Year four
Harry lay back in his bed as the nightmare of Voldemort and Wormtail began to fade. For most of his life he had lived a nightmare, of one sort or another. That made him fairly complacent about the kind of visions that left other people his age, or even considerably older, writhing in a cold sweat.
His scar was burning, but it was just another ache, and when you have lived with various aches and pains for most of your life, it was easy to not even notice it.
Reaching out to pat the enormous black dog asleep by his bed, he smiled and then went straight back to sleep.
Harry watched the Dursleys sit down to their meagre meal, and laughed inwardly. The rations they were on, in a vain attempt to reduce Dudley's enormous girth enough for him to fit into the school uniform, were not substantially less than what Harry ate for most of his life before Hogwarts, but he was having none of that anymore.
"Right," said Harry, interrupting the Dursley's meal. "I'm going out for a while. Enjoy your dinner. Come on Snuffles, let's go get some pizza."
The huge Grim silently padded down the stairs to follow Harry out of the back door. Behind them, Dudley moaned pitifully, Vernon cursed under his breath while turning purple with anger, and Petunia gave both Harry and Snuffles a look of pure loathing, but none of them dared say anything.
Having a famous convicted murderer for a Godfather had its advantages, especially when the Sirius wrote them a letter saying he was watching closely, had left Snuffles as a guard, and was paying for Harry's meals and lodging for the summer. It made leaving the house to dine elsewhere a common occurrence that didn't cause much fuss.
Harry's magically expanded trunk contained a whole room that was stuffed with enough food for the pair of them to last a month, but sometimes they felt the need to get out of the stifling confines of Privet Drive.
"Or maybe a steak dinner," he added, just loud enough for his family to hear.
Snuffles coughed the canine equivalent of a laugh as Dudley began to cry.
Harry looked around at the wizard camping ground and couldn't stop himself from laughing. The only thing he had ever seen more ridiculous than a hundred thousand wizards trying to look like Muggles, were the Dursley's trying look like a nice, normal, family. None of them had any idea what they were trying to emulate.
The tents though, they were impressive. It made him wonder how a family like the Weasleys could be running short on space when this kind of magic was available. Some of his vault was going to be invested in some wizarding camping gear that he and Sirius could use next holiday, even if it was only setting up the tent in the Dursley's backyard.
The world cup stadium too was very impressive, although the people running the show needed a good whack on the head with a Bludger bat for their laughing attempts at organisation. Imagine having to arrive two weeks beforehand if you had a cheap seat because Muggles might notice, when a magically expanded bus could secretly ferry in a few hundred people at a time from anywhere in the country.
Still, the only thing that would have made it better was if Sirius could have attended, but he was much safer staying at the Burrow, and it was only for a day or two.
Nevertheless, Harry felt distinctly vulnerable without the huge form of Snuffles present, and checked to make sure his usual arsenal was stocked and ready to go, along with a new trick or two.
Without warning, the silence was rent by a voice unlike any they had heard in the wood; and it uttered, not a panicked shout, but what sounded like a spell.
"MORSMORDRE!"
Nothing appeared to happen for a moment or two, then there was the sound of somebody cursing loudly and rather viciously from the woods behind them. An odd squeaking noise, a lot like the rubber chickens Fred and George used in their fake wand manufacture, punctuated the violent swearing.
"I think somebody just discovered one of the twin's inventions," giggled Ron.
Harry laughed too, know his wand, the most precious and prized of all his possession, was safely tucked away in an inner pocket. It wasn't until much later that he noticed his own fake one, presented in a grand ceremony by Fred and George at the Burrow, was missing from his back pocket.
"I'm never wearing them," said Ron stubbornly. "Never."
"Fine," snapped Mrs. Weasley. "Go naked. And, Harry, make sure you get a picture of him. Goodness knows I could do with a laugh."
"Why is everything I own rubbish?" said Ron furiously, striding across the room to unstick Pigwidgeon's beak.
"Ron," said Harry, digging into this trunk. "Have a look at these."
"What's that? Muggle clothes?" asked Ron, eyeing the huge, greying jumper Harry held out for him.
"That's the best piece of clothing I own, outside of my Hogwarts robes and the Christmas presents your mum makes every year," admitted Harry, feeling a bit embarrassed, but just angry enough to keep going. "You might think your hand me downs are second rate, but I bet you never had to wear anything as bad as this, did you?"
"But that's different, Harry," whined Ron. "You can go out and buy new stuff anytime you want. I bet you don't have some munky old dress robes with frilly bits in your trunk, do you? I'm stuck with what I'm given."
"Mate, are you a wizard or what? If you don't like them, change them. Hell, I saw Charlie downstairs darning his fire-proof balaclava - hasn't your mum show you how to sew? I've had to patch up Dudley's old things a time or two, so I know my way around the pointy end of a needle a bit, you must know something."
Ron mumbled something unintelligible and flopped down on his bed.
"Look, here's what we'll do. If we can't fix them up on our own, we'll ask around and see if somebody can help. There's bound to be somebody who can help make them into something a bit less, er-"
"Flouncy?" suggested Ron, unable to keep the smile from his face.
"Yeah, that's it, flouncy. Otherwise I'll loan you the money to hire some robes, because there is no way I am going to go to anything where you are going to show up starkers, no matter how much of a laugh it'll give your mum," laughed Harry.
Ron's pillow collected him right in the face.
"Imperio!"
It was the most wonderful feeling. Harry felt a floating sensation as every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness.
The experience was so foreign to Harry that his subconscious automatically started looking for the catch. Immediately the empty, echoing feeling in his head disappeared, and he found himself standing in exactly the same spot he was moments ago when Professor Moody cast the curse.
"Now, that's more like it!" growled Moody excitedly.
Dumbledore cleared his throat and read out -"Harry Potter."
Harry stood up, the buzz of angry bees filling the hall. He calmly made the immensely long walked to the front of the school, and then whirled around to face the students. His mask, the legendary unflappable, stoic, rock of indifference when it came to other people's opinions of him, finally cracked and, to the astonishment of every person present, shattered into a thousand pieces.
"When I find out which one of you twits put my name in," he yelled in rage. "I am going to take my crossbow, and jam it up your --"
"MR POTTER!" yelled Professor McGonagall, drowning out the yelling boy.
"And if it was you, Fred and George Weasley," Harry continued, ignoring his head of house's interruption. "I am going to make you beg for the tender mercies of your mother when she finds out what you have done!"
Then he whirled back around and angrily marched toward the door the real champions went through, determined to get it all over and done with as quickly as possible.
Behind him, the hallway erupted with the noise of a small riot. Almost nobody noticed that, during the-boy-who-lived's unprecedented rant, his hair and robes moved slightly, as if in a gentle breeze, and those that did notice, kept it to themselves.
"So tell me, Harry, it's all right to call you Harry isn't it?" asked Rita Skeeter. "Do your friends call you, Harry, or is it too hard to make friends because of your disability?"
Harry opened his mouth to reply but didn't get a chance before she was firing her next question.
"Is that why you did it? Did you enter the tournament to prove that having no magical power doesn't make you less of a man?" asked Rita.
"Wait, what?" he said.
"Or did you do it to prove something to your parents?" she continued.
"Eh? My Parents? What have they got to do about anything?" Harry was quickly starting to get very annoyed with the reporter. "What's that quill writing? Hey, I do not have tears in my eyes!"
"And how do you think your parents would feel about your meagre abilities if they were her to see you now?"
"Right, that's it!"
The explosion of Dungbombs was so severe it shredded Rita's quill and made it impossible for anybody to be in the same room as her or Harry for quite some time.
Harry was not sorry to miss out on the photo-shoot.
Harry picked up one of the Support Diggory badges and looked at it. He pressed the red writing and watched as it changed into the green "Potter is a Squib!" message.
"Cool," he laughed.
Then he pinned the badge to his robes and walked away grinning. He knew better than to give his enemies any kind of satisfaction.
The crowd's roar nearly deafened Harry as he stepped out into the bright sunlight. At the other end of the stadium, the huge Horntail thrashed its wickedly spiked tail menacingly. The pointed ends gouged deep furrows in the stone floor, as small wafts of smoke escaped from the beast's nostrils.
"This had better work," mumbled Harry to himself.
Striding up to a large boulder confidently, Harry raised his wand and brought it down to cast the most important spell he had ever attempted.
The rock shimmered and melted, slowly transforming into a cow. The beast mooed quietly, and then turned to begin taking hesitant steps towards the Dragon eyeing it hungrily from the other end.
A murmur of appreciation at the apparent transfiguration swept through the crowd as their shouts died down in anticipation of what was going to happen. The cow got to within a few short yards of the Dragon before its massive snout opened and poured a torrent of flame over the unfortunate beast.
The crowd went wild as the cow exploded, flinging entrails in all directions.
Immediately, the Horntail snatched up the remaining piece of its victim and swallowed it in one mighty gulp.
"Well that went well," said Harry, moving to the next rock.
Over a dozen very messy and crowd-pleasing deaths later, a gore covered Harry confidently walked past the snoozing Dragon and picked up the golden egg unmolested.
"Harry! That was wicked!" screeched Ron, running towards the tent entrance where Harry waited for them.
Hermione looked like she was going to envelop him in a hug, but then pulled back at the last second as she realised he was still pulling bits of meat out of his hair.
"My goodness, Harry," she said, restraining herself while he continued wiping blood from his face. "That was positively the best bit of magic I have ever seen you do. How did you become so good at transfiguration?"
"I didn't," answered Harry, once he felt confident that opening his mouth wouldn't result in a foul taste as stuff fell into it. "All I did was a Finite Incantatem."
Ron and Hermione stared at him blankly, so he felt compelled to explain.
"I paid a couple of guys to sneak into the stadium last night with a load of animals coated in sleeping potion. They transfigured them into rocks and put a compulsion on them to walk into the Dragon's mouth," he said. "All I had to do was cancel the transfiguration and wait until the Dragon was full, something I didn't think would take three cows, four sheep, an antelope, and five goats, to accomplish mind you. I only had a few ducks left as a last resort before it would have been all over."
"You, you cheated!" accused a shocked Hermione.
"Wicked," added Ron with a huge grin.
"Excuse me, Cho," said Harry hesitantly. "Er, is there any chance that you might be interested in going to the Yule ball with me?"
"No," she answered quickly, a little too quickly. "Er, I mean, I can't because I already agreed to go with somebody else. Sorry."
Then she smiled almost nervously.
Harry gave a weak smile in return and watched as she hurried away down the hallway, not sparing him a single glance.
She probably did have somebody else to go with, after all, she was quite pretty, and very popular, but Harry couldn't help feel his chances would have been much better, if not for his meagre magical power level.
No Kwickspell course could ever bridge the enormous gap between him and most other wizards, and no shy, meekly requested invitation was going to get him a date.
It was time to be a Gryffindor.
"Parvati? Will you go to the ball with me?"
Parvati went into a fit of giggles. Harry waited for them to subside, his fingers crossed in the pocket of his robes.
"Yes, all right then," she said finally, blushing furiously.
"Thanks," said Harry, in relief. "There's just one thing, I can't dance, oh, and I need to find somebody to go with Ron. I don't think he can dance either."
Pavarti frowned and Lavendar grimaced.
"Well…" said Parvati slowly, "I suppose my sister might…Padma, you know…in Ravenclaw. I'll ask her if you like, but what are you going to do about learning how to dance, because neither of us is going to go unless you are going to dance."
"Er, well. Any chance of you teaching us?"
Pavarti gave Lavendar and exasperated look before turning back to Harry. "All right, I'll try and teach you, and Padma can teach Ronald."
Harry smiled broadly, causing the dark skinned girl to blush for some reason. Then another potential problem occurred to him.
"Ah, there's just one other thing that you might be able to help us with. Ron's got the ugliest dress robes I have ever seen. They've, well, they got lace, lots of it, and it's really horrible, and Ron said he'd rather show up naked than wearing it."
Pavarti groaned and Lavendar burst out laughing.
"I've got it!" said Harry, excitedly thumping the book in front of him.
"You've found a spell that lets you stay under water for an hour?" asked Hermione, not quite as enthusiastically as Harry. In fact, she sounded slightly suspicious. "You're not even looking in the right section."
Harry looked at her blankly, blinking several times as his overwrought mind caught up. Ron snored loudly from the other end of the table, completely undisturbed by their conversation.
"Er, no. I gave up on that idea hours ago. I told you that I can't swim, didn't I? Anyway, this is what I need. Now I just need to practice, and spent some time down by the lake," he said, holding out the book for the bushy-haired girl to see.
"Hurrumph," said Hermione, but she reached out to take the volume anyway.
Harry heard the final, quavering note from the bagpipe with relief. The Weird Sisters stopped playing, applause filled the hall once more, and Harry let go of Parvati at once.
"Let's sit down, shall we?"
"Oh - but - this is a really good one!" Parvati said as the Weird Sisters struck up a new song, which was much faster.
Harry considered insisting on sitting this, and all future songs, out, but then thought about how the girl was doing him a favour by agreeing to be his date, and by getting her sister to go with Ron. She deserved to have the chance to parade him around like a pet at a dog show, at least for a little while longer.
Besides, what did he care if he looked a bit silly trying to dance? It wasn't like the other students ever had a favourable opinion about him anyway, and he was used to his school mates always pointing and snickering about him, even before Hogwarts.
"Okay," he said, "if you don't mind dancing with a clumsy Quintaped like me, that is."
"Oh, you're not that bad," giggled Pavarti. "You just have to relax and try to have some fun."
So Harry did try to relax, and surprisingly, he had quite a bit of fun.
Harry casually walked down to the podium where the other three contestants were already standing in their swimsuits. One look at the shivering students made Harry very happy about having no intention of entering the freezing water, although his eyes boggled at Fleur's obvious discomfort, as were almost every other male's in the crowd.
"Mr Potter," said Bagman, sounding very worried. "The contest is about to begin, are you ready? Do you need more time perhaps?"
Harry yawned and stretched luxuriously, much to the dismay of the overweight official and to the apparent amusement of Professor Dumbledore.
"Sorry," Harry said, stifling another yawn. "I just slept in a bit. Don't wait for me though, go ahead. I'm all set."
The canon fired and the three other champions leapt into the water, Fleur and Cedric both immediately performing the Bubble-head charm while Krum transformed himself into a sort of half-shark. It was all very impressive.
Harry calmly walked over to the edge of the pier and knelt down. He then lent forward and stuck his head into the water. Several bubbles rose to the surface around his face, as if he was trying to speak under water.
"That's it, Potter, you Squib," yelled Malfoy loudly. "Just go ahead and drown yourself and do us all a favour!"
The catcalls and laughter of the crowd stopped a few second later when the heads of a dozen or so Mermen rose to the surface and began a strange conversation.
The spectacle of Harry speaking to the Merepeople in short bursts of conversation, punctuated with the quick responses and bursts of what could only be described as laughter, from the lake dwellers, went on for several minutes more, before a group of them finally broke off and dived back into the water. They returned five minutes later carrying the unconscious body of Ron Weasley.
"What is the meaning of this, Mr Potter?" demanded the Drumstang Headmaster, as Harry dragged Ron onto the podium. "You are meant to retrieve the hostage yourself. This is not permitted. You are cheating!"
"Not at all, sir," said Harry. "The rules say I cannot get help from any other witch or wizard, and I have to deal with any creatures I encounter as part of the task on my own."
"You cannot zimply ask ze Merepeople to 'and over your 'ostage!" shouted an enraged Madam Maxine, her voice booming out over the noisy spectators.
"No ma'am," Harry agreed. "You can't, but I could, and did, bargain with them to trade for Ron."
The uproar continued until well after the last hostage was returned and the points were awarded.
"Mr Potter," called the Headmaster. "May I have a moment of your time, please?"
Harry sighed and motioned for Ron and Hermione to continue on without him. Was it really too much to expect to be allowed to answer the challenges of this ridiculous tournament without everybody telling him he was cheating all the time?
"Look, Professor," said Harry rather defensively. "I never wanted to be in this stupid contest to begin with, so don't try to make me feel bad about not competing the way everybody thinks I should be. I'm doing the best I can with what I have, all right?"
"Harry," said the Headmaster, his voice slightly less jovial than it normally was. "I was simply going to congratulate you on learning several rather long sentences of Meremish in such a short space of time. It is a note-worthy achievement, although your accent is rather atrocious."
Harry gulped. "You speak it?" he asked weakly. "You heard what I said to them?"
"Indeed," said the Headmaster, once again sounding quite amused. "In my youth, I was fortunate enough to have a competent teacher and a need to spend some time in a lake, but I am curious to know how you arrived at your agreement."
Harry suddenly felt incredible embarrassed at being caught out, and at his earlier attitude.
"Well," he stumbled. "All this month, I spent hours at the lake trying to bargain with them. Luckily, a few understand some English, but even with that, Hermione's help, and a translation book, it was slow going. I was ready to give up because it seemed like I had nothing that they wanted, but then I found out they like a good joke."
"Yes," agreed the Headmaster, nodding thoughtfully. "I do recall they had a rather simple sense of humour, but really, Harry, knock-knock jokes?"
"Well, they don't have doors you see…"
Harry approached the first obstacle of the maze with trepidation. So far, his journey was incredibly light on obstacles, almost as if somebody was clearing the way in front of him.
The glowing golden mist looked harmless, but the boy-who-lived knew, better than anybody, how misleading something seemingly innocent could be.
Digging deep into his pocket, he retrieved a small white dove and tossed it into the cloud, stepping back quickly to see if it exploded or suffered some other horrible demise.
The bird took to its wings, and then flipped upside down before darting down to crash into the ground. Obviously confused, the poor creature appeared to try to stand on its head while taking flight. Harry watched, feeling just as confused as the bird. Eventually its struggles took it to the other side of the mist, and it fell out, battered but apparently no worse for wear as it took flight and left the maze.
Shrugging, Harry stepped into the mist; confident that he could overcome whatever disorientation it created.
The sight of the Dementor rising up in front of him nearly caused Harry to panic. He had never managed to produce more than a weak glow using the Patronus charm, but luckily, he made sure to stash a full collection of Weasley pranks into his hidden pockets.
Collecting his wits, Harry tossed a random handful of small sweats at the gaping mouth of the creature. His aim was true, and at least one fell into its horrid maw.
Suddenly the thing stopped moving, and began coughing. The soul-wrenching fear dissipated, as the coughing became a gasping, and scaly hands rose to claw at its mouth, as if trying to prise something out.
Harry raced passed what he now doubted was anything more than a Boggart, slowing only to pick up one of the lollies that missed.
"A Super Gob-stopper," he laughed. "Wonder if it would work on the real things?"
"Sorry, could you repeat that again?" asked Harry, not for the first time.
"Perhaps if you tried to maintain eye contact, my words would remain in your memory slightly longer," suggested the Sphinx.
Harry blushed.
"I'm sorry," he spluttered, trying unsuccessfully to keep his eyes above the neckline of the creature. "It's just that, well, you are quite attractive."
"I would take that as more of a compliment if you were able to keep your eyes off my more generous human-like proportions when you said it," replied the Sphinx, sounding more amuse than annoyed.
"Look, I can't help it, all right," admitted Harry with exasperation. "I'm a fourteen year old boy who has never even had a girlfriend, and your are an incredibly good looking lady-"
"Sphinx," corrected the creature, still not sounding angry, or even perturbed by Harry's indiscretion.
"-whatever, you still look damn fine. Now how am I supposed to concentrate on a stupid riddle when all I can think of is, well, you know, those," said Harry, nodding towards the creature's chest. "Couldn't you have at least worn a shirt or something?"
"Clothes?" said the slightly startled Sphinx. "I have never been offered clothes before."
"Here," said Harry, digging around inside of his voluminous pockets to produce one of Dudley's oversized t-shirts. "Try this on. It's not really your colour, but I'm sure it'll look all right."
Harry never had much in the way of clothing, but, over the years, he had been pushed into puddles and hit with enough muck and dirt by Dudley that he almost always carried some spares with him, if he was able. It was an outdated habit, but one that served him well at the oddest of times.
He handed the top to the smiling creature and waited until she had her head completely inside the unfamiliar clothing before sprinting passed as fast as he could.
Behind him, he could hear her puzzled calling, but there was no way he was going back to tell her how cute she looked, no way in hell.
"We'll both take it," suggested Cedric, nodding towards the cup. "After all, if you hadn't used that rocket to scare off the spider, or sconed Krum with that half-brick-in-a-sock, I wouldn't be here anyway."
Harry shook his head. He wanted to, that was for sure, but he felt a bit bad about getting through the tournament the way he had.
"Cedric, this competition is meant to prove who is the best Wizard. I might be a good magician, but I am not much of a wizard. You take it, you deserve it more."
"Okay, Harry," said Cedric, then he suddenly grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him forward to touch the cup at the same time.
The wrenching of the Portkey was almost as shocking as Cedric's unexpected actions.
"I thought you were in jail," spat Harry, fighting the pain in his scar as well as the bite of Peter Pettigrew's knife cutting his arm.
Wormtail ignored him and turned his back, obviously confident the magical ropes binding the boy were secure enough. Harry's wand and crossbow were safely tucked away inside one of the rat's pockets.
He didn't know Dudley tied Harry up more times than either boy could remember, or that the lump of lard never returned to release his cousin, meaning Harry was quite practiced at getting loose.
Magical robes were quite a bit harder to get out of though, and it took Harry substantially longer to get free. He was just in time to see the cauldron change colour as Wormtail added his own severed limb to the foul mix.
The last thing the sobbing man saw was Harry's favourite sock-filled-with-a-half-brick coming straight for his face.
Leaving the crumpled form on the ground, Harry took one look at the bubbling cauldron and knew this was a brew he didn't want to complete successfully.
Years of sharing a class with Neville Longbottom and the Slytherins gave the boy-who-lived a fine appreciation for all of the different ways to kill a potion. The suspected nature of this one called for total desecration.
The handful of various Zonko and Weasley products splashed into the pot just as Harry threw himself to the ground, covering his head with his arms protectively.
The explosion lit up the night sky and sent the residents of Little Haggleton into an ecstasy of rumour mongering that lasted for years afterwards.
"So Fudge is being an moron, the twins have a bag of gold to develop their shop, Hagrid is off with his huge girl-friend to find some bigger friends, Sirius is staying with you at Privet Drive again over summer, and you-know-who has probably come back, since it looks like Pettigrew got away again," said Ron counting off each point on his fingers. "I dunno, Harry. Seems to me you've a bit of a slow year, mate. What are you going to next year to make up for it?"
"Stay home," grumbled Harry.
Thanks for the feedback, and the help of the guys at AFC, especially IP82. Year five is suffering some serious lack of plot issues, just like canon, and so will take a bit longer, also just like canon. Please don't wait for the end before leaving feedback - it really does inspire me.
