Disclaimer: Everything belongs to J.K Rowling

Chapter 5: The Offer

I slipped my invisibility cloak back on as I made my way back towards the castle. The sun had just disappeared behind the horizon, causing the grounds to cascade into a comfortable darkness. The twinge of excitement from the crowd still hung in the air heavily. My teeth clattered and I was shivering as I walked over the grounds. I found Ron and Hermione waiting for me inside the entrance but I ignored them and kept my cloak on. I could deal with them later; something more pressing took predescense.

There weren't many students throughout the castle even if curfew wasn't for a while yet. The few I walked past all talked about the task. It was concerning how many seemed outright fearful of me since my 'stunt'. I overheard a pair of second year Huffelpudds talking about how they thought I'd gone mad, but the most disconcerting thing was how they looked around in paranoia, like I could appear at any given moment and hex them straight to the hospital wing.

"They aren't wrong," I thought to myself with a frown. Here I was, sneaking around Hogwarts invisible after having publicly displayed that I had no qualms about putting people in danger. What kind of person did that make me?

When I finally arrived at the abandoned fourth floor corridor and entered the shining silver door I let out a sigh of relief. It was exhausting to constantly be on full alert and make sure that every shadow was indeed a shadow and not someone waiting to stab me in the back, literally and metaphorically.

I paused in the small space and gathered myself. I couldn't go in and throw a tantrum, that wouldn't lead anywhere. Hearing what she could say was paramount, even if she didn't really deserve that pleasure. Taking a deep breath, I relaxed and entered the room.

Like she usually did when I entered, the girl sat in her dark purple armchair by the fire. She had her hands folded in her lap and smiled at me. I couldn't quite place the emotion on her face but I almost thought she looked proud. Which was frustrating to me since it wasn't really she that ensured that I actually could return to the room.

"That was adequately done Potter," the girl began, beaming at me.

I was immediately taken aback, "How do you know what I did?" I asked suspiciously.

"I have my ways, but that's irrelevant," the girl deflected. "Your plan had merit, the execution was not perfect but better than I expected."

I stood in the doorframe a little shocked, praise was not something the girl gave out freely, and here she was handing it out to me like it was a free sample. As such, I decided to head straight to the point, I wasn't going to let her deflect from the real matter.

"You lied to me," I stated simply.

She went from radiating positivity to emanating sobriety in a heartbeat.

"I have never lied to you," she responded coolly.

I scoffed. "You promised me a blueprint. You delivered an idea. I had to create the blueprint myself." I shook my head disappointedly, "I trusted you and you decided to play your games."

"I understand that you feel cheated," the girl began understandingly.

"I sense a but."

She glared at me for being interrupted but continued. "But, I gave you a blueprint. The best blueprint. The blueprint which you can use to build a house, a castle or a tent."

"You promised that you would help me, but I sure didn't get any help to actually complete the task. That was left up to me entirely," I interrupted again while letting some frustration creep into my voice.

"I understand what you're saying. I admit that I was purposefully vague and endangered your life in the process. It wasn't for nothing though, I wanted to see how good you actually were."

I stared at her incredulously and whispered so quietly she could barely hear me. "You risked my life for a test? You decided that my life was worth the risk to let you know how good I was at something?"

"Yes," the girl admitted shamelessly. "I wanted to see if you actually were someone worth teaching."

"And you felt that if I wasn't 'worth teaching', I should die," I asked rhetorically.

"I don't think you would've died if you failed. I read the rules of the tournament, if a champion's life is in genuine danger. Interference is allowed," she stated matter of factly.

I laughed mirthlessly at the absurdity of it all. "So why didn't you tell me this? I was close to puking when I went out in the arena."

"Because if you knew a safety net existed, you wouldn't have tried your absolute best to actually complete the task. You would know you would survive no matter what, thus the situation didn't demand your full focus and best of ability."

"I can't even call that manipulation, it's something more. Something worse," I responded with disgust lacing my voice.

I made to leave but the girl conjured a magical hand to grab hold of my wrist and pin me down. "Please hear me out, I did everything for a reason. I want you to know that reason."

I looked her up and down, her usually calm and composed face was now one of stress. Her eyes were full of worry. She seemed genuinely scared at the prospect of me walking out and leaving her. I smirked inwardly, it felt good to be the one in the driver's seat for once.

I plumped down nonchalantly and spoke mockingly, "What revolutional piece of information do you have then?"

The girl looked at me defeatedly and sighed deeply. She moved one hand through her hair, messing it up in the process.

"I know a lot of things. If I may say so myself, I am incredibly good at most branches of magic," she began tiredly. "I could teach anyone I meet a fraction of all I know and they would be one of the greatest wizards on the planet," she paused as if contemplating her next few words. "I could teach someone all I know and let them continue my legacy, continue my life's work."

"So how does this play into my participation in the first task?" I asked curiously. I didn't want to be intrigued by what she said but here I was, intrigued.

"If I ever taught someone properly, they would be great. This is not me being arrogant, this is me being realistic," she paused again and chewed her check. "I don't want someone to be great because I taught them. I want to teach someone because they are great."

"So this first task was your method of finding out if I am 'great'?" I guessed with incredulity pouring out in heaves.

"In essence, yes," she answered "If you can't improvise. If you can't think for yourself, you don't deserve my knowledge," she added confidently.

"So what did the task tell you? Am I 'great'?" I asked with a grimace.

Her piercing purple eyes observed me for several long moments. "I think so."

I scoffed, "Is that enough?"

"When I think something, it usually turns out to be correct," she said confidently. "I thought you would complete the task, not as well as you did, but that you would do it." She gestured at me with her hands. "And here you are."

"No thanks to you," I said evenly and met her eyes.

"You passed the test with flying colours. So I want to ask you one thing," the girl paused dramatically and I blushed a little at the praise. I swore inwardly, she had just betrayed my trust; I would not let myself get flattered.

She cleared her throat again and adopted an overly formal voice and demeanour. Mr. Potter, do you accept the position as my apprentice?"

I snorted. "No."

She pursed her lips into a thin line. "Can you at least hear me out?"

I let out an exaggerated, exasperated sigh. "Alright, what does apprenticeship entail, Miss…Unknown Girl."

"Basically, if you do what I say, you will learn all I know," she explained honestly; completely ignoring my latter comment. There is one condition however, I want to obtain your knowledge first."

"You mean the mind reading thing?"

"Yes," she responded as she looked me square in the eyes. "If it helps to convince you, I will of course tell you who I am if you become my apprentice, and much more."

"It would be great to know who actually put my life in danger, I suppose," I drawled with a sweet smile

"It is a great honour to be my apprentice, I've only offered one other person that honour," she said, completely ignoring my comment again.

"Did that person accept your offer?" I asked with raised brows. Even if I wouldn't have admited so under the most painful of torture; I wanted to know who she was.

"She did not," the girl answered bitterly and I thought I saw her eyes go blank for a moment but she blinked and it was all gone. Perhaps it hadn't been there after all.

I sighed loudly and ran a hand through my hair. "Good for her, I can see where she's coming from."

The blonde glared at me. "An answer, please."

"Perhaps you would be able to teach me a few things, you seem very good at that," I started with a shrug. "I just don't feel like opening up myself to someone who played a direct hand in my potential demise."

"Is that a 'no'?" the girl asked coldly.

"I'm not sure," I admitted honestly. "Knowing more things has its benefits. I can't deny that."

"One week, that's all you'll get. Then I want you to answer."

The girl looked at me expectantly and I took that as my que to leave. I yawned loudly as I stood up and stretched. It was close to midnight now, exhaustion was upon me after this very long and draining day.

"Good night Ma'am," I bid curtly and left.

"Good night Potter," I heard the girl whisper before I walked out and the silver door shut firmly behind me.

-()-

Returning to the Gryffindor common room was no problem at all, it was almost cheating when having both the Marauders' map and the cloak. I slipped my cloak off and muttered the password to a very sour looking fat lady who swung open with a huff.

For the second night in a row Ron and Hermione stayed up and waited for me. They looked half asleep where they were sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace. I sat down with a thud in the armchair in front of them and waited as they rubbed their eyes tiredly.

"So what did you think of the show?" I asked conversationally.

"You're bonkers mate. Absolutely bonkers," Ron began with a chuckle.

Hermione had other ideas though, "That was very reckless Harry. I can't believe that you put the judges and everybody else in danger."

I shrugged and sighed tiredly. "The only ones in danger were the judges," I paused shortly to gather my words. "And I knew that they wouldn't come to harm, Dumbledore would never let it happen."

Hermione wasn't satisfied though. "You can't know that! What if one of them had gotten seriously hurt? Or worse?"

"Then it would have been on me. I had to do something Hermione, I don't feel like dying just yet."

"There must have been a better way! Putting innocents in danger is not the right way to do things!" she continued relentlessly.

"Innocents?" I asked incredulously. "How are any of them innocents? They forced me to compete! Then they can damn well make sure that I can keep on competing," I responded sharply.

"What if a student would have fallen inside together with them?" Hermione demanded angrily.

"It didn't happen. If we have to talk about every potential scenario, we would be here until March 2005," I paused furiously and took a deep breath before I continued. "I knew what I was doing. I took a risk and it worked. End of."

"What has happened to you Harry?" Hermione now asked sadly. "I know the last few weeks have been tough, but the Harry I knew would never put someone else in danger in front of himself."

"You want me to be in danger rather than everyone else?" I asked mockingly. "Is that what you mean?"

"You know that is not what I mean," Hermione snapped at me. "You had days to figure out a plan, you must have been able to come up with a better plan than to put five people in mortal danger."

I pondered telling them about the fact that I hadn't planned what I was going to do in the task. That would open a whole new can of worms though, especially when they had offered to help me and I brushed them off. I had promised the girl that I would keep her promise. So I would keep that promise, even if she deserved me breaking it.

"Evading a dragon is not as easy as it might seem from the stands," I began patronisingly. "When you are a fourth year student, the options I have get even more limited."

Hermione looked as if she wanted to continue to argue the matter but Ron interrupted her impending tirade.

"Either way, we both are happy that you made it through, mate. Now, have you tried opening the egg yet?"

Right, the egg, I must have forgotten it in the room on the fourth floor; I really needed to find a better name for the place than 'the room on the fourth floor'.

"Nah, I'll look at it soon. There are months until the next task," I explained calmly.

Hermione was still refusing to look at me and I yawned loudly as I stood up.

"I really need to get some sleep, good night," I muttered tiredly and exited the common room to the comfort of my four poster bed.

-()-

The great thing about getting stared at by everyone all the time was that no more people could begin staring at me. So when I entered the Great Hall for breakfast that morning and every head turned towards me and outright started. I wasn't too concerned. There were so many people here that I felt safe enough to take on the cloak for a couple of minutes. Going everywhere in that thing felt awfully distant.

A pleasing difference from the previous few weeks was that the majority didn't look at me with outright loathing. I saw people with looks of awe, grudging respect and in a few cases, fear. I wasn't particularly thrilled at the prospect of the Hogwarts population being scared senseless of me again. Another episode of my second year experience wasn't really needed.

One table was the exception to all of this, the Slytherin table. The Slytherins didn't look too bothered by my presence, I didn't even see a single sneer. That must be some kind of record. The other side of the table where the resident Durmstrang students sat were not just hostile. I thought I had seen people look at me with loathing before. This was different, it was pure, unadulterated hate. Karkaroff's feathers had been ruffled and his entire nest had grown claws sharp as a sword's edge.

I smiled at them broadly and waved at them from across the room. It was astupid thing to do, especially when I saw a few people draw their wands out of their robes and begin to stalk towards me furiously. I sat down at the end of the Gryffindor table just beside the teachers' table and began to stuff food on my plate. Not getting either lunch or dinner yesterday hadn't felt like a problem then. I woke up absolutely famished though, I desperately needed to eat something.

It looked like my meal was going to be slightly postponed as a large group of about ten Durmstrang students arrived at the end of the Gryffindor table and walked along it to get to me.

I tried to look calm and unconcerned to the outside. Inside, I was completely panicking though, I had no means to escape. The cloak wouldn't help me now. The map wouldn't help me now. No 'Feriollo' spell would help me now. To put it simply, I was an idiot.

My food exploded off the plate and I sighed tiredly as I wiped my hands on a napkin and stood up to face the group. The apparent leader of the group stepped up and stared down at me. I met his eyes fearlessly and was met with eyes which promised pain. Pain, suffering and death.

"Something I can help you boys with?" I asked sweetly.

"You have stepped way over the line, Potter," the leader spat out. "I hope you don't mind joining your parents in the graveyard," he added in a whisper and smirked menacingly.

I didn't rise to the bait just yet and tried to remain nonchalant and ignorant. "I wouldn't mind visiting my parents grave. Never been there before, you know?"

"Good," the leader said in a thick accent. "I'll make sure the visit becomes permanent."

He began to walk away together with all of his flunkies and I was just about to make a sigh of relief. Quicker than I could react, he whipped his wand out and spun around with a spell on his lips."

He never finished the spell though because a red light struck him in the chest and his wand flew from his hand to land somewhere behind me. I looked around the room and now noticed that our encounter had not gone unnoticed by everyone else.

All around us, students from all different houses stood up solemnly with their wands drawn, pointed at the now vastly outnumbered group of Durmstrang students. They didn't look nearly as confident now and their eyes darted around the room fearfully.

"I think it's time for you to leave," I heard a familiar voice call out from behind me and I turned around to see Diggory standing there, with one wand in each hand.

The leader spat in my direction and cries of anger rang throughout the hall, but they turned around and forced their way through the crowd. When they were well out of the Great Hall and the rest of their school followed in their steps, leaving the Great Hall free from foreigners, I turned around to Diggory again.

"Thanks Diggory, I appreciate it."

"It was nothing. We are both Hogwarts champions, we should stick together," Cedric responded seriously. "And please call me Cedric."

"Alright Cedric, but still, thanks for the help."

Cedric only hummed thoughtfully before he spoke. "They won't leave us alone, they will attack us. They will attack you."

"I know, their headmaster seems like a touchy subject for them," I tried jokingly.

Cedric clearly didn't find the joke funny though, because his mouth was set in a firm line. "Never go anywhere by yourself, stay in your common room outside of class. They will come for you."

"I know," I responded confidently. "I have my ways to evade them, this is not their first attempt to attack me."

"Alright," Cedric responded reluctantly. "But if you ever need help with them, I'll help you."

"I appreciate the offer Cedric, but the best way to win this fight is to not have a fight at all."

He smiled. "Wise words, but I think the time for diplomacy and words are far beyond us."

With that, he bade me goodbye and left me alone so I could finally get something to eat. My stomach growled loudly and I sighed in content as I put a delicious, salty piece of bacon in my mouth.

-()-

My sole purpose the last few weeks had been to survive the first task, everything else had been left unprioritized. So when I found myself facing everything I had procrastinated and the additional tasks concerning the tournament, I felt overwhelmed. I sat in the most secluded spot in the library for an hour trying to complete a transfiguration essay that was due Monday. After that one I had the charms essay, the potions essay and also a spell I had to learn for defence.

The essay stayed uncompleted though, only a frustrating few sentences scribbled down on the parchment. My mind constantly crept drifting, either it was me intently listening for sounds of someone creeping up on me, or worrying about the ball.

My options were extremely limited because I didn't really feel like going up to a complete stranger and just asking them out. I had thought about my options but none felt like a solution. Hermione had been my first thought, but I really didn't want to get between Ron and her. So that wasn't an option, I considered asking Ron's sister Ginny but that probably wouldn't work either because she could barely speak in my presence, let alone dance.

The girls in my quidditch team were my most recent idea, but I knew Angelina and Alicia had something going on with Fred and George. Katie was seeing someone in her year, so that didn't work either.

I groaned in frustration, my thoughts went in circles. Thinking the same thing over and over again, trying to find something which didn't exist. Perhaps I could fake an illness on the 25th. There was a risk that I was compelled to attend the contract by the goblet though, so losing my magic wasn't something I particularly wanted to pay to skip the dance.

Then an idea struck me, it was ludicrous, probably impossible. It could work though. Asking the purple girl, as I had started to call her. She would most likely refuse, but she could perhaps give me some advice. She was a girl after all, she should know how girls work.

There was only one huge obstacle in that plan. I was entirely certain she would not give me help unless I accepted her offer of apprenticeship. That was the third thing which occupied my mind. Giving up every inch of privacy I had for girl advice was steep.

Revealing my closest secrets to someone wasn't anything I felt like doing. What if she saw my memories and decided that I wasn't good enough off that and retracted her offer? My privacy had always been almost nonexistent. Living in a cupboard provided you with very little, being 'The Boy Who Lived' not much more. I was very keen on keeping the little privacy I had left to myself.

On the other hand, I could learn so much from her. If a few weeks of tutelage had given me enough knowledge to take on a dragon, what effect could several months or years have?

The problem, in the end, was that I didn't trust the girl. If she put me in that kind of danger once, what would stop her from doing it again?

I didn't even know what it would mean for me if she knew everything I knew, would she be able to be me? If she took a polyjuice potion to turn into me, would she be able to copy my mannerisms entirely and essentially become me? Would it mean that I would never have to talk with her again, because she would already know what I was going to answer, what my opinions were on every subject?

Her knowing me on such a deep and fundamental level would also make me exceptionally susceptible to manipulations. I knew she had manipulated me already, although very unsubtle.

-()-

On Monday morning classes began again and I was still no closer to a decision. On Thursday I would know my future, then the decision would have to be made. I had tried to talk to Ron, Hermione and even Neville about it. Talking in vague terms and not being able to tell them the entire situation was challenging though. Ron seemed all in favour of 'revealing a secret or two' whereas Hermione was way more understanding about my desire for privacy.

"You should never reveal anything you're not confident sharing," was what she had said.

I had sent a letter to Sirius for advice where I'd been a little more truthful than I'd been to my friends. Not mentioning the purple girl or her stake in this but about revealing everything. His response should hopefully arrive sometime soon, I had specified the urgency for an answer in the letter so the response shouldn't be too far away.

The bell rang as I entered the transfiguration classroom with Ron and Hermione behind me. We took our usual seats and waited for the class to start. The lecture was interesting and an introduction to transfiguring inanimate objects into animate objects, or dead things to living things as Ron said.

When the lecture was finally over and Professor McGonagall had stressed the dangers of not preparing enough, we were allowed to begin. I got flashbacks to my very first transfiguration lesson as a small matchstick appeared on my table. Back then we had to transfigure it into a needle, now we had to transfigure it into a butterfly.

For the essay we had to write for this lesson, we had to describe and explain a butterfly's anatomy. To make the butterfly actually living and not just something which looked like a butterfly but was dead. I tried to picture the wood of the matchstick turning into the small organs and how wings sprouted through the wood. After reaching an acceptable amount of focus I attempted the spell, nothing happened. The matchstick remained firmly a matchstick, not even a twitch or a small wing appeared. I sighed and looked around me.

My class had the same troubles I did, no one even managed a partly done transfiguration. The frustration in the room grew steadily and I heard Hermione cursing silently ahead of me. I smiled slightly at her, she hated not being able to solve something.

Slowly but surely progress was being made throughout the classroom. When about fifteen minutes was left, Susan Bones let out a squeak of joy and indeed, there was a butterfly on her table. McGonagall quickly strided over to inspect her feat but quickly dismissed it as a failure. It looked like a butterfly, but it wasn't an animated object.

The class finished with no one being able to do the transfiguration, McGonagall didn't look too bothered though. She had said that she didn't expect anyone to manage it, but I still felt frustrated. I wanted to be able to do it, if I couldn't manage spells intended for fourth years, how on earth was I supposed to manage the rest of the tournament?

I sighed defeatedly and left the class behind to head towards the next lesson which was potions. These past few weeks, I had grown used to excelling in classes, not just defence, but transfiguration and charms as well. I had no questions where that came from. Without it, I was back to my usual mediocre standards. It struck me that I liked being good at things, I loved to be able to feel that I was good at things. Better than anyone else. Not for attention, like Hermione wanted, I had enough of that. Just knowing that you could do things, achieve things that others couldn't was enough.

Still, was the price of knowledge one I was ready to pay?