CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: REACTING
The next evening, everyone was still talking about the two Hogwarts champions and following them both around the hallways. All of the Slytherins had been contemptuous towards Harry, openly showing their support to Buffy regardless of the fact that none of them actually knew her or even liked her.
Ron was refusing to talk to Harry, and Hermione had explained that the redhead was jealous that Harry always got the attention. Harry was flabbergasted by that explanation, and angry that Ron couldn't see that Harry didn't want to be special, and that he hadn't wanted to be in the Tournament.
Hermione had suggested that Harry visit Sirius and get his input into the whole affair. Harry had told Buffy, and the two of them agreed to visit Sirius and Joyce after dinner.
Harry had survived the day at classes, trying to studiously ignore the students asking him how he'd got past the Age Line, and the Slytherins accusing him of taking away the attention from the 'true' champion. Harry ignored it, but was still incredibly hurt that Ron wasn't talking to him.
It wasn't as though he wasn't used to people whispering and gossiping about him, he'd put up with it for the last few years, but now it seemed to be even worse. When he sat down beside Buffy at dinner, he noticed that she was looking frazzled as well.
"Have they been following you all day as well?" he asked.
Buffy nodded. "Yup. How bout you?"
"Ron's ignoring me," he replied, casting a dark look down the table to where Ron sat with Sean and Seamus. "He reckons I put my own name in the Goblet."
Buffy rolled her eyes. Fourteen-year-old boys could be so stupid.
"You maybe wanna skip dinner?" Buffy asked. "Just go home for a bit?"
Harry liked the sound of that. Not just getting away from the other students, but going to somewhere he considered 'home'.
"Let's go."
They stood up and walked out of the Great Hall, studiously ignoring the stares, pointing and whispers that followed them. When they reached the Entrance Hall, they reached up to touch the rings that hung on silver chains around their necks.
"Ready?" Harry asked.
Buffy nodded, and they simultaneously slid their rings onto their fingers and portkeyed away from Hogwarts. Buffy ended up in the middle of her room, and Harry in his. He grinned as he looked around at the decorations that Sirius and Joyce had put up for him. It was in the Gryffindor colours, and there were posters of various Quidditch teams. It was a massive room, almost four times as big as his room back at the Dursley's, and it was all his, thanks to Sirius and Joyce.
They left their rooms, met in the hallway and descended the stairs together. They were met by a very worried Joyce and a sombre looking Sirius. They were sitting on the couch, reading a copy of the Daily Prophet. Buffy and Harry exchanged a worried glance.
"Would you two care to explain anything?" Joyce asked.
Buffy winced. She recognised that tone of voice. She'd heard it so many times over the years and she knew that they were in trouble.
Before either of them could form a reply, Joyce continued her in her anger.
"I can't believe you would both be so reckless as this!" she yelled. "Entering a Tournament like this…people have died! You don't need to be putting yourself in more danger than you're already in. Honestly, I'd have thought you would know better."
"Look, if you're gonna get angry, then get angry at me, not at Harry," Buffy said, her voice rising with her anger. "He didn't put his name in that Goblet."
Joyce suddenly froze and Sirius stood up.
"What?" Sirius asked.
"I didn't put my name in," Harry said. "Someone else did."
Sirius' eyes darkened with worry. "This isn't good," he commented.
Harry shook his head, completely agreeing.
Joyce looked to her daughter, raising her eyebrows expectantly.
"And you? Did you enter?" Joyce demanded.
Buffy nodded, not backing down. There was nothing that her parents could do to make her pull out of the Tournament, and she was fairly confident of getting through the Tournament. She didn't know if she could win, but she would give it her all. Plus, she wouldn't have to do her exams, and that was always a good thing.
"Why?" Joyce yelled. "Why would you? Buffy, are you insane? You get in enough trouble as it is without volunteering to put yourself in that kind of danger."
"Mom, Dumbledore wouldn't let us compete if he didn't think it was safe," Buffy explained patiently.
Sirius nodded his agreement. "She's got a good point."
Joyce sighed. She didn't like the idea of her daughter or her nephew competing in a Tournament that had a death toll.
"I just don't like to think of you in any more danger than necessary," Joyce explained.
Buffy smiled and stepped forward to give her mother a hug. "I'll be fine," she promised. "Slayer's honour."
"Slayer?" Harry repeated curiously.
Buffy's eyes widened. She'd completely forgotten Harry's presence as well as his ignorance in regards to her being the Chosen One.
Sirius just laughed and shook his head. "You may want to take your foot out of your mouth soon Buffy," he teased her.
Buffy rolled her eyes and took a seat on the couch.
"Wait…Slayer?" Harry said again. "As in a Vampire Slayer? The Chosen One? The one girl in all the world to hunt the vampires and fight the forces of darkness?"
"Yeah," Buffy replied. "How'd you know about Slayers?"
"Professor Lupin taught us about them last year," he replied.
Sirius barked out a laugh. "Moony was always interested in Slayers. Always wanted to meet one. And now his goddaughter is one."
"Lupin's Buffy's godfather?" Harry asked curiously.
Sirius nodded. "I couldn't choose between James and Remus, so…I just chose both of them."
Harry laughed. It sounded like something Sirius would do.
"The Slayer's godfather, a werewolf," Buffy mused. "Strange combination, but…I think we're all used to strange things happening to this family."
Harry looked to his cousin and a lot of the strength he had always seen in her suddenly made a lot more sense. He'd read some of the stories about the Slayers and the types of lives they led and the skills they needed. More than that, he realised that he wasn't the only one who'd had a destiny forced on them. It was comforting to think that he wasn't the only one who'd been thrust into a life that wasn't really wanted.
"We're definitely a strange combination," Harry commented.
Buffy just shrugged. "What family isn't?" she asked.
Harry grinned, loving the word and the feeling of finally being part of a family that he could call his.
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Things for Harry didn't get much better, though he was glad of the support from Buffy and Hermione. Ron still wasn't talking to him, and Harry had turned down Buffy's offer of speaking to the young redhead man. Harry didn't want Ron to talk to him until Ron had figured things out for himself.
The Gryffindors were still incredibly proud of their two champions, but the other three houses hadn't been so impressed by it. The Slytherins were still being cruel, or crueller than usual. Some of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws seemed to be uncommonly angry with him, and Harry carefully hung around the Gryffindors who supported him.
Draco Malfoy had produced badges that read:
Support Eliza Summers
The REAL Hogwarts Champion.
Whenever the badges were pressed, another message would flash on them. POTTER STINKS!
It wasn't original, but it was enough to make Harry angry. The subsequent duel in the corridor had turned out horribly. Harry's spell had hit Draco's, and the two spells had shot off to the sides, hitting Hermione and Goyle. Hermione's teeth had grown considerably, and she'd needed to get them shrunken by Madam Pomfrey. Goyle had broken out in boils, but Harry hadn't been too concerned.
Harry finally got a (half) break when he was pulled out of Potions just as Snape was threatening to use a poison on them and get them to make an antidote for it. His luck didn't last that long when he found out that the champions were getting their photographs taken and their wands weighed.
He entered a small classroom and took a seat beside Buffy who grinned and winked at him.
"What's with the photos?" he whispered to her.
"For the Daily Prophet I think," she replied, her voice equally as soft. She pointed to a witch in deep magenta robes. "I think she's some sort of reporter. I'm getting kinda weird vibes off her though."
"Evil?" Harry asked.
"I wouldn't go that far. I'd just watch out for her though," Buffy warned.
Ludo Bagman jumped to his feet and clapped his hands together, getting everyone's attention. "Now, the Wand Weighing Ceremony. The rest of the judges will be here in a moment. We have to check that your wands are fully functional, no problems, you know, as they're your mot important tools in the tasks ahead. The expert's upstairs now with Dumbledore," Bagman explained. "Then there's going to be a little photo shoot. This is Rita Skeeter, she's doing a small piece on the Tournament for the Daily Prophet…"
"Maybe not that small, Ludo," Rita Skeeter said, her eyes on Harry.
Harry shivered slightly and glanced to Buffy. "Told you," the Slayer whispered.
"I wonder if I could have a little word with Harry before we start?" Skeeter said to Bagman, but still gazing fixedly at Harry. "The youngest champion, you know…to add a bit of colour?"
"Certainly!" cried Bagman. "That is – if Harry has no objections?"
"Er-"
"Lovely," Rita Skeeter said. She grabbed hold of Harry's arm with a surprisingly firm grip. Buffy's hand shot out and grabbed Skeeter's wrist, her grip even stronger. Skeeter winced and instantly let go of Harry's arm.
"Maybe later," Skeeter demurred.
Buffy glared at her, and Skeeter ran off. Harry shot a grateful look at Buffy who just nodded. They took seats staring at a velvet-covered table, where four of the five judges were now sitting – Professor Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, Mr Crouch and Ludo Bagman. Skeeter settled herself in a corner, parchment across her knee, sucking on the end of her acid-green quill.
Dumbledore introduced them to Mr Ollivander, the man from Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands in Diagon Alley.
Fleur's wand was the first to be tested, Viktor's next. Mr Ollivander then asked for Buffy's wand, which she handed to him, hoping he wouldn't mention what it was made of as he'd done for Fleur's and Viktor's wands.
"Ahh, yes, I remember this one," Ollivander said. "Unusual combination. Powerful though. Only been in use for eight weeks."
"Eight weeks?" Bagman squeaked in disbelief. "What happened to your previous wand?"
Buffy shrugged. "Never had one."
Rita's quill was scribbling frantically, and Buffy was glaring in her direction, annoyed that she couldn't go and thump the journalist and end her out of the room.
"Miss Summers was raised muggle, Mr Bagman," Dumbledore explained.
Bagman nodded and rubbed his chin speculatively.
Ollivander handed Buffy's wand back after conjuring a set of old-fashioned balancing scales. Ollivander then looked to Harry who handed over his wand. Eventually he made a fountain of wine spurt from the tip and handed Harry's wand back. Harry sighed with relief at Ollivander not announcing the curiosities of Harry's wand being the brother-wand to Voldemort's own wand.
Before they could escape to dinner, Skeeter announced that she wanted photographs with the champions and the judges.
The photographer seemed keen to have Fleur and Buffy in the front of the photo, but Skeeter kept pulling Harry into the foreground. Krum slunk towards the back, half-hidden by the rest of the group.
After the group photos, Skeeter insisted on getting individual shots of the champions. Harry reluctantly sat for his photo, and then quickly escaped to the Great Hall for dinner.
"God that Mosquito woman was annoying," Buffy commented.
Harry laughed at the name. "That would be Rita Skeeter," he grinned.
Buffy just shrugged. "Still. She was bugging me."
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When the owls delivered the mail the next day, nearly every person had read the article in the Daily Prophet about the champions of Hogwarts. Harry was incredibly grateful that he'd been saved from doing an interview. He scanned the article, his eyes bugging out as he saw one particular paragraph.
It seems that Harry has at last found love at Hogwarts. His close friend Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen out of the company of one Hermione Granger, a stunningly pretty Muggle-born girl who, like Harry, is one of the top students in the school.
Hermione had advised Harry to ignore it as she was doing, most of the Slytherin girls giggling about Hermione's description in the article.
The article had continued further, talking about how he and Buffy were cousins, and that they seemed to have an incredibly tight bond. Skeeter had speculated that they had bonded over the deaths of their relatives. Harry was just grateful that Skeeter hadn't done all of her research and had no idea that Sirius Black was Buffy's father. If that got out in the Daily Prophet, all hell would have broken loose.
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The days until the twenty-fourth, the day of the first task, seemed to slip away quickly. Buffy spent most of her evenings with Professor Moody. She'd been annoyed that they wouldn't be allowed to continue with tutoring because it might be seen as Moody 'helping' her with the Tournament. Moody had explained the loophole that she'd asked for help before the Tournament had ever begun. And so, Buffy continued to gain knowledge of the Dark Arts.
She continued patrolling the Forest, and had finally given up on trying to interpret anything the Centaurs told her. They were polite enough to her, but preferred to speak in riddles, and she'd never been good at cryptic messages. Giles tried to interpret their messages, but usually the centaurs messages weren't really all that helpful to the Slayer or her Watcher.
On the Friday night and the evening before the first Hogsmeade visit, Buffy was out in the Forest, her senses tingling more than ever. There was something in the Forest making a lot of noise, and it had been scaring away any potential baddies that she could have killed. Like any good Slayer, she had stealthily crept towards the commotion to have a better look.
There was a loud group of male voices, and Buffy thought for a moment that it might be a group of Death-Eaters come to attack Hogwarts. Buffy felt her heartbeat increase, and she continued forward. She flattened herself against a tree and peeked around the corner. She swallowed hard and nearly forgot to keep breathing.
Dragons.
She'd never thought that dragons had actually existed, and now she was seeing four of them, surrounded by thirty or so men. She swallowed hard and knew that this was part of the first task.
She ducked behind the tree as two men carrying a big blanket with huge granite-grey eggs, placing them beside one of the dragons.
Buffy suddenly spotted Charlie Weasley and felt immensely safer. These weren't Death-Eaters. They were dragon experts. Buffy watched as Charlie walked towards a smaller box and retrieve four smaller, but still fairly large, golden eggs. He picked one up, testing its weight.
Another of the men sauntered up to Charlie and took hold of one of the other eggs.
"Should be exciting, d'ya reckon?" the man asked.
Charlie Weasley grinned. "Definitely. Makes me wish I'd been a couple of years younger," he replied.
"D'ya think any of the champs will have a hope of getting past these buggers?" the man asked, pointing at the sleeping dragons.
Charlie shrugged. "Should do. Bit worried about the girls, they might not be too impressed at the thought of battling dragons. But all they have to do is get the golden egg."
"Are you gonna tell Hagrid about this lot?" the man asked. "I remember he had a dragon of his own a few years back."
Charlie chuckled a little. "I'll be telling him. I don't think he'd be too impressed if I didn't."
Buffy had heard enough. She quietly slunk back into the thick of the Forest, trying to get her heart to beat at a normal pace. Dragons. Why dragons? She raced back up to the castle, not wanting to spend another moment in the Forest.
She raced up the stairs, not stopping for anyone or anything until she reached the library. She slowed to a walk, knowing Madam Pince wouldn't be thrilled with her racing through the library. She found the section on dangerous magical creatures and looked up the section on dragons, wanting to learn as much about them as she possibly could. She only had until Tuesday evening to completely perfect whatever she was going to do.
She stayed cloistered in the library for nearly two hours before returning to the Common Room. Giles had wanted to know why she was researching dragons, but she'd shrugged him off, telling him it was just something she was fascinated by. Giles was still technically a Professor of Hogwarts, and she didn't want to tell him that she had inside information about the Triwizard Tournament. She would wait until they were alone, with no one around to eavesdrop on their conversation before informing him that she was at an advantage.
Inside the Common Room, Fred and George were seated in a corner, writing more letters to Bagman. The man had been avoiding them, and was refusing to even give them back the original bet they'd placed.
"Where have you been?" George asked as she sat down with them.
"Library," she replied.
Fred shifted over to make room for her and accidentally knocked over an inkpot that thankfully still had its lid on. It rolled away slightly. Fred groaned and reached for his wand.
"Accio inkpot!" The pot lifted from the ground and flew into his hand.
"You're so lazy," Buffy commented.
"And darn proud of it," Fred replied easily.
"Handy spell though," George commented. "Mum always uses it so she doesn't have to put her hands in our pockets. Ever since she found those live mice in Fred's pockets that one time."
Buffy laughed loudly. She could picture Molly Weasley squeaking in fright at the mice.
"It's annoying," Fred complained. "No matter where we hide stuff, even if we're bloody sitting on things, if she summons them, they'll go to her."
And it was with that one simple conversation with Fred and George that Buffy had figured out the most brilliant plan to complete the first task. Grinning widely, she moved to kneel and leant over, kissing Fred's cheek and then George's before standing up.
"You guys are brilliant!" she exclaimed.
Without another word she raced up the stairs to flip through the copious amounts of books that she'd been leant by various teachers. She found the incantation for Summoning charms and stayed up well into the night practising.
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Many thanks for your reviews and stuff!! Sorry for the delay of updates, been doing exams and travelling back home for the holidays, huzzah!
DKG.