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lomonaaeren“You murdered one of the queen’s subjects.”
“He was coming right at me with some kind of enchantment on his trident, sir. Yes, I killed him.”
“You tore him apart.”
“Why would you use a spell like that?” Madam Marchbanks demanded, spinning towards Harry in her chair and gripping the back of it. “Didn’t the mess get in the way of your seeing underwater?”
“Griselda, that is not the concern I would have raised—”
“Because you’re a fool, yes.”
Dumbledore stared at her repressively, then seemed to realize that wouldn’t work, and turned to face Harry. “Why did you tear him apart, Harry? Why not use a less violent spell, like a Stunner?”
Harry was glad that none of the merfolk had recognized the incantation for the Soul-Drinker. Then again, there was no particular reason they should. “Because he was in the way, about to strike me, and I didn’t have any chance for a less violent spell. I’d already been fighting them, and they hadn’t backed off.”
“You could have found an alternative.”
“And did you ask Krum about an alternative for his shark head? He was bragging about biting several of the merfolk. Did you ask him? Or am the only one who gets scolded?”
“More than you can know rides on your reputation as the Boy-Who-Lived,” Dumbledore said, in a way that involved him barely parting his lips.
“Maybe those people should be trying to save themselves, instead of relying on a teenager to do it?”
“No one could stand up against Voldemort. Only you.”
“Not true!” Madam Marchbanks stabbed her cane at Dumbledore as if she wanted to pierce his heart with it. Honestly, Harry would have paid good money to watch that. “You’re the only one he’s ever feared, he could—”
“I am the Headmaster, Griselda, and I hold other responsible positions. I cannot lead an army against Voldemort, or whatever you are thinking.”
“And I’m just a student, sir. A schoolboy who has to spend his time competing in a deadly Tournament and studying how to survive it because of your lax security around the Goblet of Fire. What do you think I should be doing?”
Dumbledore stared at him helplessly. Harry stared back, wishing he dared to use Legilimency, or that his Occlumency was good enough to detect some sudden intrusion. He really wanted to understand the Headmaster.
Was he one of the people who had wanted to lay the burden of defeating Voldemort on Harry? Did Dumbledore think that he should step back, or should have been able to step back, once Harry’s mum had done whatever she’d done? Was he tired, afraid?
At least that would make sense of some of his actions, including the way that he seemed to have an ill-defined sense of what he wanted Harry to do. He seemed to “recognize” when Harry strayed outside of whatever invisible boundaries he had laid down, but not much of what would be a positive thing to do.
Harry just watched him, not sympathizing, but wanting to understand.
“The mer-queen did not count on any of her subjects being damaged.”
“That was stupid. What was what Krum did acceptable, then?”
“He is not—who you are.”
“He could still get in trouble if someone decided that a Quidditch hero should be more moral. Or whatever the accusation is that you’re actually making against me, sir.”
“Where did you learn spells that rip people apart?”
“Books, sir.”
“Not ones that are in the Restricted Section.”
“No, sir.”
Dumbledore continued to stare at him, lost. Harry thought that being Headmaster for so long might also have limited what options he thought were possible for a student to learn such magic.
Harry continued to sit still with a pleasant smile on his face, and this time, Madam Marchbanks was the one who was stifling chuckles.
“You do not wish to tell me?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“You haven’t made yourself into someone I could trust, sir. Just someone who scolds and then sighs when I don’t behave like the hero that you appear to have set yourself and others up to expect.”
Dumbledore closed his eyes and seemed to spend a few minutes in meditation. That was all right. Harry could sit in silence for longer than he could. Madam Marchbanks made little chuckles and snorts under her breath and dug her cane into the floor, but said nothing.
Finally, Dumbledore opened his eyes again and said, “You do not know how much the fate of our world may depend on you.”
“Right, but it shouldn’t.”
“Will you say only that?”
“Yes. Because I’m fourteen.”
Dumbledore looked at him, then away. Finally he said, “I am going to be honest with you, my boy.”
“Did that hurt, Albus?”
Harry had nothing to add to Madam Marchbanks’s perfect retort, but Dumbledore only had a strained smile when he turned around again. “The war…it was so bad, so bloody, that by the end, a majority of magical people in Britain weren’t fighting. They simply hid or rolled over and bared their bellies to the Death Eaters. I was one of the few people who was leading a resistance force, called the Order of the Phoenix.”
Harry just nodded.
“If those times come back, the same thing will happen. Except it might happen faster this time, if people believe they cannot trust you, their Savior.”
“That’s hardly my fault, Headmaster. It sounds like they gave up anyway before my mother did whatever she did to save me. And if they give up now, just waiting for another miracle, that’s not my fault, either.”
“You want to deprive them of hope?”
“I want them to take some responsibility for saving themselves.”
“If they feel despair, how can they?”
“You really want me to some kind of savior, then? Some kind of sharp, witty, humble, heroic, wise, clever, bumbling, honest, deceptive-as-necessary symbol?”
Dumbledore paused. Then he said, “I hope you are not suggesting that I have attempted to mold you into this.”
Harry suspected that, actually, but he had no proof, so he said only, “No. I don’t think that anyone who wanted me to be able to behave that way would have left me with Muggles who hated magic.”
“Harry—”
“This is a waste of time,” Madam Marchbanks said, and jabbed her cane at Dumbledore. “Are you planning to say that Harry committed some kind of crime? Or are you only trying to drape shame all over him? Slimy, shame. I’ve never liked it.”
“Griselda—”
“It’s the shame route, then. I read up on the Tournament, Albus. No damage that the Champions cause in the course of defending themselves can be treated as a crime, or no one would participate. And you insist on treating Harry like a Champion who entered himself, so he’s exempt.” She stood up. “Let’s go, Harry.”
Harry shrugged and nodded as he stood. “I kind of reckoned when he wouldn’t talk about the damage Krum caused.”
“Harry. Would you truly doom the world?”
Harry looked over his shoulder. Dumbledore had clasped his hands in front of him and was leaning forwards as though he expected Harry to start squirming with shame and run right back to him to resume his destined role.
“A world that’s that easily doomed isn’t worth anything, Headmaster.”
“You live in that world, too.”
“Not according to a lot of people.”
“Harry—”
They turned and left, and Madam Marchbanks shook her head as she used her cane to prod the moving stairs and try to use sparks of magic to hurry the slow things along.
“Albus has a terrible habit of saying people’s names as if they substitute for a sentence. Tell me you won’t pick that up. Make you soft.”
“No, Madam Marchbanks,” Harry said, feeling his cheeks twitch under the pressure of a smile.
*
“I didn’t expect you to manage the Soul-Drinker underwater.”
“Then why work on it with me, sir?”
Moody grunted and sipped from his flask. Harry concentrated on the tar shield that he was spinning. Adding more power to it made it thinner and more transparent, so that he could see through it with only a film of black over his eyes.
“I thought you might be able to find a use for it in the future.”
“Oh.”
Harry kept his head bowed a little as he pretended to fidget with his wand. In reality, every sense was on high alert as he watched Moody put his flask down and look at something intently in the back of the room with his magical eye. Of course, the only things in Moody’s office were those he’d put there, like Dark Detectors and his huge old trunk.
His answer didn’t make sense.
Of course Harry had been focused on the Second Task. Everything that he’d practiced with Moody on for the last few months was based on trying to survive the Tournament. That he would say something like Harry should use the Soul-Drinker in other situations…
It made Harry wonder if this whole thing had been an elaborate trap, and Moody was really focused on trapping Harry into casting some serious Dark Arts so that he could turn him over to the Headmaster.
Moody’s magical eye came back to the front of the office, and he grinned a little at Harry. “Let that Tar Shield fade the minute I stop supervising you, boy?”
Harry pulled an eager, bashful smile to his face. If this was a trap, it would be stupid to show that he had suspected it. “I was just thinking I might be able to make it more transparent, but wouldn’t that come at a cost of how many spells it can stop? It seems like being thinner would make it less powerful in the center, even if more at the edges.”
“Not if you’re properly feeding it power, boy! You need to pay attention to what you’re doing with your magic, not the movement of your feet! CONSTANT VIGILANCE!”
And it seemed, for the next hour, that all was as it had been. Moody aimed his wand and moved as he always did, and cackled when Harry got the spell wrong and the backlash knocked him off his feet.
But Harry retained his suspicion. Just in case.
It had proven its worth so far.
*
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Mr. Potter.”
Harry could give a polite, polished smile by now to those who deserved it, among which he didn’t count Dumbledore. “You’re welcome, sir. I admit I was curious to hear what you wanted from me.”
Kalder Nott didn’t speak for long moments, only sat back and sipped from his tea while watching Harry. Harry waited, and waited, and waited. But he didn’t lose his smile, and Kalder didn’t speak up about what he wanted, either.
So they sat there some more. They were at Theo’s house, and Harry was wearing a Portkey that would take him back to Madam Marchbanks in instants if Kalder tried anything. She knew where he was, too, of course, and she would storm the wards if Harry was late in getting back home.
“Do you know why I summoned you here?”
“No.”
Kalder put down his teacup and leaned forwards. Harry didn’t let himself come too obviously to attention; he agreed with Moody that it could make people focus on him in ways he didn’t want. But he did shift so that he was facing his host more directly and altered his smile a little.
“I received a summons last night.”
Harry wondered for a moment who in the Ministry would have summoned Theo’s father, and then Kalder let his hand brush against his left arm, and—
Harry felt a different kind of prickling awareness dash up and down his spine. He’d seen no sign of Voldemort since he reentered the magical world, and from what Madam Marchbanks said, the Death Eaters at the World Cup were really the only sign. But if something had changed, then he would have to oppose Voldemort, too.
“Oh? Your old friend is well, I hope.”
“Wellness is relative.”
“Then I can hope that his situation will resolve to the well-being of everyone.”
“Perhaps it will not include everyone.”
“I take it that you have been following the news stories about the Tournament?”
Kalder gave him a look far less human than Theo’s. Harry did let his hand touch his wand, this time. This man would be a bad enemy. “I have. Although I do not see the relevance at the moment, I must admit.”
“Well, perhaps you have seen the stories about the power I demonstrated when I had to face the dragon and the mer-queen’s subjects. But perhaps you also know that I was forced into this Tournament through no fault of my own, and that I would prefer not to have attacked them or vanished a dragon at all. I need not attack anyone if they do not attack me.”
“Is that so.”
“It is.”
“That would seem—almost too reasonable to some people. They would expect you to hate the people who put you into this situation. For example, do you not hate Dumbledore for failing to keep you out of the Tournament?”
“To some extent. But he doesn’t present the kind of close threat that the dragon or the merfolk did. My hatred can lie slumbering for a long time, cold and waiting, if someone doesn’t do something direct to provoke it.”
“I might pass this word on.”
“You would be welcome to do so.”
Kalder smiled at him, and it warmed his harsh features a little. “It seems to me that I owe you a debt for protecting my son.”
“If not for me, he wouldn’t have been under the lake in the first place. I have no intention to claim a debt from Theo.”
“We Notts still pay our debts. I would appreciate it if you let me do so.”
Harry studied him. “All right.”
“I have a book that you might find interesting.” Kalder nudged a book across the table that wasn’t a traditional one, but what looked like a bound scroll wrapped in leather covers. “This contains some interesting history about someone who, as you say, is not a direct threat, but could be someday.”
Harry nodded and almost asked if the Dark Lord would like Kalder to release this information, but he reckoned that Theo’s father knew the risks, and it was up to him if he wanted to do this. “Thank you, sir.”
“You are—something incredible, Mr. Potter.”
“Because I made friends with Theo?”
“Because you do not hold the same grudges and hatreds that someone in your position might be expected to.”
“Please make no mistake, Mr. Nott. I am full of hatreds. But perhaps they go in different directions than one might expect.”
“Yes,” Kalder said slowly. “Perhaps that is the better way to describe it.”
*
The book turned out to be a series of scribbled notes in different hands about memories and stories, not a proper book.
And it wasn’t about Voldemort.
It was about Dumbledore.
Harry had sat in silence and stillness for a full minute after he had opened the “book,” staring down at it. Only Kreacher leaning forwards through the library door to look at him in suspicion had made him wake up and start copying down notes from the “book” in case it got stolen someday.
The scrolls recorded Dumbledore’s estrangement from his family. How his father had gone to Azkaban for Muggle-baiting, how his sister had been “strange” and his brother had blamed Dumbledore for their sister’s eventual death. That one seemed to be based on conversations with the brother, Aberforth, himself, so Harry trusted it a little more than he did the rest.
Especially the part that proclaimed Dumbledore had been friends with Gellert Grindelwald, and maybe more than friends.
Harry had wondered, as he’d stared blankly at that part, why Kalder hadn’t tried to use the information himself. Surely he should have, if he thought it had the potential to bring down someone as popular as Dumbledore?
But the answer had come to Harry as he read more about the speculations and rumors that had surrounded Dumbledore’s “friendship” and also his reluctance to go against Grindelwald later on. There were few names, few specifics. Just like it was plausible that Dumbledore hadn’t dueled Grindelwald and imprisoned him earlier because he hadn’t thought he would win, or because he was only one, not particularly politically prominent British wizard at the time, or because Grindelwald hadn’t actually invaded Britain, it was plausible that it had been friendship he'd shared with Grindelwald, and nothing more.
Kalder had had enough Galleons to escape Azkaban, but he’d still been under suspicion. And of course many people would see it as a former Death Eater attempting to discredit the man who had been almost alone in fighting Death Eaters.
In the hands of someone else, though, this information might make a real difference.
Harry tapped his quill against the parchment. He didn’t intend to move on this yet. Dumbledore was a threat, but not enough of one to be worth bringing down with the amount of effort this would take.
But later…and perhaps if he gave this to Madam Marchbanks…
No, it couldn’t be Madam Marchbanks. She was too opposed to Dumbledore in public, too. People would be entertained if she started making these accusations, but they wouldn’t take them any more seriously than her claims that Dumbledore really had a quill shoved up his arse.
Hmmm.
“What is Master Harry studying?”
Kreacher’s question was grudging, but less so than it had been in the past. Harry turned around to half-smile at the house-elf, who shifted back and forth from foot to foot.
“A collection of possible traps for my enemies,” Harry said. It was true enough. “But I need to find the right person to spring the trap.”
Kreacher stared at him with big eyes and was still. Harry wondered why. It wasn’t like what he’d said was all that interesting or articulate.
“Kreacher knows his way around traps,” the elf whispered.
“Do you?” Of course, maybe the elf only meant the kind of things that some of the mad Black ancestors would have left in Grimmauld Place, but maybe not. “What’s the best way to spread gossip about a popular person so that it hurts them, people take it seriously, but it can’t be traced back to you?”
Kreacher’s eyes went even wider, and his ears quivered. Then he said, “Kreacher will have to think,” and vanished.
Harry shrugged and turned back to copying down the notes from the scrolls Kalder had given him. It wasn’t the worst outcome, and in the meantime, Harry could think about whether he could use this information himself.
And continue to work on the other spells the library was teaching him, including Fiendfyre and that ability to block Heart-Sensing. Harry thought he was close to mastering it.
*
“The Third Task is going to be a maze.”
“Yes, Bagman mentioned that to me this morning.”
Moody paused as he was lifting his flask to his lips. Then he shook his head and completed the motion, but with a haste that Harry had never seen him use before. He turned a little to face Moody without being obvious about it, his hand resting lightly on his wand.
Moody put the flask down on his desk and demanded, “You’re getting help from Bagman, too?”
“In the form of spells? Of course not. But I’m fairly sure that he’s bet a large sum of money on me, and he keeps giving me hints that he wants me to win. Or else he just wants to make the Tournament look more exciting in the eyes of the spectators, by actually making it seem like the youngest competitor has a chance.”
In truth, Harry had investigated Bagman as subtly as he could, through Parvati’s gossip network and some things that Kalder and Madam Smith knew, to see if he could be the one who had slipped Harry’s name into the Goblet. He would at least have had a motive. But nothing showed that Bagman was a particularly wise or powerful wizard, and he would have had to be one or the other to not only make the plan but cause the Goblet to think there was a fourth school involved, which Madam Marchbanks believed had happened.
“The man’s a weakling.”
Harry blinked at Moody. It wasn’t a word that he could remember Moody spitting with that much venom before. “Yes. That’s one reason I don’t think he put my name in the Goblet of Fire.”
“And it’s a reason you shouldn’t take advice from him!”
“I didn’t say that it was advice? I don’t trust him to tell me the truth about everything in the maze. But he was right about it being one, which I know because you told me information that confirmed his, sir.”
Moody leaned forwards, staring. Harry looked back, and kept his voice and face subtle and cool. He didn’t understand this, either. Moody had shown that he had grudges against Karkaroff and Snape, but not Bagman.
Ludo Bagman was about as far from either a Dark wizard or a Death Eater as Harry could envision, actually.
“But you want to learn from him?”
“Only take advantage of what he might tell me.”
“You don’t have any principles, do you, boy?”
Harry considered Moody for a second. “I thought you had given up on me as a potential Auror trainee, sir. I know that you don’t agree with everything I do. But you have reasons for training me, even if I don’t have principles.”
Moody made that odd snorting sound that was affected by his nose being half-missing again. “Yeah, of course. But you should still—you should still admire strength. Want to learn from the strong. Not weaklings like Bagman.”
Harry shrugged. “I disagree that it’s learning so much as—using.”
“So you have no strong allegiances.”
“You know about a few.” And Moody was more than smart enough to name them, so Harry saw no need to do so himself.
Moody did some more staring. Harry did some more staring back.
Moody finally said, with the air of someone making one last push to educate a stubborn student, “Would have thought that you wanted to avoid people who were weak because you’re so strong yourself. Would have thought that you only wanted to learn from the best. Use the best, if you have to put it that way.”
“I’ll use whoever comes to hand.”
Moody wrinkled his brow, then waved a hand and picked up his wand. “Listen to me, nattering on about philosophy instead of making sure that you survive the First Task. Take up your wand, boy, and let’s make sure that you’ve been keeping up your studies.”
Harry gave a small, tight smile, and lifted his own wand. He didn’t trust Moody as much as he once would have, but he trusted him to teach Harry the Dark Arts, and that was honestly more than enough.
*
“You don’t think they’ll take another hostage this time.” Parvati’s voice was meditative as she leaned across the table and studied the photographs of the maze Harry had taken from the outside. Madam Marchbanks hadn’t even questioned why he’d wanted a camera, only bought it for him.
“No. It would be boring. And repetitive.”
“They might have shown that they don’t care that much about repetition.”
“Yeah, but not in the nature of the Tasks. Although the audience won’t be able to see much of this one, either, with the hedge mazes in the way.”
Parvati laughed. “True.”
Zacharias and Michael studied the pictures, too. Theo had already looked as much as he’d thought he could stand, he’d said, and was busy now with a book of hexes that he thought might help Harry if he picked out the right ones. Hermione hovered behind them, anxiously, near the ceiling of the corridor, peering at Harry now and then as if she thought he might not notice it. Harry did his best to ignore her instead of snapping.
“I recognize this shrub,” Zacharias said abruptly. “And the vine. My grandmother has the same sort of thing along the boundary of her estate.”
“What does it do?” Harry asked, putting aside his own notes on some spells Moody had set him to studying. He couldn’t cast them yet.
He wasn’t making that much progress on the spells he studied in Grimmauld Place’s library, either. It was frustrating.
“It strangles those who get too close. Well, the vine does. The bush holds you immobile with poisoned thorns until the vine can do it.”
“Vicious,” Harry said appreciatively. He wondered if Madam Marchbanks would want to plant some of those at home, or maybe he could convince Kreacher to plant them at Grimmauld Place. Not that he’d been into the gardens.
“You sound as if you appreciate this instead of being worried about it!” Hermione burst out.
“I can appreciate it for the future. For the present, I’m doing my best to survive.”
“But you don’t sound worried!”
“What good will worrying do?” Harry leaned back and looked at her. Hermione scowled at him, folding her arms. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Hermione. I’m studying, and I have people like you lot to work with, and I’m casting new spells every day or studying ones that I haven’t mastered yet, and I’ll do my best to survive.”
“You should be more worried.”
Harry turned his back on her in silence. He did appreciate Hermione, but not when she acted as though everyone should feel exactly the way she did. She was far more concerned and open even as a ghost than he would ever be.
Theo lingered behind the others when they left and Hermione drifted off disconsolately in the direction of the bathroom where she’d died. “What is your plan?”
“To learn as many different spells as I can for the different dangers of the maze.”
“This Task isn’t going to have one major goal, then.”
“Not unless you count just reaching the Cup in the middle of the maze, no. You have to navigate the maze, and defeat the dangers and creatures that will be there, and maybe watch out for the Champions.”
Theo hesitated. Then he said, almost inaudibly, “You could give me your Cloak, and I could come with you.”
Harry was surprised by how much the idea tempted him, despite the fact that he knew he would spend too much time worrying about Theo for it to be a good one. But he shook his head. “There might be people casting spells to detect such things. I don’t want to put your life at risk in the way it was in the Second Task.”
“You don’t want to incur a debt towards my family the way we had a debt to you.”
Harry just nodded. Let Theo think that was all it was about.
“You know we wouldn’t place stringent terms on you for paying it back.”
“Your father gave me something incredibly valuable to pay yours. I don’t have anything of comparable value that I would be willing to give up.”
Theo swallowed once. Then he said, “I won’t echo Granger in saying you ought to be worried, because I don’t know that. But I will say that I am worried.”
“I’ll do my best to come back in one piece.”
Theo relaxed in a sudden rush. “Yes, all right, I can trust that you’ll do that much.”
Harry smiled at him, and they parted to go to their respective common rooms.
Harry watched the fire in the Ravenclaw common room later on with lazy eyes, aware of the way that the others stared at him and shifted and muttered and looked away and argued about his power and dared each other to approach him. Only Michael studied at his side and asked him questions in a normal tone of voice.
The others were afraid of him since he’d vanished the dragon, and more so since his exploits under the lake had come to light. Of course, Harry thought it wasn’t the violence of the spells they feared in that instance. It was his utter ruthlessness.
They couldn’t dismiss him as a willing competitor, but they also couldn’t argue that he was a frightened child wielding accidental magic the way some of them apparently had after the dragon.
Let them fear, Harry thought, as he stood and watched the way a few third-years scrambled to get out of his path as he walked up the staircase.
He wouldn’t want them to fear him hard enough to try and curse him in the back. But if they stayed far enough away to never curse him in the first place? Yes, that would suit Harry just fine.
*
“You know that there’s a curse on the Defense post.”
“Yes, sir,” Harry said, although this was the first time he’d ever heard Moody acknowledge it. Up until this point, he’d just kept insisting that he didn’t plan to stay for longer than a year because that was the limit of the favors he owed Dumbledore.
Moody squinted at him, both eyes darting back and forth restlessly this time. “Just in case something happens after the Third Task that means this is the last time we get to speak.”
Harry watched him, appreciative of the help and as distrustful as ever. In the end, Moody gave a rusty laugh and waved a hand at him.
“Don’t think I need to worry about you sobbing over my death.”
“I would miss you,” Harry said politely. But he’d known all along that he wouldn’t get to keep Moody beyond a year, so he wouldn’t pretend to sorrow about it.
“Nah, you won’t, boy. You’d miss the magic I can teach you.”
“I’d still like to learn more.”
And at least Moody got back to teaching after that, instead of expecting Harry to—sympathize, or whatever it was that he’d really been aiming for. Harry was just as glad to see it.
*
“As those tied for first place, Mr. Krum and Mr. Diggory will enter the maze first!”
Harry stood with his wand held loosely in his hand. He didn’t really care what order they entered the maze in, except that he would have to defend against the Champions when he went in himself. Delacour was shifting beside him, sometimes casting him hateful or doubtful glances.
Harry ignored her in return. Those who still believed that he’d put his name in the Goblet willingly weren’t worth his time.
“Now, Mr. Potter!”
A whistle blew, and people jeered or called out his name, and Harry walked into the maze with his head high. The night was cool around him, and the stars overhead seemed to grow brighter as Harry left the fires and the hovering Lumos Charms of the area around the front of the maze behind.
He walked with his wand out, and had to sever one of the strangling vines Zacharias had talked about and clip a Fwooper’s wing before he’d been in the maze five minutes. He grimaced. It was tempting to just find a shadowy corner and sit there, refusing to compete.
But that could cost him his magic.
And it would give one of the other Champions time to curse him, Harry thought as he stepped around a corner and nearly ran into Diggory.
“Potter? What are you doing here?”
“Trying to survive,” Harry said, and backed away with his wand held in front of him. He didn’t really care what Diggory did, but he didn’t want to fall victim to his wand.
“Not trying to win?”
“Wow, you’re an idiot if you believe I want to.”
Diggory gave him a frown and a shake of his head. “Don’t call me an idiot.”
“Then don’t act like one.”
“Hey, that’s not nice!”
Harry turned and walked away from Diggory. He suspected that Diggory wouldn’t curse him in the back. The greater mystery was how he had survived this far into the Tournament with as blinkered and naïve a worldview as he had.
*
Harry didn’t have good luck finding his shadowed corner where he could rest out of the way. Each time he found a likely place, a creature charged him—including some of the Blast-Ended Skrewts Parvati had complained about when talking of her Care of Magical Creatures class—or he heard the footsteps of another Champion. So he retreated towards the center, seeing red sparks going up at one point, and always waiting for one of the others to win so that he could come out.
He was more than surprised to step into a larger clearing than normal and see a golden cup waiting for him on a plinth. Harry backed up at once, although he didn’t put his back against the hedge walls since the ones here were ornamented with the strangling vine Zacharias had warned him about.
“You’re a clever one.”
Moody was suddenly standing in the entrance of one of the paths that led further into the maze. Harry stared at him and said nothing.
“It meant that I had to resort to some of the tactics I would have preferred to avoid.” Moody’s voice was deeper than the one that he had used to teach Harry all year, even though it sounded like his otherwise. He took a step forwards and then stopped. “In a way, it’s a shame. I did consider a different course for a while. I thought it possible, after you vanished the dragon…”
Harry kept silent, staring at Moody, studying him. He didn’t have the glazed eyes that were typical of someone under the Imperius, and Harry didn’t think he would stand here talking if he were under the Soul-Drinker.
“But it wasn’t to be. I thought you would be sympathetic to the Dark Lord’s goals because you desired power, and he could offer you the arena and the chance to exercise that power without being hampered by the kind of morality that Dumbledore is. But then you talked about survival and even using those weaker than you, and I realized that you just don’t care about any kind of higher principles.”
Harry cocked his head. The flask that Moody always drank out of, and the way that Snape had been raging, according to some of the older Ravenclaws, about someone stealing boomslang skin from him…
“Polyjuice?”
Moody, or whoever this was, stopped and looked at him, then gave a grunt that at least sounded like the ones that Harry had been hearing all year. Of course, now he doubted that he’d ever met the real Alastor Moody at all.
Or that it had been the Aurors Moody had really been talking about recruiting him into.
“You belong in Ravenclaw, that’s for certain.” Moody gave a smile that didn’t touch either his lips or his eyes. “And now, it’s time to come with me to the Dark Lord.”
“I’d rather not.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“I could make a bargain with him? I told you, he threatened me so long ago that he isn’t on my list of active enemies. There’s no reason that we couldn’t just agree to—stand apart from each other? Ignore each other?”
“No can do, kid. He needs your blood.”
“I could give it to you willingly.”
“No bargains,” Moody said, and now there was an iron snarl behind his voice. He moved his wand in one of those movements that had become so familiar to Harry over the past two terms, and the Soul-Drinker slammed into Harry.
Harry flung himself against it. He had a stronger will than the merman or the spiders he had controlled with the curse, and he would be able to step back and then destroy this man, this Death Eater, for hurting him—
It didn’t work. Harry’s body walked forwards, ignoring the screaming from his mind, and touched the Cup.
A Portkey came to life around him.
