The following morning brought with it their favorite edition of the Daily Prophet yet.

Rita's article about them appeared, and they couldn't help but laugh their heads off as they read it, causing everyone near them at breakfast to stare at them like they were off their rockers. But they just couldn't bring themselves to care, as it was the most clearly made up bullshit they had ever seen, and they had been accused of crimes by Snape before.

~.~

The TriWizard Tournaments' Most Unlikely Competitor

Despite new rules set into place this year for the historic TriWizard Tournament, one under-age student not only managed to enter his name, but succeeded in being selected for the prestigious honor of competing, and it is none other than Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. Most famous for defeating You-Know-Who when he was merely a baby, Harry did what no other under-age student could do, and successfully put his name in the Goblet. And while defeating You-Know-Who has given him fame a plenty already, if he wins this tournament, he will become the youngest winner in the history of the TriWizard Tournament, adding to his already household name.

When exclusively interviewed by yours truly, Rita Skeeter, Harry said, "I suppose I get my strength from my parents. I know they'd be very proud of me if they could see me now. My parents were one of the biggest motivating factors to me entering this tournament. Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I'm not ashamed to admit it, and I want to do them proud. I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they are watching over me."

But that isn't all the Boy-Who-Lived has going for him this year. Harry has at last found love at Hogwarts. His close friend, Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen out of the company of Hermione Granger, a stunningly pretty muggleborn girl, and Ronna Weasley, a pureblood of the well-known Weasley family, both of whom, like Harry, are among the top students in the school. The two girls seem surprisingly friendly with each other despite competing for the same boy's attentions, though they may simply be feeling out the competition — better to know your enemy, and all that.

They also both seem to be using this tournament as a way to prove that they are the best girl for Harry. For while the tournament is supposed to be the three champions from each school competing against one another, Harry said that he was doing the tournament with his two girlfriends by his side, and that he didn't care about the rules saying he isn't even allowed to ask for help, let alone do the tasks with two other people. Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore surely has a duty to make sure the playing field is even in this tournament being hosted by Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Of course, the Boy-Who-Lived is a fourth year competing against seventh years, as are Granger and Weasley, so perhaps it is an even playing field after all.

As for who Harry and his two girls will have to overcome to win this tournament, are Deliquor from Beauxbatons, and Crum from Durmstrang.

~.~

No one else in the Great Hall seemed to find it as amusing and ludicrous as FitzSkimmons did, however, as no one else was laughing, or chortling, or even chuckling in mild amusement. Nor did anyone seem to start finding it amusing as the days went by.

The Slytherins, of course, tried to embarrass Fitz, and Simmons and Daisy as well, by maliciously quoting the article at him every chance they got, but as FitzSkimmons had completely misplaced the field in which they grew their fucks about the Slytherins' opinions, they didn't care. And with both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff still hating on him at the moment for nonconsensually having his name come out of the Goblet after Diggory's, and Gryffindor just supporting him even more the more Slytherin tried to ridicule him, they just ignored everyone and went about their classes like the world wasn't burning down all around them.

It also didn't hurt that the three of them clearly were the top of every class they were in (even if that fact confused everyone, who were only used to the mudblood know-it-all bookworm being the top of every class, and Harry and Ronna being somewhere in the middleish), and Jemma and Daisy were quite gorgeous, and any insults otherwise trying to compare the two to chipmunks sounded hollow even to the Snake-chicks saying them. As for the implied love rivalry between Simmons and Daisy, the three of them played it up any time anyone tried to insult them with that, Fitz wrapping his arms around both of his girls' shoulders, or Simmons and Daisy kissing each other's cheeks, or sitting and standing far closer together than they really needed to — all perks of being actually married, and nightly and morningly fucking each other's brains out in their private dorm, along with snogging in more than a few broom cupboards on empty hallways during the day.

They did still refrain from any of them actually kissing either of the other two on the lips, though, wanting to tease but not confirm that the love triangle was in fact real, if more of a circle than a triangle technically, and not wanting any teachers to know for sure that there were any romantic shenanigans going on between their three fourteen year old selves. Because while their daily interactions were anything but strictly platonic, no one could actually say they were romantic either, and they wanted to keep it that way for as long as they could.

The Saturday before the first task, FitzSkimmons had their first opportunity to go to Hogsmeade.

They fortunately hadn't had to set the professors straight on anything yet, and so still had permission to go to the all-magical town, and were actually rather excited. Despite the cold, the three of them went everywhere, visiting every highlight spot that their three characters knew from the books, eventually ending up at the Three Broomsticks for lunch. They hadn't been eating for long when Mad-Eye and Hagrid, who'd been sitting at a table on the opposite side of the pub, pushed their way over to them.

As Mad-Eye and FitzSkimmons greeted each other, Hagrid totally non-suspiciously leaned down between Fitz and Simmons, and tried to whisper into Fitz's ear, "Harry, meet me tonight at midnight at me cabin. Wear your cloak."

Of course, since as soon as Hagrid had leaned down, Simmons, and Daisy on the other side of Fitz, had both instinctively leaned forward to hear whatever the gamekeeper had to say to Fitz, all three of them heard his cryptic summons.

"Can we make it eleven? We have somewhere to be at one, and we'd prefer not to be late," replied Fitz, and not in a whisper.

"Also, we can't do the invisibility cloak, as it won't fit over all of us," added Simmons.

"This is jus' fer Harry," grunted the gamekeeper.

"It's all of us or none of us," replied Daisy crisply.

Hagrid just kind of looked around cluelessly for a second, mostly in Mad-Eye's direction, before finally grunting, "Just be there at midnight." Then in far too loud of a tone, he said, "Nice ter see yeh three," before heading out of the pub with Mad-Eye following behind.

"Well?" asked Fitz when the two adults were gone.

"We go at midnight to see what he has to show us, and leave by fifteen till regardless of whether he's shown us yet or not, so we have plenty of time to get back to our fire, and hopefully Sirius knows how to get to the married dorm common room fire," answered Simmons.

"I wonder what he thinks Harry needs to see, and why it has to be after hours when no one should be up," mused Daisy. "He did say Harry only, so something to do with the tournament? Although the one and only stated rule is that teachers aren't allowed to help."

"And what was up with him looking at Mad-Eye after we said we're all coming?" added Simmons. "And Mad-Eye deliberately avoiding saying anything. They're both clearly hiding something, I just don't know what."

~FSK~

That night, at midnight sharp, they knocked on the door of Hagrid's hut.

They had used the Marauder's Map to make sure their way out of the castle was clear, and Fitz had the invisibility cloak folded up neatly in case in worse case scenario they needed to pull it out real quick and throw it over the three of them, hoping whoever was walking past wouldn't be looking too closely in the dark and see their shoes. But they hadn't seen anyone, and arrived at the wooden hut uncontested.

Hagrid grunted a greeting when he saw it was all three of them and they weren't invisible, before saying, "Stay hidden behind me, Madame Maxime wouldn't like to know that I'm showin' you this — think it'd be cheatin', no doubt."

FitzSkimmons simply nodded their agreement, each thinking that while Madame Maxime might complain about Hagrid showing Harry, if this really was something to do with the first task in a few days, she was going to immediately go tell Fleur whatever it was so her champion would have the best shot at doing well. And regardless, they were going to tell Fleur, Krum, and Diggory whatever it was to make sure everyone was as safe as possible, and on an even playing field.

Hagrid led them first to the Beauxbatons Carriage, where he picked up Madame Maxime, and then led them on around the perimeter of the forest so far that the castle and the lake were out of sight, FitzSkimmons staying well behind him hidden in the shadows of the trees, their spy skills coming in handy. FitzSkimmons also kept a steady eye on their watches, so they would know when they needed to head back up to the castle to meet Sirius.

"It's almost twenty till, and I know we said fifteen, but we're so far out that if we don't see something in a minute or two, I think we should head back," whispered Simmons to the other two as they continued to walk through the woods behind the two giants who were a little ways ahead of them.

But just a minute later, they heard shouting and earsplitting roaring, and knew they had arrived. Or at least they really hoped they'd arrived, as if this was just a minor blip on Hagrid's path to whatever he was really wanting to show them, they didn't want to see what his intended destination was.

They stood there silently for a few seconds, before Fitz summed up the entire scene.

"Whelp — those are definitely dragons. And fully-grown ones, not dragonlets. Let's go."

As they stood there a second longer, too entranced to move quite yet, they listened to the nearest one make a horrible yowling, screeching, screaming noise, as its eyes bulged out in fear, rage, or probably a combination of both — they didn't look like happy creatures.

"Aww, poor things! They're just scared!" cried Simmons softly.

"Just scared, and will try to eat us Tuesday afternoon," retorted Daisy, rolling her eyes. "Come on, we've got elsewhere to be, and less time than planned to get there, Mrs Organized Schedules."

"Coming, coming," sighed Simmons, finally turning away from the dragons and following her spouses off through the woods towards the awaiting castle.

They hadn't been walking through the woods for more than a few minutes when Daisy suddenly hissed, "Watch out — someone's coming through the woods towards us!", and grabbed the other two and pulled them into the shadows behind a tree.

Peering around the tree, they saw that it was Karkaroff, heading towards the dragon enclosure himself.

"Well, that makes Fleur and Krum who should both know about the dragons by morning," said Fitz as they began hurrying on towards the castle again.

"We still need to get everyone together at breakfast and make sure their headmasters really did tell them everything they know, along with telling Diggory, since Dumbledore certainly wasn't out there to tell him, and you know Hagrid's not going to," said Simmons.

"Of course, of course — wasn't saying we shouldn't," replied Fitz. "Just pointing out that those two will know before we can tell them."

They continued hurrying up to the castle, and then through the castle, to get back to their common room before Sirius arrived, pushing open the door to the married dorms five minutes before one. A minute after one, Sirius's head appeared in the fireplace before them where they sat cuddled on the couch.

"Glad to see you found the right fire," greeted Fitz.

This was the first time the three of them had ever actually seen Sirius, Crookshanks eating Pettigrew before they had ever even boarded the train in their third year and Crookshanks relaying that information on to Padfoot after his failed attempt to get into the Gryffindor common room on Halloween.

"Didn't know this dorm existed — took me a few tries to find the right fireplace, eventually took the house elves in the kitchen telling me where to go to get here," replied Sirius. "But never mind me, how are you?"

"Oh, we're doing fine," answered Daisy. "Nothing new suspicious has happened, and we still have no leads on who entered Harry."

"I haven't got long here...I've broken into a wizarding house to use the fire, but they could be back at any time. There are things I need to warn you about."

"Yeah?" said Fitz.

"Karkaroff," said Sirius. "Harry, he was a Death Eater. You know what Death Eaters are, don't you?"

"Voldemort's minions," answered Simmons.

"Well, Karkaroff was one, and he was caught. He was in Azkaban with me, but he got released. I'd bet everything that's why Dumbledore wanted an Auror at Hogwarts this year — to keep an eye on him. And Moody caught Karkaroff. Put him into Azkaban in the first place."

"So that's why Karkaroff seems so afraid of Mad-Eye," said Daisy. "Makes sense now."

"Well, he made a deal with the Ministry of Magic for his release," said Sirius bitterly. "He said he'd seen the error of his ways, and then he named names...he put a load of other people into Azkaban in his place... He's not very popular in there, I can tell you. And since he got out, from what I can tell, he's been teaching the Dark Arts to every student who passes through that school of his. So watch out for the Durmstrang champion as well."

"Krum's distant, but the few times we've talked with him he seemed all right, and he's probably the most famous quidditch player in the world, on an international team, so he would have had to go through some kind of clearance to be allowed to play international quidditch, shouldn't he have?" replied Fitz.

"Just be careful, because we already know Karkaroff is a good actor convincing the Ministry of Magic to let him go, so he easily could have taught Krum to be as well," said Sirius. "Now, I've been keeping an eye on the Daily Prophet, Harry. And reading between the lines of that Skeeter woman's article a couple months ago, Moody was attacked the night before he started at Hogwarts. I know she says it was another false alarm, but I don't think so, somehow. I think someone tried to stop him from getting to Hogwarts. I think someone knew their job would be a lot more difficult with him around. And no one's going to look into it too closely; Mad-Eye's heard intruders a bit too often. But that doesn't mean he can't still spot the real thing. Moody was the best Auror the Ministry ever had."

"Mad-Eye thinks someone's trying to use the tournament to kill me," said Fitz. "Is it simply because it's their first good opportunity to do so, or has something changed to make whoever it is only want to kill me now?"

Sirius hesitated for a second, before saying slowly, "I've been hearing some very strange things. The Death Eaters seem to be a bit more active than usual lately. They showed themselves at the Quidditch World Cup, didn't they? Someone set off the Dark Mark...and then — did you hear about that Ministry of Magic witch who's gone missing?"

"Bertha Jorkins?" asked Simmons.

"Exactly...she disappeared in Albania, and that's definitely where Voldemort was rumored to be last...and she would have known the Triwizard Tournament was coming up, wouldn't she?"

"So Riddle finds out from her somehow, and sends someone to Hogwarts to kill me using the tournament as cover," mused Fitz. "And you think that might be Karkaroff."

"I don't know," answered Sirius slowly, "I just don't know...Karkaroff doesn't strike me as the type who'd go back to Voldemort unless he knew Voldemort was powerful enough to protect him. But whoever put your name in that goblet did it for a reason, and like you said, I can't help thinking the tournament would be a very good way to attack you and make it look like an accident."

"Well, Hermione and Ronna are by my side twenty-four, seven, and we're well past fourth year on defensive and offensive spells," replied Fitz. "But we'll keep an eye out, constant vigilance as Mad-Eye says at least a dozen times every lesson, and let you and one of the professors here know if we see anything."

"Good," said Sirius. "So I only have a couple more minutes, but have you heard any rumors about the first task?"

It took all of their training as spies for each of them not to quickly glance at the other two and instantly give away that they were hiding something, but Daisy managed to say with a completely straight face, "No rumors whatsoever. I guess we'll just have to find out what the task we have to do is on Tuesday, unless someone says something before then. But like Harry said in his letter right after his name came out, we're just trying to survive, not win. We'll do our best to stay out of danger."

"Well, if there's nothing left, I'll get going. Good to talk to you all again, though, and let me know how the first task goes. Bye."

After FitzSkimmons all bid him goodbye, Sirius disappeared from the fire, leaving them alone once more.

"Do you really think Karkaroff could have entered Harry, and then pretended to be furious about Harry's name coming out to throw suspicions?" asked Fitz once they were sure Sirius had left and wasn't going to return.

"It's always possible," answered Daisy. "And he has as much of a reason to be a suspect as anyone right now, but I certainly wouldn't consider anything Sirius said to be proof of that."

"You know Daisy-girl, speaking of suspicious behavior, I'm really not sure knowing exactly what the task is counts as not having heard any rumors," said Simmons.

"I never actually lied," smirked Daisy, as they stood up and headed to their bed.