Chapter 39: Norberta
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
“The way I see it, if the Ministry is going to throw the rules to the wind and make him compete, then Harry doesn’t owe them anything except that. Bare minimum. The rules about collaboration and doing it yourself — which are mostly implicit, I read the rulebook last night—”
“Naturally.”
“—include nothing about collaborative preparation, and for the Tasks themselves, the only rule is no one can accompany him into the arena. That’s it! Isn’t that ridiculous?” The text was summarily brandished aloft for its crimes against reason. “I can think of about ten loopholes off the top of my head!”
“Those rules were written in a pre-Granger era. I’m sure they thought ordinary swot-proofing would suffice.”
“Then they were wrong! And we’re going to prove it.”
“Do you know, when you start plotting,” he said calmly, stealing a triangle of toast, “you get the most astonishing maniacal gleam in your eye; it evokes something deadly and primordial. While fixed in it, one gets the unsettling thrill of thinking he is about to be set on fire.”
She lapsed into a thoughtful pause. “But that wouldn’t be any use,” she said, upon reflection. “I wouldn’t set you on fire; you’re being helpful.”
“I bet you say that to all the boys.”
True to form, Harry and Ron skated into breakfast when it had been so long that most dishes had disappeared, and left only a pittance of scrambled eggs and turkey bacon. Ron threw himself into it with the same aplomb as ever, while Harry had not the time to consume a wedge of toast before a snowy owl dive-bombed and stole it from him.
“Aw, Hedwig, no.”
“Your owl is a menace.” Ulysses offered his master a Daily Prophet speared on his claw.
“She can’t help it. She’s a good girl,” lied Harry, scratching the saucy bird’s head. “Anyway, I’m glad she’s come. I’ve got to send another letter to Moony and Padfoot.”
“Telling them about the Tournament?” said Ron, except it was strained through masticated eggs, so the actual utterance was a bespoke combination of vowels and gurgling. The fact that Draco understood it flawlessly delivered a crippling blow from which his dignity would never again recover.
“Yeah,” said Harry, who, even worse, didn’t seem to realize it wasn’t English. “This is from them, too… they’re telling me to hang on. They’re aiming to camp in Ireland,” he added, unhappily, “so they can be close without the Ministry finding them. I was right. I shouldn’t have said anything about my scar.”
Draco flicked a piece of scone at him.
“Ow!”
“Repeat after me. ‘I will not accept blame for the stupidity of others.’”
“‘I will not—’ hang on, they’re not stupid!”
“If you’re right, and they’re planning a return to Britain, then they are; if you’re not, you’re both blameless. Either way, the mantra is useful. I, personally, have made it my manifesto.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell him about the Tournament,” Harry said doubtfully.
Hermione rolled her eyes and cleared her throat. She continued clearing it, with increasing verve, while Harry drafted his reply on the back of some scratch paper.
“Why, Hermione. It sounds like you want to say something.”
“No, it’s just — Harry, I love you to pieces, but sometimes I wonder if you hear what you’re even saying.”
“Sort of hard to, actually, when someone’s coughing in my ear—”
“It’s the Triwizard Tournament! It’s hundreds of years old, it’s an international tradition, it’s the first tournament ever to feature two champions from one school, and one of them is Harry Potter! I’d be surprised if you’re not the front page of the Daily Prophet tomorrow!”
This blindsided him. “Me? You’re joking.”
“She’s not,” said Ron seriously. “I’m sorry, mate, it wasn’t a nightmare. You really are Harry Potter.”
“I — shut up. Fine, I’ll write to him. Hermione, can I borrow your owl?”
“Thucy? Please do, she needs the exercise—”
“As the individual who procured said animal, I would like to lodge an aesthetic objection to ‘Thucy,’” said Draco.
“Overruled — but why not Hedwig?”
“Told me not to. She stands out,” said Harry, standing up. “I’ll run this up to the Owlery— oof.”
He pivoted on his heel and almost plowed into Severus Snape.
Hard to say who of the group was most horrified about this. A real nailbiter, it was. Draco would cast a vote for himself.
“Mr. Potter,” said Snape, hitting consonants like he was chopping them for kindling. It was brutal. An elocutionary tableau. No vowels were spared.
“Professor Snape,” said Harry, somehow failing to shrivel up and evaporate under the immaculate coldness in Snape’s eyes.
“You. Are required. Upstairs.”
“What. Do you mean. By upstairs,” said Harry, slowly, and Draco would have followed the others in giggling if he hadn’t been reasonably certain he was about to watch a dear friend get decapitated. “This. Is a castle. Sir.”
Snape gave the thin shudder of one expending a decade’s accumulated patience at once.
“Mr. Crouch… requests… all champions… to report to the faculty lounge.”
“Oh. Okay. Can I stop by the Owlery f—”
“Now.”
“Right, yeah, yep, sure, that’s what I thought.”
With a grimace and a wave, Harry shot off, making the kind of time you’d expect for someone with his back to an armed and scowling Severus Snape.
“Draco.”
Draco lifted his head slowly, like Snape might forget about him in the time it took to make eye contact. It was a misbegotten hope.
“With me,” he said curtly, and left.
He had about four seconds of scrambling before Snape was out of sight, and filled these with a muttered goodbye to Hermione and Ron, who watched him depart with the same mystified stare they’d given Harry. Then he trailed his godfather down a fractal of orthogonal hallways traversing a wing’s worth of distance from the Great Hall, including several sharp turns through a hidden alcove or passageway, until anyone following them would have had to either teleport or sit down and cry; and only then did Snape stop and fold them both into the alcove of a window overlooking the lake.
“Professor—”
“Silence. I have a letter from your mother.”
“You’ve seen her? How is she?”
“If she required me to tell you, I imagine she would not have gone to the work of writing a letter.”
Sometimes, on blue moons, when the stars fell into geometric perfections overhead, and the spirits of earth and sky conspired to incline the affairs of mortal men, Severus Snape woke up in a good temper. This was not one of those occasions.
The letter changed hands. He checked the unbroken crest and then made to open it. A sudden grip to his shoulder startled him out of it.
“How did Harry Potter put his name in the Goblet of Fire?”
Slurred in a harsh fast whisper, Draco was almost sure he’d misheard him. When he processed it, he still wasn’t sure.
“He… didn’t, sir.”
“Don’t lie to me,” snarled Snape, stepping forward. He didn’t have so much height on Draco as he used to, but he didn’t need it. A man who could take down a ravenous werewolf with nothing but his wits and three wandstrokes was not the type who needed height to invoke the fear of God. “You two are always lurking together. You must have known it, if you did not see it. He would have confided in you.”
“I don’t — well, firstly — I mean, he would’ve,” said Draco, faintly flattered in the part of his gut that wasn’t scared fit to pee, “but he didn’t. Put his name in, that is. Potter doesn’t want to be champion.”
“Has he sworn you to secrecy? What oaths have you made? Answer me!”
“No, it’s true,” he said, melting fear with a tiny candle of indignation. “I’m not lying. He doesn’t want it. He’s fourteen and he doesn’t want to die, why would he risk it?”
“He is a vainglorious peacock—”
“Who? Potter?”
“—thirsty for fame, who rejoices in flaunting school rules—”
“Do I have the right Potter? Are we possibly talking about an effete thespian cousin?”
“He is a braggart! And a liar!”
“He’s a dumb friendly athlete who’s got no parents,” said Draco, half-stunned at Snape’s audacity, and half-stunned at his own. “He likes taking in strays and buying ripoff quidditch gear. He gets excited to de-gnome a garden. He thinks he’s got to thank people for being friends with him. Harry Potter? He’s thick, but he’s not vain.”
This was not Snape’s pleasure to hear. This was not Draco’s pleasure to say, exactly, either, but it was the truth and besides, it put an end to the interrogation. Snape closed off, a cold nightfall of eyes and hands that was almost more alarming than his fury.
“Swear that he did not touch the Goblet.”
“Fine. Done. I so swear.”
“On your house.”
He shifted onto his heels. “Uncle Sev.”
“On your house!”
“Fine! Merlin! I swear on the House of Malfoy.”
“And?”
“And on the land and the blood and the name of my father, which is now mine, and ever will be, and is that quite enough for you, or would you like me to fetch a witness for the Unbreakable, while you’re at it?”
“Careful,” said Snape, much calmed, but still cold. “Deep magic is not to be invoked lightly. Even in passing.”
“Understood,” said Draco, after a moment.
The tension simmered to a fever peak, broke, and descended into mellow silence.
“So,” he said. “Good summer?”
Snape let out a slow exhale through the nose, which was either a sign of immolating rage or slight amusement, depending on the angle of his eyebrows, but before Draco could check them there was a bark of: “SEVERUS!” and a clatter at the mouth of the hallway.
How a man of Mad-Eye Moody’s size managed any kind of stealth was a question Draco could not answer. The auror scuttled up the hallway. His height snuck up on you, and impressed itself in startling fashion when he peered down his nose at Snape, who had the automatic sneer of someone well-used to peering down at people.
“What are you about, Snape?” he growled. “Lurking around this one? Putting ideas in his head?”
“It may astonish you to learn that as his teacher, I am paid to do both,” said Snape, “but because you have so little experience in it, I can easily fathom your confusion.”
The two of them ogled each other in bold dislike. Abruptly, Mad-Eye turned to Draco.
“Is he trying to intimidate you, boy?”
“No,” said Draco, lying somewhat.
“Eh? Then what’s his business with you?” He flicked his wand between the two of them. “Not your head of house, is he?”
“Mr. Malfoy is my godson,” said Snape, in a slow and silken drawl. “I have a familial stake in his affairs.”
Draco looked at him with interest. Mad-Eye looked at him with even more interest; then he snorted.
“If I thought you could explain family with a dictionary in front of you, I’d pack my things and give you my job,” he said darkly. “Why haven’t you got it, by the way? You’ve been living in Albus’ armpit long enough, doesn’t he trust you yet?”
“Professor Dumbledore… has not seen fit… to appoint me… for the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. He seems to believe it lies better with his… very… very old friends.”
“Heh,” said Mad-Eye, with satisfaction. “True enough. Slither away, Severus; two of your little shits are trying to jinx a girl’s teeth into railroad tracks, and if you don’t get to them before I do, they’ll end up with a dose of their own medicine.”
Snape’s expression evoked an old fresco of Prometheus under the eagle. “We … do not… use magic… on students… at Hogwarts.”
“Maybe you don’t. I’ll not let your pack of pureblood mutts run rampant through this school without ever seeing a consequence. I made that mistake the first time.”
The first time? Did he mean the first Wizarding War?
“I agree completely. Which is why, at Hogwarts, we give detentions for bad behavior.”
“Go give some, then,” Mad-Eye suggested, his eye aglitter. “While Susie Bones still has some of her teeth.”
“Draco—”
“Leave the boy,” barked Mad-Eye. “We’ve got business.”
Snape radiated dislike, but he had no recourse. Draco sympathized with his position. Mad-Eye was a teacher, and he couldn’t very well force Draco not to talk to him. “May I trust you not to grind the ax of your dead causes while I am gone?”
“If I wanted justice done in this hallway,” said Mad-Eye, “I wouldn’t start with Malfoy. Put it that way. Off with you.”
Snape cast a parting sneer over his shoulder, and swept out.
Mad-Eye tilted his head. He examined Draco impassively for a long moment. Draco didn’t understand where their animosity came from, except possibly a holdout from the war — but Snape had been a double-agent, hadn’t he? He’d turned coat for the Order. What problem did Mad-Eye have with him?
He prepared for an uncomfortable interview.
“Gryffindor?”
Not what he’d expected. “Yes, sir.”
Mad-Eye did a strange thing, then: he grinned. The expression was so unusual on his withered and churlish face that Draco checked over his shoulder to make sure the Rapture hadn’t snuck up around a corner.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “If you could buy a hat a drink.”
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Not Slytherin, eh?”
“Obviously not.”
“Rude surprise that must’ve been.”
“One acclimates,” said Draco tiredly.
“Hm.” Moody reached down to scratch his leg.
But the movement was wrong, somehow. It stuck out like a hippogriff in a centaur herd. Draco followed the hand with his eyes, frowning, as he tried to figure out what the problem was. After a split second, it came to him: it was the wrong hand. Mad-Eye had cast with his right hand when he interrogated Draco, but he’d reached for his leg, across his body, with his left.
Draco’s wand was already halfway out when Mad-Eye’s jinx soared at him. He was such a quick draw that Draco hadn’t even seen him move. But Draco was quick, too, and the curse bounced harmlessly off his hastily conjured Shielding Charm. It soared into a corner and hit the wall, shattering a quaffle-sized chunk of brick.
“What the hell!”
Mad-Eye, his arm still outstretched, bared his teeth in a near-feral grin.
“You’re a good draw, Malfoy,” he said, lowering his wand.
“Lucky for you,” said Draco, staring at the new hole in the wall.
“Don’t be a candy-arse. I’m making a point.”
“It seems like there were other ways, potentially, to make that point. With words, for instance.”
“Shut it.”
He did.
“Holster your wand,” ordered Mad-Eye.
He holstered it.
Mad-Eye sheathed his own and tugged his greatcoat over it. “Nobody ever won a battle with book-smarts and letters,” he growled. “Those friends of yours, the ones with all-O’s in Potions, Charms, Transfiguration — oh, they’ll graduate, and they’ll be fast-tracked into Ministry jobs, professorships, bureaucratic appointments…”
“I mean, I might like some of those,” said Draco dispiritedly.
Mad-Eye loomed. “There’s a war coming,” he hissed. “A war, do you hear me? And it needs soldiers. Soldiers, not cloisterites and librarians. Not bureaucrats. Not academics. It needs quick draws and steady hands. Your school is failing you, boy. It is failing you in ways more grievous than you can yet understand. Keep that guard up. Stay vigilant. Trust no one.”
“What,” said Draco, because he couldn’t help himself. “Or you’ll jinx me again?”
The professor shook his head, his jaw set gravely. “I’m not who you’ve got to worry about,” he said. “Of all the people in this castle, there’s a dozen you should worry about before me.”
Draco didn’t know what to say to that. So he took it as a dismissal and made to leave.
“Malfoy,” called the professor. Against his better judgment, Draco turned.
“You bear an uncommon resemblance to your father.”
That much was obvious. Pure white hair didn’t crop up often, and Draco had seen himself reflected in a hundred ways in his father’s portraits, the hard nose, the hard-set eyes. At parties and congregations he could be clocked with a cursory headcount. The most that could be said for Hogwarts in this regard was that nobody was likely to stare at you for having white hair, because odds were a dozen people had done something even odder to their appearance for giggles just that week.
Thinking about Mad-Eye’s observation seriously was liable to stir feelings he didn’t want to examine. There were no normal ways to react to learning you looked like a dead man. Especially when it was your father.
Then again, there were no normal ways for your father to be dead.
He picked up these thoughts and summarily dropped them in the rubbish. What remained was impatience and wit and good, nourishing insincerity.
“We’re related,” said Draco.
Mad-Eye worked his mouth, as if chewing on something. Finally, he said, “Not sure it’s doing you any favors.”
Dear Draco,
Oh my darling, I miss you more than an arm and a leg and a hairy heart. I want to throw my arms around you and bundle you away forever at the Manor, except that I know you would never forgive me. When I heard what happened at the Quidditch World Cup it was all I could do not to abandon Briselda and run to your side, hang all propriety; but I knew that you were a strong young man, and you would not be nearly as frightened as your weak mother.
Romania is beautiful and old. We have been sightseeing in some old churches and exploring the forests around Bucharest, which hold such exhilarating sights. Did you know that hidden in the heart of Romania are some of the most powerfully magical locations in the world? Your father took me to one for our seventh anniversary. Seven is an important magical number, as you know.
I’ve attached some things for you; souvenirs and trifles, little sweets from Mummy, so you remember someone somewhere is thinking of you fondly and ceaselessly. I’ve also sent a wee something for Theodore. His birthday falls in November, and I dread to think it went unremarked. Please deliver them at your convenience.
_All best to your friends and housemates, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, & etc. _
I love you more than perfume and waltzes and strawberries and the first crocuses of spring, my little lion.
All my heart,
Mummy
The common room of Slytherin House was secreted under the belly of the castle. Draco hoped and prayed that the pipes would break and flood the whole thing with scummy pondwater. He had never felt so lost as when trodding through endless windowless hallways, dark as dungeons and twice as musky, lit by identical reas of torches and unmarked by signs or doors: he was used to airy towers, staircases that crisscrossed wide open vaults and let you peer down dizzying heights, everything open, the whole castle tumbling out at your feet like a child’s sandbox kingdom. For him, the dizzying annals of the castle basement offered an atmosphere not of mystery and secrets but of aggravation and depression, which revealed more about the character of Slytherin in forty-six minutes than three years in their company could do altogether.
Finally, he stumbled into a second year in a green tie and threatened him into leading Draco where he wanted to go: a large V-shaped archway in the shape of a serpent, carved into a blank wall.
By then he was ready to spit acid and knock the thing down with Ventus. The second year squeaked, “Parseltongue,” and the brickwork peeled away to reveal a lacquered black door.
Behind it sat a large, dark vault of a room, paneled in green brocade, with marble pillars holding up a skylight into what could only have been the lake. A dozen inquisitive sneers perked up from a dozen leather armchairs; when they saw Draco, half sharpened in fascination, while the other curdled to disdain.
“Nott,” he barked. One of them spilled her crystal goblet. He swept inside and pointed his wand at the ceiling, prepared to cast Sonorus. “Where is he?”
A familiar yellow head poked over the back of one sofa. Daphne — who was, he noticed, surrounded by a wide radius of no one — kindled with excitement and scrambled over the sofa’s back, as if the time it took to go around was too great. She was thicker around the arms and middle than she’d been even on the train, and the scars had softened to a faint silver, washed out by the ruddy glow of health that suffused her cheeks. Where before she’d been a slender crescent of loveliness, all hollows, she had waxed into the round beauty of a full moon.
One of the other girls pointedly drew a handkerchief over her mouth and nose as she skipped by.
“Draco! You’ve come to visit! I thought you never would! I’ve wanted to show you the dungeons for ages and ages! You’ll adore our library, it’s simply without compare. Have you brought your friends?” She ducked around his shoulder, as if he might be holding the other three Gryffindors behind his back. “No? That’s alright! Maybe it’s best you didn’t bring Hermione. I’ll show her later, when it’s emptier. One doesn’t like to make a scene—”
“Greengrass.”
“Hm?”
“I’m here on an errand.” He lifted the package.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Theo? I think he should be here, I’ll get him.”
He had supposed this would mean her darting into one of the various passageways leading off the main vault, but in this he was mistaken. Daphne whirled, sucked her lungs full of air, and bellowed, “THEODORE!”
From a side-room to the common lounge emerged a mousy-haired boy, wearing an emerald green dress shirt less two buttons, disheveled by Slytherin standards, immaculate by Gryffindor ones. The sight of him lifted a wave of acknowledging murmuration from the nearest students, and he fluttered his hand casually, like a descending prince, which made Draco want to wedge his head in a toilet bowl and flush.
“Oh. You,” said Theo, with a complicated, unhappy kind of affection. “I thought you’d tired of shouting at me. You do realize you can’t do it here, don’t you? Or has your nerve finally overtaken what little remains of your brain?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Do you have any idea how many stairs there are between here and Gryffindor Tower? I wouldn’t put myself through all that if I’d been poisoned and you had the last dose of antivenom in your pocket.”
“But you did,” Theo pointed out, more than a little smugly. “Should I be concerned for your health, or do we owe this dubious pleasure to something else?”
“I was going to say that my mother sent you a birthday present, but as the one holding said present, it falls entirely within my discretion whether or not you deserve to get it, and frankly I’m seeing a lot of behavior I’m not inclined to reward—”
“What? No. It’s mine. Give it here,” said Theo immediately. Draco snickered and released it with a minimum of tussling. “Could have started with that, tosser, I would’ve been nicer. Didn’t anyone ever tell you how to supplicate? It goes gift, then introduction, then request. The altitude in that tower’s getting to your head, your manners are deteriorating.”
He noticed that Theo’s hand was still bandaged, as it had been at the World Cup, but these bandages ran further down his wrist than those had, covering his palm and fingers. Had he splinched himself again? Draco frowned.
“The asbestos down here’s getting to yours. Happy fifteenth, by the way, not that you deserve it.”
“Thanks, young buck. Your gift can be learning to respect your elders.” He shredded the wrapping and tossed it over his shoulder as if he expected a house-elf to whisk it away on the breeze. Inside was a green leather jewelry box, which he recognized as a case from Moribund’s. Settled on a bed of black velvet like under a clamshell were a pair of dark jade cufflinks with ‘T’ inlaid in gilt.
Theo was doing a terrible impression of someone not deeply touched. There was an irrepressible tremor in his cheek and a double-blink of verification. He snapped it closed. “Cufflinks, for fifteen,” he said. “Traditional. I’d expect no less.”
“Perhaps it’s a veiled way of telling you to do your shirts properly. Speaking of which, mind your collar, this isn’t a nightclub.”
He struggled to rally. “I’m partial to diamonds,” he said, “but I suppose, for a night at the pub, it’ll do in a pinch. Please thank her.”
“Thank her yourself. I’m not an owl. Apparently she’s nothing better to do than sit around thinking of ways to get you weepy—”
“Sod off,” he said lazily. “And stay for tea. It’s a waste of time to go back up, besides which you’re sure to get lost, no offense.”
“Offense heedlessly taken, and if your common room weren’t shoved arse-deep in the basement like an afterthought—”
“You don’t like it? I think it’s peaceful.”
“I’m sure the mildew agrees with you.”
He was putting the finishing touches on another insult against what he honestly thought was a quite lovely common room when Pansy backed into the room, holding a box of pins and at least three different threads of argument at once. She was flanked by Crabbe and Tracy Davis and a short, soft-chinned girl with an underbite, who wore so much dark eye makeup her irises appeared to float in a vacuum. All of them wore a trifecta of badges, like military regalia, on the breast of their robes: a House badge, the heart-shaped badge of the League of Promising Youth, and one that said ‘CASSIUS WARRINGTON.’
“Dear Merlin,” sighed Theo, “so we’re doing this, are we? Even after I asked ever so nicely, specifically, to not?”
“Yes, we are,” said Pansy firmly, foisting the box on an ottoman. “Because Dumbledore’s a demented old loon, and Flint’s a brute, and I’m not going to let down the side. Do you know what Davies and Tuttle are doing right now in Ravenclaw Tower?”
“I am gleeful to report I’ve not given it a moment’s thought.”
“They’re making badges for Viktor Krum. Because they like his quidditch moves, I suppose, and I don’t doubt they’ve some objection to rooting for a girl — gibbons. I don’t even think they know the charmwork for it, so if they actually manage, I’ll be responsible for their first academic accomplishment since Roger got an O.W.L. Hello, Draco. I’d offer you a badge, but I don’t suppose you’d like one.”
“Why not?”
She tapped her nail on the lacquered surface, and the writing swirled into another message: POTTER STINKS.
“Ah. Wit,” he said. “Spent a long time coming up with that, did you?”
“Potter cheated,” said Crabbe. He folded his arms, which roughly doubled them in size. “He tricked the Goblet. S’not fair. Slimy.”
“Cass didn’t need to do that,” mumbled Millicent. “’Least when Diggory lost, he did it right.”
“Potter didn’t cheat,” said Draco tartly. “He doesn’t even want to compete.”
“Then he should drop out,” snapped Pansy. “Let the real champion have it. The school’s having enough trouble getting behind Warrington without Potter splitting the vote—”
“What do you mean, trouble? Warrington’s a pureblood and Head Boy, I can’t think of anyone less politically objectionable.”
“You’d think! You’d really think!”
Theo sighed and caught the badge that Pansy lobbed at him; but he slipped it into his pocket, instead of putting it on. “Apparently,” he said, “Cass doesn’t have quite the reputation amongst the Tower Houses that we’d like, socially speaking. We knew Gryffindor and Hufflepuff wouldn’t swing for us, but we’d rather thought that Ravenclaw might stay out of it, if only to be fair… but then again, Cass and Davies don’t really get along. Something about taking all those points off for uniforms, I believe. Of course, the dark-horse candidate isn’t helping matters.”
Draco hummed, noncommittal. He hadn’t thought that Cassius would struggle to rally anyone. But then, he also hadn’t thought that Slytherin much cared what the other houses thought, in general.
“It’s just embarrassing,” continued Theo, “if we can’t get a solid majority of our own school to applaud for us, what does it even say? Now, I’m of the philosophy that honey’s a better condiment than vinegar, with respect to catching pixies, but Pansy’s trying this bold new strategy where she tries to bully everyone in the right direction — negative campaigning, you understand, it’s high-risk but it’s worked before—”
“Potter cheated,” said Pansy passionately. “It repeat, he cheated. How is this even a question? The school is splitting up over a twat who shouldn’t even be competing! Just because Cass does his job, and enforces the actual rules—”
“Yeah, the rule against nice outfits,” muttered Daphne.
“—doesn’t mean this is suddenly some sort of horserace! There’s a real champion, and a fake champion! It’s simple! God!”
“You’re just sour Potter figured it out,” hollered one of the Slytherins by the fire, and Pansy made a rude gesture with gusto. “Slimy brat, he is, but he did do the thing, innit? Even Higgs couldn’t find a way around the age line.”
“Oh, yes? Really? You think it doesn’t matter, Yates? Snape came in and just about took the skin off your bollocks about breaking Tournament rules, you’re not fussed that McGonagall couldn’t be arsed to do the same?”
“Pansy’s found a cause,” Daphne whispered. “It’s been good for her.”
“Yes! It has! Speaking of. Daph, do you want one?”
Daphne wrung her hands and glanced at Draco, who refused to make things easier for her. He folded his arms and let her flail.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe — I’ll take one, just for Cassius — but I won’t switch the message,” she said to Draco quickly. “I like Harry. He’s nice to me.”
Millicent guffawed. The conversation tripped and plummeted into a hole of silence. Daphne stood up straight.
“Millie,” said Theo, massaging his nose, “I don’t suppose you’d do me the favor of our lifetimes and leave it be.”
“No, don’t,” said Daphne sharply. “I want to know what she thinks is so funny. I’d like her to say it. To my face. If she even can.”
“Daph, I swear, I’ll buy you enough pearls to wear as a ballgown if you just—”
Millicent was bristling. “Of course Potter’s nice to you,” she muttered. “We’ve all seen him with the half-giant.”
“Oh, but do go on, Millie. I can barely hear you.”
“Daph, don’t,” said Theo, tightly, “and that’s enough, Bulstrode—”
“I said, we’ve all seen him with the half-giant. I bet talking to you gets him extra credit in Care of Magical Creatures.”
Something unspoken was boiling over, and Draco didn’t realize until it erupted. This wasn’t the casual henpecking Hermione and Lavender waged on a daily basis, for mutual sport and pleasure. It was a wide open wound, and Millicent had spat in it, for Daphne gasped, “You bitch,” and backhanded her.
It was a good, cruel hit, four knuckles and a silver ring on her pinky, which ripped a glistening pink scratch over Millicent’s cheek. Millicent screamed and hit back, and Daphne lunged with a high wild laugh of someone living a long-harbored fantasy.
“NUFF,” boomed Crabbe.
The girls split apart, dripping blood and venomous looks. Pansy ushered Daphne away and fussed at a split in her lip. One of her cheek scars had reopened, and wept pink pus down her cheek. Pansy dabbed at it gently with a handkerchief.
“You touch Millie again, I’ll clobber you,” said Crabbe.
“Try it,” said Daphne, brightly, wetly, despairingly. “Oh, try it! I’d so love for one of you to just come out and hit me, hit me, for once, and we’ll see who’s an animal—”
“Daph,” snapped Theo. “Enough. Vince, Millie, would you please bugger straight off and stop talking to Daphne, thank you? It’s causing us all more distress than it’s worth, and I’m just about sick of it all. Draco, you too, for that matter. The Gryffindor faction of this miserable operetta is faffing up the dynamics.”
“Bite me, Nott.”
“Perhaps another time,” said Theo. He cast off Millie and Crabbe with a dismissive hand gesture and herded Draco back toward the door. “Pansy, take Daphne to the girls’ and keep her there, would you? I’ll be around in a mo. Vince, try to keep your girlfriend’s mouth shut, and believe me when I say I know how much I’m asking.”
Draco did not get to see whether these orders took any effect. He was expertly shepherded into the hallway outside the common room. Once the door sealed, Theo sagged against the wall, his spine wilting like a daisy under a heat lamp.
“I didn’t realize the dungeons were such a fracas,” said Draco, by and by. “I should’ve been down more often. Do you place bets?”
“Shut up. Shut up, shut up, and see footnote, shut up, I lack the space on my schedule to tell you all the ways you should go bugger yourself. I’m half convinced that was your fault.”
“My fault? How?”
“Give me a minute, I’ll think of something.” Theo’s eyes were watery from rubbing, and the hollows beneath them were so deep they were developing cave systems. “God. Repeat this to anyone and I’ll skin you for a briefcase, but sometimes I envy you, Gryffindor.”
“No, you don’t,” said Draco, one shocked heartbeat later.
“I do. Put ten Gryffindors in a room together, and an hour later you’ll have an organized sports league. I can’t even get ten Slytherins to agree on what we should have for lunch. First there’s the awkwardness with Daphne, and then the Potter problem, and I’m spending enough political capital trying to get everyone not to tear each other’s throats out over Warrington—”
“Merlin wept. Try complaining to Daphne. Or haven’t Bulstrode and Crabbe convinced you of something, after all?”
“Hold your tongue before it chokes on its own stupidity. Bulstrode’s a cow and Crabbe’s barely amoebic, and for the record, I wouldn’t care if she turned into a Blast-Ended Skrewt every full moon, but I’m also the only reason she hasn’t been jinxed in her sleep, yet.”
Something unpleasant skittered down Draco’s neck. “It’s that serious?”
“Obviously. You know what they say about her. I thought you would’ve guessed. But it’s nice to know we’ve been masking more than I thought.” Theo raked his hands down his face. “It’s not that I don’t want to help. I’m trying. Fuck me, I don’t think I’ve ever tried at anything this hard in my life. Do you think it’s been easy, keeping peace in that room? If I lose standing with the people she’s fighting with, I can’t help her. Daph comes first, obviously — it’s complicated.”
“So? Who died and elected you Speaker of the Wizengamot?”
“If you could glimpse the sheer number of things on my plate at any given hour of the day, you’d go choke on a broomstick for the audacity of even asking that question,” said Theo tiredly. He peeled himself off the wall and brushed himself off with the bruising strokes of someone slapping himself awake. “Draco, I know you’re looking out for her, and that’s the only reason I’m not cross with you, but I grow weary of asking you to trust me.”
“Then you might consider making yourself trustworthy,” he said coolly. “You strut around this school like you have your own Board seat, and you still won’t tell me what’s going on between you and your father. Pansy’s worried sick about you, as you surely know.”
Theo sighed a sigh the size of his whole body.
“I missed you,” he said. “I know I’m not supposed to say that, as we’re gentlemen rivals and everything, rah-rah, but I did. Over the summer. I wish you’d come to visit.”
“I wish you’d stop antagonizing everyone who doesn’t wear green.”
“Yeah, well. If wishes were nargles, we’d all go mad.”
There was something old and resigned in the way he adjusted his collar, but he blinked it off and was all jaunty cynicism again. He said, apropos of nothing: “A shame about the Samhain bonfire, wasn’t it.”
He had barely thought of it. It surprised him, actually, that he hadn’t thought of it. After last year, “I assumed I wasn’t invited.”
“No, it was canceled. It was a real sore spot with Daph, especially since we couldn’t have one last year, either, because of the dementors. And this year, of course…”
“They drew the champions on Halloween.”
He clamped a hand on Draco’s shoulder. Draco stiffened, and the fingers of his wand-hand flexed.
“Among other reasons,” said Theo softly. “They won’t let anyone in the Forest this year. Word is that they’re keeping something in it.”
“At this point, I must assume you derive some sort of erotic satisfaction from being cryptic,” he said. “Make your point or spare me the headache.”
Theo’s lips twitched in a mean little smile. “No, I don’t think I will. My recommendation is, instead, as follows: One. Deal. Two. With it. Three: Stop expecting to be spoon-fed information. It’s an embarrassingly Gryffindor trait, and it belies a fundamental misunderstanding of how people actually end up winning these things.”
“Would it detonate some combustible node in your cranium to say what you mean? What are you talking about, ‘these things’? The Tournament?”
“If that’s not rhetorical, then you really are beyond saving,” he said blithely. The door swung open behind him, and several Slytherins passed out; he caught the door on his foot and held it, half-inside, half-out. “But I’m afraid that’s all you’re getting. I’ve got enough to deal with managing the dungeons; if you want to keep your other friends alive, you’ll have to do it yourself.”
“I’m thinking of outlawing journalism,” said Harry.
“Great idea,” said Draco, tossing him his cloak. “Put your shoes on, we’ll work on it on the way down.”
“No, really. The whole thing. The press. Shut it down. I’m serious.”
“You’re neither the first nor the smartest to think of it. The champions’ interview went well, then?”
“She said my eyes ‘glistened with unshed tears’ when she brought up my parents.”
“Anything about your hair?”
“Er— no.”
“Then leave it, you’ve been lucky as is. Ronald, do you have an aesthetic objection to ties? We’re going to tea, there’s a custom.”
“With who?”
“Hagrid,” said Draco, and took satisfaction in the way both of their mouths unhinged.
By the end of that week, the school had cracked into ugly, asymmetrical factions. As with most things, this shook out badly for Harry. The Slytherins gave him a wide berth in the corridors — only Daphne could be depended on for a Good morning, Harry, or Get the door for you, Harry? and then See you, Harry, which was the only evidence of so-called sportsmanship. The rest of them treated Harry as if they longed to duel him for Cassius’s honor. Terrence Higgs had actually tried it on, dropping a lambskin glove on Harry’s shoe outside of the greenhouses, which was decent of him, because it gave Draco a chance to try out a Furnunculus Jinx and two Jelly-Legs Curses before Higgs was dragged wailing to the Hospital Wing by Marcus Flint.
After that, the message was inked invisibly over Harry’s head: nobody tried it with Harry Potter. That didn’t stop bad feeling from percolating. Hufflepuff was having a mourning period for Cedric (who, for his part, seemed entirely unbothered by Warrington’s victory, and had given Harry a firm handshake when he passed him in the halls), and too distracted to give much of a damn for either Hogwarts champion. Ravenclaw, a house of propriety and general regard for school rules, grew rather frosty, but Cho and a few other young Ravenclaws had started wearing POTTER POWER pins — which made Harry blush, and made Draco want to hunt down whoever invented the concept of a badge and find interesting places to stick one.
“Trelawney’s been predicting my death again,” Harry said glumly. They picked their way down the lawns to Hagrid’s hut in the yellow glare of an early November sunset.
“Everyone needs a hobby,” said Hermione absently.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t feel great, does it? Sitting down every Monday to ‘I see… I seeeeee… a boy with black hair and green eyes will perish at the start of May…’ Plus, I’ve got extra homework on Summoning Charms.”
“It’s not that difficult. You weren’t concentrating properly.”
“Yeah, because of those stupid pins! I can’t look at anyone without seeing my name flashing on their chests, how am I supposed to concentrate on anything?”
Hermione, who had spent Flitwick’s class whisking objects around her as if she exerted a unique gravity on school supplies, was not impressed.
“You didn’t seem so angry when it was Cho,” she said mildly. Harry’s jaw clacked together.
“What’s going on with you two, anyway?” said Ron cannily. “You gonna ask her out, or what? Because if not, you might put her out of her misery.”
“What? No! That’s not — but you don’t really think she’d want to go out, do you? With me?”
Draco consulted the heavens for patience not to reach for his wand.
“Put it this way,” he said, jumping up the steps to Hagrid’s front door. “If all she wanted to do was chat about quidditch, she could talk to Roger Davies.”
Harry didn’t have time to process what was apparently a mind-shattering revelation, because the door swung open, and Draco was nearly flattened by several stories of Frenchwoman. Madame Maxime unfolded herself from the cabin and swept her gaze haughtily over the four of them, including Draco, who was very lucky he hadn’t uttered the first jinx that leapt to his tongue.
“Thank you for ze drink, ’Agrid,” she said, as he appeared to escort her out. Hagrid had brushed his hair and was wearing a fur coat so large four or five bears must have been slain for its sake. “I do so appreciate Scottish ’ospitality. I ’ope to come back many times.”
“Pleasure’s mine,” said Hagrid gruffly, “an’ yer welcome back whenever, trust me. On’y — don’ go tellin’ everyone, alrigh’?”
“Of course. You may trust in my discretion,” she purred, and slunk out of the pumpkin patch with a very sneakish affect, for someone with so much of herself to sneak.
“Wow,” said Ron, after a moment. “I’m going to kill myself.”
“Granger,” said Draco, “I’m prepared to swear you a life debt if you can execute a minimally destructive Memory Charm.”
“We’re jumping to conclusions — we can’t assume — listen, it’s probably not what it looks like,” she muttered, apparently in prayer. “It can’t be what it looks like. They haven’t the room.”
“If you care for me at all, you won’t make me think about it.”
“What?” said Harry, baffled. “What’s everyone so upset about? She just had a drink.”
“You lot!” Hagrid noticed them at last, hauling a dreamy gaze away from the horizon. “What’re you doing here?”
“We were coming for tea,” said Draco, “but now we’re contemplating honorable ways to blow our brains out without leaving a mess on your pumpkins. We — I have never been more sincere in my life, professor — are happy to come back later.”
“No, no! Yer jus’ in time. Jus’ put a kettle on. Come in,” he said grandly, sweeping them into the hut. Inside a pot of tea still cooled on the table, with two teacups, and a terrified glance at the bed revealed it to be blessedly untouched. There was no evidence of furniture being knocked over, which further diminished the dread possibility, but Draco still fretted fearfully about lowering himself onto any flat surface absent certain assurances; ultimately, he elected to stand.
“I was missin’ the two of yeh in Care of Magical Creatures,” huffed Hagrid. He bustled to the cabinet and brought down a set of red clay mugs. “Dinnae realize the two of yeh didn’t like it no more.”
Hermione nearly cringed out of her chair. “We’re sorry. We wanted to take Care of Magical Creatures, we really did, it’s just—”
She looked at him desperately. He raised his eyebrows. He was intrigued and slightly impressed by her decision to lie, but he couldn’t help her. He had been prepared to tell Hagrid the full and simple truth, which was that he wanted to graduate with all ten fingers and toes intact.
“It’s just that Draco was desperate to take Muggle Studies,” she finished, and he marveled at how quickly the bus mowed him down. He would only jinx her shoelaces together for a few days, he decided, as encouragement for enterprising behavior.
“Did’ee, now?” Hagrid gave this excuse the suspicion it deserved, i.e., total. “Tha’s the firs’ I’ve heard of it.”
“Which makes two of us,” said Draco, or would have, but he was cut off at two by a sharp pain to his shinbone. He shot a daggered look at the innocent, blinking Hermione.
“No, it’s true,” said Ron, disguising a laugh as a honking sneeze into his napkin. “He’s really, er… turned over a new leaf, has Malfoy. Total mugglehead. You should hear him talk about sellyphones.”
The screech of the kettle filled the air. Hagrid filled everyone’s mug with strong dark tea, earthy and oversteeped, and set out mason jars of brown sugar cubes the size of galleons. A little tray of rock cakes and treacle tart followed this, the first of which could crack your teeth and the second which could glue them back together, a nice little therapeutic dessert course. Draco politely passed the tray over his empty plate; Hermione surreptitiously fed hers to Fang; Harry wolfed down both and asked for seconds. When there had been enough chitchat to throw a veil of plausible deniability over the visit, Draco set down his teacup and seized on the first beat of silence in the conversation.
“Professor, could I bother you with a question about the Forbidden Forest?”
Hermione glanced at him in interest, and he made a hand gesture to her under the table: Explain later. “Would you happen to know—”
“I don’ know anythin’ about anythin’ happening in the forest!” said Hagrid loudly, springing up to wash his cup. “Nothin’s happenin’! Where’d you hear tha’? Did someone tell yeh?”
“No, sir,” said Draco, serenely. “But I thought, if anyone, the Hogwarts groundskeeper must know everything that happens on the grounds, so I thought there was no one better to ask.”
Flattery of this type was too obvious to work on most professors, but on Hagrid, it was a tool so rarely deployed that it worked wonders. He flushed bashfully. “There’s almost always summat happenin’ in the forest,” he said. “Busy place. But there’s somethin’ special happenin’ there now — not tha’ I can say about, of course.”
So it did have to do with the Tournament. Not surprising, but helpful to confirm. “That’s fascinating, professor. Do you know — I mean, I’m sure you couldn’t possibly say outright, but speaking in general terms—”
“What is it?” demanded Harry, blundering all over Draco’s carefully calibrated gambit. Draco dropped his teaspoon and glared at him. “Do I have to fight something?”
“Can’t say, can’t say,” said Hagrid, eyes a-twinkle. “Can’t break me promise, oh, no. When the Ministry came in an’ set it all up, I helped ’em, an’ they made me promise not ter tell any students. Very strict, they were, about leaks.”
“But you can still tell us, can’t you?” said Hermione, with a hungry expression. “We’re not going to report you, we’re your friends. And after all, the rumor’s clearly out already, so it’s not as though they can trace it back to you.”
“Tha’s squirmy,” said Hagrid, frowning. “I’m no’ gonna break me promise jes’ because they cannae tell I’ve broken it.”
Hermione exchanged a look with Draco, sharing in his frustration over this irritating moral stumbling block.
“Hagrid,” she tried again, in a more coaxing tone, “Harry’s got to compete in this Tournament against his will, which is already unfair in a dozen different ways, besides which it’s going to be incredibly dangerous, the school’s mostly turned against him, and he’s obviously not as good at magic as the other champions—”
“Love you too, Hermione.”
“And we’re doing the best we can to prepare him, but it’d be really helpful if we could get some idea of what to expect — even just a hint—?”
“Yer a good girl to try it, but I’m no’ tellin’ ye, an’ that’s final,” said Hagrid gently.
She scowled and slumped in her seat, arms folded.
Frankly, Draco didn’t blame Hagrid. Hermione couldn’t manipulate her way out of a paper bag, and she had all the finesse of a rampaging wolverine.
An endearing wolverine, granted, but still not a politically-minded one.
“But,” he added thoughtfully, “if yeh wanted ter follow me on a walk or summat… well, it’s a nice night fer it, nae? And no one could say I’d done aught wrong, if I was jes’ takin’ me friends fer a walk.”
“Thanks,” said Hermione tautly, reaching for her bag, “but our evening’s quite full. I have a meeting with McGonagall about S.C.R.U.M.B.Y. and a Potions essay to finish, and then I have to dig up copies of the Hogwarts Enquirer from the last time the Tournament was played in 1891, which will be a joy, as wizards don’t seem to have a concept of archival science—”
“A walk sounds lovely,” said Draco abruptly. Her nose crinkled with indignation, and then understanding slackened her whole face, and she shot up like a pixie.
“Yes. Yes! A walk — Harry, Ron, come on, let’s go — Hagrid, that would be wonderful!”
“Jes’ a short one,” said Hagrid in alarm, as Hermione shot to the door and hauled it open. “There’s no rush — blimey, er, I s’pose we can go now, then.”
At just past five o’clock, the weak winter sun had drooped below the horizon, and darkness spread like melting syrup over the grounds. Hagrid unhooked the lantern from his gate and held it high above them as they took the long path around the side of the forest, tracing the perimeter of the lake. They passed the pebble beach where he had stood down an army of dementors, the scarred trunk of the Whomping Willow — now swaddled in bandages, and fenced off with a twenty-foot perimeter of caution tape — and the thick copse of blackberry bushes where they had fled from a werewolf. Cold claws of dread trailed over his back. Hermione shivered. He shifted closer to the group, and took his wand out.
When the castle towers disappeared around a bristle of pine trees, faint shouting emerged from the darkness. The flicker of bonfires pressed through the trees, and Hagrid, after a quick check over his shoulder, veered hurriedly into the forest, leading them down a narrow dirt path that winnowed up to the peak of a steep cliff, and beneath it, a huge hollow in the earth where the forest fell away into the river valley. A barbed-wire fence ran along the top of the cliff, ostensibly to keep people from toppling over it.
Draco opened his mouth to demand where they were going, but whatever he was going to say was swallowed by a distant bellow and screech of a vast angered beast. A jet of fire erupted into the sky above them, and they reared back, their faces painted red by the intensity of the jet. The sound was unmistakable.
“It’s dragons,” said Harry, awed.
“Of course it’s dragons,” said Hermione miserably.
“Aren’ they magnificent?” sighed Hagrid. “Go on an’ have a look!”
He clapped Harry and Draco on the back, buffeting them forward, and nearly tripping Draco into the dirt. “They cannae hurt yeh from here. There’s containment spells all over.”
Holding an Aguamenti on the tip of his tongue, Draco crept to the edge of the cliff and peered down.
Four grown dragons prowled around the dirt pit at the bottom of the hollow. From above they made a wall of pitted jeweled backs and leathery crests, their scales fitted so closely they moved like liquid metal. Their eyes were hollow pits of molten light, ringed by the leathery black skin of their face, and venom dripped from the crescent blades of their teeth, like arakhs. They were all screaming and lunging at each other, only to be hauled back by the rattle of chains, as if it were only shackles keeping them from ripping each other to pieces.
At least thirty wizards, seven or eight to each dragon, flew around on broomsticks, hauling on the chains connected to heavy leather harnesses. How those had ended up on the dragon’s bodies had to be a matter of suicidality or immense wizarding skill. One dragon leapt into the air and freewheeled above the others, its red scales flushing in the bath of fire it released from its throat.
“Keep back there, Hagrid!” yelled a wizard near the fence, straining on the chain he was holding. “They can shoot fire at a range of twenty feet, you know! I’ve seen this Horntail do forty!”
“Code blue!” yelled another wizard. “Stunners on three!”
“Charlie?” cried Ron. The wizard did a double-take and zoomed down to meet them.
He landed and whipped off his cap, revealing a flushed, disheveled redhead with penumbral volumes of eyeliner and a pair of piercings dotting his lip. He grinned and stuck out his tongue at Ron, revealing a barbell piercing through the tip of that, too.
“Charlie!”
“Ronniekins!”
Ron hauled his brother into a thumping hug. “I didn’t know you were at Hogwarts! You tosser, you never said!”
“Been busy managing these four divas, haven’t I! And they’re needier than you are! Sorry I stink like ash! Norberta’s teething.”
“Norberta?” said Hermione faintly. “Who — which — is that?”
Charlie beamed and pointed. “The Ridgeback she-dragon, just there. Gorgeous, isn’t she? What a beaut! Hagrid knows her, doesn’t he, Hagrid — Hagrid?”
Hagrid had pressed himself to the wire fence. One of the dragons tore free of its harness, gave a violent shriek, and torched it to a crisp. A proud tear glistened in his eye.
Charlie whistled. “Aw, piss. Girlie doesn’t like the harness. We usually try to get them earlier, so they can acclimate, but, uh, Hagrid here had other ideas.”
“These are the First Task?” Hermione sounded furious. Draco sympathized. He didn’t realize the Ministry actively wanted their champions to die. “You have to kill a dragon?”
“Kill? What? No! Who said anything about killing? Berta’s endangered, nobody’s killing her!”
“Then what do the champions have to do?”
“Search me. If it don’t yell and spit fire, it ain’t my lookout, Mione. All we know is they want four young’uns, biggest we can get. The adults calm down a bit,” he added, as Norberta nearly clubbed a wizard out of the air with her tail, “but they’re too big to move overseas, and the Romanians’ll ride us like house-elves about it.”
“They get bigger?”
“Oh, loads. Also, hullo, Draco,” he said, grinning. “Good to see you. Excited for the show?”
“Like a gallbladder removal.”
“Why not use a Shrinking Charm?” Hermione asked, crouching over the precipice. She was kneading her hands thoughtfully. “Or a Transfiguration spell?”
“Good idea! Wish it worked,” he agreed, rubbing his jaw. His tone was exasperated and confoundingly fond, as if the creatures were an impishly clever little flourish of breeding, and not nature’s best attempt at a weapon of mass destruction. “Resistant to magic. Clever clogs! Takes about three Stunners to the eye to get the Shortsnout down for her Sleeping Draught, and that only buys you twenty seconds before you’re a meat toastie! Speaking of which.” He slung a leg over his broomstick and hopped into the air. “Gotta go.”
“Do the other champions know about this?” called Harry. “I mean — we’re lucky, thanks to Hagrid, but—”
“Thanks to Hagrid?” said Draco irritably.
“—but the others are going in blind, and if dragons are resistant to magic—”
Charlie laughed. “Give Warrington some credit, he’s smarter than he looks,” he said. “Bloke was down here last week. And just now, the big woman came out for a peek. Dunno but she was pure mad for them, wanted to know everything about them! Tried to chirp me, I think — poor girl, better women have tried — anyway, Wallace sent her off with a stern no peeking. Just like I’m about to do with you lot, come to think.”
“But hang on — how do you subdue them? Stunners? Multiple, simultaneous?”
“Aye, that’s one way. Probably shouldn’t tell you this, but if you want to know the truth, only the scales are spell-resistant. Inside they’re just like any animal, only huge. The trick of a Stunner is nailing the throat or the eye. ’Course, the eye’s your better bet, if you want to stay clear of the breath weapon — whoops , and she’s spitting mad, she nearly got Wally’s leg there! Better give him some help. Gotta go! Good luck, Harry! We’re all rooting for you! Dad’s trying to get time off for the Tasks. And write soon! Mum misses you!”
With that, the wizard careened into the air, firing off a tricky double-barreled pair of Stunners.
Harry lurched away from the dragonpit like the ground beneath him was the deck of a capsizing boat. Ron noticed and dove after him, catching him before he buckled and was sick into a patch of daisies.
Then he straightened, wiped his mouth, and wobbled into the forest. The three of them tagged after him. Hermione cast one last intense look at the dragonpit behind her, calculating, before Draco sent an annoyed chirp at her, and she joined them.
“Harry?”
Harry swiped his hand over his mouth, walking fast. “What?”
“You alright?”
“Fine,” he said. “Great! Great, actually. Couldn’t be better.”
“We’ll figure it out, mate. It’s just a big lizard, when you get down to it—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said doggedly.
A muted roar shuddered the trees behind them. Harry picked up the pace, and soon they were loping across the lawns back to the castle, hugging the curve of the lake. The Durmstrang ship sat pale and ghostly under a quarter-moon’s light, like a haunted vessel lifted from the deeps, its dragonhead mast huge and snarling.
At this hour, with curfew fast approaching, Draco didn’t mind a bit of haste to get back indoors. So it bemused him when, instead of beelining for the castle, Harry swerved right and made for the beach.
“Potter? What are you doing?”
“Taking a midnight swim,” said Harry grimly. “What does it look like?”
“Drowning yourself, by my best guess,” he called, lagging behind, while Harry and Ron scrambled down the pebbles. “A rational impulse, but not one I can support, in this instance. Come up to the castle, we’ve got work to do.”
Harry pivoted, planting his hands on his hips. The resemblance to Molly Weasley was neither faint nor pleasant. “You get it, don’t you?” he said flatly. “You can count. How many champions know about the dragons? We just saw them; Warrington’s known for a week; and Madame Maxime was there earlier, which means Fleur will know by tomorrow, if she doesn’t already.”
“Obviously. So?”
“So what about Krum?”
“So what about him?” Draco lifted his hands, agitated. “Bonne chance to him and Karkaroff. Maybe he’s been there half a dozen times since Sunday, you don’t know.”
“Or maybe he hasn’t, and he’s the only one going in blind.”
Draco had an unfortunate premonition of the mistake that was about to occur, which, like most of his premonitions, happened too late for anything to be done about it.
“Potter. Be reasonable. He’s your competition.”
“We wouldn’t have known about them, either, if you hadn’t heard that rumor,” Harry said stubbornly. “That’s not a fair advantage, that’s just random chance.”
“Hardly random—”
“Anyway, it’s not fair. He could use the help.”
“He could also report you for cheating,” Draco said. “Inter-school conspiracy is against the rules.”
“No, it’s not,” said Hermione suddenly. She broke out of her reverie in time to thwart him, which was just really typical. He glowered. “It’s implied to be, and you’ll be docked points if you collaborate during the Task. But they don’t say anything about preparing together. Or trading information.”
“Have none of you ever heard ‘it’s the spirit, not the letter’?”
“Yeah, and so what? What’ll they do, disqualify me?” Harry grinned with his teeth, a new and slightly frightening expression. “Stop me from competing? Oh, no.”
“Potter, this is a bad idea. A bad one, do you hear me? Listen! Don’t — Merlin’s blood, there he goes.”
“It’s sort of nice how you still try to stop him,” said Hermione fondly. Draco muttered mutinously, and kicked a rock.
Harry scampered up the gangplank and rapped on the door. Several moments passed, in which Draco aged several years, and as he approached his late twenties a small Durmstrang student poked his head out the door and squinted at Harry in understandable consternation. The two had a short exchange, and then the student disappeared.
Draco was well into middle age when it opened again and Viktor Krum ambled out of the ship. He was in what must have been nightclothes, wearing a peasant tunic and brown drawstring pants, arms folded and hip cocked in the age-old stance of skeptics and disturbed nappers. Standing next to each other, they could have been mistaken for a vaudeville act. Harry barely came up to Krum’s collarbone. The sight did not fill Draco with confidence.
Harry spoke for perhaps twenty seconds, gesturing vaguely and pointing to the sky. Krum’s expression waxed from suspicion to confusion to surprise. When Harry finished he paused, deep in thought, and then said a few words. Harry nodded. Krum opened his mouth, scowled, and then bracketed his chest with his hands in the universal symbol for ‘big.’ He cocked his head. Harry nodded again, harder.
Krum said nothing. Then, silent, he extended his hand. Harry shook it.
The Durmstrang champion disappeared into his ship, and the Hogwarts one jogged back down to the lawns.
“What’d he say?” said Ron eagerly. “Did you ask for an autograph?”
“Yeah, ’course, popped my collar and told him to do it right across the chest — no, mate, what the hell?”
“I was just asking! He’s a celebrity! Could sell that for a killing, come to think.”
“He didn’t know about the dragons,” Harry said, as they climbed back to the castle. “I was right. He was surprised.”
“I suppose his headmaster can’t flirt it out of Hagrid,” muttered Hermione.
“Close-minded of you,” said Ron. “Karkaroff’s not bad-looking.”
“No, but a tad small,” she murmured, and Ron threw back his head and cackled.
Draco cleared his throat. “That reminds me, Granger. We need to revisit the conversation about Obliviation. There are images in my head where there should not be images.”
“I think it’s sweet,” she tried valiantly, the dear little liar. “I imagine it’s hard to find companionship, if you’re looking for… you know, anyone who can understand…”
“Right,” said Draco crisply, “good, thank you, that’s the last call for tonight. My eardrums are closing until the next business day. Thank you for your contributions, but I’ll be hearing from you all again in the morning.”
Harry and Ron laughed at this, which was how they discovered themselves the unwitting victims of a Tongue-Tying Jinx; and the blissful half-hour of peace that followed was well worth having to sprint up all fourteen flights of stairs to Gryffindor Tower.
-ABSTRACT: Snape and Mad-Eye have a staredown in the corridor while their students rapidly try to reevaluate the Hogwarts power structure, ranked by level of intimidation, and finally resolve that the two must occupy a joint deputy position under Minerva McGonagall.
-Writing Mad-Eye is never not absurdly fun. Sure, he hasn’t used Unforgivables on kids (yet), but that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to test their reflexes.
-Can’t believe it took three books to get a scene in the Slytherin common room; it’s a marvelous place, and by far my favorite common room of all four. For preference, of course. Gryffindor Tower is pretty unbeatable, for coziness.
-Charlie Weasley forbidden character: unlocked. Draco doesn’t know the words for “snake bite piercings,” but I do, so you get to know that’s what he has. He just takes them out when he goes back to the Burrow, because his mum’s still grappling with the fact that Bill has an earring, and they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.
-Thank you to those who commented, and to those who’ve come to chat on tumblr! Makes one feel quite welcome. A bouquet of your favorite non-allergenic flowers to every one of you.
-Next chapter: “Read All About It.” And with it, an introduction to the wonderful world of Wizarding journalism.
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