Harry didn't think he had ever before seen this many people gathered in one place simultaneously – with the exception of the World Cup, of course, but even then he had been just one visitor among others. Now, it was different. Everywhere he looked there were hundreds of faces turned towards him; how had he managed to forget how awful it was, to be noticed by so many? It wasn't until Harry had somehow succeeded in calming himself down that he realized that people were clapping, whistling, and waving. Some were even holding banners and charmed signs in the sky.
Below his feet was the odd mirror surface that covered what had once been a field of grass, and a fair distance from one another were three round platforms that emanated some sort of yellow fog that rose a bit above Harry's knees.
"I love this," Fleur said, and Harry wished from the bottom of his heart that he could find this as enjoyable as she did. The anticipation he had felt but moments before had turned into apprehension and he had to make a conscious effort into keeping his back straight and expression pleasant.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Sirius said, his enhanced voice reaching every person in the audience. "Welcome to the Triwizard Tournament!"
"Oh, my mum and dad are there," George said, and waved towards where he had seen his family. Harry looked at the cheering audience and saw Truls, Mette, and Viktor, side by side. He then turned towards the judges and saw Bellatrix looking at him and clapping, but strangely enough not smiling. She didn't seem displeased, however.
And then, on a throne separate from everyone else, with a snake partly around his shoulders and on his lap, sat the Dark Lord. Harry had never asked Tom about his obsession with keeping his face relatively unknown to the public, but he did seem far more dangerous with the hooded cloak than without it. In that instance he remembered the moment he first saw Tom as Lord Voldemort. He remembered being woken up by his parents and flooing to witness a burning, and the ghost of his mother's grip on his shoulders was something he could never completely forget.
"Let's give rounds of applause to our three champions," Sirius said, making the audience cheer even louder. "Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons! George Weasley of Hogwarts! Aaaaaaand Harry Potter of Durmstrang!"
'Don't they get tired of clapping?' Harry thought, when he suddenly saw a familiar man in the audience. Decked in what looked like white robes decorated with golden stitching and a heavily feathered hat, surrounded by about a dozen stunningly beautiful witches and wizards, was Gilderoy Lockhart. Where on earth had the man been for the past few months? Harry hadn't heard a word from him for a long time, and now—
"The champions," Sirius said, his loud voice interrupting Harry's train of thought. "Will each be given the task of finding a simple silver plaque, and sent to a closed location where this plaque is hidden. Who will be the fastest? Who'll be the cleverest? We will see that soon!"
Fleur and George were still waving at their families and friends, but Harry didn't know where to wave. Truls should have been the obvious answer, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. He wanted his dad there. He wanted James. He wanted someone he could... someone who...
Harry's hands stayed down.
"I have five portkeys here in this bag," Sirius continued, levitating a small pouch above his head. "Each champion will blindly select one and go to their destination to finish their task. But! How on earth can we keep an eye on them? Rest assured, honoured guests, I did not bring you here today just to make you sit on the bleachers and chat with each other, no."
Sirius then waved his wand, and the yellow fog above the three round platforms suddenly flared, and rose up towards the sky. Startled, Harry realized that every pillar showed each one of the champions - the one closest to the Dark Lord seemed to be focused on Harry, while the one furthest away from the man was fixed on George. Fleur's was in the middle, and the witch smiled brightly at that.
"The actions of each champion will be seen by us all," Sirius said, and the audience cheered once more. "Not only today, but during the future tasks as well. Now, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy the ride and pray for the champion you're supporting to succeed in his or her mission!" The man then allowed the pouch he had still been levitating above his head to drop into his hands.
'Anything but an Azkaban prison cell, please,' Harry thought with no small amount of panic.
"Ladies first," Sirius grinned.
"Charming," Fleur said, and slipped her hand into the pouch. Soon she pulled her hand out, a small cage dangling between her fingers. "You won't be sending me to a kennel, will you?"
"Oh, it's far better than that," Sirius said, and smiled at Harry, clearly intending for him to be the next to pick. Harry shook his head and allowed George to go next. The redhead pulled out a small scalpel and eyed it warily. Harry wondered if the items actually hinted at their destinations.
"Interesting," George said, before stepping aside.
"And now you, Harry," Sirius said, his smile encouraging. Harry tried to respond with a confident smile, but it came off as a grimace. He doubted that any of the options were actually better or worse than one another, and thus wasting any time on trying to figure out what each of the remaining items were was unnecessary. Harry ended up grabbing the first thing he could touch, and pulled out what looked like a tiny bed.
"All right, champions," Sirius said, "are you ready?" Not waiting for the answer, he turned to the audience. "And are you all ready to watch this happen?" The cheers were louder than ever, and the grin on Sirius's face was genuinely amused. Harry felt sick.
"Good luck to all the champions," Sirius hollered. "Show us your best!"
Harry didn't end up in a cell - not in Azkaban or in any other prison. Once his eyes had gotten used to the relative darkness of the room, he wished from the bottom of his heart that he could turn back and say "you know what, that cell I had already resigned myself to? Take me there".
He was in a mortuary.
'This is not where I wanted to be,' Harry thought, and then swiftly reminded himself that people were watching him even if he couldn't see them. Showing signs of fear would be an instant strike against him, and Harry didn't want that. Not when Tom was in the audience. Not when Bellatrix would be watching him as well. And yet... it was strange how standing in a train station with souls of the dead was nothing compared to being in a small room with two corpses.
Merlin, he wanted out of here and fast.
Now, where could a small silver plaque be hidden? There weren't many potential hiding places, but Harry didn't want to underestimate the cleverness of whoever had hidden the plaque in the room. Quietly the boy pulled out his wand, and lit up the tip before making his first round in the room, shuddering in disgust at the brown stains that could be nothing but dried blood.
When he happened upon the door, he nearly pushed it open to see what was outside. Two things, however, made him change his mind: firstly, Sirius had specifically told him and the others that the point was not to search for an exit. Secondly, Sirius had said that something would try to attack them eventually. Well, not in those words exactly, but Harry was quite sure that that was what Sirius had meant. And that was why instead of opening the door and stepping out, Harry used three different spells to make sure that the door was locked properly. Whoever wanted to come in would need to break down the door first.
The plaque wasn't on the floor, but then again Harry hadn't expected it to be so easily found. Not even under the dried up and dirty remains of what looked like a pile of human kidneys. Their stench was horrible.
What seemingly served as the mortuary was a rather small, square room with a few broken lamps on the ceiling and dirty tiled floor and walls. There were no windows, and the silence was heavy and absolute. In the middle of the room was a table, and on the table was the body of a witch who didn't look that much older than Harry himself. She didn't seem to have any visible injuries, and Harry wondered what kind of spell had killed her.
Near the door, by the wall, was a trolley, and on the trolley was a second body that belonged to an elderly man whose eyes - merciful Circe that was one thing Harry did not want to see - were wide open. The man's body was littered with big and small wounds, one of which went from his throat to his navel.
Harry shook his head, feeling nauseated, worried, and alarmed. What if the threat didn't come from the outside, after all? What if he had managed to lock himself with it in here? What if... what if one of the bodies was charmed to stand up and attack him soon?
'No,' Harry thought. 'Let's not think about that.' He held his want tighter in his hand as he continued his investigation of the room, hoping to strike gold even by accident. He remembered being tested for felix felicis and couldn't help but hope for some of that particular potion right now.
In addition to the table and the trolley, there was a small oven - what for? Harry didn't want to begin to guess - and a sink in one corner. Harry walked towards the sink first, finding it the easiest place to start with. The strangely stainless surface made him wary, and he tapped the tip of his wand against it, wondering if he would be fortunate enough for the plaque to simply drop out of somewhere. But no, no such luck.
After making sure that what he was looking for was nowhere near the sink, Harry moved to take a look at the oven. The filthy thing was stained and rusty, and unsurprisingly even dirtier on the inside. The boy poked at the charred remains of whatever had been cooked in there, making sure that there was no silver hidden somewhere under the filth. Having no luck there either, he turned to eye the table, and the body of the witch on top of it.
A sudden thought crept into his mind, and much to his horror Harry realized where the plaque most likely was hidden. Nothing in the mortuary was there just for decoration - not even the bodies. And if the plaque wasn't under the corpses or anywhere on the table or the trolley, then that left...
Harry couldn't help but grimace as he stepped closer to the table. The air was still all around him, and the sound of his footsteps felt obnoxiously loud to him in the silence of the room. Harry glanced nervously at the door, expecting something to try and barge in and stop him, and he thought fleetingly of how Fleur and George were doing. Was one of them done already? What if Harry was the only one to spend this much time on his assignment?
How much time had passed, anyway? It didn't feel like much, and yet felt like far too long. He couldn't even give the audience a show, not this way. Not while trapped in a room all by himself, increasingly frustrated. Was Sirius disappointed? Had his smile frozen on his face, drained of amusement or pride, simply there to fool the audience? No, no. Harry didn't want to disappoint all the people who were watching him. It was with this newfound determination that the boy stepped even closer to the dead witch, and reached out.
The moment the tip of his wand touched the bare skin of the dead witch, an agonized scream from somewhere outside the room split the air.
The first thing that Fleur Delacour became aware of was the hard, cold floor she was kneeling on. The portkey had not granted her a soft landing, and her knees ached due to the impact they had suffered. It wasn't until a moment after that that the witch paid attention to the sounds she was hearing.
Warily, with her wand in hand, Fleur stood up and tried to make sense of the darkness that surrounded her. From all around her - not even far, just a few steps to all sides - she could hear groaning, smothered sobs, and shallow breathing. In one corner there were even people talking. Her mouth set in a grim line, Fleur cast a protective shield around her before lighting up the place to see where she was.
Shrieks greeted the light, and the witch's own scream was stuck in her throat as she took in the sight of what surrounded her. Cages - dozens of cages - some big and some small, piled all around her. And in each one of those cages was a person, kneeling in the small space and either shielding their eyes and screaming, or watching Fleur with rage and loathing in their eyes. She had never - not once in her life - seen anything like this.
It was frightening. It got worse when some of the caged people began reaching out, their thin hands and broken nails trying to grab a hold of her.
Blessed Morgana, how was she supposed to search for the plaque in a place like this?
With a quick flick of her wand, Fleur cast a silencing charm on the cages before selecting one and allowing the creature – the human - inside it to keep its voice. She didn't move from where she was standing, horrified by the thought of being touched by what was surrounding her.
"Qui êtes-vous?" Fleur asked, receiving no response. She scowled, before trying again, this time in English: "Who are you?"
The man, naked and bruised and filthy, cowered in his cage as far away from her as he could get. When Fleur repeated her question louder, the man whimpered and hid his face behind his arms. The French witch pinched her nose and resisted the urge to scream in frustration. There was no force on earth that would make her search the cages one by one. However, she was nothing if not clever, and so Fleur plastered a beautiful smile on her face instead and spoke again.
"Listen to me," she said, making her voice carry as far as it could in this strange, disgusting place. "I am looking for a plaque. A small, silver plaque with numbers on it. Whoever finds it for me will be allowed to leave with me. I... I will return your voice to you now, but if you scream again, I will silence you once more."
Much to her satisfaction, despite cancelling the silencing spell, she didn't have to endure the sound of their screams. What she did have to put up with, however, were the stares. It was unnerving, the way they all kept their eyes fixed on her - those who had eyes, at any case. "You will be fed and clothed," Fleur promised, painting a pretty picture of salvation, "and I'll drop you off at any place you want, and you'll never see me again."
"Food," someone groaned, their voice fragile and brittle. "Please... I need... anything..."
"What about your kind?" a raspy voice of a woman asked, and Fleur turned to look at the woman who had spoken. Her ashen skin was marred with infected wounds and scars, and her eyes were wide and desperate. Fleur swallowed a disgusted scream, knowing that even if she had had any intention of keeping up her end of the bargain, she would certainly not be touching someone so... filthy. "Will any of your kind come after me?"
"My kind?" Fleur asked, wondering how the woman had managed to recognize the Veela in her. Then again, Fleur knew that for any witch with knowledge on the matter, it would be relatively easy to make the connection. Question was, however: why was this woman so wary of Veela?
"Witches," the woman clarified with an angry hiss, and Fleur grimaced, finally realizing where she was. She had heard that there were Muggle storages somewhere in Ireland, but had never had a reason to visit one. Many people did, however, and though hunting Muggles was technically illegal, there were places where one could 'legally' purchase a Muggle. It was admittedly shady business, entirely immoral and barely legal, but who could really say anything against it? It simply wasn't worth the trouble.
Fleur offered the woman a curt nod and nearly smiled when she saw the silver plaque in her filthy hand.
"Let me out first," the woman demanded, and Fleur nearly shook her head before realizing an easier way. There was no need to negotiate, really, and so she simply nodded to keep the muggle from being alarmed and pointed her wand at her.
"Stay relaxed," she ordered, and the woman nodded. "Imperio."
It was a given that the woman wouldn't be able to resist. Starved, beaten, and broken, she barely had the energy to stay conscious, let alone struggle against Fleur's spell. The witch was pleased, thinking that using one of the darkest curses she knew would win her plenty of points from the judges.
"Throw me that plaque," Fleur demanded, and the bewitched woman did as told.
"You promised to let her go," a young man in one of the lowest cages howled. "You promised to let her go!"
Fleur forced out a horribly unamused giggle, and shook her head before grabbing the plaque from the floor to read the number scratched on it. By the time the portkey activated, the whole storage was full of screaming. The last thing Fleur saw was the woman's crying face, her thin hands clutching at the bars, begging to be taken away.
Startled, Harry turned abruptly towards the door and raised his wand. The wailing didn't stop for what felt like an eternity, and when it did, it simply dwindled down into heavy sobbing. Right outside the door. Harry shuddered, and hoped from the bottom of his heart that whoever was there wouldn't look into the room through the small window of the door.
Moving so his back was against the wall rather than the door, Harry focused on the corpse with renewed vigor. His hands were shaking when he used one of the simplest cutting charms to split open the witch's stomach, and he had to take a step back at the horrible smell that hit him like a wave.
'Don't throw up,' Harry told himself with as much determination as he could muster, clenched his eyes shut and reaching with his hand to lean against the wall. He stepped on something soft, and he knew without watching that it was the pile of kidneys. Disgusting. He didn't want to think of what else he had managed to step on during the search so far.
The heavy sobbing turned into miserable mumbles, and it was only then that Harry could determine that the person was indeed a man - if it was a person at all. Deciding to use the bubble-head charm to help him breathe easier, Harry returned to looking for the plaque inside the corpse. He had never seen the insides of another human being from such a short distance, and had it been a... a golem or a puppet, Harry would have been able to treat the whole thing as simply educational.
Now, however, he could only hope that the witch had no family who would be watching Harry do this to her.
He was so focused on making sure that the plaque was not inside the body that it took Harry a few minutes to realize that even the muttering had quieted down. Feeling a chill go down his spine, Harry slowly looked up towards the doorway, and flinched back. A face was pressed against the tiny window of the door, and small blood-shot eyes were staring at him, glazed with tears and grief.
"Please," the man on the other side of the door whispered. "Please, let me in."
Harry's hands shook as he continued his search, becoming increasingly frustrated and frightened. He needed to locate the plaque, since he couldn't summon it, and oh- wasn't that the solution? Angry at himself for not realizing it sooner, Harry stepped away from the body and balanced his wand on his palm.
"Boy, please," the man shrieked, his voice desperate. "Please, let me in! I won't hurt you, I promise! Look, I have no weapons on me!"
"Point me," Harry whispered, doing his best to ignore the man who was trying in vain to shove his hands through the small window. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't help noticing the white, stubby fingers slick with blood. He was fiercely glad for having charmed the door to stay locked. What would have happened, had the man been able to barge in?
Harry's wand pointed towards the other corpse, specifically at the belly, and the boy renewed the bubblehead charm before proceeding with the search. As soon as he had turned towards the wizard's corpse, the man on the other side of the door had fallen silent for a brief moment, before he whispered:
"You know they sent me here for you," he said, the tone of his voice no longer fearful or desperate. It was in no way pleasant, either. "They said, if you can get the boy, you go free. I couldn't say no, you know. I don't want to die here, and if you don't open this door right now, then that's exactly what will happen to me. Would you want that, darling? Do you want to be the reason why I'm dead?"
Harry swallowed thickly and shuddered, as the man continued:
"I wanted to kill you at first," he said. "I'm so hungry, boy. I would have killed you and gobbled you up like the prissy little bitch you pureblood brats always are. But I wouldn't do that anymore, not to you. You're such a nice boy, aren't you? If you open this door now, I won't hurt you, darling. I'll show you a good time, yeah? Something mummy and daddy wanted to hide from you. You're a big boy after all, right? Open the door and this uncle can show you some games big boys play."
Bile rose up Harry's throat as he understood what the man was implying. Even the rotten intestines of the dead wizard beneath his hands were more bearable than what he was hearing, and Harry knew that if the man was to somehow barge in now - if he managed to unlock the door - Harry would shoot him with the strongest curses he ever learned. It was strange how fear made murder seem like a viable option.
"Saw your pretty eyes," the man groaned, breathing heavily. "Come on, baby, bite those lips and look at me. Open the door, sweetheart. Open the fucking door right now or I'll break it. I'll be angry if I have to do that, and you won't like me when I'm angry, you won't. I'll grab that fucking hair of yours and shove my—"
Harry nearly sobbed with relief when he found the silver plaque peeking from under all the blood and fat. He tugged it free and wiped the worst filth off it, though it was hard to do with how soiled the sleeves of his uniform had become. He squinted at the four little numbers scratched on the surface of the plaque.
"Zero," Harry read aloud, and cringed when the man on the other side of the door began hitting it with his fists. For a moment he contemplated sending a hex through the window but didn't want to waste any time on that. Not when leaving had finally become an option. "Zero, three, nine."
The tug of the portkey had never been so welcome as then, when it took Harry away to safety.
George found himself standing in the middle of a square, finely decorated room with white walls and a floor covered by thick Persian carpets. It was hard to pay attention to the furniture or even the expensive, gilded paintings and vases, however, when there were a dozen children standing with their noses touching the wall at random intervals, unmoving.
"Who's here?" asked a loud, sharp voice, startling George. The wizard turned towards the source, and hastily pulled out his wand. On a chair by the fireplace was a woman, so fragile she could disappear and so wrinkled that George couldn't tell where her eyes and mouth were. Her dress was liberally decorated with pearls and ivory, and her fingers were held down by heavy bejeweled golden rings. The long, sharp nails were digging into the dark wood of a thick cane.
George remained silent, his heart thundering in his chest. He didn't remember a day when he had been this afraid, and for the first time he regretted his desire to participate.
"Who dares to come to a poor, blind lady's house," the woman said then, her voice gaining a rather cruel tone. Her eyes were now slightly ajar, but only white could be seen from them. Blind! Never before had George been so delighted to find out that someone was blind. "I heard you, you know. You ought to come and greet me lest I set my little beasts on you."
Still unwilling to speak, George silently conjured a small cat instead, setting it loose. The animal meowed, and the old woman relaxed.
"A cat," she said with a snort, before she raised her voice again. "If there's a cat in here, eat it."
And, much to George's horror, one of the little children by the wall took a few steps back from it, turned, and lunged at the cat. It was only then that George could move, the sound of his steps masked by the noise caused by the child and the cat it was eating.
Too soon the child was done, the dead cat was thrown into the fire, and silence reigned once again. George breathed as quietly as he could while looking around in the room, hoping to spot the silver plaque he had come here to look for. He was sweating nervously, knowing that if reaching the plaque required opening a drawer or moving anything, he would be caught.
For once, luck was on his side as he noticed the silver plaque on a small table across the room. It was simply there, covered by nothing that should cause George any trouble. The only difficulty now was in making his way across the room without being heard. Which wasn't going to happen easily. Not only would he have to get to the plaque, but staying so close to the hag and her children while reading the numbers aloud was bound to end up badly. The more distance George managed to put between them, the better.
Ready with another animal in mind, George took a step forward, stopping the instant the hag perked up.
"Who's here?" she shrieked again. "Who dares to come in uninvited?"
Resisting the urge to swallow, knowing that that was yet another sound that could get him caught, George wordlessly conjured a puppy and set it loose. The hag snorted, leaning back in her chair again.
"If there's a dog here," she said. "Eat it."
And once more one of the children - a girl with ribbons in her hair - stepped away from the wall and lunged at the animal. George wondered why the children did not notice him - or if they did, did not mention him to the old woman - but decided to not think of matters that were working in his favour.
Yet again George had to stop before reaching the plaque as the child was done with its meal far too fast. Yet another animal was thrown into the fire, and George felt sorry for having to conjure something that would die seconds later, and he didn't want to imagine what his family was thinking of him now. Refusing to allow his thoughts to distract him from the task at hand, George took one more step and managed to take a hold of the plaque.
"Is it a cat?" the hag suddenly snarled again. "If it's a cat, eat it!" No child moved, as there was no cat in the room. George held his breath for as long as he could, praying for a miracle.
"Is it a dog, then?" the hag continued. "Is it a dog or something else? If it's a dog, eat it!" When no child moved this time either, the hag leaned forward in her chair, and took a deep breath. George was frozen where he stood, fear making him unable to move. It was only when he thought of Fred, and the candy that they had been designing for prank purposes recently, than he figured what to conjure next.
A small canary flew a few feet further into the room, its wings flapping loudly, before it stumbled down and dropped onto a table. The hag tilted her head, her blind eyes turned to where the canary had fallen.
"I hear a bird," she said, "but I smell a boy."
The hag then fell silent, but did not relax. The fire crackled loudly, but not loud enough to hide even the faintest of whispers. No, if George wanted to be able to read aloud the numbers without being attacked, he would have to figure out how to make the place noisier.
"Boy," the hag said suddenly, startling him. Her voice was sweet, and perhaps George could have mistaken her for a kind grandmother, had he not heard her before. "Come and sit with me, son."
When no response came forth, the old woman made a disgusted sound, before she spoke the words that chilled George to the bone: "If there's a boy in this room," she started, her voice gleeful. George, unwilling to waste a single second that could bring him closer to being a snack for her freaky children, decided to forego silence and simply run while reading the four numbers aloud as fast as he could.
By the time the portkey finally whisked him away, George was nearly unconscious with pain.
Harry felt absurdly grateful for sunshine and breathed the fresh air with greedy gulps. The portkey had thrown him roughly on the same area it had taken him from, and the impact left his vision swimming. He barely registered the hand that grabbed his arm and hauled him to stand up, and it took him a moment to even see Sirius's face beaming down at him.
"Brilliantly done," Sirius said, enthusiastically, looking pleased with whatever he had seen Harry do. Had he seen the man behind the door? Had Sirius heard what the man had said to Harry? "That was brilliant!"
"What the fuck was brilliant?" Harry said, unable to smile or collect his thoughts, and for once not bothering with keeping his words proper the way his mother had always instructed him to do. The fear that had felt so overwhelming moments ago still lingered, surrounding him like a thick, mouldy blanket that made something inside him scream. What was even worse, though, was the knowledge that he had reached a point where murder had... where killing someone he viewed as a threat had become something he would have done given the chance. And oh, had he truly reached that point so easily? The thought of simply stunning him or knocking him unconscious hadn't even crossed Harry's mind.
But if that man with his blood-slippery hands and revolting words and repulsive intentions had managed to break into the mortuary, Harry would have aimed a bone-breaking hex at his head, and nothing would have made him feel better than to see his skull cave in like a-
"No," Harry said aloud, trying to shake off the thoughts. He felt nauseated, and didn't have it in him to look at Tom or Bellatrix, or even his friends in the audience. Everything was too overwhelming, the noises were too loud, the colours too bright, and he still couldn't get his eyes to focus on anything. "Sirius, I'm not feeling good-"
"Delacour came before you," Sirius continued, as if he hadn't heard Harry's words. "But her performance, while clever, wasn't nearly as entertaining as yours. Weasley's was brilliant, too, but- oh, there he is, just turned up. Needs healers, from the look of it. Poor lad, lost an ear." Harry's head snapped up just in time to see two healers patch George up as well as they could do right then. A few feet to the left of him stood Fleur. The witch was pale and there was a wild look in her eyes, and Harry suspected that she wasn't faring any better than he was, despite how put together she looked.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Sirius hollered, and was rewarded with whistles and cheers. "The first task of the Triwizard Tournament is over!"
'First,' Harry thought, wanting nothing more than to obliviate himself. 'First of three. Graceful Circe, I will not survive this.'
"We have had quite the show here," Sirius said. "But now it's time to see if the judges enjoyed it as much as we did. On to the grading, starting from the lady who came first: the champion of Beauxbatons, Fleur Delacour!" Harry wondered where she had ended up - despite looking quite shaken, she was clean and didn't seem to have had suffered through filth.
Then again, perhaps she had had the mind to use cleaning charms, Harry then realized, while watching the judges draw Fleur's grades in the air. Meliflua's score turned into a ten, followed by Parkinson's nine and Bellatrix's eight.
"An average of nine," Sirius said. "Let's give a well-deserved round of applause to this brave young lady before we move on to the next competitor: the champion of Durmstrang, Harry Potter!"
Harry looked at Tom, though he knew that the man wasn't a judge and thus wouldn't grade him. He still felt disoriented and he needed to shower and wash the filth off of him as soon as humanly possible. It wasn't until Sirius nudged him that Harry turned to take a look at the numbers and managed to muster up something akin to a smile. A row of nines kept him on equal footing with Fleur.
He thought of the man he had left there, on the other side of the door, and wondered if he would have truly gone through with what he had implied. Had he, was he, had he really looked at Harry and decided that rather than kill him, he wanted to-
Someone would have stopped him before anything would have happened to Harry, for sure. Some things went far past the point of entertainment, and- and George Weasley had lost an ear and Circe, how was that even something that was allowed to happen? Had Sirius focused so much on entertainment that he had forgotten their safety completely?
The judges hadn't been so impressed with him. George Weasley lost an ear and received two eights and a nine for his effort, as if his loss was nothing but an error on his part that he should be punished for. But perhaps they could attach it again? Worse injuries have been fixed successfully.
'That doesn't change the fact that it happened,' Harry thought, and oh, it had been such a long time since he had felt like the world was as wrong as it was. Women who were ignored, children who were put in danger in the name of entertainment, and millions of people looking right at it all and not seeing anything wrong. He had chosen to change Tom rather than to change the world—
No, not really even that. He had promised to... neutralize Tom, as if he was the only thing that was wrong in the world. As if without him the world would be fixed and people would stop being awful. Harry took a deep breath and stood straighter when a thought crept into his mind: a possibility. Rather than work on changing things as they are on his own, perhaps he could talk to Tom and make him see sense?
'He won't take me seriously,' Harry thought instantly. 'Not yet.'
But eventually, he would.
And that's why Harry finally pulled his arm out of Sirius's hold, took a few steps forward, and waved to the audience. His eyes were unfocused but his heart certainly wasn't. With a smile he could barely keep on his face, Harry decided that come what may, he would succeed. No matter what he became in the end.