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Chapter Sixty—The Goblet

“How have you been this week, Mr. Longbottom?”

“All right,” Neville says, as he sits on the bed in the hospital wing and watches as Madam Pomfrey’s wand dances through the air. She’s casting the same diagnostics as always since the day he collapsed in Transfiguration. Neville’s been coming for almost a month now, and he’s more than a little bored.

Sometimes his vision has sparkled with the white stars since that day in Transfiguration, but he hasn’t had any other fainting fits. He thinks Madam Pomfrey must be pretty bored, too. She wouldn’t be casting the diagnostics at all, Neville thinks, except that Gran insisted.

Would she agree to tell Gran that she hasn’t found anything and I should be allowed to go back to my usual routine in peace?

But abruptly, Madam Pomfrey’s wand halts, and she stares at the runes hovering in front of her. Neville cranes his neck, even though he isn’t taking Ancient Runes and they wouldn’t mean much to him if he could see them.

“What is it, Madam Pomfrey?”

“An oddity in the symbols for this one.” Madam Pomfrey reaches out and traces her finger back and forth beneath the gleaming purple and red writing in the air, before she shakes her head and briskly banishes it. “It seems to indicate that you must have come into contact with death recently. I’ve seen it before on people with infected wounds from being bitten by an Inferius.”

Neville sways. He’s glad he’s sitting down, or he probably would faint. But he tries to his keep his hands flat on his knees and his voice as casual as he can. “I was helping Professor Sprout in the greenhouse with a Devil’s Snare that had got some kind of withering disease. We were trying to stop it spreading to the other plants. Do you think that could be it?”

“Maybe. It wouldn’t usually show up this way if it was, because plant diseases aren’t usually toxic to humans…”

Neville murmurs and talks her through it, and by the end of it, Madam Pomfrey seems satisfied that the strange reading comes from the plant disease. She waves Neville off with a smile. “All good, Mr. Longbottom, and I’d talk to Professor Sprout about having any more contact with that Devil’s Snare.”

“Thank you, Madam Pomfrey, I will.”

Neville is glad that he can sound automatic like that, because his heart is pounding and the temptation to run is pouring through him. But someone will notice if he does. So he walks steadily away from the hospital wing, and only runs once he’s already on the stairs that lead back to Gryffindor Tower and no one is around.

His vision is blurring with tears.

He stops, leaning on a wall, when he’s most of the way back to the Tower and no one’s caught up with him yet. He puts a hand across his chest and calls softly, “Alissa.”

She appears at once, although he knows that there have been problems with the house-elves at Hogwarts letting some of the Longbottom elves into the castle. She throws her arms around him and holds him there, strong and grounded.

Neville stoops down and hugs her desperately back.

When he thinks that he can stand up and function on his own, he lets go of Alissa and steps back. He explains in clumsy words what Madam Pomfrey found when she examined him, and Alissa listens with intensity that would be frightening if she wasn’t on his side.

“Alissa shall take care of it,” she says, and pats him with one big, floppy hand. “Why does Master Neville not take the rest of the day off?”

“I can’t do that, Alissa, I’m supposed to meet Hermione for a study session in the library, and Beauxbatons and Durmstrang are coming in this afternoon—”

“Then Master Neville will go to sleep, and I be carrying a letter to Miss Hermione so that she will not see me, and I be waking you up when it be time to go to the Great Hall.”

Neville hesitates, but in the end, he can’t resist the temptation to go back to his bed and draw the curtains for a while. He nods and writes a quick note to Hermione with the parchment and ink that Alissa has ready. Then he goes back up to the Tower and lies down on his bed, pulling the curtains shut around him.

Worry stalks him for a little while, but he exhausted himself with worry already, and with running towards Gryffindor Tower. Sleep comes quickly.

*

“Longbottom looks peaky.”

Harry shrugs, his eyes on the students coming out of the Durmstrang ship that just appeared in the Hogwarts lake. “He can look that way all he wants. I don’t have any interest in finding out why anymore.”

“None at all?”

Harry tilts a sideways smile at Blaise. They have to stand with their Houses, but he’s at the very end of the Ravenclaw line, and Blaise at the end of the Slytherin one. After Harry’s little demonstration in the Slytherin common room last month, none of them have tried to keep Harry from visiting, and none of them show any inclination to get in his way.

“Well, I’m a bit curious. But it’s the kind of thing that he wouldn’t tell me if I asked. I can find out from gossip around the school.”

“Which is always accurate, of course.”

“It’s enough for my interest in Longbottom,” Harry says, and if that’s a bit of a lie, Blaise isn’t going to bother him about it. He turns back to the approaching Durmstrang students.

They walk side by side, their heads bowed. They’re wearing immense furs which Harry thinks are a little much for the situation. At their head struts a tall man with a look of slick satisfaction on his face.

“Igor Karkaroff?” Harry whispers to Blaise.

“Yes. One of my mother’s allies.”

“Really?”

Blaise laughs a little, leaning near enough to Harry that someone might object they’re forming one Ravenclaw-Slytherin line instead of standing separately. Harry can see Padma biting her lip, her eyes bright with amusement, but she doesn’t say anything, and none of the Slytherins are stupid enough to object. “Why so surprised?” Blaise whispers. “Mother finds the useful, whether or not they’re perfect.”

“He’s so smug. I thought that kind of person would annoy Aradia into…”

He trails off, and Blaise nods. Harry isn’t going to say more than that in public, although of course most people would only assume he meant killing someone. Not sacrificing them to the Suns.

“Maybe someday,” Blaise says, and steps back.

Dumbledore is greeting the man with a show of happiness. Karkaroff shakes his hand with the same show of happiness back. Harry rolls his eyes and turns to watch the Beauxbatons students entering Hogwarts. They wear shimmering robes of blue and silver and white that he’s sure means something, but he’s never studied the French school.

“Mother wanted me to go to Durmstrang.”

“Why?”

“She knows people who could have kept an eye on me there. Kept me safer than she thought I would be at Hogwarts.”

Harry does have to snort a little as they watch the Durmstrang students start inside, then follow them. “Well, with the basilisk and everything, I can’t pretend that it’s perfectly safe here. But I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Yes. Me, too.”

There’s a smile in Blaise’s voice that makes Harry want to drag him away into a broom cupboard. Blaise probably knows that and is doing it on purpose, the bastard. Harry just keeps a mild smile on his face and keeps walking forwards.

“Look, Harry, the Beauxbatons students are sitting with us!”

Padma sounds on the verge of fainting with excitement. Harry smiles as he walks over to take his seat next to her, squeezing Blaise’s hand once before they part. “Did you consider attending Beauxbatons?” he asks, as he sits down.

“Well, not seriously. I’d have had to learn French, and I’m not much good with languages. But look!”

Harry peers at the French students as they come towards the table. The one in the lead is a tall girl with floating silvery hair and a way of walking that makes her look as if she’s gliding. She takes a seat in the center of the other students, who are all clustered at the opposite end of the table from where Harry and Anthony and Padma are sitting, and looks around like a queen displeased with her realm.

“She’s so beautiful,” Padma sighs. “I want to go up and introduce myself, but I know I’d make a mess of it.”

“What? Why? She probably speaks at least some English. Or they’ve cast Translation Charms.”

Padma sends him a sharp look. “Because I’d drool over her.”

“What?”

“Don’t you feel it?”

“No? Whatever it is.”

Artemis stirs in Harry’s pocket and hisses in the gentle tone that will blend with other sounds and not be noticed, “There is magic in the air. It smells like feathers and fire. But it isn’t something interesting enough to catch your attention.”

Harry shrugs, at both Artemis and Padma. “Sorry. I really don’t sense anything from her.”

“It’s allure,” Cho Chang, a fifth-year sitting a little further up the table, says, leaning out so that she can see them better. “A lot of part-Veela students attend Beauxbatons, and they can’t always control their allure when it’s wafting out of them.”

“Oh.” Padma flushes a little, not that visibly, and stares at her plate.

Harry cocks his head. He knows that he has a strong will, but he doesn’t think that’s the main reason he would be immune to Veela allure. Padma has a strong will, too, and she’s staring in the Veela girl’s direction. So is Anthony.

It must be because I’m gay, then. And Padma likes girls.

Content to have understood that, Harry goes back to eating his dinner, and slipping little pieces of meat down to Artemis when he gets the chance. He knows that she can hunt for herself, but, as she sometimes reminds him, she’s a civilized snake and shouldn’t need to.

*

“Who can tell me about the Goblet of Fire?”

Harry sits quietly in Professor Fawley’s class. She’s talked about lots of fascinating things over the weeks they’ve taken Defense from her so far, but there’s nothing interesting about this topic. If anything, Harry thinks that people who want to enter their names in the Goblet of Fire are mad.

“No one?” Professor Fawley frowns at them all, and paces back and forth with a shimmer of her robes around her legs. “Very well. I’ll tell you.

“The Goblet of Fire is an ancient artifact, first used to assess fitness for magical office in ancient Rome. Over time, it was found that its criteria seemed to change, and its choices were no longer trusted the way they used to be. Its use fell out of favor, only to revive when the Tri-Wizard Tournament was first established.

“There were those who questioned the Goblet’s choices when it began to make them in the first Tournament, and the rules were changed several times to restrict its powers. The Age Line placed in front of the Goblet in this iteration of the Tournament is an example of such restrictions.” Professor Fawley turns and sweeps the room with her eyes. “Who can tell me why this particular one was implemented?”

Well, that’s easy enough. Harry raises his hand, and Professor Fawley half-smiles at him. “Mr. Potter?”

“Well, Professor, they don’t want younger students entering the Tournament. I don’t think that it would make a very good or exciting competition to watch, since the young ones would probably die first.”

Professor Fawley nods once. “A good answer, Mr. Potter. Any others?’

Others propose that the Tournament might have tasks too dangerous for children, or that children’s parents might object and challenge the rules, or that people might not attend the Tasks if they thought that firsties were involved. Those are all subsidiaries of the rules that Harry talked about, he thinks. He sits back, a little bored.

He notices Professor Fawley watching him, and sits up attentively. Yes, he’s bored, but because of his classmates, not because of her.

She turns away without commenting, and goes on taking answers from a few of the students. Then she marches back to the front of the classroom and folds her hands on her desk as she takes a seat behind it.

“The Goblet of Fire makes its choice based on its own criteria of worthiness,” Professor Fawley says softly. “That is something you must not forget. If you question the choices that it makes tonight, well, remember that it was the Goblet’s, and not the choice of anyone else except insofar as they chose to enter.”

There’s a murmur going around the classroom, but Harry doesn’t bother tracking it. He’s just as glad when the professor returns to her lecture on the differences between powerful and weak countercurses.

He can’t fathom who would want to risk their lives in such a savage Tournament, especially when there’s other ways to earn Galleons and glory.

*

“Wish they were sitting over here.”

Neville smiles politely. Dealing with Ron’s crush on Viktor Krum—which of course Neville’s best friend would never admit is a crush—is starting to get a little wearing.

“That’s the fifth time you’ve said that, Ron.”

Apparently, Neville has an ally who thinks the same thing he does. He leans around Ron since he can’t see who’s speaking, and blinks a little at the sparks of magic that are springing off Ginny Weasley’s fingers.

“What? It’s true!”

“It’s boring. Find something else to say.”

And Ginny turns back to her dinner as if that settles that.

“She’s been like this all summer,” Ron complains, slouching back in his chair, but at least he’s keeping his voice down. “She doesn’t think that I have anything interesting to say, and I’d better not say it.”

Neville just hums a little. It’s true that Ron is often loud and repetitive, and those are things that Neville doesn’t like any more than Ginny does.

But it wouldn’t have occurred to him to protest it. Ron is his friend.

I probably won’t get another one if I drive him away.

“The time has come for the choosing from the Goblet of Fire!”

Neville looks up. Dumbledore is standing next to the blazing Goblet, whose flames make Neville want to wince away. He doesn’t really care if it’s an ancient artifact the way that Professor Fawley said today in class or not. It looks dangerous, and he has enough danger to contend with in his life.

A piece of parchment flies out of the Goblet and into Dumbledore’s hand. He unrolls it and looks out over the Great Hall for a long moment before he reads it.

“The Champion for Durmstrang is…Viktor Krum!”

“Of course,” Neville thinks he hears Ginny mutter before the Great Hall goes wild. Lots of Hogwarts students are clapping, too, although the Beauxbatons ones don’t look as enthusiastic. He does his best to applaud himself as he watches the famous Seeker stand up from the Slytherin table and go into a little room Dumbledore directs him to.

It doesn’t take long before the second parchment leaps out, and Dumbledore announces that the Beauxbatons Champion is Fleur Delacour. Neville applauds politely, again, noticing that this girl gets a lot less people clapping than Krum did. Maybe it’s because she’s so beautiful and some people are jealous.

The third piece of parchment springs out, and Dumbledore open it. Then he stands there with his mouth hanging open.

Neville feels coldness like a river run through him.

“The Champion for Hogwarts,” Dumbledore says, in a low voice that seems to hurt the air, “is Harry Potter.”

*

Harry stares at the Headmaster, and refuses to move. His heartbeat is throbbing so loudly in his ears that it hurts. His grip on his fork hurts, too. He wants to stand up and hurl the fork straight at the Headmaster.

“Harry,” Dumbledore says softly.

“No,” Harry says.

“Harry, you need to join the other Champions,” Dumbledore begins, while behind him the Goblet turns sullenly dark. Harry knows without asking that there won’t be any salvation coming from that direction.

“I didn’t put my name in,” Harry says flatly. He ignores the discontented mutterings, sometimes building up to shouts, from the other House tables, and the stares from the other Ravenclaws. “You can try to shove me towards this all you want, but I didn’t put my name in, and fourth-years aren’t supposed to compete.”

“Your name came from the Goblet.”

“It’s not possible! I didn’t put my name in!”

Harry manages to catch Blaise’s eye while he’s still speaking, and Blaise shakes his head once, violently. Harry masters himself, biting his lips. He can understand what Blaise is saying without hearing it. The Goblet creates a magical bond to the Champion, and the last chance they had to reverse that is gone, with the flames going out.

“Please join the other Champions, Mr. Potter.”

Harry lifts his chin and ignores the heated whispers breaking out around him, including the hateful ones. Most of the school hasn’t noticed him up until this point. He’s just been a Ravenclaw who’s Blaise’s boyfriend. If anything, they probably paid attention to Blaise because of his reputation and Aradia’s and only noticed Harry as an afterthought.

But they’re ready to dislike him, now.

“I want to say that you should have done something more to secure the Goblet,” he says softly, eyes meeting Dumbledore’s and holding them. “Something more than this. You’re going to regret it.”

He makes sure to look at the other organizers of the Tournament, as well, who just look puzzled, but he really means it for Dumbledore. Yes, he’s going to make sure that he can hurt the man as badly as this is going to hurt his reputation.

“I will protect you.”

Harry lets his hand slip down to cover the pocket where Artemis rests as he walks over to the little antechamber. He doesn’t dare turn to see the expressions on Padma’s and Anthony’s faces. He can’t live with it, right now, if they think he did this or it was his fault.

“They would not suspect you.”

Harry murmurs an instruction to hush as he enters the room where Krum and Delacour stand. They turn to look at him and blink, then look over his shoulder for the Hogwarts Champion they must assume is coming.

"You are the Champion for Hogwarts?” Krum asks in his slow way, turning his head to look Harry up and down.

“How can you be? You are young!” Delacour’s magic sparkles silver in the air around her, and Harry is especially glad that Artemis isn’t talking right now. With Veela heritage, Delacour’s senses might be sharper than those of an ordinary human, and she might be able to hear the slightest murmur of Parseltongue.

“Ask the person who put my name into the Goblet.”

“Of course you did.”

“So you think that I got past an Age Line cast by one of the strongest wizards in the world? How?”

Delacour doesn’t seem to have an answer for that, only casting Harry a look of dislike. Krum folds his arms and doesn’t say anything as Bagman, Crouch, Dumbledore, Karkaroff, and Maxime come in.

Karkaroff is trying to hide his smile as he looks at Harry. Harry’s dislike for the man grows. “Well, they do prefer them young at Hogwarts, don’t they, Albus?”

“I promise that we had nothing to do with this cheat,” Madame Maxime says, and looks away from Harry as if dismissing him from her notice.

“I am sorry, my boy,” Dumbledore says to Harry, shaking his head a little as if he wants to draw his wand and reverse time. “But the Goblet says that you have to compete, on the pain of the loss of your magic.”

Harry takes a sharp breath. The mere thought of losing Artemis and Ignis and Sidus, the protections that he put in the amulet for Aradia, and everything that connects him to the magical world and the Zabinis is too much.

But he does say, “Then how do you think this happened, given that I didn’t put my name in?”

“I am concerned about the power of your Age Line, Dumbly-door. One of the ones I brought with me as observes could have got past it, no?”

Harry ignores the Beauxbatons Headmistress, but he is glad about the way that her words make Dumbledore pause and look a little embarrassed. Then he shakes his head with a faint sigh. “I don’t know what to tell you, Olympe.”

“Perhaps the Age Line wasn’t real,” Karkaroff suggests silkily. “Perhaps Hogwarts was hoping for two Champions, or more!”

“Igor—”

“This Champion, he will hardly serve them,” Delacour says, and folds her arms as if that gesture will make Harry wilt to the floor.

In truth, it’s hard for Harry to keep his fear uppermost on his face. He’s feeling rage, and he wants to show them that.

But it isn’t a good idea, here in the middle of Hogwarts where he’s already been responsible for some deaths. He just folds his own arms and stands there, with an expression on his face that they can take as a pout if they want.

In truth, he’s thinking.

All right, so he can’t get out of this situation, not without damaging his magic, and not without doing something about the Goblet of Fire that probably can’t be done if Professor Fawley is right and it’s an ancient artifact.

That means he has to do his best to survive.

He’ll start asking Professor Babbling if he can attend a few training sessions with Blaise. Or working with her separately, since she might not want to teach him everything that an assassin apprentice learns.

He’ll work harder with Steel on defensive applications of his magic.

He’ll come up with protections for his bed and trunk in Ravenclaw Tower, too, just in case some of his Housemates take their anger at his “cheating” out on him.

“Harry.”

Harry blinks and jerks his head up. Most of the people have left the antechamber, and he didn’t hear or see them go. That’s bad, he thinks. He’ll need to work on his situational awareness and peripheral vision during the Tournament.

Dumbledore is left, staring at him with pity in his eyes.

“You ought to know that I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world,” he begins. “The Age Line and the rule change really were meant to keep the younger students safe.”

“They didn’t.”

Dumbledore blinks and clears his throat. “Yes, well. I hardly think that anything that’s happened so far is my fault.”

“That’s because you never think that, sir.”

Harry turns and walks out of the antechamber before the Headmaster can say anything more. He’s going to find Blaise and have a good rage. Then maybe he can catch Professor Babbling before she goes to bed for the night and ask her about the lessons. Of all the professors in the school, she’s the least likely to think he put his name in the Goblet.

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry turns around, fighting to keep the irritation off his face. Can people just let him go? Do they have to keep talking to him?

Professor Fawley is standing near the empty Hufflepuff table, her face fixed in a slight, sad smile. “There’s something you need to know.”

“Unless you can tell me some way out of this, Professor, I’m not interested,” Harry says, fighting to keep his voice low and tight instead of exploding.

“I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you the name of the person who put your name in the Goblet.”

Harry stares at her, then becomes aware that his mouth is hanging open and slams it shut. “You can?”

“Oh, yes. I did it.”

Harry feels as though the floor is falling away from underneath him, and he stares at her for long enough that he’s afraid Dumbledore’s going to come out and interrupt this conversation. But nothing happens before Harry finds his voice. “You did? Why?”

Professor Fawley walks towards him and then draws her wand. Harry promptly pulls his and drops into a defensive crouch.

But Fawley doesn’t fire a spell at him. Instead, she traces a symbol in the air. Harry squints at it. It’s silver, ornamented with sparks of blue, and it looks like a rune, but not anything that he’s learned in Babbling’s class.

“Do you recognize this?” Fawley asked softly.

“No.” Harry darts a look at her, then returns to studying the symbol. He doesn’t want to disregard the danger she might present, but he also wants to make sure his memory is clear so that other people can see it later.

“Perhaps there’s no reason you should.” Fawley shakes her head. “You might as well know that I was created by the clash of the reality bubbles, the one that saved your former friend Neville Longbottom and the one that your foster mother spun to, in part, avenge you. Simply manipulating reality, especially in a fluid situation where one bubble already existed, caused immense ripples. I cannot punish your Aradia for it, but I can right some of the points of reality that would otherwise topple.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that!”

“And yet, you have changed reality in and of yourself, haven’t you? You weren’t born with Parseltongue, or with the power to create life. You willed yourself to have it. Another ripple in reality, coming from a boy who was already affected by the first bubble due to your presence in Godric’s Hollow that night, unbalanced things even further.”

“So this is punishment for being lonely and abused?” Harry hisses.

“Of course not. This is reality correcting itself, and this is one way for it to do so. One way or the other, your survival or your death, will right things.”

“Why?”

“Alas,” Fawley says, and dismisses the symbol with a swish of her wand, “I don’t think you have the comprehension or I the language to tell you. Come talk to me in a few days, and one of us may.”

And she turns and walks out of the Great Hall, leaving Harry astonished and furious.

And deeply, deeply afraid.