"The third task is really very straightforward. The Triwizard Cup will be placed in the center of the maze, and the first champion to touch it will win!"
Mr Bagman had just finished explaining to the three champions and FitzSkimmons what the third task was going to be.
"We simply 'ave to get through ze maze?" asked Fleur in understandable confusion. The first two tasks had been much more life and limb threatening than a casual stroll through the quidditch pitch sounded.
"There will be obstacles," answered Bagman happily. "Hagrid is providing a number of creatures...then there will be spells that must be broken...all that sort of thing, you know."
"Oh, that makes more sense," Daisy said to herself, having wondered the same thing as Fleur.
"Yes indeed," smiled Bagman, having heard her. "It will be no walk in the park. Between the maze itself, and the obstacles inside, I think you will all find it quite the challenging task. Now, the champion leading on points will get a head start into the maze — that would be you Cedric — then Mr. Krum will enter...then Miss Delacour…and finally Harry Potter. But you'll all be in with a fighting chance, depending how well you get past the obstacles. Should be fun, eh?"
"How are we going to know when someone has found the cup to start trying to find our way back out?" asked Simmons. "And how is the person who finds the cup going to get back out without risking running into any other competitor who might try to steal it from them, and from obstacles that might knock them unconscious, if it's in the middle of the maze?"
"The cup will be a portkey, set to transport the winner to just outside the entrance of the maze," answered Bagman. "And once the winner has appeared with the cup, the patrollers will go in and get the remaining champions out."
"How?" asked Simmons in genuine curiosity. "You can't apparate inside Hogwarts grounds. And how will they know where the champions are in order to go get them, anyway? For that matter, how will they know if a champion gets injured, and needs rescuing?"
"Professor Moody's magical eye can see through the maze; if any of you get into difficulty and wish to be rescued, you can send up red sparks to let us know you need rescuing; and the maze has been set up with special wards to allow apparation into the maze from a specific point just outside it, with the return trip to the outside of the maze being done by portkeys the patrollers will be carrying in their robes," answered Bagman.
"Okay — makes sense," said Simmons.
After several seconds of silence in which no one else asked any questions or commented any comments, Bagman said, "Very well...if you haven't got any questions, we'll go back up to the castle, shall we, it's a bit chilly."
As everyone began jumping over the hedges to get out of the pitch, Bagman hurried up to FitzSkimmons.
"How you feeling, Harry?" he asked quietly. "Confident? This task should be right up your alley, based on the rumors I've heard of some of the adventures you've got up to here at Hogwarts before. The Philosopher's Stone, the Chamber of Secrets…."
"Those are common knowledge?" Simmons asked in surprise. "I kind of thought it seemed like they were swept under the rug, completely hidden from public knowledge."
"I have my sources," brushed off Bagman like it was no big deal. "But this should be just like those. You should do great on this one, Harry."
"Yeah, I suppose," replied Fitz, adding in his mind, 'If we were going to try'.
But this seemed a good enough answer to Mr Bagman, as he left them alone to finish their walk back up to the castle. Which as they did so, they saw Mad-Eye prowling around the grounds, something they'd noticed he'd started doing in the past week. But as he was Mad-Eye, Dumbledore thought someone was trying to kill Harry, and it wasn't like Dumbledore or Mad-Eye was going to tell the three of them what he had Mad-Eye doing, they assumed it was on Dumbledore's orders, or else something Mad-Eye thought was necessary from his auror days, and walked on past their fellow spy with just a wave and a nod 'hello'.
Four days later, in Monday afternoon's Arithmancy class, Simmons was diligently working on the in-class assignment Professor Vector had given them, when she glanced over at Daisy on one side of her to make sure she wasn't doodling stick figures of FitzSimmons as superheroes, and then over to the other side at Fitz to see if he was done with the assignment yet.
Daisy was not in fact doodling FitzSimmons as superheroes, she was doodling them as lab nerds in a stick figure lab, but Fitz was staring straight ahead of him, unseeing. Something that was clearly wrong.
"Fitz?" she hissed.
Fitz never stopped staring straight in front of him, but he did quickly scribble out on a piece of parchment he'd been using for calculations for their assignment, 'I think Harry's having a vision of some kind', and slipped it over to the edge of his desk for Simmons to grab.
At Simmons' hissing, Daisy had looked over to see what was going on, so Simmons showed Fitz's note to her as well. Sure that their wife also knew what was going on, Simmons slid the parchment back onto Fitz's desk, and asked quietly, "You okay?"
She was pretty sure he was just concentrating on remembering everything in the vision, hence the writing without looking instead of verbally answering her, but she wanted to make sure — he was her husband and best friend, after all.
A few seconds later, the parchment was on the edge of his desk again, and she took it to show Daisy as well — 'Yeah, I'm fine.'
But before she could decide what to say to Fitz next, if anything at all and not just let him finish watching Harry's vision, a stern voice right above her demanded, "What do you think you're doing, Miss Granger? You're normally my best students!"
In her concentration to make sure Fitz was okay, she'd completely missed that Professor Vector had made her way back to them.
Simmons looked up and answered politely, "Harry is having a vision, Professor Vector. We're just making sure he's okay until it's over."
"Oh."
Vector stared at them in shock, clueless as to how she was supposed to react now that it turned out that her best and most diligent students weren't goofing off in class for the first time ever like she'd immediately jumped to the conclusion of, until she finally asked, "Do you know what about?"
"He hasn't said, but given the fact he is Harry Potter, I would imagine it's most likely about Voldemort. He had a dream over the summer about Voldemort murdering a muggle that now looks like it might have been less a dream and more a vision while he was asleep. And this time it's happening while he is awake."
"Do you uh — does he need to go to the Hospital Wing?" asked Professor Vector hesitantly, unsure as to what she was supposed to do now. The entire rest of the class had turned to face them by now as well.
"Not yet. Maybe when it's over, but he'll be able to tell us better," answered Simmons.
They all watched for several more long seconds, until Fitz finally winced and shook his head like he was trying to shake away a fly or a hangover, breathing slightly heavier than normal. Looking around him to recollect his bearings, he saw everyone looking at him, before turning to his wives next to him.
"Someone is dead. Someone who I'm guessing Pettigrew was supposed to be watching or something, because the death made up for Pettigrew's blunder, and Pettigrew's blunder didn't ruin everything — Riddle's words. Because of that, Nagini won't be eating the human rat. Nagini will of course be eating me eventually, surprise, surprise there, who could have ever guessed that would be coming — before using the cruciatus curse on Pettigrew, under the pretense of punishing Pettigrew for his blunder, but we all know it's really because Riddle's a sadist — and not the Special Advisor to the Director In Science and Technology, in this case."
"That was masochist, not sadist," smirked Simmons. "Shame the acronym worked out so poorly, though."
"Most Advisor Specialest in an Outrageous Color Hierarchy In Science & Technology," Daisy supplied helpfully from the other side of Simmons.
Fitz gasped in joyful shock, as Simmons just closed her eyes and shook her head for a second, figuring it improper to beat her head against her desk in the middle of class, before opening them again and turning to her wife. "How long have you been holding that in?"
"Since the last time Fitzy brought up sadist a few weeks ago our time, and you mumbled like always that you were a masochist, not a sadist for doing that job," smirked Daisy.
But Professor Vector had latched onto the 'Pettigrew' portion of Fitz's recounting of Harry's vision.
"Pettigrew is dead! Killed by Sirius Black over a decade ago!" she exclaimed.
"No he's not — and he committed the crime Sirius was illegally imprisoned without due process for, not Sirus. Sirus was innocent of that. All the stuff he did last year, not so much, but the initial crime that led to all that, he's innocent of, and Pettigrew is alive and with Riddle right now, in whatever form Riddle is still alive in. Oh, and Pettigrew is an unregistered animagus rat, which is how he survived undetected for twelve years — Dumbledore knows all this, even if he's declined to tell anyone, or even bother trying to get Sirius a trial to get him acquitted," Simmons replied to their professor. Then turning back to Fitz, she asked, "Did you see what he looked like this time? You didn't over the summer."
"No, but he could somehow point the wand to crucio Pettigrew or else had a third person there, though it was definitely Riddle saying the spell," answered Fitz, shaking his head. "And considering he's been in a high-back, classical villain chair both times — the kind they can hide in so you don't know they're there until they spin around all evilly with ominous music playing in the background — I'm guessing he's the one manipulating the wand somehow, and isn't just a spirit. Else the chair seems a little too cliché even for Riddle."
"Could he be possessing someone again?" asked Daisy. "That would need a chair."
"I think Riddle's voice would be muffled in the back of the chair, and he'd be smushed into the back of the chair all the time if he was renting out a flat in the back of someone's head again," answered Fitz. "So I'm guessing no. Though he doesn't seem to want to be seen, or else needs to face the fire, so probably not what we'd call human?"
Simmons simply nodded, before they all turned back to Professor Vector.
"Do you, uh — do you need to leave class?" she asked unsurely — she'd never had a student have a vision of You-Know-Who in her class before, and was in a bit over her head as to what the protocol here was.
"Oh, no, finish class — I was done with the assignment anyway," replied Fitz, picking up his assignment and holding it out to her.
That's my husband, thought Simmons to herself with a proud smile, before saying out loud, "I'm done as well."
"And I'm, uh, mostly done?" said Daisy from the other side as far more of a question than a statement.
And…that's my wife, Simmons sighed to herself.
"It's, uh — that's okay, there's still fifteen minutes before I was going to ask everyone to turn them in. You still have time," replied Professor Vector still flummoxed by everything that had happened in the past five minutes, before turning and walking back up to the front of the classroom, where she turned around and said to everyone, "Fifteen more minutes, and then I will be collecting your charts."
~FSK~
Once the bell had rung signifying the end of class, and FitzSkimmons were walking down the hall towards the Great Hall for supper, Simmons looked over at her husband.
"Are you really okay? Looked like you were in pain there at the end — when Riddle was crucioing Pettigrew," she said gently. She knew getting any of the three of them to admit they were in any kind of pain was like pulling teeth.
"Yes, I'm fine, Jemma," replied Fitz, touching her shoulder to reassure her. "It was Harry's vision, so I was watching it, not living it. And some echoes of the pain came through my dual brain, but just echoes. I can say I wouldn't have wanted to be Harry, though — he would have been in pain."
"Yeah, Simmons — it's not like he's never been lightly shot, or had a building lightly drop on him or anything like that," teased Daisy.
"That second one was quite heavily, actually," smirked Simmons. "Killed him, in fact."
"Stop telling people I'm dead," mock scolded Fitz.
"But how you're my first and second husband is such a good story for parties, Fitz," teased Simmons.
"And what parties would those be, exactly?" replied Fitz. "We haven't been to a real party except on missions since like Academy days, and we only went to a few of those — ones you drug me to, to be specific."
"Ok, fine — it would be a good story if we ever retired and went to parties. Or when we have a child and take a ten to fifteen year sabbatical from field duty," said Simmons.
But hearing Jemma mention a sabbatical to raise their child reminded Daisy that they'd have to get (happily granted) permission from AC, which in turn reminded her that when it came to Riddle that Dumbledore was the closest thing there was to a Director to report to, which made her ask the other two, "Should we tell Dumbledore about Fitz's vision? Seems like the kind of thing he'd like to know."
"Does it matter? — we really can't change time here, anyway," answered Fitz. "And there's only a month or so left for us before everything resets."
"But that's a month Riddle will still try to kill us during, and could possibly be thwarted if Dumbledore knows about it," replied Simmons.
"Sorry Fitzy, but I have to agree with Jemma on this one. We have to let Dumbledore know someone — probably someone of standing, accord, or importance, at least to Riddle — is dead," said Daisy. "If he can figure out who that is, maybe he can figure out how they died, who killed them, who's trying to kill you, and all that fun stuff. Stuff that could help us next year since we'll remember it even if no one here does. And you know you'd want to be told if you were in charge."
"I was very specifically never in charge — something about unauthorized surgery or something," replied Fitz rolling his eyes, before sighing and saying, "But you're of course right, as always."
"You were in charge with less than stellar influences for a while, it just didn't turn out so well," smirked Daisy, causing Fitz to roll his eyes at her again.
"Shhh — Jemma still doesn't like to be reminded of the Framework," teased Fitz, bumping Simmons with his shoulder.
Now it was Simmons' turn to roll her eyes, as she replied, "I think we all want to never have to think about that again. But back to what we're supposed to be talking about, when are we going to tell Dumbledore? Should we go see if he's in his office right now?"
"Well, we have no idea what the password is anymore," replied Fitz. "So talk to him at supper, assuming he's there?"
"Works for me," answered Daisy.
~FSK~
When FitzSkimmons finished eating supper that evening, they strolled up to the staff table where Dumbledore was eating with all the professors and Snape.
"Excuse me, Sir, but Harry had another vision of Riddle," Simmons said politely when they had reached the headmaster. "We thought you might like to know."
"Oh — well, yes, um — why don't you meet me outside the gargoyle statue to my office in twenty minutes, Harry, and you can tell me what you saw," stammered Dumbledore after a second, completely taken off guard.
"We'll be there, Sir," replied Fitz, before the three of them turned and walked away to go find a broom cupboard to snog in until it was time to meet Dumbledore.
A little over twenty minutes later, the three of them were seated across from Dumbledore at the desk in his office that the three of them had never been in before, and Hermione and Ronna had never been in, either.
"So Harry, you had another vision of Voldemort, you said."
"Yes, Sir. At the start of the vision, my point of view was on the back of an eagle owl, which flew into an old, ivy-colored house up on a hillside through a broken window on the upper story. The owl flew down a clearly abandoned hallway into the room at the far end, which was mostly dark and completely boarded up. My point of view stopped about in the doorway, as I saw the owl fly around and into the high-backed chair across the room next to the fireplace. The chair had it's back to the door, so I never saw anything in the chair. But after a few seconds, during which Riddle presumably read the letter the owl was presumably delivering, Riddle said to Peter Pettigrew, who was lying and sobbing on the floor next to the chair, 'You are in luck, Wormtail. You are very fortunate indeed. Your blunder has not ruined everything. He is dead.' Pettigrew then gasped, 'My Lord! My Lord, I am...I am so pleased...and so sorry.' Riddle seemed to ignore this for the moment, and said to Nagini, his snake, who was also lying on the floor next to Pettigrew, 'Nagini, you are out of luck. I will not be feeding Wormtail to you, after all...but never mind, never mind...there is still Harry Potter.' Then Riddle did address Pettigrew again, and said, 'Now, Wormtail, perhaps one more little reminder why I will not tolerate another blunder from you." Pettigrew immediately began begging, 'My Lord...no...I beg you', clearly knowing what was about to happen to him. Which was the tip of a wand pointing at Pettigrew from behind the chair, and Riddle saying, 'Crucio'. Pettigrew of course acted like you'd expect, screaming and writhing on the floor and all that, while I felt some minor pain in my scar, and came back to myself."
When Fitz had finished, Dumbledore simply looked at Fitz, not immediately saying anything. FitzSkimmons just looked back, waiting for him to speak. Fitz had said everything there was to say, in complete detail — now it was his turn.
"I see," Dumbledore finally said. "I see. Now, has your scar hurt at any other time this year, excepting the time it woke you up over the summer?"
"No. But it did look like the same room that Riddle and Pettigrew were in," answered Fitz. "So it can be reasonably assumed that he's in the same house as he was back then."
Dumbledore stood up and began pacing behind his desk, clearly beginning to get lost in his own thoughts, so before they had to sit there forever just watching the headmaster pace without talking to them, Simmons asked a question that had been on her mind ever since seeing Fitz in slight pain from the vision.
"Why is his scar hurting him when he has a vision of Riddle? And why, for that matter, does it hurt him when he's in physical close proximity to Riddle? I mean, it obviously has to be magical, as it certainly isn't muggly possible for either of those to occur, but do you know what magic is causing it? I'd like to try reading up on it if you do."
Dumbledore looked very intently at Simmons for a moment, before evasively replying, "I have a theory, no more than that. It is my belief that Harry's scar hurts both when Lord Voldemort is near him, and when he is feeling a particularly strong surge of hatred."
"Why?" insisted Simmons, already knowing the first half, and while the second half was new, it didn't help her much, and was clearly an evasion of her question.
"Because Harry and Voldemort are connected by the curse that failed," said Dumbledore. "That is no ordinary scar."
"Then what kind of scar is it?" snapped Daisy, doing what Simmons wanted to but was too polite to actually do. "So Riddle and Harry are connected by that unordinary scar, but what is the actual connection? How does it work? What books can Hermione get to study up on it? How can Harry extend the vision to see more of what Riddle is up to?"
At this last, Dumbledore hurriedly exclaimed, "No! We don't want Harry to have to go through more of this than he unfortunately has to!"
Fitz thought about saying that the visions didn't hurt him at all, that he'd be more than happy to see more of what Riddle was up to, but something in Dumbledore's tone told him that his real reason for not wanting Harry to see more had little to do with Harry's suffering or lack thereof, so he didn't say it. The headmaster was just a little too urgent about Harry not having visions for it to be for Harry's sake — well, pain sake, anyway.
Simmons had apparently come to the exact same conclusion, as she said, "What's wrong with the visions? What about the connection makes you not want him to have them?"
"Yeah, because it isn't Harry's suffering," added Daisy. "I'm the world's leading expert on avoidance, and you're clearly avoiding something. Is Riddle making up the visions and sending them to Harry? Is this misinformation intended for you because he expects Harry to immediately run and tell you every vision of Riddle he has? But even then, couldn't we still analyze what Riddle is sending him for clues on what Riddle is actually doing? It still seems like useful information, even if it has to be analyzed differently or in multiple ways depending on which way we think it is or if we're unsure. But intentionally false information can still give us a clue as to what the enemy is doing."
Like every time one of them showed wisdom beyond their character's years, Dumbledore stared at them, but especially Daisy, in shock for a long time.
Finally, Dumbledore answered slowly, as if trying to decide as he spoke how much of what he knew to actually tell them, "We don't know the exact nature of the connection, and until then, we don't know that information can't pass both ways. Every time Harry has a vision, Voldemort could at the same time be seeing what Harry is doing. And if these visions occur when Harry is not at Hogwarts, it could give Voldemort information on where Harry is."
"Fair enough," replied Daisy after a second. "And I'll assume you either have no clue what type of connection it is in order to research, there isn't any research on it because it's either so rare no one's studied it or the wizarding world doesn't seem to understand the concept of research, or you know exactly what it is and aren't going to tell us no matter what, so there's no point in repeating any of the questions about what kind of scar it is or how to research it. So instead, who was killed that Riddle didn't kill Pettigrew over for blundering somehow? Any ideas on that, that you're willing to tell us?"
Dumbledore was silent for a while, studying them and stroking his beard all wisely-like, before finally answering, "Bertha Jorkins is still unaccounted for, so it could be her. Mr Crouch, one of the other two judges, you may have noticed was filled in for by your older brother, Weasley, and has not been seen in the Ministry for over six months now. Percy Weasley insists Mr Crouch simply says he's ill and is taking some time off, but in forty years I've never seen Mr Crouch take off more than a week and only that once or twice, and no one to my knowledge has gone to check on him at his house to make sure he is actually okay, so that seems suspicious as well — but that is not to leave this office," warned Dumbledore sternly. "The Ministry would not be happy if rumors started spreading that Mr Crouch isn't simply at home ill. Although, for that matter, I don't think they would like rumors spreading that he is at home ill for the last six months, either, even if every single person in the Ministry has heard it by now, not in the least because Percy Weasley keeps telling everyone he meets that that's the scenario."
FitzSkimmons simply nodded their acknowledgement, before something else the three of them had talked about entered Daisy's mind, and she asked, "Last time we saw Riddle, back in first year, he was just a spirit renting space on the back of Quirrell's noggin. And yet now, three years later, it seems like he's capable of holding a wand. Any idea what form he's in now, and how he got there?"
"Pettigrew," hissed Simmons. "Pettigrew went to find Riddle at the end of last year. He could perform spells that would give Riddle form again."
"Miss Granger is right," said Dumbledore. "The same as unicorn's blood will keep you alive even if you are an inch from death, there are spells that can bring Voldemort back to some semblance of physical form — though I do not know what exact form he might be taking at the moment, though it is doubtlessly not what we would exactly call 'human'."
They had all been silent again for a while, Dumbledore resuming his pacing, when Fitz mumbled as much to himself as everyone else, "Shame there's no way to figure out what abandoned house he's in, and the place be attacked directly and arrest or kill Riddle."
While it might have been possible with Shield's resources, only he had seen the house and surrounding countryside, and while he could still picture it, it's not like he could draw portraits, besides the fact that there were no computer databases in the wizarding world to run any such image through. Simmons, however, noticed for a very brief flicker in Dumbledore's eyes that it almost looked as if he knew exactly what abandoned house Riddle might be hiding out in, but it was gone so fast that she doubted herself whether she'd really seen it or not — anyway, if he knew where Riddle was, he would have already sent a force to arrest him, right?
Silence descended again for a while, before Daisy, who hadn't seen any flicker in the headmaster's eyes and was in the slightly more impatient half of their little trio, said, "Well, if there's nothing else…."
"Oh, yes, of course — I didn't mean to keep you here," said Dumbledore quickly, turning to face them directly. "And Harry — good luck with the third task."