Hey guys! I'm really excited for you guys to read this chapter - it's a big moment in the trajectory of the series, and I can't wait for you to see it!
(Disclaimer: See Chapter 35.)
Chapter 38:
When It's All Your Call
"'Right you are, Verity, I'm coming,' said George promptly. 'Harry, you help yourself to anything you want, all right? No charge.'
'I can't do that!' said Harry, who had already pulled out his money bag to pay for the Decoy Detonators.
'You don't pay here,' said Fred firmly, waving away Harry's gold.
'But -'
'You gave us our start-up loan, we haven't forgotten,' said George sternly. 'Take whatever you like, and just remember to tell people where you got it, if they ask.'"
Molly's first crush was on Kevin Bernard.
He came to her school a few weeks into fifth grade, right around the same time that Kirsten and Amber had started the Dance Moms club at recess. He had light brown hair that swooped over his face, and piercing blue eyes that looked like he could stare into your soul. He was a bit taller than Molly, with a baritone voice that he showed off all the time in music class.
He seemed nice enough when he first arrived, and with all the other kids in the class being jerks, Molly immediately saw him as a friend. It wasn't the kind of friendship she had with the Guardians - that was genuine. With Kevin, it was less of a real friendship and more that she didn't know what friendship was, so she latched onto him. Not knowing what love was, she fell head over heels - especially when he revealed that he played the ukulele.
A few weeks after she realized how powerful this feeling was, she told her mother on the car ride to school. Her response was a natural one for any parent.
"Don't do anything you'll regret," Mrs. Evans said. "You're not even out of elementary school yet, and this is a kid you know next to nothing about. If he's nice to you, great! Enjoy his company and leave it at that."
Molly decided to take her mom's advice, however unbearable it felt for her to hide her emotions. It turned out to be a good idea when he was expelled in early November for ripping up a first-edition Great Gatsby from the school library. However desperate Molly was, she wouldn't be caught dead with someone who - horror of horrors - ripped up library books.
Ever since Hogwarts, she hadn't thought for a second about Kevin Bernard. So why was she thinking about him now, sitting in the common room, her hair messy from the second task, her guitar strapped around her, desperately wishing she could call her mother?
She started picking a song on the guitar, slow and gentle.
"Are we fools for rushing in, cause I already dread the end," she sang. "Lonely ain't no place to start...I guess that's just where we are...Oh how I remember well sunset on September 12th...I disappeared to get a drink, but you still kept your eyes on me…"
She didn't notice Mackenzie walk into the common room behind her as she began the chorus.
"Sometimes love acts out of spite, and good things happen overnight...Can't take it slow cause you and I are pushin' time…"
Fittingly, this was another song by Miranda Lambert - the same singer who had written the song she'd sung the night everything changed for the Guardians.
"I didn't plan on falling fast - I didn't know I could be kissed like that...now I'm trading miles for minutes, and this bed's too big without you in it…"
She sang the chorus again, bending over her guitar, watching her fingers fly over the strings.
"And they say only time can tell...well, you already know me well," she sang. "And if it has to end in tears…"
She felt a lump form in her throat.
"I hope it's in sixty years," she stumbled, her voice breaking as she went back into the chorus. A single tear dripped onto the wood of the guitar.
She sat there for a second, breathing heavily, letting her thoughts wander.
"That one wasn't sad at all," Mackenzie said sarcastically. Molly turned, eyes wide - then sighed.
"Oh, it's you," she said. "I was worried it was -"
"Anyone but me?" Mackenzie said.
Molly nodded. She took a deep breath as she realized Mackenzie was definitely the closest thing she'd get to parental advice in this moment.
"I have never felt this way before," she admitted as Mackenzie walked over and sat down in a plush red chair. "I've felt a sort of...infatuation with someone before, a desperate longing for someone, just the idea of being in love...but this is different."
"Because he's destined to die in three years, two months, and nine days?" Mackenzie said.
"Well, kind of," Molly said. "And it's not just that I want to be with someone, just a random person I know, cause then poor Jonah would've been under the lake today. He just...he gets me, in a way that not a lot of people do. He understands why we're here, in a way that even I don't understand. He's always been at least a tiny bit hilarious, but then when I just needed a shoulder to cry on when my name came out of the Goblet, he was there."
"And now you're not sure whether the kiss was just part of the act for Rita Skeeter...or whether it was genuine," Mackenzie finished.
"Exactly," Molly said. "And I don't want to go running in blindly if that's not what he wants, or what I want...but then why does that feel like the best option?"
Mackenzie sighed. "Well, what I'd say is just be friends. In love or not, he's one of the closest things we have to a friend inside Hogwarts. Just...enjoy his company and leave it at that."
Molly giggled. "You sound like my mother."
"That's what all the boys tell me," Mackenzie said, a smirk on her face.
"Oh, that's gross!" Molly said, chasing Mackenzie through the doors to the dorms.
"Well, here it is," Molly said, walking into the bathroom with the others. She slapped a Daily Prophet issue on the sink, and the other Guardians crowded around.
The picture was of the end of the task, Molly emerging from the water with Fred and Gabrielle, and of course, the kiss.
"It's over a month after the task!" Jonah said. "Couldn't have rushed this one along a bit?"
"She used a line from an Elvis song as the title, so she cannot talk poop about your mom being a songwriter," Stella said.
A LITTLE MORE ACTION, PLEASE: ROMANCE WITHIN THE TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT
Molly skimmed through the article, but it wasn't as much fun as Rita's articles usually were. The highlight was a quote from Draco Malfoy: "They've always seemed a little too close for my taste, especially considering this is the same girl who told me off for pretending to be a Dementor last year. Everyone says I was being 'insensitive' or my jokes were 'too soon' - I don't get it."
The door to the bathroom opened behind them - a tall, red-haired Gryffindor.
"Happy birthday, Fred, you're above the fold," she said dryly, handing him the newspaper.
"No way," he said, perusing the article. "This has got to be an April Fools' joke."
"Oh, so that is a thing in the UK?" Molly asked. "Dang it, I thought that wasn't a thing, I would've pranked you guys so hard."
"The twins don't leave next year until April 22nd," Beatrix said.
"Oh, you and George are so doomed," Molly said, winking at Fred.
The days passed without much fanfare. Molly knew in her heart what was coming, which just made everything worse. It wasn't until late May that she was given the information about the final task from the horse's mouth.
She practiced jinxes and hexes in the Room of Requirement with the other Guardians, making sure she was good at the right ones and just okay at the other ones. She put together a study guide of each obstacle to face.
"If only technology worked here," she remembered saying one day. "I'd kill for a good Quizlet."
The day of the third task, the elder Weasleys came to visit for a late lunch. Molly had been looking forward to this - besides the fact that it would distract her from the task, she had never really gotten to meet Bill Weasley.
It was a good way to calm her nerves. She took them on a quick tour, and Bill was pleased to see some of the paintings again. The Hogwarts food tasted just as delicious as ever, although Mrs. Weasley took one taste of the spotted dick and said, "Too sweet. Needs more lemons." Molly made a mental note to, at one point or another, have dinner at the Burrow.
The sun began to set outside, and just before she was called away for the task, Molly pulled Harry to the side.
"Okay, so you know the thing that Rita put in the Daily Prophet about me being from the future?" she asked.
"Yeah," Harry said. "Although Rita's so unreliable, so I wouldn't put stock in -"
"It's true," she said.
Harry's jaw dropped.
"No way," he said. "There's no way."
"There is a way, but I can't tell you, it would spoil the future," Molly whispered. "Anyway, things got all messed up this year. You're supposed to be the fourth champion, you're supposed to be going through all this, and if you don't come with me during the task today, the entire future of the wizarding world as we know it will be destroyed."
"Okay," Harry said. "How do I know you're not lying?"
He said it loud enough that the others could hear him. "She's not," Fred called, and that settled it.
"So what should I do?"
"Do you have your Invisibility Cloak on you?"
"Of course - wait, how do you know about the Invisibility Cloak?"
"There you go," she said. "Double proof. Anyway, hide under it and follow me through the maze tonight. When we get to the cup, hold onto my hand as tightly as you can. I can't tell you what's going to happen next, but I trust you'll do the right thing."
Harry shrugged. "I can try."
"Good enough," Molly said. "Dumbledore should be coming out in three...two...one…"
"Ladies and gentlemen," Dumbledore announced from the front of the Great Hall, "in five minutes, the doors will open to the Quidditch pitch for the final task. I would like to ask the four champions to follow Mr. Bagman to the stadium now."
Harry's eyes widened. He grabbed the cloak and wrapped it around him, disappearing under it. Molly could feel his hand slip into hers, and they began to walk.
"Wish me luck, you guys!" she said to the Weasleys.
"Good luck, sweetie!" Mrs. Weasley said, wrapping Molly in a hug.
"Break a leg," George said. "Wait, no, don't, cause that's actually a possibility, and I don't want another Skele-Gro situation."
Molly giggled.
"For good luck," Fred said. He stood up and hugged Molly, then gave her a kiss on the cheek.
"I'm serious, you guys are the cutest couple this side of the Greenwich line," George said.
"It is a thing you say!" Molly said, invigorated. "Let's do this!"
And she bolted through the doors to the Quidditch pitch, as ready as she would ever be.
"So...on the count of three, Molly and Cedric!" Ludo Bagman said. "One, two, three, huh!"
And they were off. The second Molly entered the maze, the world became silent.
"Okay, this is definitely how Orpheus felt," she whispered, drawing her wand. "Lumos."
Cedric did the same, until they reached a fork in the path. "See you," she said, turning left, as Cedric turned right.
She ran for a bit, looked at her hand.
"You still there?" she whispered.
"Yep," Harry said behind her.
She turned right, hurried on, reached another fork.
"Point Me," she whispered to her wand, and it spun to her right, into solid hedge.
"Left," she said, and ran. Take a right - she looked at her hand, which she had enchanted to display her next obstacle or important milestone. It read, Look behind.
"This better not be an Orpheus situation," she whispered, and turned. Cedric was behind her.
"Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skrewts!" he said, his robe smoking. "I only just got away!"
He dove into another tunnel, and Molly continued to run, until suddenly, she came face to face with a Dementor.
"I can't do a Patronus!" she whisper-cried, and Harry peeked his wand out from under the cloak and whispered, "Expecto Patronum!"
His stag came out of his wand, and the Dementor stumbled back.
"Shoot, it's a boggart," Molly said. "Riddikulus!"
It turned into her TV at home, showing an episode of Bewitched. The two ran, left, right, left. A dead end, then another dead end.
She turned to see a golden mist floating ahead of her. "Take my hand," she said, and Harry obliged. A scream shattered the silence - Fleur.
She ran into the mist, and the world turned upside down.
"What the -"
"Quiet, Harry," Molly said. "Lift your right foot on three - one, two, three, huh!"
They both lifted their feet, and the ground became the ground once more. Molly helped Harry up, and they ran forward, into dead ends, different turns - and then, a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
"Get down!" she yelled.
"What?" Harry said quietly, then Molly's hand met his shoulder, and he was on the ground.
Molly aimed her wand at the skrewt's underside. "Impedimenta!"
It flew back and froze in place.
"Come on!" Molly said. Left - dead end - right - dead end - "Point Me" - northwest -
And then suddenly Cedric's voice came through the darkness.
"What are you doing? What the -"
"Crucio!"
It was Krum. Molly pointed her wand at the hedge - "Reducto!"
A hole the size of a small dresser appeared in the hedge, and the two of them crawled through to see Krum standing over Cedric, who was convulsing on the ground.
"Stupefy!" Molly called, and Krum fell. She knelt down to Cedric.
"You alright?" she said, picking him up and hugging him for dear life, just to know she and Harry weren't entirely alone.
"He crept up...I don't know what happened - I cannot believe it -"
"We should send up red sparks," Molly said. "Otherwise he'll probably be eaten by a skrewt."
"He'd deserve it," Cedric said, shaking his head - but he still raised his wand and sent up the signal.
"Let's do this," Molly said, and the two of them parted ways again. Molly held out her hand to make sure Harry was there, and he took it.
After many a wrong turn and many a "Point Me," she arrived at a sphinx.
"Ooh, this'll be fun!" she said. "What's the riddle?"
The sphinx sat on her hind legs, blocking the path, and recited:
"First I want you to think of the language of love,
The land of a champion, and her word for "of."
Then think back to English, and to the past tense
Of when what you want to say doesn't make sense.
And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?"
It wasn't the same as the riddle from the book - well, not the exact same.
"The language of love...a champion - her - Fleur - French - of - 'De!'" Molly said. The sphinx smiled.
"Past tense - doesn't make sense - want to say - mean to say - 'Meant!'"
"You're good," Harry whispered.
"Sound - hard-to-find word - um...or, no, what do you always say - er...that's it! 'Er!'" Molly figured out. "And string them together - unwilling to kiss - de...meant...er - DEMENTOR! No way in heck I'd wanna kiss a dementor!"
"You may pass," the sphinx said, moving aside.
"Thanks!" she said, running past.
"You don't have to say heck," Harry whispered. "Nobody can even hear you here."
"Oh, not you too," she said, pretending to be angry, but with a huge smile on her face. She was so close. She made a few more turns, and then the Triwizard Cup was ahead of her. Cedric ran ahead of her, and Molly watched the hedges next to them for the giant spider.
She saw a glimpse of movement - "Cedric, on your left!"
He swerved, but tripped into the hedge.
"Stunning Spell - together!" Molly yelled. Cedric drew his wand, and they both yelled out - "Stupefy!"
The spider fell back, unconscious.
"You good?" Molly called.
"I think," Cedric said, as the two of them helped each other up. Molly looked at Harry's foot, peeking out from under the Cloak, then back at Cedric.
"You know what?" she said. "Let's do this together."
"What?" Cedric said.
"We've helped each other so much through all of this," Molly said. "We both won this, together. Let's do this."
"You know what?" Cedric said. "I like how you think."
They walked up to the cup together. Molly reached out her hand, and Harry took it, almost breaking her bones from how hard he was grasping it.
"One…" they said together, "two...three...huh!"
And they grabbed the cup and were whisked away together, Harry holding on for dear life.
Their feet hit the ground, and Molly's legs ached from the impact. Already she could feel the aura of ghoulish creepiness surrounding her, and she knew what she had to do.
"Give me the Cloak," she said to Harry. Almost instantly, Harry's face appeared below her.
"What is this place?" he said.
"I don't know," Molly said, basking in the glory of verbal irony.
Cedric helped Harry up - then realizing that it was Harry that he was helping up.
"What're you doing here?" he said.
"Long story," Molly said, feeling a little guilty knowing that she'd never get to tell Cedric. "Come on."
They walked into the graveyard.
"Is this supposed to be part of the task?" Harry said.
"I dunno," Cedric said, his voice shaking with nervousness. "Wands out, you reckon?"
Harry nodded, and the two of them drew their wands. Molly draped the Cloak over her body and ran behind a gravestone, peering out at the figure she knew was approaching.
"Someone's coming," Harry said.
Sure enough, the outline of Peter Pettigrew was barely visible among the fog of the graveyard.
For a moment, everything was still.
Absolutely still.
Then a cry of pure pain arose from Harry, and suddenly Molly felt nervous. Stealthily, she looked through the Cloak at Peter, who was drawing his wand.
She heard a voice come from the baby-esque bundle of flesh in Peter's hand - a raspy voice saying, "Kill the spare."
"No," Molly whispered under her breath.
And then came Peter's voice, pointing his wand at Cedric:
"Avada Kedavra!"
A green light burst from Peter's wand, hitting Cedric square in the chest. Molly recognized it; it was the same light that had come from Jonah's wand, the day after Madison died.
Cedric went flying in the air, landing just next to Molly.
Dead.
Harry looked back at Cedric's body, and Molly crawled over to his body, the Cloak slightly slipping off her body. The plan had gone perfectly - so why did Molly feel such a heavy ache in her heart?
She was still looking at Cedric when she felt a tug on her shirt.
"Harry?" she said quietly, her voice shaking with tears. She turned her head towards Harry - only to discover that Harry wasn't there.
A sneering face was looking at her - Peter Pettigrew's. He grabbed her by her collar and held her up to him, Harry in his other hand. The flesh bundle was on the ground nearby.
Molly gasped - the face looked extremely familiar.
"You're - you're Nathaniel," she stammered. "From Enchanted. But…"
"Oh, yes, that's me, Nathaniel - sweetie, I don't know what on Earth you're talking about," Pettigrew said, his sarcastic voice sounding very much like that of a chipmunk.
He looked towards the flesh bundle. "Should I dispose of her?"
Molly's eyes widened. "No...NO!" she screamed.
"She could be of use for step 3," the bundle said. "Isn't that why we didn't argue with her when she told us her new plan? Tie her up with Harry."
Molly barely had time to register that Delphi had conspired with the Death Eaters before Pettigrew slammed her and Harry into a marble gravestone. She didn't need to look back at the name on the stone to know what body lay below it.
"You!" Harry said, recognizing Pettigrew.
He didn't reply; his hands were flying across their bodies, tying them up tightly. He walked over to a cauldron at the foot of the grave and dropped the bundle into it, and then began to speak, in what seemed like a spell or chant of some sort.
"Bone of the father," he said, "unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"
The ground underneath Molly and Harry broke open, and a trickle of bone dust, illuminated by the moon, flew into the cauldron.
"Dang it," Molly said quietly to herself.
Pettigrew didn't hear her; his voice shaking, he continued.
"Flesh - of the servant - w-willingly given, you will - revive - your master."
Pettigrew raised his four-fingered hand - and his dagger - and Molly closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind.
But she wasn't able to block out the sound of Pettigrew's scream, piercing the night like a needle going through fabric. Molly opened her eyes to see the stub that was his hand held in the air, the cauldron's liquid glowing red.
"Blood of the enemy...f-forcibly taken, you will resurrect...your foe."
His dagger forced itself into Harry's arm, and he let out a cry of pain. A bit of blood went into a glass vial that Harry was holding, and then he turned to Molly.
The red-tipped dagger, stained from Harry's blood, swept down Molly's right arm.
It was as if a hot iron had been placed against her arm and pushed into her. She screamed against the pain, tears of terror rushing down her face like waterfalls.
The glass vial was placed at the base of Molly's arm - warm from Pettigrew's touch and Harry's blood inside it.
"Thank you," Pettigrew said, walking over to the cauldron and pouring in the blood of Harry and Molly.
The cauldron's liquid turned white, the color of the gas Madison would give off when "Sublimate Spiritus" was cast upon her. A sobbing Pettigrew fell to his knees next to the cauldron.
Suddenly, the gas-like vapor poured into the world around the cauldron, obscuring Molly's sight; the only person she could see was Harry, tied up next to her. They looked at each other, reminding themselves that they were still, technically, alive.
"I got you," she whispered, trying to calm him down. A sad smile, with a hint of mystery, spread on his face, and they looked ahead, trying to see something together.
Suddenly, the vapor cleared enough to see the outline of a man, dressed in black robes, with pale skin, slits for a nose, and piercing blue, terrifyingly human eyes. Pettigrew cried out in joy amid his sobs.
Lord Voldemort had risen again.
Well, there you have it! Here are this chapter's behind-the-magic fun facts:
1) The chapter title is from a line in "What Comes Next," a song from Hamilton, which is a great musical that you should listen to right now. (And watch! How many of you guys have seen the proshot on Disney+? It's awesome!)
2) The anecdote about Kevin Bernard is actually entirely fictional, which is unusual for my stories from before the plot of this story! Although I've definitely gotten that advice from my mom about dating, Kevin Bernard is not based on anyone in particular, and nobody at my school ripped up a first edition of The Great Gatsby. I just wanted to give Molly's feelings some context within the story.
(Also, side note, I was rereading some of this fanfiction, and I discovered this passage from Chapter 30:
"That was the triple attack," Fred realized. "You two and Penelope." A small smile spread over his face. "She and Percy are still going steady, by the way."
Molly shook her head, still smiling. "It's too young," she said. "I could never imagine dating someone at this age. I'd be too immature."
For the record, this was from before I decided to have the romantic tension between the two characters, so it was doubly funny.)
3) The song Molly sings is a Miranda Lambert song called "Pushin' Time," from her album The Weight of These Wings. The album was on repeat in my house when I started writing this fanfic, so even though there was no technical association with it, I associated the two in my mind, and I wanted to work at least one song from the album into the story.
4) Mackenzie's exit line is a reference to an exchange in the musical In the Heights.
5) Quick anecdote from my life: I actually made the front page of my local newspaper for a song I wrote, but it was on April Fools' Day, so when my parents and I started getting texts, we thought it was a joke! It's also where I learned the phrase "above the fold," so that phrase has extra humor to me.
6) When I was rereading this part of Goblet of Fire, I had forgotten about the lunch with the Weasleys right before the third task. I love that that lunch exists, just as one last moment of levity genuine childhood friendship before the sudden loss of innocence and absolute horror that happens next.
7) In writing the scene with Molly and Harry, I realized that I had never mentioned the Invisibility Cloak before this moment! It felt the same way it did when I learned that Harry doesn't cast a single successful verbal spell in the first movie - disbelief at first, and then suddenly going, "Oh, yeah, that makes a bit of sense."
8) The Greenwich line reference comes back! I still don't know if it's an actual thing, but I wish it was, so it counts.
9) That stupid little SpongeBob Musical reference comes back, and it still cracks me up - as does the reference to the Orpheus myth.
10) I love the little riddle passage - I wanted to come up with a twist on the riddle that shows that even though she has the ultimate source of cheating, Molly is still bright enough and brave enough to get through the maze herself. Plus we get to come back to the cursing joke!
11) I wrote the scene in the graveyard way before I wrote the rest of this chapter - like, right around the time I wrote Madison's death scene, that kind of "way before." I edited it a teeny bit, but it's still fundamentally the same scene.
12) Of course, with such a big Enchanted reference in the last chapter, you can't ignore the fact that Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew) is also Nathaniel in Enchanted. My dad always says "Nathaniel" in the chipmunk voice from the movie, so that's the kind of voice I was imagining Wormtail using in that scene.
13) You might be wondering, "If Delphi conferred with Voldemort and the Death Eaters, why wouldn't Cedric be alive?" The way I imagine it is that Delphi realizes that no matter what she does, Molly and the Guardians will find a way to make sure the story stays on track, because they're just that powerful. So Delphi now sees Molly as a potential stronger asset, much like she didn't kill off the Guardians when they visited Madison's parents - they're too valuable for her, and there are other ways of changing the future.
14) And as we reach the first major canon character death, I love that the narration makes the same reference it made during the first major fanfiction character death - "And everything was still. Absolutely still."
Feel free to review, but please no negative reviews or cursing. (And please, NOTHING POLITICAL!) Thanks!