A/N: There are two cows standing in a field in Britain. One turns to the other and says, "So, what do you think of that mad cow disease going around? Are you worried about it?" The other says, "No, why should I be? I'm an airplane."
"That's not true," said Vasily flatly. "Bella, you know Harry can't cross the Age Line, he's fourteen. He couldn't have put his name into the Goblet."
"How do you know?" she retorted. "He- he could've had somebody else put his name in for him!"
"Like who?" he pressed on. "Anybody old enough from Hogwarts would have put their own name in, not helped some fourth-year- they want to get in, they don't want competition. No one from Durmstrang or Beauxbatons would even bother."
They were at breakfast, mid morning the day after Harry had been selected as one of the school champions, alone. Ron had come down quite early, eaten wordlessly, and departed; Hermione had left ten minutes ago with a stack of toast wrapped up in a napkin; Harry hadn't been downstairs at all so far. Last night and this morning, he was ll anybody could- or would- talk about, including her.
Bellacine herself had not attended the roaring party in the Gryffindor common room the night before. Instead she had been sitting cross-legged on her bed with the drapes pulled shut and her wand lit, trying not to get ink on the duvet, dashing off a note to her uncle.
Sirius, she had written, I don't think you're going to get a letter from Harry about this, so I'm writing instead. Today the Goblet of Fire chose the names for the three champions in the Triwizard Tournament, and somehow Harry got in there as a fourth champion. The other Hogwarts champion is Cedric Diggory, a Hufflepuff, and Krum is competing for Durmstrang. I don't know how Harry got in there but it seems to me like he put his own name in. I don't know how.
We've got a new Defence teacher, Moody. The ex-Auror. He's weird, but he knows his stuff. He keeps talking to me, I don't know why. Mostly he's asked me about Durmstrang and my parents. It's strange but it's nice to have a good teacher.
There's really not much else to say, except that I hope you're all right and please don't do anything that's going to get you in more danger than you're already in. Example: Don't come north because you read this. Stay where you are. Dumbledore knows what he's doing. STAY IN AFRICA or wherever you are.
Bella
The letter was now sitting in her pocket, waiting to be posted, a tightly rolled piece of parchment with the strongest locking spell she knew on the sealing wax. Nobody except for Sirius would be able to open it.
"I'm leaving," she said suddenly, and stood. "Have to go mail something. See you at lunch."
Vasily waved a good-bye as she trotted out of the Great Hall up to the Owlery. Standing close by the door, stroking one of the school barn owls, was Hermione. Farther back, sitting on the straw-covered floor, was- Harry.
"What are you doing here?" Bellacine snapped. "Writing off to the Daily Prophet to tell them all about how wonderfully famous you are now?"
Harry said angrily, "I didn't put my name in! Why would I do a thing like that? I don't want to get myself killed here- Who're you writing to?"
"It doesn't concern you," she snapped. Well, technically speaking, it does. She strode across the room and tied her message to the leg of a waiting barn owl. Carrying it over to the wide opening in the wall, she allowed it to fly away...hopefully as free as Sirius would remain....No, she told herself sharply, thinking of the dementors, that's not going to happen...don't think about that....
When she returned to Gryffindor Tower that evening, there was a school owl waiting on her bed, the very same owl that she had just sent to Sirius that morning. She was surprised to see a reply had come so quickly...so he was nearby, the idiot...."When did this come?" she asked.
"It's been there since I got back from dinner," Parvati said curiously. "Who's it from?"
"Friend of mine, nobody you know," she mumbled vaguely, breaking the seal and turning away.
Bella,
Too late. I'm north. I'm his godfather, Bella; I have a duty to protect him.
And no, I don't think Harry put his own name in the Goblet, and I'll tell you why: Whoever put it in there, most likely wants him dead. This Tournament is a perfect opportunity to get somebody killed. We both know Voldemort is getting stronger, or at least his supporters if not him, because the Death Eaters were out at the World Cup. Whatever it is, something is happening.
I want to talk to you, and soon. Can you make sure you're by the common room fire at one o'clock the morning of November 22nd?
Be careful and keep your eyes open; let me know about anything unusual. In the meantime watch out for Karkaroff and for Harry, though for different reasons, which I'm, sure you knew in the first place. If something's wrong go to Dumbledore or to Moody.
Sirius
She folded the letter into a tiny rectangle and tucked it away in her pocket, planning to incinerate it in the common room fire first chance she got.
"What is it?" Parvati asked curiously. Bellacine fixed her with a bland glare that, she hoped, clearly said, Stay out of my business. "Just asking, for Merlin's sake," she huffed. "Am I not allowed to ask? I'm just trying to be nice to you for once, because you certainly haven't ever been."
"Oh really?" she snapped, wondering where this was going. "Well, then, I'm glad you have the mental capacity to formulate an opinion of your own, I never expected that of you...I mean, you could do a bit more work on making it a wee bit clearer, but it's an improvement-"
"This is what I mean!" she exclaimed. "You wonder why nobody likes you- well, it's not because of Sirius Black, it's because you think you're better than everyone else, that rules don't apply to you, that-"
In walked Hermione. "What's going on?"
Parvati and Bellacine were standing at opposite ends of the dormitory, scowling at each other, arms folded. Bellacine thought it was rather obvious. "Nothing," Parvati said coldly, and stalked out.
"What's going on?" she repeated, settling the S.P.E.W. notebook and collecting tin into her trunk.
"I got a letter from- you know, him," she said shortly. "Parvati asked who it was from and of course I couldn't tell her, so she threw a fit about how apparently I'm not very nice." She looked expectantly at Hermione- she herself had never heard a word of this-
"Well...," Hermione said, looking uncomfortable, "well, it is true, in a way...you've always acted sort of...above everyone else, you know, sort of haughty and cold...." She trailed off nervously.
"And why didn't anyone tell me this before?"
She was surprised when Hermione answered at once: "Because you were always our friend...whatever happened last year, you were always friends with at least one of us- I'm not saying that you aren't now, all I'm saying is that last year it really was our fault in retrospect, generally speaking- but now it's you being mad at Harry for putting his name in the Goblet, which he didn't...and Ron's the same as you, he thinks he put in his own name, but he didn't...."
It was true: the group of the four of them had fractured down the middle, leaving Harry and Hermione on one side and Ron and Bellacine on the other (and Vasily occasionally, even though he believed Harry's story, but she held him accountable for nothing). Technically Hermione played the neutral role, the go-between.
"That wasn't a reason, that was a soliloquy," said Bellacine bleakly, but they both laughed and exited the dormitory, books in hand, together. But when they got to the common room, Hermione went over to Harry and she was left alone at the door, staring at the bright scene ahead of her, only barely out of reach. But still far away.
There was another problem, another inconvenient truth, which Bellacine started to ponder as she lay in bed staring at the heavy scarlet drapes over her bed, while Lavender Brown and Parvati discussed a fight the Indian girl had had with her Ravenclaw twin sister, Padma. Originally, the thought that popped into her head was something vague about having a sibling in another House. Then she thought of Sirius and her father, Gryffindor and Slytherin; then she thought of Draco.
They had always practiced ignoring each other in third year, except for once after the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch game in the spring, when Draco loaned her his broom. Otherwise they had kept their distance; grateful, she reckoned, for the long-standing rivalry between their Houses. During the holidays she had bought his silence about her Gryffindor friends by doing all the essays the teachers had assigned over the summer for him; in exchange, he went along with whatever story she presented.
But this year...at the World Cup, there had been that memorable argument, when she, Bellacine, had told Draco she wanted nothing more to do with him...and now he was ignoring her in a completely different way. Before, he had avoided her, and she knew by the simple fact that she very rarely saw him except in class that he evaded her purposely. Now, his gaze swept through her like she was glass, like she no longer existed.
What she had said...that she wanted nothing to do with him, or the Malfoys (and that she didn't care if he told them about her friends, a damming blow)...what did that make her? The way she was acting now, in Gryffindor and perfectly happy...perfectly proud, for heaven's sake....Wasn't family more important than anything? And here she was, betraying all her family stood for every day of her life...Sirius didn't count.....What was she becoming?
"You're no blood traitor," Vasily said at once when she casually, quietly broached the subject at breakfast. "You have a long road to walk before you achieve that sort of title, and you're not the sort of person who would walk it."
Bellacine allowed herself a privately relieved smile before Harry arrived at the table. Like everyone else, she had read the article in the Daily Prophet- the one where he'd been interviewed by Rita Skeeter, that didn't seem like him at all- but, then, did she really know him? Because Harry never would have sounded so idiotic s the person he had become in the press: "Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about [my parents], I'm not afraid to admit it....I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they're watching over me...."
Well then. Always nice to find out that one knew people so very well, always nice to know about their "unplumbed depths" (Rita Skeeter's phrase, not hers, although she wished she could lay claim to the "unplumbed deaths" line somebody had uttered in the corridor; that was good), if that piece of rubbish on newsprint, with its sickening descriptions of Harry's "tragic past" and the near-complete avoidance of anything about the other champions, could be a sign of anything other than a horrible lousy journalist and the fact that one should never, ever assume they knew a person.
Aside from Hagrid's increasing dual obsessions with an unfortunately omnivorous-with-homicidal-tendencies horde of Blast-Ended Skrewts and one French headmistress; a supply of badges that alternated between SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY- THE REAL HOGWARTS CHAMPION in glowing green and POTTER STNKS in red, which she suspected had been funded b Draco; Peeves's introduction to the wondrous joys of Broadway show tunes, a weapon worse than the Avada Kedavra in the hands of your average poltergeist, life progressed rather well over the next two or three weeks. That wasn't saying much, even though it took a long time to say.
On the Saturday before the first task, there was an opportunity to go into Hogsmeade, something Bellacine wasn't quite looking forwards to; she had no one to go with and didn't feel like going alone. Harry and Hermione were sticking together, and even though Hermione was the same as ever, she didn't much fancy the idea of spending five hours with Harry. Ron had to stick around at school for some reason, and Karkaroff hadn't given the Durmstrang students leave to go into the village. This didn't mean they weren't allowed to go to the castle at times other than meals, as she often saw Krum frequenting the library.
She knew this only because Harry avoided libraries containing Hermione on principle (the principle of keeping one's sanity and self-respect, that is), so logically the only champion-free place where Bellacine could actually spend time with one of her friends was in the library, which was better than nothing. This ground to an abrupt halt when Harry started showing up every afternoon, and Krum's fan club too- the latter spent its time sneaking through the stacks, hoping for a word with the famous Seeker.
Bellacine assumed the two champions were spending so much time there because of the approaching first task of the Tirwizard Tournament on Tuesday the twenty-fourth. But this only make her think of Harry again, and what had been lost through his stupidity and her stubbornness, which served no purpose but to put her in a vaguely pessimistic mood ; the sole thought that cheered her at all was the idea of seeing Sirius in the fire that evening. Or Sunday morning- same difference, really.
Having gone to Hogsmeade rather than waste five hours at a school devoid of everything but vertically challenged first-years and a handful of irate teachers, she stopped in at Honeydukes to refill a supply of secret weaknesses, then went on to Zonko's Joke Shop to examine the selection of weapons of mass destruction.
There Bellacine found Ron, the twins, and Lee Jordan stocking up on nothing Filch approved and everything he detested. Ron was the first person to notice her- "Guess what Hermione told me," he said excitedly.
"No idea."
"Well, I don't know how she heard this- I reckon Harry found out and told her"-he grimaced and Bellacine shook her head-"but Fleur, Fleur Delacour, she really is a veela, or at least part."
She could imagine Karkaroff's reaction when he heard this, and later that evening, she told Vasily everything at dinner.
He frowned. "Why did they let her in the Tournament, then?" he said shortly. "I don't care...it's only a veela, for heaven's sake, but there are certainly plenty out there who would care, and for something that's supposed to be as peaceful as possible...." They were both speaking quietly- this, after all, was the Gryffindor table and any brief comment either of them made, especially Vasily, would be the perfect opportunity for their exile into Slytherin hell.
"Fleur put her name in the goblet herself- unlike some people I know," she reminded him. "Maxime obviously doesn't care, and now it's too late, since her name's been chosen. Binding magical contract and all that."
"Incidentally, what does that mean?" asked Ron, who had only caught the tail end of their conversation. "That is, I know what it means, but what happens if you don't do your part of the contract?"
"It's like an Unbreakable Vow," said Vasily. "If you break it, you die. End of story."
Meanwhile, Fred and George carried on a separate conversation- "We ought to write to him, see if he'll pay up," Fred suggested. "It might have been an accident, you never know-"
"I don't think it was," said George.
"You don't think what was an accident?" Ron butted in. "Who're you writing to?"
Fred glowered at him, his face full of Stay out of this, and said, "In the Three Broomsticks this afternoon, before Zonko's, when you got butterbeer spilled on you? Well, George here reckons that it wasn't an accident, and maybe we should write them and complain." Despite his flimsy, implausible excuse, he turned away and none questioned him.
Bellacine shrugged and sat back, and saw someone from the Slytherin table heading towards them- she didn't know who it was from this far away, but he wore red Durmstrang robes. She smiled a little, uncertainly, thinking Isay had come to join them.
Life being life, it was not his friend Isay but Vasily's cousin Anton who crossed to where they sat, a sneer playing across his face. She'd always found his manner to be reminiscent of Draco's to everybody else in Gryffindor, except Anton was three years older (which made crossing him a waste of time for her) and high-up on the Byzantine system of a student hierarchy that governed the Durmstrang student body- no Houses, ergo no prefects from each to keep order, ergo the headmaster appointed one or two people each year and a ninth-year student to oversee them all (something like the Head Boy position formerly filled by Percy). Vassikin was this, but he had at least retained a sense of humour.
"What are you doing here?" was the first thing he said when he reached them. The second was, "You should be sitting with us at the Slytherin table, both of you."
"Really?" said Vasily without looking up, toying with his knife. "Hadn't heard that one before." A pause, during which Anton looked to her with the same sneer on his face.
"I was Sorted into Gryffindor," she retorted. "This is my House. I'm supposed to be here."
Somehow Anton managed to look even more condescending without any major changes in his facial expression. "My point exactly! You're from a perfectly respectable pureblood family, you've been brought up well, you were going to the best school in Europe, and a year later you're sitting at this mudblood table!"
It was a good thing he had been speaking in German and not English, because if he had, Bellacine felt certain a decent-sized portion of the table would have jumped him when he said "mudblood" at that volume. Still acting completely nonchalant, Vasily said, "You know what? Go be an idiot someplace else."
"Quickly," she added.
"You- watch it," he snapped. "And as for you- the Professor doesn't want you sitting here any longer. Get up. You're sitting with us and the Slytherins from now on." Vasily said nothing and remained in his seat, completely ignoring his elder cousin. Anton was very still- he hadn't expected this, she could tell, this level of defiance. Finally he sneered, and his voice was deadly soft, "You are the idiot, Vasily Pyotorovich, not me. Ignore me, I don't care. But remember I have Vassikin behind me and behind him I have Professor Karkaroff. Get up."
The two cousins stared at each other until Vasily swore loudly and stood up. He brushed past Anton and marched across the Great Hall to the Slytherin table, taking a seat beside Isay.
"What was that all about?" asked Ron, looking thoroughly bewildered, after Anton too left. "Who was he? Where'd what's-his-name go?"
"Vasily Pyotorovich," she corrected, drumming her fingers on the table. "That was his cousin Anton. And remind me," she continued, "next time somebody asks how Durmstrang was, remind me to say that it's not as great as it sounded."
The common room was quite full after they all returned from supper, but everyone gradually drifted upstairs to their respective dormitories, so the need did not arise for Bellacine to make any of them leave herself. Some of the last to head up were the Creevey brothers, who had somehow procured a stack of the POTTER STINKS badges and spent till gone midnight accomplishing nothing but getting them stuck on POTTER STINKS. They gave up and went to bed by half past, and she was alone in the common room.
Finally, it was a quarter to one in the morning, Sirius was due to arrive within fifteen minutes; Bellacine cast the best charm she knew- one that would distort their words enough that no one could understand them; she didn't know a complete, reliable silencing charm- on the doors to both dormitories, and doused all the lights but for the crackling fire.
Five minutes till...she sat down on the hearth rug...and then the entrance door burst open. Bellacine leapt to her feet- at first there was no-one there- but then she saw a glint of slivery-blue material as Harry pulled off his Invisibility Cloak.
He seemed to be in a very great rush, but when he saw her, silhouetted by the fire, he skidded to a halt. He had leaves in his hair.
"Where have you been?" she asked, trying to convey a sense of urgency. "Never mind that- you ought to be in bed, Harry; you might have another photo shoot tomorrow-"
"Look," said Harry peevishly, "if you don't mind leaving, I have to talk to-"
"Sirius!" Bellacine exclaimed, for her uncle's head had just appeared in the fireplace. She understood her whilom friend's meaning at once- he was here to talk with Sirius as well- "You never wrote you were going to talk to both of us!" she exclaimed accusatorily.
"Nice to see you too," said Sirius, laughing. He looked much healthier, much happier, than he had when she last saw him, flying away on the hippogriff Buckbeak- his hair was washed and cut, and his face fuller, but his grey eyes were still so flat.
Harry immediately took a seat before the hearth; she knelt beside him. "Sirius- how're you doing?"
"Never mind me, how are you?" said Sirius, looking concerned.
"I'm-" began Harry, but instead of a simple "fine," he started to pour out how nobody believe he had not put his name in the goblet, about Rita Skeeter and how everybody thought he was in it for more fame, about Ron's anger and jealousy- and how she, Bellacine, did not believe him- at this Sirius glanced sharply at her- "and Hagrid's just shown me what's coming in the first task, and it's dragons, Sirius, and I'm a goner," he finished desperately. He turned to her, and for the first time in weeks she looked him in the eye, and saw how afraid he was.
And it all made sense, it all was logical- so perhaps he really was telling the truth-
"I believe you," she whispered. She was quite conscious of the fact that both Harry and Sirius were staring at her; she quickly reached out and gave Harry a brief one-armed hug.
"Right," said Sirius briskly. "Dragons we can deal with, Harry, but we'll get to that in a minute...I haven't got long here, I've broken into a Wizarding house to use the fire, but they could be back at any time. There are things I need to warn you about."
Harry looked blank and unsettled, and Sirius continued, "Karkaroff- Harry, he was a Death Eater. You know what Death Eaters are, don't you?
"Yes- he- what?"
"He was caught, he was in Azkaban with me, but he got released. I'd bet everything that's why Dumbledore wanted an Auror at Hogwarts this year- to keep an eye on him. Moody caught Karkaroff. Put him into Azkaban in the first place."
"He talked to the Ministry," Bellacine picked up, "and he told them a lot of other Death Eaters' names, and they let him out. He's vaguely reformed- where do you think I learned the Curses from?...but all in all-"
"He's not very popular in Azkaban, I can tell you," Sirius continued grimly. "Watch out for the Durmstrang champion too, Harry- you never know-."
"Okay," Harry agreed. "But...are you saying Karkaroff put my name in the goblet? Becaseu if he did, he's a really good actor. He seemed furious. He wanted to stop me from competing."
"We know he's a good actor, because he convinced the Ministry of Magic to set him free, didn't he?"
Sirius went on to talk about what he'd seen in the Daily Prophet- the attack on Moody before school began, Bertha Jorkins, the Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup- while Bellacine could only stare into the vibrant green flames, hardly even seing her uncle's face....He had written that he wanted to talk to her, had he not? Had he not written this? Yet he barely acknowledged her, only speaking to Harry....She ought to be more dangerous; he was in pressing danger...but she didn't particularly care at the moment....
But did not Sirius care about his family, his own family? She remembered the look that had crossed his face when she had mentioned her father the previous year, a look of deep dislike...almost loathing...but it couldn't really be....
But when Sirius vanished quickly wihtout even a parting word- she understood, she understood, but still- when Ron appeared in the common room, bellowing at Harry and she could do nothing but hide in the shadows, grateful for the darkness when she was tired of darkness and whatever connotations it carrried, when she returned to the silent girls' dormitory, even though she had no right to, Bellacine felt remarkably and dizzingly alone.
A/N: Well, at least I could make her get over it in one chapter.
Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who live in places where they have Thanksgiving...to the rest of you...happy I-don't-know-what. Happy Tuesday, all right? Happy Tuesday!
