"Isn't it foolish to make threats?"
Harry laughed shortly. "What are they going to do, kill me?"
Rita Skeeter stared at him for a moment. "The rumors of a bounty on your head have never been conclusively proven."
"Just the rumor is enough, isn't it?" Harry asked.
If enough people believed there was a bounty, then idiots and poseurs would be coming out of the woodwork for him. The fact that it wasn't proven made it more difficult for the aurors to track it down.
"Rumors can be quite powerful," Rita Skeeter says. "Like the rumor that you are much more powerful than a boy your age should be...some people say the last boy as talented as you was you-know-who himself."
"Prophecies have a way of making themselves come true," Harry said. He smirked. "If I'm to fight Voldemort as an equal, then I have to become his equal."
"What will you do if you win?"
Harry stared at her. He hadn't thought too much about what would happen afterwards because it felt like he'd be jinxing himself.
"What is it the American sport stars say? I'll go to Disneyland?"
Rita Skeeter smirked.
"I might invent a new hair care product...compete with Lockhart when he gets out of Azkaban...maybe join a rock and roll band."
"Can you play?"
"No...but when did that ever stop anyone?" Harry grinned. "Maybe I'll start thinking about politics."
Rita Skeeter suddenly sat up, her former playfulness gone. "You'd have a leg up given that you are popular with your classmates."
"I was joking," Harry said. "I wouldn't go into politics unless there was something I wanted very badly to change."
"How do you feel about the current administrations policies?"
She was leaning forward and Harry realized he was in a dangerous position. As angry as he was at Scrimgeour, he was at least superficially on Dumbledore's side. With the seats on the Wizengamot open due to assassination, the Wizengamot would be the ones to appoint a successor to fill out his term until the next election.
With the open seats gone, the current balance of power fell in the direction of the purebloods, who would doubtlessly appoint someone Harry didn't care for at all. He'd had the politics carefully explained to him by his Slytherin contacts and for once he'd actually listened.
He had to be careful in what he said.
As he opened his mouth the door opened suddenly. A panicked looking Scrimgeour was standing outside with Dumbledore behind him.
Considering that Harry had toppled his predecessor after a visit to a reporter, Harry could understand his concern.
"It's time for the wand weighing," he said shortly. "The photographers are waiting."
Harry nodded, grateful for once to see the man.
Scrimgeour grabbed him and pulled him away. "What did you say to her?"
"Nothing that will hurt the elections, I hope," Harry said. "But you'd better keep me away from her if you want things to go smoothly."
The last thing he needed was for her to paint him as the next dark lord right before the elections.
She was following them, but didn't say anything as they entered the chamber with the other champions. They were seated together while the four judges were sitting at an elevated table.
"Here is our last champion now," Scrimgeour said. "If I may introduce our expert, Mr. Ollivander we can begin the weighing of the wands."
Harry watched as Ollivander tested Fleur's wand...which apparently contained a Veela hair from her grandmother.
Krum's wand contained hornbeam and dragon heartstring. None of it mattered really; wandlore was a highly specialized and esoteric art that Harry had no interest in. His wand was a tool and a weapon, and as long as it did what it was designed for, he had no problem with it.
Harry found himself reluctant to hand it over, however, although he schooled his face to look impassive.
He found himself looking at the wands of everyone in the room calculating the odds. Who's wand looked loose enough to accio wandlessly, who was most likely to attack him and where would he have to dodge.
By the time he'd finished calculating the possibilities, Ollivander's examination had ended.
Pictures were agonizing afterward; Harry had spend most of the last four years trying to avoid photographers. Even though the Death Eaters now knew what he looked like it was a hard habit to break.
Furthermore, Harry had never had to sit through the interminable family photos like Dudley had been forced to; his aunt and uncle had not cared to have pictures of him. Now he understood why Dudley had hated it so much.
He felt awkward and unsure and this wasn't something he was used to feeling. He didn't care for it at all.
Maybe he'd have loved it as a Gryffindor, loved all the glory and the acclaim, but Harry felt he more naturally belonged in the shadows. The limelight was dangerous.
The article Skeeter had written wasn't quite as bad as he'd feared, but it was almost. She'd described him as dark and dangerous and with possible political ambitions.
Worse was the fact that she seemed to intimate that he and Hermione were dating, and that he was making a political statement by dating a muggleborn instead of a pureblood. She claimed that as a Slytherin everything he did had a meaning.
He caught people looking at him and Hermione in a new light, one that made him feel uncomfortable. Hermione was his closest friend, with Neville as his second. Anything that made her uncomfortable was something he couldn't abide.
Hermione had had her teeth fixed to smaller than they had been before, and so now she was noticeably prettier than she had been in the past. Other boys were starting to notice, which irritated him more than he could admit.
He wondered if it was simply that they threatened his time with her. After all, he'd seen what happened with other couples. They spent so much time making eyes at each other and doing whatever it was that couples did alone that they lost time for their friends.
No one dared to tease him about it; Malfoy came close, but stopped when he saw Harry's expression. However, Hermione wasn't so lucky. She refused to tell him who was teasing her, but he saw her several times with flushed cheeks looking angry.
Neville tried to stand up for them, but the more he protested, the less anyone seemed to believe him.
Harry finally had to resort to sending a letter to Sirius, who agreed to meet him during the next Hogsmeade weekend.
"You're looking better," Harry said.
The shrieking shack hadn't changed much since the last time he'd been in it except for the addition of additional years' worth of dust.
Sirius was dressed better than he had been and he'd been filling out and gaining weight. He looked healthy and tanned, nothing like the disheveled shell of a man he'd been when Harry had first seen him.
"I'm doing important things for Dumbledore," Sirius said. "We're on the verge of something big...very big."
Harry stared at him inquiringly, but Sirius shook his head.
"It's all top secret. No offense, but someone could pluck it right out of your head if you weren't careful, so there's only so much I can tell you."
"What can you tell me?" Harry asked.
"The headmaster of Durmstrang is a former death eater," Sirius said. "He was captured by the Ministry but was released after naming a lot of names. Many Death Eaters went to Azkaban because of him, and its thought that he isn't particularly popular in those circles."
"I'm surprised he's still alive."
"It's probably because nobody knows where Durmstrang actually is, which may have been why he took the job. He has to want this TriWizard Championship pretty badly in order to come out of hiding like this."
"So I may not be the only one Voldemort is out to kill," Harry said. "Great."
Being accidentally killed was just as painful as being intentionally killed. Being caught in the middle of a war between two sides sounded a lot like his entire life.
"There's also the possibility that he's made a deal with the group in order to get them off his back. That may be why he's here, to throw a spanner in the works."
"We'll see how he judges me," Harry said. "I'm pretty sure Voldemort wants me to win this thing, so if he grades me high he's probably working with him. If he grades me low to give his own champion a better chance of winning, then he probably isn't."
"Either way, watch out," Sirius said. "He's not someone you want to cross. You don't get to be headmaster of any magical school by being weak."
Harry nodded.
"I was only able to find out the first task," Sirius said. "Security is pretty tight around the others because they don't want reporters ruining the spectacle."
"It's dragons, right?" Harry asked.
Sirius stared at him, then nodded. "How did you know?"
"I just thought of the worst thing I could imagine that spectators could actually watch, and I asked them." Harry said. "Dumbledore is good with a poker face but the others aren't."
Basilisks would make for a poor viewing experience to say the least, and cockatrices had attacked the judges at the last event. Dragons seemed like a close third.
"I can't believe that they want us to kill dragons in front of spectators," Harry said. "That seems a little bloodthirsty, even for the Ministry."
Sirius shrugged. "I don't know exactly what they plan, but I've got a few ideas about how to approach it."
"Ones that don't involve me blowing up half the stadium, I hope," Harry said.
"About that," Sirius said. "Did you bring the map?"
Harry nodded and pulled it out, opening it up. He could see the headmasters together in Dumbledore's office. Moody was with Snape in the dungeons.
He looked carefully for any names he didn't know. He'd begun doing it on the night of the Goblet ceremony, and he had continued doing it on a sporadic basis. The last thing he needed was to have his throat cut by one of the porters who'd carried the cup then had never left.
"There's a special room that we never found until the last year of school," Sirius said. "Long after the Map was made. You've been having trouble finding a place to practice?"
Harry nodded.
"This room can be anything you wish for, if you know how to open it."
That could prove to be very useful. Harry had almost gotten caught on two occasions during his experiments on the Astronomy tower, once by a sixth year couple out to enjoy some romantic time together.
The fact that neither of the other champions looked surprised at the announcement that it was dragons suggested that someone was cheating.
On the other hand, only needing to get past the dragon to get the golden egg meant that half his strategies were suddenly useless. The last thing that anyone would want to see was him slaughtering a dragon in front of a crowd of thousands.
Harry reached his hand into the bag and grimaced. It fit his luck; he'd gotten the Hungarian Horntail, the most vicious of the three dragons featured.
Krum gave him a sympathetic look.
After that it was just waiting and listening to the roar of the crowd as Krum went out and did whatever he was doing to deal with the dragon.
It was reassuring that he didn't hear any screams of horror. Harry was certain that if things went horribly wrong he'd be able to hear it long before anyone came to inform them.
Fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity as the crowd roared and then gasped over and over. Harry kept waiting for the screams of horror that never came.
The enthusiastic clapping that finally ended it was an enormous relief.
Fleur had been sitting across from him the entire time, wincing every time the crowd gasped. She was pale and trembling, but when she was called she stood with her head held high and she stepped out into the light.
The fact that she took only ten minutes probably had something to do with the fact that her dragon was easier than Krum's. It might have also been because of whatever strategy she was using.
Finally the applause came, followed by the scoring.
Harry's turn finally came. As he stood, his legs felt like jelly. He knew what it felt like to die, but he didn't know what it felt like to burn alive or to be chewed up and swallowed. He wasn't particularly looking forward to learning either thing.
Stepping out into the arena, Harry saw hundreds of faces staring at him. The fact that any one of them could be planning to attack him while he was busy with the dragon occurred to him, but the fact was there wasn't anything he could do about it. Planning only took him so far, and after that you had to deal with the situation as it changed.
More important was the dragon, which was bigger than he'd thought. It looked angry; it was gouging the ground with it's claws and staring at him with its yellow eyes.
It thought it was protecting its eggs, which made it much more dangerous than it usually would have been. The fact that it usually would have been a wizard killer wasn't encouraging.
Harry squinted, hoping to get a good look at the egg. He couldn't see it because the dragon was crouched too low over the eggs with her wings outstretched.
He'd have to get the dragon to move if his primary plan was going to succeed.
Pulling out his wand, Harry took a deep breath. He'd been practicing the charm he was about to use almost constantly since Sirius had taught him to do it. It hadn't helped Adrian against a troll, but it was presumably going to do better for him.
"AVIS," Harry shouted.
The sound of a small explosion was followed by a stream of birds flying from his wand. It was an advanced transfiguration that was mostly useless in a real battle, but what Harry was facing wasn't a real battle. He was facing a beast that was chained down and he was out of range of its fire breath.
The birds began to flock around him.
"AVIS," Harry said again. Another explosion and another flock of birds.
Again and again he cast the spell, the flock around him growing and growing to become truly massive. Soon it filled the half of the arena that was out of the dragon's range.
The dragon looked as though it was growing more and more agitated.
Finally feeling that he had enough, Harry gestured, and the massive swarm flew at the dragon. It screamed and blew fire, but the swarm simply parted in the face of the stream of explosive death.
The birds flowed like a school of fish, subject to Harry's will. They flew at the dragon's eyes, and it screamed again as they pecked and pecked away at it.
They couldn't do any damage unless they impacted the eye directly, but the flock was doing an excellent job of agitating the dragon, which looked more and more upset.
It rose up on its hind legs to claw at it's face.
Harry could see the crowd staring at him. He hadn't moved a single inch from his original position. He had no intention of getting any closer to the thing than he had to.
Finally he saw his chance; a glimmer of gold in her nest as she shifted away from it.
"ACCIO EGG!" he shouted.
A moment later the golden orb flew through the air to smack into his hand.
The crowd was silent for a long moment, as though stunned at what had seemed perfectly obvious to Harry. There was no need to actually get past the dragon. All that was needed was to acquire the egg.
He dispelled the birds with a wave of his hands and they flew up into the sky, dispersing into all directions.
The crowd began to clap politely as they realized that he had actually completed the task he had been assigned. A lot of them looked disappointed. It probably hadn't been the spectacle they had hoped for, but it had been effective.
Winning the Tournament didn't really matter to Harry as much as simply getting through it. He wouldn't have minded winning except that he suspected that was exactly what Voldemort wanted. The fact that he'd had a dream like that once simply meant that his subconscious mind was telling him what he already knew.
Harry could see Scrimgeour scowling. He'd obviously hoped for something more flashy from the Boy-Who-Lived. After all, the primary purpose of the Tournament was to entertain and distract from the failures of the Ministry.
On an impulse, Harry held the egg up for the crowd to see, and he heard people cheering.
Unfortunately that wasn't the only thing he heard. The Horntail was staring at him and at the dragon in his hand. It screamed its anger and defiance; as far as it was concerned he'd stolen the egg from it.
The birds had already enraged it; now it lunged forward, the chains holding it creaking as it struggled to break free, to attack him.
Harry heard the screams from the audience and he realized that now was probably a good time to leave.
He turned to head back into the tents, but he heard the sound of metal breaking behind him and he whirled to see the dragon roar in triumph.
It was free and it was charging toward him, looking suddenly much bigger than it had from all the way across the stadium.
It suddenly occurred to Harry that a following plan that required enraging a dragon probably wasn't the brightest thing he'd ever tried.
Damn.
