A.N/ Here is my new story idea that I will be writing at the same time as 'May Our Hearts'. Hopefully I can write both in a relay system but if I can't then 'May Our Hearts' will be concentrated on more as it was my first story and has far more readers than this will initially.

Chapter 1: Burning Friendships

Just once Harry Potter would have liked a quiet year at Hogwarts, but it seemed like he was cursed by fate to have something try to kill or maim him each and every year. It had all started the previous evening when his name had appeared out of the Goblet of Fire that chose the champions for the Triwizard tournament from three magical schools. However it should have not been possible for Harry to be entered in this tournament for a variety of reasons, the first being was that the champion for Hogwarts was a Hufflepuff by the name of Cedric Diggory who was everything that Harry felt that he wasn't. Cedric was a tall, handsome and popular guy not just because of his looks, but because of his prowess on the Quidditch pitch and his high grades despite the fact that he wasn't a bookworm.

The second reason which made Harry nervous was the fact that the Tournament was only supposed to be open for entrants that were seventeen years old or more as the tasks that they were most likely to be facing would be using high levels of complex magic that would be far beyond what any student would hope to achieve unless they were almost finished with their schooling. Due to the fact that Harry was only in his fourth year and he had been raised by Muggles until he reached the age of eleven he simply didn't have the magical knowledge to compete even if he had been pushing himself harder over the summer and for the first few months of the year so far.

The final reason was the most important and what everything should have been based off when it came to other people's attitudes towards him was that Harry knew that he had not entered himself in the Tournament. Sure he had had daydreams and fantasised about if he was old enough to enter like most of the other students in his year had done as well, but Harry would never have entered even if it had been offered as he just wanted one quiet year where he could further himself in his studies without something trying to hurt him.

However when it came to the final reason no-one seemed to believe that he hadn't entered his name into the Goblet of Fire somehow using magic or trickery that was unknown to the rest of Gryffindor house. This in itself was ludicrous but Harry was fast learning that when people were angry or jealous they tended to not make very good or logical decisions and they also tended to follow whatever voice or opinion was the loudest rather than making up their own minds. This had been made abundantly clear to Harry when he had re-entered Gryffindor tower last night, and thinking back pained Harry to his very core but he couldn't help but relive the memories of the potential disintegration of most of his friendships.

Harry had been trying to put off returning to Gryffindor tower as long as he could as he was fairly certain that it wasn't going to be a party inside waiting for him to show up as a Gryffindor was technically school champion as well as Cedric Diggory. Harry knew that his friendships had been a little shaky since returning to school but he had hoped that it would be something that would pass as his friends got used to his new work ethic.

After his lack of magical knowledge had allowed Peter Pettigrew to escape this meant that his Godfather, Sirius Black was forced to go back on the run again when they had been so close to clearing his name. Harry had vowed after letting Pettigrew escape that he would study harder so such a thing would never happen again if he could help it. He had took to this new work ethic with vigour over the summer as he had been reading ahead as much as he could with his school books to try and learn as much magical theory and new spells that he could. Harry was also very happy that wherever Sirius was he seemed to have a large supply of books with him as he had sent a few to Harry after Harry had written to him asking about where he might be able to get more advanced books from without having to visit Diagon alley. These books had proved to be extremely helpful to Harry over the entirety of the summer as they had been full of theory and spells that he hadn't even attempted and he was fairly certain was at a level that Hermione might not have even attempted yet.

All of this had meant that when Harry had got back to Hogwarts he had been putting in a lot more effort to his schoolwork and was no longer slacking off during lessons when he thought he would be able to get away with it like Ron did. He had been pushing himself in every lesson to not only finish the work that they had been assigned, but also any spells or theory that was related to what they were currently studying so that if asked he could prove that he wasn't going off task, but was instead furthering his own learning. It had also meant that Harry had arranged with Professor McGonagall to drop Divination and instead take up Ancient Runes with the reasoning that he was finished with coasting through his time at Hogwarts and he felt that he would get more out of studying Runes than Divination. Harry could have sworn that after hearing his reasons for switching classes he could see a ghost of a smile on the stern Professor's face as she agreed to make the arrangements.

However despite the fact that most of Harry's Professors apart from Snape, who would rather dance naked with Alastor Moody, before he would admit like his colleagues had that they were very pleased with Harry's newfound enthusiasm towards learning and the progress he was making. No despite this he was getting increasingly detached from Ron and Hermione as he continued to make great strides in his work whilst Ron was still just barely trying and Hermione was desperately trying to catch up or beat him. This had caused friction between the three friends as Ron was annoyed at Harry for putting his work ahead of everything else which was a full one eighty to how Harry had viewed his work last year and how Harry was getting more points for Gryffindor in one week than Ron usually managed in a year due to his progress. Hermione's reaction to Harry's new work ethic had stung somewhat as he had expected that she would be happy to have someone that took pride in their work as much as she did and to have someone who would challenge her to do better thus making her own work better in turn. However this hadn't happened and instead of Hermione being happy for him she had become rather bitter and petty about who had earned the most points for Gryffindor during the week and if Harry performed a new piece of magic before her then she became rather hostile and would become focussed on also performing the spell and if she couldn't then she would become rather unpleasant to be around.

With all of this running around Harry's mind as he made his way up to Gryffindor tower made him not want to enter the tower as he was scared of what they might say despite the fact that he hadn't actually done anything to make the events that had transpired happen. As he pushed open the portrait to the tower he was met with a room that suddenly lapsed into silence at seeing hm and he braced himself for what was about to happen.

"So you finally decided to grace us with your presence Potter?" Came a rather cold tone from somewhere in the middle of the room and if Harry hadn't known it so well he might have not recognised it but he knew that it was Ron speaking.

Harry looked around the room for anyone that might be willing to listen to his side of the story, but most faces were looking at him with either anger, jealousy or something close to hate. The only anomalies in this sea of faces was the Weasley twins who looked rather apologetic, but didn't seem to want to speak out for some reason and Harry couldn't see Neville anywhere so maybe he might still have one friend in what was fast becoming the tower of the Jackals rather the tower of the Lions.

"Do you have nothing to say for yourself Potter or are you waiting for all of us to fall to our knees in awe and worship the scar on your head?" This came from Hermione in a rather snotty tone that she had only previously used when lecturing people about House Elf rights in the common room.

"Are you going to at least let me try and explain guys?" Harry replied with a hint of pleading in his tone as he watched friendships start to crack.

"What is there to explain? Harry Potter couldn't stand anyone else getting a little bit of fame at Hogwarts so he had to cheat his way into the Triwizard tournament to try and regain the spotlight!" It hurt Harry more than he thought it would that this had been said by Angelina Johnson who would most likely be taking over the Gryffindor Quidditch team next year and Harry had considered almost a big sister. That even after playing on the same team as her for three years she could think such things of him and she wouldn't even hear what he had to say.

"Guys please you know me. You know that I hate my fame and I want to be as far out of the spotlight as possible." Harry tried again to make his friends and housemates see reason in the face of mass opinion.

"If that's true then why are you trying to be teacher's pet in all of your classes? If you just want to be normal then why are you trying to make the rest of us look bad?" Hermione retorted in the same snotty tone that she had used before.

Harry looked at her unable to form any words against what was being said to him. In part of his mind it was saying how pathetic it was if that was what they thought he was doing in class rather than trying to better himself for his own peace of mind rather than for praise and the admiration of others. Another part was angry that people would turn on him so readily when he had done nothing to warrant such behaviour from them in the last few years. Finally the majority of his thoughts were of sadness at what was happening and that he had no control over what was happening.

In the end Harry took the most logical step and he turned round and walked back out of the portrait hole away from the Jackals that had invaded the Lion's den. Harry was at this point desperately trying to keep his emotions in check, but it was a losing battle as his tears threatened to spill out. After wandering through corridor after corridor Harry finally found himself in a section of the castle that he had hardly ever visited with an unfamiliar door on his right opposite one of the more absurd paintings in the castle. The painting was of a rather confused looking wizard who was trying to teach some trolls what looked like the ballet if the tutus he had them in were any clue towards his goal. Realising that it was close to curfew Harry entered the room in front of him so that he wouldn't have to risk returning to Gryffindor tower where there would be a less than warm welcome or risk running into Snape or Filch patrolling the corridors.

Harry was rather surprised when he opened the door in front of him and found a bedroom with a large four poster bed inside that resembled his own bed in Gryffindor tower. However what was different was that this room was painted in neutral colours in contrast to the red and gold that adorned all of the bed hangings in his normal room. For the time being Harry found the lack of the bold colours comforting as he didn't need yet another reminder of his house stabbing him in the back. As Harry took off his outer robes and pulled back the covers of this bed that had appeared he was still struggling to understand as to why all of his friends had turned on him at the drop of a hat or in this case at the drop of a parchment fragment. His mind returned to its original thoughts of how childish and pathetic Hermione was being at the whole ordeal as he knew she was angry at him being in the Triwizard tournament in itself as she didn't really care all that much about it. No what Harry reckoned she cared about was that a magical artefact had determined that he was worthy to be in such a tournament and that he was just trying to prove that he was better than her by showing off. Harry hoped that he was wrong about this but due to Hermione's behaviour that evening he was fairly sure he was right even though he had hoped she would be more mature now that she was fifteen but alas no, she apparently had the same level of maturity as Ron did at the moment.

As Harry started to drift off to sleep his final thoughts were of the concern on professor Dumbledore's face after he had decided that Harry had indeed not entered his name into the Goblet of Fire. However none of the other tournament officials agreed with him as they all thought that Harry had cheated somehow and that possibly Dumbledore had assisted him. This could not be further from the truth as the old Headmaster had taken Harry aside before dismissing him to let him know that he would try and get to the bottom of the situation, but he could not shown to be interacting with Harry more than the average student might be interacting directly with the Headmaster otherwise people might get suspicious and accuse him of aiding Harry even when that was against the rules. Unfortunately Harry was quite adept at reading between the lines and knew that Professor Dumbledore was saying that he would not be able to intervene if Harry received a cold front in any way from the rest of the school as this might well be seen as favouritism and cats yet more doubt on Harry's proclamation that he hadn't entered his name into the Goblet of Fire.

As Harry awoke the next morning he was at first confused as to where he was and why he was feeling so upset before it all came flooding back. He sighed as he recalled his name coming out of the Goblet of Fire, the accusations that he was a liar and a cheat, the rather frosty welcome he had received at Gryffindor tower and finally how his so called 'friends' had reacted to him becoming a Triwizard champion. Harry was just thinking that he needed to get back to Gryffindor tower to take a shower when suddenly a shower appeared in one corner of the room which made Harry's eyes widen in shock. He realised that this room was magical in itself and that was why he had only seen it for the first time last night was due to its nature. Pushing these thoughts to one side for the time being to revisit later Harry showered and got redressed before bracing himself and exiting the room that had been his solitary sanctuary for the last twelve hours.

Walking down to the Great Hall for breakfast reminded Harry a lot of when he had first arrived at Hogwarts where people would point, stare or whisper things to each other as he passed which he had found a little overwhelming to begin with but had since learnt to deal with. However he knew that people weren't acting like they were due to being so close to the Boy-Who-Lived after hearing stories about him for so many years. No they were probably all calling him the Boy-Who-Cheated or something similar and not all of them were whispering, in fact some of the surrounding students weren't even bothering with the premise of private conversations as they loudly exclaimed that they had knew all along that he was nothing but an arrogant attention seeker and cheater.

Harry did his best to ignore them but they would not stop and he finally decided to break off from the main corridors and take a less well known shortcut that would take him almost to the top of the final staircase down to the Great Hall. This helped a lot as he was finally away from the whispers but he knew that it would all start over again as soon as he entered the Great Hall but magnified hugely due to the large number of students that would be there on a Sunday. For once Harry would have liked to be completely and utterly wrong but his predictions were spot on as he walked through the double doors the noise in the hall dropped briefly as the amassed students took note that he was in the Hall before they started up their conversations again at a louder volume, a large majority that seemed to be speculating on how Harry had cheated his way into the tournament.

Sitting down at the end of the Gryffindor table Harry was unsurprised when several people slid down the benches to be further away from him and new arrivals were looking for spots that were as far away from him as they could possibly be. Not wanting to linger in such a hostile environment Harry ate quickly before he made his way out of the Great Hall and through the doors leading outside so that he could have some peace and quiet away from the masses.

Finding a secluded place with several tall rocks, Harry clambered up to the top before he lay down flat on the top of the rock and just stared up into the distance as he contemplated what the hell he was going to do in order to survive the tournament. However his thoughts were eventually broken by a voice that was clear but laced with apprehension.

"Harry, do you want to talk about what's wrong?"

Harry looked down at who was willingly talking to him and was only slightly surprised when he took in the blonde hair and strikingly blue eyes of the Slytherin Ice Queen Daphne Greengrass.