Chapter 29: Rumours Rumours
I felt bad for Hermione. Rita Skeeter was just as Moody had said, an awful woman. Her story about Hermione, Krum, and Harry was outrageous, and while everybody knew that it was fake, some people still had to act like it wasn't.
It was reaching the end of March, and as the rest of the snow and frost fell away, Angelina began pestering Alicia and I to go down to the quidditch pitch with her, she didn't want to get rusty. We had made our way down to the pitch that night to find it closed. That was the strangest part of it all, the pitch was never closed.
Games weren't typically played and practices usually weren't held in the dead of winter, but the pitch was always open, even if it was buried under two meters of snow. The whole area was blocked off, and what looked to be a ministry regulation wizard waved us off before we could get close enough to see what was going on.
"What the hell are they doing down there?" Angelina exclaimed as we made the trek back up to the castle after being turned away.
"Gotta be something about the tournament, it's taken over the school." Alicia shook her head and Angelina grumbled some more.
"First we can't play games, but now we can't even practice." Angelina's mood had taken a nosedive as we entered the common room and settled down.
Alicia took her leave shortly from our conversation she was going to go down to the library to meet Warrington. Against everybody's expectations, they were still dating, and had at least calmed down from making out at every opportunity.
"Vern?" Fred interrupted Angelina's tirade, and I mouthed a quick sorry to her as I got up and followed him out of the common room.
"What do you need?" I asked as we walked down the hallway, it was late evening, but not past curfew, and while the halls were mostly empty, a student or two could be spotted.
"What I'm not allowed to spend time with my girlfriend?" Fred joked as we made our way down a series of moving staircases.
"It's not that at all." I protested and shoved his shoulder lightly. "It is your birthday soon though, big seventeen."
"I just can't wait to do magic all the time, imagine how useful that will be." He grinned, his eyes far away in the moment.
"What do you want? I have to get you something." Fred shrugged, seemingly nonplussed.
"No you don't, I can't really think of anything I'd like, I do have a prank planned though."
"Exciting, what is it?" I had always liked to help out in Fred and George's fun when I could.
"Well it's nothing."
"What?"
"Literally nothing, me and George are going to do nothing all day and nobody is going to relax at all." I laughed out loud, imagining the pandemonium that would occur if Fred and George did actually nothing all day.
That's exactly what happened, as April Fools Day washed by in a rainstorm, nothing particularly exciting happened the entire time. But every teacher who had a class with Fred or George was on edge, the only person who didn't give them shifty looks all lesson was Moody.
"Mr. Weasley, I must ask, what tragedy will ultimately befall this school before the day is done?" I snorted into my hand at the end of Transfiguration as McGonagall lost all patience with Fred.
"Oh, well absolutely nothing Professor, of course." He flashed her his most charming smile as we left the room.
The Easter Holidays were a bright sunny week interrupting a rather rainy month, though most everybody had so much homework that we didn't enjoy it much. I didn't even have exams at the end of this year but the work and I was receiving from seven NEWT level classes was making me wish I was still in fifth year, even OWLs would be better than perpetual studying.
I had sent more letters to Sirius, but hadn't been able to visit due to the slight problem that there were no Hogsmeade visits any time soon. He was nervous about the final task of the tournament, and seemed to be getting increasingly agitated with his writing style, the letters were rather spiky, the parchment ripped in some places, like over the cross of a t or the dot of an i.
I hadn't seen anything particularly suspicious, but lying was becoming my fatal flaw. I had created such an elaborate web of lies with my best friends and my boyfriend that it took a conscience effort to keep everything in order. Whether it was Angelina lying about buying me Ajax for my benefit, or myself lying to Fred about how my correspondents were just Witch Weekly copies, it was never ending.
Fred and George had been obsessed with money lately on a different train, it seemed to be all they talked about was getting startup funds for their joke business. The products they sold on Saturday nights in the common room were quite good, but they weren't very expensive, and couldn't be making that much revenue.
"You guys won a bunch of money off that Bagman guy at the World Cup though?" I asked one evening as we all sat around the fire.
Fred's eyes darted around for a second before they rested on me, a trace of unease in them. "Yeah but forty galleons isn't enough to build a shop, we need more." George nodded fervently, and yet again, I wondered what they could be hiding.
June bombarded the castle with a storm of excitement for the third task. I was excited about what it would be and who would win, the intoxicating aura of the castle getting to me.
You must be ready for whatever is coming, expect odd things for the third task.
The message from Sirius was odd itself, and a little frightening, I tucked it into my back pocket as I left the owlery, going down the stairs slowly, deep in thought.
The morning of the third task, the Gryffindor table was alight with conversation, Fred was talking excitedly over my head with Lee about what he thought it would be, and the morning seemed to fly away. Mrs Weasley and Bill had come to watch Harry, which I thought was very nice, and we had a lovely lunch at the Gryffindor table.
Mrs Weasley had become rather chummy with me after Fred and I announced we were dating, Ron mimed gagging into a napkin when she squealed in excitement.
"I don't see ickle ronniekins getting a girlfriend now do I?" George asked a bit snidely.
"No he's too busy preparing to be prefect next year." Fred added in, and Ron's face went a deep shade of red.
"That's not an entirely bad thing you know." Hermione said quietly, and Bill nodded.
"I was prefect, and head boy." He said.
"Yeah but you're cool." George shrugged.
As we walked down to the quidditch pitch, I thought back to Sirius's odd letter last week. I hadn't sent anything back and he hadn't contacted me again, which was strange, he usually made a point of sending me a letter every week.
As we found seats, I scanned any corners of the arena for a large black dog.
"This better not look like this next year." Angelina said with a hint of bitterness. The quidditch pitch had been transformed into a massive maze, twenty foot hedges dominated the field, and even from our elevated position we couldn't see more than about three turns in, and even then, the maze was shifting. I watched hedges disintegrate and regrow instantly, closing and opening new paths every minute or so.
The summer night wasn't exactly cold, but it wasn't very warm either, and we could see the champions lined up and ready to enter the maze. Lanterns were lit around the edge of the pitch, illuminating the rather dark night, but the middle of the maze had no light at all, and looked quite foreboding as the evening got darker as the sky turned from purple to blue.
"May I welcome you to the third and last task of the Triwizard Tournament!" Bagmans voice echoed around the stands.
"Tetrawizard." George said a bit grudgingly.
"Shut up!" Angelina hissed.
"In first place, tied, we have Mr. Cedric Diggory and Mr. Harry Potter of Hogwarts School!" We cheered so loudly I was sure the village of Hogsmeade heard it.
"And then we have Mr. Viktor Krum of the Durmstrang Institute in second place, and Miss Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons Academy in third!" They still got a decently loud applause from the hundreds of students who had come to watch.
Cedric and Harry disappeared at the first whistle, we could just see them dart into the maze from the good spots we had, since we were sitting with Harry's chosen 'relatives'.
The second and third whistles sent Krum and Fleur into the maze and suddenly, it was very quiet. The champions had to send red sparks if they were in danger, and we heard quiet roars and bushes rustling. Nobody spoke at all, everybody had an ear tuned to the maze.
The first sound to shatter the still night time air was a faint scream. No red sparks shot up, and while I could see the judges look around, none of them did anything. The scream had been high pitched, I guessed it was Fleur, the time continued, and I felt a strong sense of foreboding.
A shower of red sparks shot up from where the scream had sounded. A seemingly magical force acted over the area, and all of a sudden Fleur appeared in the courtyard where the champions had been before. Madam Pomfrey shot over to her still form, and woke her up, she seemed to curse as she realized where she was, and rather grumpily stood with the rest of her classmates.
The next bout of red sparks came quicker, and the stunned body of Viktor Krum was next out of the maze, he was woken up too, and looked much more confused than Fleur had. He kept shaking his head and rubbing his eyes, like he had just woken up from a really good nap.
It was quite a while before something happened again, no more red sparks were shot up, and Harry and Cedric remained fully in the maze, people even began to talk as the mood became a bit more jovial. First years were passing out chocolate frogs and bottles of butterbeer, and we really started to relax.
All of a sudden that was shattered, in an almighty rush of noise, a silver cup materialized about five feet in the air, holding onto the handle was none other than Harry Potter, and holding on to Harry, was Cedric. The three beings crashed into the courtyard and we all stood up, laughing and cheering we applauded our two champions for winning. I think I might have even kissed Fred I was so in the moment.
But it all changed, I looked at Cedric and saw his blank eyes. "He's dead! Cedric's dead!" A chorus of noise reached us and Fred dropped my hand. I screamed in shock, my hand over my mouth as I stared at the commotion going on below.
Dead?! He couldn't be dead, but he was blocked from my view as Dumbledore and the Minister and countless others I could barely see swarmed around Harry and him on the ground.
Cedric couldn't be dead, he was too nice. I scolded my own foolishness, but couldn't think of how the gentlemanly guy in my year, who'd helped me up at the World Cup, could be dead. It just wasn't possible.
It was pandemonium, people were running, Mrs Weasley was sobbing, and Bill held onto her, trying to comfort her in some way while his eyes darted around, seemingly looking for the hidden dangers.
"We have to go!" I yelled to Fred, who seemed rather panicked. I could describe Fred in many words, not all of them very nice. But he was never panicked, never fazed, always had a joke to get him out of something, a second path to provide his escape. But his eyes, they were just dull, unseeing.
People weren't allowed to leave the pitch, the only people I saw leave were Harry, Moody, Dumbledore, McGonagall and Snape. I heard more screaming, a woman's scream so loud I knew it must be Cedric's mother.
The confusion was cut by none other than Professor McGonagall herself, I had no idea how much time had passed but the sky was pitch black now, the moon and lanterns casting a pale light on everything.
"Ms Smith, I was instructed by Professor Dumbledore to have you fetch a large black dog from Hagrid's pumpkin patch, and take it to Dumbledore's office, the password is Cockroach Cluster." I couldn't say anything, I looked from Fred to McGonagall, and she seemed to understand. "He'll know soon enough." Her mouth was in a thin line, it must have been the most emotion I had seen on the stern professors face in, well, ever.
"Okay." She nodded once, and disappeared into the crowd, I followed her, my hand pulling Fred along. McGonagall let us out of the pitch, past ministry officials, and walked briskly up into the castle. I could hear Fred shouting at me, his face in front of mine, trying to get me to look at him. Yelling at me to ask what was going on, and where we were going. But I couldn't answer, and as I started to where Sirius would be, I knew everything had changed.
