Liar Liar

by kitsunerei88

[Fanfiction of murkybluematter's The Rigel Black Chronicles] Some people are not all that they seem to be. Rigel Black is not, and neither is Aldon Rosier. [AU post-Ambiguous Artifice]

4. Chapter 4

On the twenty-eighth of December, Aldon took his time picking out his robes for the first Tournament strategy meeting. The Changs were hosting, but they were not a noble family, nor a wealthy one – they were respectably middle class, but it would be rude to arrive flaunting his noble status. He dug deep through his wardrobe, eventually coming up with plain, navy blue robes, trimmed in light gold. They were a light wool, suiting the weather nicely, and he pulled on a thick, grey cloak, fastened with a golden clasp. His favourite, worn, black boots completed the ensemble neatly, and out the door he went.

The Changs lived in Muggle Edinburgh, and Aldon was careful to focus on the Apparition coordinates Chang had given him before the break. She had said that they would lead to her backyard, out of the sight of her neighbours, and they were also connected by Floo, but Aldon had (finally, on his third try) received his Apparition license and wanted to use it. He turned on the spot, gritted his teeth through the intense squeezing sensation of Apparition, and appeared in a covered backyard.

The Chang residence was small, a two-storey row-house on the outskirts of Edinburgh, smaller than any other house of anyone in his acquaintance, but at the same time it had a cozy look to it that he, surprisingly, liked. He could feel the heat coming off the home just approaching the back steps, hear the laughter of some of his teammates from the inside already. He checked his watch – he was on time, or maybe a minute off.

He heard a pop from behind him and turned to see Ed, landing gracefully from his own Apparition. Ed had had his license months earlier, of course, passing on his first try nearly a year ago now. Still, he shot his friend a smile of relief – it was always easier to show up to new places as part of a group, rather than alone.

"Aldon," Ed greeted him with a quick nod. Ed was on the support team as a Healer; Aldon supposed that the Hogwarts Healing program was so small that there just weren't many qualified candidates. And since Ed had been Healing animals at their family animal shelter for years now, he did have a solid grasp of first aid. "I'm glad you Apparated safely. Shall we go in?"

Aldon suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at his friend. Trust Ed to still tease him about his multiple attempts to pass the Apparition test. The first time, last June, had been simply painful, because Aldon had splinched himself, leaving some of his toes behind. It was fixed right away, but it still took him a few months to work up the nerve to try it again. The second time hadn't been as bad, but he had overshot his target by a couple miles, landing, somewhat fortunately, in the middle of nowhere. He did Apparate to the target, it was only an unfortunate and unplanned stopover, but they caught on and failed him again. He had it the third time, though. He turned away from his friend, heading up the two steps to the back door, and rapping on it smartly. "Very funny, Edmund."

"Welcome, welcome!" The back door flew open, revealing a slight, almond-eyed woman with close-cropped black hair streaked with grey. Her English was proper, but still bore an accent. "It is such a pleasure for us to have you."

Aldon bowed slightly, the standard fifteen degrees of a nobleman to a respected member of the community, or to a lesser-blooded noble. "Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Chang," Aldon said easily, pulling out an assorted package of sweets from Honeydukes from his pocket and stepping inside as she welcomed him in. He stood to one side, allowing Ed entrance as well. "I hope you and your family are having a happy holiday."

Ed passed over a box of Chocolate Frogs, murmuring the same sentiments.

"You shouldn't have," Mrs. Chang replied, accepting the gifts with grace. "Cho and the others are in the front sitting room – we have expanded the space, so there should be plenty of room for everyone. Have you eaten? I'll prepare a platter."

They were among the last to arrive, Aldon saw, looking around the expanded sitting room. It did have that characteristically stretched look, and he spotted the paper charms in the corners of the room anchoring the spells. The seats were artificially stretched, too, with the armchair having been turned into a loveseat, the loveseat into a bench, and the sofa now seating five. Other chairs, too, had evidently been pulled into the sitting room from other spaces; these chairs were strange in their normalcy, lacking the stretched look.

Harriett was already there – for the briefest of instants, he had wondered whether, since Arcturus Rigel Black would be back from America, if it would be Arcturus attending their first strategy meeting. He didn't think he would be able to tell the difference, to be blunt – both Harriett and the real Arcturus Rigel Black had set off his gift last year at the Gala, and he didn't see any reason why that would have changed. He would assume it was Harriett, because there was no reason why Arcturus, instead of Harriett, would have attended their first team strategy meeting.

Aldon exchanged a nod with Alex, seated beside Diggory on the stretched-out armchair, and took a seat in one of the remaining chairs, looking around with interest. There was a stretched-out golden shrine in the corner, and lacquered, rectangular plates depicting cranes hung on the walls. Chang's family, he recalled briefly, were immigrants from Wizarding China. Their wizarding community had been disrupted, decades ago, by Muggle events, and there were many witches and wizards of Chinese descent worldwide. Still, for every witch or wizard who had fled, there were two that stayed, and the Chinese wizarding community was still one of the largest in the world.

"Rosier, Rookwood," Cho said, rising from her seat in the corner of the sofa, which she had been sharing with three Hufflepuff girls and Johnston. Outside of her Hogwarts robes, in a modest, traditional Chinese dress of red and gold, she was stunning, and Aldon cast a discreet, but admiring, look at her figure. "Welcome! You're the last to arrive, so we may as well start. I was thinking we might begin with introductions, since some of us don't know each other yet, then we can talk about the Tournament itself, and if we have time, actual strategies."

"Sorry, Chang," Ron Weasley interrupted, waving a hand, seated between his twin brothers. All three, along with Johnston, were dressed in Muggle garb, standing out from the rest. He gestured to the four players. "But is there any reason you're taking charge? Shouldn't this meeting be run by the players?"

It was uncalled for, even rude, to question the hostess at her own meeting, but when Aldon looked around at the rest of the group, he realized that Weasley was doing Chang a favour. More than one of them had the same question, and by raising it and letting her address it directly, he granted her legitimacy. He glanced over at the youngest Weasley son, and saw from the way his eyes roved around the room that he was perfectly aware of what he was doing. He felt his estimation of Ronald Weasley rise a few notches, but he shouldn't have been surprised; for all that he was used to watching Weasley be wiped on the floor by Pansy in Duelling Club, it was true that the two of them were the only ones who spent a half hour after their duels deconstructing what had happened. He had to have an analytical streak.

"Normally, it would be," Chang conceded with a smile. "At most schools, the alternate is in charge, since he or she is expected to take up the slack in any space that opens on the team, support or player. We aren't allowed to bring in new, undeclared team members after the Tournament starts. And rules like that are why Alex has asked that I run the first strategy meeting – out of everyone here, I know the Tournament best. My parents played at the National Magic School of China, half of my cousins in China have been involved in the games over the last twenty years. I've been following the Tournament my entire life. Hogwarts has been out of the circle for too long – you need me, right now, to explain to you how the Tournament works, how to score points, how to train for it.

"So that's me. You can all call me Cho, even if we haven't been formally introduced – it will make things easier in the long run. I am a strategist."

There was a steely glint in her dark brown eyes as she looked around the room, waiting for another challenge, but Ron simply shrugged. "Makes sense," he replied. "Ron Weasley. Call me Ron – I'm a strategist."

"Because he's a chess whiz," one of the twins spoke up. Aldon could never tell the Weasley twins apart. "George Weasley. I'm sure you all know us, already, but Fred and I are your equipment managers. We're going to make sure our team goes in with some fun, experimental, surprises."

"Very useful," Cho smiled appreciatively. "Should we just go around the room, first? Oh, Bulstrode couldn't make it, Millicent Bulstrode. She's one of our compliance officers, but she owled this morning and said she was caught up in preparations for the SOW Party Gala."

"The Bulstrodes are hosting this year," Aldon added lightly, ignoring the various looks of distaste exchanged around the room. Only a minority of the people in the room would be on the guest list for the Gala – himself, Ed, Harriett. Lucky for them. "So that's understandable. Aldon Rosier. I'm the third strategist. If something new comes up on the battleground, I'll be responsible for figuring out what it is and how to deal with it."

Susan Bones, a fourth-year Hufflepuff, had been picked as the other compliance officer, and took charge of one of the two fat books titled Triwizard Tournament: Regulations. She would be responsible for ensuring that the strategies and items used by Hogwarts complied with the rules, and she would be defending any appeals from other teams for the things that Harriett, Johnston, and Diggory did in-game. Bulstrode, her partner and opposite, would ensure the other team complied with the rules, and would be filing any appeals against the other teams for their conduct. According to Cho, appeals were very common, especially in the elimination phase, even if they were only successful once in a generation.

Aside from Ed, the other two Healers were Megan Jones and Erin Stark, two fifth-year Hufflepuffs and, according to Madam Pomfrey, the two most promising Healers at Hogwarts aside from Rigel Black. Aldon wasn't entirely sure if that meant that they were the two most promising Healers, if they were the only two Healers, or if they were just the two most promising Healers who had applied for a position on the team. The Hogwarts healing program was so small that Aldon couldn't rule out any of the possibilities. Midway through the introductions, Mrs. Chang brought in a platter of shortbread cookies for them all.

Cho nodded encouragingly at each introduction, every so often checking a sheet of parchment. She had probably been involved, through Alex, in picking the team in the first place. If Alex was formally in charge, it was a smart move on his part.

"So, I suppose the first thing we do is assign strategists to players," Cho said, after they had finished their introductions. "The primary function of the strategists is communication – each player is linked by communication spell to a strategist, who is directly responsible for them as well as for passing messages through to the other players if you get separated, which you will. The strategists also have access to an overall view of the battleground, and we can pass that on to you."

Johnston – Angelina – waved her hand in the air, frowning and eyeing the three strategists. "Why can't we be connected to each other directly?"

Cho shrugged. "I'm not sure – strategists were an addition about thirty-five years ago, just after Hogwarts was excluded from competition. Those are the rules."

"It's probably because wizarding communications technology isn't very advanced," Aldon offered, vaguely remembering an article that he had read in his smuggled journal a couple years ago. Muggles had something called telephones, which allowed them to communicate with each other over long distances with some sort of code. Different codes led to different people. One of the biggest puzzles in modern magical theory was to design something similar using wizarding technology. "Even now, if owls cannot be used, most wizards send messages by Patronus. Patronus messages have a physical limit depending on the strength of the witch or wizard; if Edmund was in France, for example, I couldn't send him message by Patronus, because I'm not powerful enough. Even if I could, there would a time lag, and he likely couldn't reply without summoning his own Patronus, and not everyone can summon a Patronus to begin with. There are two-way mirrors, but those are rare and are all held private collections, now; we've lost the wizarding technology to make a mirror that can take the complex sound and sight spells and link them. The current technology for instantaneous communication over long distances are linked orbs, which can carry sound between two orbs. But they use blood magic, so they can only connect two specific people."

There was silence at his explanation, and the Weasleys were looking at him in surprise, though they also had a hint of calculation in their eyes. Most of the others looked at him as if he had grown a second head, though Ed was nonplussed, Alex was hiding a smile, and Harriett, of all people, looked interested.

"Is that so?" she asked, peering at him curiously. "Does the blood activate the spells, or is it an intrinsic part of the spell? So, for example, if you and Rookwood had linked orbs, and I stole yours, could I use it to contact him? If the blood is an intrinsic part of the spell, does it carry all sound, or just the person's voice? How does it work?"

Aldon blinked and tilted his head to one side. She had never mentioned an interest in magical theory to him, and as far as he knew, she wasn't even in the Magical Theory course. "I haven't seen one for myself, but there was an article in the American Journal of Magical Theory two years ago that covered some of the theory. From my understanding, the blood is an intrinsic part of the communication spell – I would need to be in physical contact with the orb to activate the speaking spell, though I believe it would transmit through without your involvement. But you couldn't activate a linked orb between Edmund and I, so you would only be able to listen. If the person is in contact with the orb and has the speaking spell active, I think it carries all sound. As for how the speaking spell itself works, I don't remember; I would need to refer you to the article. Now, interestingly, recording spells are something quite different, though you wouldn't think they would be-"

Aldon stopped suddenly, realizing that the entire room was now staring at them both, open-mouthed. He had said he was responsible for figuring out what new things the other teams did, hadn't he? He sighed dramatically. "I said I liked magical theory. What did you all think I meant?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, Rosier," Johnston said, eyes wide, "but I am not doing blood magic with you. If I need a strategist, I'm picking Weasley – I'm sorry, I've actually seen Weasley demolishing everyone in twenty moves or less in Gryffindor, and if blood magic is involved, I don't trust you."

Aldon suppressed a roll of his eyes. He didn't care – if he had to be assigned one player, he would find a way to assign himself to Harriett – but he couldn't resist needling her. "Fine with me, but you know that blood magic is one of the most common ways of doing magic worldwide, right? It might be taboo here, but in fairness, it allows for incredibly customized spells and defenses. A lot of advanced Healing potions involve blood."

"Still not doing blood magic with you, Rosier," Johnston repeated, though she smiled to soften the blow. "And considering Rigel looks like he actually understood the communication spell insanity you just spewed, I think you should pair up with him. He's the most likely to understand and act on whatever you figure out on the fly."

Aldon inclined his head in acceptance, wondering if it really was that easy. That was absurdly convenient – he had expected quite a bit more conversational manoeuvring, that this seemed almost like a trick. He glanced over at Harriett, who hesitated for a second, but nodded in agreement.

"That works for me," Diggory said, smiling at Cho. "Cho?"

"Yes," she agreed quickly, her cheeks flushing. She turned to look down at her parchment. "Now that that's worked out, does anyone need me to go through the other roles? No? All right. Let's move onto the other schools' teams. Alex – would you – thanks." She took the package that he offered her, a pile of booklets, and passed them around. Aldon looked down at his: Triwizard Teams 1995.

He paged through it, quickly. The paper was glossy, smooth to the touch, rather unlike parchment, but he saw that the pictures in it were in much higher quality than they were in the Daily Prophet, or even in paintings. Each school, he saw, had two pages: on one side, there were the four players, photos and names only, and on the opposite was a simple list of school's support team, listed by positions. As the host, the Hogwarts team came first in the booklet, followed in alphabetical order for the rest. At the back was a page listing the pools and match order, several pages with blank, oddly designed, grids, and one spread with a blank tournament bracket.

"First things first – does anyone recognize any of the names on any of the other teams?" Cho asked, flipping through her copy of the manual. "I can tell you from looking at the National Magic School of China team that, unless they swap in their alternate, I think they'll have one paper-caster and two heirloom-casters, this year. Their alternate is a second paper-caster. I don't know them myself, but that's what I would guess from their surnames."

It took Aldon a few seconds to work out what she had said, before he nodded in understanding. However, it was evident that most of the others had not understood, but didn't want to ask. There was a cool silence, for a minute, before Ed spoke. "Could you explain that?"

Cho blinked. "Oh, right. Chinese wizardry doesn't use wands, and there are two main schools. Paper-casters use paper charms to cast spells; heirloom-casters use an item like a wand, but it's customized for each person or family. Only the oldest Chinese wizarding families use heirloom magic, usually the boys cast with a sword, and the girls with a fan."

"They're in Pool D. Don't worry until direct eliminations," Alex interrupted, waving a hand dismissively. "We're in Pool A."

Ron waved his hand in the air. "Back up. I know that we need to win the pools to get into direct elimination, and in pools we have a match against all the other teams in our pool. What happens if two teams tie? You could have two teams, in a pool of four, winning two games and losing one each."

"It's a point-based system through the pool phase," Bones replied, raising her head from the rulebook. She had been following the conversation, if only on and off, while paging through her book. "You end the game by either destroying the other team's keystone, or by eliminating all of their players, but destroying the keystone is worth three points and each player is worth one point. If I understand this correctly, this means a team could get up to five points in a match, by eliminating two of the other team's players and then destroying their keystone. So really, it's the team scoring the most points that passes through to the next phase, but if points won are tied, then it looks like they consider points lost as well, and if they are still tied, a one-on-one duel. The winning teams from each pool automatically go to the elimination rounds, with two wild card slots for the best scoring teams who didn't win their pool."

"That means that the margins are important," one of the Weasley twins added, cottoning on quickly. "In the first phase, it's disadvantageous only to try to destroy the keystone, we'll want to eliminate as many players as possible earlier on."

"And the other team will have the same goal, on that front," the other twin said, his voice considering. "We should arm everyone up with more defensive items in the first phase, then. Switch to a mix of defensive and offensive in the second phase, if we make it there."

"No if, everyone," Diggory grinned, leaning forward from the armchair he shared with Alex. "We'll make the second phase. Think positive."

Alex looked as though he wanted to roll his eyes at Diggory, but he merely crossed his arms, instead. "Think realistically," he commented dryly. "Pool A includes AIM, Patagonia and the ICW School. Know anyone?"

There was a pause – Aldon himself skimmed the pages. He saw, for the American Institute of Magic, Harry Potter listed under the Healers, but no doubt Harriett would catch that. The Rosiers did little business in America, anyway – of all the magical governments, MACUSA had the strongest trade sanctions against Wizarding Britain. He turned over to the ICW school – a French school, it took students from France, Belgium and Switzerland, a few from Italy. Beauxbatons, the more prestigious of the two French schools, restricted their student body to those from the wealthiest, most established wizarding families, leaving the remainder, mainly Muggleborns and students from poorer wizarding families, to go to the ICW school. He didn't recognize anyone, but he hadn't expected to. The same could be said about the Patagonian School, simply because the Rosier Investment Trust didn't do any business in South America. Looking up, he saw that most of his teammates were similarly shaking their heads.

"My cousin Harry is on the AIM team as a Healer," Harriett said, her voice matter-of-fact, even as she lied. It was only a half-lie, though, so Aldon guessed that other than identity, she was speaking the truth. "Her best friend, Hermione Granger, is one of their Compliance Officers. Harry says that Granger is extremely sharp, and they are both in the AIM Healing track."

"I'm not entirely sure, but the name Kowalski, on their team, is familiar," Jones offered, her soft voice hesitant. "The family is associated with the Scamanders, since the 1930s during the war against Grindelwald-"

She fell silent, suddenly, shaking her head. "Sorry. I'm mistaken."

Chang frowned at her, and Aldon favoured her with a sharp look, his core buzzing. Whatever Jones had realized, she certainly did not believe she was mistaken. He took in her composed face, tight lips pressed together – she knew something. "I don't remember that from History of Magic, and we covered the Grindelwald Wars earlier this year. The Scamanders played a big role, but I don't recall any other family being associated with them."

Jones shook her head, resolute. "I was mistaken," she lied again.

"Stop lying," Aldon ordered bluntly. Normally, he would be inclined to let this kind of lie slide, but John Kowalski was listed as a player, and since Hogwarts would be facing AIM in the pools, it was important to have as much information as possible. "It's obvious you don't think you're mistaken. If it might be relevant or helpful, you should say it. How could we prepare otherwise?"

Jones glared at him, lips pursed, and crossed her arms. "Fine. Can someone cast a privacy ward?"

Ed and the Weasley twins quickly cast Muffliato spells on each of the walls, but Aldon took caution and threw on a runic ward as well – it was only a few runes on each wall, since he could follow the integrity and shape of the building itself to form the circle.

Jones lowered her voice anyway. "My grandfather was on Dumbledore's side during the Grindelwald Wars. They cut it out of the History of Magic classes, but a Muggle, Jacob Kowalski, helped Newt Scamander on his missions in Eastern Europe throughout the war. The Ministry removed him from our History books because he's a Muggle – that's why the Scamanders won't send their children to Hogwarts anymore, even though they're pureblood. Jacob Kowalski married Scamander's sister-in-law, Queenie Goldstein, so their children are all halfbloods. They live in America. It's possible that John Kowalski is a direct descendant; if he is, you should know that the Queenie Goldstein is a Natural Legilimens, it may have been passed down."

"Natural Legilimency is rare, though." Ron said, somewhat skeptically. "Seems unlikely. Still, if he is, I can see why they would put him on their team."

Cho nodded slowly, making a note in her copy of the booklet. "Anyone else know anything? AIM will be our biggest competition in the pools – they won the Tournament twenty years ago, and they've only lost their pool once since that time. Patagonia has only made the direct elimination once in the past forty years, same with ICW, so they are less of a concern, though we shouldn't take them lightly, either."

She waited for a minute or so, but no one else had anything to add. Aldon wasn't surprised – other than a few of the strongest business families, and perhaps some of those with connections at the Department of International Magical Cooperation, few pureblood families would have the wide international network needed to recognize specific families.

"Alright, let's move onto strategies, then." Cho shrugged slightly, a slight frown crossing her face. "The difficulty with our pool is that no one has a consistent strategy. AIM is known for their Healing and experimental charms – they almost always bring something original to the Triwizard Tournament, which is historically why they are so successful. And since they have the best Healers, their players aren't afraid to get hurt, either. Patagonia I know very little about, the one year they made it into the direct elimination, they were in a weaker pool of three. ICW is the same.

"So, since most of you haven't seen any Tournament games before, I was thinking we might want to watch a few of the ones I have. I have memory orbs for a few AIM games, since they make the direct elimination fairly reliably, but our collection admittedly focuses on the National Magic School of China." Her smile became hesitant, hopeful – Aldon wasn't sure why, it was entirely obvious over the last term that Chang and her family were obsessed with the Tournament, and she never seemed embarrassed about it before. Still, she seemed reassured by the wave of assent and encouragement around the room, stood and walked over to a cabinet that Aldon saw was locked with a paper charm.

She ran her finger along the side of the paper charm, and it unravelled, allowing her to open the cabinet. Inside were two rows of orbs, each one filled with grey mist and labelled with tiny white paper tags. The mist seemed to move, swirling in chaotic patterns, not unlike memories in a Pensieve, though the memory orb charm was a much more recent development, only formalized about thirty years ago. They were called memory orbs, because the original orbs actually did use memories, but nowadays the orbs used a sophisticated audio and visual recording spell. This was an area which had seen intense development, particularly from the Americans, over the last generation; from the articles he had read, they were obsessed with reinventing something called television for the wizarding community. Most recently, they had managed to link the recording spell to allow for instantaneous, one-way transmission to a limited network of other orbs, but they were still extremely expensive and unwieldy. The Tournament must be more important internationally than he had thought.

"We only have a good collection for the past twenty-five years or so, and I'm afraid a lot of them are copies – if you have one of the original orbs, you can use a second orb to record the record, so to speak, but they are never quite as good," she said apologetically, pulling out three orbs from the collection. "I have here the semi-finals and finals from the last year that AIM won, in the 1970s, and a quarter-final match from the last Tournament, when they lost to NMSC.

"The year they won, they actually used different strategies in the pool phase and the direct elimination phase – they swapped out their key player in their pool phase for their alternate and played a completely different game. In pools, they focused on teamwork. Their strategy started changing in the quarter-final, against Mahoutokoro. I don't have a copy of it, but they were on the plains battleground, and they summoned a thunderstorm, taking out flying entirely. Then they followed up on their advantage and eliminated all the players in less than thirty minutes. For the semi-final, they were up against Castelbruxo, and, well, you can see for yourself."

She set the orb in an artfully carved cradle on the coffee table, took out her wand and used it to draw a rune – one of the dreadfully complex Chinese runes, Aldon realized. Whatever she did activated the spell on the orb, which glowed and unfolded on the table – forcing Ron to hurriedly rescue the shortbread. The image stretched out across the coffee table, the colours slightly muted, then rose into a cube, adding depth. It wasn't the same as a Pensieve memory, where one simply fell into the memory, but it was also nice being able to stay in the warm, welcoming sitting room, with a plate of cookies, rather than being in the pouring rain.

The battleground, this time, was a city. The buildings were low to the ground, stone with tile roofs, cobblestone streets with a slightly pinkish, rosy tinge. If it wasn't raining, Aldon thought it would be warm, but it was pouring buckets – water was running in rivulets down the streets, and even without being present he could tell that it was chilly.

The AIM team Portkeyed in, all three of their players staggering slightly when they hit the ground, in the centre of a small square. They were three girls, that year, and Aldon winced sympathetically, because they clearly hadn't anticipated landing in the rain. One of the girls, a brunette with her brown curls pinned out of her face, slipped on her landing and fell onto the soaking cobblestones, swearing. Her teammate, another brunette with slightly darker skin, made a face and pulled her roughly to her feet; their third teammate, a pretty redhead with startling green eyes, pulled out her wand and wordlessly cast a spell to shunt the water off of them.

"Where are they?" the darker brunette asked, skimming the eerily empty city. She pulled out her wand cautiously, looking around.

"Doesn't matter," the one who landed on the streets said, uselessly swiping at her bottom to get the excess wet off. She similarly pulled out her wand, skimming the rooftops and streets around them carefully and pacing a small, quick circle. "They're around here somewhere. Let's get this over with, I'm freezing. Lily, stop wasting magic! Let us take care of the umbrella spell."

The redhead shrugged, but cancelled her spell anyway with another wave. "It's not much magic, anyway. I know how much the song will cost, I've practiced it enough."

Aldon blinked – her accent was British. It was a little worn, no doubt from living in America, but it was still undeniably British. She must have been a Muggleborn. Red hair, green eyes, British, named Lily, likely in her mid-thirties now … well, it was one likely possibility. He glanced over at Harriett, but she was expressionless, even as her grey eyes were intense on the image.

"Not on a block like this, you haven't," the wet one said. She finished pacing out the circle, a small one around them, then activated her spell. To his surprise, it wasn't a defensive spell – the threads of magic reached into the earth, strengthening it. "We're good. Let's start, before they find us. They're disadvantaged on the city battleground, but we shouldn't take chances."

Lily nodded agreeably, turning in a circle herself. She took a couple deep breaths, seemingly mentally preparing herself, then she settled back. Her teammates were pacing careful, defensive circles around her, eyes carefully looking around, casting Hominem Revelio every quarter-circle. Lily frowned in concentration, weaving her wand in a complicated pattern. A wild sound came out of the silence, music like Aldon had never heard before – it was heavy, unearthly, and somehow compelling, and then she opened her mouth and sang.

Her song was an angry song, a song that railed against the world that left her behind. She sang about injustice: about the laws that took her away from her family, that separated her from her best friend. She sang about the inherent wrongness of being forced out of her homeland, about being shoved into a world that both adored her for her power and didn't want her for her blood all in the same breath. She sang about her rage and her sorrow and her fury, and as she sang, Aldon felt the song come into him, breathe into his bones. Lily was angry, and Aldon was angry with her, and she turned her voice against the earth, against the world that made her what she was and then forced her to live it.

And the earth started shaking.

The other team's players were appearing, poking their heads over two of the nearby tile roofs, but it was too late. The tremors had started, the earth was rolling, was tearing itself apart under the power of her spell. The curly-haired brunette staggered, pulling back into the protective circle, half-closing her eyes in concentration as she held onto the earth beneath them. Tiles were starting to fall off the roofs, shattering on the cobblestones below. One of the Castelbruxo players slipped, between the shaking and the wetness, and fell two stories to the cold, wet, unstable ground – while there, Lily's teammate took the opportunity to Stupefy him. Aldon noted that another player Portkeyed into the battleground beside him, checked him over professionally, and signalled a large "X" with her arms before taking him out of the battleground.

The song was still building, and Aldon could see that the Castelbruxo players had grievously erred by climbing onto the roofs. Strategically, it was a good move in the sense that, had things gone well, the height would have given them an advantage. In the rain, though, their strategists should have called off that plan, because the slipperiness of the roofs simply didn't justify it anymore. However, combined with the fact that the entire battleground, except for the small protective circle around the AIM team, was now rolling in an earthquake, they were slowly but surely being shaken off and thrown to the ground. On the ground, they were easy pickings.

One of the Castelbruxo players tried to retreat, falling backwards, but he was the last one at this point. Having the advantage of being on the only stable piece of land in on the battleground, the darker brunette pulled out a broomstick and took off after him. Even if he was completely unfamiliar with song magic, the pressure on his chest lifted, and he could tell that Lily was winding down her song, sagging slightly with tiredness. Still, the ground, destabilized by both the rain and by the earthquake she had caused, continued shaking and buildings continued to fall.

It was barely a minute later that a bell sounded.

"Winner: the American Institute of Magic."

The two remaining girls, Lily and the curly-haired brunette, waited a minute for their teammate to reappear on her broom over the few remaining houses. The ground was still rolling, still shaking intermittently, when they Portkeyed out and the image collapsed back into the small, unassuming grey orb.

Chang didn't comment, instead picking up a second memory orb and putting it into the cradle. "The final, that year, was against Durmstrang."

She waved her wand in the same sequence as before, activating the recording spell, and the orb again expanded onto the coffee table. This time, the scene was idyllic – there was a babbling stream in the centre of the scene, with groomed trees waving lightly in the breeze on either size. The AIM team Portkeyed in, landing lightly on a large, flat, rock on one side of the stream, finding their footing easily.

"Looks nice," the curly-haired brunette commented, looking around. "You can almost forget that Poplovsky stabbed Everton in the gut here."

"If I never see intestines again, that will be too soon," Lily gagged. With the sunlight shining off her hair, Aldon could see that she was quite beautiful, and familiar. It was certainly a younger version of Lady Lillian Potter. "Still, this setting is perfect. It's always easier to encourage the softer emotions when it's nice out. People are naturally happy in the sun."

"Everton survived," their third teammate said, shrugging, looking down the stream. She cocked her head to one side, and Aldon caught the flash of a red stone in her ear. "Matt says they're about a quarter-mile away, on the other side of the stream, and moving fast. We have to start."

Lily nodded, turning her head up for one of her teammates to cast a Sonorus charm on her, then the two of them cast deafening charms on themselves. Lily didn't seem to need any time to prepare herself, this time; her wand moved in a soft pattern, letting the music swell around her, before she started to sing. She started soft, and it was only thirty seconds later that Aldon knew it was a love ballad.

Her voice was light, sweet, alluring. It called, asking for love, asking to be loved as herself. There was a haunting subtext to it, a subtle sadness, and a sense of loss that came underneath her intense desire to be loved. It was a song that went straight to his heart – straight to the parts of him, to everyone, to the part that needed to be needed, and his chest ached. Nor was he the only one affected; a quick glance around the room showed that two of the Weasleys were wearing stunned expressions, and even Ed was leaning forward, compelled even as he didn't want to be. And in the image, Lily's eyes were wet as she poured her deepest, most intense desire to be loved into the song.

It was a long time before the Durmstrang players came into view – much longer than a quarter-mile walk should have taken. When they appeared, across the stream from the AIM players, it was obvious why – they were entranced. Two of them were still fighting it, twitching every couple steps, while the third one had given up and was walking, heedless of danger, into the stream. Lily turned to look at them, and for one heartstopping moment, she smiled. Her expression was sweet, soft and kind, even as she focused on them and her green eyes lit with intensity. She took two steps closer to them, reached one hand out to them, and beckoned.

They weren't just entranced, Aldon realized, a sense of distant horror overriding his desire to go to this memory of a woman and kneel at her feet. They were enthralled. Lily was a Siren, stepped out of the old Greek myths, calling sailors to their death. He was just watching a memory and he could still feel the power she must have exerted on the other team.

He wondered briefly why her teammates weren't Stupefying the other team, though once they walked into the stream, heedless of the danger, he guessed that Stupefying them might have led to drowning, which would be in breach of the rules. The stream, it turned out, was not deep – the water came neck-high, but still the Durmstrang players walked, all three completely lost. When they reached the other side, Lily's song became a quiet lullaby, her wand movements just minor twitches, singing them to sleep.

As one, they sagged, and fell asleep. And Lily, too, dropped, clearly exhausted by her efforts. A single Healer, wearing a blue armband, popped into existence beside the Durmstrang team, checked their vitals, before standing and gesturing an "X" with his arms, taking all three out of play.

"Winner: the American Institute of Magic," a loud, commanding voice declared, and it was with wide grins that the two remaining AIM players draped Lily's arms over their shoulders and Portkeyed away.

The image collapsed, back into the memory orb, and Aldon shook his head subtly to cast off the last of the spell. Not that the song magic should have worked through memory – it would break all the known rules if it did, especially since he wasn't living the memory, only watching it. The only thing they ought to have been affected by was the music itself, not the magic woven into it. Still, belief was powerful, and it was conceivable that, as long as he believed the spell should have worked on him, his own magic could resonate and mimic the same effect.

"AIM is famous for that match," Cho said, her voice subdued. "It was the first time they included a Songmaster into their team. They never did it again, though, so the consensus is that Lily Evans was a rare talent, one they couldn't replicate in the next years. Not sure what happened to her afterwards, either – she was famous, but she disappeared after she left school. Anyway – the third match is an AIM loss from the last Tournament, so I don't think it will be as useful. They used a stealth strategy that year."

Aldon knew perfectly well what had happened to Lily Evans, as did half the room, but Cho was oblivious. Well, he supposed that while Lady Lillian Potter was known in noble circles, there was no reason why those from more middle-class, if respectable, families would ever have met her or learned the barest details about her. Even if Lord Potter was the current Head of the Auror Office, the Potters were not known for socializing, particularly since the Split. He chanced a glance at Harriett: her expression was still, almost bored. She gave no sign that she might want to answer the unspoken query. Ed glanced at him, but Aldon shook his head, a tiny movement. If Harriett didn't want to mention it, it was not their place to do it in her stead. And, anyway, Cho was already putting the third orb into the wooden cradle, and the scene was already unfolding.

Desert, this time – it was a different tournament, a different time, and the recording was from the perspective of NMSC. The recording orb was focused on a dip in the middle of three sand dunes, a red sandstone rock at the centre; the keystone, Aldon realized. It was only a second later that the team from NMSC Portkeyed in. There were two boys and a girl, and they each touched down with barely a stumble, even though the ground was soft, shifting underneath their feet. They looked around warily, shared one business-like look, and slowly stalked off in separate ways. Two of them were pulling out small, hand-sized, sheets of parchment; the last one, the girl, had a fan in her hands.

The images changed, following the players as they each carefully padded around in the dunes. Two of them were clearly searching for something – the other team? AIM's keystone? The last one, one of the two paper-casters, stopped at a vantage point on one of the nearby dunes, standing guard. The scene was eerily silent, the sand glowing under their feet.

The two hunters stopped every few hundred feet, casting some sort of search spell. Aldon suspected the spell was simply "Point Me", but he couldn't be sure as they were each doing it wordlessly, and it was obviously different without a wand. Both of their search patterns were somewhat erratic, changing directions often, so Aldon thought they were tracking their opponents.

The girl was the first to run into an AIM player, narrowing throwing herself out of the way of an attack spell of some kind – it was wordless, but Aldon guessed it was Stupefy. She was back on her feet not even a full second later, turning around to face … nothing. There was no one, nothing behind her, and she turned in a careful circle. Another two spells came out of nowhere, and she whipped her fan in a complicated pattern – Aldon couldn't tell what she had done, but it was almost as though she grabbed onto one of the spells and pulled. It told her something, though, so when she whipped her fan again in another pattern, the barrel-chested AIM player appeared only ten or fifteen feet away from her, farther up on the dune she was on, but Aldon had barely registered his location before he was thrown backwards.

Without the element of surprise, it was readily apparent that the NMSC player was simply a better dueller. She was fast, and the AIM player was immediately put on the back foot, stumbling in the sand as he struggled to defend. He wasn't bad at duelling, even managing to get a few attack spells out when he was back on his feet, but he was clearly disadvantaged by his lack of familiarity with her casting system – he was wasting energy on shield spells he didn't need to cast, because he didn't recognize what her spells were. Aldon didn't recognize her spells either, but it was evident that she had a wide repertoire.

She got through with some sort of blasting curse aimed at the ground, causing the AIM player to slip on the side of the dune, then landed a cutting curse of some kind. He kept fighting, ignoring the blood spraying lightly onto the sand, his wand moving frantically, but she held him down with a barrage of other spells. He blocked, one after another, but another two spells were through within a minute and he was out. She waited only long enough for him to collapse, before returning to her search patterns. The recording orb stayed on the fallen AIM player, though, and Aldon watched as a Healer declared the player officially out of the match and Portkeyed him out. The image held, another few crucial seconds.

"That was an error," Cho inserted her hand into the image, pointing out a medium-sized sandstone rock in one corner of the terrain. "NMSC should have ended the game here – their player took out the AIM guard but didn't identify the keystone. There's no reason to hold out in direct elimination, it's just who wins, so she just didn't see it. She is what they call a fighter – her main job is duelling the other players. But if she, or her strategist, had thought about it at the time, AIM would have known that NMSC would outmatch them head-to-head – there was no reason for the AIM player to attack unless he was protecting the keystone."

The image changed, focusing on the other, moving, paper-caster. He was frowning, holding up a piece of parchment, repeatedly casting his search spell, but clearly the results weren't promising. He said something – speaking to his strategist, Aldon assumed – but then he blew out a breath and pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment.

"He's getting instructions from his strategist on a more precise search spell," Chang said, off-hand. "It's not important, but he's basically going to cast the paper form of the Hominem Revelio spell, which turns out like a map."

Aldon nodded, turning his eyes back to the screen and leaning forward in interest. Even if he mainly signed up for this adventure because Harriett was in it, he couldn't help but be intrigued. He had read a bit about other channelling methods, but he only really knew wand casting and runic casting. Paper-casting was, in some ways, similar to runic casting, but from what he could tell, also completely unlike it. The paper-caster in the image pulled out a tiny ink bottle and brush from his pocket, knelt on the ground, and he drew a pattern of runes onto the sheet of paper. He was quick about it, no doubt knowing that he was vulnerable while he did it, and stood up only a few minutes later. He activated the spell on the parchment, imbuing it with a flash of his magic, and Aldon could just see the lines of ink on the parchment come alive. Renewed with determination, the paper-caster moved on, considerably more confident than before.

"Most of the time, paper-casters enter a game with a number of spells prepared ahead of time and partially imbued, so they don't need to stop and create a spell from scratch," Cho explained, pointing it out. "It's rare they'll need to create a new paper-charm mid-game, but they all carry paper and ink to do it."

There was a flash of lightning in the distance, and the image suddenly switched to NMSC's starting position, where the other paper-caster, the guard, was engaging another AIM player in combat. The AIM player had to have been invisible, before – there was no other way that she could have gotten that close to the team's keystone without being noticed. The lightning must have been a warning spell, and she panicked, throwing an overpowered Confringo at the sandstone. The paper-caster, equally panicked, had just managed to block it, throwing out a piece of parchment which lit up into a shield, then following it with a fire spell that the AIM player hurriedly dodged. They exchanged a flurry of spells for the next five minutes, and seemed to be roughly evenly matched. The end result was sheer dumb luck – the AIM player just missed her timing on a block, and was hit in the chest with a focused lightning spell, knocking her unconscious. Aldon watched as the paper caster walked a wider circle, this time, around the keystone, resetting his warning spell.

The first paper-caster, the one with the map, finally found the final AIM player – or he guessed he had, in any case. He threw an arc of paper charms in one direction, flying unnaturally far on the strength of his magic, and just one of them hit the AIM player. The paper charm, some sort of Finite Incantatem, stripped the Disillusionment away, and almost before the AIM player realized he was visible again, the paper-caster threw lightning at him. His reflexes were fast, dodging out of the way, before returning fire. The paper-caster said something to his strategist, throwing another lightning spell, which burst with a loud clap of thunder. The AIM player dodged it again; he was tall, lithe, and moved with a grace that was almost dancing.

He was a better dueller than the paper-caster, too, Aldon realized quickly. Paper-casting was fast, and since they were partially imbued ahead of time and activated with just a touch, they were also efficient, increasing the number of spells a person could cast in a row. However, the variety of spells he could cast entirely depended on what he had prepared ahead of time. In a combat situation, he couldn't react on the fly, and the AIM player took ruthless advantage, varying his spells and analysing the pile of spells the paper-caster had available. The paper-caster kept throwing lightning, so Aldon suspected that he wasn't carrying many other attack spells.

He was caught with some sort of disorientation spell, his paper charm being completely ineffective at blocking it, and stood, frozen, trapped in the spell. Aldon wondered for an instant why he wasn't casting the counter-curse, before he realized that he couldn't – he didn't have one prepared, and he was too disoriented to make one. The AIM player Stunned him with no ceremony.

Unfortunately, the girl from NMSC, the fighter, appeared from over one of the sand-dunes, engaging him in combat before he could cast a Disillusionment Charm and disappear. She had none of the spell restrictions as the paper-caster did, and coldly ignored her teammate, Stunned on the ground, in favour of attack. She must have been called over by the lightning spells, Aldon realized, or a message from her strategist. She was perfectly aware that this was the only AIM player left standing, and she fully intended to end it, fast, which she did savagely with a targeted piercing or stabbing spell, followed by a powerful explosive charm. The AIM player flew backwards, landing hard in the sand. He didn't get up.

Two AIM Healers Portkeyed in, checking over their teammate. One, a tall, dark-skinned boy, grim-faced, stood up and raised his arms in a large "X", while his friend continued kneeling, her wand moving in quick, precise movements.

"Winner: The National Magic School of China," a cool, monotone voice announced, followed by the same in Chinese.

The image collapsed, just as the NMSC player Portkeying out, one hand on her teammate and pulling him out as well.

It was Ronald Weasley who broke the silence first, his voice measured, considering. "That was helpful. The first two were interesting, but you said they never replicated the strategy, so it was useful seeing how a normal game played out. You called the girl who used the fan a fighter?"

"Yes," Cho nodded. "NMSC is the largest magical school, with over three thousand students, and they're the only one that plays the game internally outside Tournament years. They classify all players as either fighters, defenders, or rounders. Fighters are offensive – they look for the other team's keystone or actively attack other players. Defenders usually protect the keystone, and rounders can do both. Only NMSC categorizes players like this, though."

Ron waved his hand dismissively. "That's probably because, since they play it regularly, they've thought the most about the common strategies. We should adopt the terminology to describe the game tactics generally. In this game, since AIM was aiming for a stealth strategy, they didn't put any fighters on their team. Is that usual?"

Cho shrugged, but there was an excited gleam in her eye. "With AIM, one can never be sure, and I haven't done a specific study of how the major teams break down, but offhand I think they prefer defenders and rounders over fighters – I can't think of a single fighter on their team in the last five cycles."

"So with our team, I know already that Angelina is a fighter, and Rigel is more of a defender – don't look at me like that, Rigel, I see you in Duelling. You're fantastic at taking advantage of others' attacks on you and drawing attacks, but not so great at initiating them. Diggory is probably a rounder…" Ron trailed off, thinking it over. "Do we know what the battlegrounds are, this year?"

"City, Lake, Forest, Rock," Alex supplied helpfully, shuffling through the back pages of their pamphlet. "Match listings in the back – Hogwarts plays AIM the first weekend of February on Forest, while Patagonia and ICW play on Lake."

"But we won't know what they actually look like until we're in-game," Cho added.

"Maybe we should discuss this separately?" Diggory interrupted, gesturing delicately at the others. While Harriett, Alex, and Johnston were listening intently, the rest were otherwise occupied. The Weasley Twins were quietly exchanging looks and hand movements which Aldon suspected they had long since developed into a sign language, Ed and the other two Healers were looking politely bored, and Susan Bones was nose-deep in the Tournament Regulations. "It's late. We should finalize our next steps and we can meet again at Hogwarts. Professor Dumbledore is turning one of the empty classrooms into a meeting room for us."

There was a murmur of agreement, Aldon and Ed among them, and Stark hid a yawn. The Healers would brush up on their trauma and first aid skills, including lightning treatments. Chang agreed to review her collection of memory orbs, taking notes on other teams' strategies generally, and Ron, as the chess master, would join her and work on Hogwarts' strategy. The Twins grinned, identical expressions of menace, and said they would start inventing. The players would be working on their duelling and physical fitness. Bones agreed to have the Tournament Regulations reviewed before returning to Hogwarts.

As for Aldon himself, he would be researching different channelling methods. Most of their pool did use wand magic, but it was by no means a guarantee. Even wand users often crossed the lines into wandless magic – what else were Runes, or Potions, or Herbology? Still, one major advantage that non-wand-users had was simply that it was unfamiliar – an unfamiliar attack was that much more likely to succeed. It was, overall, extremely interesting, and even if Aldon wouldn't have chosen to put himself forward if not for a certain Harriett Potter's involvement, he couldn't say he regretted it in the least.

XXX

The night before the Gala, Aldon joined his parents for dinner. Whatever went unsaid, it was still an expectation that, while he was at home, they had dinner together several times a week. Usually the dinners were peppered with light conversation, a veil over the distance that had grown between them. His parents often discussed business, and he listened; sometimes he was asked about school, and he would reply vaguely, meaninglessly. He largely ignored his specific interests, and they never asked. They never pushed.

They never cared.

So, it was a surprise when his father turned to him, over dessert, and quite bluntly asked him whether he was interested in anyone.

"Excuse me?" Aldon replied, politely not spraying his lemon panna cotta across the table.

Lord Evan Rosier sighed, and glanced at Aldon's mother. His non-biological mother, his brain supplied helpfully. "Your mother and I were discussing, recently. You are now of age, and you know that, in our social class, it is about time for us to begin arranging meetings for you with prospective spouses."

"But we don't want to pressure you, Aldon," Lady Eveline Rosier added gently. "You need to be seen on the marriage market, so to speak, but there's no need to enter into an arrangement right away. At this point, we just need to be seen making inquiries on your behalf."

Aldon grimaced, even as he knew it was true. He had seen girls watching him and twittering amongst themselves at the last Gala, and while none would dare approach him, he knew they talked. The Rosiers were noble, even if it was only a minor Book of Copper nobility, Sacred Twenty-Eight in terms of purity (hah), and extremely wealthy. He was an excellent pick for respectable, middle-class families trying to climb the social ladder, as well as for noble families needing to refuel their family coffers. As a supposed, Sacred Twenty-Eight pureblood, too, he was also generally considered a good choice for families aiming to firm up their pureblood credentials, which, in this political climate, most families were. Certainly, his blood-status posed no barrier. What a joke.

Suddenly, he was struck by wild inspiration.

He hesitated artfully, glancing down and to the right, as if he were embarrassed by what he was about to admit, even as he was internally spinning in glee. "Well, I have to admit that I was intrigued, at last year's Gala, by, well…" he threw in a pause, taking a breath or two, looking at his plate, and lowered his voice. "By Harriett Potter."

"Heiress Potter?" His father inquired. To his credit, he didn't sound dismissive, and when he glanced up, he saw that his mother, too, had a considering look on her face.

"Yes," Aldon replied, warming to the topic, as if he was encouraged by his parents' responses, even if he felt no such thing. "I met her, at the last Gala. We spoke at some length. She is training as a Healer at the American Institute of Magic, and of course I am friends with her cousin Rigel. She has," he paused, searching for the right words. "The most stunning green eyes."

"I have heard that she is engaged to her cousin, Arcturus Black," his mother murmured, casting her father a look. "Though, from all accounts, it is not a serious engagement. Likely protection in case the legislation goes through, since she is a halfblood."

"That shouldn't be an issue," his father replied, equally quietly, as though Aldon weren't there. "Should the legislation pass, were she married to Aldon, she would have the status of a pureblood anyway. The House of Potter is old – Book of Gold. And they are wealthy. It would be a good match. The Lord Potter, though, is unlikely to be receptive…"

"I know she is a half-blood, but our children would be pureblooded by definition," Aldon added, pretending as though he hadn't heard their quiet conversation. "And since Lord and Lady Potter are known to be powerful, she is likely magically powerful."

"I'll speak to Lord Potter, considering the existing engagement," his father said eventually. "You should feel free to pursue her informally, however; since she is formally engaged, she would need to be persuaded, informally, to break it."

Aldon smirked. Harriett, or Rigel, would be annoyed, to put it lightly, but it really was for her benefit, he told himself altruistically. She was a half-blood, whatever the potential legislation said, and having it be quietly known that the popular Rosier Heir had his eyes on her would make those around her think twice. And when he considered the scope of what he could do, as one of her informal suitors, that was merely twice the fun. And if it was also provided a convenient discouragement for his own potential suitors, that was all the better.

XXX

Compared to the previous years' Galas, Bulstrode House was stark. There was no gold gilt this year, no burgundy velvet drapes, no giant chandelier. Bulstrode House was drawn in tight, straight lines and open spaces, decorated in black and greys. The whole feeling of the house was stern, austere, the coldest form of nobility, for all that the Bulstrodes were not noble. They were affiliated with the SOW Party, they were wealthy, but they were primarily known for their work in international affairs.

Something was changing, Aldon realized, fixing his collar as he followed his parents through the reception line. Between the Tournament and having the SOW Party Gala hosted by the Bulstrodes, at the house of Sir Philip Bulstrode, the British ambassador to the ICW, Lord Riddle was trying to open the borders. Was it that forty years of sanctions were finally pressing on Wizarding Britain's economy? Or was it something else?

He didn't have enough information to speculate, though he knew for a fact that the sanctions did work. The Rosiers' once-vaunted business network, stretching across Wizarding America, Australia, Canada, and Western Europe, had slowly withered away over the last four decades. Even the governments in eastern Europe, less respectful of the ICW and its rules, were hesitant to trade. That was why so much of their portfolio had shifted domestically, though the few international trade connections they still had were worth significantly more. On the other hand, forty years was a long time to hold out, and there was no apparent reason why this should happen now. As far as he knew, Wizarding Britain's economy was strained, but it was not at the breaking point.

Still, the very fact that it was at Bulstrode House meant that, like with the Parkinsons last year, more families were present, including Light families. He spotted the Potters almost immediately after finishing the reception line, Lady Potter's brilliant red hair standing out against the Bulstrodes' minimalistic décor, and fought the shiver that crested his shoulders remembering the sight of her, singing, enthralling men to sleep. Harriett was there, too, though he couldn't see her face – as soon as he looked at the Potter family, he felt the telltale buzz in his core that told him that she was there. Lord Sirius Black, too, was standing with them with Arcturus Black, a pristine copy of Rigel Black, though he was smiling openly, laughing at something his father had said. He, too, buzzed to Aldon's core.

"Are you all right, there, Aldon?" Ed asked, appearing beside him.

Aldon turned, admiring his friend briefly. Ed was looking smart in navy blue robes with a high collar, tailored to emphasize his height. The cloth was a light wool, it looked like, hanging in unusually pristine lines – weighted hems, he assumed. "Edmund. I'm fine, as well as can be expected. I've picked up a number of books on international casting methods – it's interesting reading. How goes the wedding planning?"

Ed and Alice would be married in June, just after Ed's graduation from Hogwarts, and while most of the coordination was being handled by Alice or through owl post, there were things that Ed needed to be present for. Meal tastings. Robe fittings, which Aldon, as best man, had been pulled into a few days ago. Contract negotiations – the Selwyns wanted the wedding at their Estate, but the Rookwoods were of the view that the Selwyn ballroom was too outdated, leading to some offense. Then there were issues involving the Selwyn title, on whether Ed should change his name to Selwyn rather than Alice since he wasn't noble, and she was, or whether they would adopt the Rookwood name.

Ed nodded, and if Aldon didn't know him quite so well, he wouldn't have picked up on the tired, but happy glimmer in his dark brown eyes. "Thank you for your research, the other day. When I raised that the Potters legally still held the Peverell title, the Selwyns folded. Alice will take the Rookwood name, and legally we'll hold the Selwyn title. The engagement was formally announced before the holiday, so this is our first formal appearance together as a united family."

"Glad to hear it," Aldon smiled briefly, a genuine smile. "I assume you're telling me this so you can disappear in good conscience for the rest of the evening?"

Ed tilted his head in rueful acknowledgement. "You know me too well."

"Go, go," Aldon waved his hand. "If you don't, Alice will come looking for me. And I need to find a drink, anyway – I can't possibly do a Gala without a drink in hand."

"Don't overindulge, Aldon," Ed shot him a warning look, before disappearing into the crowd. Aldon rolled his shoulders lightly – the new formal robes he had this year were a royal blue, accented with gold, which made his eyes pop, but the style was somewhat constricting across his shoulders. His mother tended, if anything, to overemphasize Aldon's slim form when she was ordering new robes.

He found the refreshments easily, lined along one side of the expansive ballroom. It had been expanded for the event, Aldon realized, but it worked well in Bulstrode House since the lines of the building were so unforgiving. It was only the stairs, on either end of the room leading to the second-floor balcony, lining the entirely circumference of the ballroom, that revealed the trick, each step having been disproportionately stretched and having a decidedly odd footprint.

There were no serving-elves at this Gala; rather, the Bulstrodes had hired a human entertainment company to manage serving. Aldon accepted a glass of red wine with thanks from a bored looking blonde witch, who had several levitation spells on the go as she mixed spirits for other guests, before retreating to wander through the crowds, keeping an eye out for people he knew.

Harriett had found a friend. Aldon didn't recognize the tall, brown-haired, hazel-eyed boy. Aldon eased himself carefully through the crowd, moving to a position several feet closer, where he could see him in more detail. He wasn't a boy, Aldon realized quickly; he was a man, though a young one. Perhaps about twenty. He didn't look like a pureblood, either. His nose was too large, and crooked, as though it had been broken and improperly set at least once before. His formal robes were bright green, the shade of grass; not brand new, but also not too worn. He didn't come from a wealthy family, obviously, but he must come from a respectable one if he were at the SOW Party Gala. Aldon frowned; he didn't recognize him, which he should have if the man was associating with Harriett.

Even more concerning, though, were their expressions. The man was clearly taken with Harriett, deeply taken. His eyes were soft, intent, when he looked at her, as if she were the only person in the room, and a warm smile was playing about his lips. He had one of her hands, too, held lightly in both of his hands, and he stood over her almost protectively, a bold statement to all who were near that Harriett was his.

And Harriett, stunning in sea-green formal robes the exact shade of her eyes, was smiling back. She laughed, pulling her hand back casually from him, and there was no hesitation, no reticence, nothing held back in that smile, in that laugh. She was beaming at the unknown man like she knew him, like she was delighted to have run into him here, a little as though he hung the moon. There was light in her eyes when she looked at him, and Aldon could hardly help but scowl, downing his glass of wine. Who was he?

Perhaps more importantly, where was Arcturus? As Harriett's formal betrothed, surely he had something to say about this state of affairs?

He stalked through the crowd once more, searching for a familiar face, focusing, too, on finding a familiar buzz through his core. He took a second glass of wine when he passed the refreshments table next, which he slipped more slowly while looking. He found Arcturus Black, just as the dancing was about to open. He was standing in a group with his supposed friends, laughing lightly, Rigel's laugh, at something one of them had said.

"Rigel," Aldon said, pushing himself into the circle of fourth-years and placing a hand on Arcturus' shoulder. Harriett would have tensed, slightly, but Arcturus had no such reaction. He nodded to the others. "Oh, hello, Pansy. Malfoy, Zabini, Nott."

"Rosier," Arcturus greeted him, inclining his head slightly in welcome as he made space in their circle, and Aldon knew immediately that something was different. Wrong.

No, wait. It was right.

His voice didn't buzz. Arcturus, as an actual male, had no need to artificially lower his voice as Harriett did; his voice was lowering itself naturally and Harriett's was only a copy. Because this voice was his true voice, it didn't read as a lie in his core. That was useful, and Aldon just prevented a wicked smile from spreading across his face. It would be useful to know when Harriett was playing Rigel, and when Arcturus was playing Rigel.

"I'm sorry to leave so quickly, especially since you've just arrived, Rosier," Zabini interrupted, casting a meaningful glance at the dance floor, "but the dancing is about to start. I wouldn't like to leave Hannah searching for me."

"You're right," Nott said, throwing him a garish wink. "We had better find our partners. I've been pulled by one of my cousins, again – guess I'm old enough to use as a shield! I'll see you later?"

Aldon nodded at the two of them, as they disappeared into the crowds, searching for their partners. He cast an inquiring glance at Pansy, who simply glanced over at Malfoy without a change of expression, and Aldon realized that the two Silver Snakes would be opening the dancing together. He raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment, taking a small sip from his wine glass, instead. He had gotten the white, this time. It was lighter, less heady.

"How was your holiday, Aldon?" Pansy asked, her voice light and curious. "You were at the Tournament meeting, weren't you? Rigel has been so close-mouthed about it; surely you'll be more forthcoming?"

Aldon made himself relax. He could make small talk for the next few minutes, before they had to disappear for the dance. His demands could keep. "There's little news of interest, Pansy," he replied lightly, "and it will be more interesting for you to simply watch the matches. Honestly, our meeting a few days ago was dull; we only learned the rules of the game, read over the books that the ICW sent us, and so on."

Pansy sighed prettily. "That's what Rigel said, too," she flicked her eyes to her friend, but her tone was affectionate. "I suppose we'll just have to wait. Still, can't you at least tell us who we're playing first?"

Aldon laughed, playing along, eyes flicking to Arcturus. He hadn't been at the meeting, though he was sure that Harriett would have given him a briefing. He wondered vaguely how much detail Harriett had gone into – they hadn't discussed specific strategies, but it was still an advantage she could have given him. Then again, Harriett as Rigel would likely have been closed-mouthed about the meeting anyway, so maybe she had kept it to the basics. "I suppose, Rigel, that we can tell them that much, at least?"

Arcturus shrugged diffidently. "I suppose it does no harm. Our first match is the first weekend of February, against AIM."

It was only because Aldon was paying attention that he caught it. Arcturus' accent, too, was subtly different from Harriett's. The backbone of his accent was entirely upper-class, the same accent as he and Pansy and Malfoy shared, though he enunciated his words better.

Malfoy snorted. "We'll wipe the floor with them." There was barely a flicker in Arcturus' expression, but Malfoy flinched slightly, clearly catching some feeling from him. "Sorry, Rye. You said Harry was on their team, right? As a Healer."

"Yes, that's right," Arcturus replied, keeping his voice coolly neutral, even as Aldon suspected he was quite a bit more offended than Harriett would have been. Harriett was used to these comments, and she didn't go to AIM; Arcturus wasn't, and he did. "And we shouldn't underestimate our opponents. AIM could be quite a challenge."

Malfoy smiled at his friend, skeptical though it was. "I'm sure. Sorry to leave you here, but Pansy and I have to get on the dance floor – the dancing is about to open."

"Don't mind me," Arcturus replied, waving them off. "I'll catch up with you later."

There was an awkward pause, while Aldon simply stood and looked the Black Heir over. He could be excused for the moment, he thought; it was his first meeting with the true Black Heir, after all. Arcturus was identical to Rigel, which only made their slight differences more obvious. He fidgeted more – small twitches in his fingers, glances around the ballroom, shifts of his weight from foot to foot. His posture was straighter, too, than Rigel's, or maybe it was the lack of twelve textbooks slung across his back. His bearing, too, was somehow more regal than Rigel's, than Harriett's.

"You were looking for me," Arcturus reminded him, eyebrow raised. "What is it, Rosier?"

Aldon leaned back, a casual movement, letting a small half-smile play about his face as he took another sip of his wine. "I'm sure I've told you to call me Aldon a dozen times if I've told you once," he said, carefully making his voice light, inquiring, with just a hint of offense. It was a bit of a gamble, or perhaps a bit of a test; no doubt Arcturus and Harriett were close, to have exchanged places successfully, but there were things that one had to have lived to know. "Or have you forgotten?"

He caught the briefest flash of panic in Arcturus' grey eyes, and kept the smirk of amusement off his face. "Aldon," Arcturus corrected himself, shrugging, his voice purposely even. "Force of habit, I suppose. You're not dancing? I'm surprised."

"I rarely dance at these things, Rigel, you know that." He cast a pointed look over the dance floor. It was the first dance: the dance of couples, or potential couples. It was the dance where people signalled their interest in one another, announced new ties to Society, demonstrated solidarity with their allies. He narrowed his eyes when, with no surprise, he saw Harriett being spun around the dance floor by the unknown man. She was still smiling, still laughing, and it was with effort that he kept his hands loose, casual. "I was curious about who Miss Potter was dancing with, tonight. I don't recognize him."

Arcturus looked over, and his expression didn't change. Aldon thought he was pushing it, a bit; he and Harriett, as Rigel, were not so close as he was playing it, but Arcturus would not know that. Arcturus was clearly hesitant, but as the silence passed, and he shifted, Aldon knew he could outwait him. Arcturus Black was not so patient as Harriett Potter, it seemed.

"That would be Lionel Hurst – he's the son of the Aldermaster of the Potions Guild," Arcturus offered reluctantly. "Harry met him at an apothecary, or something like that. They are good friends."

A true answer. Arcturus was more earnest than he was careful, Aldon thought, even if he could mimic Harriett's mannerisms.

"More than friends?" Aldon supplied.

"Not at all." He was lying, at least partially, and Aldon knew it.

Aldon breathed in deeply, letting the silence fill the moment, before picking his next words carefully. In a good conversational dance, the silences were every bit as important as what was said. "I would have thought you would be dancing the first dance with her, since you are betrothed."

Arcturus shrugged slightly. "Our contract doesn't require exclusivity."

"And yet you're unconcerned," Aldon mused openly, fiddling slightly with the stem of his wine glass. It was more than three quarters empty, but enough time had passed – he still kept his head, for now. "I wonder if you would be so unconcerned to learn that your betrothal contract is largely considered to be a shield for Miss Potter's protection."

Arcturus' face didn't change, but the silence stretched. Aldon chanced a look at him – his was studying the dance floor, and his breath was even, but Aldon suspected he was thinking fast about how he, or Rigel, should respond to the bald challenge. Aldon, too, was curious – Harriett, as Rigel, would staunchly deny it. She had denied it, indirectly, before.

"So what it if it were?" Arcturus asked finally, turning to face him directly, a sharp look in his grey eyes, which somehow looked more natural on him than they did on Harriett. "If Harry needs to use my name as a shield, then I'm happy for her to do it. She has it hard enough; anything I can do to smooth her path, I'll do it, no questions asked."

Aldon blinked, taken aback at the glimpse of the true Arcturus Black shining through Rigel's persona. It was nothing that Harriett's Rigel would have ever said, even if she thought it, and her Rigel would never have openly challenged him as he did. Despite himself, Aldon had to smile; he couldn't help but like Arcturus, or what he had seen of him thus far. Here was a person who understood, at least somewhat, what Harriett put herself through and did what he could to protect her from it – from America, no less. He could respect that.

"So the engagement isn't serious," Aldon replied, his smile turning just a tad darker. "And that means Miss Potter is still considering suitors, is that right?"

Arcturus didn't reply, turning back to look over the crowd of whirling couples on the dance floor. Aldon spotted Ed and Alice easily, on the far edge of the floor. He took a step closer to Arcturus – close enough that those around them wouldn't hear, but not so close that it could be considered a threat, or worse, a proposition.

"So surely you might put in a good word for me with Miss Potter? We are such good friends, after all."

Arcturus spun around, taking a step back in his surprise. "What do you mean by that, Rosier?"

Aldon didn't bother to try to correct him, this time. Harriett would have said the same, anyway – she would say the same, later. "I met her, at the last Gala. She left a strong impression. Stunning eyes. I was – I am – quite intrigued. And it would be good to give her some options – especially since your betrothal is, as you say, not serious."

Arcturus stared at him, opening and closing his mouth a few times in a strange parody of a fish as he considered what to say. Aldon looked back on the dance floor – the second set was starting, the sounds of a Viennese waltz drifting through the air. Harriett was still with Hurst, and it looked like they would be continuing. He watched them, a few minutes, allowing Arcturus to gather his thoughts.

"Harry knows her own mind," he said finally, simply, his eyes flint.

"I'm counting on it," Aldon murmured, draining the last dregs of his wine. He caught sight of his father, across the ball room, making his way towards Lord Potter. "If you'll excuse me – I have remembered something I must do."

Arcturus didn't dignify him with a proper farewell, but Aldon supposed that he warranted that. Harriett would be seething later, he had no doubt, but there was little she could do as Rigel when Rigel had practically already conceded the point. He would be repeating Arcturus' own words back at her if she even tried.

The distance between him and Lord Potter seemed much closer than it actually was, or maybe Aldon was just moving slower than he thought he would be able to. He wouldn't say that he was struggling with his coordination, but he had had two glasses of wine over the last hour, and while he wasn't even what he would consider tipsy, neither was he entirely stable. He grimly focused on walking straight, with an even stride.

By the time his father reached Lord Potter and had pulled him aside for a private conversation, Aldon had a straight line of vision with both them and with the dance floor, conveniently centred in the room. He could still see Harriett and Hurst spinning their way through the second set, and Aldon glared at them momentarily before turning his focus back on his father. He couldn't hear what was said – he was still too far away – but at least he had a good view.

His father must have opened the conversation with some small talk of some kind or another, because Lord Potter was looking bemused, slightly suspicious, but not offended. Well, of course – the Rosiers had not historically had any ties with the Potters. Before the current political state, the Potters, as a wealthy, pureblood, Book of Gold noble family, would likely not have considered the Rosiers, upstart nobility, seriously. Even James Potter, at school, had gravitated first towards Sirius Black, another Book of Gold pureblood from a wealthy family. Today, however, with a halfblood Heiress, the landscape was very different.

Aldon wished he knew what they were saying. He was too far away to cast anything without being noticed, and there was just too much interference for the low-key runic charms that he would have preferred using anyway. He saw Lord Potter, easily recognizable from pictures in the Prophet, reply to something his father had said, and he watched his father turn on the charm, turning the conversation to something easy, something relaxing, something that would ease Potter's unspoken suspicions. Something about the Ministry, or the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, perhaps? No, that was probably too stressful. Business? Unlikely, the Potters had never been a business family. Family? No, absolutely not – his father would start with family when he was turning the conversation to the proposal itself. They had so little in common, Aldon figured they were probably talking about the Gala itself.

Father was good at charm, Aldon thought clinically, watching as Lord Potter slowly relaxed, his face becoming politely engaged as he waited for Evan Rosier to get to the point. The Rosiers had so little to do with the Potters, of course there was an ulterior motive. Lord Potter was showing a willingness to hear his father out, though, which was good.

Aldon knew the second that his father turned the conversation to the Potter family, first because Lord Potter's face had lit up, but the expression was replaced by a heavy scowl within seconds. The next words, Aldon could tell, were heated, though his father seemed to maintain his calm, making several points. At one point, his father glanced around and, spotting him, pointed him out to Lord Potter.

Aldon quickly turned to face the dance floor, his eyes tracking immediately onto Harriett Potter as he carefully composed his face. He softened his eyes, adopting a wistful expression, throwing in a hint of jealousy and a fair amount of longing into his body posture. He made himself lean forward just slightly, as if against his will, leaning in the direction of the dance floor. He held the position for a minute, or so, before daring to look over at his father and Lord Potter again.

His father was patting Lord Potter on the arm, saying something that looked like, "Think about it," before turning and walking away.

Well, he supposed that had gone about as well as could have been expected. He turned, navigating the crush of people back to the refreshments table, picking up a third glass of wine. It was regular wine, not fairy wine, and if he nursed it slowly, he would be pleasantly tipsy and not embarrassingly drunk, and he needed a bit of tipsiness to negotiate the rest of the evening, he thought. The refreshments table was crowded, though, and he was waylaid by Lucian and Adrian for a short conversation on the way there, so it was well into the third set by the time he looked again at the dance floor.

Harriett was still dancing with Hurst, he saw with little surprise, frowning. It was, frankly, worrying; if Black had no intention of acting on the betrothal, and he clearly didn't, then Harriett should really be playing the field. Going to AIM as she supposedly did, she had no real opportunity other than these Galas to meet potential suitors, so she should have been making the most of it. Instead, she was occupied for nearly half the dancing with one partner: one likely halfblooded, middle-class, partner. He sipped his wine – white, again – considering what, if anything, he should do.

He would like to dance with her, he admitted somewhat morosely to himself. Or talk to her. Or anything. Even if he could talk to her as Rigel anytime, it wasn't the same – he wouldn't get to look into her sea-green eyes, he wouldn't hear her openly teasing him. She was so guarded, as Rigel, every other sentence out of her mouth a lie that sparked through his core. As Harriett, without needing to pretend, she was different. She smiled, she laughed with a genuineness that he could feel, a warmth that just wasn't present when she was Rigel. There was too much in the way when Harriett was Rigel.

It was only when he lifted his glass for the second sip of wine when he saw him, across the dance floor, similarly alone with a glass of wine. Caelum Lestrange was gripping his glass, with a pressure that would break the delicate stem if it wasn't spelled to be unbreakable, glaring at Harriett and Hurst on the dance floor. His cousin – second-cousin, really – was scowling openly, a rude expression at an event like this, and when the third set ended, he stalked onto the floor, rudely intercepting Harriett for the fourth set. There were clearly harsh words said, between him and Hurst, but the music started, and Harriett was whisked away, an expression of righteous indignation on her delicate face.

Aldon watched them, the fourth set. They were arguing through half the set, and a cold silence enveloped them for the other half. Harriett was not a very good dancer, he saw – she missed steps frequently, stepping on Lestrange's feet several times. As the lead, he was setting a no-nonsense pace; Hurst, as the better dancer previously, must have been compensating for her. That must have been why she had so stringently avoided dancing in previous years, going so far as to arrange for Ed to take her place in dancing with Pansy that first Gala, exactly two years ago. But Arcturus was a perfectly acceptable dancer, because he had danced several sets with her friends last year.

Indeed, at the end of the fourth set, Arcturus was waiting, catching her the same moment that Hurst went to do the same. He said something, a razor-edged smile on his face, and spun her back onto the dance floor. By the surprised expressions on both Lestrange and Hurst's faces, and the way they both immediately headed for the refreshments table, Aldon suspected he had told them about the engagement. Or, at least, selective facts about the engagement.

Arcturus was a much better dancer than Harriett, Aldon realized, seeing them side by side. She made fewer mistakes with him, mainly because he was adaptive with his pace, making it easier for her to follow him. However, neither did she look as graceful beside him as she did with Hurst – she was better at reading Hurst's cues. He pursed his lips slightly in discontent. What was the nature of their relationship? Arcturus had said they were more than friends (or rather, he had denied it outright, but his denial was a lie), but surely …

He didn't like where this train of thought was leading him, and instead he set his mostly-full glass of wine down on a convenient side table, weaving a small ward around it. The fifth dance was a schottische, and Aldon tried calculating where they would end up at the end of the dance. It was usually possible, in general terms, but for some reason the logic slipped out of his mind as he thought about it. He sighed, resigned to doing this the old-fashioned way, and simply made his way to the edge of the dance floor closest to them. As the schottische continued, he followed around the edges of the circle. He moved slowly, but directly, dissuading anyone from making small talk with him with dismissive glares. No one along this edge of the ballroom was worth his attention, anyway.

The schottische ended, and Aldon was there.

"If I may?" he asked politely, his tone just daring Arcturus to argue with him.

"Rosier," he replied coolly, tilting his head in acknowledgement, his eyebrows furrowed slightly in warning. He glanced at Harriett, his grey eyes communicating something to her, and she sighed. They were exactly equal in height, nearly identical but for eye colour and a few other, smaller details. His jaw was more square, his face slightly more masculine, but Aldon could only tell because they were side by side. "I do believe that would be up to Harry."

Aldon turned to Harriett, looking into those glittering sea-green eyes, feeling a sharp pang in his chest. It had been so long since he had seen her true eye colour, he had forgotten how striking they were. All his imaginings of them, talking to her as Rigel, did them no justice. They were compelling, just like her, suiting her so much better than the ugly grey that she wore at school.

Harriett looked distinctly unimpressed by the male antics around her, her expression cool as she glanced at him. Arcturus, too, wasn't leaving – one look, and Aldon knew he wouldn't leave until Harriett had either agreed to dance with him or she had rejected him. And if she rejected him, well, that warning look told him that Arcturus planned on dismissing him, somehow. He'd find another way, but honestly, it would be simpler if Harriett just agreed.

"Miss Potter," he bowed, a thirty-degree bow of social equals, of one pureblood heir to another – or a bow of a halfblood heir to another. He saw a glint of something like approval in Arcturus' steely grey eyes at the gesture, and carefully kept the smirk off his face; no doubt Arcturus believed him to be paying his cousin unusual respect, for a pureblood to a halfblood.

He reminded himself sternly that he didn't know about the ruse, he hadn't seen Harriett Potter in a year, that this was a once in a year opportunity for someone of his circle and someone of hers, and chose his next words carefully. "I am glad that you were able to come to the Gala. I do hope you remember me fondly, and I regret that, this time, I am one of those people pretending not to be drunk."

She stared at him for a moment, then snorted in laughter. It was restrained, but it was a balm, light and airy and genuine. The small smile on her face, too, was real, and Aldon found himself relaxing. "You hide it well," she sighed, her sea-green eyes resigned. "Aldon."

It was a purposeful use of his given name; she was probably using it to distinguish herself from Rigel, who generally preferred to refer to him by surname. Even knowing that, however, some part of Aldon softened to hear it, and he smiled, tilting his head down at her.

"Thank you," he replied, taking her hand. She didn't pull away, which was a good sign. Another glance at Arcturus – his face was impassive. "Might I have this dance? You refused me one last year, and left me quite bereft."

She glanced over at Arcturus, and there was some unspoken communication between them, and Harriett sighed again. "I am not a good dancer," she demurred, even as Arcturus withdrew. That, more than anything else, told him that she had accepted, and he wasted no time sweeping her onto the dance floor in the quickstep.

Harriett was not a good dancer. It wasn't that she didn't move with grace, because she did, and Aldon had seen her in Duelling Club often enough. Perhaps it was the wrong sort of grace; duelling required a certain linearity of movement that was absent in dance, replaced entirely by circles. The quickstep was challenging, faster than the waltz – in his current state of inebriation, he wasn't quite as attuned to the cues he needed to provide to her, and she trod on his feet more than once.

Their silence was awkward, with none of the friendly camaraderie of the previous year. She was aloof, stand-off-ish, her brows furrowed in concentration and staring anywhere but him. It was obvious that both Lestrange and Arcturus must have told her that she could not spend the entire Gala with one person who was not her fiancé, not without sending an untoward message to Society. He didn't think Harriett would care, frankly; this was a woman who had committed blood identity theft to come to Hogwarts. At that same time, however, standing out in such a manner was drawing unusual attention, and Harriett, as Rigel, had never liked drawing unusual attention.

"I have a confession to make," he murmured into her ear. She wasn't tall, but then again, neither was he. She stood about half a head shorter than him, and her ear was in easy distance. "I was drunk last year, too. I usually am, at these events."

There was a pause, and Aldon wondered if she was remembering the very first time they had met at a Gala, exactly two years ago, when he didn't yet know about the ruse. He had been very drunk that night. Fairy wine was much stronger, and he hadn't yet known his limits quite as well as he knew them now. She had asked him, then, why; and he had told her about hating his parents. It was only two years, and yet it felt so long ago.

But that was something he had told Rigel, not Harriett.

"Why?" she asked, her voice low and musical. She glanced up at him, her green eyes betraying nothing but simple curiosity. She was good – but then, she had to be. "Surely you know your limits. Is drinking so enjoyable?"

He let a quick, dark smile flash across his face. It had been two years – so much could change in two years. So much could be learned in two years.

"Just look around you," he replied, keeping his voice low, whispering directly in her ear. "Look at us. Look at our Society. You stand here, a halfblood, at the SOW Party Gala, the annual fundraiser for a pureblood supremacist party, because pureblood supremacy has so infused our Society that you have no choice. You're fourteen, and you're engaged to your cousin because with Marriage Law on the table, you have no choice. Over there, you see my best friend, Edmund Rookwood, and his fiancé, Alesana Selwyn. They're getting married just after he graduates this June, because her family is impoverished nobility, and his family isn't noble at all, and they have no choice either. We stand in the home of Sir Philip Bulstrode, Wizarding Britain's ambassador to the International Confederation of Wizards, an organization which stands vehemently against our government. He is not noble – the Bulstrodes are not noble. He has no voice in our government, but every year, he goes to the ICW and defends it, because he has no choice."

His voice was becoming even quieter, in his anger, and he took the time to make sure his face was blank of any hint of discontent. He didn't know about the ruse, he reminded himself. And Harriett went to school abroad. "You should know, more than anyone here. They don't marry at seventeen, in America, do they? Take education, too: they say that Hogwarts provides the best general education of all wizarding schools, but have you ever compared your curriculum with Rigel's? Have you ever seen what we're missing, what's been censored, at Hogwarts? And in research: except in Potions, Wizarding Britain hasn't produced any major research breakthroughs in the past half-century, and the only reason we still have strong potioneers is that the Potions Guild, being financially self-sufficient, doesn't bow to the whims of politics. At the Rosier Investment Trust, and other companies like ours, we have little choice but to hire from abroad because Hogwarts graduates no longer have the grounding they need to do some of our work. And the Fade-"

"Stop, Aldon," Harriett hissed, her grip on his hand becoming tight in warning and her green eyes flashing. And Aldon stopped, because he hadn't intended to go on that much. Maybe a suggestion, a hint at his disgust at their Society, a hint of his bone-deep rage at the hypocrisy he lived. He was drunk, he supposed, even if he was good at hiding it, and Harriett was Rigel, even if she wasn't, and he couldn't help but feel closer to her than he should. "Stop it right now. People have been arrested for saying less. Let's change the subject. You are on the Hogwarts Triwizard Team, is that right? Tell me about it."

He took a dizzying breath. She was right – of course she was right. No one as notable as he had been arrested before for fomenting sedition, but there was always a first. He forced himself to relax, and her hand loosened a touch. He opened his mouth to tell her about it, but closed it again, smiling wryly. "Are you trying to discover our strategies ahead of time? You're on the AIM team."

She smiled cheekily back, even if her grip on his hand was unusually tight and her eyes scanned the couples whirling around them. She was looking to see who might have been listening, but Aldon's voice had been quiet, the music had been loud, and he had been whispering right in her ear. "Of course. You are a strategist, right? Rigel tells me everything, you know."

"Then you'll know that I really have no idea, I'm the team's magical theorist. Unless you want to provide me hints about anything new your team might have planned…"

She laughed, a light, bell-like sound that rang in Aldon's core. "I'm just a Healer. I know nothing."

"Not even your teammates?" Aldon cajoled winningly. "Come, I'm sure Rigel has already told you all about his teammates, it's only fair."

"As a Slytherin, I understand from Rigel that you aren't supposed to care about what is fair," Harriett replied, eyebrow raised, for all the world as though she weren't herself a Slytherin. "But unfortunately for you, I don't even know them. The Healing track doesn't have much to do with the rest of the school."

It wasn't a lie, but since Harriett was Rigel, Aldon hadn't expected as much. "Another topic, then. You danced with Lestrange."

"So I did," Harriett replied, a scowl marring her features. Aldon waited several steps, but she added nothing further.

"He's my second cousin," Aldon prompted neutrally. "I've never known him to dance at any of these events."

She snorted. "If you want to know, you can just ask. I met him during my Potions internship. He's prickly and annoying, but not a bad person. He knows his Potions."

Aldon laughed. It was light, and not altogether false. "Is that what you consider to be a good person? Proficiency at potions?"

She flashed a smile up at him. "A large part of it, yes. And how are your Potions?"

"I want to tell you they are good – I did make NEWT-level Potions. However, given the frequency with which Professor Snape scolds me, I am positive that I am nothing exceptional."

"And what does Master Snape say? You and Rigel are so fortunate to be able to learn from him."

"That I need to stop flinching when I touch creature parts and that my knife skills are shit, mainly," he replied, surprising a genuine laugh from her with his language. That was the point. "I take it for the theory, but was told I couldn't exempt myself from the practical."

She didn't reply to that, looking away from him in thought as he guided her through a careful spin. He let her focus on the spin, on the steps for the few minutes – the quickstep was the fastest of the usual dances at a ball, as she sorted out what she was thinking.

"Rigel told me you spoke to him," she said finally, looking up at him directly, voice quietly suspicious.

Aldon nodded slowly. He had expected as much. She wanted to know why, it was obvious, and Aldon didn't know what to tell her. He could tell her that it was a distraction – that it was for his own benefit, even if it helped her too. That was no doubt the most comforting answer for her. He opened his mouth to tell her not to worry about it, but somehow, the words didn't come out. It was comforting for her, but something about it felt wrong to him, incomplete. There was an aspect of that, certainly, but there was something else, too.

In a world of no choices, Harriett wasn't a wrong choice. She was certainly less wrong than anyone else he could think of.

"So I did," he replied finally, meeting her striking, sea-green eyes. "So I did."

XXX

The Gala ended with little fanfare, after that. Harriett danced another set with Hurst, but the last set with Arcturus, rescuing at least some small part of the supposed betrothal cover, and Aldon passed the rest of the night in casual conversation with Lucian and Adrian, who were pressing him about the Tournament. After that, there were precious few days left before the return to Hogwarts, and Aldon spent them reading detailed magical theory treatises on other channelling methods, with a particular eye to their strengths and weaknesses.

Back at Hogwarts, the entire Triwizard Team was thrown into a flurry of preparation. After seeing the past games played, Alex had forced all the players into the Duelling Club, and then forced everyone to have additional practices with Harriett once he realized how strong of a dueller she was. The Healers were ordered to brush up both the standard curses, and blunt trauma, and for the most part they trained separately from the others. Bones and Bulstrode had reviewed the regulations exhaustively, and Bones informed them in a tone of moderate disgust that, while they were long, the rules were actually simple.

"Don't actively try to kill anyone," she said. "A hundred and twenty pages of regulations, and most of them are case summaries for situations that would never come up. Just use your brain. No Unforgiveable Curses, don't knock anyone out over a body of water, avoid hitting people in their vital organs."

Among the strategists, Aldon had reviewed what magical techniques were taught at AIM, ICW, and Patagonia. AIM was the only school to teach song magic, since it was closely tied with Charms as a secondary channelling method. Normally, song magic had to be done by several witches and wizards working in concert, but it could be done solo for certain powerful witches and wizards. Lily was only the most recent of a long line of Songmasters that the school had produced, and the only one living in Britain. The bigger risk with AIM, though, was that, as a school with a strength in experimental charms, they often came into the Tournament with new spells. The Point Me spell used unilaterally throughout the world was an AIM invention, apparently, whisked out in the Tournament battleground some seventy years ago.

The South Americans generally, including the Patagonian School of Magecraft, did use wands, but also drew on the natural environment to power many of their spells. The Patagonians, among the South American schools, were particularly known for their weather magics, so Aldon made a note of it to pass to Ron and to the Weasley Twins to ensure that their players were equipped to handle heavy winds and rains in that match.

ICW, the final school in their group, was in many ways the easiest. The United Academy of the International Confederation of Wizards specialized in magical law and politics, and while they produced competent witches and wizards, their graduates largely went on to careers in various wizarding governments. It was a little ironic, really – since Beauxbatons only accepted those from the most prominent, powerful and wealthiest French wizarding families, the ICW, as the only other French-speaking school in Europe, took mainly Muggleborns and those from families which did not meet the power, prestige or wealth tests. However, based on their knowledge of magical law and governance, their graduates formed the body of the public service in the French, Belgian, and Swiss magical governments. In terms of what the Hogwarts team might face, though, they were not so different in their spell-casting that Aldon thought his expertise was helpful or necessary, and he told Ron so.

He was actually somewhat surprised by Ron, now that he saw him in his role as a strategist and chess master. He had always seen Ron around as the earnest but awkward counterpart to his boisterous older brothers, or as the counterpart to Neville, whom he also had a soft spot for. He did not have a reputation as being particularly intelligent, though now that he knew Ron better, he was a little surprised by that. Ron was clearly intelligent, though perhaps not in the way that was measured by tests; he was excellent at strategy, at looking at an active, real situation with real people, and predicting how they might act.

After Ron had suggested that the strategists use the fighter, defender and rounder system as a quick way to design strategies, Cho thrown herself into reviewing the records obsessively with him. She confirmed that, for AIM, unless they were trying something truly unusual, they would play with two rounders and one dedicated defender. For Patagonia, they tended to stack fighters, much like Durmstrang, so they would put three fighters on if they could. ICW didn't really produce fighters and their historic strategy involved very close teamwork, so they tended to put on three rounders.

Ultimately, without knowing what map types would look like beforehand, and without knowing whether AIM would have a new strategy to throw out this year, Ron decided to keep Harriett in reserve to defend the Hogwarts keystone, figuring her power would make her a solid challenge if everything else went poorly. Cedric and Angelina would both move forward in a search for the AIM keystone, and while they would defend themselves, neither had an appetite for going out of their way to actively attack anyone else so early in the competition. It was a bit of a sore point for Ron, who advocated for a more aggressive approach, but he conceded that they could adapt their strategies later, if necessary.

The Weasley Twins worked closely with Ron on the items the team would be bringing into the first game. Angelina had insisted on a broom, to travel distance quickly, and they had agreed. Harriett had requested a knife, providing no explanation, but they reasoned that it would probably be useful in multiple ways and let her have it. Otherwise, they filled out Angelina and Cedric's inventories with Peruvian Instant Darkness powder, Sleeping Powder, something that they promised would produce an instant swamp, a flashbang. For Harriett, as a defender, she was equipped with a bottle of Potter's Portable Protection Potion, which she hadn't requested but which they had reasoned could be used to defend the keystone if she had to abandon it, and a Barrier Button.

They made the communication orbs early in the year. The process was, for Aldon, at least, extremely interesting. He went after dinner to the Headmaster's office, finding most of the other players and strategists already there. Harriett, as Rigel, arrived several minutes later.

As Rigel, Harriett had been coolly professional, almost distant, since their return to school. Then again, Aldon hadn't really expected anything different. They weren't as close as Aldon had played it with Arcturus at the Gala, and Harriett was already annoyed at being compelled into the Tournament anyway. She did make the extra duelling practices that Alex had forced on the team, but otherwise she kept to her lab, to her private lessons with Professor Snape, to her year-mates. She had no comments on Ron's planned AIM strategy, and generally didn't contribute to the planning or strategy meetings, though he caught her look of interest when he discussed esoteric points of magical theory with the rest.

Inside the Headmaster's office, Dumbledore had set up three bowls of a thick, clear potion. Aldon examined it carefully, running his magic over it lightly, but it wasn't really a potion. It did nothing in and of itself, but was an interdisciplinary use of potions technique to create items that had the correct matrix to trap and hold speaking and listening spells. Once a drop of blood was added from him and Harriett, acting as a magical lock and activation cue on the speaking spell, the "potion" would be drawn up and solidified into two orbs, then the required spells would be charmed in.

He had never seen the process for making communications orbs before, and barely noticed when Harriett joined him. He noticed, though, when she connected her core to the not-potion, running her own magic through it. "Interesting base," she commented, when she withdrew her magic.

"Isn't it, Mr. Black?" Dumbledore commented, beaming, appearing from his workroom. "As you've correctly identified, these are not potions, just a stage in the process of making the orbs you'll be using in the Tournament. All I need from each of you, is to pair up with your partner at one of the bowls and put in a drop of your blood. A single drop will do."

Aldon spotted several of the other pairs giving slightly misgiving looks at the bowl, but he didn't hesitate in directing a small puff of raw power at one of his fingers. Cutting and Severing charms were far too messy for something like this, and with enough intent, it worked well enough. He held his hand over the bowl and squeezed out a single, red, drop. Harriett shot him a slightly disbelieving look, and pulled a small knife out from the side of her boot. She pricked her finger, and similarly held her hand over the bowl, squeezing out a single drop.

He shot her a similarly disbelieving look. So his use of magic had become more and more based around raw power and runes in the last few years as he fell into a deeper understanding of magical theory; so what? She, apparently, walked around armed with a knife in her boot.

Professor Dumbledore came to them first. He waved his hand over the bowl, once, mixing it thoroughly, then drew up the not-potion into the air. The not-potion spun in the air, and Aldon noted that it was a very dark blue. The potion, then, reflected the colour of their magical signatures, not the colour of their mixed blood. He knew his colour to be a royal blue, so Harriett must be darker – not black, surely, but perhaps a dark grey or darker blue. There were numerous theories on what the colour of one's magical signature meant, but honestly Aldon thought they were all rubbish.

The orb of potion divided into two smaller orbs, unevenly sized, spinning round and round like twin globes. One was tiny, small enough to be embedded in a ring or earring; Aldon had noticed, in Cho's memory orbs, that the players' all tended to wear an earring, and they never obviously reached for any communications devices. His half of it, then, would be the larger, almost palm-sized, one. They solidified, dropping down gracefully onto the table, and even knowing that they wouldn't yet have the spells locked into their matrixes, he reached out curiously to touch the rare items. They were cool, solid, promising.

Aldon watched with interest as Dumbledore repeated the process for the other two pairs. The orbs for Ron and Angelina was a vibrant purple, whereas Cho and Cedric's had come out dark green. Each of the other pairs, too, were poking at their orbs, though with significantly more misgivings.

"It will take some time to embed the speaking and listening spells into the orbs, but you should have the completed orbs about a week before your first match. You'll be able to practice with them the week before, to work out any problems and see how they fit in overall in your strategy." Dumbledore told them, a gentle smile on his face. "I look forward to the first game."

True to his word, the orbs arrived a little more than a week from their first match with AIM, and they worked perfectly as planned. The strategists would stay on Hogwarts grounds, in the strategy room off the Entrance Hall that Dumbledore had set aside for them. They had made some effort, over the last month, to make the room both practical and comfortable. It was dominated by a large, round, table, seating about ten of them at any time. At one end of the room, they had littered armchairs and pouffes, as additional, more comfortable seating. At the other end was a long and narrow table, on which sat a single orb – a one-way imaging orb, Chang identified, a more modern and powerful version of the memory orbs. They would transmit as her memory orbs did, allowing them to follow the players within the battleground. There was another one of them, a more powerful one, in the Great Hall, where the rest of the school would be watching.

The day before the first game, Bulstrode and Bones were on duty, both Portkeying out to an undisclosed location for the traditional examination of items. Bones stayed with the Hogwarts team items, ready to answer questions or justify why they were within regulations, while Bulstrode investigated the AIM team's items. They returned an hour past dinner, with the rest of the team already seated and waiting anxiously in the strategy room.

"No issues with any of our items," Bones reported first with a quick smile. "Granger had some questions about the portable swamp, but let it through."

"On the other side, nothing much to worry about. Something to help them aim their spells." Bulstrode smiled invitingly, as if waiting for laughter, but moved on quickly when it became obvious no one was in the mood for it. They were all too tense to laugh. "The most interesting things were two potions – they weren't labelled, but their officer said it was a protection potion and a ward disruptor. They look like ones Rigel has in his kit, the experimental ones."

Ron glanced between Bulstrode and Harriett. "Rigel, what are the chances that these would be Potter's Portable Protection Potion and the associated ward disruptor?"

"Almost certain," Harriett replied, her expression bored, even if they were her own invention that had been appropriated by the other team. Aldon wondered if Arcturus was similarly strong at Potions – he had always suspected that Arcturus must be good at potions, else the ruse would never have lasted as long as it did, but he probably wasn't anywhere near her level. "Harry did invent them."

"So our protection potion will be useless? Not that we can switch items out this late."

Harriett tilted her head, considering. "Not necessarily. It will probably be useful against the other schools. Very few people thus far have been able to recreate Harry's technique – I can do it, Professor Snape, Caelum Lestrange, who is an apprentice with the Potions Guild, but that's about all as far as I know."

Ron chewed on his lip for a moment. "Those were the only potions, in the lot, right?"

"Yes, that's right. No other potions," Bulstrode confirmed.

"Rigel, has Harry done more experimenting with the new potions?"

Harriett shrugged slightly, a little uncomfortable. "It's more of a potions technique than an actual potion," she explained carefully. "So, yes, she has been experimenting more. However, if there were only the two vials in the group, then there won't be anything else in this match – the base potion she has been working with is quite different."

She was lying, but it was only a lie by omission, so Aldon guessed that Arcturus wasn't able to recreate any of Harriett's potions, but that he had supplied two made by her for this competition. Perhaps, since he was masquerading as Harry Potter at school, and Harriett's few papers thus far had been published under "Harry", he hadn't been able to get out of it.

"All right, then," Ron decided. He looked at the three main players, his blue eyes uncommonly stern. "Tomorrow, Rigel, don't leave your post for any reason. Chances are, neither the potion nor the Barrier Button will pose any difficulty, so you're the last line of defense. Even if AIM takes out both Cedric and Angelina, they still need to come for you, either to polish you off or destroy the keystone, so don't leave your post. Cedric, Angelina – it's on you to bring us a win."

Aldon didn't sleep well that night. It didn't feel like he slept at all – he felt as though he had lain, awake, staring at the top of his four-poster most of the night, listening to Ed's calming, even breaths from the bed beside his. But that didn't make any sense, he didn't have the patience to lie in bed for eight, nine hours at a time. Whenever he couldn't sleep, he inevitably got up and read by wandlight, the curtains on his four-poster closed, until he fell asleep over his books. It happened, from time to time, when he was stressed, and on the rare occasion that Ed caught him at it, Ed would hex him into sleep. The fact that he hadn't gotten annoyed, gotten up, and started reading, and that he hadn't found a book under him when he got up, meant that he must have slept. He just didn't feel like he had.

He rolled out of his bed a little after six in the morning, taking his usual care with his robes and his hair, stacking some of his more useful magical theory texts in his messenger bag, and took breakfast with him to the strategy room. He wasn't even the first person there – Cho was there, checking and double-checking her notes, moving things around with nervous energy. She had laid out the large square of magicked parchment, sent from the ICW the week before, onto the main table. Once the game started, the parchment would reveal the terrain and the location of the other team's keystone, though not the other team's players. They might be able to identify, with enough familiarity with the terrain, where the other players were using the main imaging orb, but that was a matter of luck. Her communication orb, swirling dark green, was sitting in front of her, within easy reach.

Aldon joined her, setting his own communication orb within reach, in sight of both the map and the main imaging orb. He stacked his books – it was only four texts, with an emphasis on charms, beside him, and began paging through the tournament teams booklet without really paying attention to it. He had looked over the AIM team roster so many times that he had the names, the faces memorized. John Kowalski had a square jaw and close-cropped brown hair, and wore a jaunty grin. By contrast, Jessica Calderon-Boot had a stern expression, no smiles for her. Her dark hair was pulled up, out of her face, held tightly in a no-nonsense braid. Their third team member, Sidney Foster, was dark-skinned and slight, and wore a similarly serious expression. Aldon had, like the other strategists, put a note beside Kowalski's name, noting that the family carried the gift of Natural Legilimency. It was an outside chance, but a chance was a chance.

It was shortly after eight-thirty that Ron walked in, carrying a stack of toast on a napkin. He set them on the table, much to Cho's annoyance, and set his own communication orb, violently purple, in front of him. He ignored her glare, and instead pulled open his own team roster booklet. Aldon saw that he had messily scrawled strategy notes for the AIM team on their roster page, including far more notes than Aldon had.

The game would start at ten sharp, and Alex had ordered all team members to be present in the strategy room no later than nine-thirty. The Healers had each received a Portkey, earlier in the week, though the activation charm on it wouldn't become effective until the game started. It wasn't effective immediately, as many Portkey charms were; apparently there had been developments in the Portkey charm over the past few years, so it was possible to set both an activation time and an activation phrase, such that it wouldn't whisk the Healers away until after a certain time had passed, and the correct phrase was given. The three players, too, had Portkeys to access the battleground, but once used, theirs did not allow them to exit until the game was over, until some Tournament official somewhere had declared the game over and reactivated them through a linked charm.

The three Healers, as well as the Weasley Twins, had each taken seats in the comfortable end of the room, taking the armchairs and pouffes. It was less critical that they had a clear view of the game, though Aldon thought the twins would be useful to have in the room in case AIM did come up with anything new. He took deep, calming breath – he didn't dare hope that Harriett's potions were the extent of their ingenuity this year. For everything he had said before, he hoped he wouldn't actually need to reverse-engineer a new spell in the middle of a match.

Bones and Bulstrode had both chosen seats close to the imaging orb, fortunately out of the line of sight of the strategists, both with parchment on hand to take notes. Aldon spotted a copy of the Tournament Regulations sticking out of Bones' bag, on the floor beside her seat. Alex joined them at the main table, as the person in charge of the strategy room – it would be him that ordered the Healers in, that made decisions on any appeals, that made the ultimate call on any changes of strategy.

The room was coolly, eerily silent. Even the twins seemed to have been affected by the tense atmosphere, sitting quietly and holding a silent conversation with each other. Team uniforms were the purview of each team, and Aldon recalled vaguely that Harriett said she had asked Pansy to equip them in that respect. Pansy had gone extremely practical with the outfits, though they remained fashionable; she had chosen to equip them entirely in black, with tight trousers and long tunics which stretched almost to the knee, split up the sides to the waist to allow for easy movement. They were trimmed in house colours, for those who cared, and Aldon saw that the belts they each wore were buckled with a House crest, rather than the school crest. He ran his eyes over Harriett's form appreciatively – the belt cinched in at her waist, showing her hips, but he didn't think anyone would notice if they didn't already know the ruse. Cedric's shoulders, too, were shown to great effect. The players were checking over their items, which were mostly shrunk and held in a belt-pouch, though Harriett was adjusting the knife in her boot. Each of them wore their communication orbs on their ears, though only Angelina had a piercing; both Cedric and Harriett were wearing them as clasps. They were each given a one-way imaging orb as well, which they were to set down once they were in the battleground – apparently each one was charmed to follow a player around, projecting their position to the main imaging orb. It was both entertainment and a safety precaution.

They heard the school, heavy footsteps feet and loud voices, crossing Entrance Hall and entering the Great Hall, more of them as the hour drew near. They would have snacks throughout the morning, Aldon knew, and while he might normally have liked desserts too, he didn't think he would be able to eat anything during the game itself. He was grateful they couldn't hear anything said; he knew that, despite the amount of work that had gone into preparations, a good proportion of the school didn't take the Tournament seriously. Why would they? They didn't know enough to take it seriously.

Ten minutes before the game began, the imaging orb turned on, and began playing advertisements. Of course it would – how else would the tournament recoup its costs? With four battlegrounds, the charms and wards needed, the specialized communication orbs and imaging orbs … much of the equipment running the Tournament was top notch, new, expensive. But then, he had already figured that the Tournament was very much a big deal outside of Wizarding Britain, so there was little surprise there.

He watched the advertisements with some interest. He didn't recognize most of the brands, the products being featured, but he smiled when he saw one for the Firebolt among them. There were candy shops, robes that looked nothing like British fashion, various magical cleaning potions, shoes, anything he could think of, it was there.

A minute before the game began, the scene changed, showing a great clock ticking down. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven… Aldon tried to see the terrain behind the numbers, but there was only green. Green leaves, trees, grass. He couldn't see enough that would be useful. He glanced around the room; Ron, too, was glaring at the image, looking around the numbers, while Cho tapped on the table nervously. Angelina was fidgeting at her earring, Cedric was gripping his Portkey perhaps a little too tightly, and Harriett, well, Harriett was expressionless.

Ten, nine, eight…

Aldon heard the chanting from the Great Hall, counting down the last few seconds, loud enough even to penetrate the strategy room. He wished they wouldn't. It was distracting.

Three, two, one.

Zero.

The three players popped out of existence.

Ron immediately sprung to his feet, leaning over the map on the table, while Aldon stared at the one-way imaging orb. The screen showed the AIM team first, appearing on the battleground under a canopy of dark, wet, trees. They were in the south of Britain, then, Aldon realized quickly – Hogwarts was still trapped under a layer of snow. It must have been colder than they were used to, because one of them, Jessica Calderon-Boot, immediately cast a warming charm. The image then switched to the Hogwarts team, also under a different canopy of trees, though Aldon was glad to see that none of their players seemed to be freezing. Pansy must have prepared their uniforms for the weather.

"Ced, can you hear me?" Cho asked, tapping on her communication orb. "Reply."

"Loud and clear, Cho."

"Angelina?" Ron asked, hand on his orb.

"Yes, I'm here. This is weird. I know we practiced, but it's still weird."

Based on the image, Harriett was still standing with her two teammates, though she was casting around for the Hogwarts team keystone.

"Testing, Rigel," Aldon said, touching his orb, his eyes on her.

"Confirmed," she replied curtly, as the image spun away to the AIM players once more. They had split up, now – it looked as though Calderon-Boot was shimmying up a tree, for a good vantage point, and the other two were gone.

"Game plan, everyone," Ron said, looking around and them all. "Let's go. Angelina, Cedric, start moving."

"Aldon, I found the keystone," Harriett's said, her voice echoing eerily from the communications orb. Aldon glanced up at the image being projected not only to them, but to AIM and in the Great Hall. It showed Cedric moving cautiously through the trees, listening to Cho's instructions based on the map. Periodically, he used the Point Me spell to orient himself to her directions, but she was guiding him, slowly, into AIM's territory.

"As planned, then."

Harriett's orders were, rather than stay still in one location, to circle the Hogwarts keystone a short way away with sensing and listening charms, so that she couldn't be taken unawares. Those spells had to be far enough away that she would have time to prepare to intercept, and she would stay on guard inside the circle of sensing spells, but she had to be far enough away that the keystone wasn't identifiable on the image when she appeared. The AIM strategists would sometimes see her, but not the keystone itself. She was the last line of defense, and their studies of the past games showed that AIM was not a bloodthirsty school. They would go for the keystone, rather than trying to eliminate players.

Angelina, too, was on the move. The terrain was hilly, with trees too close together, the canopy blocking out the morning sunlight in most of the scenes that Aldon caught. He was focused on Harriett, checking in with her once a minute, listening to her quiet replies. She kept her voice down, and the mere fact that she hadn't appeared on the image often meant that she was doing very little interesting. The few times she did appear, he was glad that she simply seemed to be doing what the other players were doing: walking around in the woods in smooth, even strides.

Most of the players, it seemed, were just moving under the trees. Aldon hated it – all of it looked the same to him on the screen. Glancing at the map, he could tell that Ron had directed Cedric and Angelina to move in a pincer movement towards the AIM keystone. Harriett was moving in solid, slightly wobbly circles around their keystone, just waiting. He had no idea where the three AIM players were, though it looked like Calderon-Boot had set herself in a tree somewhere and planned on staying there. No doubt she was their keystone defender. She had her wand out, and was adjusting something on her shoulder, it appeared, but they couldn't get a good vantage point on it. The orb set to following her hadn't managed to get a good view of her.

"Angelina, from the air." Ron ordered, his voice tense and his eyes on the screen. She had the longer distance to travel to get to the keystone, having actually moved a little farther away from it on her trajectory, but it would bring her in from a different direction than Cedric was approaching it from.

"Finally," she grumbled, pulling out her broom from her belt-pouch. Since they couldn't shrink the broom, they had put an Undetectable Extension Charm on it, but her broom came out easily enough. She launched into the air, flying low and using the Point Me spell to arrow in on her target.

Aldon checked in with Harriett twice more, receiving quiet confirmations that everything was all clear on her end, when the tense silence was broken by Ron, swearing loudly.

His head snapped up, looking at the redhead. "Angelina, answer me," Ron growled at his orb, but Cho shook her head frantically, rapping his hand, and pointed at the image.

It was a minute later, some sort of replay because Ron was already swearing at his orb, but Aldon watched as Calderon-Boot fiddled with whatever she had on her shoulder, sighting a dark shape upwards. A cool voice he didn't recognize came across on the imaging orb: Calderon-Boot's strategist, he assumed.

"Jess, we're golden. Now."

"Roger that."

Her follower-orb finally seemed to wake up and move with her, moving up above the canopy. Angelina was just a smudge in the blue sky, certainly too far away for Calderon-Boot to do anything about, and yet she raised her item, a dark shape with a narrow muzzle, braced against her shoulder, and whispered the words.

"Stupefy. Stupefy. Stupefy."

The image snapped, swapping to the orb that covered Angelina's movements. She was flying, staying close to the canopy line, keeping a careful eye on the ground in front of her.

It was because she was focused on the ground in front of her that she didn't see the red light coming her way until it was too late. She spotted the first line just in time, swerving sharply, but fell in the line of the second and third spells, and down she went into the trees, her broom now flying, without her, harmlessly across the battleground.

Aldon heard the crack behind him signalling that one of the Healers had gone in to retrieve her, but he was distracted by Ron yelling at him.

"What the fuck was that?!"

"Shut up, Ron," he snapped into action, tapping on his communication orb. It was more important that Harriett know that there was an item on the field allowing for long-range shots, and Ron would hear that explanation anyway. "Rigel, Angelina's been eliminated. Long-range Stupefy. Calderon-Boot has an item with a strong amplification spell on it, extending her range. The item probably also has something to improve her vision – she hit Angelina from more than a hundred yards away. Great aim – she hit two out of three body shots."

"Got it."

He heard Cho awkwardly adopting his explanation and relaying it to Cedric, and turned to Ron, raising his eyebrow slightly. Ron coughed slightly in apology, but his blue eyes sharpened as he looked back at the image. "Oh, shit."

"Thanks, Cho, but I'm under fire here," Cedric's voice, strained and yet cheerful, came through. He had been ambushed by Kowalski, who still wore a disturbingly jaunty grin as he threw a series of curses and hexes at Cedric. Cedric was fast, though, dodging and blocking and giving as good as he got, but none of his spells came close to the other boy. They were each being deflected by blocking spells, but…

But Kowalski wasn't casting blocking spells. Of the things he cast, not a single spell was Fortis, and yet he recognized Fortis spell appearing around him to intercept every spell Cedric cast at him. It wasn't that he was holding the Fortis spell, which would be challenging enough, it was that he was casting it anew each time. He wasn't casting it – and yet, he was. He should have been exhausted, and yet he wasn't. Somehow, Aldon didn't think it was because he was a Lord-level wizard.

"Rigel, AIM has something new. Some sort of automated shield spell. I need to focus on that for a moment. Yell if anything changes."

"Will do."

He hesitated for a moment, then he picked up the orb and carried it with him closer to the image, staring at the interplay of spells. Cedric had changed over to curses that couldn't be blocked, only countered, but Kowalski turned out to be a mean dueller, too, recognizing and dodging as many spells as he could. He was preternaturally good at determining what spells Cedric was casting, even though Cedric was doing half of his spell-work nonverbally.

Kowalski wasn't, though. His spells were verbal, they were just quiet and fast. His reaction time was incredible. He looked over the other player carefully – he was big, but younger than a seventh-year, Aldon thought. No more than a fifth-year, perhaps. The AIM uniforms were blue, their shirts form-fitting and short, considerably shorter than the Hogwarts tunics and almost indecent, and their pants were a little looser, with the same belt-pouches. There was nothing he could be hiding in those clothes, and he struggled to remember what, exactly, the AIM team had brought in. Bulstrode had only really mentioned the potions, and she hadn't been concerned about the rest, though since she didn't identify whatever object had allowed Calderon-Boot to cast a long-range Stupefy, Aldon was starting to mistrust her judgement.

He heard a crack behind him, and he knew that one of the Healers had returned with Angelina. He didn't bother looking behind him – they would have taken her right to the Hospital Wing if she was seriously injured. He had more important things to do.

Aldon didn't know enough about what items the AIM team had brought in, and he didn't have time to quiz Bulstrode more right now, not when Cedric had to have answers now. And, to be fair, he didn't think it was an item, because even if Kowalski wasn't casting the Fortis spell with his wand, he was casting it somehow. He had to be casting it, because Cedric had largely swapped to casting spells that couldn't be blocked by Fortis, and he was correctly identifying which spells to dodge or counter and which ones to block. He was casting Fortis non-verbally, too, but since he wasn't casting anything else non-verbally, there was something different about it.

Channelling methods weren't an item, either, so they didn't need to be declared.

All of this ripped through his head in less than five minutes, and he was motioning Cho to trigger her communication orb. Her eyes were wide, as he came around beside her, and her hand was on her orb.

His link to Harriett was already triggered, the orb already in his hand.

"Cedric, it's Aldon. AIM has a new magical channelling method – I'm not sure what it is, which is why I think it's new." He heard his voice coming off the imaging orb, too, cracking by a second after he said it like a strange, otherworldly echo. He ignored it. "Whatever it is, I think it's most like the partially imbued paper charms – he's cut down the casting time and increased efficiency at least three-fold, else he should be staggering by now, unless he's Lord-level. Basically, think of the spell has being half-casted, all the time. You won't get by it. The good news is, he hasn't tried anything else with it, so I'm pretty sure Fortis is all he can cast with it. Forget anything that can be blocked, or physical attacks. Hit his mind if you can."

"Got it," Cedric's voice was terse. He was using the trees as cover, but it blocked his aim as much as it protected him.

"You have a flashbang, Ced," Ron practically yowled in Aldon's ear, his own communication link with Angelina lying, dead, on the table across from him. "Use it!"

True to their orders, Cedric threw a flashbang out from his cover, and it exploded in a cacophony of noise, shattering several of the nearby trees. Flashbangs were not supposed to do that, and Aldon chanced a glance at the twins, who grinned sheepishly at him. It created a blocky, sharp, clearing, which wasn't part of the plan, because Cedric hadn't been expecting it to do anything other than flash and bang, and he was consequently unprepared for the concussive wave knocking him to the ground.

He scrambled up, and the screen changed to Kowalski, blinking a little at the light and frowning. He had his wand trained on his face, and by the time the dust cleared and Cedric was back on his feet, the advantage had been lost. "Good try," he commented cheerfully, before bringing his wand back in play. "But AIM is a Healing school, you know. Let's duel, Hogwarts-boy."

Cedric didn't dignify that with a response, which Aldon thought was entirely appropriate, instead throwing himself into another round of spell-fire. Aldon saw he did use a wide range of mind-altering spells, this time, but Kowalski was preternaturally quick at identifying them and either dodging or countering. He wasn't so fast offensively, Aldon noted – he got off the usual rounds of Stupefy, Impedimenta, Expelliarmus, the Vertigo Jinx, Confundus, but none of them connected. If it wasn't for the secondary casting method, whatever it was, Cedric was easily the better dueller.

"Should I go… help?" Harriett's voice came out of the orb, echoing weirdly. Aldon realized that he had been clutching the communication link, and that she was following along based on what she heard.

"Absolutely not," he snapped, at the exact same moment that Ron said, "Abso-fucking-lutely not."

"All right, then."

Ultimately, Kowalski didn't take Cedric out.

Foster did, appearing from behind Cedric and felling him with a single, neatly placed, Stupefy.

Cho swore.

"What have I told you about playing with your food before you eat it, John?" Foster asked, one dark eyebrow raised in slight annoyance.

"Man, I wasn't even playing," Kowalski replied, lightly shaking out his shoulders. "He was good. Flashbang wasn't anything I'd seen before either. Let's go – Marsh says they're two down."

Foster saluted his teammate, slightly ironic, and strode off.

"I'm… guessing from that whole exchange that Cedric is out," Harriett said, her voice unusually calm.

Aldon blew out a long breath. "You guessed right." His voice was cold, emptier that it should be, a sheet of ice coating it, and set his orb down on the table, closing the communication link. The image orb had returned to views of the four remaining players, walking in the woods. The forest was unusually calm, quiet – there weren't even birds.

"They won't want to eliminate him, though," Ron interrupted sharply, suddenly, looking up at the image. Harriett was looking around carefully, cautiously, but there wasn't a hint of fear on her face. Aldon would have thought it odd, but then again, the girl had already dealt with a basilisk and a crazed Hogwarts teacher, so maybe an unlikely-to-cause-serious-harm war game wasn't that worrying. Aldon wished he could say the same, because his heart was beating a vicious rhythm in his chest. "Or, probably not. They want the keystone more – we're in pools, they want a five-nothing win. He needs to back further off the keystone – standing by it is going to be a giant sign telling them where our keystone is."

"I don't know, Ron," Cho said, hesitating. Aldon glanced at the back of the room – both Angelina and Cedric were back. Cedric was fine, having been revived quickly, but Stark still had Angelina out and was Healing something. "They might want to go after the keystone, but they only need to eliminate Rigel – a three-nothing win is still a win. And he already has the listening and sensing spells circling the keystone, so wouldn't they be able to tell roughly where it is anyway? I say we set up the other precautions and just have him wait for the attack."

"The sensing spells are tied to Rigel, though," Aldon added. "They wouldn't sense them unless they were specifically looking for them – certainly, even if they sensed them when they crossed the line, they wouldn't know that it's a circle around the Hogwarts keystone."

"From the items, Cho, we know that they can break the protection potion, and the Barrier Button is a Marauder product – they know how to counter both. Our extra protections will buy us time, nothing more, and they outnumber us, and those protections will make the keystone stand out." Ron bit his lip, thinking, then grimaced. "We're pinned. Our choices are really this: we can have Rigel close to the keystone, with the extra protections, and hope he can take them on two or three on one, or we can have him move further away and rely on the fact they want a five-nothing win. If we do that, I think they'll split their forces – one of them will hold Rigel down while the other looks for the keystone."

"Rigel is a good dueller," Aldon said, turning to catch Alex's eye. The taller Ravenclaw had been at the back, checking on Angelina and Cedric. Angelina was conscious, again, though the look on her face said she wasn't too pleased. "He can take them on, one on one. It's an outside chance – if he can eliminate the one holding him down, he can return to defend the keystone."

There was a pause, as the strategists and Alex exchanged glances, and Alex nodded. "Pass on those orders, Aldon."

"Rigel, move away from the keystone," Aldon said, with no preamble, triggering his communication link. "One of them will come after you. Eliminate him as fast as possible and return to defend the orb."

There was a cool pause, and then her response.

"Understood."

Aldon looked up to the image to see that she was still walking in woods, with not a hint that anything was different than before. As the last Hogwarts player, though, whoever was controlling the image orbs had clearly decided that she was the most interesting focus, because she took up most of the screen, most of the time. Her follower-orb tracked her movements, sailing above and beside her like a weird, haunting, ghost. She paused often, stopping to scan the trees around her, both with her senses and with her magic. Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty, and Aldon saw her tilt her head slightly as something caught her attention.

"Rigel Black," Kowalski said, melting out of the trees like a shadow, sidestepping her Vertigo Jinx. They locked eyes for a minute, and that was when Aldon knew. She fired another spell at him, a Confundus Charm, and he dodged it, too, with eerie grace. "Your cousin talks about you a lot, you know."

"Funny. I've never heard of you," Harriett replied casually, throwing another spell at him, which he deflected with his Fortis charm. This one was non-verbal – he didn't know she had the ability. Her voice was cool, calculating, a little stiff. "You're a Natural Legilimens."

She was panicking, Aldon knew. He could hear it in the stiffness of her voice, in the uncommonly still way that she held herself, see in in the fact that she wasn't holding him down with a barrage of spell-fire like they had practiced – but it had nothing to do with the Tournament. No, if Kowalski was a Natural Legilimens and he knew her cousin, then…

"That I am. I get it from my grandmother. Nice shields, by the way – Harry's have gotten much better in the past couple years too, but yours are something else." He grinned, an open, friendly grin with just a hint of challenge, but it shifted immediately into surprise.

It was a split second before his strategist's voice, a low baritone, came over imaging orb. "John, Jess has been attacked. She's out."

"What? But—"

"I know."

Distraction was distraction, even if it made no sense, and Aldon grasped at it, tapping his communication link, his voice a near unrecognizable growl. "Rigel, now, we can worry about he said later!"

He had the briefest glimpse of Harriett and Kowalski exchanging spellfire, before the imaging orb spun away to a view of Jessica Calderon-Boot. She was in the tree, still, the device that he didn't recognize now lying loosely in her arms. He heard Alex's sharp intake of breath, and there was a loud crack of a spell, and her head snapped back, and she was falling, bleeding and falling, something clearly broken, and then she was on the ground, her blood, so much of her blood, seeping in a puddle around her. Two AIM Healers had already Portkeyed in – he recognized Arcturus, and the other was a girl, who had her dark hair tied out of her way in a no-nonsense ponytail. They were working frantically on her, and the girl had pulled out a Blood-Replenishing Potion, and Aldon knew that whatever it was, it was serious. They would have Portkeyed her out with them if it wasn't. It was a few minutes before Arcturus, grim-faced, stood up, crossing his arms in the "X" signifying that his player could not continue play.

The image spun again, to Harriett and Kowalski's duel on the other side of the map. Harriett was the better dueller, by a considerable margin, but even without his Legilimency, Kowalski still had his other channelling method, which he used with abandon. It also helped that he wasn't trying to win – he was just distracting her, Aldon realized, because when she was preoccupied with him, she was not defending her keystone. He didn't need to be the better dueller, he only needed to be good enough to not be hit, bothersome enough that Harriett couldn't turn her back. He only needed to be good enough to buy time for his teammate.

And he was good enough. While he was hard-pressed by Harriett's fast spell-work and her wide repertoire, between his new channelling method, his speed, and his own spell-work, he was plenty good enough. Harriett was better defensively than she was attacking, Aldon realized. She was excellent at taking advantage of the opportunities provided to her when other people attacked her, but she wasn't as strong against duellers who mainly defended themselves. In most situations, that would be fine – just not in this one, because Kowalski had no need to attack her.

They waited, and the longer they waited, the more his stomach dropped. He looked at Ron, whose eyes were trained, lips pressed hard together, on the imaging orb, and at Cho, whose hands were gripping the table so tightly he thought she had made dents in the wood with her fingernails. Alex, by contrast, was sitting in his chair, grim-faced, thinking.

The moment the imaging orb spun to show the Hogwarts keystone was almost an inevitability. It was a small, almost indiscernible rock, covered in moss and trapped between the roots of an ancient yew tree. He saw Foster, searching the grounds with his wand, spot it and, with a tight, white, smile, point his wand at it.

"Confringo."

The rock exploded, and a great gong rang out through the battleground.

"Winner: The American Institute of Magic, 5 to 1."

XXX

Aldon stayed in the strategy room that entire day. He remembered the icy silence that fell in the room, that he heard from the Great Hall. Facing the school would be something that they would have to do, another day, because with a few exceptions, Alex had effectively sealed their room. No one was to enter. No one was to leave. The first hour had been by regulation, to wait for score confirmation, since an hour was the appeal deadline. Once the appeals were launched, though, it was customary, but not a rule, for at least the affected team members to wait until they were resolved.

Harriett had gotten back easily enough under her own power, Portkeying in a minute after the game result was declared. She was not happy to be locked in the room with them past the customary hour, and it showed – something about needing to get to her Potions lab, but when she had tried to say something, to leave anyway, Alex had gotten in the way and shoved her roughly back into an armchair.

AIM, as Cho had predicted, white-faced, in the first few minutes, filed an appeal for their player, Calderon-Boot. She had lost a lot of blood, and in the short snippet they had seen, the usual Healing spells didn't seem to be working, suggesting that it was "action likely to permanently disfigure, maim, or kill". Even if not, the timing was suspicious, and as it stood, Hogwarts generally stood accused of cheating.

In response, Alex ordered Bones to file an appeal on the game for the long-range amplification device, even though she told him that, based on precedent, it wasn't likely to be successful – Angelina had been flying close to the canopy, and she had only broken a couple bones on the way down. It wasn't the sort of action that fell under "action likely to permanently disfigure, maim, or kill". And, anyway, Cho said, Mahoutokoro shot people off their brooms all the time. That was their playing style.

Harriett technically wasn't implicated by either appeal – her whereabouts during both incidents were well-established, but Alex made no exception for her. Aldon should have said something; Alex's shove had been hard, forceful. He almost had, but he had looked at his friend's face, coolly patrician with blazing, summer-blue eyes, and he had wondered if he had ever known him. Alex was normally cool – his sentences were normally short, to the point, dropping unnecessary words, and Aldon had always thought that a reflection of his sharp intelligence. Alex was smart, and he was nonchalant, and even if he smiled and snorted and snickered sometimes, he was unalterably cool. That was why they had become friends. Alex didn't ask him a lot of questions, he just was. He was a lot like Ed, a version of Ed that was tempered glass instead of cold stone.

This Alex was different. Alex was blazing, and he exercised his authority with no qualms. He ordered Harriett to stay in the strategy room, his right hand wavering uncomfortably close to his wand and he kept a sharp eye on her. She tried to leave perhaps two or three more times, that first couple hours, and each time he intercepted her and redirected her back into the armchair. The last time she tried, he told her that if she did it once more, he would Petrify her, then have Aldon bind her in the armchair with a runic ward. She had frozen then, her grey eyes glittering strangely, then settled back in the armchair, a mulish expression on her delicate face.

It lasted the second hour, and part of a third, before Alex relaxed even a little, realizing that the twins, backed by Harriett, were on the verge of a revolt. Instead, he simply emphasized to all of them, in no uncertain terms, that since they were all formally charged with cheating, they all needed to remain accounted for until the decision was made, and asked Stark and Jones to go to the kitchens and order them food. He let them go, in pairs, to collect anything they might need with strict orders to return immediately, lest he need to go retrieve them personally.

Aldon only left, once, with Ed, to retrieve parchment for a paper he needed to write, not even questioning the order to return. Even the twins obeyed, leaving once for a pack of Exploding Snap and returning. It was surprising, in a way, but Alex was in charge, he was their leader, in a way that Aldon didn't think he could explain to anyone who hadn't been under it. It was leadership, he realized soon enough. Leadership presence. Alex had it, and he gave the orders, and he expected them to be obeyed, and they were.

It was half-six when Bones returned, looking pale and drawn, her arms full of the Triwizard Tournament Regulations.

"No luck," she said, setting her book down on the table and sitting in a hastily vacated chair that Stark offered her. "They said Angelina was too close to the treeline and ground, and with the canopy to catch her, there was no risk of permanent disfigurement, maiming, or death. Worse news, too – Granger's appeal for Calderon-Boot succeeded. They believed us that we had nothing to do with it, which was borne out by the Portkey logs, but that made it an unlawful interference in the game by a third party. And whatever spell was cast, it was bad – whoever did it tied the Cutting Curse with a Dark hex that kept the blood from clotting. If AIM weren't a school that focused on Healing, she would have died. As it is, she nearly died anyway, and she's going to have the scars forever. AIM's putting in their alternate for their next games. So the official score is 5 to 0."

There was a long, dark silence. Aldon looked around the room: Harriett, Ed, and the other two Healers were sitting in armchairs at the back, Harriett farthest from the door. The rest of them were seated at the table, Ron looking exceptionally pale under his freckles. Cho had a mildly shell-shocked expression on her face, as did Angelina and Cedric, and Bulstrode looked drawn. Bones was refusing to look at Bulstrode, her face tight and focused. Even the twins were looking grim, and the expressions were so unusual on their faces that it just looked wrong.

"Let's review what happened today, everyone," Alex said, his voice quiet, a sharp dagger in the silence. He was speaking in full sentences, which was a little unlike him, and Aldon heard the whisper of something else in his words. Was it the barest hint of a lisp? "We'll start with the sniper rifle. Bulstrode, would you like to tell us why you didn't tell us that AIM would have a sharpshooter with them?"

Bulstrode shifted uncomfortably under the team's stare. "I didn't know what it was. They called it an assistive aiming device, and I didn't think much of it. And I did tell you about it, I made a joke about it."

"An assistive aiming device," Alex repeated, his voice still cold steel. "And you didn't think to ask questions? You thought that it was grounds for a joke?"

She quailed under his glare. "Well, it's AIM, you know…"

Ron snorted. "And because it's AIM, they're not purebloods, of course they need something to help them aim," he snapped, disgusted. "That's what you're trying to say, isn't it? Angelina broke three ribs on the way down. She hit the branches in a bad position."

Bulstrode looked away, refusing to dignify that with a reply, though it was patently obvious from the look on her face that he had hit the nail on the head.

Alex waited for a minute longer, to see if she had anything else to say, then turned to the rest of the hushed room for any further comments. There were none, and he turned back to her, still looking anywhere but at anyone in the room. "Obviously, that is a problem. It is a problem, Bulstrode, that you cannot set aside your preconceived ideas to do your main duty, which is to examine what items other schools are going to be bringing into the competition. If you can't identify a sniper rifle as a problem, then why should we have you be a part of this team?"

"Wait," Harriett rocketed to her feet, a little unsteady. Her face was drawn, but set. "Millie didn't know, she'd never seen one before. We all make mistakes. That doesn't mean that she can't do her duties."

"But I don't trust her to, anymore," Angelina said quietly. "If I had known that long-range spells were a possibility, I would have done things differently. I would have stayed under the treeline. It's not about whether she can do it, it's about whether we can trust her to do it. I don't."

"Part of that might have been our fault, too, to be fair," Cedric interrupted, his voice even. "I don't think it's even a matter of trust – I don't think Millicent has the necessary skills for her job. Susan, we took her on because with her background in wizarding law, we knew that she would be good at interpreting the tournament regulations and arguing the appeals. We took Millicent on because with her background in international politics, we thought that she would know more about other wizarding communities and any recent developments that could affect the games. We misjudged the kind of items that people would be bringing in. We should have looked for a second magical theorist, or put Aldon in the role."

Bulstrode's head snapped up, grasping at the hint of hope. "Why didn't Rosier pick it up, then? What's his excuse?"

Aldon glared at her – she was a Slytherin, she should know rank. And respect. "Rosier did pick it up," he said, his voice a quiet, mocking, purr. "Rosier was the one who explained how it worked as soon as he saw it work. But I couldn't possibly have known they had brought in a spell amplification device unless you told me. Don't pin this on me, Bulstrode – you're the one responsible for reviewing the other team's items before they go on. You need to actually know something about the items you're reviewing to do that, of course."

"Rosier saved our ass in there," Ron said, similarly glaring at Bulstrode, and Aldon was so surprised that he stopped glaring at her. "I know it didn't count for much in the end, but at least he could tell us how to deal with things once they happened."

There was a cool pause.

"We can't recruit anyone else, at this stage," Bones said, voice devoid of any inflection, flipping open her increasingly battered copy of the Tournament Regulations. "If you remove her from the team, then we'll need to pick up the slack. We're allowed to move around the Healers, Compliance Officers and Equipment Managers to cover it, or you would need to step in, Alex."

"Are there any specific regulations for removing a team member?"

Another pause, as Bones re-read several passages from the beginning of the book. "Only for players and strategists. No one else."

"I really think that we should reconsider this," Harriett interrupted again, still standing. The twins had made room for her at the table, and while she couldn't squeeze a chair in beside them, her hands were on the table. "Millie's learned from this, it won't happen again."

It was nice of her, to defend her friend, even though Aldon privately thought it was all for naught.

"Look, Black," Angelina said, her face slightly apologetic. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you should even have a say in this. You never cared about this process before – you show up, but you don't care, at least not until your friend fucks it up for the rest of us. We're a team – you have to think about what's best for us all, not just you and your friends."

"Rigel cares," one of the twins spoke up, defending her. "When have you ever heard him complain about anything, Angelina? He carries his weight, he does what we ask him to do. And he's a team member, same as the rest of us. You don't have to like what he says, but he gets a say in it, same as the rest of us."

Angelina grunted and looked away, crossing her arms. Well, as the injured person, Aldon supposed she had a right.

"Let's put it to a vote, then," Alex ruled. "All in favour of removing Bulstrode from the team?"

All four of the Gryffindors raised their hands, the twins with apologetic glances at Harriett, as did Alex and Cho. Cedric hesitated, one long second, then he put his hand up as well. That was seven.

Some would say that it was betraying his house, but Aldon didn't think of it that way. The way he saw it, he had a choice – Bulstrode, or Harriett. A vote to keep Bulstrode in was a vote to make things more dangerous for Harriet in later games, and his hand made eight. Eight, out of fourteen.

"Carried. Bulstrode, leave your Tournament Regulations book and get out. Don't come back." Bulstrode, looking down, slowly pulled her book out from her bag, dropping it on the table with a dull thud. Slowly, she pulled herself up from the table and walked out, face lowered, though Aldon still spotted the shine of tears in her eyes. "Aldon, can you rework the wards on this room to exclude her magical signature, or should I ask Professor Dumbledore to do it?"

Aldon stood, pulling out his wand and walking to the heavy wooden door, checking over the wards. He recognized them – it hadn't been Dumbledore to set up this ward, but Flitwick, and he spotted Flitwick's telltale explanation tags all over the spell work. Since he was always harping on their class to include explanation tags in their work, he was pleasantly surprised to see that his professor at least practiced what he preached. He found the permitted persons section easily, rifling through the magical matrix until he found the tag labelled Millicent Bulstrode. He snipped out that portion, letting the magic snap back into the matrix, where it shifted to cover the gap. The loose bit of magic, Bulstrode's magical signature, he disintegrated with a deft mental twist, snapping in the air as light. "It's done."

"Good." Alex stopped, looking at the lot of them again. "Healers, Susan, Equipment Managers – you're free to go. The rest you will not want to hear, and it will not particularly relevant to you anyway."

Two of the Healers, Stark and Jones, rose and left with no complaints. Bones stood, but she paused, staring at Alex for a long moment.

"You'll tell me if there's anything I need to know, right?" she asked, though her tone said that it was not a question. "If you're even contemplating breaking the regulations…"

"Go on, Susan," Alex said, favouring her with a small smile. "Go sleep. You've earned it, and yes, we will tell if you all strategy beforehand. The next part is just … a trust exercise."

She looked at him skeptically, but walked towards the door, anyway. "Fine. All strategy, Alex. Don't break the regulations."

Alex turned to look at the Weasley Twins, but their faces were set. "We're staying," said one.

"You have our puppy and our baby brother," said the other. "We're staying."

"Besides, we could do with a bit of trust too," said the first, smiling winningly. "We should have told you that the flashbangs would do more than flash and bang."

Alex snorted, shaking his head, then he looked at Ed, who had been on his way out, but had stopped and taken a seat at the table beside Aldon. "Rookwood?"

"I'm staying," Ed rumbled, his mountain's voice low, and a glance in his eyes showed that he didn't believe the trust exercise explanation any more than Aldon did. The difference, Aldon thought, was that he trusted Alex, and Ed didn't. "If Aldon must stay, then I'm staying."

Alex nodded, letting it go, and pulled a notebook from his bag, paging through it to find a diagram, and handed it to Aldon. "The three of you will wish you hadn't, soon enough. Rigel, sit down. Aldon, can you cast this? I'm afraid it's a little too Dark for me to do easily, but it should be well within your ability."

Aldon took the proffered notebook cautiously, looking over the runic diagram. It was like nothing he had seen before, but the runes were Eastern European. Did he bring that book? He had – he reached out and flipped to the dictionary at the end, identifying the runes, one by one. Runes for silence, for secrecy. A pattern for consequence. He ignored the stares around the table – he wasn't casting anything until he knew what it was. It took him many long minutes to decipher the diagram, and when he did, he looked up.

"You cannot be serious, Alex," he said, his voice betraying his disbelief. Where had Alex, a Light wizard, ever gotten a hold of this pattern? "This is…"

"I'm serious, Aldon. If you don't cast it, I will myself, affinity be damned," his friend replied, his eyes bright as a winter's morning, and Aldon knew, staring in his friend's eyes, that there was something very serious indeed about his friend that he had missed. "I've done it before and I'll do it again. You know I am speaking truth, Aldon."

Aldon pressed his lips together, looking at the diagram. He could refuse to cast it, but Alex was telling the truth – and he was having a foreboding feeling about the last sentence. If he didn't cast it, Alex would. And Alex, then, would be the only person with the keys to let them out.

He looked down at the diagram again, and stood on shaking legs, pulling out his wand. He felt drunk, gut-punched, and he grimly held onto the diagram as he paced the four walls of the room, his wand drawing out the Dark runes with little effort. They spilled from his wand, pieces of magic, patterns of light, splaying onto the walls so innocently, even if they bound them all. The magic did come easily to him – he was Dark, and for a split second, he hated that fact. But affinities were born, not chosen, and ultimately the affinity did not make the person – the fact that he was casting a Dark runic ward on the orders of a Light wizard was proof positive of that fact.

He had never cast something so aggressive before.

He finished the ward with complex knot at the door and shut the notebook loudly, a cold clap in the silence. The notebook he returned to Alex, sliding it across the table back to him with a slight tremble in his fingers.

"Thank you," his friend said, relaxing his shoulders slightly. He looked around the room – at the team members whose faces now varied from mild interest to outright horror. "Don't worry – for all of Aldon's dramatics, the ward is only a strong privacy ward."

"One that forbids us from telling anyone else anything that is said in this meeting," Aldon snapped. "One that will make us choke on the words if we try."

Alex waved his hand diffidently. "How can we begin to truly trust each other unless we have some reassurance that nothing said in this room will travel? And, anyway, the ward is outdated – there are other ways of communication than telling people. The choking will just be a reminder – the true enforcement comes from us. By the time we leave tonight, we'll each know enough about each other that we won't want to betray this trust." He paused, casting a stern eye over the rest of the room. "Someone is interfering in the Tournament."

A cold silence greeted his words, but at this stage, none of them could deny it. Someone had nearly died today, even if she wasn't on their team.

"Rigel, you never put yourself into the Tournament, did you?"

Harriett looked at the stern Ravenclaw, and nodded. "That's right."

Surprisingly, Alex's eyes flickered over to Aldon, and Aldon pressed his lips together again.

He knew. He definitely knew, and suddenly Aldon was thankful for the wards, as heavy-handed as they were.

"Well, Truth-speaker?"

Aldon coughed, throat dry, even as he heard the title spilling from his friend's lips. It was an ancient title – he had only read it in the oldest memoirs. Truth-speakers were rare, and in the past, they were accorded great respect. Before the invention of Veritaserum, they were an integral part of the Wizarding Courts of Law. His voice trembled slightly. "He speaks truth."

"I don't suppose, Rigel, you know who would have put you in for the Tournament?"

"None," she lied, and Aldon didn't need Alex to look at him before he shifted uncomfortably. She caught his shifting, though, and before Aldon had to say anything or Alex had to press her, she corrected herself. "Lord Riddle, maybe."

"I did think it was unusual that you were picked, Rigel," Angelina offered, giving her a sharp look and folding her dark hands on the table. "In the first task, you only followed Cedric's directions; in the second, you didn't put up a very good performance, even if you did save McLaggen's life. And you're a fourth year. I thought that it was because they wanted a team of one person from every House, but if Riddle put your name in, and he was on the selection committee with three of his Ministry allies, then you probably didn't have much choice."

Harriett put on a pained half-smile and left it at that.

"But if they're interfering, then what for?" Ron asked, drumming his fingers on the table in thought. "If it was Lord Riddle, then why does he want you in this Tournament? Why have we been invited to play it again, anyway? I'm not stupid, I know that we were kicked out when the Muggleborn bans came in place, but why now? We haven't lifted the bans, and if anything, they're worse now."

"The sanctions have been tough on Wizarding Britain," Ed said quietly, with a concerned glance in Aldon's direction. "Our domestic economy is still going strong, but anything we need to import is expensive. Most of the former trade families are shades of their former selves – the Selwyns were one of them. There are only a few families still able to make it in trade, and from all accounts, the Lestranges will be going down within a few years. The Lestranges are very strong supporters of the Party."

"Riddle could have promised changes to have the Tournament be played again, too," Aldon added, thinking back over the past couple years. "There have been changes over the past few years. The Marriage Law is still tabled, and even if that is mainly because Riddle doesn't have the support to pass it, he could use it as a bargaining chip at the ICW. And Society has been opening up, this last year; there were many Light families at the past two SOW Party Galas."

"Riddle knows I am powerful," Harriett said, her voice soft, her face pinched at a bad memory. "Since last year. Professor Snape told him. He doesn't like that I try to hide it."

There was a round of snorts at the table, and even Harriett smiled weakly.

"So your involvement could just be to force you to show off, then," Ron smiled, though it was equally weak. "To show off pureblood power. But what about today? Why attack AIM?"

"We were losing," one of the Weasley twins reminded him. "Losing badly."

"Let's be honest, though," Cho said. Her face was pale, luminous under the light. "We were sunk the minute Ced went down. The chances we had of pulling that out of the fire were minimal."

"But it hasn't been played in forty years, so maybe Riddle didn't know that?" the other twin asked. Aldon supposed one day he would have to learn to tell them apart. "And it did even the score a little, at least until AIM appealed."

"The appeal was always going to succeed, though," Cho said, waving her hand. "First, it was interference. Second, Calderon-Boot is going to have scars forever – that's permanent disfigurement."

"I doubt that was Lord Riddle," Ed said, shaking his head. "It doesn't serve his purposes to have it look like Hogwarts was cheating. Were he to interfere, it would not have been so obvious. Ultimately, Lord Riddle and the SOW Party want to protect our way of life – he would want to demonstrate to the world that we are stronger because of it."

"It could be an opportunist, as well." Alex tapped his fingers on the table. "There are always multiple motivations, especially for a major international event like the Tournament. We don't have enough information to guess, we can only take greater precautions going forward. Whoever interfered today is not afraid to use lethal force, and we need to be prepared to react accordingly. Which brings me to my next point, and the real reason for the wards."

He smiled at them all, showing his teeth, and Aldon felt his stomach drop, as all three Weasleys shoved themselves away from the table, Ron's chair falling to the ground with a clatter. He felt Ed's hand grip his shoulder, uncommonly tight, prepared to pull Aldon to the ground, and saw Cedric and Cho freeze, their eyes wide. Angelina's hand was reaching for her wand, and only Harriett still looked calm, though her eyes traced his face cautiously, with intense interest.

"No more secrets, not in this group. Put your wand down, Angelina, you don't need it." His fangs were tiny, only enough to dimple his lower lip if he didn't keep them carefully tucked in, and now Aldon knew why his friend tended to speak in short, clipped sentences, why his smiles were so small, tight, closed. "Aldon will tell you that I speak truth. We need to know everything that everyone in this room can do – no matter how Dark, unusual, or dangerous your secret might be. Only if we know everything can we plan, and you can all see my secret, now. My name is Aleksandr Dragić."

"You're part-vampire," Ed commented, his hand on Aldon's shoulder loosening slightly. "I assume you're part of the Order in the Balkans?"

"Part-vampire?" Ron spluttered, his voice pitching upwards almost comically. "I didn't think vampires could… I didn't think part-vampires existed."

"We're very rare," Alex said, dropping any pretense of hiding his small fangs. "Yes, I am a part of the Order, as is every dhampir. It's our sworn duty to hunt vampires, though there are less than two hundred of us world-wide, and only three of us are also wizards. Most dhampir are not magic users, and the fact that I am has made me a high priority target for the vampire community since I was very young. My parents sent me to Britain because the vampire population here is tamed, as we say. The vampires at home are decidedly not, especially with the hostilities in Bosnia. They are, as we call it, enjoying a blood frenzy."

Ron and other Weasleys were cautiously re-taking their seats, though Angelina kept her wand in hand.

"So. My skills: I am unusually strong, fast, and resilient. I know how to free duel – I've been training with another of my kind over the summers in Romania. I am a master of the blade, and have a passing familiarity with other weapons. More importantly for the moment, since I'm not actually entering the battleground, I know Muggle weaponry and battle technology, and I'm familiar with their wizarding equivalents. A sniper rifle would not have passed by me."

"Do you drink blood?" one of the Weasley twins asked, leaning forward in mild interest, and from the round of soft, nervous, laughter, Aldon could tell that it, at least, fractured the ice.

Alex favoured him with sardonic half-smile, his fang dimpling into his lower lip. "Only if I want to be court-martialed."

"I have a question," Harriett spoke up, her eyes unusually direct. "You said a few times that Aldon would say if we were telling the truth. You called him a Truth-speaker. What does that mean?"

Aldon sighed, feeling resignation seep through him. Of course Harriett would fixate on that, instead of the part-vampire before her, because his gift was the one that threatened her. She had good reason to think so, too, because Aldon had figured out her ruse.

"He means exactly what he says," Aldon answered, his voice quiet, meeting her fake, grey, eyes. He willed her to understand, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to make her understand. Yes, he knew her secret. No, he hadn't told anyone. No, he didn't plan on telling anyone, not yet, anyway, and if she wanted to keep it secret then he would try to help. He was a half-blood, too. "Lies irritate my magic. It's not a well-known gift."

"Though Aldon relies a little too much on his gift, if truth be told, I think," Alex commented, with a small, but genuine, smile. "He can be misdirected. He never found me out."

"For which I will be spending many hours in self-reflection, I'm sure," Aldon replied, rolling his shoulders lightly, shaking Ed off. He had calmed down, slightly; Alex was still the same Alex, part-vampire or not, he reminded himself. Just like he was still Aldon, Truth-speaker or not. Alex had never harmed them before, there was no reason for him to start now. His gift said that Alex told the truth. "How did you find out, Alex?"

"I didn't have confirmation until now," his friend smirked openly. "But there were clues: ordering people to stop lying was a big one. If I hadn't met another Truth-speaker in Serbia a year ago, it wouldn't have occurred to me. Now, is that your only secret?"

"No," Aldon said bluntly. "But it's the only one that matters."

Alex met his eyes, blow-torch blue to fiery orange, and there was a long pause, then he looked back at the rest of the table. "So Aldon can tell us who is lying, aside from his strengths in magical theory and runic wards. Who's next?"

There was a frozen silence around the room, before the one of the Weasley twins spoke up. "For our family, we're very much … well, what you see is what you get. Fred and I have a bit of a sympathetic link to each other, which comes in useful now and then, but not in any way that might be useful. Ronnie might be a passive Seer – sometimes his joke guesses are surprisingly on the mark."

Ron snorted. "George is making that up. There's no Seer blood in the Weasley line. I'm nothing special."

"Other than being a chess whiz," Fred corrected with a smile. "Let's not sell ourselves too short, now."

"I also have no particular gifts," Ed said, his voice smooth. He had relaxed, then, though Aldon would bet that his hand was still hovering close to his wand pocket. "I can Heal, obviously. Otherwise, and completely irrelevantly, I am a decent dueler and am good with magical creatures of all types."

Alex looked at Aldon for confirmation, and with some small hesitation, Aldon nodded.

One of the things that the oldest Truth-speakers had written about was the difficulty of being used as a living lie detector. It was one of their most important roles, centuries ago, and for all the honour and praise heaped on them, they were also not free. But it was Alex asking, and because it was Alex asking, because it was for a Tournament suddenly more serious today than it had been a day ago, Aldon thought he could live with it.

"I'll go next," Cho said, still pale but brushing her dark hair behind her ears with trembling fingers. "None of this should be a surprise. As you know, my parents went to the National Magic School of China, in the paper-casting school. My paper-casting is not very good, but I can do it. Paper-casting is difficult – it's based on our written language, and while I can speak Chinese, I'm basically illiterate – but I can teach you how to make the paper version of Hominem Revelio for the next game."

"That will be very helpful, Cho," Alex nodded, with a soft, genuine smile. "Angelina?"

The dark-skinned girl shrugged. "I suppose mine is much like Cho's. My parents went to Ougadou, but they haven't taught me how to be an Animagus yet. But I can braid extra magic into my hair – I usually have about half a core's worth in it, which I can reabsorb if I need it."

"How much can you braid in?" Aldon asked curiously. It was a talent largely used by witches and wizards trained in Africa, and he had read a mention of it in one of his books, but since their pool didn't include any of the three African schools, he hadn't looked further into it.

"For me?" Angelina reached up, touching her braids with a look of concentration. "I think I can keep about three-quarters of my core in in my hair. But the magic does come from me – I'm not making more, it's more than I can conserve the magic I don't use on one day to use another day. I usually put in some before bed, because my core will replenish itself overnight."

"Next game, then, be sure to have as much in as possible before the game starts. Extra power is never a bad thing." Alex nodded decisively, then turned to Cedric, sitting beside her, who was unusually quiet.

That was unlike him, Aldon reflected suddenly, casting his eyes over his classmate. Cedric was always one to smooth things over, always bright and easy and hopeful. He was the voice of positivity on their team, when Alex was the voice of reason. He should have been soothing out the rest of the alarm, the rest of the awkwardness, working to make everyone relax. Instead, he was pale, and his eyes flickered between Alex and Aldon carefully. He glanced at the door. "Will we really choke if we say anything about this meeting?"

His voice was queer – he didn't sound offended, or shocked. Rather, he almost seemed to be seeking reassurance.

"Yes," Alex said. "Which doesn't stop anyone from communicating what is said from this meeting, to be clear. The ward gives us enough confidence in each other to share our secrets at all, and reminds us if we try to tell anyone. If you choose to communicate what was said here, well, the ward won't stop you – your fear of the consequences will." He smiled darkly, showing his tiny fangs again.

"I'm just asking, because what you're asking me to reveal is not just my secret," Cedric said, sighing heavily. "Put your fangs away, Alex. What does everyone remember about the Conquest?"

Aldon blinked at the change of subject. The Conquest was almost a millennium ago, and most of the oldest nobility were descended from the wizards who had followed the Conqueror across from Norman France. The Malfoys, the Lestranges, even the Blacks and the Rosiers, though the Rosiers had been foot soldiers. They had nearly exterminated the existing wizarding population, those who had been around from the time of the Romans – they certainly killed their way of life. The few surviving noble families from before the Conquest, including the Peverells, had abandoned their oldest traditions in favour of survival.

Those who hadn't were slaughtered.

"In 1055, William the Conqueror came from Norman France with a contingent of both Muggle and wizarding soldiers," Cho offered slowly, squinting as she recalled the history lessons. "He conquered England."

"He didn't conquer Wales," Cedric said, looking around grimly. "Wales wasn't conquered until the reign of Henry II, more than a century later, and the Norman lords never maintained a good grip on the Welsh."

Aldon was suddenly reminded of a passage he had read in the journal of Lady Jane Dalmore, years ago. Not even ten minutes later, the Polyjuice wore off and another wizard, considerably smaller than Lord Malfoy, slipped free of the binds, spat out a phrase in the harsh Celtic tongue, and fled free … His Majesty asked that we attend her Majesty more attentively, in caution for his campaign in Wales.

He would need to copy the whole account before he left Hogwarts, he resolved. Lady Dalmore and her sisters were just too useful.

"You're saying that you know another channeling method, a second magic system," Aldon offered, voice thoughtful. Well, this was just becoming the most interesting meeting, wasn't it? "One which has, for the past five hundred years or so, been banned – even if the ban is only because the Ministry doesn't believe it exists anymore and is too lazy to take it off the books."

Cedric nodded slowly, eyeing him cautiously. "It's still a death sentence to be caught practicing the old ways."

Not for any real reason, though, Aldon thought disparagingly. There was little mention of the old Celtic ways, but from the little he had read, it was heavily reliant on natural magic. The things he had read suggested that it was connected more to wild magic, that the old Celts could call on the assistance of the elements, particularly the earth and trees. It was no more or less dangerous than wand magic. He nodded his acceptance, leaning back indolently in his chair.

"If it ever becomes a question of survival in the Tournament, use it," Alex ordered. "Surviving one more day is one more day for things to change. That leaves only Rigel."

"I hate to disappoint," Harriett said, shrugging, her voice relaxed even as her ugly grey eyes were wary. "But other than being magically powerful and good at potions, I really don't have anything else to say."

There was a light murmur of disbelief around the table, sparked predominantly by the people who knew him best. The thing about Rigel was that he lied. He lied to his enemies, he lied to his closest friends. Aldon had heard Pansy and Malfoy, at times, complain about how often their friend lied, how often he hid things from them, how often he disappeared and didn't tell anyone where he went. Rigel Black lied, and people let him lie, because their friendships with him were more important than whatever he was lying about – especially because he was nice. He was inoffensive. He cared for little except for his friends and his potions, and even if he did seem to have a monumental streak of bad luck, he clearly didn't look for it.

But this was different. This was a strategy meeting where, under Alex's extreme privacy ward, they had openly talked about the possibility of powerful politicians trying to interfere in what should have been a game. An important, international game, but still a game, where no one was supposed to die. No one was supposed to come close to dying. And yet, someone had tried to kill someone today.

And, under the ward, the others had already revealed their secrets – secrets that were dangerous, even criminal. Alex had broken the ice by revealing that he was part-human. Aldon had revealed he had a powerful and disconcerting gift. Cedric had confessed to committing a capital crime. What could be worse?

But Harriett's secrets were worse. There were treaties protecting part-humans, and honestly, for most wizards, all Alex had to do was flash those fangs and they would yield. Aldon's gift was powerful and disconcerting, but it was only a gift, even if it was a signal of his blood heritage for those who studied magical theory or wizarding genetics. Cedric's use of the old Celtic ways was illegal because it was supposed to have been stamped out, because the Ministry was lazy about cleaning up the old laws. Sticking a charge of use of Celtic magic would be difficult.

Blood identity theft was different.

He stood up, pushing himself away from the table. "Alex, may I speak with Rigel privately? I'm his strategist. We won't leave the room."

Alex studied him for a moment, before he inclined his head in respect. "Truth-speaker."

"Thank you." He looked at Harriett, motioning with a tilt of his head to the back of the room, where the armchairs waited. She stared hard at him, her ugly grey eyes suspicious, but rose and followed him. He threw up a quick runic privacy ward, then cast a strong Muffliato spell on top of it. One could never be too cautious with privacy wards.

He pushed her gently into the armchair across from her, and simply studied her for a minute. Her hair was mussed, probably from both the battleground and the day. Underneath her poker face, he saw shadows under her eyes from exhaustion. It had been a long day, for them all, and she was in combat this morning – and he remembered what Kowalski had told her, too. Her eyes were grey, and he still hated them because of what they were not, but they shone with suspicion and obstinance. Her hands were too loose on her lap, but he spotted small crescents where she had dug her nails in earlier that day in worry.

"You are having a very bad day, Harriett," he observed lightly, and was gratified by the small snort she let out in response, even if her eyes narrowed at him.

"What do you want, Aldon?" she demanded, her voice harsh under the buzz Aldon felt in his core. "Or is this about your offer? I did hear about it, at length, from my father."

Aldon's head snapped back, as if he had been slapped. How could she possibly have thought that he would ever use his knowledge for something like that? After what he had openly told her at the Gala, too? Or what about all the other conversations, they had shared, as Rigel, as Harriett, over the last few years: the first Gala she was at, his fifth year, when he told her how he hated his parents? Their almost-closeness later that year, when the school was under the terror of the basilisk? Or the Gala, the first year he met her as Harriett, their shared laughter that evening, or the awkward intensity of this past year?

Well, now that he thought of it, the list of conversations were, he supposed, dreadfully short. It was a piss-poor excuse for a relationship, really. He was friendly with her as Rigel, but he was not Malfoy. He was not Pansy. He had had two conversations with her as Harriett, and while he liked her, so much of it had been premised on the fact that he knew her secrets. And she didn't know that he had known them.

He let out a long, calming, sigh, smoothing over his feelings, hiding any sign of his sudden hurt. Though, since Harriett was Rigel, she probably saw it already.

"It is not about my offer," he replied stiffly. "Which, just so you know, was at least partially because I knew that, were it known that I were pining for the elusive Potter Heiress, I would not be pushed into any other arrangements right away. It is about how we are going to get through this Tournament with your life intact and, preferably, without you being arrested for blood identity theft."

"And why would you care about that?"

"Why wouldn't I care about that?" Aldon spread his hands. "I have told you how I feel about Society. Why did you not report me, for the things I said that night while intoxicated?"

"Because my word as a halfblood is worth only three-quarters of yours in a Wizarding Court of Law," she fired back, grey eyes glinting.

Aldon snorted in disbelief. "You're lying. That's not why you didn't report me. You didn't report me because you don't want to see me arrested. Just as I don't want to see you arrested. I don't care that you broke the law to be at Hogwarts, Harriett. I like you, and I don't want you to die: whether it be by Tournament interference, or because the SOW Party purified you."

There was a silence to that, and Aldon let Harriett chew over his words for a few minutes. She looked up, mouth opening, and he interrupted before she could make whatever offer she wanted to make for his silence. He didn't want to hear it.

"Alex only wants to know what you're capable of doing – whether it is as Harriett or as Rigel, he won't care as much. Who you are, your sex – that doesn't matter. But you need to at least give me an accurate account of your abilities, so I can tell that to him persuasively. I don't care how you learned what you know, but it's obvious that you learned Dueling from someone other than Draco Malfoy, so start there. And you can cast non-verbally, so any other unexpected skills like that, too."

She glared at him, and her eyes flickered briefly to the other team members, watching them through the privacy screen.

"I'm not telling you how I know these," she said finally, lips pressed together in a harsh line.

"I'm not asking you to."

"Fine," she snapped. "Aside from non-verbal casting, I can Apparate. I can free duel, which is why I asked for a knife. I'm a Parselmouth, and can travel through people's cores. And since all of Harry Potter's potions inventions are mine, I obviously can make them, but I'm only going to stick to the published theory."

Aldon listened, keeping a worried line from appearing between his eyes when she mentioned free dueling with effort. Where would the Book of Gold heiress of House Potter learn such a brutal skill? But he had said he wouldn't ask, so he didn't, even if he was burning with curiosity. He could always find that out later.

"Anything else?"

She paused, thinking, her head tilted up. "No, nothing," she said finally, and his gift confirmed that she, at least, believed that to be true.

"Then let me handle Alex." Aldon stood, dismissing the Muffliato spell but taking his time unravelling his privacy ward. For all his words, he was nervous. He had never known Alex, it seemed, even if his friend's words, combined with his gift, told him that Alex meant them no harm. And Ed, too, would be far tenser if there was anything worrying about Alex being a dhampir. Ed had, in fact, been one of the first to relax, as soon as Alex had confirmed he was part of the Order in the Balkans – Aldon had felt the tension seep out of him slowly as he let his grip on Aldon's shoulder lapse.

The last of his wards faded away, snapping as light, and Aldon purposely relaxed his shoulders, walking back to the table. Harriett was a few steps behind him, and she lingered as he stopped by Alex's shoulder, one hand on the back of his chair.

"Aside from non-verbal casting, which he demonstrated in his duel with Kowalski today, and his skills generally known from previous years, Rigel can Apparate, and he can free duel with a knife. He is also intimately familiar with his cousin's potions work, but out of respect for her, he will only make the potions that she has published thus far." Aldon pulled out his chair, meaning to sit in it again, perhaps with a sigh, but Alex's hand stopped him.

"Is that everything?" Alex asked, his voice whisper-soft. His blazing summer-blue eyes studied him, the emotion in them hard to read.

"Everything of importance, Alex. Everything else is irrelevant." Aldon narrowed his eyes slightly, returning Alex's stern gaze with his own fiery orange one, willing his friend to believe him. The moments ticked by – each of them was waiting to see who would break first, who would concede the unspoken battle.

"Would you swear it?"

Aldon licked suddenly dry lips, thinking fast.

The fact that Rigel Black was actually Harriett Potter was almost certainly irrelevant to the Tournament. They were one and the same, Rigel Black and Harriett Potter – the only lies were blood status, and sex. Whoever was interfering in the Tournament was focusing on Rigel Black, and it didn't matter that Rigel Black was also Harriett Potter. Her secrets harmed only her, only her and her cousin, not the rest of them. Probably.

There was a risk, there was always a risk, but he felt Harriett's eyes on him, heavy in their intensity.

"What do you want me to swear on? My magic?"

Alex snorted, but his summer-blue eyes didn't waver an iota. "Nothing so mundane. Muggle lives these days are quite comfortable, you know. And they have better music." He paused for a moment, a half-smile lingering on his lips. "Swear on your blood."

Aldon shouldn't have been surprised, even as he felt a chill of fear descend from the crown of his head. Magic, for most modern witches and wizards, was life, but swearing on magic only lost you your magic. Swearing on blood meant that, if he lied on this, his life would be forfeit, should Alex choose to take it. And, from the little he understood of Alex now, the dhampir cared about life far more than about magic.

There was a risk. There were always possible unseen consequences. But it was Alex, and Aldon knew Alex, or he thought he did before, and the Alex he knew would probably not hold any unforeseeable consequences against him. Probably.

"I assume you have a knife, then," Aldon said, his voice dry, even as he felt Ed grab the back of his robes, heard a hiss in his ear. He ignored him.

"I rarely go without," his friend said, pulling one out of his boot and standing. What was with all of his friends walking around armed, anyway? "You'll swear, then? Rigel's secrets are worth this to you, Truth-speaker?"

"I will," Aldon replied, hearing Harriett's gasp of shock behind him. He snapped his hand backwards, a sharp rap to tell her to shut up. He was busy. "They are."

"Then let's do it." Alex shook out his left wrist from his robes, unbuttoning the pearly buttons holding his cuff around his wrist and pulling the sleeve up. Aldon saw rows of scarring along the arm, patterns of past oaths. His friend scored another red line in the forest with one deft movement, and passed the knife to Aldon. Aldon felt Ed tugging the back of his robes, but he shook him off and kept his eyes on the dhampir, taking the knife.

He shook his own wrist out of his sleeve, unbuttoning his own cuff with numb fingers. The cut was easier than he thought it would be – Alex's knife was sharp. He stretched his arm across the small expanse, felt the magical link form as soon as they gripped forearms, as soon as their blood touched. He picked his words carefully.

Harriett Potter was Rigel Black. Her cousin was Arcturus Rigel Black. There was a difference, and he concentrated, hard, on that difference.

"I swear that the secret I keep on behalf of Rigel Black causes no harm to the players of this Tournament," he said slowly, his eyes trained on his friend's burning blue eyes.

"So mote it be."

And fire ripped through his veins.

XXX

AN: As per usual, thank yous go to my now-official beta-reader, meek-bookworm (honestly, she probably just got mad at me emailing her a week before post-date freaking out), and all the other people I annoy IRL with my fic-planning and fic-writing: badculture, JEM, SHL, JAP, who are all awesome at helping me plot and make the best scenes. This was one of my favourite chapters to write - Aldon reveals that he is a magical theory nerd, he is awesome at being a magical theory nerd, the Gala where Aldon drinks (for those asking, yes, he does have a bit of a problem) and meets Archie for the first time and dances with Harry, and then secrets are revealed! And then Aldon does something really rather stupid. For those of you who are curious, the songs that Lily sings were inspired by, for the earthquake song, "Unchain Utopia" by Epica, and for the Siren song, "White Waters" by Epica, "Come Cover Me" by Nightwish and "Ever Dream" by Nightwish. Next update is the last Friday in November!