And so, quickly, too quickly, the two and a half days left to them before the first task passed. Monday morning Harry finally came up with a plan- use a Summoning Charm to get his Firebolt, which he could use to fly past the dragon. There was one problem here- Flitwick had been teaching them this in Charms for ages now, and Harry was no closer to mastering the Summoning Charm than he was to becoming friends with Draco.
Every moment of free time they could scrape up, Harry, Hermione, and Bellacine put to use in an empty classroom, the two girls collecting paper clips, textbooks, and rubbish bins, and then Harry would shout "Accio!" He did get progressively better over time- but would it be enough? They worked till gone midnight that day, and trudged into Gryffindor Tower not entirely heartened, but encouraged somewhat.
The school had the afternoon of Tuesday off so as to watch the first task; at lunch Professor McGonagall hurried over to the Gryffindor table. . Seeing her coming, Harry pushed away his plate- despite Hermione's pestering, he clearly wasn't going to be able to eat a bite.
"Potter, the champions have to come down onto the grounds now....You have to get ready for your first task."
If he's not ready by now, he'll never be, thought Bellacine, discouraged, but she pulled on an artificially cheery smile and wished him a "Good luck" along with the rest of the table. Around the Hall, the other professors ushered their champions out the door with equal urgency.
It was an inappropriately bright day, both for this late in November and for the matter at hand. The sunny ceiling above was cloudless and a bright azure blue, with not a hint of danger.
Soon they all left the castle and wandered out into the blinding afternoon; everyone seemed to be swarming in the direction of the Forbidden Forest and the Black Lake, where a massive stadium was just visible, and details made imperceptible by the sun. It felt very similar to the World Cup- a vast current of humanity all rushing to a large, gilded stadium.
"Oh, I hope he's all right!" Hermione whimpered out of fear and nerves as they passed a large, multicoloured tent where the four champions were waiting. She kept repeating it as they entered the stadium.
"He'll be fine," Bellacine said absently, because every time somebody mentioned it, she just thought about it more. She could not deny the thin taste of worry gnawing at her stomach, nor the unnatural chill that seemed to creep across her neck. It'll be fine, really, she chided, but she couldn't stop imagining the worst...there were dragons, dragons were large and fire-breathing and vicious, Harry would be lucky to escape unharmed and she could not bear the thought of losing another friend....
In an attempt to occupy her mind, Bellacine surveyed the stadium they were now in, climbing up a long, shining staircase for a good seat. The seats, enough for the entire school and for spectators, ringed around a large flat dirt enclosure. Beside the entrance they'd come through there was another gate, a holding area...she couldn't see in, but the loud, thundering roars of dragons furious with indignation rang throughout. At the other end of the stadium there were five gilt seats on a dais, and the commentator's box raised up behind them.
She, Ron, and Hermione filed into a row of seats empty but for Fred and George. Then Vasily pushed his way out of the crows and sat down next to Bellacine, who hadn't been able to see him since Anton ordered him back to the Slytherin table—then again, this was the way Durmstrang worked and they were accustomed to it; you did what you were told and, far away, commiserated later.
The stadium filled, four out of the five judges—Karkaroff, Dumbledore, Mr Crouch, and Madame Maxime—filed into their seats, whilst Ludo Bagman nodded to them and stepped into the commentator's box.
Bagman, wearing the same yellow-and-black striped robes he wore to the World Cup, shouted, "Welcome, witches and wizards, to the first task of the first Triwizard Tournament in well over a century. The task of the champions will be to get the golden egg." He paused, surveying the crowd, which watched him eagerly in return. "Their task is to get the golden egg...from a dragon!"
At this there went up a collective gasp from the crowd, which had quieted when he spoke. Two girls, Hufflepuffs, she thought, in the row in front of her put their heads together and began to whisper furiously. Ron was turning a shade of white, bluntly juxtaposing his bright hair; Vasily, eyebrows raised, said nothing. Whilst the audience's attention was diverted, the second gate was pushed open by a team of wizards and a bluish-grey dragon came out into the enclosure. Bellacine guessed it was female, the retrieval of the egg playing to its mothering instincts. The dragon half-lumbered, half-flew, to the far end of the enclosure, where she crouched protectively over a clutch of eggs. Most of them were a mottled brown or black, resembling smooth-hewn rocks, but one glinted in the afternoon sunshine.
"Our first competitor," roared Bagman, again immediately instigating silence, "will be Mr Cedric Diggory of Hogwarts School facing the Swedish Short-Snout!"
Cedric walked into the pit from the other gate, looking very small and inconsequential. About halfway to the dragon he hesitated, pointed his wand at a rock, and shouted a spell. The rock, now a black Labrador, sprang up and trotted towards the dragon.
Seeing the mother dragon occupied, Cedric began to sidle around the edge of the inclusion. He was almost directly behind the dragon, which had reared up leaving the eggs exposed underneath, when she apparently realised that the Transfigured dog was doing nothing but trotting amicably back and forth in front of her, but a boy behind her was about to steal one of her eggs....
The dragon whipped around faster than Bellacine would have thought possible for such a large animal and roared flame at Cedric, who leapt away just in time-
"Oooh, narrow miss there, very narrow!" said Bagman.
Now the game was properly on: He ran back and forth, sending up coloured sparks every time he moved, trying to divert the relentless dragon, Bagman all the while shouting possibly-helpful, more-like-distracting things like," He's taking risks, this one!" and "Clever move—pity it didn't work!"
"He ought to get it over with and hex her, not run back and forth tiring himself out," Vasily said.
She shrugged. "What is it they say; the best offence is a strong defence?"
"No," he corrected, "the best defence is a strong offence. And define 'they.'"
"Offence is defence."
"Defence is offence."
Another loud roar went up—this time it was the spectators, not the dragon. Bellacine looked back again; Cedric was holding the golden egg aloft (though quite far from the dragon, which was being restrained and pulled away by the same team of wizards) and looking victorious, even with a burn across his shoulder.
"Very good indeed!" enthused Bagman. "And now the marks from the judges!" He was the first to put his up, a seven formed out of gold ribbon that rose from his wand. The Beauxbatons headmistress was next, giving an eight, then a nine each from Crouch and Dumbledore, and another seven from Karkaroff.
"It's not quite as bad as it sounded," said Hermione, sounding entirely unconvinced of herself. Fleur Delacour entered the stadium meanwhile, against a Welsh Green. "At least he's flying, so he won't be on the ground like they are...."
Fleur walked across the field like a person going to their execution with a stay of said hidden under their cloak. She started waving her wand in an intricate pattern when she got halfway out, half-singing, half-chanting a spell. "Oh, I'm not sure that was wise!" Bagman exclaimed as she drew closer to the emerald dragon in ever-tightening circles.
"Good idea," Vasily said approvingly. The dragon's eyes hovered closer and closer to fully closed; it seemed to relax....."Trying to calm it down instead of working it up—maybe not such a good idea!" he added, as the dragon let out an enormous, fiery snore, igniting Fleur's skirt.
She set it out with a jet of water from her wand, however, and stealthily snuck up on the dragon from the side; it stayed asleep and then she too had her golden egg.
"Very good!" the announcer shouted. "And now, the marks!" Four eights and a seven—the seven was from Karkaroff—thirty-nine all told. "And here comes Mr Krum—Mr Viktor Krum, of Durmstrang Institute, facing the Chinese Fireball!"
Krum strode out onto the packed dirt, now stirred up by the two champions gone before him; he kept walking, not pausing until he was almost upon the dragon. It eyed him and his drawn wand warily, and rightly so, and hissed a spurt of fire out of its reptilian nostrils. He raised his wand to eye level and bellowed "Conjunctivo!" loud enough for the entire stadium to hear.
The Chinese Fireball shrieked in unbearable pain as the spell hit her in her glowing red eye, an eye that began to pour black smoke as though it had been lit on fire.
"This from someone who walked out of Dark Arts?" she murmured. "Or did you forget to tell me something—he walked back in, perhaps?"
He said dismissively, "That—we learned that in Charms. You know Rukovskaya. He'd tell us Avada Kedavra was a charm if Karkaroff would let him."
The dragon, still blinded and making loud screeching noises of agony, was stomping around in half-circles—it, like the other dragons, was chained to the ground with enough room to move, though not enough to fly—and trampling its nest, in search of whomever did this to her—then she stepped a little too far to one side—Krum was in—"That's some nerve he's showing!"—and he held the egg aloft—"Yes, he's got the egg! The scores for Mr Krum!"
Eight, eight, eight, seven from Bagman, ten from Karkaroff. Of course.
"Mr Harry Potter, also of Hogwarts school—the Hungarian Horntail!" Bagman roared, and with another loud blast on a whistle Harry walked in, looking much smaller than everyone else, much more insignificant, much less prepared-
Before he had even walked the length of a broomstick, he raised his wand and shouted, "Accio Firebolt!" There was a ghastly pregnant pause, a very long and looming pause, under the shadow of the gallows. It had to work; she and Hermione had practiced with him long enough and he had to know it, he certainly had known it last night...it was taking far too long....
Something brown, there was something brown flying over the glassy blue lake, over the edge of the spiky Forbidden Forest, over the high arch above the gate he had only just walked through, and the Hungarian Horntail's thick spiked tail engraving furrows in the dust, and Harry reached up and caught the broom.
Now clutching her face in terror, Hermione was moaning softly, "They shouldn't have allowed him to compete—How can they expect him to know what he's doing-oh, oh god....Oh, Merlin!"
Bellacine would have reached over with a soothing hand, would have said something comforting, but every muscle and tendon in her body was clenched too tightly to relax or even to move. Her friend was quite right; this was too dangerous, too much to expect, too deadly; Dumbledore said the Tournament had been discontinued once because of the death toll. There was a death toll for this thing, how could they think it was safe?
Bagman was presently screaming things like, "Great Scott, he can fly! Are you watching this, Mr Krum: but she did not find this encouraging in the slightest. Harry circled the Horntail on his Firebolt, diving closer again and again before swooping away, like Cedric and Fleur, but in this case she hoped it was an actual strategy and not merely immediate planning for the immediate problem, not just tactics—She realised they had never figured out a strategy; hopefully he knew what he was doing, but sometimes Harry forgot to think.
Then the dragon lunged at him, rearing upwards, snapping at him with her serrated teeth the colour of old bone, her black wings unfurling, leaving her nest unprotected—he dived for it, skimming the dirt—then pulling up sharply, with something shining brilliantly as it was hit full-on by a glint of sun in his hands.
Shouting incomprehensibly with relief and joy, Hermione leapt to her feet, and the entire row soon followed—the entire row but for Ron, who stared white-faced blankly into the space in front of him. Bellacine could barely hear Bagman calling out the scores—the only one she actually heard was Karkaroff's four, but the others added up to thirty-six. Ron still sat motionless, looking in shock.
"Ron!" she shouted over the din, learning past Hermione, "Ron, what is it? You look like you've seen a—"
"Merlin, that could have killed him!" he said weakly. "He could have died! Whoever put his name in the Goblet of Fire—they're trying to kill him! Why didn't you tell me I was being such an idiot?"
"Because you were being too much of an idiot to listen to us," Bellacine said coldly. "Brilliant deduction, yeah, but a little overdue." Ron winced at her sarcastic tone and she glowered back, but when he shoved past her onto the stairs, practically falling down them instead of running down, Hermione following, she went after as well, finding him waiting outside the first-aid tent.
Harry walked out ten minutes later, holding his golden egg under his arm, grinning—a grin which stopped in its tracks when he saw Ron. The two boys eyed each other.
"Harry, you were brilliant!" Hermione exclaimed in an attempt to break the silence. "You were amazing! You really were!"
Standing very stiffly, Ron shot her a shut up glare. He wavered momentarily, then stammered out, "Harry—whoever put your name in that goblet—I—I reckon they're trying to do you in!"
"Caught on, have you?" he snapped. Ron flushed and opened his mouth, and as they stood there watching him gape like a fish out of water, Harry suddenly said, "It's okay, forget it."
"No—I shouldn't've—"
"Forget it."
With a loud cry of "You two are so stupid!" Hermione burst into tears, and fled the scene. She supposed she ought to go after her; she'd leave Harry and Ron alone to reconcile, and went off to catch up with her other friend, who by now had wiped her eyes dry, and in fact looked as if she had never been crying at all (well, it had been short-lived). She was standing outside the gates to the dragon pen, deep in conversation with none other than Krum.
"Yes, I do think it went rather well," Hermione was saying. Bellacine caught her eye and sent her a raised-eyebrow look, but she kept talking, "considering the general idea, but there's still the issue that it's inordinately risky, and it might not be entirely legal—they're supposed to notify the Muggle government if they're bringing dangerous animals into the country. Well, the Welsh Green is obviously native, but how did they even get the Fireball here without anyone noticing?"
Krum was about to say something but she cut him off. "Hermione. Leaving. Castle. Now."
Blinking hawkishly several times, Krum said, "You go to Durmstrang, don't you?"
"Past tense," she corrected briskly. "Used to go. Went." She took Hermione by the arm and firmly dragged her out of earshot. "What was that all about? You—talking to Krum—"
"I only said 'congratulations' when he walked by me," she shot back defensively. "He started talking to me, all right? He asked me my opinion of the task in general and we started talking. That's not my fault, is it?"
"But he's Krum," Bellacine countered, knowing even as she spoke that her arguments were miserable. "You know our opinion of him, I mean what he's like—not that you're supposed to have the same opinion, that's not what I'm saying. You know what I think of forcing opinions on people; I'd never do that, but we actually know what he's like...."
"Oh, leave well enough alone," said Hermione, frowning. "Please let's not fight about anything, it's just a waste of time, I can't stand it."
Thus they headed back up the gently sloping hill towards the castle, Hermione blathering on about S.P.E.W. and the need to get more people involved the whole way, Bellacine not really paying attention, but she let her go on for once, reckoning she might as well.
With the onset of December (and the onset of several bucketfuls of sleet and snow pouring from the surly grey sky), the only real thing to look forwards to was the Christmas holidays. It seemed like they would never come, but fortunately, even farther away was the second task, sometime in late February. This was excellent, as the only clue, the golden egg, did absolutely nothing but reveal a tendency to scream until somebody gathered their wits and slammed down the lid.
The skrewts were "thrivin'," meaning their class was not; almost every one of them sustained a bad burn or a scorched cloak hem by the end of a lesson, and Hagrid began keeping large packages of Stover's Magical Burn Banisher near the gate. This was the one thing the rivers of slush were good for—the ground was so soaked that at least the skrewts could not accidentally start any fires.
Divination was, as expected, as enjoyable as the weather (meaning not at all); Bellacine tried cracking quiet jokes about Trelawney's obvious lack of credibility, but all it did was make Neville, otherwise disregarding her, scowl. Defence Against the Dark Arts didn't help the matter much either—when Harry opened the egg for the first time, at the wild party held in Gryffindor Tower that night, Neville had panicked immediately—"It was someone being tortured! You're going to have to fight the Cruciatus Curse!"—and in class, Moody was calling on her more often than Hermione. It was clear she was one of his favourite students, yet wasn't that completely illogical?
So when Hermione ran up to them after said class, as she, Harry, and Ron were giving the Fat Lady the password, shouting, "The most wonderful thing's just happened!" Bellacine was quite surprised and, naturally, curious; they followed her lead, if only to get answers to their queries.
Hermione led them all the way down to the entrance hall, where she took a left instead of the usual right, leading to the dungeons—the left way led to a cheery basement corridor, illuminated by bright dancing torches. She wasn't positive, but guessed that this led to the Hufflepuff common room and dormitories.
"Oh, hang on," Harry suddenly said; he seemed to be cottoning on to something, stopped in his tracks. "Wait a minute, Hermione...I know what this is about." He nudged Ron and pointed to one of several oil paintings lining the walls; Bellacine looked at the picture, a brimming bowl of fruit.
"Hermione!" Ron reprimanded. "You're trying to rope us into that spew stuff again!" For the past few days, Hermione had actually shut up about S.P.E.W. on request, this development was a surprise. She realised that the portrait, the very same that Fred (or was it George) had mentioned once, accidentally; it led to the kitchens.
"No, no, I'm not! And it's not spew, Ron-"
"Changed the name, have you?" he retorted. "What are we now, the House-Elf Liberation Front? I'm not barging into that kitchen and trying to make them stop work, I'm not trying to make them stop work, I'm not doing it—"
"I'm not asking you to!" she said loudly. "I came down here, just now, to talk to them, and I found—oh come on, Harry, I want to show you!" She dragged Harry forwards and, reaching out and touching a green pear, tickled it gently. It squirmed and giggled, then turned into a shiny green doorknob, which she tugged.
Bellacine had an impression of a large, sparkling clean kitchen, the walls lined with reflective copper pans and a vast brick fireplace, before something small and brightly coloured hurtled at them, squeaking, "Harry Potter, sir! Harry Potter!"
It leapt up and latched onto him; Harry gasped, "D-Dobby?" choking for breath, and suddenly she recognised this house-elf. The very same house-elf that had served her mother's family, that had served the Malfoys for sixteen years, before mysteriously disappearing almost two years ago, was now bouncing ecstatically in circles around Harry.
Bellacine too gasped, "Dobby?" disbelievingly, and at this Hermione turned to face her with a disapproving expression across her face.
"Yes," her bushy-haired friend said quietly, "you would know him, wouldn't you? So, tell me, how did you treat him compared to the rest of the Malfoys?"
"Hermione, it's not like that, for god's sake!" she said hastily. "I never—I wasn't—for heaven's sake, ask him! See what he tells you!"
Dobby, who had been squeaking with delight over Harry Potter now turned at the sound of her voice, and at once was less jovial, sinking into a half-bow. "Is this Miss Bella, Dobby wonders...?" he said; he was almost talking to himself. "Dobby is surprised to see Miss Bella at Hogwarts; Dobby did not know she was at Hogwarts...."
"Yeah...well, it's me, Dobby," Bellacine said unwillingly. "Er, well, how're you doing? I--ah--I didn't know you were here either."
The elf looked conspiratorially around the gleaming kitchen, then leaned in and whispered, "Dobby is getting paid for his work!" The other elves, which were previously occupied with stuffing every kind of sugar-laden food available into the boys' waiting hands, edged away, aghast, as though Dobby was a pathogen.
"That's excellent, Dobby!" Hermione encouraged, but Bellacine couldn't think of a single thing to say—who ever heard of paying a house-elf?—but for, "That's...ah...that's very remarkable, Dobby." She glanced around hopefully, wondering if this was the right thing to say. She meant remarkable in the literal sense of the word, 'worth remarking upon,' not that it was brilliant. The question was, had Hermione noticed?
She had. Her face was immediately lit by a fiery, nearly-angry, light; however, she said quickly, "It's all right, Bella...why don't we go in farther, there's someone else you lot will recognise—"
"It's not good," she said, shaking her head. "Sorry...I just can't, I can't do this right now, I'll wait outside," Bellacine walked out the heavy kitchen door without a backwards glance until she was outside, to watch the green doorknob slowly melt back into the portrait, now nothing but a slightly raised bump.
She plopped down on the stone floor; she felt numb. What had Hermione expected her to do? She knew she'd lived with the Malfoys for as long as she could remember, she knew she would've known Dobby, so what on earth had Hermione been thinking? She had been raised pureblood...Hermione might want her to change, but did she want to change? She was herself, she didn't want to be who other people made her, she wanted to be independent of their expectations: Late last year, Dumbledore asking a portrait in his office—her something-great-grandfather, Phineas Nigellus Black, if he still thought she belonged in Slytherin...she did, really, but they wouldn't listen to her....
This wasn't like other things, this wasn't like last year's situation with Lupin...it was only a house-elf; she harboured no grudges against house-elves...but this was certainly not how people were meant to behave—not only was the entire purpose behind a house-elf to work without gratitude and pay, but the elves themselves enjoyed it. Everyone knew that. The Malfoys weren't some horrible antebellum plantation owners to keep house-elves...it wasn't a crime, it was what both parties wanted, an age-old tradition furthermore....
She heard light footsteps coming from farther down the corridor and looked up. A brown-haired girl was headed her way.
"Excuse me," said Bellacine, pulling in her legs.
"Hello--oh, hi, Bellacine," said the girl, glancing at her. It was a Hufflepuff in her year--Susan Bones, she thought, but she could never keep track of them. "Are you lost? This is the Hufflepuff wing--well, and the kitchens. Rest of the school is that way." She pointed in the direction from which Hermione had led them.
"Thanks."
Susan smiled and nodded and went on her way.
Well, they don't all hate me, Bellacine thought.
When Hermione, Ron, and Harry came out a few minutes later, she got up and followed them back to the Gryffindor common room. They talked about Dobby and Winky--who had come to work at Hogwarts and having a miserable time of it, it appeared--and Mr Crouch, and somehow Ludo Bagman got worked into the conversation, and then Hermione, who had been giving her the cold shoulder on the way back, looked at her.
"I'm not going to be what you want me to be," said Bellacine sharply.
Hermione sighed. "I'm not trying to do anything to you. I want fair conditions for house-elves, because the way they're treated most of the time, I don't think it's right, and I want to do something about it. Look, I know I carry on about it sometimes--"
"All the time--"
"--but it's what I want to do, and if I change for everyone who wants me to shut up or who ridicules me behind my back, and I know about all the people that do, it would be the same thing. Same difference. We're not changing for every person that wants us to be something else, because if we all did and we did it every single solitary day there wouldn't be any point, we'd all be flat people in a flat world and there wouldn't be any point. I don't care if you aren't interested--no, really; it doesn't matter. I'm not going to go all A Clockwork Orange on you--"
"What on earth is a clockwork orange?" interrupted Bellacine loudly, having a very odd mental image.
"The point is," Hermione interjected before she could put her vision into words, "I don't mind. I'm sorry for making you go in there. You get the point."
"I get the point," she affirmed.
"Girls," muttered Ron to Harry. "I swear, I couldn't follow a word of that."
A/N: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. There's a bit where the evil Dr Branom forces this kid to watch recordings of people being tortured to get him to be less violent and ends up completely destroying the poor kid. Very good book (if you read the real version with the last chapter. If you read the American version it has an awful ending. Another reason why the British edition is always better). Anyway...wow, I really hated that chapter. Sort of like how I hate writing Quidditch games, only worse, because I essentially had to do it four times in one chapter. Oh well. At least it's the only task that it's technically possible to watch. The others will be more fun. Hopefully.
