lomonaaeren

Harry lived the next several days in a snowstorm of hatred.

He heard the taunts from the older Ravenclaws that he had cheated to get into the Tournament, when he wanted nothing more than to be free of it, and he let his magic flow out from him in ways that tore their books and robes. When one of the older girls named Edgecombe snarled and reached for her wand, Harry looked her in the eye and broke her fingers. She wailed, and then she looked at him and shrank down.

She went to Madam Pomfrey to get her hand healed. Harry watched her with indifferent eyes, and when she came back, she avoided him.

The taunts in Ravenclaw Tower died down.

They didn’t from the other students, and Harry couldn’t handle them the same way, because he only saw people from other Houses in front of professors. He could look at them, and a few of the smarter ones shut up, but others just kept calling him a cheater.

On the third day after the Tournament, Dumbledore called Harry to his office.

Harry walked in and wasn’t surprised to find Madam Marchbanks there. Of course he’d sent her an owl the day he got “chosen” by the Goblet, and she had told him that she would be seeing him as soon as she’d had a conversation with the Headmaster.

From the expression on her face as she turned to him, Harry knew that she hadn’t managed to get him out of the Tournament. He took a deep breath and held it.

“THIS ABSOLUTE TOSSER!” Madam Marchbanks snapped, holding her cane out towards Dumbledore.

“Griselda, I must insist on some respect.”

“YOU DIDN’T EVEN PROTECT THE GOBLET AGAINST SOMEONE ELSE SUBMITTING SOMEONE’S NAME! What is wrong with you, Albus? Did you stuff all your courage up your shriveled arse? Or use it all up on hiring Alastor for the year?”

Harry felt a faint amusement. It couldn’t get through the blizzard in his head, not really, but it was there.

Madam Marchbanks turned to him, lowering her cane to rest in front of her. “Pity they made castration illegal with that Wizengamot law of 1653. I don’t fancy going to Azkaban, even though he deserves it.”

“Griselda—”

“He thinks that Age Line was enough of a precaution.” Madam Marchbanks shook her head in disgust. “He thinks that you really wanted to put your name in and risk your life for the sight of a few more people kissing your arse.”

“Griselda—”

Harry laughed. He thought some of the falling snow inside him came out in the sound. At least Dumbledore shut up, and stared at Harry as if seeing him for the first time.

You’d think my threat about haunting him would have made him pay attention, Harry thought, but he sat down and turned to focus on Madam Marchbanks. “So I have to compete in the Tournament or lose my magic.”

“Yes.”

“Even though I’m fucking fourteen and don’t have the age or the training that the older Champions do?’

“Harry—”

Madam Marchbanks pointed her cane at Dumbledore again. “He might be about to die. He can swear as much as he fucking wants.”

Dumbledore put his hand over his face. “I must insist on the answer to one question,” he said through gritted teeth. “Mr. Potter, did you ask someone older to put your name in? Or manage some way to do it yourself.”

“No. Neither. I did not.”

From the way that Dumbledore peered at him, face quiet and eyes sharp, Harry was abruptly sure that the Headmaster was a Legilimens. He focused on the middle distance between Dumbledore’s brow and his eyes, and the Headmaster made a frustrated little noise and leaned back in his seat.

“I had to be sure, my dear boy.”

“If the Age Line didn’t prevent anything, why cast it? Just enjoy some company in your foolishness, did you?”

“Griselda, that is enough.” Dumbledore didn’t raise his voice, but suddenly there was a sense of his power in the office, hovering and filling the air with invisible, silent lightning. “I understand you are upset, but that is no call for disrespect.”

“I think it is,” Harry said.

Dumbledore turned to him. “You have never exactly had the most normal of perceptions, have you, Harry?”

Normal.

The word rang in his head, and roused echoes of the Dursleys that he hadn’t had to think about in years, and this time, Dumbledore’s desk cracked in half.

Madam Marchbanks made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a groan. She came up and stood beside Harry, probing with her cane at the carpet. Dumbledore stared back and forth between Harry and his desk, seeming to be in a state of shock.

“What an arse you are,” Madam Marchbanks said.

“He cracked my desk.”

“Yes, and from what I understand, he did the same thing to the Ravenclaw table the other day. You’d think you ought to have anticipated this.” Madam Marchbanks shook her head. “Where did the boy I examined with the highest NEWT scores in history go? Did you stuff him up your wrinkled arse along with everything else?”

Dumbledore raised his eyes to Harry’s. Harry stared back, not trying to shield or Occlude or anything like that, just let Dumbledore see who he was.

Dumbledore’s mouth tightened. “I see,” he said quietly.

“Do you?” Madam Marchbanks asked. “I don’t think so.” She put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and drew him to his feet. “Come on, now. We’ll discuss the course of action we should pursue next, since we can’t get you out of the Tournament.”

Harry felt Dumbledore’s eyes on his back as he left. He thought the Headmaster probably did see him for who he was now, and wasn’t enjoying the vision.

Should Harry have shown him the truth? Perhaps not.

But the hatred made it hard to think.

*

“Harry.”

Theo’s voice cut like a knife. Harry looked up. He’d been coming out of Defense, which wasn’t a class he shared with the Slytherins, so it was a bit of a surprise to see Theo here. “Theo.”

“Come with me,” Theo said, a snarl in the back of his voice, and then he turned and stalked away.

Harry paused, wondering if he really wanted to follow someone who was commanding him right now. He’d got enough of that from Dumbledore.

But Theo seemed serious, and it was true that they hadn’t really talked in the five days since Harry’s name had come out of the Goblet. Harry followed him. If Theo was going to call him a cheater like all the rest of the Ravenclaws except Michael and most of the people in other Houses, then better to know now, so Harry could chop off the end of their friendship and move on.

And since they would be alone, maybe he could take out his frustration in ways that wouldn’t be appropriate in front of the professors.

Theo whirled around to face him the instant they reached one of the dungeon classrooms where they had worked on powerful Arithmancy equations together last year. Harry’s hand snapped down to his wand.

But amazingly, annoyingly, Theo hadn’t drawn his. He stared at Harry and practically snarled, “Why the fuck haven’t you come to talk to me?”

Harry paused. Theo didn’t usually swear.

“Why the fuck?” Theo repeated, his eyes darting down from Harry’s face to his wand hand and back, over and over. “Did you really think I would behave like them and think you must have done it for the glory? Did you think I didn’t know you?”

Oh. Theo is—upset.

Harry slowly let his hand drop from his wand and rocked back on his heels. “I didn’t know if you would say that,” he said. “But I wanted to avoid drawing attention to you and having a confrontation with you if you did think that way. I might have hurt you if you called me a cheater, and I didn’t really want to hurt you.”

Theo stared at him. Then he closed his eyes. There were lines of weariness and bitterness carved deeply into his face that looked as if they’d always been there, but Harry had never seen them before.

“You don’t trust me,” Theo whispered. “Not really. After all this time, after all the demonstrations of loyalty I’ve given you and you lending me your Invisibility Cloak and telling me about the spells and the Arithmancy and the rest, you don’t trust me.”

Harry stood still. He looked at Theo, and saw that the bitterness and weariness were for him, not because Theo had a Death Eater father or had few friends in his House.

Something sharp and small lodged itself behind Harry’s heart, and the snowstorm in his head calmed for the first time in almost a week. He took a deep breath.

“I trust you.”

“Not enough.”

“I trusted you so much that the thought of your betraying me hurt me.”

“You never thought Corner would betray you—”

“Because he was there defending me to the other Ravenclaws who thought I cheated,” Harry snapped. “If he’d kept silent, or even just kept away from me? Or been in a different House, so I didn’t get to talk to him on a daily basis? I would have thought he’d betray me, too. Just like Zacharias. Just like Parvati.”

“They—haven’t.”

“I don’t know that.”

Theo stared at him, now with his eyes wide and so filled with surprise that they were blank of everything else and Harry couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Then Theo swallowed and whispered, “They wouldn’t.”

“But they might.”

“Harry.” Theo spoke in a soft voice, and moved towards him with his hand held out. Harry felt his muscles tighten all over his body, but he fought the snowstorm when it tried to come back. This was important, he knew it was. “None of us are going to betray you. You’re our friend. We won’t turn our backs on you. We know you. We know that you never would have put your name in that Goblet. You already have all the glory you want. It’s survival that’s most important to you.”

Harry still wanted to jerk away. Theo was saying that, but what if he turned his back? Harry would feel even more stupid, even smaller and weaker, if he trusted Theo and then Theo betrayed him after all.

He would die.

Theo came to a halt in front of him, hand still held out. Harry remained still, his breath scraping in and out of his lungs.

Theo didn’t come any closer.

After a moment, Harry realized that was due to a combination of things. Theo didn’t want to upset Harry, and he probably didn’t want to make himself any more vulnerable than he already had. He wanted some sign that Harry trusted him.

It was the hardest thing Harry had ever done, to lurch forwards and cross the flagstone separating them. His brain was swirling with white-edged, screaming panic as he touched Theo’s hand.

But Theo’s fingers curled around Harry’s, and he said softly, “We know you. I promise. We know you. And we’re going to help you survive this,” and Harry closed his eyes and shuddered and—relaxed.

He still didn’t know if he would really manage to survive. Theo was promising the kind of help that even Madam Marchbanks couldn’t, because ultimately, they couldn’t get him out of the Tournament.

But maybe there was some help in just standing there holding Theo’s hand. The way that both of their breathing steadied seemed to indicate it.

And when Harry walked to History of Magic, one of the classes that the Ravenclaws shared with Slytherin this year, Theo was by his side.

*

“Did you really think that I would believe you’d cheated to put your name in the Goblet?”

“The rest of your House are wearing those stupid badges.” Harry’s voice was tight, and he literally, physically couldn’t turn his head to look at Zacharias, concentrating as he was on the Runes project in front of him. “Forgive me for not being sure.”

“Not forgiven.”

Harry turned his head to glare at Zacharias. “You haven’t been this much of an arse since your first year.”

“Forgive me, too, for thinking that you should know me by now!”

Harry closed his eyes and breathed in and out. They were at their usual table in the library, but he knew that Madam Pince wouldn’t hesitate to throw them out if they made too much noise or had too obvious an argument. After all, she had been glaring especially hard at Harry lately, probably because Dumbledore had told her part of the truth about him.

Harry couldn’t think of anything else it would be, at least.

“I’m sorry,” he finally forced out.

“Accepted,” Zacharias said, calm and cool. “Now, do you want the news I tricked out of Diggory about the First Task or not?”

Harry blinked and turned to face Zacharias. “Is there a reason he would tell you the truth? After all, we’re known to be friends.”

“He thinks that my House loyalty is stronger than my loyalty to my friends.” Zacharias’s face bore an odd combination of smugness and outrage. “And apparently he found out because he saw the other Champions going into the Forest and followed them.”

“The Forest?”

“Where they’re keeping the beasts for the First Task. They’re dragons.”

Harry felt as though he were falling through the snowstorm this time, instead of containing it. His breath escaped him in an uneven whistle. His fingers flexed on the library table, and he wanted to stand and run. He wanted to—

Theo’s hand landed on his elbow, steadying him. At the same time, Michael was leaning over the table, concerned.

It is all right. You will survive. It is all right. You will survive.

Harry chanted the words to himself until he was sure that he was steady, and then nodded to Zacharias. “Thank you for telling me. I suppose that Diggory doesn’t trust you enough to share what he’s planning to do to oppose them?”

“No. Although I could try to get into his good graces?”

Harry cocked his head, considering it. On the one hand, it would be demanding a lot of Zacharias, and that might make him resentful. It might also make Harry more dependent on someone else than he wanted to be.

But Harry really needed a spy in Hufflepuff, and he had almost alienated Zacharias by believing the worst of him. Better to bind him to Harry’s side by giving him a task that he would feel important about.

So Harry smiled at Zacharias, and watched as he puffed up a little. “Thank you. If you can convince Diggory that you really do trust him and believe in him and want him to be Hogwarts Champion, I’d be grateful.”

“Think nothing of it.” Zacharias was practically fluffing his hair. “Diggory’s so friendly that he would never suspect another Hufflepuff of having stronger loyalties to someone else if they’re friendly to him, or lying about those loyalties.”

“Thank you,” Harry repeated, and turned back to his homework.

Michael was the one who spoke to him in a low voice as they left the library that day. “Did you really think that Zacharias would be wearing one of those badges?”

“I didn’t know.”

“You don’t trust anyone, do you? Even people who have been friends with you for years.”

Harry glanced around automatically. They were walking down one of the corridors that led back to Ravenclaw Tower, and no one was near them, but it didn’t mean that someone couldn’t come around the corner.

Michael gave what sounded like an angry huff of breath. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty, no one is around to hear you confessing to having human weaknesses.”

“People betrayed me last year,” Harry said. “I found out that someone who could have come and taken me away from the Muggles years ago didn’t do it because he was a coward. And Black would have forced me into St. Mungo’s if I hadn’t done it to him first. And before that, the Muggles who were my family spent years betraying me. Why do you think I am the way I am, Michael?”

Michael hesitated for a long moment, although he kept walking. Harry walked with him, not knowing whether to savor the silence or not.

Then Michael said, “We won’t do that.”

“I know that now. But it’s understandable that I thought about it, isn’t it?”

“Understandable. But wrong.”

Harry nodded and smiled and pretended to agree. By the time they reached the Tower again, Michael seemed to have accepted that Harry really did believe him, and was talking with more gentleness about what they should do so Harry could face the dragons.

Harry was a convincing liar, and he knew it. But at least he cared enough about his friends to lie to them and soothe their feelings.

While maintaining enough alertness to react quickly if they did betray him.

*

“Dragons, huh?”

Moody was leaning his hip against his desk in his customary posture, his eyes fastened on Harry again. He was stroking his chin, and a rusty chuckle came out of him a moment later.

Harry watched, silent, full of hatred. But the hatred wasn’t directed against Moody at the moment. He would only do that if it turned out to be justified.

“I can show you a shield that would work against dragonflame,” Moody said at last. “But it takes more magical power than I think you’ve got to hold it. And it needs something to power it that I don’t think you possess.”

“What is that?”

“Hatred.”

Harry let one of his real smiles well across his face, one of the ones that he hid most of the time because he knew not even Madam Marchbanks wanted to see them. Often, anyway. Moody paused and stared at him.

“I’m full of enough hatred to break someone’s fingers by looking at them,” Harry said softly. “Does that count?”

“The Edgecombe girl’s hand was you?” Moody flicked his fingers together for a moment. “I was in the hospital wing when she came in, and she said it was a dueling accident.”

“Mine. Wandless.”

Moody stared at Harry again, then cleared his throat. “Is it the wisest course to tell the people around you about that?”

“Are you going to go to the Headmaster about me, Professor Moody?”

Harry had striven to put the perfect tone in his voice: wondering, a little cautious, but not afraid. Moody cocked his head and twisted his neck back and forth as if considering Harry’s words from different angles.

“Albus would probably want me to,” Moody finally admitted.

“But are you going to?”

Moody gave one of his crazy cackles suddenly, so suddenly that Harry might have jumped if he hadn’t been braced to expect it. The Defense professor leaned back against his desk and laughed and laughed as though he was going to explode with it, while Harry watched him.

Harry thought he might know why Moody was acting this way. On the one hand, he probably thought Harry was Dark because of his actions and attitudes. On the other hand, Harry was the only one who could learn some of the more powerful spells Moody had to teach, one of the few rare students who wouldn’t betray him to the Headmaster.

The only true protégé Moody could have right now.

Moody straightened back up and gave Harry a ghastly grin. “No. Let’s see how you handle the dragonfire shield.”

*

They took small dragons from a drawstring bag, the three people who had been stupid enough to put their names in the Goblet of Fire, and Harry. Harry stared down at the miniature Hungarian Horntail crawling around on his palm and took a deep breath.

The shield he had practiced should work. He had demonstrated it to Moody so many times now that he had to prevent his hand from twitching his wand in those movements in other classes. And he had known, thanks to Zacharias’s information, that one of the dragons was a Horntail, one of the most dangerous magical creatures in existence.

But he had known that, and now he was facing that.

Harry tucked the small dragon in his robe pocket while he listened to the others. The commentary only revealed a little of what was happening. Curses, sleep spells, Transfiguration. Harry heard the whoosh of flames, but he didn’t know how badly burned the Champions got.

He hoped it was badly. They deserved it for being so stupid.

“Harry Potter!”

Harry stood. His brain was buzzing, not full of snow the way it had been in the first days after the Goblet “chose” him, but full of clear and focused loathing. He walked out onto the field and looked up for a moment.

Madam Marchbanks stared back at him, leaning forwards in her seat. Harry knew she would intervene if it looked like he was going to die. But only if it looked like he was going to die, because direct intervention might cost Harry his magic.

Maybe. He didn’t know. Nobody actually did.

The loathing sharpened into a blade that Harry knew could kill if he aimed it in the right direction. He turned and walked towards the Horntail with steps that didn’t drag, but that he wouldn’t have been ashamed to have look like that.

Because willingly and happily facing a dragon by himself was stupid.

Harry looked up. The dragon was curled around her eggs, staring at him. She rumbled a growl at him, and flames shot up from her nostrils. Harry knew he was dead if those flames touched him.

He could see the golden egg he had to retrieve next to one of her talons, but at the moment, all his attention was for her. This dragon he had to defeat. This dragon who hadn’t chosen to be here either, but would still do her level best to kill him if she got a chance.

And the loathing sharpened even more.

Harry raised his wand. The familiar movements made the shield spring up in front of him, a seemingly hollow circle of rotating silver light. As Harry spoke the full incantation, the circle filled in with spikes growing from the sides.

“Protego Odii!”

The dragon roared, and Harry heard more than one scream from the audience, too. He ignored that. He didn’t have time to care about what it meant, whether they had recognized the spell or something else.

And if they had recognized the spell, so what? None of them were down on the field with the dragon.

Harry began to walk forwards, the shield floating along in front of him. Through it, he could see the dragon’s head. The Horntail pulled back, her mouth opening, her claws digging into the ground as she began to breathe in.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

The words beat in Harry’s head, as regularly as blood inside his temples. He clenched his fists and fed more power into the shield, until the spikes that rotated inside it spun as fast as the wheels on a Muggle car. He was going to survive. He didn’t care if that meant he hurt the dragon.

He would survive.

The dragon breathed out.

The flames rushed towards Harry and hit his shield. Harry could feel the strain at once, which Moody had warned him about. It grew rapidly worse than anything that Moody had cast at him.

It didn’t matter. Harry walked forwards, his hatred inexhaustible.

He hated the person who had put his name in the Goblet.

He hated the way that people stared at him and gaped and chattered and acted like he was a cheater, like he had wanted this.

He hated the way that Parvati had avoided his company since his name had come out of the Goblet.

He stepped up to the Horntail, who was still breathing out gusts of fire that splashed against his shield and died, and stared at her. Try it. Try me. Attack me.

The Horntail didn’t seem to know what to do now that her fire had failed. She scraped her claws on the ground and roared again. Harry stepped forwards, walking on, and then reached out, shield still aimed towards her, and scooped the golden egg out of the nest.

The crowd went mad.

Maybe that was what stung the Horntail into action. Harry supposed he would never know. He only knew that he saw her head twisting towards him, and he braced himself behind the shield again.

Die, he thought. Die.

She breathed fire longer this time, hotter this time. Harry still stood behind the shield, and his hatred flowed from him in waves. The shield spun and spun, and more spikes sprouted out of it, and the flames slammed towards him—

And turned back.

The Horntail gave a single coughing roar, and she was gone. Harry stared as flecks of black ash blew into the air and came flying back down towards him, borne on a hot wind.

He couldn’t have destroyed a dragon with her own fire, by simply willing her to die.

But he had.

He turned and stared up at the stands, the golden egg in the crook of his arm. Madam Marchbanks was on her feet, her cane pointed into the air as she viciously argued with Ludo Bagman, one of the judges. People were chattering among themselves but not raising their voices, as if Harry had scared them all.

Moody was staring at Harry as if he had never seen him before.

Shaking, Harry lowered his shield.

He wondered if he should have done that, the same way he wondered if he should have showed the truth of himself to Dumbledore. And then he saw the way that people in the stands, including some of the ones who had called him a cheater, were avoiding his eyes, and smiled.

If it kept him safe? If it meant they left him alone, the way they should have from the beginning?

He would take it, and more.