[From Litha to Lammas]: Red in Beak and Talon, sequel to A Game of Eagles, 3/9

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Three

Harry felt as though someone else had taken possession of his body. He sat at the Ravenclaw table, and his limbs grew heavier and heavier. He stared at Dumbledore and could think of nothing to say.

“How did you do it?” Padma whispered beside him. She sounded disbelieving, but also greedy. She probably thought that any magic Harry could use to fool the Goblet and Dumbledore’s Age Line could also make her a more powerful witch.

“I didn’t!”

Padma opened her mouth, started to argue, and then snapped it shut again. “All right,” she said, but nodded at the professors’ table. “I don’t think they believe that, though. I think they want you up there.”

Harry sat up, scowling, his hands folded around his elbows. “I didn’t put my name in!” he yelled up at the front of the Great Hall. People were chattering and shouting, but fell silent when Harry started to speak, so they could hear him. “I’m not going to be a Champion!”

“Your name is on this parchment, Harry,” Dumbledore said, not smiling. He looked the sternest Harry had ever seen him, even when he’d confronted Harry about lying by omission when it came to visiting the Notts instead of the Dursleys for Christmas. “You must go into the same room as the other Champions.”

“No!”

Theo was trying to catch Harry’s eye from down the table, but Harry ignored him for now. He knew as much about the Tournament as Theo did, since Theo had done some reading about it in his irritation over Quidditch being canceled and shared the books with Harry. He knew that people whose names came out of the Goblet were bound to compete.

But he also knew that he didn’t have to make it easy for everyone.

“Go now, Harry.”

Dumbledore’s disgruntlement filled the air like invisible smoke. The pressure of his magic, Harry knew. He sat back and said, “No,” again.

“What, Potter, afraid that your prank caught up to you?” Snape asked, his voice one long sneer.

“Shut up, you idiot.”

“Mr. Potter! Twenty points from Ravenclaw!”

Harry ignored Professor Flitwick, too. Flitwick had dithered second year when he and Theo had wanted help with Snape’s bullying. Harry didn’t have to respect him. He sat still and glared, until Karkaroff leaned out of the small room where the Champions had gone.

“What is the hold-up, Dumbledore?” he called. “We are waiting on you for the official instructions.”

“Harry’s name also came out of the Goblet of Fire, but he is refusing to join the other Champions,” Dumbledore said. His glare was really intense now. But Harry had resisted being glared at by Uncle Vernon and Hermione and Professor Babbling. He stayed seated.

“What?” Karkaroff was practically gaping. “You are saying that a fourteen-year-old managed to fool your Age Line? That Hogwarts is to have two Champions?”

“What is this?” Madame Maxime loomed behind Karkaroff. “What is going on?”

Karkaroff started explaining to her, but Harry said as loudly as he could, “I’m not a Champion. I’m not going to be a Champion. I didn’t put my name in.”

“Why do you think it came out of the Goblet, then, boy?” Snape said, and there was such a hateful tone in his voice that Harry twisted towards him.

“Because someone else did it,” he replied. “Someone who was old enough to walk over the Age Line. You really are an idiot.”

“Mr. Potter.”

Dumbledore’s magic was filling the air like an invisible storm, and he leaned towards Harry, his eyes narrowed. “Ten points from Ravenclaw and a week’s detention with Professor Snape for insulting him. Now, you will go into the anteroom with the other Champions, or I will see that you have detention for another week.”

Harry glanced at Theo. Theo nodded to him, face shadowed. He obviously thought that Harry had reached the limits of open defiance.

Fine. But Harry would make as much trouble for them as he possibly could.

He shoved his chair back so that its legs shrieked on the floor of the Hall, overcoming even the other students’ returning chatter, and stalked towards the anteroom where the stupid Heads of the other schools scowled at him. It wasn’t like he had asked to be there.

He knew that Theo would send an owl to Sirius and Eustace as soon as he could, so he wasn’t as worried as he would have been otherwise. But he still brewed with anger.

Someone did this to me. I didn’t do it. I’m going to make them regret it.

*

“How can you be friends with a cheater like that, Nott?”

Theo looked up. He was sitting near the fireplace in the common room, waiting for Harry to come down so they could walk to breakfast together. Terry Boot, to whom he’d probably spoken twenty words in his first three years at Hogwarts, was standing in front of Theo with his fists clenched.

“What cheater do you refer to?”

“Potter! Of course! We all saw his name come out of the Goblet!”

“And you heard him say that he didn’t do it.”

“Come off it, of course he did!”

“Fascinating that you distrust Harry, whom you’ve lived beside for three years now, and not Dumbledore.” Theo shut his book with a snap. “You didn’t see the parchment he was holding and going on and on about. Who knows what was written there? Who knows if it was in Harry’s handwriting? Who knows if someone didn’t come up with a spell to make it look like Harry’s name when it really said something else?”

Boot’s eyes widened, and he scratched his head. “But why would someone do that?”

“To get Harry in trouble and try to kill him, of course. Or have you forgotten that the Death Eaters are still out there, somewhere?” Theo had decided that it was better to talk about them than about the Dark Lord, and possibly get in arguments about the Dark Lord’s continued existence.

“But what if he entered the Tournament to get eternal glory—”

“More glory than he could have as the Boy-Who-Lived?”

Boot slammed his mouth shut. Then he frowned and said, “Well, maybe he wanted more.”

Harry clattered down the stairs then, and Boot turned his back and moved deliberately towards the entrance from the common room. Harry stared after him with a pinched face for a second, then shook his head. “He’s keeping up the ‘cheater’ nonsense from yesterday, then?”

“Yeah.” Theo studied his boyfriend, the quiet way he stood there, with his hands tucked into his robe pockets. “It doesn’t bother you?”

“I don’t like it, but my real hatred is for whoever put my name in the Goblet. And Moody.”

Theo nodded, understanding. It wasn’t like Boot had been a close friend. “Come on, let’s go to the Great Hall. Maybe there’ll be a letter from Father waiting.”

“You think he might be able to get me out of this?”

“I don’t know. The magical contract makes it difficult. But I do think that he can at least make sure that you won’t be injured in the Tasks. The books about the Tournament say that professors can’t help the Champions. Not that parents can’t.”

Harry smiled, and they left the common room together, ignoring the hateful glances they got. Theo kept his wand in his hand in case of hexes, but he was glad to see that Harry had his chin up, wading through the glares as if he did this every day.

Harry had largely been ignored for the last few years because he didn’t behave like the other students thought he should. They couldn’t expect him to care about their disapproval now.

*

“We will handle this.”

Harry nodded, overwhelmed. Both Eustace and Sirius had come to Hogwarts the afternoon of the day after the Goblet “chose” him. It seemed they’d just Apparated to Hogsmeade, walked up to the gates, and refused to go away until the Headmaster let them in. Now, Dumbledore hovered a short distance behind where Harry, Theo, Eustace, and Sirius all stood in front of the gates, his expression unhappy.

“I’m going to prank everyone involved!” Sirius said with a cheery smile, and a look at Dumbledore that didn’t promise good things for him.

“Sirius, there is no need for that, surely—”

“Thanks, Sirius.”

His godfather beamed and reached out to ruffle Harry’s hair. “No problem, kiddo. I think we should prank Snape first, don’t you agree? He was the one who acted so stupidly in the Great Hall yesterday.”

Harry would have agreed, but Eustace cut in smoothly. “If you please, leave Severus to me, Sirius. I think that he will take it better coming from someone who was in Slytherin with him instead of in Gryffindor.”

“You will do nothing to Professor Snape.”

“I understand that you prefer everyone in general do nothing,” Eustace said, and his cold eyes were on Dumbledore, cutting at him like someone trying to carve runes in stone, Harry thought. “That is not my way.”

“Severus Snape is still a professor at my school.”

“And Harry Potter is still my ward.”

Harry settled back against Sirius, sure that Eustace would find some way to keep Snape away from Harry even if Dumbledore tried to insist Harry serve detention with Snape. Theo gave Harry a small smile, and Harry nodded, and then started listening to all his godfather’s ingenious prank ideas.

He wasn’t much for pranks, himself, but some idiots really deserved them. Even some people in Ravenclaw, from the way it seemed things were going.

*


“With me, Theo.”

Father had said no more than that, but Theo hadn’t expected to be given even that much. So he walked quietly as Father’s heels as Father stalked into Hogwarts and down into the dungeons, towards a blank stretch of wall across from a portrait with a sleeping snake in it. Theo memorized the location. He knew one door to Professor Snape’s private quarters, which prefects could access in case of emergencies, but not this one.

Father raised his hand. Loud, booming knocks echoed up the corridor, spreading along and shaking the stone wall. Theo stared at him with his mouth open.

“I,” he said weakly in the moment before the wall swung open with a bang. “I didn’t know you could do wandless magic.”

“It unfortunately only comes to me in moments of extreme anger,” Father said, and then the door did swing open and they were facing Snape.

Snape’s face was a riot of angry, flushed patches, but he shut his mouth immediately on seeing Theo and Father. “Eustace,” he said, in the very best neutral tone Theo had ever heard.

“I know that you are tormenting my ward,” Father said. “That you might also take your anger out on my son. I will tell you now to stop that, Severus. If you do not wish to find yourself a front-page story.”

Theo watched, alive with curiosity. He knew that Father had some leash to pull on Snape; that had been obvious since second year. But he hadn’t known that Father could do something that would put Snape on the front page of the Daily Prophet.

What, though? Skeeter wouldn’t care about him just being cruel to students, or he would have been out of here years ago.

The color faded from Snape’s face. “You would not.”

“I would.”

“You would come into conflict with Albus.”

“I am not afraid of that.”

Snape actually swayed a little in place. Theo watched closely and thought he could see why Father had wanted him to be here. He’d wanted Theo to observe Snape being afraid, and know that he wasn’t undefeatable.

“The boy still has to compete in the Tournament,” Snape whispered, barely moving his lips. “I had nothing to do with that, and I can’t get him out of it.”

“But if you do anything to make it harder, including taunting him or actually making him serve detention, then I will play my hand.”

Snape waited a moment as though to make sure that Father would say nothing else, and then just nodded. The door of his quarters closed with a rumble. Father turned on his heel and stalked back down the corridor.

“Wow,” Theo said at last, when they were far enough out of the dungeons that he thought Snape wouldn’t overhear.

Father smiled at him. “He will be no trouble. And now I will handle Headmaster Karkaroff.”

Theo followed along happily.

*

“Did you put your name in the Goblet?”

Harry glanced up, blinking. Ravenclaw had Herbology with the Gryffindors this term, and he had already had several people ask him that question. But none of them had been Ron, clutching a bucket of dirt and staring at him with a betrayed expression.

“No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then you’re as much of an idiot as Professor Snape,” Harry said coldly.

Ron gaped at him, then dropped the bucket and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t call me an idiot!”

“Then don’t act like one.”

“Is this something I need to handle?” Theo asked softly, appearing from nowhere to stand between Harry and Ron. He had his wand drawn, and didn’t seem to care that Professor Sprout was only a few shelves of plants away. His attention was fixed on Ron.

“No,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I hoped my friends would believe me, but if they don’t, then all I can do is feel sorry for them and wait for them to see the truth someday.”

“Does this mean that Weasley isn’t your friend anymore?”

“Theo,” Harry sighed.

“I’m only asking.”

“I’m your friend! That’s why you should tell me how you got past the Age Line! I would have liked to put my name in the Goblet of Fire and compete for the glory and the money, you know—”

“Mr. Weasley, stop shouting,” said Professor Sprout as she appeared behind them. “Get your own Vomiting Violet and go back to your own station. Unless you are working with Mr. Potter and Mr. Nott this morning?” She glanced at Harry as if she probably hadn’t heard every word Ron spoke.

“No, he’s not,” Theo said. Harry just nodded.

Professor Sprout nodded back, and escorted Ron back to the Gryffindor part of the classroom. Hermione, Harry saw, was biting her lip furiously. He thought she probably did believe him, but she also didn’t want to speak up in case Ron got upset.

“I can hex him,” Theo whispered as they bent over their own Vomiting Violets. “Just say the word.”

“Theo.”

“What? I know more untraceable spells than you do. You tend to put too much strength into your jinxes.”

Harry smiled, and saw the way that some of his classmates looked at him and began to whisper. They probably thought that he should spend the rest of his existence all penitent and beaten-down because of what others had accused him of.

They’re idiots, too.

*

“What are you going to do with the First Task?”

Harry smiled a little at Cho Chang, who normally never paid attention to them but was lingering at the end of the couch now for some reason. Theo found her irritating. “Not participate,” Harry said, and turned the page of his book.

“But you have to. The Goblet of Fire said so.”

“He probably should have thought of that before he tried to get past the Age Line,” Boot muttered. He still believed Harry had done it, which had made Theo reconsider whether Ravenclaws were really the cleverest House.

Theo turned a remote gaze on Boot. Boot flinched and found an urgent need to move across the common room to join a Charms-focused study group.

“You have to,” Chang repeated. Her eyes were wide and fascinated, which Theo didn’t appreciate. She was here for gossip, then. “Did you think of that before you put your name in?”

“I didn’t put my name in,” Harry said calmly. He was frowning down at a page of Arithmancy equations. Theo leaned over and pointed out the mistake, where he had forgotten to add instead of subtract. Harry sighed and crossed out his answer.

“You’re so smart you can see a mistake from a page away.”

“I am. Thank you for noticing.”

Chang decided to interrupt again. “But since you have to compete or lose your magic, what are you going to do?”

Harry’s hand tightened for a second on his quill. Then he looked up. “You know how half the people in Gryffindor who taunted me about the Goblet the other day had chicken beaks instead of mouths when they wanted to eat breakfast?” he asked.

Chang took the hint. She scowled and moved off. Theo shook his head at her back and turned to face Harry. “You’re sure that artifact Black got you will hold?”

“He says it comes from Grimmauld Place, the house he grew up in. And that it makes the Nott cellars look like nothing.”

“It does not.”

“How would you know? Have you ever been?”

They started bickering, and Theo tried to relax into the comfort of that, tried not to look at the thick iron chain around Harry’s neck that continued down beneath his robes. It was more than worrying not to know what the First Task would be, and if the artifact Black had found would really protect him.

But Harry seemed quietly confident. Theo could only support his boyfriend and go on taunting people who thought Harry had put his name in.

And hexing them, when Harry said it was all right. You’d think Weasley would have learned to stop insisting that Harry must have put his name in now, so he could eat a meal without pecking it up.

*

Dragons.

Harry sat in the middle of the Champions’ tent and did his best not to let his fast breathing overwhelm him. His hand clasped the thick, black iron shield that Sirius had found for him and tried not to rattle it back and forth. That wouldn’t help.

What also didn’t help was seeing Cedric Diggory carried out of the ring where he’d faced his dragon, barely breathing. The other Champions seemed to have had some kind of forewarning that dragons were the Task, but Diggory hadn’t. Madam Pomfrey was still working over him with a grim expression that made Harry wonder if the Hufflepuff would survive.

Although Harry was worried more about his own survival than Diggory’s, to be honest.

“Harry Potter!”

Ludo Bagman was calling his name from the front of the tent. Harry wobbled to his feet and set off in that direction, one hand locked around his shield.

Bagman winked at him and flung a hand towards the area where the Hungarian Horntail waited. “Here you are! I don’t suppose you would care to tell me what devastatingly clever idea you have up your sleeve to defeat it, hm, Harry?”

Harry didn’t bother even meeting the man’s eyes. He stepped past and walked into the arena, and also ignored the wall of chattering and screams and shrieks from the audience. He knew Sirius was there, and Eustace. And Theo, and Padma, and Hermione. Ron probably was, too, although whether he wanted Harry to win…

That’s unfair.

But no. Harry wouldn’t think that way now. Not because he wanted to have Ron back as a friend, although he did, but because the dragon was more important than any petty spat that might not even exist after today, because he might not.

Harry moved forwards.

The Horntail was curled around her eggs, impossibly large, staring at him with eyes that were a deep, dark color. Harry avoided them. Some books said that wizards and witches could get lost mentally looking into a dragon’s eyes, and although other books said that was stupid, Harry didn’t want to take a chance.

He grabbed the chain and held up the shield in front of him. It began to pulse with a subtle blue color.

“What’s that?”

“What’s he doing?”

“Did the rules say he could do that?”

Whatever the shield was actually made of—and Sirius hadn’t been able to tell Harry, except that it wasn’t iron—the dragon didn’t like it. She bristled, all the spikes on her neck standing up, and began to pull in fire.

Harry adjusted the shield to make sure that all his fingers were behind the blue glow, but he could still hold the heavy thing up.

The Horntail jerked her head up with a roar, and breathed fire.

The flames crashed towards Harry, and it took everything he had to stand there, instead of turning and running for his life. You wouldn’t make it anyway, trust Sirius, he chanted in his head as the flames hit the edges of the blue glow.

For a moment, the fire stopped, and hung there between Harry and the dragon, shifting curtains of white and red and gold reflecting themselves in the blue light. Then they turned around and sprinted back towards the Horntail.

The Horntail reared on her hind legs and staggered sideways. Harry winced as he heard the sound of cracking eggshells. He felt sorry for the young dragons that would never be born.

But not sorry enough to drop the shield.

The Horntail breathed again, a waterfall of fire, and the audience screamed deafeningly. Harry didn’t dare turn his head to look at them. He just braced the shield, and the flames went on crashing and tumbling around him, and then it was done. Harry stood there, panting, and watched the Horntail scramble back into her nest.

She wasn’t wounded from the fire, that Harry could see. But she seemed dazed, and she tucked her head down in a way that said she didn’t want to attack him again.

Harry looked at the eggs in her nest. To his relief, only a few looked completely smashed. But one of the ones that was had been made of metal, and looked like the golden one that he’d been meant to retrieve.

Harry looked up at the stands and shrugged.

Then he turned and walked, very slowly, back to the Champions’ tent, his arms shaking. Only when he was inside and could duck into a curtained cubicle did he bow his head and wrap his arms around his legs. He was trembling all over now.

Someone really was trying to kill him. And Harry didn’t even know what the Second and Third Tasks would be like.

*

Theo ran for the Champions’ tent, ignoring the warnings of some people behind him and the ones who tried to crowd into his way. He burst in, and then he had to ignore the scoldings of Madam Pomfrey and the stares of Krum and Delacour. Not Diggory, though. There was a portion of the tent with a curtain of fabric pulled in front of it that Theo thought probably held Diggory.

He could see Harry huddled with his face between his knees, and it seemed Madam Pomfrey had been scolding Harry before Theo came in. Theo scrambled over to his boyfriend and grabbed his hand.

Harry startled violently and seemed as if he might fling Theo away from him the way his shield had flung that storm of fire. Then he stared and blinked and smiled weakly. “Theo?” he whispered.

“I’m here, Harry.”

Harry slid off the cot and hugged him. Theo would have liked to stand up with Harry clinging to him like a Devil’s Snare and carry him somewhere they could be in private, but he wasn’t strong enough for that. He just had to kneel, hugging Harry, and ignoring the way that more people encircled them.

“Good job, Harry!” Black said, because he was a moron with no sense of whether this was appropriate timing.

Theo tilted his head back to glare at said moron. Black faltered, but then seemed as if it gave him additional strength. He stuck out his tongue at Theo, because he was a child, and grabbed Harry’s only free shoulder. “I’m here, too.”

“Mate?”

Theo did not want Harry to have to deal with Weasley right now. He swung around, and Weasley ended up stumbling into the side of the tent from the sheer speed he was using to get away.

“Leave,” Theo hissed.

“I—I—”

“Ron was going to say he was sorry,” Granger mumbled. She had a face as red as if she had been scorched by dragonfire. Probably ashamed that she’d been standing by the second moron in the place for weeks.

“Later.”

Weasley opened his mouth to say something, but Granger nodded, grabbed his arm, and towed him out. Theo settled back with Harry in his arms and met Father’s eyes. Father had been absolutely silent during Harry’s confrontation with the Hungarian Horntail, but now, he nodded, although not at any question Theo had asked.

“I will make sure that we can find them,” he said.

The one who had put Harry’s name in the Goblet, Theo knew. He nodded, and leaned his head against Harry’s, and closed his eyes.

*

Harry opened fuzzy eyes and turned his head. He seemed to be in the hospital wing, but he couldn’t see much without his glasses.

Then they slid onto his face. Harry saw that Theo was sitting by his bed in a chair pulled away from the wall, and managed to muster a smile.

Theo didn’t smile back.

“Is—is everything all right?” Harry could remember ignoring the call to come get his points, which wouldn’t have been worth much and which he didn’t care about anyway, and then he thought someone had cast a Sleeping Charm on him. “Did it turn out that I was burned after all? Did you get burned?”

“No. I’m fine, and Father and Black and Padma and Weasley and Granger.” Theo hesitated one moment more, then seized Harry’s hand and squeezed it. “Diggory died of his burns.”

Harry swallowed. His throat was too dry to finish it, and a sticky lump of fear seemed to sit in the middle of his mouth.

“Oh,” he whispered.

Theo nodded, and leaned over to kiss him. Harry rolled on his back, hands uplifted to clench his fingers on his boyfriend’s shoulders.

Diggory was dead, but they were alive.