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lomonaaerenTitle: An Accurate Accounting
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo, background Lucius/Narcissa, mentions of James/Lily
Content Notes: AU starting with fourth year, Lucius as Harry’s godfather, angst, complicated relationships, underage kissing
Rating: : PG-13
Wordcount: 4300
Summary: AU. Lucius Malfoy and James Potter were friends, once. Then they weren’t. But James kept his promise to name his old friend as a godfather for his son. In fourth year, when Harry is brooding by himself and Theodore Nott challenges him to do something about it, the truth comes out.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” chaptered fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s for DustAshShadows, who asked for Lucius and James being friends in childhood and promising to name each other their sons’ godfathers.
An Accurate Accounting
“Pathetic.”
Harry jerked. He really had thought he was alone here in the shadows of the Forbidden Forest, leaning against a tree so dark that it looked as if it had lain in shadow for millennia. He twisted around and scowled at the pale boy behind him. Nott? Yeah, Nott.
“Go away, Nott.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Yeah, I know, because I’m a cheater,” Harry said, rolling his eyes, and turned around to lie down between the tree’s roots again. At least a Slytherin taunting him wouldn’t make him feel as bad as it did when the Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs did it. Slytherins taunting him was business as usual.
“Of course you didn’t cheat. You’re painfully honest.”
“Then what are you—”
“If you want to make other people believe it, going off and sulking isn’t the way to do it.” Nott flopped down beside him and snorted when Harry flinched away. “I’m not going to harm you, Potter. I came here to tell you I believe you. But here you are, acting like a child whose sweets were taken away.”
“I am not!”
“Then prove it.”
“How, exactly?” Harry snapped. “Supposedly no one can fool the Goblet of Fire, and I already told them the truth and they didn’t believe me.”
“There are spells,” Nott said, staring at him with oddly intense pale green eyes, “that can make magical artifacts tell the truth. You, of course, wouldn’t be interested in learning any of those. Or have any idea they exist.”
“Tell me, Nott.”
“I like that growl. Very impressive.”
“Nott!”
“Does that mean you’re interested in learning them after all?”
“Yes, damn you.”
“Then let me teach you.”
Nott sat up and drew his wand. It was made of some dark wood—ebony, Harry thought—but it still seemed to glow in the darkness of the Forest. So did Nott’s eyes.
But Harry had faced Voldemort and a basilisk and a hundred Dementors and a fugitive he thought was his murderous traitor godfather. He stared back and said, “Do it.”
*
“This is really most irregular, my boy.”
Harry ignored Dumbledore as he strode up the center of the Great Hall towards the Goblet of Fire. It hadn’t been easy to make the Tournament judges bring it back from wherever they’d stored it. But he’d thrown a tantrum and used the power that Nott had reminded him he had, as the Boy-Who-Lived. He’d threatened to go to the papers and tell them that he was being denied the chance to see the artifact that had ruined his life.
The papers probably wouldn’t have believed him, but they would have loved to print the story. Nott had predicted that. And so Dumbledore and the others had caved.
It made Harry wonder what else he might be able to do, what else they would do to avoid angering the Boy-Who-Lived.
Snape was sneering at him from the professors’ table as though Harry had confirmed all his worst suspicions, but Harry had accepted that Snape would hate him no matter what he did, “if you came riding into the Great Hall on a unicorn with centaurs singing songs about how much sweetness and light you shit out,” as Nott had put it. Harry laid his wand against the Goblet of Fire and took a moment to concentrate. The Great Hall was falling silent as people leaned forwards to stare at him.
“Vis contra rem!”
The spell expanded out of Harry in rings of green light. They landed on the Goblet and began to circle it, thrumming. Harry heard more than one person catch their breath. He didn’t move. He just kept his eyes fixed on the Goblet.
There was a flicker above it for a second that made Harry wonder if it was going to start burning the way it had when the Champions were chosen. And then the flicker became a bright gold and spat out the information Nott had told him it would.
Harry Potter hovered above the Goblet. Harry could see the names of his Muggle relatives off to the side, along with Sirius’s, whose name was joined to Harry’s by a thin golden stick. His parents’ names were right above his.
And there were the words underneath that, the ones that Nott had said would be the most important.
Chosen for the prophecy by Lord Voldemort. Chosen for the Tri-Wizard Tournament by Barty Crouch.
Harry hissed. One of the judges had chosen to put his name in the Goblet? He wondered why. Maybe he thought this would make it more exciting because he was part of the Ministry or something. He didn’t know what the prophecy information referred to, but the part about the Goblet was more important.
He started to turn away, but paused when he saw another golden stick poking out from his father’s name. It looked like the stick that held Sirius’s name, but the one on the end of it made Harry stare blankly.
Godfather, Lucius Malfoy.
He was barely sure that he had seen it. The golden words dissolved in the next instant and rained down as flickering, illusory flames, although they vanished before they hit the floor of the Great Hall. Harry stood there, staring, and then a loud retort went off from someone’s wand and the shouting he’d barely been aware of stopped.
“Mr. Potter, if you will tell us where you learned that spell?”
Crouch sounded as if he were trying to sneer and instead battling against terror. Harry looked up slowly at him, and then his surprise tore and rage surged up inside him. He ran straight at the professors’ table.
Someone’s spell caught him before he got there. A transparent spiderweb appeared from nowhere and tangled around him. Harry struggled against it, shouting, “Why did you do it? Why did you put my name in the Goblet? Is this all some kind of sick game to you that you needed to make sure people come to or something? I’m going to—”
“It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it!”
“It said you did! Your name! I saw you!”
“Harry, calm down.”
The Headmaster’s voice had the power to cut through everything, including the buzzing in Harry’s head. He was breathing deeply as he turned and stared at Dumbledore. Dumbledore stared back at him with eyes that seemed shadowed with sorrow.
“Where did you learn that spell, Harry?”
“That’s what you want to talk about? When he put my name in the Goblet and you just let him sit there—”
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
“It does seem to be a rather powerful spell,” Snape said. His voice sounded like he was enjoying this whole thing. Harry supposed that as long as Harry got in trouble, the bastard wouldn’t care if other people did, too. “I wonder…if you insist that you didn’t do it, Mr. Crouch, we have only one other candidate. Someone with the same name.”
“My son is dead.”
“Then why did the spell say that you did it?”
“Harry, I will need you to stop shouting.” Dumbledore stood up and seemed to be looking around the Great Hall, looking for some specific person, although Harry didn’t know who. “In fact, I think that is best to retire to my office to discuss this matter. Bartemius, if you would come? Severus, bring Harry.”
It was Snape’s spell holding Harry captive, then, and Dumbledore didn’t even care and didn’t want to make Snape release it. As Snape waved his wand and sent Harry, still wrapped up in the web, skidding towards the doors of the Hall, Harry felt slapped in the face.
Dumbledore didn’t care that this would humiliate Harry or that he wasn’t a cheater after all. He just wanted them out of there as fast as possible.
Harry managed to turn his head to the Slytherin table and meet Nott’s wide, shocked eyes before the doors of the Great Hall slammed shut behind them.
*
“I want you to tell me where you learned that spell, Harry.”
“And I want to know what it means that one of the judges put my name in the Goblet of Fire. Sir.”
Dumbledore peered at Harry above his glasses. Harry felt his soul shrivel at that. Dumbledore did disapproving better than Snape and Aunt Petunia combined. Or maybe it just felt that way to Harry because he cared about what Dumbledore thought.
But he sat there, and at last Dumbledore let out a sharp sigh and turned to face Mr. Crouch. “I find Harry’s question a fair one, Bartemius. What did the Goblet mean by giving your name?”
“Nothing.”
Harry thought it might have been a mistake to give Mr. Crouch time to recover. Now he just sat there with his arms folded and looked stubborn and uncompromising and made Harry want to reach out and rip his face off.
The air in between him and Mr. Crouch suddenly sparked with something that felt wild and strong. Harry blinked, and it disappeared.
“While I do worry that the spell Harry used was Dark Arts, there is no indication that it was wrong,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I am afraid that I must insist on more of an answer than you have so far provided.”
Dumbledore’s magic seemed to spread through the office like wings, and Harry shivered a little, as much as he could wrapped up in the spiderweb. Dumbledore still hadn’t made Snape remove it.
“My son is dead. You know that yourself.”
“I know that he died in Azkaban and was privately buried. If we went to that grave, I wonder what we would find?”
Mr. Crouch lurched to his feet. His face was pale and he was sweating, but he still looked like he would like to hurt Dumbledore the way Harry had wanted to hurt him. “You will not disturb his rest!”
Dumbledore just sat there and stared at him. Mr. Crouch folded his arms and stood still. Snape smiled. Harry glanced away from Snape and focused on the confrontation again.
“You won’t,” Mr. Crouch repeated, but he sounded a little more uncertain this time. He glanced around and then folded his arms and sat back down in the chair. “My son is dead. The name in the spell is simply a mistake. Ask Potter where he got that spell! It could be lying for all we know! He could just be trying to make people think he didn’t cheat!”
“Where did you get that spell, Harry?”
Harry just stared at Dumbledore. “Why should I tell you that, when you let Snape haul me out of the Great Hall like this and you’re believing the man who put my name in the Goblet of Fire?”
“Professor Snape, Harry.”
Harry sneered and said nothing. It probably wasn’t a good sneer, but he didn’t care.
Nott didn’t really care about Harry, but that was to be expected. He was a Slytherin. Mr. Crouch didn’t care, but he was just a judge and probably had thought he could make the Tournament more exciting.
But Dumbledore was supposed to care.
“I find myself curious about something else,” Snape said with a drawl, probably because the situation wasn’t dramatic enough for him anymore. “I saw the names above the Goblet, and they included more than one unexpected one. What was Lucius Malfoy’s name doing there with Sirius Black’s?”
“We need not pursue that.”
“Why not?” Harry snapped, angry all over again. “Why do you only want to talk about the things that make me look like a cheater and a liar?” The air sparkled between him and Dumbledore again, but he barely noticed. “Why do you want to ignore everything else?”
Abruptly, the spiderweb around him froze, blackened, cracked, and fell to dust.
Harry sat there and stared at his hands, and Crouch stared at him with his jaw hanging open. Snape made an angry hissing sound. Dumbledore was the one who leaned back in his chair, rubbed at his face with one hand, and whispered, “I am sorry, Harry.”
“Was—was that my magic?” Harry stared at the air between him and Crouch again, and thought he could see light glinting and tumbling there, although it vanished when Harry gave it a sharp glance.
“Indeed,” Dumbledore said. “I do wish I knew where you learned that spell you used on the Goblet, Harry.”
“He is a brat,” Snape said, and Harry wanted to look at him, but he knew what he would see. Just a sneer. “He has been meddling in books that he should not have.”
As long as Snape didn’t think Harry had learned the spell from one of his Slytherins, Harry had no intention of worrying about him. He just looked at Crouch and asked, “Is your son really dead?”
“You aren’t to worry about that!”
“So that sounds like a ‘no’ to me.”
“Harry—”
There was a sudden burst of sound at the door to Dumbledore’s office. Harry jumped, and hoped, absurdly, that the noise was Ron hammering at the door to come in and apologize to him.
But instead, the door burst open, and the last person Harry had expected to see stepped into the office. Lucius Malfoy looked as ruffled as a swan with a stolen egg. He stared around for a second, then focused on Harry.
“James’s son,” Mr. Malfoy whispered. “He kept his promise.”
“Er, what?”
Mr. Malfoy strode towards Harry and then stopped suddenly as if someone had blocked him with an invisible wall. He was still staring at Harry, raking him with his eyes again and again. “James and I promised that we would make each other godfathers to our firstborn children. I kept the promise, although it has not been relevant since—what happened to your father happened. But I thought James had not.”
“My godfather is Sirius.”
“There can be more than one. I assume that James thought it would be little more than a ceremonial promise, given that he also named Black. But he did it. And that means that I have a measure of responsibility for you.”
“We are still trying to determine whether the spell on the Goblet told the truth or not, Lucius.” Dumbledore’s voice was a deep rumble that would have made Harry look at the Headmaster any other time. Now, he couldn’t take his eyes from Mr. Malfoy. “After all, the Goblet claims that Bartemius Crouch put Harry’s name in the Goblet, but Bartemius Crouch here is most insistent that—”
“He had a son,” said Mr. Malfoy instantly. “And that son was in Azkaban when Crouch visited him with his wife, less than a full day before Emilie herself died.” He spun to face Crouch. “Where is he? Where did you put him?”
“You—you aren’t—I resent these accusations!”
“That is not the same thing as saying they are not true—”
Mr. Crouch drew his wand. Harry didn’t even see Mr. Malfoy move. Suddenly his wand was in his hand, and Mr. Crouch’s wand was spinning through the air as if it had decided it liked Mr. Malfoy better. Mr. Malfoy pocketed it.
You can do the Disarming Charm wordlessly? That’s so brilliant.
“I want to know where he is,” Mr. Malfoy said. He sounded a lot more intimidating than Snape ever had. “Where did you put him? Emilie would have died for that boy. I suspect she did. And you—what? Kept him prisoner? Perhaps subdued him with the Imperius? I assume you would need to. Barty was a dedicated Death Eater.”
Harry swallowed. He hadn’t heard of Mr. Crouch’s son before, and so he hadn’t even thought about why he would be in Azkaban, but—well, it made sense that a Death Eater would want to put Harry’s name in the Goblet and get him killed.
If this was true. If any of it was true. Harry kind of felt like he was in the middle of a dream and no one had bothered to wake him up yet. Even though when he pinched his arm, it hurt.
“I resent these—”
“Enough!”
Dumbledore didn’t even need his wand to produce a bang, the way he had in the Great Hall. He just stood up, and Harry felt magic like a wind pressing everyone up against the walls. Mr. Malfoy still managed to grab onto Harry’s chair and stand between him and Crouch instead of blowing away like Snape. He was staring at Crouch still, with a strange expression on his face.
Harry didn’t know what that expression was. He wasn’t sure he liked it.
“These accusations are indeed distressing,” Dumbledore said softly. He pulled his magic back into his body, and Harry could sit up again. Mr. Malfoy grasped his shoulder. Dumbledore frowned at Mr. Malfoy’s hand. “I suggest we all sit down and discuss them like civilized people. Lucius, I must ask that you give poor Bartemius back his wand.”
“Not until he ceases to threaten my godson.”
“Lucius.” Dumbledore sank a lot of something into that word. Harry wasn’t sure he knew what it was. He wasn’t sure he liked that, either. “Regardless of what James might have intended, Sirius Black is the boy’s godfather in every way that matters.”
“So would I have been, had I known of James’s intentions. And given that Black is a hunted fugitive at best and a murderous madman at worst, I do feel that I am the better choice.”
Harry swallowed. “Hey,” he said. He didn’t want to let Mr. Malfoy say that Sirius was a terrible person. It wasn’t Sirius’s fault that he’d had to go to prison or that he couldn’t be Harry’s godfather openly.
No one seemed to hear him. Mr. Crouch had got back some of his personality, and he was sneering at Mr. Malfoy. “Why should Dumbledore trust a Death Eater to claim that he can be around the Boy-Who-Lived without wanting to slaughter him?”
“Why should he not trust me with Mr. Potter? He trusts another Death Eater with him on a daily basis.”
Mr. Malfoy’s voice was heavy, and Harry had the distinct feeling that he should be paying attention. He looked up, and discovered that Mr. Malfoy was staring at Professor Snape, who was stony-faced.
Oh, no. I didn’t—oh, no.
“Is it true?” Harry whispered, staring at Snape. “Are you really a Death Eater?”
“I need not answer that question.”
Mr. Malfoy laughed, a kind of breathless sound, and pulled back his left sleeve. Harry stared at the Dark Mark on his left arm, and thought of the huge green one hovering over the Quidditch World Cup.
“I need not hide who I am,” Mr. Malfoy said softly. “I was under the Imperius Curse, and I am ashamed that I was so weak, that I got close enough to the Dark Lord to be branded and trusted him enough to let him cast that curse on me. I have atoned. But what has Severus done except stay close to Dumbledore and torment the most famous of the Dark Lord’s orphans?”
“Stop, Lucius.”
This time, though, Dumbledore didn’t sound so commanding, and Harry found himself shaking his head. “Is he really one?” he asked, turning to Dumbledore. “You never said. You keep insisting that I should trust him, and I shouldn’t trust people like the Malfoys, but he’s my godfather.”
“Harry, that spell—”
“Tell him the truth then, Albus, if you know it.” Mr. Malfoy clenched both hands on the head of his cane and turned to face the Headmaster’s desk. Harry sneaked a look at his face. He was pale, of course, like always, but he looked almost—joyful, as if he was about to charge or something. “Did James not name me godfather?”
Dumbledore considered Mr. Malfoy in silence for so long that Harry thought he wasn’t going to answer. Maybe he was trying to make the question seem ridiculous. But then he shook his head and said calmly, “I cannot answer that. What happens with the private desires of the heart in the moments before death—”
“You do not know, then.”
“You do not know that he intended to name you, either.”
“James and I were friends as children. His mother was related to people on my mother’s side.” Mr. Malfoy stepped neatly to the side as Mr. Crouch moved, so that he was still between him and Harry. “We promised that we would name each other as our firstborns’ godfathers. But then I went to Hogwarts and was Sorted into Slytherin and learned more about blood purity, and—James was not raised with that. When he came to Hogwarts, he went to Gryffindor, and it was all too easy for him to believe the worst of everyone else. Slytherins, Death Eaters, everyone outside his tight circle of best friends.”
“Lucius—”
“I could have told him that was foolish. I could have told him that just because someone laughs with you and plays pranks with you is no indication of a true friendship. And I was right, wasn’t I?” Mr. Malfoy took a long step forwards. “One of his supposed best friends betrayed him.”
Dumbledore tensed. Harry was sure that he knew Mr. Malfoy knew the truth, even though neither of them would say that because Crouch was in the room. And Snape? No, wait, he must know that Sirius was innocent.
“I could have been there for Harry, if I had known.” Mr. Malfoy’s voice was low and passionate. Harry didn’t know if he jumped more from that or from hearing Mr. Malfoy say his first name. “You need not have abandoned him to the Muggle world.”
“Mr. Potter had a perfectly normal life in the care of his relatives—”
“They locked me in a bloody cupboard! It was not perfectly normal!”
Several people turned to stare at Harry. Harry was aware that he was yelling. But he didn’t want to sit there and hear those lies, and if anyone should know the truth about the Dursleys, it was Dumbledore. He was a great and powerful wizard, and he wasn’t fooled by things people said like Sirius still being guilty. So he had to know.
“My boy,” Dumbledore whispered.
“It wasn’t!”
“So the great Potter was not treated the way he thinks he should have been,” Snape muttered. He made a wiping motion as though he was erasing a blackboard with his hand. His eyes were locked on Harry. “What does it matter? We are here to discuss many things, including whether the information revealed by the Goblet was even accurate—”
“We do not know that it was,” Dumbledore interrupted. “I know that James never told me about being friends with Lucius Malfoy in his youth.”
“Why would he? Did he tell you everything?”
Dumbledore said nothing, but his hands tightened on the edge of his desk. Harry stirred uneasily, wondering if it was the best idea for Mr. Malfoy to taunt the Headmaster. He had no idea what was going on, and the only clear thing in his head was that he didn’t want to go back to the Dursleys.
Mr. Malfoy seemed to hear his silent plea. He squeezed Harry’s shoulder one more time and shifted so that he was between Harry and everyone in the room, not just Mr. Crouch. “I will take my godson home now. He’s had a trying day, and he doesn’t need to be here for the cancelation of the contract between him and the Goblet of Fire that you’ll announce.”
“He is still bound to compete!”
“Not unless he entered his own name,” Mr. Malfoy said, and laughed a little. “Did you not know the rules of the competition that you yourself invoked, Crouch? I look forward to your reversing the declaration in the papers. Headmaster, we will use your Floo.”
“You haven’t heard the last of this, Lucius.”
“About the Goblet and the competition, I am sure we have.”
“Harry, don’t go with him.”
Harry took a deep breath and looked up. “I don’t want to compete in the Tournament,” he said. “And Mr. Malfoy is the only one saying I don’t have to. Are you going to say that I don’t have to?”
Dumbledore sighed. “Not until I can be sure that the spell you cast on the Goblet is accurate. And to know that, I need to know where it came from. Where you learned it.”
Harry shook his head and remained silent. He didn’t know if going with Mr. Malfoy was the right thing to do. He was growing less and less sure that casting the spell had been the right thing to do. But he did know that betraying someone who had tried to help him was wrong.
Another long sigh. Then Dumbledore said, “You may use my Floo, Lucius.”
Harry was so numb that he didn’t remember what Mr. Malfoy said next, or what the Floo trip to some place called Malfoy Manor was like. But he was aware of Mr. Malfoy’s hand on his shoulder the whole time.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo, background Lucius/Narcissa, mentions of James/Lily
Content Notes: AU starting with fourth year, Lucius as Harry’s godfather, angst, complicated relationships, underage kissing
Rating: : PG-13
Wordcount: 4300
Summary: AU. Lucius Malfoy and James Potter were friends, once. Then they weren’t. But James kept his promise to name his old friend as a godfather for his son. In fourth year, when Harry is brooding by himself and Theodore Nott challenges him to do something about it, the truth comes out.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” chaptered fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s for DustAshShadows, who asked for Lucius and James being friends in childhood and promising to name each other their sons’ godfathers.
An Accurate Accounting
“Pathetic.”
Harry jerked. He really had thought he was alone here in the shadows of the Forbidden Forest, leaning against a tree so dark that it looked as if it had lain in shadow for millennia. He twisted around and scowled at the pale boy behind him. Nott? Yeah, Nott.
“Go away, Nott.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Yeah, I know, because I’m a cheater,” Harry said, rolling his eyes, and turned around to lie down between the tree’s roots again. At least a Slytherin taunting him wouldn’t make him feel as bad as it did when the Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs did it. Slytherins taunting him was business as usual.
“Of course you didn’t cheat. You’re painfully honest.”
“Then what are you—”
“If you want to make other people believe it, going off and sulking isn’t the way to do it.” Nott flopped down beside him and snorted when Harry flinched away. “I’m not going to harm you, Potter. I came here to tell you I believe you. But here you are, acting like a child whose sweets were taken away.”
“I am not!”
“Then prove it.”
“How, exactly?” Harry snapped. “Supposedly no one can fool the Goblet of Fire, and I already told them the truth and they didn’t believe me.”
“There are spells,” Nott said, staring at him with oddly intense pale green eyes, “that can make magical artifacts tell the truth. You, of course, wouldn’t be interested in learning any of those. Or have any idea they exist.”
“Tell me, Nott.”
“I like that growl. Very impressive.”
“Nott!”
“Does that mean you’re interested in learning them after all?”
“Yes, damn you.”
“Then let me teach you.”
Nott sat up and drew his wand. It was made of some dark wood—ebony, Harry thought—but it still seemed to glow in the darkness of the Forest. So did Nott’s eyes.
But Harry had faced Voldemort and a basilisk and a hundred Dementors and a fugitive he thought was his murderous traitor godfather. He stared back and said, “Do it.”
*
“This is really most irregular, my boy.”
Harry ignored Dumbledore as he strode up the center of the Great Hall towards the Goblet of Fire. It hadn’t been easy to make the Tournament judges bring it back from wherever they’d stored it. But he’d thrown a tantrum and used the power that Nott had reminded him he had, as the Boy-Who-Lived. He’d threatened to go to the papers and tell them that he was being denied the chance to see the artifact that had ruined his life.
The papers probably wouldn’t have believed him, but they would have loved to print the story. Nott had predicted that. And so Dumbledore and the others had caved.
It made Harry wonder what else he might be able to do, what else they would do to avoid angering the Boy-Who-Lived.
Snape was sneering at him from the professors’ table as though Harry had confirmed all his worst suspicions, but Harry had accepted that Snape would hate him no matter what he did, “if you came riding into the Great Hall on a unicorn with centaurs singing songs about how much sweetness and light you shit out,” as Nott had put it. Harry laid his wand against the Goblet of Fire and took a moment to concentrate. The Great Hall was falling silent as people leaned forwards to stare at him.
“Vis contra rem!”
The spell expanded out of Harry in rings of green light. They landed on the Goblet and began to circle it, thrumming. Harry heard more than one person catch their breath. He didn’t move. He just kept his eyes fixed on the Goblet.
There was a flicker above it for a second that made Harry wonder if it was going to start burning the way it had when the Champions were chosen. And then the flicker became a bright gold and spat out the information Nott had told him it would.
Harry Potter hovered above the Goblet. Harry could see the names of his Muggle relatives off to the side, along with Sirius’s, whose name was joined to Harry’s by a thin golden stick. His parents’ names were right above his.
And there were the words underneath that, the ones that Nott had said would be the most important.
Chosen for the prophecy by Lord Voldemort. Chosen for the Tri-Wizard Tournament by Barty Crouch.
Harry hissed. One of the judges had chosen to put his name in the Goblet? He wondered why. Maybe he thought this would make it more exciting because he was part of the Ministry or something. He didn’t know what the prophecy information referred to, but the part about the Goblet was more important.
He started to turn away, but paused when he saw another golden stick poking out from his father’s name. It looked like the stick that held Sirius’s name, but the one on the end of it made Harry stare blankly.
Godfather, Lucius Malfoy.
He was barely sure that he had seen it. The golden words dissolved in the next instant and rained down as flickering, illusory flames, although they vanished before they hit the floor of the Great Hall. Harry stood there, staring, and then a loud retort went off from someone’s wand and the shouting he’d barely been aware of stopped.
“Mr. Potter, if you will tell us where you learned that spell?”
Crouch sounded as if he were trying to sneer and instead battling against terror. Harry looked up slowly at him, and then his surprise tore and rage surged up inside him. He ran straight at the professors’ table.
Someone’s spell caught him before he got there. A transparent spiderweb appeared from nowhere and tangled around him. Harry struggled against it, shouting, “Why did you do it? Why did you put my name in the Goblet? Is this all some kind of sick game to you that you needed to make sure people come to or something? I’m going to—”
“It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it!”
“It said you did! Your name! I saw you!”
“Harry, calm down.”
The Headmaster’s voice had the power to cut through everything, including the buzzing in Harry’s head. He was breathing deeply as he turned and stared at Dumbledore. Dumbledore stared back at him with eyes that seemed shadowed with sorrow.
“Where did you learn that spell, Harry?”
“That’s what you want to talk about? When he put my name in the Goblet and you just let him sit there—”
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
“It does seem to be a rather powerful spell,” Snape said. His voice sounded like he was enjoying this whole thing. Harry supposed that as long as Harry got in trouble, the bastard wouldn’t care if other people did, too. “I wonder…if you insist that you didn’t do it, Mr. Crouch, we have only one other candidate. Someone with the same name.”
“My son is dead.”
“Then why did the spell say that you did it?”
“Harry, I will need you to stop shouting.” Dumbledore stood up and seemed to be looking around the Great Hall, looking for some specific person, although Harry didn’t know who. “In fact, I think that is best to retire to my office to discuss this matter. Bartemius, if you would come? Severus, bring Harry.”
It was Snape’s spell holding Harry captive, then, and Dumbledore didn’t even care and didn’t want to make Snape release it. As Snape waved his wand and sent Harry, still wrapped up in the web, skidding towards the doors of the Hall, Harry felt slapped in the face.
Dumbledore didn’t care that this would humiliate Harry or that he wasn’t a cheater after all. He just wanted them out of there as fast as possible.
Harry managed to turn his head to the Slytherin table and meet Nott’s wide, shocked eyes before the doors of the Great Hall slammed shut behind them.
*
“I want you to tell me where you learned that spell, Harry.”
“And I want to know what it means that one of the judges put my name in the Goblet of Fire. Sir.”
Dumbledore peered at Harry above his glasses. Harry felt his soul shrivel at that. Dumbledore did disapproving better than Snape and Aunt Petunia combined. Or maybe it just felt that way to Harry because he cared about what Dumbledore thought.
But he sat there, and at last Dumbledore let out a sharp sigh and turned to face Mr. Crouch. “I find Harry’s question a fair one, Bartemius. What did the Goblet mean by giving your name?”
“Nothing.”
Harry thought it might have been a mistake to give Mr. Crouch time to recover. Now he just sat there with his arms folded and looked stubborn and uncompromising and made Harry want to reach out and rip his face off.
The air in between him and Mr. Crouch suddenly sparked with something that felt wild and strong. Harry blinked, and it disappeared.
“While I do worry that the spell Harry used was Dark Arts, there is no indication that it was wrong,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I am afraid that I must insist on more of an answer than you have so far provided.”
Dumbledore’s magic seemed to spread through the office like wings, and Harry shivered a little, as much as he could wrapped up in the spiderweb. Dumbledore still hadn’t made Snape remove it.
“My son is dead. You know that yourself.”
“I know that he died in Azkaban and was privately buried. If we went to that grave, I wonder what we would find?”
Mr. Crouch lurched to his feet. His face was pale and he was sweating, but he still looked like he would like to hurt Dumbledore the way Harry had wanted to hurt him. “You will not disturb his rest!”
Dumbledore just sat there and stared at him. Mr. Crouch folded his arms and stood still. Snape smiled. Harry glanced away from Snape and focused on the confrontation again.
“You won’t,” Mr. Crouch repeated, but he sounded a little more uncertain this time. He glanced around and then folded his arms and sat back down in the chair. “My son is dead. The name in the spell is simply a mistake. Ask Potter where he got that spell! It could be lying for all we know! He could just be trying to make people think he didn’t cheat!”
“Where did you get that spell, Harry?”
Harry just stared at Dumbledore. “Why should I tell you that, when you let Snape haul me out of the Great Hall like this and you’re believing the man who put my name in the Goblet of Fire?”
“Professor Snape, Harry.”
Harry sneered and said nothing. It probably wasn’t a good sneer, but he didn’t care.
Nott didn’t really care about Harry, but that was to be expected. He was a Slytherin. Mr. Crouch didn’t care, but he was just a judge and probably had thought he could make the Tournament more exciting.
But Dumbledore was supposed to care.
“I find myself curious about something else,” Snape said with a drawl, probably because the situation wasn’t dramatic enough for him anymore. “I saw the names above the Goblet, and they included more than one unexpected one. What was Lucius Malfoy’s name doing there with Sirius Black’s?”
“We need not pursue that.”
“Why not?” Harry snapped, angry all over again. “Why do you only want to talk about the things that make me look like a cheater and a liar?” The air sparkled between him and Dumbledore again, but he barely noticed. “Why do you want to ignore everything else?”
Abruptly, the spiderweb around him froze, blackened, cracked, and fell to dust.
Harry sat there and stared at his hands, and Crouch stared at him with his jaw hanging open. Snape made an angry hissing sound. Dumbledore was the one who leaned back in his chair, rubbed at his face with one hand, and whispered, “I am sorry, Harry.”
“Was—was that my magic?” Harry stared at the air between him and Crouch again, and thought he could see light glinting and tumbling there, although it vanished when Harry gave it a sharp glance.
“Indeed,” Dumbledore said. “I do wish I knew where you learned that spell you used on the Goblet, Harry.”
“He is a brat,” Snape said, and Harry wanted to look at him, but he knew what he would see. Just a sneer. “He has been meddling in books that he should not have.”
As long as Snape didn’t think Harry had learned the spell from one of his Slytherins, Harry had no intention of worrying about him. He just looked at Crouch and asked, “Is your son really dead?”
“You aren’t to worry about that!”
“So that sounds like a ‘no’ to me.”
“Harry—”
There was a sudden burst of sound at the door to Dumbledore’s office. Harry jumped, and hoped, absurdly, that the noise was Ron hammering at the door to come in and apologize to him.
But instead, the door burst open, and the last person Harry had expected to see stepped into the office. Lucius Malfoy looked as ruffled as a swan with a stolen egg. He stared around for a second, then focused on Harry.
“James’s son,” Mr. Malfoy whispered. “He kept his promise.”
“Er, what?”
Mr. Malfoy strode towards Harry and then stopped suddenly as if someone had blocked him with an invisible wall. He was still staring at Harry, raking him with his eyes again and again. “James and I promised that we would make each other godfathers to our firstborn children. I kept the promise, although it has not been relevant since—what happened to your father happened. But I thought James had not.”
“My godfather is Sirius.”
“There can be more than one. I assume that James thought it would be little more than a ceremonial promise, given that he also named Black. But he did it. And that means that I have a measure of responsibility for you.”
“We are still trying to determine whether the spell on the Goblet told the truth or not, Lucius.” Dumbledore’s voice was a deep rumble that would have made Harry look at the Headmaster any other time. Now, he couldn’t take his eyes from Mr. Malfoy. “After all, the Goblet claims that Bartemius Crouch put Harry’s name in the Goblet, but Bartemius Crouch here is most insistent that—”
“He had a son,” said Mr. Malfoy instantly. “And that son was in Azkaban when Crouch visited him with his wife, less than a full day before Emilie herself died.” He spun to face Crouch. “Where is he? Where did you put him?”
“You—you aren’t—I resent these accusations!”
“That is not the same thing as saying they are not true—”
Mr. Crouch drew his wand. Harry didn’t even see Mr. Malfoy move. Suddenly his wand was in his hand, and Mr. Crouch’s wand was spinning through the air as if it had decided it liked Mr. Malfoy better. Mr. Malfoy pocketed it.
You can do the Disarming Charm wordlessly? That’s so brilliant.
“I want to know where he is,” Mr. Malfoy said. He sounded a lot more intimidating than Snape ever had. “Where did you put him? Emilie would have died for that boy. I suspect she did. And you—what? Kept him prisoner? Perhaps subdued him with the Imperius? I assume you would need to. Barty was a dedicated Death Eater.”
Harry swallowed. He hadn’t heard of Mr. Crouch’s son before, and so he hadn’t even thought about why he would be in Azkaban, but—well, it made sense that a Death Eater would want to put Harry’s name in the Goblet and get him killed.
If this was true. If any of it was true. Harry kind of felt like he was in the middle of a dream and no one had bothered to wake him up yet. Even though when he pinched his arm, it hurt.
“I resent these—”
“Enough!”
Dumbledore didn’t even need his wand to produce a bang, the way he had in the Great Hall. He just stood up, and Harry felt magic like a wind pressing everyone up against the walls. Mr. Malfoy still managed to grab onto Harry’s chair and stand between him and Crouch instead of blowing away like Snape. He was staring at Crouch still, with a strange expression on his face.
Harry didn’t know what that expression was. He wasn’t sure he liked it.
“These accusations are indeed distressing,” Dumbledore said softly. He pulled his magic back into his body, and Harry could sit up again. Mr. Malfoy grasped his shoulder. Dumbledore frowned at Mr. Malfoy’s hand. “I suggest we all sit down and discuss them like civilized people. Lucius, I must ask that you give poor Bartemius back his wand.”
“Not until he ceases to threaten my godson.”
“Lucius.” Dumbledore sank a lot of something into that word. Harry wasn’t sure he knew what it was. He wasn’t sure he liked that, either. “Regardless of what James might have intended, Sirius Black is the boy’s godfather in every way that matters.”
“So would I have been, had I known of James’s intentions. And given that Black is a hunted fugitive at best and a murderous madman at worst, I do feel that I am the better choice.”
Harry swallowed. “Hey,” he said. He didn’t want to let Mr. Malfoy say that Sirius was a terrible person. It wasn’t Sirius’s fault that he’d had to go to prison or that he couldn’t be Harry’s godfather openly.
No one seemed to hear him. Mr. Crouch had got back some of his personality, and he was sneering at Mr. Malfoy. “Why should Dumbledore trust a Death Eater to claim that he can be around the Boy-Who-Lived without wanting to slaughter him?”
“Why should he not trust me with Mr. Potter? He trusts another Death Eater with him on a daily basis.”
Mr. Malfoy’s voice was heavy, and Harry had the distinct feeling that he should be paying attention. He looked up, and discovered that Mr. Malfoy was staring at Professor Snape, who was stony-faced.
Oh, no. I didn’t—oh, no.
“Is it true?” Harry whispered, staring at Snape. “Are you really a Death Eater?”
“I need not answer that question.”
Mr. Malfoy laughed, a kind of breathless sound, and pulled back his left sleeve. Harry stared at the Dark Mark on his left arm, and thought of the huge green one hovering over the Quidditch World Cup.
“I need not hide who I am,” Mr. Malfoy said softly. “I was under the Imperius Curse, and I am ashamed that I was so weak, that I got close enough to the Dark Lord to be branded and trusted him enough to let him cast that curse on me. I have atoned. But what has Severus done except stay close to Dumbledore and torment the most famous of the Dark Lord’s orphans?”
“Stop, Lucius.”
This time, though, Dumbledore didn’t sound so commanding, and Harry found himself shaking his head. “Is he really one?” he asked, turning to Dumbledore. “You never said. You keep insisting that I should trust him, and I shouldn’t trust people like the Malfoys, but he’s my godfather.”
“Harry, that spell—”
“Tell him the truth then, Albus, if you know it.” Mr. Malfoy clenched both hands on the head of his cane and turned to face the Headmaster’s desk. Harry sneaked a look at his face. He was pale, of course, like always, but he looked almost—joyful, as if he was about to charge or something. “Did James not name me godfather?”
Dumbledore considered Mr. Malfoy in silence for so long that Harry thought he wasn’t going to answer. Maybe he was trying to make the question seem ridiculous. But then he shook his head and said calmly, “I cannot answer that. What happens with the private desires of the heart in the moments before death—”
“You do not know, then.”
“You do not know that he intended to name you, either.”
“James and I were friends as children. His mother was related to people on my mother’s side.” Mr. Malfoy stepped neatly to the side as Mr. Crouch moved, so that he was still between him and Harry. “We promised that we would name each other as our firstborns’ godfathers. But then I went to Hogwarts and was Sorted into Slytherin and learned more about blood purity, and—James was not raised with that. When he came to Hogwarts, he went to Gryffindor, and it was all too easy for him to believe the worst of everyone else. Slytherins, Death Eaters, everyone outside his tight circle of best friends.”
“Lucius—”
“I could have told him that was foolish. I could have told him that just because someone laughs with you and plays pranks with you is no indication of a true friendship. And I was right, wasn’t I?” Mr. Malfoy took a long step forwards. “One of his supposed best friends betrayed him.”
Dumbledore tensed. Harry was sure that he knew Mr. Malfoy knew the truth, even though neither of them would say that because Crouch was in the room. And Snape? No, wait, he must know that Sirius was innocent.
“I could have been there for Harry, if I had known.” Mr. Malfoy’s voice was low and passionate. Harry didn’t know if he jumped more from that or from hearing Mr. Malfoy say his first name. “You need not have abandoned him to the Muggle world.”
“Mr. Potter had a perfectly normal life in the care of his relatives—”
“They locked me in a bloody cupboard! It was not perfectly normal!”
Several people turned to stare at Harry. Harry was aware that he was yelling. But he didn’t want to sit there and hear those lies, and if anyone should know the truth about the Dursleys, it was Dumbledore. He was a great and powerful wizard, and he wasn’t fooled by things people said like Sirius still being guilty. So he had to know.
“My boy,” Dumbledore whispered.
“It wasn’t!”
“So the great Potter was not treated the way he thinks he should have been,” Snape muttered. He made a wiping motion as though he was erasing a blackboard with his hand. His eyes were locked on Harry. “What does it matter? We are here to discuss many things, including whether the information revealed by the Goblet was even accurate—”
“We do not know that it was,” Dumbledore interrupted. “I know that James never told me about being friends with Lucius Malfoy in his youth.”
“Why would he? Did he tell you everything?”
Dumbledore said nothing, but his hands tightened on the edge of his desk. Harry stirred uneasily, wondering if it was the best idea for Mr. Malfoy to taunt the Headmaster. He had no idea what was going on, and the only clear thing in his head was that he didn’t want to go back to the Dursleys.
Mr. Malfoy seemed to hear his silent plea. He squeezed Harry’s shoulder one more time and shifted so that he was between Harry and everyone in the room, not just Mr. Crouch. “I will take my godson home now. He’s had a trying day, and he doesn’t need to be here for the cancelation of the contract between him and the Goblet of Fire that you’ll announce.”
“He is still bound to compete!”
“Not unless he entered his own name,” Mr. Malfoy said, and laughed a little. “Did you not know the rules of the competition that you yourself invoked, Crouch? I look forward to your reversing the declaration in the papers. Headmaster, we will use your Floo.”
“You haven’t heard the last of this, Lucius.”
“About the Goblet and the competition, I am sure we have.”
“Harry, don’t go with him.”
Harry took a deep breath and looked up. “I don’t want to compete in the Tournament,” he said. “And Mr. Malfoy is the only one saying I don’t have to. Are you going to say that I don’t have to?”
Dumbledore sighed. “Not until I can be sure that the spell you cast on the Goblet is accurate. And to know that, I need to know where it came from. Where you learned it.”
Harry shook his head and remained silent. He didn’t know if going with Mr. Malfoy was the right thing to do. He was growing less and less sure that casting the spell had been the right thing to do. But he did know that betraying someone who had tried to help him was wrong.
Another long sigh. Then Dumbledore said, “You may use my Floo, Lucius.”
Harry was so numb that he didn’t remember what Mr. Malfoy said next, or what the Floo trip to some place called Malfoy Manor was like. But he was aware of Mr. Malfoy’s hand on his shoulder the whole time.
