Chapter 38: Four Names
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
The next day was Saturday, and so Draco would have ordinarily laid in until half eleven, marinating in the heat from the fireplace and his feather coverlets. Instead, he dressed at nine while the others slept. The dorm smelled of coffee and woodsmoke, and rain trilled merrily against the windows, a mild-mannered shower of late autumn, turning the lake to glittering diamonds and paving a layer of fog on the lawns.
With some regret, he left it, and went instead to the one place that would be empty as a graveyard on Saturday morning.
The doors to the library were ajar. Hermione always sat in the same place. It was a table in the Transfiguration section, under a round east-facing window, where sunrise drenched the whirling dust motes in gold, and the metal bindings on the books gleamed and glinted seductively on their plush leather spines. The table was engraved with the loquacity and carelessness of generations of students, epithets scrawled in Irreversible Ink and simple childish carvings, A + F in a heart enclosed, foul words, fouler curses, vows to perform acts sublime and unnatural with the reader’s mother, all covered by the canopy of Hermione’s Arithmancy homework.
He set his book down first, to test the waters. It made a soft thunk on the table. She didn’t look up.
He sat down, crossed his legs, and opened the book.
His advantage in this was the knowledge that, though he had virtually no patience whatsoever, she had even less.
“You just missed him.”
“Hm?” he said, as if he had been here for hours.
“Krum,” she said. She scrawled something, flipped back a page to check something else, and added another line. “He was just by. Along with his fan club. I’m sure he’s still around, if you’d like to meet him.”
He would. She knew that. It was beside the point, however.
“I’m not here for Krum.”
“Hmph,” she said. She signed something with a scribble and turned the page over.
“What are you working on?”
“None of your business.”
“If it’s the Arithmancy, I already finished it. You can have a look.”
“That’s cheating.”
“It’s collaborative learning,” he said. “Also, you give Potter your Potions homework every week.”
She sat up and put her quill down. “That’s beside the point. Harry tries, he and Ron just need a boost.”
“You coddle them.”
Narrowed eyes. If her anger had a meter, it would have slipped from green to yellow. “Coddling? I have to yell myself hoarse to get them to even look at the homework.”
“And the fact that you’re yelling yourself hoarse doesn’t tell you anything, vis-a-vis: coddling?”
She scowled. “You help Ron with his Potions, too.”
“Sure. I answer the questions he asks me. And only when those questions aren’t ‘hey Malfoy, what’s the answer.’ There’s a difference.”
“If you say so,” she muttered, in the put-upon way that meant she did not care to hear anything else that disagreed with her, and he suppressed a twinge of irritation. She could be impossible. She was being impossible, and a little bit on purpose, if he wasn’t wrong. Ridiculous witch.
He leaned out and snatched the top paper from her stack. “So. Let’s have a look—”
“No—!”
“—addressed to Madam Portia Magnussen, the Chairwoman of the Allegiance for Muggle-Born Wizards, Order of Merlin, Third Class — Granger, you’re not applying for a job, are you?”
“No!” She snatched it back and ferreted it away into her bookbag as if he’d read her bank information. “And I’ll thank you not to snoop!”
“Then what are you doing? They don’t take underage applicants.”
She slammed her hands on the table. Papers scattered. He caught a page of Arithmancy before it escaped into dusty oblivion.
“I know! It’s maddening! Why on earth would you restrict membership just to adults? Most of the difficulties of being muggle-born start at school, where you haven’t got the same resources as everybody else, so what’s the bloody good of starting an organization once your education’s over?”
He fell silent. There were some things it was better not to touch, and on a scale from cashmere to hot stoves, this subject was a flobberworm. If he hit it from the wrong angle, he could end up pitched into last night’s argument.
He still didn’t understand what he was supposed to say there. That everything was alright? That blood status didn’t make a difference, to him or anyone else? Neither of those things were true.
“Well, anyway,” she said, suddenly withdrawn, “I thought it was time someone tried to fix that. I thought — you know, enough complaining! I don’t want to be one of those people who sits around feeling sorry for herself when nobody helps her. So instead of any more whinging about how hard things are for muggle-borns — you know, all that stuff that nobody cares about anyway — I did something about it.”
She pushed a stack of papers across the table. Draco flipped up the top sheaf and read:
THE SOCIETY FOR THE CULTIVATION AND RECREATION OF UNDERPRIVILEGED AND MUGGLE-BORN YOUTH
A MANIFESTO IN EIGHT PARTS, AN APPENDIX, AND A POSTSCRIPT
The postscript alone was seventeen pages.
“You wrote this?”
“Yes.” She leaned forward on her elbows, smirking with commingled pride and embarrassment. More pride, though. With Hermione, it was almost always more pride.
“Good Lord, when?”
“I’ve been sneaking up to the library as often as I can,” she admitted, “which hasn’t been often as I’d like, between classes and this stupid tournament, everything’s been so crowded — but I’ve got the manifesto down, and there are an order of badges on the way. I’ve filed a permit with McGonagall, and S.C.R.U.M.B.Y. will have our first meeting in October.”
He looked up. “You’re not serious.”
His fondest hopes for her to be joking were quashed by her stony expression.
“‘Scrumby’?”
“It’s S.C.R.U.M.B.Y.,” she said impatiently. “It stands for the Society for the Cultivation and Recreation—”
“I know what it stands for,” he said, gesturing pointedly with the melee weapon she’d penned. “But — Granger — and listen to me, here—”
“Yes?”
“Why on earth didn’t you just call it the Allegiance for Muggle-Born Wizards?”
“Because they wouldn’t give me permission for licensing,” she snapped. “I wrote to them weeks ago explaining what I wanted to do, and they said they didn’t allow student chapters!”
“Maybe they haven’t finished reading the manifesto yet.”
“No, it’s because they don’t want to be affiliated with Hogwarts!” She stabbed her finger at the manifesto. “They said the Ministry doesn’t let private organizations recruit at schools with government funding, and Hogwarts only permits student-led clubs, which I’d have been fine with if I didn’t know it was the most bollocksing bloody tripe I’ve ever heard, because that stupid League for Special Purebloods or whatever it is was started only last year! But the Allegiance is already scared to death of the Ministry cracking down on them, no thanks to your friend Nott, so instead I’ve had to do it all myself, and without a lick of help!”
It was vaguely strange, hearing her use ‘we’ in a sense that didn’t include him. On some level, of course, he knew that it wasn’t his affair, and that he oughtn’t care less about whether or not there was a muggle-born society, but he had no idea what to say about it that wasn’t some flavor of condescending or trite.
“Well,” he said stiffly, “how’s recruitment, then?”
She flushed. “I — I mean, I haven’t really started recruiting yet. But — as it stands — three.”
“That’s— wait, who?” He ran back the register of muggle-borns he knew. For reasons various, it wasn’t a long list. “It can’t be Potter and Weasley, they’re not muggle-born.”
“You don’t have to be!” she said hurriedly. “Anyone’s welcome! I’m hoping to recruit lots of people. Also, Hogwarts rules say you can’t exclude people on the basis of blood purity — in either direction. I was actually planning to ask you and Harry and Ron, after I finished edits on the manifesto—”
“You haven’t answered the question,” he interrupted. “Who’s two and three?”
“Colin and Dennis Creevey,” she said reluctantly.
He stifled a guffaw.
“Oh, go on, laugh it up, why don’t you—”
“The Gryffindor Paparazzi? And his brother, Squidbait?”
“They’re nice boys!”
“They’re about nine years old.”
“So they need a lot of help!”
“Like baby kittens. Never mind, I’m sure they’re wonderful. Listen. Do you think that enlistment numbers might change if — spitballing, don’t mind me — you named it something other than ‘Scrumby’?”
She hauled the manifesto away from him, glowering. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have told you about it.”
“Hey. Hang on, hello, Granger,” he said sharply, sitting up. “I’m not making fun of the idea.”
“No, you think it’s stupid.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“I don’t need to. The ones already in there are worse.”
“I resent that. Give me some credit. Here, I—” He was, distantly, starting to worry. The conversation was slipping precipitously from good-natured ribbing to pressure on a bruise. “Give it back,” he said, impulsively. “I’ll read it.”
She greeted this with the shock it was due. The thing was bigger than a volume of Bagshot.
“You’ll read my manifesto?”
“Why not,” he said, with distant fatalism. There was a part of his brain banging a gong labeled BAD IDEA, WILL REGRET, but his wild impulses put it down mercilessly with a headshot. “You’ll need line edits, won’t you? I’ve seen your Charms essays, remember. Someone has to prune down all those em-dashes.”
She smiled at him, first hesitantly, and then breathlessly when she saw he meant it, with teeth and dimples and everything. Suddenly he found it very difficult to keep his expression neutral, and so he tried to sober himself with thoughts of the new voluminous addition to his workload. It didn’t work, and he had to turn his head away and pretend to cough into his arm.
After that, she was in a much better mood. She prattled to him about the Arithmancy homework, and didn’t bring up anything about their argument from dinner; he got the distinct sense, watching her steam unerringly through four minutes of monologue about second-order derivatives, that she, too, was slightly embarrassed by it, and saw it as a topic best drowned out with math. He could not have agreed more if he tried.
He was pleased, all in all, that things had returned so swiftly to normal, and for the trouble of only a few days’ hard reading. Trust Hermione to be sensible.
When they finally found their way down to the entrance hall for breakfast, there were dozens of people milling around, some eating toast or sipping carafes of coffee, and examining the Goblet of Fire. It sat on the stool in the Great Hall that normally held the Sorting Hat.
“Has anyone put their name in yet?” Hermione asked Ginny.
The girl was wearing a plum-purple ‘G’ sweater, Molly Weasley’s handiwork, and ratty corduroy pants. She yawned and shoveled sleep-tangled hair out of her face. “Everyone from Durmstrang. They got up in a line and did it earlier this morning. And from Beauxbatons, there were these two boys with weasel familiars, and this one tiny girl—”
“Fascinating, don’t care,” said Draco. “Who from Hogwarts?”
“Angelina just did,” she said, indicating where the tall chaser leaned against the wall, chatting with Fred. She had done her hair in a different kind of braids this year, and was surrounded by a small hemisphere of worshipful Gryffindor underclassmen, who venerated her for her quidditch skills and the mere prize of being older. “She’s got the best chance, I reckon.”
He sized her up. Angelina had the advantages of height, strength, and athletic build, which would help her in physical challenges, and certainly any that involved flying. Anyway, she was friendly and ferociously competitive, frankly a much better sport than Oliver, but tolerated no nonsense and had an iron nerve. Everyone had thought she would make captain this year, now that Oliver was gone.
Her disadvantages, compared to these, were few: she lacked N.E.W.T.s in some of the thornier subjects, like Potions and Runes, which might come up as puzzles or challenges in the Tournament. She wasn’t a prefect — she was part of Fred and George’s gang of friends, so effectively disqualified, anyway — and aside from quidditch, she hadn’t set herself apart as a student. She wasn’t like Katie, who had a reputation for dressing wild and acting wilder; she was cool, competent, and wonderful at minding her own business, which in Draco’s book was a cardinal virtue, but it meant not many people outside of Gryffindor knew her. Still, the Goblet wasn’t a popularity contest.
“If it’s her versus Warrington, I think she’ll win,” said Hermione. “Fred says she’s top of her class in Charms.”
“God, I hope it’s not Warrington,” said Ginny. “Imagine wearing green. I think I’d root for Durmstrang, wouldn’t you?”
They fetched toast and tea and milled around watching students try their hand. A few more tried to cross the age line, without success, but by the time the hour bell tolled noon the only student to rival Angelina or Warrington was a Ravenclaw named Rogier Davies, the quidditch captain, a man with nearly as many acolytes as Oliver Wood. With him was Cho Chang, who spotted Harry across the hall and — Ron groaned — walked quickly over to talk to him.
“Hiya, Harry! Gosh, you look like you didn’t sleep at all!”
Harry politely snorted some of his tea back into his mug and smiled blearily. “Potions essay,” he said, at which Draco choked, because the liar had never lost sleep over Potions in his life. He’d been up scheming to get Krum’s autograph with Ron.
“Wow! Boring!” said Cho. “I dunnae how you did homework after last night! Viktor Krum, Harry! I spent like an hour trying to figure out how to corner him without the entourage. I’m gonna get him to tell me how he did that Pincer move, if I have to hunt him down with a dart gun, I am toh-ta-lly serious.”
“That’s brilliant,” said Harry, sounding concussed.
“Aren’t you in Ravenclaw?” Ginny said irritably. “Aren’t you supposed to like homework?”
Cho shrugged at her, guileless as a clear lake. “I dunno. We’re not like, the House of the Honor Roll. I’m just pure curious about things, I guess. I get mad into them, I’ll read three books in a day, but put me in class an’ I can’t focus for piss. I’m about quidditch, now,” she added, “but as a tyke, it was football and rugby. Mum’s a muggle, she played as a kid.”
“Wicked,” said Harry breathlessly.
Ginny’s face was pinching into an ever-tighter knot. She glowered at Cho as if she had been caught red-handed in the murder act, and at Harry for aiding and abetting it, but unfortunately, neither of them seemed to notice, having drifted into their own universe of chatter about quidditch plays.
“Doesn’t Cedric look handsome today, Hermione?” she announced, as if she wished all of Ravenclaw Tower to know about it.
Hermione looked like a startled deer.
“I… suppose? He’s, er… not really my type.”
“Your ‘type’?” What was her ‘type’ supposed to be, anyway? Besides leatherbound and Harvard style?
“I — not really — I obviously haven’t a lot of experience,” she said, turning pink.
“Have you any experience?”
Ginny mowed them both down on her warpath. “He’s terribly pretty, isn’t he? His hair’s perfect, like you said. It’s all neat,” she said, hitting her consonants percussively, “and well-combed.”
“You said his hair was perfect?”
Hermione was wringing the handle of her bag like it was Ginny’s neck. “I said ‘pretty,’ I didn’t say ‘perfect,’ and so what?” she said hotly. “Objectively speaking, it is—”
“‘Objectively speaking’? Do you fancy Cedric Diggory?”
“Not him, just his hair,” snapped Ginny, who was rapidly liquidating every token of his goodwill she had ever earned. “A lot of girls like a man who knows how to BRUSH HIS HAIR!”
Harry, hearing not her words but her tone, glanced over in bemusement and faint concern, and noticed Hermione’s mounting distress. “Hermione?” he called. “You alright?”
“She’s fine,” said Draco shortly.
“She’s wonderful,” snarled Ginny.
“I’m not involved in this,” Hermione said shrilly. “I was never involved in this. I will never be involved in this! I have no idea how I became involved in this! I hate all of you.”
She hadn’t said she didn’t fancy him.
Draco stared at Cedric Diggory, trying to see what was so bloody magnificent about him, and concluded little except that it would be remarkably easy to hit him in his tiny smug mouth.
Cedric himself stood among a group of his friends, toeing the age line. Draco watched through slitted eyes as he pulled a slip of parchment from his pocket. He walked right up to the Goblet, and his fingers passed harmlessly through the fire, which licked cheerfully at his wrist as if it were a mere light show.
He took a deep breath, opened his hand, and the parchment was lost to the blue flames.
“Lord, I hope it’s not Hufflepuff,” Cho murmured to Harry, while a few of the onlookers clapped for Cedric. “God bless an’ all, but all the same.”
Speak of the boggart. Out of the Slytherins milling around by the door stepped Gregory Goyle, who pointed at Cedric as he stepped down from the plinth: “What’s he going to do? Cuddle the other schools to death?”
“Don’t be silly, Greg,” said Marcus Flint. “He’d show them some Hufflepuff hospitality. Like: you turn around, bend over, and give ’em a real welcome.”
He demonstrated. There were shrieks and jeers from the Slytherin table. Cedric turned on his heel to face him, calmly, his hands in his pockets.
Harry bristled. “Oi,” he began, stepping forward — several of the Hufflepuffs had already drawn their wands — but Cedric smiled at Flint and cocked his head to the side, like he was speaking in a dialect he couldn’t quite understand.
“That’s not very sporting, Flint. We’re all in this together. One school, one champion.”
“Warrington’s our champion,” drawled Flint. “It’s an embarrassment he’s got to even compete with you. He’s going to be Minister someday, and you can’t even walk into a room without embarrassing us. I’m not letting you stand for me against Durmstrang, that’s for bloody sure.”
“Sounds like your mind’s made up,” said Cedric calmly, “so I won’t bother arguing. And I’m sorry to embarrass you, Marcus, but if my appearance bothers you that much, you’re free to divert your attention elsewhere. I didn’t realize it was so hard for you to look away.”
Some of the Hufflepuffs giggled. Flint’s lip curled.
“Shut up, you poofter.”
“You shut up!” Hannah Abbott, a girl he knew only for having the softest voice he’d ever heard, ripped out her wand and pointed it at Flint. “You’re a bully. Cedric’s worth ten of you.”
“Ooh, a bully. Am I mean? Did I hurt your feewings?”
“Langlock!” she shrieked. Flint dove sideways onto the table. He landed in the potatoes and knocked over a decanter of pumpkin juice, drenching his shirt.
Chaos erupted at the Slytherin table. Terrence Higgs and Adrian Pucey both shot jinxes back at Hannah, while Goyle simply lunged over the table. Hannah, who was generously speaking one-fourth his size, screamed and scrambled back, but before things could spiral any further, Cedric stepped between them and whisked his wand.
A shimmering translucent shield erupted between the Hufflepuffs and the Slytherins. Goyle knocked his head against it and tumbled back, rubbing his cranium.
“That’s enough,” Cedric snapped. “Ten points from Slytherin for verbal harassment, and language unbefitting a Hogwarts student. Ten points from Hufflepuff for improper use of magic.”
“What? Ced!”
“No exceptions. Hannah, go back to the table, I’m disappointed.”
Hannah trudged away, distraught. Cedric urged the other Hufflepuffs away with another wave of his hand, and shooting an unhappy look over his shoulder at Flint, he shepherded them out of the Great Hall.
“At least he’s fair,” murmured Hermione. The suggestion of violence still vibrated uneasily in the air, and as the Shield Charm flickered out, a susurrus swept over the hall. “I wouldn’t have taken points from Hannah for that, she was clearly provoked.”
“Fair, nothing. He was protecting Abbott. Otherwise, they’d have reported her.”
“Hm. That’s shaping up to be a nasty little gang,” she said. “I’d keep a close eye on them.”
He watched Goyle haul Flint off the table, scattering fruit rinds and pumpkin juice. The pack of Slytherins grumbled and bumped into each other with the brotherly violence of bulls. He hadn’t liked the way Flint spoke to Cedric — oh, it was only words, the sort of teasing that might happen anywhere, but it was the kind of teasing that hid the suggestion of what might have happened if there hadn’t been anyone watching. Of what might have happened to Cedric in an empty room.
“Not too close,” he murmured. Something hard turned over in his stomach at the idea of Flint looking that way at Hermione, or any other way, ever, at all.
On the Saturday before Halloween, Draco donned his nicest wool robe, threw some gel in his hair, and joined a throng of students in winter cloaks on their way to Hogsmeade. Frost crunched under his boots, and the crumbling leaves of autumn broke into brown shards underfoot. His breath turned shock-white in the air.
He was joined by Harry and Ron. Hermione bobbed behind them, her nose deep in a book about the Goblin Revolutions. Draco, having precious little social capital to spend ever since their quarrel over the muggle-born issue, didn’t dare remark on it, even when she almost tripped into a lamppost. While Harry and Ron guffawed, he suffered in silence. Noblesse oblige.
Emerging from Honeydukes an hour later with a bag of chocolate cream puffs, they strolled down Main Street, peering in shop windows. Hogsmeade was fuller than usual with Tournament spectators, as well as students from other schools: for every two or three black-robed Hogwarts students, there was a mantle of Durmstrang fur. A trio of Beauxbatons girls in blue silk capelets huddled excitedly outside the door of Zonko’s, pointing and giggling.
“When the four founders started Hogwarts, they meant it as a school for wizards everywhere.”
They were waiting outside Sprintwitches Sporting Needs. Draco leaned against the window, nursing a Peppermint Wand from Honeydukes, and Ron was idly playing catch with Harry’s pocket snitch. Meanwhile, Hermione was enthusiastically indulging in her favorite hobby, which was to explain things.
“That’s why they built it next to Hogsmeade, a wizarding settlement, so they wouldn’t have to hide. But couldn’t have known how many wizards were really out there — we know from historical documents that they thought there were only a few hundred wizards in the world. And all of them in Europe! How small-minded can you possibly be? Anyway, when everyone came out of the Middle Ages and they realized how many there were, it became obvious you couldn’t have one school for a whole continent, I mean really, there are ten in China alone, and there used to be three or four in Russia, before the Bolsheviks — so a bunch of wizards from France split off and started a movement for their own school—”
“While their monarch was otherwise preoccupied clobbering the Huguenots,” said Draco, rotating his Peppermint Wand for another angle of attack. “A bleak time for French nationalism. Vive la revolución.”
“Regrettable!” said Hermione, brightly, of the massacre of thousands. “But the founders of Beauxbatons were aligned with the crown. Or at least Bagshot thinks they were. It’s hard to explain where they got the money from, otherwise, and the revolutionaries certainly weren’t kind to them — apparently the château was burned down four times. Oh, there you are, Harry. Did you get whatever it was you wanted?”
Harry grinned guiltily. He held a giant Sprintwitches bag behind his back, as if they couldn’t see it bulging around his hips. “Yeah, and a few other things.”
“I don’t think ‘few’ means whatever you think it means,” said Draco.
“Aw, but they had these new waterproof transition goggles! Which I need! Kind of. Probably. Oh, and Cho said she bought the new Firebolt scope that you can clip on your broomstick to calculate distances at speed, so you can do all these cool dives without worrying about velocity? She said it was the best hundred galleons she’d ever spent, seriously, crossed her hearts.”
“Oh, good, she’s rich, too,” said Ron briskly, standing up. “Maybe I can have your dowry, when you two get married, then.”
In the hierarchy of things not to be touched, this ranked supreme. Draco could point at it with a ten-foot pole and the pole’s shadow would not grace the very edge of it, for that was how far, exactly, he was from touching it. Harry didn’t, either, which showed three years of Draco’s company had managed to rub off at least a thin shedding of tact.
Ron’s feelings were more painful because they were obvious, as were his attempts to quell them, a child ripping fruitlessly at his own scabs. Everything about Hogwarts was grand and therefore subtly not meant for him, the robes and the books and the expensive supplies, the shops with sky-high markups at the end of the lane, posh traditions and sports where the best players bought their own gear, the secret pureblood rooms in which he, despite a Prewett pedigree, would never find himself welcome. Most of that wasn’t magic, it was money, the second lifeblood of the wizarding world, the substance that did whatever magic couldn’t.
Harry had inherited a third-generation fortune; Hermione’s parents were well-paid Healers and lived in a suburb; Draco went without saying. What waited for Ron when he came home? A ratty attic bedroom full of secondhand everything? A house full of bigger, brighter, louder children than him?
“Weasley,” he began.
“Shut up,” said Ron evenly. “I’m serious, mate. Keep your head down.”
Twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week, he wouldn’t take that comment from Ron or anyone else breathing; but this was hour twenty-four, and he let it slip between his fingers without retort.
The Three Broomsticks was packed to the ears and people came by to say hello, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, Katie Bell and George Weasley, the trio of Ginny, Neville, and a small blonde Ravenclaw Draco didn’t recognize — and meanwhile, high-collared students from Durmstrang peered with steely eyes from the bar, while Beauxbatons students flounced through crowds as though they didn’t understand why everyone was standing in their way. Fed up with being the magizoo exhibit, Draco lifted his stein at one Beauxbatons student who’d been staring at them for a while, who squeaked and burrowed back into her friends. Unfortunately, after a moment’s furious discussion, they turned and crossed the pub to Draco’s table.
One of them was tall and thin and pale like a dehydrated cornstalk. The shorter two were younger and earlier-on in their processes of dehydration, still flushed in the face and animated when they spoke.
“Allo!” said a short one. “You are ’Arry Potter, oui?” She zigzagged her finger over her forehead.
Harry smiled thinly.
“You are! You are!” She whirled on the second. “Je te l’ai dit! Combien y a-t-il de jolis garçons avec une putain de cicatrice éclair?”
Draco snickered.
The second hopped up and down. “Do you… can you…” She turned to her friend, traded mutters, and then waved her pinched fingers through the air. “Signature?”
“Sure,” he said uncomfortably, fumbling for his pockets. “I can do that. Um, who’d you like it made out to?”
Hermione gave a deeply skeptical snort. Ron had slouched so low his eyebrows were on a level with the coasters.
The second glowed with pleasure. “Thank you, ’Arry Potter,” she said, curling her tongue slowly around each word. “Plees make eet for Gabrielle Delacour.” She smiled, the full bellows of her dimples swelling with life.
“Ai! Gabby! Et un pour moi!”
“And Monique! And Monique.”
“Gabby… and… Monique. Er — ‘have a nice day.’ There you are,” said Harry, handing them his napkin. It bore four lines of bleeding ink, an almost unrecognizable scrawl, and a butterbeer stain. Gabrielle clasped it like a bridal veil. “Have a good one, you lot.”
Apparently, the subtext of ‘thanks, get lost’ didn’t translate to French. The girls lingered at the table, even as Ron approached subterranean levels and Hermione’s little condescending throat-clearings threatened to broach the Richter scale. Gabrielle pointed at Draco’s tie. “Your tie,” she said. “You are: Gryffon-d’or?”
“Non, non,” hissed Monique. “Le jaune est pour Poufsoffle.”
“Je sais de quoi je parle! Harry Potter est un Gryffon-d’or!”
Draco decided to liberate them from doubt.
“He’s not,” he said to the girls in French. “In fact he’s a squib, and we only let him hang around because we like him. Don’t tell him, though, it’s his only reason for living.”
The girls fell silent. Monique gave a short gasp of betrayal.
“Parlez-vous français?” said the tallest, speaking at last, with a glimmer of interest. “Pourquoi n’as-tu rien dit plus tôt?”
He shrugged. “C’était marrant.”
A smile twisted her lips. It woke a sly, lazy cunning in her face, like a snake stirring to life. Her eyes took a leisurely vacation down from his face, and made no rush in returning. “Oui,” she said. “Clever boy.”
It was hard not to preen, but nobly, he managed. “So they tell me.”
“You may like to come see our carriage,” she said, still in French. “We do not let the students of École de Poudlard inside. But you will fit in with us, I think. And it is most magnificent.”
At first he thought he’d heard the word incorrectly. “Chariot? Vous voulez dire le véhicule?”
“Oui,” she said simply. Her mouth made the word in the shape of a kiss. Her eyes glowed with a lazy sort of interest, like an auror at the door of the most satisfying interrogation of her life. “We sleep there,” she said, in English.
Having dropped that on the table to fester, she sauntered off. The other two followed her in peals of insensate giggles. One fluttered her fingers over her shoulder at Harry.
Draco identified a great constellation of stains on the ceiling, and began composing an astronomical chart.
“So,” said Ron, from beneath the table. “Here’s the situation. I’m going to flip a sickle, and if it’s heads, I kill myself. If it’s tails, I kill you —”
Harry switched his empty glass for Ron’s full one while his head was submerged. “Are you talking to me, or Draco?”
“Both!”
Hermione stared at Draco with the perfect silence of a stalking predator. He glanced at her and lifted one eyebrow in a wordless question.
“I didn’t know you spoke French,” she said, in a constricted voice.
“Of course I do. It’s part of any complete primary curriculum. French, Latin, Greek, etiquette, dancing—”
“Latin makes sense. Latin is relevant for spellcasting. But what, pray tell, may I ask, is supposed to be the use of French? Besides fielding inquiries from blonde lampposts?”
“Hell if I know. I didn’t choose it. When I was seven, my mother handed me a textbook and didn’t talk to me in English for a month.”
“I suppose it’s come in very handy,” she said coolly.
“…Which means what, exactly?”
She flashed a meaningful look at him. He gestured in bold frustration. Then a sly smile curled the corner of her mouth.
“‘You know, we sleep there,’” she said breathily, in a very ungenerous dramatic interpretation.
He ignored the odd twitch that the hairs on his neck gave at the sound of her voice. “Shut up.”
“‘Ooh la la! Do you vant to see my carriage? It is soooo nice.’”
“That’s — don’t be ridiculous. She didn’t sound like that.”
Harry dropped his chin into his palm, grinning like a phooka. “‘Ooh, Monsieur Malfoy, talk French to me.’”
“You’re so good at it.”
“I could talk to you all night…”
He tripped and nearly tumbled to the floor in his haste to get out of the booth. He could light a match against the skin of his face. “I beg your pardon, I hadn’t realized I sat here by mistake. I meant to sit with my fellow fourth years, and yet somehow I’ve found myself up to my arse in ten-year-olds.”
“Monsieur Malfoy! Monsieur Malfoy! ’Ow do you say ‘bedroom eyes’ in Eengleesh?”
“Are ze mattresses as comfortable in Britain as zey are in France?”
Mockery piled on at the rate of avalanche. Ron made a double-entendre about carriage horses that made Harry spit up his butterbeer and Hermione bury her face in her hands, shrieking, and Draco was so violently appalled that he made a vow of silence against him on the spot.
When they hiked back to the castle, boots crunching through the shadowy frosted woods, they were still giggling about it, and he’d very nearly recovered enough of his dignity to start speaking to them again.
The silvery days of October slid out like beads of dew on a spiderweb, distended. It seemed that Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had been among them for months, not weeks, wandering around the castle’s labyrinths like overlarge first years and shouldering in at House tables during meals. All spoke English, some less perfectly than others, although some carried pocket dictionaries like the last life raft on the Titanic, and some stayed silent. Mingling was encouraged but rare. The Durmstrang students kept to themselves, and the Beauxbatons students, though friendlier, treated everything with a general haughtiness that made it clear they had meant to come as conquerors, not as comrades.
On Halloween, the Great Hall filled with orange garlands and flocks of enchanted bats, and pumpkins the size of hippogriffs were rolled up from Hagrid’s hut to service the roiling kitchens. The feast was three times as grand as usual, towers of roast goose and dripping chocolate fountains, deep cauldrons of pumpkin pie, buttery toasted apple crisps in tins like upturned shields, flagons of spiced cider and mulled wine wafted foisted aromatics amidst the scent of woodsmoke and candles and burning leaves. But all this was scarfed down impatiently, or left untouched by the impatient hordes, for the Goblet of Fire had been moved from its resting place, and now stood in front of Dumbledore’s chair. For once, Hermione ate the most of any of them, spooning pumpkin bisque methodically into her mouth while she devoured with gusto a book on the muggle witch-hunts, inured to the collective anxiety of waiting for Dumbledore’s announcement.
When the feast ended, Dumbledore rose to his feet. The champions’ instructions were simple: when the Goblet called their names, they would rise, be applauded, and go into the staff chamber behind him.
He flicked his wand. The pumpkin jack-o-lanterns swallowed their light, and the Great Hall plunged into darkness, lit only by the sparkle of enchanted stars above. Hermione lifted her head from her book, nose wrinkled in displeasure.
“All together, everyone,” muttered Ron. “Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin.”
The flames from the Goblet of Fire cast a blue beacon on the stone floor around it, and made Dumbledore’s face shine with a ghostly pallor as he approached the chalice. From the faculty table, Mad-Eye Moody’s glass eye swiveled across the hall. Barty Crouch yawned.
An apprehensive stillness fell. Angelina’s knuckles were white on the table, and she was squeezing Fred’s shoulder so hard Draco could practically hear the bones crack. Fred patted her hand.
At the Slytherin table, Cassius Warrington sat rigidly upright, unblinking. Cedric Diggory was casually stirring his coffee.
Dumbledore cleared his throat and offered his hand. The flames turned bright red, and a piece of charred paper leapt from the ashes, flying high in the air and twirling to a graceful rest in his upturned palm.
“From Beauxbatons Academy,” said Dumbledore clearly, “the champion is Fleur Delacour.”
A willowy girl with flaxen hair, a hawk-nose, and a strikingly pretty face peeled herself away from a cheering group of girls and swanned up to the table. She had a lilting dancer’s step, as if she were more used to skating or gliding than having to walk.
“She’s rather small, isn’t she?” said Hermione dubiously. “I’ve seen bigger ballerinas. I hope she’s up to it.” She caught Draco’s look and flushed. “I’m just saying,” she said quickly.
Fleur’s fellow Beauxbatons students seemed to be of the same opinion. Several shot her nasty glares as she stepped up to shake Dumbledore’s hand. One of them even groaned. At a sharp cough from Madime Maxime, however, they sat up and applauded with fervor.
Each of the heads of school shook Fleur’s hand in turn. Dipping a graceful curtsy in the direction of the assembled students, she turned with a swish of her skirt and disappeared into the back room.
The clapping died down. The Goblet turned red again, and another piece of parchment spiraled from the ashes, lifted as if carried up on fingers of flame. This time, Dumbledore had to leap, and caught it deftly in mid-air.
“Spry for his age, inne?” remarked Ron.
“From the Durmstrang Institute,” he read, “the champion is Viktor Krum.”
A storm of applause and cheering swept the Hall. In contrast to Beauxbatons, no one from Durmstrang seemed remotely surprised, and applauded with good sportsmanship. Viktor Krum slouched up toward Dumbledore, in his trudging, ungainly bird-step; up close, it was striking how the pictures exaggerated his features, for he could have been an altogether normal boy.
Krum shook Dumbledore’s hand without much enthusiasm. He didn’t even look Crouch in the eye. Professor Karkaroff was the only one he acknowledged, and the man leaned in to whisper something in Krum’s ear; Krum paused, nodded, and followed Fleur into the antechamber.
Hermione elbowed Draco, who returned the move with the slightest twitch of his head. In their own code, it meant: Well, isn’t that interesting?
“It’s strange that the Goblet chose him, he’s only a quidditch player,” she whispered. “Will the challenges be athletic? But Fleur was so tiny… I suppose he must be good at something besides flying, mustn’t he?”
Draco did not have time to give this as much thought as he would’ve liked, because the Goblet of Fire had turned red once more. This time, it was violent, almost vindictive, when it spat out the piece of paper. The flames churned and snapped, threatening to spill over the ledge. A scrap of parchment with ragged edges soared high in the air, and it was a long time before it sank within reach of Dumbledore’s long fingers.
He caught it, and stared at the parchment.
Whispers flew. Draco glanced leewards, and found Hermione agape with confusion and alarm.
For reasons that escaped his understanding, Draco found himself on the edge of his seat. There were whispers at the Gryffindor table, up and down the aisles, various names chanted like incantations. The tension frayed.
Dumbledore cleared his throat with a short, staccato sound. “From Hogwarts, the champion is Cassius Warrington. Congratulations.” He folded the paper into his pocket and removed his glasses to polish them.
The tension snapped, and suddenly he missed it. What followed was worse.
He had never heard Slytherin go wild before. Even its celebrations of victory in the House Cup were nothing next to the riot of roars and applause that surrounded Cassius Warrington, a grinning, golden-haired boy of seventeen, as he wrestled free of his peers’ embrace and staggered up to the dais, smoothing the immaculate lapels of his cloak. Twice, someone hauled him back to pump his hand or ruffle his hair. Draco sought Theo across the hall, met his eyes, and found him sitting apart from the riot, smiling slightly to himself. There was something thin in his smile, though, and the way he and Pansy remained seated, with almost bizarre decorum, while the rest of the house exploded in triumph.
Ravenclaw applauded politely. Hufflepuff, particularly the section seated around or near Cedric Diggory, gave a few half-hearted cheers, but Gryffindor descended into a depressed silence from which it seemed unlikely that, say, Fred Weasley, would ever return.
“Not a Slytherin.” He had pillowed his head in his arms, and was groaning, while George rubbed sympathetic circles on his back. “Whole bloody student body, and it had to be a Slytherin. We gave up Quidditch for this?” Angelina, meanwhile, was receiving an array of whispered comforts from the girls, many of whom were inventing new ways to describe Warrington’s appearance and desirability with such spontaneous creative license it should have earned them the Booker.
It was some time before Dumbledore could make himself heard over the tumult. “Very good! Thank you!” he cried. “A fine selection! Three fine champions! Prepared to undertake… to undertake…”
He trailed off. The light in the hall had changed again from blue to red, for the Goblet of Fire was stirring a fourth time. A ripple of shock quelled the cheers from Slytherin’s table, like a water drowning a bonfire, issuing only the guttering smoke of whispers.
Dumbledore glanced at the slip of paper and cocked his head. The silence dwindled on to the point of awkwardness, then misgiving, then deep foreboding.
“From Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—” And he became silent again, gazing deeply at the paper.
“Maybe it changed its mind,” said George hopefully.
There was a screech of chairs. Crouch came hurrying down from the teacher’s table and plucked the paper from Dumbledore’s hand. He squinted at it, adjusted his glasses, and then lifted a clear, distant gaze to the Gryffindor Table.
He said, “And from Hogwarts — Harry Potter.”
Draco, along with the rest of the hall, swung his head around to stare at the fourth champion. He had a strange sense he was dreaming.
Harry didn’t move.
This was not a figure of speech. By all appearances, there was zero activity happening above or below his cranium. Hermione lurched out and seized Harry’s wrist, as if trying to hold him there, but she needn’t have bothered. The boy was stone still.
The rest of Gryffindor also burst into merry, if confused, applause. This was gratifying but useless, as it made it harder for Harry to pry himself free. When at last he did, he stumbled up to the staff table on sluggish feet, as if wading through muddy water.
Professor Karkaroff had swept over to Dumbledore and was whispering urgently in his ear. Madame Maxime was berating Crouch in spirited tones, but Crouch appeared not to hear her. Crouch had eyes only for Harry, who approached him on leaden feet.
Hundreds and hundreds of eyes rested on his shoulders, very few of them fond.
He stopped in front of Dumbledore, and waited.
“Well, in you go,” Dumbledore said, after a moment. He did not shake Harry’s hand. Neither did Professor Karkaroff.
Harry trudged into the antechamber. Maxime, Karkaroff, and Crouch followed him. Dumbledore hesitated, bid the Great Hall a somewhat cursory goodnight, and then swept in after them.
McGonagall rose to take control of the Great Hall, but it soon became clear this was impossible. The noise that erupted would take more Silencing Charms than the whole faculty could muster together.
Hermione was breezing through the early stages of hyperventilation.
“They won’t let him compete.” Draco’s knuckles were white on his knife-hilt. He spoke to himself as much as her. “There’s no way they’ll let him compete.”
“He’s fourteen,” Ron mumbled. “How the hell…? He’s my age. We’re the same.” He swept around to Fred, and his tone was furious. “Did you tossers figure out how to cross the age line without telling me?”
“No,” George said, stunned. “We didn’t. Couldn’t crack it.”
“You swear? You didn’t help him? Or put his name in for him,” Ron was shrill, “or — something like that?”
“Why would we?” said George irritably.
“Because you thought he’d have a better chance than me!”
“Blimey, the bar’s on the floor,” said Fred. “We’d have had to put in all of Gryffindor Tower.”
All around them, students were yelling, chants of ‘Warrington’ and ‘Potter,’ meanwhile the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students clamored of unfair play. He agreed with them. Two champions wasn’t fair, it wasn’t proper. It doubled Hogwarts’ chances. The other headmasters would never stand for it. Neither would the Ministry.
Hermione doubtlessly understood it, too, but that didn’t change her expression at all. Her face was marble-rigid and twice as pale.
“They won’t let him compete,” he repeated.
“And what if he does?”
“Then he’ll be alright. He’s not going to die. That won’t happen.” A small tightening happened in his stomach, like a pang of indigestion. She was terrified for Harry, almost beside herself for him. Part of his brain lifted its head from slumber, revealing a shockingly nasty face, and said: What if it was you?
She was acting like Harry would be dragged out and shot at dawn. She cared an awful lot about him, didn’t she? Would she have been on the verge of tears if it’d been him walking into that room?
He let go of her arm. She wrapped her arms around herself and nibbled furiously on the skin of her thumb.
The party in Gryffindor Tower raged for an hour before Harry showed up. Fred and George, performing admirably on short notice, broke open the bottles they’d saved for Angelina’s celebration and charmed the name on the banner to read ‘POTTER’ instead of ‘JOHNSON,’ only the enchantment wore down when both of them got plastered and ended up flicking on and off between ‘JOHNSTER’ and ‘POTTON.’ Ron was nowhere to be found. Draco and Hermione found armchairs in the back of the common room and camped out, waiting for Harry to come back, which happened when most of Gryffindor was already three drinks deep and nowhere near stopping.
When the shell-shocked boy came stumbling through the portrait-door, the roar almost scared him back into the hallway.
“S’him!” bellowed George. “Boy wonder! Fourteen!”
“A Gryffindor champion! FOR HOGWARTS!”
“FOR HOGWARTS!”
“Want some food? We’ve got some!”
“Butterbeer, Harry? Peanuts?”
“Tell us how you did it! Tell us how you outsmarted ’em!”
“I didn’t,” Harry shouted. He cringed away from the shouting. “I don’t know how—”
Draco, fed up and sore in the ears, rolled to his feet and pulled out his wand.
“Diffindo.”
The blast rocketed into the air and shattered a bulb on the chandelier, sending shrieks and good-natured hollers among the partygoers, who assumed it was part of the fun. In the noise-dimmed aftermath he cast a Movement Charm and stalked through the crowd, seizing Harry’s arm, and towed him over to the boys’ staircase.
“As you were,” he snapped, and bundled Harry up the stairs. Hermione hurried up after them.
On the way down, they bumped into Colin Creevey, who gasped and hit the shutter on his camera before any could object. The flash momentarily blinded the three of them.
“That’s it,” Draco snarled, and threw Harry off-handedly at Hermione, who caught him. He whisked out his wand. “I’ve had enough of this—”
“Oh, Draco, don’t—”
“Levicorpus.”
Colin was whisked into the air, warbling in fear, and Draco stalked up the stairs under his dangling body. He slashed a counter-jinx over his shoulder, and there was a great THUMP as Colin went tumbling back down to earth.
“Colin! Draco, really, he might have been hurt—”
“Should’ve gotten out of the way, then.”
“I don’t remember Flitwick teaching that jinx,” said Harry distantly, in dissociative tones.
“Didn’t. Learned it from a book. In here.”
He kicked open the door to the fourth-years’ room and found it empty except for Ron, who was sitting with his knees up on his bed. At the sight of them he scrambled to his feet, and Hermione slammed the door firmly behind them, murmuring, “Colloportus.”
Harry was wrestling off the Gryffindor banner that Lee Jordan had tied around his shoulders. Draco, too tired to watch him struggle, flicked a Disintegrating Jinx at the knot, and it drooped to his ankles.
“So,” he said, after a moment. “I… I have to compete.”
Hermione’s hands flew over her mouth. Draco let out a short gutpunch of a breath and rubbed his jaw.
“Dumbledore argued for me. He said I couldn’t consent, I wasn’t… of age. He was really… really angry. I’ve never seen him so — but Crouch said, if the Goblet made a decision — I was supposed to compete. And — and if I didn’t, Hogwarts would be disqualified for tampering. Which he couldn’t — wouldn’t — allow. The Ministry wouldn’t. Allow it. He said.”
Ron blinked. “Oh,” he said. He wore an unpleasant, anemic cousin to a smile. “Well… congratulations.”
“I begged to get out of it,” he said hollowly.
“What?” said Ron. “Why?”
If not for the shield of his glasses, Harry’s eyes would have popped out of his skull.
“Because I could DIE!” he shouted. “Because I could get KILLED! Because I wanted a QUIET YEAR for once! D’you think I fancy dodging death at every corner? You think I like getting chased and jinxed and kicked around? Giant spiders and Death Eaters and dementors — wow, fun! D’you know what I wanted to do this year, Ron? I wanted to join the GOBSTONES TEAM!”
Ron was almost bowled over onto the bed. Harry had never shouted like that before. Draco was glad to know the kid had it in him.
“Blimey!” Ron snapped. “Fine, then! Why’d you put your name in, if you’re so miserable about it?”
“I DIDN’T!”
“Honestly, Ron, when would he?” said Hermione acidly. “You’re with him day and night—”
“EXACTLY!”
“I dunno! He might’ve used the Cloak!”
“THE CLOAK?”
“For an Age Line?” drawled Draco. “Do you age three years when you’re invisible?”
“Or something else!” said Ron, defensive, but also relieved. “I don’t know! Maybe you paid off someone to do it for you!”
“PAID OFF?!”
There was a crash: Harry had kicked over his nightstand.
Ron leapt out of his bed, his hands aloft in pacifying formation. “Mate. I’m sorry. I didn’t— ha, er, I didn’t think— I thought you might’ve kept it a secret or something.”
Harry whirled. His hair, never tidy at the best of times, had reached new Lovecraftian orders of tangle. “I could die,” he said, raggedly, “and you’re worried — what, that you wouldn’t get to share the glory?”
“You’re not going to die,” said Draco shortly. Hermione was standing in a rictus of fright, absolutely going to town on her thumbnail.
“Exactly. I was being stupid,” said Ron calmly. He grabbed Harry’s shoulders — Harry lurched at him as if to swing, and then gave a wheeze, collapsing at the last moment — and hauled him into a hug. Harry melted into it as if it was his first glimpse of home in years. “Go easy on me, mate. I get stupid sometimes. So do you.”
“You can say that again,” said Harry thickly.
“Alright. Earned that one.”
Draco straightened and jerked his head at Hermione. The boys deserved a moment, and he needed to speak to her alone.
They stepped out of the room. He threw a Muffling Charm over the narrow hallway above the stairwell, and then drew her aside, into an alcove under the sconces.
“Well, he’s done for,” he said casually.
“Don’t say that. Don’t you dare.”
“What? He is.” He nodded at the door. “He’s fourteen. The magic in the tournament is designed for adult wizards. There’s no way he’ll manage.”
“You might at least pretend to have a little faith,” she said hotly.
“That’s not what I mean at all, and you know it.” He paused. “We’re going to help him cheat.”
He expected a wail of lament at even suggesting this heresy against School Rules.
Instead, she tilted her head and offered a quizzical: “No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are.”
He had three arguments, an excuse, an appeal to emotion, and one very powerful expletive prepared to convince her. As it came out, he needed none of them.
“It’s not cheating,” she murmured, lifting her chin. There was a cunning flicker in her eyes. “It’s called collaborative learning.”
News! I made a Tumblr — @greenerteacups — if you prefer to get fic updates that way, or if you wanted to use the ask/messaging system there to reach out. It’s threadbare at the moment, because it’s brand new, but I thought it would be helpful to have conversations or answer questions that don’t fit in the AO3 comments section. Anyway!
-One of the consequences of being friends with Draco Malfoy for four years, especially if you happen to be a teenage criminal genius, is that things like “rules” end up meaning a lot less. Hermione Granger is officially Not Bothered by the rules of the magical world, especially dumb ones that endanger her friends. Some buildings need burning.
-This chapter comes with formal apologies to the House of Hufflepuff, and a sincere promise that they have not been forgotten. Rest assured that Cedric isn’t disappearing, he’s just going to be on a different journey. Certain plot elements are going to be a bit different, this time around.
-Fun fact, some of those French words come from the French translation of the Harry Potter, where Gryffindor is literally translated as “golden gryffin,” and Hufflepuff is “Poufsoffle.” Which is the cutest, really.
-Harry is that guy who goes into Dick’s Sporting Goods because he needs to buy fishhooks or something and walks out an hour later with two carts full of the most arcane weird sports tech known to mankind. He DOES have a fitbit, he DOES share his workouts, he DOES get the special dri-fit running jackets with the built-in reflector patches. Meanwhile, Ginny (the actual pro athlete) wears sweats.
Wishing a fresh, tasty cup of your favorite drink to everyone who commented! Perpetually amazed by the warm reception to this fic. Y’all are the best. Next chapter: “Norberta.”
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