Chapter 4
Sunday morning found Hermione having a relaxing breakfast with Ginny Weasley. "I really must spend more time with her," she found herself thinking, watching the red-head speak animatedly about something or other. "The boys have me nearly tearing my hair out."
Just as this thought passed through her head, Harry skidded to a halt rather unceremoniously behind her. Hermione sighed, realizing her the calm beginning to her day was officially finished. She scraped the last bit of porridge from her bowl, and allowed her friend to pull her from the great hall, waving an apologetic hand at Ginny as she went.
Of course. Of course, it would be dragons. It's not as if they might have come up with some sort of reasonable task to start the tournament off, perhaps a boggart, Harry could definitely handle that, or maybe even dueling the other champions, there were four of them now, that could absolutely work. But nooooo, the idiots in charge of this ridiculous tournament had to choose one of the most dangerous creatures known to wizard kind.
To be entirely honest though, who was she kidding? As worried as Hermione was about this idiotic choice to have a 14 year old combat a dragon, she knew this was far from the worst thing they could have come up with. Dragons are dangerous, but at least now there was a bit of time to prepare.
Hermione met Harry's eyes for the first time since he mentioned his knowledge of the dragons, taking a deep calming breath.
"So what is your plan?"
"My plan?"
"Yes, Harry! Your plan! You know the only thing that is going to keep you from getting killed when you walk into that stupid arena!"
"…" Harry, looking rather contrite, quite obviously had not thought at all about any sort of plan, despite having known about the dragons for over 10 hours.
"Oh, come on Harry! I won't always be here to do this part for you. You have to learn to think things through yourself."
"Well it wasn't the only thing on my mind Hermione!"
"What do you mean?"
Harry proceeded to tell her about his whole conversation with Sirius the night before, skimming over his confrontation with Ron and focusing himself entirely on the Karkaroff issue.
While extremely concerned about the prospect of a Death Eater in their midst, Hermione still felt the dragon was the most pressing issue. She could do some research about Karkaroff in the coming days, it's not as if he was going to come out and Avada Harry in front of people after putting so much effort into getting him in the tournament. Pushing that issue to an unoccupied corner of her mind, Hermione focused back on Harry.
"Let's just try and keep you alive until Tuesday evening," she said pleading with him, "and then we can worry about Karkaroff."
The pair spent the next hour walking around the lake, trying to come up with what supposedly "simple" spell could be used to subdue a dragon. Coming up with nothing, they moving their quest to the library. With Harry collecting books and Hermione reading at her usual rate, they made it through a surprising amount of research in record time. Unfortunately, they were still coming up blank. And to make matters worse, the Bulgarian champion had shown up.
"Oh no, he's back again, why can't he read on his stupid ship?" Hermione growled under her breath, watching the older boy slouch into the library. He slumped into a distant chair, directly in her line of sight. He was always doing that, almost too often for it to be considered a coincidence, and to what end Hermione had no idea. Perhaps he thought by sitting where he could see her, he might be able to spy on Harry to gain an advantage? Truly, she did not know what was going on with that surly, slightly intimidating boy. But what she did know, whether he was spying on Harry of not, is that they had to leave, and do it fast.
"Come on, Harry, we'll go back to the common room . . . his fan club'll be here in a moment, twittering away. . . ." Hermione groaned. Too late, within seconds the aisles were swarmed with a gang of girls giggling and whispering to each other as they tiptoed closer toward Krum. Hermione grabbed all the books she thought might be useful, threw them into Harry's arms, slung her bag over her shoulder, and pushed the two of them toward the door as fast as she possible could.
When Harry came tearing into Herbology three minutes late, Hermione quickly realized something was up.
"Hermione," he whispered as he slid into a spot next to her, "I need you to help me."
She felt her teeth begin to grind. He was ridiculous. "What d'you think I've been trying to do, Harry?" she hissed back, aggressively pruning back the branches of the Flutterby Bush in front of her.
"Hermione, I need to learn how to do a Summoning Charm properly by tomorrow afternoon."
She raised an eyebrow before turning back to the task at hand. "That actually has some potential. Why didn't I think of that?"
Time was of the essence, and so, when Herbology let out, Hermione pulled Harry into an open classroom and began drilling him on the Accio charm. It was not going well.
Hermione was trying her hardest to get him to concentrate, but the more frustrated he got, the more uncontrolled his spells became, causing stress to build up in loads. She could feel their personalities beginning to clash, but she could not think of anything else to do with the time they had left. Eventually, when the lunch break ended, Harry asked her to skip their next classes and keep practicing. Eying the redness of his face and the trembling of his wand hand, Hermione felt it would only make things worse if they stayed. A break was most definitely needed, and so she insisted they both go to class.
"Nothing better to give a brain a break than that nonsense Trelawney's always babbling on about."
They began after dinner, practicing until after midnight, only leaving the classroom when Peeves became too much of a nuisance, and continued in the common room. Harry finally caught on at some point between one and two, and Hermione began to feel as if she could breathe again. Unfortunately, Harry was once again starting to doubt himself.
"The Firebolt's going to be much farther away than the stuff in here, it's going to be in the castle, and I'm going to be out there on the grounds. . . ."
"That doesn't matter," said Hermione insisted, absolutely refusing to show her slight bit of doubt to Harry, who needed all the confidence he could get "Just as long as you're concentrating really, really hard on it, it'll come."
She looked at her watch, they had to be awake in five hours to get to classes. "Harry, we'd better get some sleep . . . you're going to need it."
George scanned the benches ahead of him, spotting a clump of ginger-headed people in one of the first few rows. As he came closer he realized there was a single head of bushy, brown hair at the end of all those red heads. Changing course without a thought, George came around on Hermione's open side and dropped into the seat next to her. George raised an eyebrow when he saw that his twin had claimed the seat on her other side.
"Where the hell is Ron?" he thought. Followed quickly by, "Oh for shit's sake, what has that little idiot done now?"
George shook his head at his younger brother's continued stupidity before glancing over at Hermione. Now that he was sitting next to her, George realized he hadn't seen much of Hermione over the past several weeks. Really this shouldn't be all that much of a surprise. He was a sixth-year while Hermione was only in fourth, so they obviously didn't have any classes together. He spent most of his time at quidditch practice, in his dormitory (coming up with more joke products with Fred), or in the common room. Out of those three places, Hermione could really only be in the common room, but she was only there when she wasn't in the library or off gallivanting with tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum. So really, what should be surprising is how often he sees her usually.
George looked over at Hermione, ready to crack some one-liner about Harry fighting with a white-haired dragon on a regular basis, ready to cheer her up the only way he could think of, but when he saw her face he changed his mind. He couldn't believe what he was actually thinking this, but now was not a time for jokes.
Hermione looked absolutely terrified. There were dark circles under her eyes, indicating a night with little sleep. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth and looked about three seconds away from bleeding. Her foot was making the bench squeak it was bouncing so forcefully, and her hands were gripping each other in her lap so tightly they were turning white.
"Hey," George tried softly, so as not to draw anyone else's attention. "Hermione, hey…"
She turned to face him and his breath caught slightly in his throat. Her chocolate brown eyes, usually sparkling with happiness, or mischief, or even righteous fury, revealed an emotion he had never even thought possible in her—helplessness. Hermione Granger, the most intelligent, powerful, and independent witch he had ever met was feeling helpless, and that look on her face was quite possibly the worst thing George had ever seen in his life.
Without even a second's hesitation, George's hands shot out, prying her clenched fists apart and taking one of hands between both of his, holding it tightly.
"Hermione," he said softly, looking directly into her eyes, "He's going to be fine. I'm sure both you and he have done everything you possibly could to get him ready for this moment. He knows what to do. For Merlin's sake, he's Harry-freaking-Potter, You-Know-Who couldn't take him out, a dragon is nothing compared to that!"
The furrow between her eyebrows lessened slightly as she nodded slowly, seemingly trying to convince herself of the truth in George's statement. She was still chewing on her lip and bouncing her leg up and down, but both were occurring at a much more subdued pace, so George counted that as a win.
After that there was no more time for talking, as Ludo Bagman's voice began booming from all angles, signaling the beginning of the first task. George held Hermione's hand through the first three champions, rubbing his thumb up and down, trying his best to sooth her nerves.
While she watched the contestants, George found himself watching Hermione. He saw her eyes light up with interest when Cedric transfigured a rock into a dog, and felt her whole body bring when the dragon fire reached him. She snorted, rolling her eyes a bit at Fleur's fairly successful attempts at lulling her dragon into a trance-like sleep. She seemed somewhat impressed with the conjunctivitis hex Krum used, but seemed physically pained at the crunch the dragon's eggs made when they were trampled. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, it was Harry's turn.
All of Hermione's tension came back with a vengeance as soon as his head of messy, black hair popped through the tent's opening. Hermione tore her hand from George's grasp, seemingly unaware of her actions, and brought both hands up towards her face. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, with the heels of her hands braced against her chin. Her fingers were curled nearly into claws, and her nails appeared to be digging into her cheeks painfully.
George met Fred's eyes behind Hermione's back and they each placed a hand on her back, hoping to provide what little comfort they could, and turned their eyes back to the arena.
Harry did phenomenally, as George expected, probably due to a decent amount of Hermione's input, and when he stumbled to safety, clutching his golden egg, Hermione spun towards George with a look of pure, unadulterated joy and relief on her face. She threw her arms around his neck pulling him close, and for an instant, everything was perfect.
Then she dropped back to her normal height, and spun too her other side to hug Fred in the same manner. A pinprick of something heavy and upsetting settled in the bottom of George's gut as he watched Hermione hug his twin with equal enthusiasm.
"Well that can't be good," thought George with a resigned sigh. As Hermione once again dropped back to the ground, this time grabbing her bag and dashing off through the crowd, assumedly towards wherever Harry was at that moment, George dropped heavily back onto the bench.
Had he looked over to Fred at that very moment, he would have seen a face, identical to his except in expression, looking down at him with slightly raised eyebrows, a smirk slowly quirking into place.
Hermione was so happy she could barely think. She tore off full-speed towards the medical tent, not even hesitating to apologize to everyone she bumped into on the way. She thought Ron might be behind her, but she wasn't going to slow down to figure that out right now. Harry was alive! He had done it! He was going to be okay, everything was going to work out.
She came barreling into the text, only to slam to an abrupt halt when she saw those wonderful bright green eyes right in from of her.
"Harry! You were brilliant!" she all but squeaked, unable to catch her breath from her mad dash across the stands. "You were amazing! You really were!"
But by then Harry was looking over her shoulder. She turned and saw Ron, the three of them the in the closet proximity they had been in for weeks. Ron was paler than normal, his freckles standing out boldly against the bloodlessness of his face.
"Harry," said Ron completely serious, "whoever put your name in that goblet — I — I reckon they're trying to do you in!"
"Oh God Harry," thought Hermione, hope beginning to well up inside, "He's trying, don't let your angst muck this up!"
"Caught on, have you?" said Harry coldly. "Took you long enough."
"Come ON!" cried Hermione to herself.
Ron started to open his mouth, looking vaguely like he had when he was vomiting slugs, and Hermione began to smile, knowing everything was going to be okay. Harry stopped Ron before he could even begin to apologize, and Hermione was filled with pride in her boys and how much they were growing up.
It was all too much, Harry was this close to dying, and Ron hadn't been speaking to him, and Hermione had been stuck in the middle, and now it seemed things were going to be back to normal and the adrenaline that had been holding her together suddenly crashed, and she burst into tears.
"There's nothing to cry about!" Harry told her, like the unobservant idiot she loved him or being.
"You two are so stupid!" Hermione found herself shouting, stamping her foot on the ground in an uncontrolled expulsion of energy, tears running down her face. She suddenly sprung forward, gripping them both tightly to her, then sprinted out as fast as she could, hoping to get back to the castle before anyone saw her bright red and puffy. As she ran, tears still falling, Hermione felt a small smile beginning to rise.
"Everything is going to be fine."