingers had shriveled, the nails split and crumbling away from blackened beds, the skin charred to cinder-gray.
“I believe it was made clear,” said Mad-Eye, cutting across the chatter in a loud voice, “that supplicants to the title of champion were to be of an age no less than seventeen.”
The twins whispered frantically at each other, scurrying away from the Cup. Hermione made a harsh sound of disapproval.
“That’s horrid,” she said. “I can’t believe the Ministry approved any of this.”
“Yeah, it’s awful,” said Ron distractedly. “Hey, can any of you see where Krum went? I want to see if we can get his autograph.”
“I’m serious! This is dangerous! They could’ve been hurt! Who lays down that kind of enchantment in a school for children? I want to have a word with Mr. Crouch.”
Draco was watching the upper table. Crouch had stood up and was talking to Mad-Eye Moody in low tones. Neither of them looked happy. Crouch gestured at the Gryffindor table, and Mad-Eye’s eye swiveled to surveil it while he continued to argue with Crouch. Draco glanced away, to the Goblet, where a group of Beauxbatons students were standing on tiptoe to put in their names.
Constant vigilance.
“Why now?”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
He nodded at the Goblet. “Over a hundred years since the last Triwizard Tournament, and they bring it back now. Why? Dumbledore wouldn’t put it forward. Neither of the other headmasters seem too happy about it, either.”
“It’s a game,” said Harry simply. “Don’t they want to compete?”
“No,” said Hermione suddenly. “I understand. You’re making a point about — the timing, politically.”
He jerked his head in a nod. “What does the Ministry want to say about Hogwarts?” he said quietly. “What does it mean that we’re hosting? It’s a disruption, an academic distraction, and as you said, it’s dangerous—”
“You’re thinking too much,” said Ron idly. “It’s a tournament. The competition is the point. It proves you’re the best.”
Draco stared at him.
“You know, Weasley, sometimes I wonder what could happen if you kept your brain activated all the time, instead of just taking it out for walksies every blue moon.”
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You said it exactly. The competition is the point. It proves you’re the best.” He pointed his chin at Cassius Warrington, who was holding court with a group of Slytherin upperclassmen. “And when the best looks like that?”
It would be all over the Daily Prophet. He’d make headlines even if he didn’t win, but if he did, it would be all anyone could read about: Warrington Heir Wins First Triwizard Title in a Century. The Pride of Slytherin Strikes Gold. There would be interviews and sponsorships, and a photograph of Cassius Warrington, a strapping blond Slytherin Head Boy, shaking the Minister’s hand, plastered across every flat surface in Britain.
“There’s no reason to assume the Hogwarts champion will be a pureblood,” said Hermione. “You’re assuming one will. Most students here don’t have pedigrees, you know. Angelina’s a halfblood.”
“No. I’m saying the Ministry is assuming it’ll be a pureblood, for reasons that I’m certain I don’t have to explain to you.”
Her expression changed. She worked her jaw furiously, as if trying to break the argument between her teeth. “I understand,” she said finally, “but surely they couldn’t — it’s incredibly dangerous! I understand some people at the Ministry don’t really care about — I’m not delusional, I know it’s not as though they all — but aren’t they worried about their own children getting hurt?”
Someone needs to fix Hogwarts… It used to be the greatest wizarding school in the world.
“It’s about tradition,” he said.
“Tradition,” she said, as if it tasted sour. “The pureblood tradition of having children get hacked to pieces for a thousand galleons and a made-up title.”
“You wouldn’t get it,” he said absently. He almost envied her for that.
She threw down her fork and stood up. “Yes,” she snapped, “as you’ve made me very aware before, there are a number of things I don’t get about your stupid brainless ‘pureblood traditions,’ because I’m not born into it. And by the way, in the real world, things like child endangerment and neglect are crimes. I think the truth is that there are a hundred things about the way you live that just don’t make sense if you happen to give a damn about other people!”
His head whipped around. He could feel the force of her anger, like a physical heatwave, leaving his face was tingling and numb.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said, feeling rather like he was staring at the crunched remains of a teacup he’d just stepped on. She kept fuming at him, obviously unconvinced. “And what do you mean, ‘the real world’? This is real.”
“Then don’t — don’t—” Her hands spasmed, as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to rip out her hair or his. “Don’t talk to me like that,” she snapped.
“Like what?”
“Like it’s — you know — some sort of chore to explain things to me. Like you’re so exhausted with telling me things you had the good luck to be taught growing up. Well, I’m sorry to bother you with it, you know, I don’t like feeling like I’m stupid, but I sleep about four hours a night trying to read as much as I can so I don’t bother anybody with questions about things they already know, so maybe I’d like someone to treat me like I’m not an idiot for not— for not—”
She realized, perhaps for the first time, that many people were listening to her. Draco was stunned silent, his mouth parted.
“Never mind. That was — I’m sorry. That was stupid. I didn’t — I shouldn’t.” She snatched up her bag. “Forget I said anything. I’m going to the library” she muttered, and fled.
“Hermione!” Harry stood up and glared at him. “What’d you do that for?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, shell-shocked. “I didn’t — not on purpose.”
“Ah, she’ll be alright by tomorrow,” sighed Ron. He idly hit Draco’s shoulder and stretched for the ceiling, twisting his wrists together. “Let her sleep it off. She’s been pulling double hours at the library. She’ll be sorry for snapping at you, mate, you’ll see. Though,” he added, “you could stand to be a little nicer to her.”
From Ron, who called Hermione a know-it-all at least once a week, and had veered into much worse during what Harry once called the Great Rodent War of 1993, this was something like receiving advice on dental care from a mountain troll. “Nicer?” said Draco, baffled and irritated. He was nicer to Hermione than he was to virtually anyone in his life, up to, and possibly including, his mother. He thought that, based on his regular standard, she ought to be aware of her own privileged status. “I don’t think she’s stupid, she bloody well knows that.”
“Beside the point, innit,” sighed Harry. He slung his bag over his shoulder. “I’m practically muggle-born, and she trounces me in everything, anyway, so it’s not like anyone can say I know more than she does. Ron’s a pureblood but he doesn’t give a rat’s arse for tradition, and she trounces him, too — sorry, Ron. But she still worries, doesn’t she? It’s not Hermione if she’s not tearing her hair out over something. And then at the Cup, with the Death Eaters and the Dark Mark, she gets a nice ugly reminder of everyone who wants her out.
“And then you come around, practically the most pureblood-est pureblood-y pureblood anyone ever dreamed up, with the white hair and the Eton sneer and everything, and she spends about half her waking hours trying to beat you just to prove she can, and you wonder why it means something different when you say she’s not good enough?” Harry shrugged. “I dunno. Wasn’t all that confusing to me.”
Draco, wordless, had nothing better than the truth: “I never said that.”
Then, belligerently: “How on earth do you know all that? Did she tell you?”
The idea of Harry being Hermione’s confidante in anything was unseemly. Using Harry Potter, lover of beasts, quidditch, and not one book ever written, as a source of wisdom reflected a dearth of choices that verged on tragicomic.
“No, but it’s not exactly a puzzle, is it,” said Harry exasperatedly. “Merlin, you’re bright until you’re thick. Don’t you listen to her?”
“Of course I listen to her,” he said coldly. “Far more than you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Ron, bizarrely angry, because they both knew damn well it was true. Draco could list things about Hermione that would make both of their heads spin; he could cite theses for her papers, chain-cite the bibliography of her summer reading list, rattle off the music she listened to when she folded laundry. He had more datum in his brain about Hermione Granger than either of them could pool with Gryffindor House, and the implication otherwise was a cold insult of the sort he’d normally demand satisfaction for.
Harry waved his arms between them, windmilling for peace. “Oi! Stop it! We’re at quota. One row a day.”
Ron huffed. “Makes us sound like right arses,” he muttered. “Course we listen to her.”
Perhaps he hadn’t given them enough credit, Draco thought, as they climbed the stairs to Gryffindor Tower in silence.
Well. —Not Ron. Ron was still suspended on paper-thin ice. But it was with a deep pang of discomfort that he acknowledged the things Harry had seen and he had not. He would never have admitted as much, on pain of death, had the proof not been tasted in the proverbial pudding: Harry hadn’t been surprised by Hermione’s outburst, while for one terrifying moment Draco had looked at her like a stranger, not knowing her at all.
Sorry for the tension! It wouldn’t be fourth year if there weren’t a little bit of angst. Fourth year is Hermione’s Big Year. She’s done taking everyone’s nonsense. Fifteen-year-old girls are brave and terrible.
-dennis is mildly surprised to discover that harry potter is a blond, but that is the extent of his thought on the matter. big of heart and dumb of ass: the creevey boys story
-draco: oh you know, durmstrang isn’t so bad, my parents would’ve sent me there
-hermione: your parents? your parents, the death eaters? those parents?
Up next: Chapter 38: “Four Names.” Coming events: an interaction between Cho Chang and Ginny Weasley; a small row (unrelated); and a manifesto.
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