As was the way at Hogwarts, Harry counted six different rumours over lunch.

"Hey Harry," Neville started it off within earshot. "Is it true that Professor Moody was arrested because Minister Fudge doesn't want Hogwarts training competent students?"

Harry coughed into his pumpkin juice, inhaling the sweet scent that lingered over the heavier smells of gravy and slow-baked pastry. And sweat. The room reeked just a little of teenage excitement. "Probably not?"

"I'm just saying…after his 'visit' the other day…" Barely heard over the sound of the Great Hall's chatter, Neville's robes rustled as he turned to ask a second opinion. "Hermione?"

"Well," her voice came from Harry's right, her precise pronunciation slow and thoughtful, "it is suspicious that the Ministry took away the first compet—but wait, we had Professor Lupin last year too. He was also good."

Feeling generally informed and therefore mildly superior, Harry nevertheless enjoyed the moment and pursed his lips gamely. "Actually, I reckon someone would have come out and, um…ruined his reputation if he hadn't gone to join Sirius in Germany, now that you mention it. But. Um. That's a completely different topic."

"Uh huh," Neville in a sceptical voice.

"No, really!"

Hermione sniffed. "Actually, I heard that the professor was arrested because he was trying to smash – of all things – dragon eggs. Something about them being used in the tournament, and thinking they were Dark Artifacts disguised to get past the international borders." She huffed. "As if."

Harry blinked. The rumour mill had struck again. At least some parts of the castle had heard about the dragons, he realised. Then he turned his ears back to Nev.

Neville paused to swallow before hrmm-ing. "Actually, that sounds realistic too. There was that fuss about his dustbin lids a few months ago wasn't there?"

"Again?" Despite his blindfold, Harry jerked his head around to stare a Neville. Kind of stare. Point his blindfolded face at the boy disbelievingly, at any rate. "How do you know about that?"

He could just imagine Neville blushing and wriggling in his seat when the boy mumbled, "Gran reads the Prophet, and then writes me letters saying what she thinks about them. Let's just say she was real vocal about Moody becoming a teacher at Hogwarts, and leave it at that."

Huh.

Lunch went on. Harry ate his quiche and pasty quietly and fielded comments and questions from the students who kept stopping by to visit him.

"Can I have a photo, Harry?" Colin Creevey asked forthrightly, speaking up just in time for Harry to choke on his mouthful of carrots.

"What? Now?"

He heard the boy's robes rustle as he shrugged. "Just in case, I mean. M'Da and Mam are big fans of yours; I want to send it to them before you either win this Task or die trying, you know?"

This time it was Neville who inhaled his food, and he spluttered loudly, forcing Hermione to whack him heartily on the back with five solid, thudding beats.

Recovered from his own choking, Harry merely raised an eyebrow. "That's what you expect from me?"

"Oh yeah!" The boy had no sense of hesitation, Harry remembered. "You'll either go out in a blazing fire of absolute glory, or you'll thrash all the other Champions and leave them in the dust. I reckon you'll have to fight a nundu." He leaned forward to whisper in Harry's ears. "I put six sickles on it."

Harry's mouth instructed, "Don't tell Hermione," a beat or two before his brain engaged. He coughed and felt his forehead flush with the heat of it. "I mean, you're far too young to be betting real money. And how did you even get into the pool, anyway?"

Blithely, Colin continued. "It's why the professor was arrested, I reckon. He probably nundu-napped it from somewhere in Egypt and smuggled it into the country."

Harry kept his silence but added the theory onto his mental list of rumours when another peppy voice spoke up from beside Colin and he had to stifle a groan.

"Me too, Mister Harry! I think so too, you know." Benny the bubbly Ravenclaw. "Not about the nundu thing, but that you're going to beat everybody out there by miles!"

Great Godric, but had Colin and Benny somehow become buddies? Harry momentarily distracted himself by trying to think of anyone, any duo at all, who had less combined impulse control or more enthusiasm, before realised that his palms were sweating heavily and this was a problem for some other time.

"Benny," he squeaked out instead. "You're here too! Who knew? Ahh…I hope you haven't been betting on anything around Hogwarts this year."

"Oh no, Mister Harry," the younger boy's voice beamed at him. "But I've been telling all the older students that they should be betting on you! Maybe some of the French boys will cheer you on too! I met a whole bunch of them at the branle performance last time. You know, the dance thing." Just as Harry was beginning to worry about his lungs, the boy took a short breath. "Actually, I didn't see you there, Mister Harry, sir. But it was all in good fun, they did a whole bunch of dances with a couple of flute things and a pipe and some other instruments, and while the French girls didn't talk to me, the boys seemed to think I was interesting and we had a good talk."

"Did you—?"

"I mean, they didn't speak very much English at all, and I don't speak French except oui, and non, and croissant, so I didn't really learn much, but they laughed every time I told them stuff, so they must have understood something. I told them all about you just in case, Mister Harry. Maybe they'll go away and share what I said about you. Maybe they'll come and join the fan club."

Harry stiffened. Cold chills shot down his spine and the heat of the Great Hall abruptly seemed very distant. "The what?"

"Oh, you know. The Harry Potter Fan Club. At Hogwarts. We've got more than forty people in it so far this year alone!"

To Harry's dismay, the thought of a Harry Potter Fan Club sank successfully into his mind. Not even the dismaying sounds of repeated camera clicks coming from Colin's direction could distract him.

"I…" Harry tried. "Sorry, I thought you— Did you really just say…?"

Betrayal came from all sides. Whether it was some kind of inaudible sound from them, a rhythm in the air, or just the smug scent of schadenfreude, Harry knew with sudden certainty that Neville and Hermione had known.

They're known and not told him.

A bloody fan club!

He couldn't deal with this right now. In about five minutes, Professor McGonagall was going to come and take him to face down a dragon.

"Nev? A little help please?"

They owed him this much least. Smothering their unrepentant sniggers, Neville and Hermione finally stepped up. It took longer than he would have liked, but eventually, between Neville's solid presence and Hermione's efficient chivvying, the two apparent members of his fan club were gently hustled out of Harry's presence.

Harry could almost fool himself into pretending he could still taste his lunch.

"Traitors," he muttered.

Neville giggled.

"Bloody bastards."

Hermione huffed, and somehow even that seemed to laugh at him.

"…I thought you were my friends!"

Silence. Amused silence. Harry stifled a snort and directed his mind to anything, any other direction at all, that would distract him from this terrible truth.

He chewed in stolid silence while his pulse beat a rhythmic count down: why, why, why?

More rumours drifted into his ears as Harry's body lived the rising tension: his pulse slowly speeding up, his breath rate rising, and he felt his brain surge faster and faster as it calculated what he'd be facing, how he could fix it, how his – fan club!? – plans could adapt to changes…

"Do you reckon it's true that Moody tried to burn down the forest?" caught his attention for mere moments before the positively plebian suggestion shocked him out of his fugue.

Was Moody censured by the Board of Governors for his detentions? Some surreptitious coinage going into Ministry purses had smoothed his way into custody? Harry snapped out of his cycle of adrenaline-fuelled preparation with surprise.

"What?" he spat out, before realising that he'd been nibbling at his empty fork for at least three or four minutes. It tasted unpleasantly warm and metallic. "Someone reckons the Ministry was bribed to get Moody away? What, away from the Slytherins?"

"That's what he said," Hermione responded, sounding equally bemused. "Seems rather too…commonplace…for Hogwarts, don't you think?"

"Who said?"

Hermione's voice lowered. "Malfoy," she murmured. "Here he comes now, talking as obnoxiously loud as usual."

"…is what my father hinted," Draco's voice carried clearly to where Harry was sitting, and he wondered for a moment why the Slytherin had chosen to walk this way to get to the door. "We've all seen his paranoia. That time with the seventh years when he exploded the cupboard that he'd provided for practice. That time those little third years saw him cursing a student in Hogsmeade, to 'teach him not to spike love-potions' in drinks. And that anti-Slytherin bias," Draco scoffed as his voice came ever closer to Harry. "We've all seen it. Why, I felt positively unsafe in class with the man. He's a menace. Ought to be locked up!"

Fake-Moody had been a very effective teacher, Harry reflected, but not even his fans could say that the man was 'predictable' or 'safe.' Even if he hadn't bounced Malfoy down the steps this timeline.

"Still," Malfoy continued speaking loudly as he paced behind Harry's seat and towards the exit of the Hall. "I suppose it taught us good reflexes. Prepare for the worse. Always have your wand handy. You never know when a bloody great dragon or something might pop out of the ether to kill us all. Or, you know. One of us."

"Huh," someone replied to him, and Harry identified Crabbe and Goyle as Malfoy's companions. He hadn't seen any of the trio very much this year, actually, aside from the occasional owl to Draco, and it was nice to hear their voices before the Task.

Although…Merlin, they might be friends now but Draco really could come across as obnoxious, couldn't he? Why was his voice so loud?

"I suppose if I happen to wander near a nesting mother or something, that crazy professor will have taught me something, anyway," Draco continued. "Gigantic ruddy flames or whatever won't seem like much after the stress of Defence this year. Don't you think?"

"You said it," his friends muttered back at him, and Harry suddenly wondered just how many students had heard the defiant trumpeting of the nesting mothers, or seen flames spat out, or trees catch alight, for Draco to be mentioned these dangers just now, over lunch.

"Well," Draco continued to grandstand as he moved further away from Harry at the lunch table. "I do hope that all the Champions survive the day, at any rate. Father – he's on the Board of Governors, you know, my father – Father will have far too much paperwork to do if anything happens, so I'm hoping for a nice, calm term myself. At least I wasn't daft enough to…" His voice trailed off into the distance.

Harry stopped playing with his empty fork and placed it neatly onto his empty plate in front of him as Draco's voice grew too faint to hear.

"I've noticed that Malfoy really does like being the centre of attention," Hermione spoke thoughtfully.

"Oh, that's true," Harry agreed, temporarily distracted from his upcoming brush with death.

"And he's awfully proud of his father," Neville grumbled, finishing up his own lunch from the sounds of his cutlery against his plate.

"Yup."

"Still," Hermione mused, apparently in the process of putting the stray Slytherin out of sight and mind, "I suppose he gets some pretty good gossip from his father. Maybe Pro—Moody really was arrested for, I don't know…inappropriate teaching practices."

Harry grinned. "You think they'd arrest Fak—uh, Moody for his teaching when they haven't arrested Lockhart yet?" he reminded, and thoughts of dragons and fire and fan clubs were temporarily pushed to one side.

Minutes later, Harry had just finished learning about how some students were convinced that Moody had tried to – in no particular order – kill, incapacitate, or kidnap the visiting Durmstrang headmaster, thus leading to his arrest, when he heard the approaching sound of clicking heels on stone, and a firm hand was placed gently on his left shoulder.

"It's time, Mr Potter," Professor McGonagall told him quietly. "The Champions will be taken to their tent to await the First Task. I'll walk you down now myself if you have everything you need."

It was time.

"I, uh," a suddenly flustered Harry blustered. "Wand, lunch…yes, I think I've…hang on." He checked his neck for his mokeskin pouch, just in case it had suddenly fallen off his neck for the first time in the last four years, "And you've got my…Yeah, I think I've got everything."

"You'll be fine," Hermione squeaked from her seat reassuringly.

"Have at 'em," Neville encouraged, whapping Harry on the shoulder a tad too hard for comfort. But the throb of impact was solidly heartening. "You've got this!" He sounded like he believed it too, which was oddly reassuring coming from Neville.

He totally would get it, Harry knew. Probably. Would most likely get it. If things worked out the same as last time, but it all seemed rather theoretical in the face of living, fire-breathing dragons all of a sudden.

He stood shakily from his seat to follow McGonagall out of the Hallway; presumably, Sprout had Cedric, and their respective Heads had Fleur and Krum.

It seemed like a long walk out of the Hall as the chatter petered to an abrupt halt, broken only by individual voices calling, "Good luck, Champions!" "Don't die on us!" and, "I'll share all my photos with you, Harry!"

Then it was the cooler air of the Entrance Hall, and the Great doors swung open for Harry to hurry down the steps. He took his blindfold off with relief, revealing a wheeling surge of colours in the air. Harry blinked, and the early afternoon came into focus, revealing itself to be blustery and overcast now, but no rain was threatening. Professor McGonagall was staring at his face sternly, a distant note of worry hiding in her steely grey eyes.

"Come along, now."

"Professor," Harry scuttled to keep up as his Head of House strode ahead of him, her lips pressed into a thin line.

"I hope you're prepared, Potter," she told him while they paced rapidly down the slope. Near the edge of the forest, a distant red tent stood out against the dark green of the trees behind it. "It's too late for help now. You're sure you have everything you need?"

"Think so."

"How are your eyes?"

"Good, I reckon."

"Have they been hurting today?"

"I'm all good thanks, Professor," Harry nodded. "They're fine everywhere except Hogwarts now. The age and density of the enchantments and all. But outside is fine."

"I certainly hope so," his professor told him firmly. "Madam Pomfrey will have my head if you can't see to do the task, and I'd deserve it too."

They stepped off the beaten path to walk over grass, heading towards where Harry knew the dragon enclosures were. The red tent in the distance grow larger, and began to glow as Harry's mage-sight started to pick up the enchantments and charms woven into its fabric.

"The Champions will all wait in the tent," she reminded him. "Mind your nerves, now. Your father would have been bouncing off the walls at all the waiting, but I do hope you have your mother's single-minded focus."

Ooh. A new titbit. "Yes, ma'am."

The red tent now stood forbiddingly before Harry, revealing itself to be much larger than Harry had first assumed, and its magic shimmer and pulsed with a chaotic haze of magic colours and enchantment. The fabric entrance faced him, hanging closed, but flapping slightly in the breeze. There were little gold tassels everywhere that danced and jerked in the wind chaotically, and the three school flags erected at the top of the tent flapped obnoxiously.

The tent itself stood steadily enough though, needlessly large Harry decided suddenly, blocking the sight of the arena and dragons beyond, and it glowed in a cacophony of colour to his magic-sensitive eyes – golds, purples, green, pink…silver and something else? – although it was dim and pale in comparison to Hogwarts. Harry blinked, and the colours muted into a painless glow.

The professor pulled back the flap for him. Then she paused for a searching moment. Harry had rarely seen her so lost for words. After a jerky gesture of her shoulders, she nodded firmly, once, and spoke. "In you go, Mr Potter. I expect you to do us all proud."

"Thank you very much."

Harry strode inside.

He was second into the tent, after only Fleur, who was paler than Harry remembered her to be and was worrying at her lower lip anxiously while she paced nervously in a corner.

"Hey," Harry nodded.

She half-spoke, half-scoffed. "Hmph."

A single blonde eyebrow rose contemptuously, and Harry's feet paused on the soft Persian rug he now stood on as his brain froze from dissonance. For a moment, his anxiety was forgotten from sheer shock: Fleur Weasley, looking at him like that?

Fleur turned her head promptly away, leaving Harry standing and staring for a moment.

Her response was jarring, as her familiar face glanced at him condescendingly and immediately dismissed him. It had been years since he'd seen Fleur so…teenage-angsty.

But she wasn't Mrs Weasley yet, was she? This was Fleur…pre-Bill. She didn't seem very happy like this either. His forehead furrowed.

After a beat, maybe two, Harry blinked and looked away; he didn't want to give the impression he was enthralled by her now, did he?

Instead, he tried to steady his breathing as he took in the tent:

There were no windows, presumably to stop the Champions from seeing the dragons, but instead, the light seemed to seep through the very walls, although an enchanted flame floated near the centre of the ceiling and helped out somewhat. In Harry's eyes, it added pale, magic eddies to the air near the ceiling in his mage-sight, as it burned nothing and cast its silver light over the space.

On either side of Harry, two wooden stools each stood against the right and left walls, leaving the opposite wall – the back wall? – dominated by heavy curtains and another canvas door.

Bit different to last time, Harry's brain prompted; somehow fancier? Maybe Mr Lloyd-Elliot's influence?

That the second door was how they'd leave the tent, Harry assumed, and his eyes flicked over the extra spots of magical enchantment that kept the door safely closed until the Champions were called.

The whole room seemed dimly red, and it was completely empty except for the plush red rug on the floor, the four stools, the fancy exit, and Fleur, who'd gone back to pacing and mumbling to herself as if Harry wasn't present.

Harry shrugged. Giving the blonde girl plenty of space, he edged around her and strode over to one of the stools furthest away from her nervous energy. He sat down, and found the stool softer than expected, and also lower. He could stretch his legs out a bit, and did so.

All he could hear was Fleur's mutters and the flick of her robes, and the sound of his own breathing.

They couldn't hear anything from outside yet: no crowds, approaching stampedes, dragons or anything.

He also couldn't feel the cool, simple weight of his Time-Turner hanging on his chest, and that left him feeling off balance too.

In the cool, wooden seat, Harry settled himself down and distracted himself by pursing through his mokeskin pouch.

Wand. Wand polish. Photos. Study planner, within which was tucked his Map mark II.

Now that would be a good distraction.

He folded the soft vellum open and peered curiously at the thing. Despite its age now, and months of repeated use and improvements, it still held that refreshingly new scent and Harry breathed it in.

Despite Fleur's presence, Harry didn't mind using the Map; he'd cast the Fidelius on it months ago.

The enchantment didn't seem to affect its use at all, and, secure in his privacy, Harry spent almost thirteen seconds staring at the long, black lines of ink and moving specks on the map.

McGonagall was walking back up to the castle. Accompanied by their teachers, Viktor Krum and Cedric Diggory were on their way to the tent. Lunch was still going on in the Great Hall, where Nev and Hermione, Luna and Ron were. Draco was…back at the Slytherin table, so why had he made that big drama about leaving the Hall just n—

Oh. The cute kid. Harry found himself cracking a smile before the adrenaline surged again and he had to distract himself once more.

The dragon handlers, over where the temporary arena had been built, were hustling around in a hive of activity and flurry.

Last minute feeding, Harry hoped. To allow for better chances of survival.

He closed the Map and popped it away safely.

Somewhat to Harry's surprise, Cedric was ushered into the Champions tent next, the fabric door held aside for him by Professor Sprout. A slender triangle of light and cool air snuck inside, and Harry felt the brush of loose hair tickling his forehead. Then Sprout placed one silently encouraging hand on Cedric's shoulder, squeeze, and disappeared.

The canvas rasped closed behind him, once again cutting out the grey sunlight.

"Hey."

Cedric saw Harry, glanced at Fleur pacing and then away again, and raised his eyebrows. "Harry! First task, huh? Blimey, it all seems real now. You good to go?"

Harry looked up from where he was fretfully bouncing his coin pouch in his hand and paused in his actions. "Oh, yeah. Maybe? Er…where's Krum?"

Cedric waved a hand. "Stuck outside with Karkaroff giving him last-minute instructions. He looks like he could go on for another hour. But how are you feeling?"

"As well as can be, I guess?"

As he moved towards the stool next to Harry, Cedric snorted. "Why did I think this was a good idea again?"

A ghost of a smile. "Merlin only knows. At least I had the sense not to put my name into the Goblet."

"For all the good it did you."

"True that."

Over in her corner, Fleur was muttering something in French, too low for Harry to catch. She'd slowed her pacing now. Her grey, no-nonsense wizarding robes no longer flapped in the air every time she turned around, but her eyes looked a little wild. She was counting something on her fingers.

Cedric and Harry watched, white-knuckled themselves, as she abruptly stopped pacing and raised her arms to yank out the braid in her hair, cursing quietly as she retired it. Tighter.

"So, you, er…know what we're facing?" Harry double-checked while Fleur fiddled with her plait and Cedric stared fixedly in her directly, focusing on some distant spot, apparently through the nervous Veela.

Cedric jumped. "Ah? Yeah…I…I've done some…research."

Dragons, no one said, but the word hung in the air like a spectre. "You? And you, Delacour?" she spoke louder. "You know what we're up against?"

"…Oui," the girl nodded sternly. A rapid babbling of more French.

He really should pick up another language, Harry mused while she muttered. French, for example, would be convenient right now, although Harry could probably guess what she was saying, more or less.

What had possessed the other Champions to put their names in the Goblet anyway? School pride? National pride? A bit of gold?

Cedric seemed to be a bit fluent, Harry figured, as he raised his eyebrows at whatever Fleur had said and nodded darkly when she finished.

The three settled into disquiet for a long moment, consumed by whatever thoughts or distractions they each had.

Fleur went back to pacing.

Cedric closed his eyes and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Harry left him to it.

He himself went back to pursing through his mokeskin pouch with half-hearted attention, and soon his grasping fingers grabbed the little green, velvet pouch that contained his runestones. He drew them out with a small stab of guilt; one didn't very well use runestones often when one couldn't see inside the castle, after all. He'd been letting them slide.

The little velvet package sat soft and light on his lap, and Harry found his fingers poking at it in thought. They could help the anxiety, perhaps, his right-hand index finger shoving a spot that made the runes rattle and clatter inside the pouch. If he could get his headspace right. If he could ask the right questions.

Harry licked his lips and let his eyelids drift close. He heard Fleur mutter and rustle over in the corner, and acknowledged her sounds before carefully pushing the idea of her away. He sensed Cedric's hurried breathing and recognized his presence before shoving those sensations, too, aside.

The arrhythmic rattle of the tent entrance, he heard, acknowledged, ignored.

The rapid thudding of his heart. The taste of anxiety on his tongue. The little flashes of sunlight that sometimes peered into the tent and teased against his closed eyelids as the canvas door flapped.

Slowly, surely, Harry fought to settle into his deep, still calm.

It was a struggle; thoughts, worries, the idea of dragons intruded, but Harry persisted. Breathing in. Breathing out. Stilling his mind.

Tentatively at first, and then with growing…confidence?...the very weave of Harry's magic seemed to unwind, unfurl, extend itself in slow ripples of movement that flowed through the very inside of him…He sighed in comfort as his own magic seemed to warm and embrace him.

Harry breathed. And thought of nothing but calm.

Finally, once he'd lost track of the time, or the movements of the people around him, and the pressure of the task, Harry willed his eyes to open and his right hand to nestle into the opening of the rune pouch.

The rune pouch itself was dark in Harry's eyesight, the authentic velvet fabric a magic insulator, and so he couldn't see the collection of pebble-like runestones on its inside even with his mage-sight. But, as Harry's fingertips crept further into the pouch, he felt – first, a tiny, magical surge of joy and connection and recognition; something in his magic seem to flow – and then the cool, smooth sensation of the runestones against his skin.

Slowly, Harry's fingers combed through the rattling runestones, revelling in the familiar action and waiting for the sense of…something…

The sense of a golden spark. A certain stone caused something in Harry's – it wasn't his body, so it must be his magic – to jolt in recognition. Harry drew it out and palmed it into his left hand without looking.

His second stone soon followed. Then, a third.

Cracking his eyes open carefully, Harry glanced down into his hand to see what runes he'd drawn. He blinked, brows furrowed in confusion, and waiting for the meanings to become clear.

Ooooh, it wasn't a great selection. Even through the calm of his hard-won meditation, Harry felt his heart beat once, twice, with an extra-heavy beat.

He grasped the smooth, rounded stones in his hand and let their cool temperature seep into his skin.

Nauthiz, ᚾ: the drunk-looking 't', was first. Struggle, turmoil, and persistence, perhaps?

Hagalaz, ᚺ: the wonky 'H'. Traditionally meaning delays, and tests, and challenges, according to Trelawny. Third and finally: Eihwaz, ᛇ. Yew. Nothing more need be said.

Patiently, Harry waited in that silent, calm mind space for a little longer, to wait and see if the runestones would speak more to him. Tentative sensations seemed to blossom in his mind, shapes he couldn't quite identify, colours that seemed to mean something just out of his grasp.

And finally, once Harry figured that the runes had told him everything that they were going to, he clasped his hands tightly around the solid little stones and let his mind swim upward, surfacing towards the present, and the real world.

Harry became viscerally aware of Fleur's muttering the moment he regained clarity and almost felt the tension in Cedric's muscles transmit itself through the air to stimulate Harry's own. But he retained his meditative calm and sat for a long while, mind at peace, while his fellow Champions fretted and worried and waited for the First Task to begin.

Sometime later, Harry didn't really care about when, Viktor Krum entered the tent with a surprisingly quiet step and a very controlled sweep of the tent's fabric door. Somehow, Harry had always associated Krum with noise. Physical presence. But then again, maybe that was just his fans.

Krum paused a moment in the light, which lasted but a moment until the canvas door fell closed again, and took in the three other Champions. Then he picked out the last wooden stool, by Fleur, to sit in and settled down.

He said nothing.

Neither did anyone else.

They waited. And waited. Nervous anticipation and confusion churned in Harry's guts and turned to nausea.

They all snapped their heads up when the sound of rushing footsteps preceded the tent flap being forced open with undue haste.

It was Bagman, to Harry's unsurprised view.

What did surprise Harry, however, was when the man said, "Oh, you're all here. Good, good. Just…stay like that then," and promptly disappeared again.

"Eh?" Cedric sat upright with a jerk of his upper body. "Ah…well, I guess it's time then."

Krum sighed soundlessly, then stood.

"I azzume so," Fleur spoke in a higher pitch than she usually did.

"Hm," said Krum.

Harry clapped his hands, hoping to speak before Bagman came back in with his little bag of dragons. "Good luck to you all then. Um…once again, I'm sorry I've somehow barged in on your Tournament, but I'll do my best while I'm here. But be safe out there."

Krum jerked his head in agreement silently.

Fleur's smile was sharp, her eyebrow arched again. "May ze best witch or wizard win."

"Best of luck, best of luck," Cedric managed, and then after a pause, got out of his seat to shake everyone's hand.

He completed his little circle of three handshakes and returned to hover in front of his own seat, leaving all four contenders staring at each other. There was a rather intense quiet, filled by only the sound of four people breathing, and someone's stomach, which rumbled unexpectedly.

"Ah…" Harry began after the pause grew a little uncomfortable, "You all know what we'll be facing out there, yeah? And you've all got a plan? Ah! I'm not asking for m—I know what I'm going to do, but you've all got an idea? It's safe? An escape route, just in case something goes…um. Maybe a backup plan, if you need it?"

They were only schoolchildren and barely even counted as the adult witch and wizards they thought they were. Harry felt rather indignant for them actually, that some adult in charge had thrust this trial on them.

Head nods.

"Oh, yes."

"Oui."

"Ja."

Awkward silence.

"Cool then." Harry clapped his hands together once. "Right. Good luck, I guess. Again, I s'pose."

More silence.

They stared at each other.

Harry catalogued his competition. Krum stood in leathers: dark, brownish. His face was set into stern lines, and his brown eyes intense. He pulled his wand out from some kind of inner pocket in his jacket and slid a hand up its length in thought.

Fleur tugged once at her long, braided hair, then ran careful hands over her forehead and scalp: checking for flyaway hairs, Harry realised after a beat, and automatically did the same. Then Fleur tugged her collar up with, Harry noticed suddenly, white-knuckled hands that nevertheless remained unusually graceful. One of her legs started bouncing up and down where she sat.

Where he stood, Cedric seemed to shuffle his feet a bit. He rocked his body weight left, then right, then left again while he searched for a spot that was comfortable. He ran his own hands through his hair in a nervous twitch that turned into the kind of head shake that settled his hair back down. It reminded Harry suddenly that Cedric was supposed to be some kind of Hogwarts heartthrob. He'd forgotten, it seemed, after the long years of guilt over his death.

Harry himself had calmed right down, and merely stayed sitting and breathing and vaguely pitying these poor kids who were relying significantly more on luck than they were currently aware of.

The light in the tent, vaguely reddish front of the canvas walls, added to the intensity.

Cedric fidgeted.

Fleur started muttering to herself again.

After a moment, Viktor Krum sat down on his stool again.

They waited some more.

The thought occurred to Harry that something had started to go wrong even before the next adult poked their head in the tent, which happened some ten minutes later and was Professor McGonagall.

Her stern face – sterner than usual? – seemed to glare at them all for a long moment before her lips thinned, and she, too, disappeared again.

Cedric shuffled in his seat.

Five minutes after that, the stream of visitors began.

Two aurors spoke loudly to someone outside their tent – guarding their tent? – before stalking officiously into the space where the Champions waited. The tent was large enough, but rapidly seemed smaller than it should be, as the two scarlet-robed witches bustled in, wands drawn. There was some sort of invisible animal with them: four-legged, snuffling almost silently, and glowing orange to Harry's sensitive eyes. From the shape of the lights that only he could see, it looked elongated: like a fox maybe, but…stretched out?

"Eh?" Cedric muttered.

Fleur's head jerked upright in surprise.

The aurors barely seemed to register that they were dealing with, well, celebrities. Viktor Krum sat in one corner of the tent, Harry Potter in another, and a literally enchanting Veela was also present. But the witches barely glanced at their faces.

The invisible creature dashed up to them all, sniffed at their boots and nosed around under the seats. Harry watched it compulsively, but then it stopped moving and lay down near the exit, still and bored.

He turned back to the witches in red. Unlike the invisible thing, they paced around in a measured manner, eyes glued to a couple of objects in their hands: the taller witch held a hand mirror, which did not seem to reflect her tense face or her heavily braided head. The smaller, brunette witch with the no-nonsense, close-cropped hair seemed to hold…was that a sneakoscope? Plus some other golden trinket that balanced and spun to some rhythm that Harry couldn't interpret. They hustled around all four corners of the tent, poked at the fancy tent exit for a long minute with their wands, then gathered in the middle of the room for a low, intense discussion.

A flare of blue light stopped the Champions from hearing what they said. Harry scowled.

Just as Cedric had just about psyched himself up to interrupt and ask what they were doing, both witches turned and strode out, disappearing behind the tent flap with nary a word to the teens within. The invisible thing went with them soundlessly.

After the red tent flap had shuddered closed, Harry and Cedric turned to look at each other in confusion.

"Do you…?" Cedric asked.

"No idea." Harry shrugged.

The weight of confusion and expectation in the air grew and was only mildly interrupted by their next guest, some five to ten minutes later. An old wizard with bright white, wispy hair came traipsing into the tent space as though he'd gotten lost on a trip with the retirement village. Despite his hunched figure and somewhat scattered appearance, his brown eyes were startlingly alert. He looked startled to see the four faces staring back at him.

Harry, in particular, raised his eyebrows in a cynical attempt to learn something from the man, since something had obviously happened.

"Oh!" The old gentleman exclaimed. "Oh, I say! There's four of you, still here!"

By now, even Fleur, Cedric and Viktor were figuring out that they weren't being called to the Task.

"Ah, yes?" Fleur tried politely. "Ze First Task: it iz 'appening today, no?"

The little man twitched in surprise, his ever-so-fine hair appearing to float for a second in the air. "Ah hah! Now I see. Yes, yes…I suppose I should go and find someone then," he muttered, before he, too, turned around and strode off.

"…Harry?" Cedric tried. "What do you reckon is going on?"

"It's got to be the Moody thing, right?" Harry tried. He knew that Barty Crouch was now arrested – and how would that work out for all of his plans for the year – but…what did the aurors know?

"But he had nothing to do with the Tournament, right?"

Harry scoffed. So you'd think.

They waited some more, the thrumming tension that came from anticipating a showdown with a dragon seemed to diminish in the presence of this wide-spread confusion and chaos.

An official-looking wizard in a deep brown tartan came in shortly thereafter, saw them all, frowned, and disappeared.

"Wait!" Harry tried, causing the man to pop his head back through the tent flap and look very frustrated with him. "Are we allowed out?"

"Not at all," the man said, and left the teens to their confusion.

Harry didn't know for how long, but it seemed like they were left alone in awkward silence for ages before a younger auror popped by. Perhpas someone in charge had finally remembered the Champions, after all.

"I say, old chaps…er, should I say chaps and chapette? We haven't forgotten about you, don't you worry!" he said.

"What's going o—?" Cedric tried.

"'Ow long must we wait?" Fleur spoke to.

Krum's low voice seemed to carry through their less certain ones. "Vot news?"

The auror – maybe thirty, Harry couldn't tell – shrugged his shoulders, his red auror robes swishing dramatically. "No idea, mate. But there's a big hullabaloo up at the castle. Best be glad you're all out of it, I should say."

Cedric tried, "What does that mean?" and Fleur spoke again, but this time Harry thought he'd phrased a question that might get him the most news.

"Is there anything you can tell us? Even speculatively?"

The man chuckled. "Harry Potter, isn't it? I've heard all about you. Can't return the favour, I'm afraid. Ongoing investigation, don't you know."

"Is the castle in lockdown?"

"Ooh, yes. Very much in lockdown. Now, stay here and don't run about, will you? We've got guests and visitors and all sorts all over the place, and we need to sort them all out."

On that unhelpful note, he gave them all a cheery little wave, unduly positive, and turned on his heel.

At least he spoke to them, but he was otherwise no more help than any of the others.

Sometime later, a solitary bug bumbled in from under the open lip of the red tent flap and circle once around the space before apparently deciding nothing of interest was happening here and buzzed industriously out again. Harry eyed it knowingly, but let it go on its merry way.

"What should we do, Harry?" Cedric asked as the silence settled in and the knowledge that they were going to be isolated for a while grew more concrete.

Harry shrugged. "Wait, I guess? Although…hang on, there is something I can manage…"

He took a moment to twitch his wand and summon Crow – he couldn't call it that; it wasn't bird-Crow;it was Harry-crow, him-crow…Crowley, he decided out of necessity before focusing back on the task on hand – he summoned Crowley the patronus, seeing him cast a dancing silver light along the insides of the intensely red tent.

"Tell him I'd like to hire his services as…another pair of eyes?" Harry told the hovering silver creature. "Wait, I'll start again. Ah…Mr Lloyd-Elliot, it's Harry here. I'm hoping…if I could have you at Hogwarts at your earliest time of convenience? Please? I'm not sure what's going on," Harry told the bird, ignoring the disbelieving stares of Fleur and Krum, "but something seems to be up, and we're stuck inside the Champion's tent, and a legal representative seems like a really good idea right now."

As if confirming the message was complete, the cr—Crowley paused in the air for a moment, defying gravity, before turning to wing off through the tent walls in the general direction of London, Harry figure.

He turned back to the other Champions and paused at the looks on their faces. For the first time in this timeline, they were both looking straight at him, unprejudiced and evaluative. Krum's dark eyebrows were lowered in concentration as his stare seemed to bore through Harry himself. Fleur's eyebrows had lost – finally, lost! – the quirk of disdain and condescension, eyes almost comically wide as she reassessed him for the first time since his name had come out of the Goblet of Fire.

Harry figured that they were going to take him more seriously now, and right before the competition he didn't know if that was a good thing or not.

They sat there in quiet for another long moment, the dim sound of footsteps and low chatter occasionally heard if it were right by their door, but in pressing silence aside from that.

Then there was the crowd of five or so that came in muttering to each other non-stop. The quiet shattered like crystal, and for the first time the red tent seemed small, too warm, too full of movement and noise for comfort.

There were three witches of disparate ages, each of them positively dressed to the very minute of cutting-edge wizarding fashion: fur stoles, elaborate hats, ornate hairstyles. And two wizards; one was a mature gentleman of portly stature, with a long, wooden pipe and a large moustache that put Uncle Vernon's to shame. The other was Lucius Malfoy.

The witches peeled off from the group almost immediately and took Fleur to one side to…chat…to her in French. Two of them chatted in French, at any rate. The second witch, a blond and rather proud-looking type, kept up a muttered translation to the third witch who apparently wasn't keeping up.

It left the two wizards to speak to the boys.

"Well then," the portly wizard exclaimed genially. "I don't suppose this is how you thought your day would be going, is it, gentlemen?"

Cedric slipped into conversation easily, while Harry, Krum and Malfoy looked on in silence.

"Terrible business it is too," the man continued, and Harry placed him tentatively at around fifty years old, although of course, it was hard to tell with wizards. "And you've all been caught up in it. Shame. Shame. A real shame…Pity there's no champagne on ice in here, eh?"

"Hmmm," Harry tried, while Cedric muttered words with a tad more effort.

"I don't suppose you've seen any of it, have you?"

Cedric agreed. "No. Nothing at all. Dead boring it's been for us, eh Harry? Krum?"

They nodded.

The portly gentleman wizard seemed to think it was all a great joke. "Boring, eh? Haha!" He leaned back where he stood and slapped the pockets of his waistcoat, causing his golden watch chain to jingle."I suppose it has been…all the rest are stuck back up in the castle and the whole place is overrun by aurors. Stuck in the common rooms, or their ship," he nodded Krum's way, "but you lot have had quite the time of it down here, eh?"

"Ah!" Harry slammed a fist into his palm. All the connections in his brain suddenly seemed to find each other and while the boredom and sense of endurance were still there, at least the confusion had resolved itself. "This is a…kidnapping, isn't it?"

"Terrible business," the man repeated. "They've found Alastor now, of course. Just half an hour ago. Absolutely potioned up and stuffed inside his own trunk, I tell you! Shocking news."

Harry felt a warm sense of satisfaction inside his chest as he finally, finally, put all the pieces together. A bit slow, but he got there, didn't he?

Fake-Moody had been arrested before lunch; Harry had seen it himself. So he'd been put in some cell or something for holding, isolated or whatever, and then his Polyjuice had run out. Now no one in the ministry knew what Fake-Moody had been planning, or what he'd done already, or whether there were other fakes with access to the Tournament too…

The sense of satisfaction Harry felt when it all came together was incredible.

And…there was the Crouch Sr. problem too. That would cause a fuss.

"So what about the Champions then?" he asked, the words coming to his mouth unbidden in his eagerness. "Are you going to let us go or something?"

The portly man did a double-take, then peered closely at Harry after he spoke. "Harry Potter himself! Well, bless my soul, lad, but you seem to have figured it all out! But no, not at all. You'll be stuck here a bit longer or I miss my guess."

"Eh?"

"Well, the Tournaments got to go on, doesn't it? Can't let you out of the tent then, can we? It would never do to let the Champions get a look at the first challenge, would it Lucius old boy?"

Harry Potter had never imagined Lucius Malfoy being addressed as an 'old boy', but the wizard went one step further and responded to it. Stoically. As if he was very familiar with the address.

"Certainly," Malfoy enunciated precisely. "The Ministry must uphold its promises, and the Board will see it done."

Harry took a wide-eyed glance at the two men in front of him and the ladies in the corner. They were the Board of Governors then. Or a part of it, anyway.

Then: "Eh? We're stuck here? For, ah…how much longer, would you say?"

The portly gentlemen took over again. "Better late than never, the ministry always seems to think. Just think, the dra—event will look so much more magnificent at night, at any rate! It'll be quite the drama, don't you think old chap?"

"Indeed," Malfoy agreed dryly.

"Ah, is the castle safe then?" Harry tried. "And, do you have an estimated time for our task, do you reckon?"

"No news is good news," the cheerful little wizard said, before taking a pipe out of a pocket in his waistcoat and fiddling with it for a bit. "We just thought we'd pop our heads in to look in at you, make sure there's no international incident because of this. You know how it goes…"

Harry did.

"Well," the same chatty man finally seemed to decide. With a tap of his wand, he lit the pipe alight and stuck it comfortably in his mouth. Harry inhaled the heavy scent of tobacco. "That's enough from us now. Best be going: people to see, things to do, don't you know. Good luck with the task, chaps! Up Hogwarts, eh!" He shook his fist cheerfully. "Oh! Er…and, um…Durmstrang too, I suppose. International cooperation and all that! Welp! Best be off!"

With a call to his companions, the energetic little man led the Hogwarts Board of Governors out, leaving behind him a rather sullen tent.

"I, uh…" Harry spoke up in the loud silence that was left behind. "I can conjure up some playing cards, if you'd like?"