But Dumbledore suddenly stopped speaking, and it was apparent to everybody what had distracted him.
The fire in the goblet had just turned red again. Sparks were flying out of it. A long flame shot suddenly into the air, and borne upon it was another piece of parchment.
Automatically, it seemed, Dumbledore reached out a long hand and seized the parchment. He held it out and stared at the name written upon it. There was a long pause, during which Dumbledore stared at the slip in his hands, and everyone in the room stared at Dumbledore. And then Dumbledore cleared his throat and read out -
"Harry Potter."
There was only one problem with that, of course.
Harry Potter didn't attend Hogwarts.
Harry Potter didn't attend any wizarding school at all.
In fact, as of that Halloween evening, Harry Potter had been missing for exactly thirteen years.
Probably, this should've been the moment that something... momentous happened. Thunder should've boomed, lightning cracked from the heavens, the sky rent apart, and Harry Potter himself appeared halfway down the Ravenclaw table in a flash of purple smoke, and one foot in the gravy boat.
What instead occurred was a lot more boring - a suspended moment of absolute, pervasive silence while everyone waited, possibly, for Peeves to pop out from behind the Headmaster and call 'Surprise!' before blowing a raspberry in Snape's ear and cackling away - and then the Great Hall burst into excited, barely controlled whispers.
"Merlin's third n-" Hermione heard Neville breathe, and elbowed him in the gut out of sheer reflex, her eyes trained on Dumbledore, the way he'd gone pale, bloodless, as still as a statue. It was Professor McGonagall who stepped forth to the podium after a watchful pause. Her wand swept down in a short, forceful arc, producing a near-concussive shockwave of sound, making the student bodies of all three schools shut up and settle down.
"Prefects," she commanded, wandtip to her throat to amplify her voice, "lead the students to their dormitories in an orderly fashion. Students of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, please make your way to your allocated accommodations. That is all. Good evening."
"You know what this means, don't you?" Weasley asked, ruddy eyebrow raised, meeting everyone else's eye. The fourth-years had managed to snag the best seats in the common room, right next to the fireplace, and they were all there, Lavender and Parvati curled up on the loveseat, Dean sketching on the low table right by the fire, Seamus sprawled by his side, Hermione curled in the big armchair, Neville perched lightly on an arm beside her.
Hermione watched them all huddle forward, even Neville, and barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. Ron had such a thing for being the center of attention, honestly, it was a bit embarrassing.
He dropped his voice lower, shoving up the sleeves of his robes in a well-worn nervous gesture. The scars from his encounter with the basilisk gleamed on his forearms, circles of shiny, silvered scars, the size of silver dollar pancakes. "It means Harry Potter's still alive."
This time, she did roll her eyes.
"Oh please," she snapped, "he's been gone thirteen years! You'd think, if he was alive, he'd have showed up by now, don't you? What's he so scared of?"
Ron bristled, colour rising splotchy across his nose, making his hair the precise shade of Chudley orange. Lavender cut in, with a quelling hand on Ron's forearm, saying, "Papa says that maybe he didn't really survive Voldemort, you know? Maybe he's, like, crippled or gone stupid or whatever." She tilted her nose up, which only improved her resemblance to an extremely snotty pug, and added, "It's better for the image, you know, if he's just gone. More... mystique."
"That's lovely," Hermione replied. "Really, a brilliant theory. Or maybe, Lavender, he's just dead. People don't survive the Killing Curse. Hence the name."
Parvati and Lavender shared a Look, before Parvati said, in that annoying, shivery, sage little voice Hermione was positive she'd borrowed from Trelawney, "If he was dead, Hermione, where was the body? Hmm?" Her eyes had acquired that glazed, distant quality that Hermione took to mean Parvati was employing her "Inner Eye" or whatever new pseudo-occlumency rubbish Trelawney'd been cooking up while she was high off sherry fumes.
Hermione laughed humorlessly. "Merlin... You are aware that nearly a quarter of the Potters' house was vaporized? In the explosion? They only ever foundJames Potter's body."
Parvati blinked, and then hastily looked away, with a mumbled, "Yes, well."
"You lot aren't seeing it," Dean said quietly. His quill moved in short, deft strokes across the parchment, and his eyes never moved away from the sketch. "If the reason you think Harry Potter might still be alive is because they never found a corpse... You have to consider this: they never found You-Know-Who's body either."
"Mate..." Seamus said, soft as a feather, but the words had done their trick. All the fourth-years were quiet as mice, staring into the crackling flames, the strange shape of fear coiling in their hearts.
"The Dark Lord isn't alive," Hermione said stubbornly, into that fragile silence, and Ron snorted.
"Yeah?" he scoffed. "How do you know?"
Hermione glared, and Ron willingly reciprocated. "Oh, I'm just guessing, Ronald," she snarled, sotto voce. "Maybe because there isn't a war outside? Maybe because Muggleborns like me aren't being strung up by our toes and tortured in Hogsmeade square?"
Neville placed his heavy hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently, and Hermione paused, and noticed the younger kids all around them had gone quiet too, watching her rant with huge, scared eyes, making her feel like the worst sort of monster. She forced herself to close her eyes and breathe.
"You weren't there, Granger," Ron finally said. "You weren't there, this summer, at the World Cup. They... They hurt those muggles. Laughed when they screamed. And then the Dark Mark? In the open like that?" He shook his head, his gaze far away, flames flickering in those ice blue eyes. "There's no war on now, you're right.
From Dean Thomas' parchment, a Basilisk hissed at them, it's yellow eyes filled with a hungry rage, it's fangs dripping with crimson blood.
"Not yet."
November came to Scotland with a wintry vengeance, turning the air chill and the skies a steely gray, forcing Hogwarts' population indoors against the malevolent weather.
And indoors, all anyone could ever talk about was Harry sodding Potter, as if he'd suddenly usurped the position for the center of the universe. Hermione had heard more nuanced discussion about the nature of 'magically binding contracts' and their enforcement in the past month than she would've dreamed possible - all anyone could talk about was if he was going to turn up for the First Task.
All Hermione wanted to do was run far, far away.
Thank Merlin for the library.
"Um... Is this one taken?"
Cedric Diggory, sixth year, Hufflepuff Prefect, Hogwarts champion, all-round good guy, and possibly the most extraordinarily handsome boy in school, looked up to see Hermione Granger, her leather-gloved hand resting on the back of a chair opposite his. The library was well packed today; Viktor Krum had taken one table, and his twittering horde had taken up six more.
Cedric had managed to ditch his own fanbase, praise Morgana - none of them had figured out quite how much time he spent in the library. It would be a real shame, Cedric thought, if they were to figure it out today.
But Hermione didn't looked prettied up, or nervous; her hair had been hastily braided down her back, corkscrew curls escaping the 'do, and she was flushed, sweaty and looked a little... cranky. Cedric grinned.
"All yours," he said, gesturing grandly at the empty seat, and Hermione took it with a perfunctory smile, thumping her bookbag down and pulling out her Runes textbooks.
Cedric returned to his Herbology essay in turn, and for a time, they worked in peaceable silence.
...right up until a high-pitched, pig-like squeal came from the table on the other side of the stacks, making Hermione twitch violently, her quill snapping in her hand. The nib skidded across the parchment to leave a long, ugly streak of blue ink across the creamy paper.
"For the love of Merlin!" Hermione hissed with uncharacteristic rage, turning in her seat to glare at the long rows of books, as if she could see the offending witch right through the paper and wood.
Cedric smirked, but he was a Hufflepuff, so instead of the wiseass remark she might've gotten from a Gryffindor or even a 'Claw, he waved his wand over her essay and siphoned away the spilled ink.
"Oh," Hermione said, turning back to see him stowing his wand away once more. Colour rose to her cheeks, in high spots of pink. "I... Thanks."
"Don't mention it." He pointed his wand at the broken quill. "Reparo."
She smiled, a little hesitant. Diggory was, after all, older and taller and terribly good-looking, and a Champion to boot. "It must get exhausting, mustn't it?" she said softly. "Dodging this crowd?"
Cedric's eyes widened, before he- blushed. Lud, he really was a 'Puff. Every Gryffindor she knew would've had the time of their lives with a proper fanbase, and here he was, getting all coy about it.
Well, nearly every Gryffindor.
Neville would've hated it.
But then, Nev had never been like the rest of them.
"I don't mind," Diggory said, just as soft, without meeting her eyes. Hermione chuckled.
"Right, my mistake. You're hiding in the library from the giant squid, of course. How did I get that confused?"
He snorted, peeking up at from beneath his dark lashes like a guilty little kid. "You should try Scrivenshaft's for quills," he said instead. "They don't break so easy."
It was Hermione's turn to smile then. She tugged open the buttons at the wrist, and then loosened each finger of the black, leather glove she wore on her right hand. "It is from Scrivenshaft," she said. "But even they don't make quills for someone like... me."
And she pulled off her glove, to reveal a hand that was entirely formed of cold, gleaming steel.
She giggled a little at the dumbstruck expression on his face, flexing the cold, metal fingers until they caught the light and refracted it, making tiny fractals dance across her faux-skin, and Cedric mock-scowled at her, making her laugh harder, until he was grinning too.
"That's kind of amazing," he said, after their laughter had subsided. "Your hand, I mean."
Hermione ducked her head, unused to the compliment. "Thanks. Professor Dumbledore's work. It was after the, you know..."
"The troll incident?" Cedric asked quietly, and Hermione nodded. His only response was a sharp, rattling exhale, and she snapped her gaze up to meet his troubled eyes. "I heard it was a close shave," he said.
"It was. But I survived." Her tone became brisk, pragmatic. "Lost my hand, my forearm, most of my right leg-"
"Your leg too?!" Cedric interrupted.
"It was a troll," Hermione said patiently, as if she was speaking to someone particularly stupid, and he settled down once again, looking shaken this time.
"Merlin..." he mumbled, and Hermione finally noticed how pale he'd gone. "That's... that's gonna keep me up at night, that is."
And then she realized- People died in the Triwizard Tournament.
Students died.
And here she was, dumping her near-death horror story in his lap- Damn, she'd been such an idiot! "Cedric," she whispered, grabbing his hand impulsively. "Nothing's going to happen to you, alright? You're smart, you're quick, you're going to have your wand, you're going to be prepared. You will survive this. You will."
Cedric gaped at her. "I'm not worried about me!" he hissed indignantly. "You were eleven! You shouldn't've had to face down a troll, for Merlin's sake!"
"Oh," Hermione whispered, feeling stupid, a surge of unsteady warmth swelling up in her like a tidal wave. "Well I was. And I did."
"And it's not just you!" Cedric barreled on. "Quirell's suicide, remember that? Right after you got hurt. Nobody knows why. The year after that - all those Petrifications! And the talk about the Chamber... And Ginny Weasley being sent to St. Mungo's for six months at the end of term-"
"You heard about that?!" Hermione asked incredulously, and he waved it off.
"My aunt works in the Billings department. That's not the point, Hermione. I know Ronald - he's in your year?" Hermione nodded. "He has scars now. Those big, silver ones on his arms. Nobody knows why. Year after that, Sirius Black escapes Azkaban, comes straight here. Nobody knows why. The best DADA professor we've had in a decade? Turns out to be a goddamn werewolf! And now this!"
The whole time, his voice had stayed in a low, furious whisper. Clearly, this was an oft-visited subject. "People have died for that sodding Cup. And if the Goblet really does create magically binding contracts, and Potter is really alive, then a fourteen year old kid is going to forced into the most dangerous competitions in the history of magical education." There was a furious glimmer in his eyes when he looked at Hermione. "And nobody knows why."
a/n: Accidentally deleted the original. My apologies.
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