Chapter 53: The Triwizard Cup
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
The race through the maze was stiff competition for the worst thing he’d ever done for Harry Potter. It was worse than any he’d ever done for any other reason, too, though those adventures were far and in between, being that he had only one friend who was this much goddamn work to keep, and really, he would’ve saved a lot of time and effort if he’d bought a cat.
Tendrils of Devil’s Snare sprouted from beneath the hedges and lunged for his ankles, and he cleared these with blasts of Confringo that would’ve had Neville weeping. Sap and something viscous splattered on his trousers and he knew he’d have to burn them, likely on a funeral pyre, and if he was lucky he wouldn’t be wearing them when they lit it.
If he was very, very lucky.
So he ran.
Through dark corridors of trawling vines and narrow blind corners, tight thorny archways that ripped at his shirt, ducking into and out of an alleyful of Blast-Ended Skrewts, running at such a pace that his breath turned to a constant harsh drumroll in his throat, Hermione’s shirt fluttering in his periphery like a frantic white dove, the warm scent of spring on the grass and smoke from somewhere and above it all the silence, the intolerable fucking silence, the silence like a kettledrum that said no one can hear you scream—
He rounded a corner and almost stepped into a jet of red light.
The kettledrum broke with a shrill scream. He hauled around and shoved Hermione back with an arm that nearly sent her flying — but she had her wand out, and the Shield fountained in front of them, deflecting the second curse of Fleur Delacour.
Fleur wasn’t well. Thick columns of blood trailed both nostrils, and her nose was crooked, the cartilage bent where something unforgiving had been introduced to it. When she screamed, rivulets laced her teeth. Long bolts of her flaxen hair was crusted with a rind of dark red clots. It was rather like a grotesque painting from one of those nasty bastards in the Baroque movement, the ones who liked killing almost as much as naked women.
“D’où viens-tu!” she screamed. “Quelqu’un m’a attaqué! Il a essayé de me tuer! J’aurais pu mourir, tu m’entends? Quel genre de misérable putain d’école—”
“Fleur!” Hermione ducked under Draco’s arm and tripped forward, hands aloft in pacification. “Oh, God, what happened to you?”
“Qu’est-ce qui m’est arrivé, putain de crétin insipide? J’ai embrassé un dragon! Imbecile!”
“Alright, that translates, but If you hold still, I can do something about—”
“Do not touch! Je vais crier si tu me touches, je ne peux pas le supporter!” Fleur tipped back her head and let out a long, tearful wail. “Où est ma mère? Je veux aller a la maison!” She started sobbing, deep ugly heaving sobs that brought new volumes of blood out of her nose. Hermione made an appalled sound.
Draco grabbed Fleur by the wrist and hauled her around. She screamed, and he plucked the wand from her hand.
“Fermez-la. Ressaisissez-vous. Ce n’est pas le théâtre,” he snapped, and stabbed her wand back at her.
She gasped herself into apoplexy, and then fell blessedly silent.
“Thank you,” said Hermione. “Now — Fleur, what happened to you?”
“A wizard,” she said stonily. “’E comez out of nowhere, a big man, and ’e curses me. And ’e breaks een my noze — PAF! — my beautiful noze! I am ruined, my face is ruined— ” Her mouth wobbled. She daubed at her lips and then spat. A red gobbet sailed into the grasses.
“None of that,” said Draco curtly. “What wizard? What did he look like?”
“I do not know! ’E wore a mask, I did not see his face!”
“A white mask?”
“Zhis is not fair! We were not told zhere would be wizards hunting us!”
“There aren’t,” said Ron grimly. “The Tournament’s off. The Task’s over. You have to get out.”
“What? Why? Why are you telling me zhis, and why eez it only you here? Where iz Madam Maxime? Where iz Dumbledore?”
“We don’t know,” said Hermione, with diminishing patience. “Outside, probably. They’ve closed the entrances, the maze is walled off. Fleur, listen to me. You have to get out of here. The man you saw was a Death Eater. Everyone is in danger.”
Fleur stared at her dazedly. “You are ze golden girl,” she said. “You came to ze Ball. With Viktor.”
“What? Yes! No! It doesn’t matter! Are you deaf? There are men in this maze who want to kill Harry, and believe me, they won’t hesitate to kill you, too!”
“They – they do?” She blinked. “Why?” she said, and her voice was harder, almost brittle, as if it were a personal annoyance.
“Because they’re shits,” said Ron calmly, standing up. “Because if you could bottle Harry’s luck, you’d have a weapon of mass destruction. We don’t know. It doesn’t matter. You have to go.”
She frowned, and rose to her feet. “No,” she said. “I cannot. ’Arry cannot die. I do not permit zhat.”
Hermione choked. “Oh, you don’t?”
“Non! He saved Gabrielle. I ’ave,” she said, “a debt.”
“No. You don’t. Really! He wouldn’t think so. Go! Right now! It would make it easier, in fact!”
“I do not know how they do zhese things in Britain,” she said haughtily, “but I ’ave my honor to think of. I will fight for ’im, as ’e fought for Gabrielle. I will find zhese terrible men in masks — these weak, pathetic, cowardly men, who do not show their fazez to fight! — and I will avenge my nose. And you will not zay of me, ‘zhat Fleur, she eez weak, and shallow, and zhinks only of ’erself.’ No, you will not! Zhey will zay: ‘Fleur Delacour, she eez brave, and good, and she did not forget zhe kindness zhat was shown to her!’”
Her chest heaved. She whirled on her heel and marched deeper in the maze with the panache of someone at the vanguard of the July Rebellion.
Hermione’s jaw dropped. She stalked after her.
“Fleur, you know he didn’t actually save her, right?” They followed, more or less from necessity, because it was the only path ahead. “The Second Task was on a timer. They weren’t going to kill her if you failed, that was never an option.”
“And ’ow you know zhat, I will be fazzinated to ’ear!”
“I know because I was in there with her!” Hermione was belligerent. “Are you listening to me? You’re putting your life in danger!”
The path winnowed and plunged under a gated archway of wrought-iron. Through the gnarled braids of iron wove a brilliant pepper of blue-and-yellow flowers, percolating fragrance, like the passage into a fairy garden. There were no hinges, nor handles, but the gate clearly was meant to be opened: the path continued on the other side, swallowed by gray mist.
“Zis eez a puzzle,” said Fleur, which made Draco begin to doubt the use of bringing her along.
Hermione drew her wand and used it to prod one of the flowers, which sighed a spring of yellow pollen at her touch. “Do you suppose there’s a pattern to the flowers?” she wondered. “Like a combination, or a code? I — oh, yuck.”
She whisked her hand back. The skin where the pollen touched started to flush and crack, beading little scabs of dead skin like sheddings of soap. Hermione made a panicked noise and smacked it off.
“It’s acid!”
“Technically, eet eez a base,” said Fleur, peering through the wrought-iron. “Ze acids hurt when you touch zem. Ze basez are more dangerous, for zey do not hurt, but zey will shred ze skin from your ’ands before you will even notice.”
Draco snatched Hermione’s wrist and cast a Scouring Charm. The pollen scattered, along with a skein of dead skin that fluttered into the wind. She sucked a breath through her teeth, and his stomach turned.
“Alright?”
“Fine.”
Fleur hopped up and down. “Oh! Eet eez a riddle!”
“Oh, good,” muttered Hermione. “The last one we had was a real treat.”
He tilted his head. “Do you think we solve this one the same way?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
There was a plaque inset into the center of the gate, engraved with ornate script.
Halfway up the hill, I see thee at last
Lying beneath me with thy sounds and sights —
A city in the twilight, dim and vast,
with smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights.
Fleur peered at it. “Hm. Eet eez not very clear, non? What eez zhe hill? And why can you not see it before?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hermione said shortly. “It’s a riddle, it’s not supposed to make sense. They don’t actually give you clues, because the point isn’t to help you solve them, it’s to suggest a plausible relationship post facto —”
“Eet eez lying beneath you… why beneath?” Fleur tapped her wand against her mouth, thoughtfully. “Why repeat zhat? And why is only zhe city in twilight? Why eez zhe speaker not also?”
“Because it was written by someone who didn’t care about narrative continuity. Listen, I think a good Freezing Charm and a Blasting Curse should be able to get us through here, we just need to check for holding runes. Ron, can you see—?”
“Aha!” Fleur snapped her fingers. “Ze past!”
The arms of the gate shrieked and pried apart. Each reaching curl of iron unwound and wriggled like it was a living tendril, transforming the complex lattice of metalwork into a writhing knot, like an anemone. The flowers shuddered and disappeared in tiny detonations of yellow dust.
“No,” said Hermione. “No. Really? That’s all? That’s absurd!”
“Jealous,” he said.
“I’m not! I’m just saying there’s no way to infer that from the riddle itself!”
“Eet eez not about inferenze, cyprin. You must think abstractly, creatively. Ze riddle,” said Fleur, with relish, “eez about ze observation of possibility.”
“I’m observing several possibilities right now,” Hermione muttered, and stomped after Fleur into the passageway.
They had made it only a few steps into the next corridor when a figure appeared in the fog. It was Cassius Warrington.
He came striding around the corner, his wand still glowing from the remnant of its last spell, and at the sight of Fleur, he barked and dropped at once into a dueling stance.
“Delacour!”
“Oh, perfect,” hissed Hermione.
“This git,” said Ron aggressively.
“Warrington,” Fleur said coolly. “Allo.”
“The devil are they doing here?” His wand skated from Ron, to Hermione, to Draco. His grip tightened. “Malfoy?”
Draco drew his wand and rolled it through his fingers. He narrowed his eyes.
Nobody would know. One curse, and they’d be the only ones to know. Could say it was a Death Eater. None the wiser, really.
“You’ll be disqualified,” Cassius told Fleur, his voice reverberating queerly in the gloom. He was faintly excited. “Once I tell them about this, you’ll be done for. It’s against the rules to get help in the Tournament.”
“Zhe Tournament?” demanded Fleur. “Zhere eez no Tournament, you gormless shit.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She gestured at the three of them. “Look around! ’Ave you not seen zhe men in here? Zhe Task is finished! Eet eez over! We must band togezzer, and escape!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said stiffly. His wand stayed level with his eyes. “If this is some sort of ploy, it’s failing.”
“Eet eez not a ploy! Ridiculous boy! Look at me! I was attacked!”
“Yes, that’s clear. Your struggles in the Task are your own misfortune, not mine. What’s not clear is why you felt the need to invite three children—”
“Children!” cried Ron. “Rich!”
“—into the Task with you, perhaps because your own magic isn’t enough—”
“Ow dare you!”
“—to do the same work as real wizards, which isn’t surprising—”
Fleur spat on his shoe. Cassius snarled and brandished his wand.
“Wouldn’t do that, Warrington.”
Cassius curled his lip at Draco, who rolled his wand through his fingers.
“What?”
“Flora Carrow,” he said. “Running around the dungeons looking like a vampire went after her. It’s the sort of information I’d want to keep contained, personally.”
“…That’s all?” He arched his eyebrows. “This is how you threaten me, Malfoy? A handful of — what? Vague insinuations?”
“You’re committing an indiscretion. I think your father might be interested to know about that.”
“You think my father gives a damn what I do behind closed doors? What licentious rumors my enemies care to spread are of no interest to anyone of substance.”
“Which is why you took such pains to hide it.”
Cassius shrugged. “Fine,” he said drolly. “Shout it from the rooftops, see if I care. It’s her reputation at risk, not mine. She’s a young woman of no prospects; really, Malfoy, you can hurt her if you like, but don’t imagine you’re touching me at all.”
Draco tilted his head and examined his face, the square set of his jaw, the pinched set of his mouth.
“You’re lying.”
“You’re free to think so.”
“And it still wouldn’t matter. Being a rake isn’t the headline you want running alongside the picture of you with the Triwizard Cup.”
“No?” Cassius smiled indulgently. “I quite agree. Which is why it’s terribly convenient that Flora will deny anything you say about it, like the good girl she is. And if you suggest anything she wouldn’t agree with, then I imagine a lot of newspapers will find all sorts of interesting things to do with the fact that you took a lycanthrope to the Yule Ball.” His smile widened. “And did a bit more, as I hear it.”
Ron gave a hard exhale. Draco’s fingers found the handle of his wand, and it stilled on the last spin.
“You’re a slimy little toad,” said Hermione.
Cassius quirked his eyebrow at her. “And you’re nothing,” he said indifferently. “I suppose you think I’ll take offense at that, but I can’t, because you’re not even real.”
“Warrington—”
“Your magic is an act of theft.”
“My magic is mine,” she said, with an awful little tremor.
It ought to be a hanging offense, that tremor. Or worse.
“You’re at this school on the charity of men like me.”
“No—”
“And when everything is sorted out,” he said calmly, “they’re going to send you back to your shack, or your cave, or whatever it is, where the other muggles live, and I’ll expect you to thank us for the privilege of borrowing our magic. Because it is, you know. A privilege.” He flicked his wand at her. “In fact, you ought to start now. Say ‘thank you.’”
“Stop eet,” said Fleur harshly. “Be quiet. Horrible boy!”
“Say ‘thank you, Cassius,’” he said, stepping forward. “‘Thank you for the magic.’ Say that, why don’t you? You’re rather clever, after all; you only need to learn to mind your manners. Maybe I’ll tell my father to take you on as a secretary. Might even let you have robes, like a real witch, instead of those little skirts that muggles wear—”
“Ulceratio.”
The jinx was fast. Too fast for him to see it, let alone dodge. Draco had a fast hand.
Snape’s curse was a dark salmon pink, like raw meat, and unlike the glitter of a normal spell, its body was thick, viscous, almost muscular in shape. He didn’t have time to examine it before it collided with Cassius’s cheek.
Sores blossomed on the side of Cassius’s face, wide wet weeping red pustules that scrambled over the skin like a hungry parasite. They swallowed his cheek and one ballooned over his eye, swelling it shut, while his shriek was garbled by the white pustules exploding on his mouth. Draco’s second jinx was the same, only lower, spreading the rash of bubbling flesh down his throat, and he savored the scream for a rare moment of pure satisfaction at a good hit, the clean running-water sensation of magic moving through his body like it was a river and he was the dam, the channel, the source of power.
Also, he now knew what his godfather did in his spare time, and it was horrifying.
Cassius went down on a knee, his hand palpating the sticky horror of his face. He gave a strangled whine, and Fleur said, “Mon dieu,” in hushed tones. Then she hurried forward and Stunned him. He toppled over with a groan of what might have been relief.
“Merlin,” said Ron faintly. Hermione had one hand over her mouth, her expression unreadable.
Draco ran his wand over his fingers. The power and the anger still danced like lightning over the surface of his skin, a lovely little waltz that looked at the Dark curse unfolding and thought, lovely, lovely, lovely . Lovely like Hermione when she got a spell right for the first time, lovely like pulling out of a dive. Lovely and deserved.
Not a real person… those little skirts.
There was a well in the bottom of his stomach and when he looked into it there was no bottom, and he wondered what would happen if he slipped into it, went deeper, reached for other spells he’d read in those books. Now he knew he could do it, with just a wand and a whisper and the still reservoir of rage in his navel.
“Draco.”
It was Hermione’s voice, so he listened. She was sheet-pale, and that wasn’t necessary, was it? He hadn’t done anything wrong.
“What?”
“What was that?”
“It’s a Boils Jinx,” he lied. “Sixth year Charms.”
She stared at him.
“Flitwick teaches that?” she said, and it was about as credulous as it ought to have been.
“I’m not a sixth year. I wouldn’t know.”
While she struggled to decide whether to call his bluff, he sheathed his wand and walked away. His heart was hammering. He could feel her watching his back.
Ron and Fleur were fussing over Cassius’s body, rolling him onto his side.
“We cannot leave ‘im like zhis. ’E will be attacked.”
“Yeah, here’s hoping.”
“Ronald! ’E is a bad man, but we must not let ‘im die!”
“Somehow, I don’t think the Death Eaters are gonna go after him.”
“Even so,” she said throatily, “ze maze eez full of ozzer creatures. Zere are scorpions, occamies, redcaps — I ‘ave seen zhem. Zhey will not ‘esitate. If ze Blast-Ended Skrewts come for ’im, ’e is defenseless.”
“Might be good for his character,” said Ron. “You never know.”
There was a faint shout, muffled by distance and fog. All stood at attention.
“Who’s that? Can you tell?” Hermione peered into the distance.
“We should hurry,” said Ron.
Green lights danced at the other end of the path, not spells, but the reflected glow of one against the dark hedge-wall. Shouts and roars of an animal that wasn’t human, and one animal that definitely was, more or less in the same amount of pain. Lights peppering the wall like the reflection of a fireworks display, and then an explosion, followed by screams plural and voices slightly less plural, signs of a pyrrhic victory.
“Death Eaters,” whispered Hermione. “We have to run—”
“Oh, Merlin,” said Ron, in a high-pitched voice. “Oh, Merlin, Merlin. Those were green lights. D’you think…?”
“Who cares, who cares! We still have to go! Hurry, hurry!”
“What! And leave ’im ’ere?” said Fleur, gesturing to Cassius.
“Yes,” said Hermione, bluntly, and for a moment Draco felt something in his chest that was very sharp and bright and pleasant, a sort of cutting pride — she was in fine form like this, cutting off a worthless bit of deadweight who would’ve left her to die, free at last of that pesky all-souls-on-board streak that would shackle her to the sinking boat — but then she said, “They won’t bother with him if they’re in a hurry. Probably.”
“Getting closer,” said Ron reedily. “Pretty fast, actually, maybe we should run—”
“We can’t make it.”
“Well damn, Mione, I guess we shouldn’t try!”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”
“No,” interrupted Fleur. “You will. But you must ’urry. I will hold zhem off.”
“Absolutely not,” said Hermione, although her tone suggested her concerns were probabilistic, not moral.
“Yes. I am ze finest witch at Beauxbatons. I will hold zhem for a while.”
“You don’t understand what you’re offering, Fleur. These aren’t students. They’re grown wizards, and they could kill you.”
Fleur drew herself up to her full height, which was not considerable, but still taller than Draco had initially thought. He remembered her at the drawing ceremony, all of none and zero inches, tripping down the aisle like four solid ounces of ballerina, and it seemed that he was recalling a different person altogether. She was no one’s ornament. She had approximately a third of the blood in her body worn on her face like war paint, half the nose she used to, and the distinctly red-eyed glower of a girl not so far removed, genetically speaking, from a Dark creature as anyone else in the outing.
In short, she was precisely the kind of person you might want between yourself and any sort of trouble.
“I hope zhat zhey will try,” she said.
“That’s not — oh, fine, but Fleur — if it gets bad, you have to run, alright? Don’t be stupid.”
Fleur nodded. “Fly fast, cyprin, mon chou,” she said. “Be quick. Get to ’Arry.”
“Yes’m,” said Ron, and then blushed furiously when she kissed his cheek.
“Go,” she cried, “run!” And standing, she spun a long, glittering charm in the air over her and Cassius, forming a silver ball.
“A hemispherical Shield Charm,” said Hermione, wondrous. “Those are… I can’t believe it. They’re impossibly difficult. The theory alone…”
“Yeah, almost like she’s good at this or something,” said Ron. He grabbed her arm and hauled her along. “C’mon, we’ve got a job to do.”
Their job, by joint understanding, was run like hell. Their job was move, yesterday, and Draco executed it with vigor. He didn’t even remember which turns he took, whether they were doubling back or getting any closer to the maze center, and he shamed Mad-Eye by not checking his corners. By his thinking, whatever was ahead couldn’t be worse than the cost of slowness. He might’ve been wrong about that, but he was lucky enough that it didn’t matter.
The maze was an eerie lattice of corridors, dark and narrow and misty without exception, and they swallowed echoes to the point where space itself seemed to twist sound; the distance between each turn felt unreal and inconsistent. Sounds came spearing out of the night and then vanished. Something about the unique poison of adrenaline and dread stifled conversation; perhaps they were all silently afraid of drawing attention. When they hit dead ends he didn’t even bother to speak, just snarled and whirled into the nearest corridor they hadn’t taken, Hermione hissing curses a half-step behind him. Sometimes he would stall and let her run into him at corners and junctions. The combination of sharp pressure and reprimand when she stepped into his back was a comfort as much as it was a precaution. The clasp of her fingers on his wrist when she shoved his arm out of the way to duck her head around a corner. It reminded him of running through the Forbidden Forest on a night like this one, nearly a year ago, her hand slippery and tight in his.
In the fug of focus and tension some part of his brain whirled and demanded of its other: Really, now? Here? And the other part replied, in a whinging voice: Yes, always, everywhere.
Besides which, if he was about to round the corner into an Unforgivable, he would do it having had as much as he could of the things he wanted in life. One of them being Hermione’s firm insistent little hands pushing up against his back, and the soft rasp of breath against her set teeth, and the impatient little exhale that she made of his name.
Not that he had ever been all too strong in the muscle of self-restraint, but he was certainly not about to develop it here.
It was abnormal how fast they could move. It was the Third Task, and he would have expected something to leap out of the bushes and try to decapitate him, or at least get a few hits in before moving along. He’d read up on previous Tournaments, the sorts of things administrators liked to line up for the grand finale — runespoors and occamies and chimerae, just the sort of nasty customers he’d grown distressingly adept at imagining — but the maze was clear as a duke’s garden, simply endless rows of darkness and the beckoning fingers of mist. This was highly suspicious, and he said as much.
“Don’t jinx it,” muttered Ron. His voice was thin and tinny in the fog. “Maybe they’ve gone to eat someone else.”
“That isn’t comforting,” hissed Hermione.
“It’s not not comforting,” said Draco, thinking of Krum.
Something scuttled around the corner. It was a newborn fire salamander, barely large enough to muster a puff of smoke, but when it skittered across Draco’s shoe he sucked air through his teeth and hiked his leg back as if bitten. This he elected to blame on poor visibility and the general atmosphere of creep, but it also stalled him at a junction, and in that time Hermione stopped dead like a startled bird, her hand aloft, stalling movement.
The susurrus of wind through the branches cleared and coalesced into human murmur.
“…find him in all…”
“…told to give us a map…”
“…a moving maze…”
Hermione took a half-step back, gesturing frantically for them to retreat, but the whispers abruptly cut.
“Wot — OI!”
“Reducto!”
“BOMBARDA!”
“Stupefy!”
Spells crackled in a blaze of light around the corner, and then there were three soft thuds. Quick footsteps stirred the rustling grass.
“Behind me,” said Hermione firmly, her wand up, and there was a bit of blue light at the end that foretold a Shield Charm; and with a noise of irritation, Draco grabbed her arm to haul on it, because she was properly mad if she thought he was going behind anything — him having a better arm than she had, and also being of no mind to watch her get mowed down the first time she met a spell stronger than a fifteen-year-old’s ability to cast Protego.
None of which came to pass: Viktor Krum stepped around the corner and let out an exclamation.
“Hermiown?”
“Viktor!” Hermione exclaimed.
“Vat are you doing? You are not supposed to be—”
“I know! It’s off. The Tournament is off. The Task’s compromised—”
“I know this,” he interrupted, patiently. “I haf just Stunned three men. This is not in order. Vat is going on?”
“Death Eaters are trying to kill Harry, we’re trying to stop them, I know it’s a lot but we don’t have much time—”
Viktor frowned. “Death Eater?”
“Bad men in masks who want to kill us for reasons that are complicated but not particularly relevant right now, and we’re running, you should go—”
“Harry Potter, they are trying to kill?” His expression darkened. “Your friend, Harry Potter?”
“Do you know others?” said Draco.
Viktor ignored him. “Harry Potter vill not be harmed,” he said stonily. “Ve must find him.”
“Yes! What?” Hermione blinked. “Why? I mean, I know why — it’s rather selfless of you, of course, but I didn’t think you two—”
“He is coming to help me. Vhen the First Task is still ahead. He comes to me, for nothing, and he tells me of the dragons. For vhat? No return. Who is he? A child. And still he is vorried for his rival of seventeen. The other man, Varrington, he is not doing this. Varrington, he is doing his duty, and only that. He is serving his country only.”
“Could have this conversation on the move,” said Ron, edging away. “A movable thing, this conversation.”
Viktor ignored him. “For Potter, it does not matter. He is only a boy trying to protect another boy. Of me, he is thinking: ‘He is Bulgarian, and my enemy, and but I vill try to help him, for because it is right thing to do.’ Vell. He is right. This is as great athletes do, I am thinking. This is sportsmanship.”
“A questionable decision, since this may get him killed,” said Draco, thinly. “And us, too, come to think of it.”
Far from being offended, Viktor nodded. “For you, I am sorry. You have had no choice in this. Great misfortune. Vould it vere not this way. But I chose this task. I am the champion. I put my name into the fire.” He drew himself upright. “Harry Potter will not die tonight. You have the word of Viktor Krum.”
He cast Lumos, and sent its beam sailing into the dark.
“Onvard,” he ordered.
Onward they went.
At the mouth of a wide circular junction they approached with more care than was necessary, since the space’s only population was corpses. Six of them, to be precise, all lizardly little things with wide mouths and mushrooms sprouting around their backs, arrayed in the limp sprawl of deadness, half of them in states too bad to identify.
“Dugbogs,” said Ron. “Hagrid had us doing them.”
“Thank you for that. I had taken them for kittens.”
“How d’you reckon Harry did this?” Ron probed through the clearing, astonished. “I wouldn’t think… he loved these things, tried to teach one to fetch.”
“It’s not Harry, it’s the Death Eaters,” murmured Hermione absently. She was checking the next courtyard for traps. “Trying to clear a path for him, I’d expect.”
Ron touched one with the tip of his shoe. “You don’t even have to kill them,” he said sadly. “Hagrid taught us the tricky bit. You just bop ’em on the snout, they go stiff as a board.”
Draco flicked a glance at one, and cut through the clearing. No use dwelling on it.
They broke into a run. A choice of paths ahead winnowed to one with Hermione’s whisper of “ Point me,” which cut them due north, through a volley of arrows that loosed at a height perfect to cull any healthy seventeen-year-old — enough for Viktor and Ron, anyway, though because Hermione reached it first, they triggered a hair too soon — and under coiling arms of Devil’s Snare, which erupted from the side of the hedge to meet a swift end with her “Incendio!”
By and by, when she cut ahead a ways, Viktor checked that she was enough ahead to struggle hearing behind her, and touched Draco’s arm.
“What?”
“You,” he said. “I haf not known your name until now. But you are Malfoy.”
“This isn’t really the time, Durmstrang.”
“She speaks of you very highly,” said Viktor seriously. “Herm-own.”
“Of course she does,” he said tartly, “she’s got a brainstem and an optic nerve. Now, about running—”
“I am vishing to make your acquaintance,” he said, “because of how she is talking about you. But I am not knowing I haf made it already.”
“Listen, if there’s a point to any of this—”
“I know you are not liking me very much,” said Viktor calmly. “And that you are not liking me because you are not liking that I am friendly vith her. I am understanding some things. I am also having vat you call ‘brainstem’ and ‘optic nerve.’”
Draco had nothing to say to that. He kept walking, briskly, and silently, in the hopes that Viktor could learn by example.
“But I am trying to know her friends, as vell. I am not having many friends,” he admitted freely, “except for team. I am flying too much often for that.”
“That’s your misfortune.”
“So I am thinking, you come to Bulgaria vith her,” he said, “and come see game. Ve vill play — vat you call it, here? ‘Friendly’? In off season. She says you fly. She says you are a good flier.” Then, slightly nonplussed: “ Very good, she says. She is alvays remembering it.”
“Does she,” he said, coolly. Then, with all the suspicion it was due: “That’s not a real invitation, I take it.”
His brow furrowed. Or furrowed more, rather. It was hard to alter something that was already one contiguous caterpillar of woe. “I am not being this insincere person,” he said, with more offense than Draco had ever managed to inflict before. “I am not making offers that are not good. You come vith her to Bulgaria. You vatch. You fly. Ve talk. Ve drink. Ve vill come to know each other.”
“Are you serious?”
“I vish to know you,” he said simply. “She is saying you are man vorth knowing. Good man.”
Draco tilted his head and probed his cheek with his tongue.
“Well, it’s perjury, if it’s not slander.”
“Vat?”
“Never mind. If we survive this, then I’d be delighted to go to Bulgaria, though I want it stated for the record that I shall be most unsurprised if an owl somehow mislays that invitation.”
“Vat do you mean?”
“I mean that you’re not subtle, either,” he said irritably. “I’m not eager to act as chaperone on your — courting holiday, and I don’t imagine I’ll be welcome there, either.”
Viktor blinked at him. His eyes were wide and dark as coffee grounds, the fine soft ones fresh out of the grinder, the ones that glittered.
“She is kind,” he said. “She is speaking to me in library, and I am thinking: she is not afraid. She is not vanting anything except to speak, and haf me listen. This is how it is, to haf a friend. You understand.”
“Daring of you.”
“You are understanding,” he urged. “Ve see it both. Every day of my life, the vorld is like this.” He laced his hands together. “But vhen she is speaking, the vorld is like this.” He spread them out, fingers splayed.
“…I’ve no idea what you mean.”
“You do. You are not liking me, because I see vhat you see, and you think I am vanting to take it for myself. No. I am not like this. I do not vant to take her away.” Viktor smiled, tentatively, like his face wasn’t used to it and was afraid of hurting itself. “I vant to come in.”
Draco was quiet.
Because that showed what he knew, really. Showed the colossal, hateful innocence of one Viktor Krum, a seventeen-year-old quidditch star who still somehow managed not to acquire any sense for what other people thought, because that wasn’t what Draco felt at all.
If he could have said anything to Viktor — at any rate, anything that he could live with, and anything that didn’t run the risk of being overheard — it would be that he was wrong. Wrong in his assumptions, wrong in his suspicions of some good-natured core of him that was soft and sweet and only wanted the best for her, and would just roll over and pant and share with as many people as she pleased. It wasn’t like that, his feeling.
He did want to take her away. He wanted to put her somewhere that the world couldn’t do anything to do with and hoard her up, every smile, every laugh, every single wink and smirk and nice thing she ever said, all of them only for him, and the worst part was it still wouldn’t leave him anything but starving. Which was the whole fucking problem.
He wasn’t like Viktor Krum. He didn’t want things the same way this boy did, apparently, which was so fucking wholesome butter wouldn’t melt. He was a Malfoy. He took the things he wanted. He didn’t give them back.
Hermione ducked against the next corner and glared at them, jerking her head: Hurry up!
Viktor hurried up. Draco hung back, striding a heartbeat slower than he could have, because he knew it would annoy her. And because then he’d have another thing that Viktor didn’t, another one of those expressions, the could-have-done-it-faster meets glad-you-did-it-at-all. And that was his. It was a glare for him. She didn’t let anyone else get away with it.
Around the corner, there was a cobblestone courtyard, and upon a stone plinth at its center stood a silver cup. It was nearly Harry’s height, smithed from crystal, and glowed faintly with an ethereal light at the center of the maze. There was no one in the courtyard.
“Thank God,” said Hermione, faint with relief. “We’re in time.”
“Don’t jinx it.” He crept into the courtyard and swept his wand around each of the branching lanes, probing them with Lumos. “He could’ve run into someone else. Oi— don’t you dare.”
Viktor paused, one foot on the plinth, and tore his awestruck stare away from the cup. “Is beautiful,” he said. “Goblin-make. You can tell, by the striations.”
“What striations?” said Hermione curiously.
“My father, he is vorking as metalsmith. He is showing me. Come, come.” He beckoned her.
“Get away from that,” Draco snapped. “It’s a Portkey.”
“Portkey?”
“Yes. It’s a trap for Potter. Touch it, and you’re dead.”
Viktor took back his hand and rubbed it, glancing guiltily at the cup.
Draco turned his back. He shook out his wand and cast Incendio up one of the lanes, setting the grass on fire. Within seconds, tendrils of Devil’s Snare struggled out of the lawn, wriggling for freedom in the dense thicket of the maze walls. Hermione and Viktor were inspecting the Cup, and began discussing something about goblin-silver in low voices.
Fatigue was beginning to settle in. He’d used enough magic that day that his body was faintly warm, with whispers of energy drifting over his skin in an unpleasant crackle, like he was a rapidly disappearing fuse. The strain of casting another Shield Charm would be considerable.
Ron gave a shout. Draco whirled around.
Three figures appeared at the end of the path. They were tall and hooded — he mistook them for Dementors, until he saw the glimmer of bone-white over their faces.
His innards turned to cold water.
The three of them broke into a run. The first brought back his wand — who were they? — and yellow light clustered at the tip — at least it wasn’t green — and loosed it in a bolt that soared across the courtyard — Travers? Avery? — and he was the last one to duck, when Ron screamed at him, but he did so, leaping sideways and slapping ungracefully onto the stone.
Yellow magic shattered into the maze wall and set it on fire. Flames billowed up the side of the maze, belching smoke, while the thick scent of burning greenery rose over the clearing.
The Death Eaters were a wall of black gliding down the lane. In his throat there was a knot of something so large and thick it hurt, and it left his lungs burning. Who were they? Igor Karkaroff? Sibelius Nott? Runcorn? Snape?
In the cold gleam of the mask there was nothing, no humor, no mercy, not even a pair of eyes to seek for understanding when they cut you down. And he understood, for perhaps the first time, why they wore them. Not for cowardice, but for strength.
You couldn’t plead with a piece of bone.
It’s me, I’m Draco, I’m a Malfoy. You knew my father, you served him.
And what would they say? He wasn’t Cassius Warrington. He could have been, but he wasn’t anymore.
More flames ripped up the sides of the maze, springing from the wands of the other two Death Eaters. The first reached the clearing and pointed his wand at Viktor, who drew his own, grim-faced, and settled into a crouching, eastern dueling stance.
The other two came into the courtyard like a creeping ink stain, nearly silhouetted against the flickering flames. The handle of his wand was a sharp line in his palm, and he couldn’t remember a single spell, not one, that would work. The terror was poison. It made him feel dead.
“Clear the altar.”
The voice from behind the mask — he was pathetically relieved — it wasn’t Snape. It was a deep, nasal Sussex, and he didn’t know it. Not that he long dwelled on it, because the man lifted his wand.
“Serpens—”
“Stupefy!”
Something darted out of another path, dark and blurred. The Death Eater sidestepped the red light, letting it sail harmlessly into the flames, but its caster shot into the courtyard and skidded to a halt in front of Hermione, his wiry shoulders heaving with effort.
“Potter!”
“Harry!” roared Ron.
He was scratched and bleeding a bit from his cheek, with all manner of twigs and leaves in his hair, like he’d escaped a rather cutthroat production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but otherwise, he was patently whole. One of the Death Eaters surged forward, but then — it surprised Draco — the other, their leader, threw out his hand and stopped him.
Then a Death Eater crooked his wand, and blue light forked like lightning over the clearing. Harry whipped around and rolled upright, casting two Stunning Spells like a one-two punch over his shoulder, and skidded around to Draco.
“Alright, Draco?” he shouted, half-wild.
“Me?”
“Yeah! You! Not hurt? No! Hermione—”
Hermione’s Shield Charm exploded into force at the center of the field, catching the bulk of a curse that was red and nastily viscous. Viktor was dueling one of the Death Eaters in a deadlock on the other side of the courtyard, their wands moving in almost inverse motions of spell and counterspell, like a remote ballet at lightspeed.
“Don’t touch the Cup,” Draco snarled. He grabbed Harry’s collar and shook him. “Listen to me. Don’t touch the Cup.”
“Merlin’s taint, really? No shit, I’ve got other things on my mind!”
“That’s not—”
The ground of the courtyard surged and rippled in a shockwave. Viktor’s Death Eater had cast a spell. Bodies flew: Harry’s, who was tossed freely into the air, like he was on an invisible broomstick; Ron, who flipped and landed hard on his stomach; Hermione sailed into one of the maze-walls, and the quick use of a Cushioning Charm stopped her face from being shredded on twigs. Draco backhanded another one on the ground beneath her, and she dropped safely into a round of shattered cobble.
One of the Death Eaters pointed at Harry. He didn’t seem to say anything, just extended one long gloved finger across the burning courtyard, like Death marking out the next head for his scythe.
“Potter!” Viktor roared. Two Death Eaters had cornered him against one of the burning walls, and he was struggling to prevent being herded into the flames. “Run!”
And Harry did — in the wrong direction. He cut sideways, sprinting through the shattered remains of the courtyard, straight for Viktor.
Draco was going to seize. Hermine stumbled up beside him, bleeding from a cut on her lip, and screamed: “Harry!”
It was unclear what he meant to do: at any rate, they never learned, because the third Death Eater sprang forward and swept a long current of force from the side of his wand, sending Harry sailing at the podium. Draco’s heart teleported several stories down out of his body—
But Harry missed the Cup by inches, and instead knocked against the plinth beneath it, his body landing with brutal force on the stone.
One of the Death Eaters whirled to pursue. Draco saw him. The man’s elbow was up, hand poised in the overhand to cast, which opened up his flank for an attack from the right, and Draco didn’t have an eye on him anywhere, he could move fast, he could move freely. He didn’t remember telling his wand what to do. The curse rolled down his arm like it had always been there, like he was passing the quaffle through a basic underhand, his muscle wiser than his brain.
“Reducto.”
The curse bit its target and vanished. There was a piping scream, which he realized belatedly came from inside the mask, and the Death Eater swiped at his side, which had dissolved into a curtain of fine red dust. Flesh and bone sieved into a curtain of glitter on the smoky wind, and viscera spilled from the hole in his chest. The Death Eater went to his knees. Hermione gave a small scream and clapped her hand over her mouth.
Draco’s stomach quaked, once, and then stilled. The instinctive roil of discomfort disappeared. There was a moment when he was staring at a living man, with real flesh and real pain — but he blinked, and it was a Death Eater again, the thing that would’ve killed him if it could have.
He could put the feeling away. That was interesting.
Viktor, meanwhile, roared approvingly, and kicked the fallen Death Eater in the head. He went over, and Viktor brought his boot down hard once, twice, three times on his face, until the mask gave a hard CRACK, and split in half. Viktor snarled and kicked his head again, letting the mask skitter free in two pieces over the stone.
The man flopped over sideways, unconscious. His hood and sheaf of dark hair spilled over his face, hiding it from view — nauseous, Draco took a half-step forward, and raised his wand, to cast it off, and see who it was—
Harry stirred against the plinth, groaning. Ron barked and took off running for him, but a Death Eater cut his wand back at him and hurled him into one of the burning walls, where he floundered, bellowing.
“Ron!”
Hermione tripped into a run. The Death Eater’s wand followed her path across the clearing. Draco broke into a sprint after her.
“Stop!”
“Hermione!”
He got to her before the curse. He didn’t exactly know what reservoir of his life’s luck he’d spent doing that, and he didn’t want to know, but he wasn’t too late. He shoved her down and went down hard on top of her, covering her body, and the curse moved harmlessly over their heads, detonating in the air over their heads. His ears rang. He put his hand over her head and shoved it into the ground, and he didn’t care if she was furious, he didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care. The curses passed over them like a firestorm happening six inches from their head. Her clothes were hot with smoke and exertion and her own residual magic, and she wrestled under him, trying to throw him off, shouting about something he couldn’t make out and didn’t care about.
He rolled up onto his knees and saw what had happened while he went down. Harry had staggered up on the podium, holding his head in one hand and his wand in the other. His glasses were askew, and one lens was cracked. The Death Eaters had turned back to him.
The first spell wasn’t a jinx at all. It was Flipendo, the telltale green pinwheel. Harry dodged it, and the next, and threw back a few feeble curses. His foot slipped back onto the platform, and something sank into the plinth. A rumble like a grinding whetstone took up under the platform, and the cup began to sink into the plinth, its glow sharpening, like it housed the birth of a star.
His ears cleared somewhat, and he finally heard what Hermione was screaming. It was Harry.
A Death Eater threw his wand out, and Harry dodged again, with the seeker’s reflexes that had never failed him once. A perfect sidestep.
Which meant the Death Eater’s Summoning Spell hit the Cup behind him. And it hurtled off its plinth as if it meant to embrace him.
“POTTER!”
They were all too far. Ron was rolling in flame, Hermione pinned, and Draco too far away.
So it was Viktor who, with a monumental effort of the body — his great, lumbering, ungainly quidditch player’s body, that never once moved on land with a tenth of the grace it did in air — launched himself at Harry. So it was Viktor who knocked into him, slamming him sideways, and for a moment the two boys hurtled free, wrapped together, spinning in air like the twirling arc of a helix.
Then the Cup knocked Viktor’s ankle, and gleamed white.
The clearing became a field of light. It outshone the flames. Someone was screaming. The light was so bright that it seemed to blot out even sound, like the world was glitching.
When shadow and figure returned, Death Eaters were gone, and so were the two remaining champions. And the clearing was full of three children, rubble, and smoke.
The riddle is a modified excerpt from Mezzo Cammin, a sonnet by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Bottom of the ninth, and we’re really in it now. I hope it doesn’t disappoint. Thank you so much for everything.
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