The Try-Wizard Tourney

"Here's the fellow we need!"

Harry glanced up just in time to be accosted by two bulky redheads who promptly seized his arms and lifted him from the ground. "Errr—" he managed before they had him in an empty classroom with the door closed.

"Are you going to enter?" one of the twins asked him.

"Why would I want to?" Harry asked back, wondering if he was being set up for their latest bit of mischief.

"Yes, yes, you don't really need the fame or financial injection, do you?"

Harry shook his head, waiting for the terrible twins of Gryffindor to reveal their reason for dragging him off.

"My good fellow," one of them – he thought it might be George – began, "we had an idea."

"Quite right, brother mine, an excellent idea to get us into the tournament."

They both were staring at him expectantly, as though Harry would have some profound insight on this. Finally giving in to the silence, he gave them what they wanted: an interactive audience. "Do tell, then."

"So glad you asked!"

"Finally!"

"Better late than never, George."

"Right again, Fred."

Harry realized he had them backwards, that was to be expected. Then again, that was assuming they were being honest in identifying themselves. They rapidly scuttled back and forth in front of him, manic grins in place, and he was left thinking of the pea-and-shell game he had heard of so many times before. Except this time it was the name-the-twin game.

"So, Harry, we thought of using an Aging Potion." Twin number one was obviously convinced it was a brilliant plan.

Twin number two nodded, though Harry thought the attribute sagely might be failing to describe the facial expression. "It's not so long before our seventeenth, you know, a few drops ought to do it just fine."

Resigned to playing along fully to escape the room, Harry sat down in a chair and looked up at the twins who playfully tussling as they tried to sit in the same chair. "And I come into this where?"

"Oh, right. You're the resident Dumbledore expert, right?"

Harry blinked once, trying to understand the logic of that question. "I am?"

"Of course you are!" the other twin said with a sharp, single nod. "You've spent more time with him than any student."

"Oh." Harry tried to think about how much time he had actually spent with the headmaster, as he did not think it was all that much time in total. "Assuming I take your word for it, how do I come into this?"

"Well, since you're the Dumbledore expert, we want to ask:"

"Do you think an Aging Potion would get around his Age Line?"

Harry no longer cared which was which, which in a certain manner of thinking, might make him more capable of handling their randomness. Thinking of them as Number One and Number Two, or perhaps Left and Right, would be good enough. Their question, however, had an obvious answer. The question he was left with was whether he wanted to state it and risk their irritation.

"You want my honest opinion?" he finally asked.

"Of course!"

"Why else are we here?"

Harry sighed. "It won't work. There's no bit of magic that you could possibly think up that he wouldn't have planned for."

The twins stared at him, their happy faces slowly turning into frowns. Their lack of surprise, however, told him they already suspected as much. Silently, Left dug in a pocket and handed a single sickle to Right, but they both remained rather depressed in their appearance.

"Yeah, we thought as much. It's the best we've been able to think of, though."

"It's our fallback plan. You wouldn't happen to have any ideas, would you?"

Harry laughed for a moment, wondering at the craziness of the twins. How would he know how to get around an obviously advanced bit of magic like an Age Line? Then again, given what he saw of the magical world in general during the World Cup, perhaps all wizards and witches were a bit daft and he was one of the few sane ones.

"Well," Harry slowly temporized, "about the only thing I could suggest would be to not use magic. I've yet to meet a wizard who really understands Muggle life that wasn't born as one, you know? So a non-magic solution would be best."

"Like what? Using a long pole to drop it in?" Right asked, his eyes tracking some imaginary thing on the ceiling. At least Harry hoped it was imaginary.

"Nah," Harry said. "The line's a good ten feet from the Goblet. I'm not sure you could hold up a stick long enough like that without magic, and I'm sure that an enchanted stick won't cross the Age Line."

"What if we throw our paper in?"

"You'd have to crunch it up into a ball," Harry pointed out. "It'd be tough to hit, because it's so far away, and paper balls just aren't very accurate. You'd have to throw a dozen or so, and that would leave a lot of evidence behind."

"What's wrong with evidence?" Left asked.

"Don't you think Dumbledore would find a way to remove your name from the Goblet if he knew you actually got around his Age Line?" Harry pointed out. It seemed rather obvious to him. "Did you guys try asking someone older to put your names in for you?"

"Yeah," Right said glumly. "Angie tried, but the name on the parchment changed from mine to hers as soon as she stepped over it."

"That's pretty impressive," Harry muttered. "I wonder what it would do if no one held the paper?"

Right and Left looked at each other for a long moment. "Let's find out, shall we?"

"It's probably about curfew right now," Harry pointed out. "Do you –"

Left held up a ratty bit of parchment that Harry recognized instantly. "That's never stopped any of us before, now has it?" he asked with a grin.

Knowing he was not going to escape the twins until the show was over, he got to his feet and followed them down the corridors – pausing now and again to evade as needed. When they finally reached the room with the Goblet, they each moved inside.

Right sat down near the doorway with the map. "You two go on, I'll call out if we need to hide for a bit."

Left, now One, pulled out a bit of parchment as they reached the line. Harry caught a glimpse of a "G" on the paper, and knew it was George – or at least extremely likely to be him.

"Just slide it over the line by a tiny bit, George," Harry told him. He dug around in his own bag to extract the last Long Lasting Sugar Quill. George looked at him curiously, but gave the paper a slight push to get it across the line. The name did not change, which was all they really needed to know.

Harry poked the Sugar Quill through the line, and used the tip to jerk the parchment back to their side of the line. Unfortunately, as soon as the quill touched the slip, the tip started dissolving. The contact had been just enough to get it back, but now it had a large pile of sugar powder coating it.

"See?" Harry muttered, holding his now Short Lasting Sugar Quill remains. "Magical tricks won't work here."

The two of them sat there for a few minutes, trading ideas back and forth about how to get the twins into the Tri-Wizard contest. It was while Harry was contemplating Fred's plan to build a paper ball trebuchet that he remembered how he had idled the hours away during his summer when he had been imprisoned in his room. Before the twins came to save him, at least.

"A paper airplane."

"What?" George asked. "That wouldn't work, magic makes them go."

"No," Harry said, "it only does that for you lot. Muggles make paper airplanes all the time. I spent nearly a month flying a paper airplane around my room when I was, err, stuck there for a bit. I know I can get a name into the Goblet from here with that."

"You think so?" Fred called from the doorway.

Harry shrugged and dug around in his bag again. He was not about to put his name into the Goblet, but if they wanted proof, he could put someone's name in. He knew that Angelina had already put her name in, so he could just jot her name down on a bit of parchment and enter her name again.

Of course, in his search for a spare bit of parchment, he came across a note he had received previously . . . with a signature on it. Of an adult. He was holding it in front of his face, wondering whether the Goblet would accept such a name, when he set it aside and went back to digging. Finally turning up a decent sized bit of blank parchment, Harry wrote Angelina's name on it and then set about making it into a paper airplane.

Less than a minute later, the twins were both whistling in appreciation as the airplane had neatly deposited itself into the Goblet. "Very nice," George said. "Can you do it again?"

He handed Harry an already folded airplane, though it was much more ragged. "Yeah, but this one's going to be harder. You made a mess of it."

"Just throw it, Harry," Fred called. "Let's get our names in and get out of here."

Shrugging, Harry experimented with throwing George's plane around outside of the line to see how it flew. Comfortable with the way it handled, he landed that name in the Goblet as well.

"Excellent!" George crowed, his smile quite broad. "Here you go, then," he said while handing Harry the third plane. This one was much better, no ragged edges at all. He tested it again a few times to be sure he knew how it would fly, and sank it as well.

"Outstanding!" Fred said. "Last one, then," he said while holding out a fourth plane that was also in nearly perfect condition. Without thinking much about it, Harry tried it, found it to fly almost better than his own, and sank it into the Goblet.

As the Goblet flared up and took the last plane, Harry's mind came to a screeching halt. Turning sharply, he looked up at the twins. "Hang on, I just put in four planes. Angie and each of you. What's the fourth?"

George took on a very sly grin, while Fred started to actually giggle. Harry had no recollection of ever hearing either of the twins emit such a . . . strange sound. "That second plane wasn't our name," George finally said. He silently handed out the signed parchment that Harry had set aside earlier – except the signature and bottom half of the parchment were torn off.

"You didn't?" he heard himself whisper, his mind staggering at the implications.

"No, we didn't," he heard one of them say. "You did," the other chimed in before they both started laughing loud and hard.

"Bugger," was all Harry could say before the twins led him back to the Tower. He had no idea what was going to happen now, but he had a horrible feeling that a truly colossal mess was forthcoming.

****

"And the champion for Hogwarts will be . . ." Dumbledore's voice carried out as he caught the crinkled parchment the cup spat into the air. "Ahhhh" Dumbledore's voice stopped before he could get even the first syllable framed, and Harry tried to ignore the giggling he heard erupt from a few spots down at the table. Dumbledore's hand was on his chest, and he appeared to be heaving with the effort of simply staying upright.

McGonagall rose to her feet, looked over the shoulder of the headmaster, and her voice rang out sharp and strong. "Albus Dumbledore!" She turned to face the headmaster, and it was apparent how shocked she was.

A/N

This is a drabble. My bunny file has been in need of dumping some content. No betas were used or harmed in this. I have a bit more to dump on this arc in the future, but it's very low priority.