Yes, we're back, after an absurd delay. The Task proper will begin being posted in the next few days. In the meantime, now would be an excellent time to go back and reread to catch yourself up. If you don't want to re-read the whole thing (which I wouldn't blame you for, wordy bitches), the run-up to the First Task started on chapter 38 ("Lyra Black Should Not Talk to the Press"), and the day of the Task started on 49 ("Rules Are Boring"). —Lysandra
Maybe I should have invited Dan, Emma thought, meandering down yet another largely empty corridor on one of the upper floors of the enormous castle which housed her daughter's school.
She had been wavering on whether or not to do so (and then whether she should have done so) since Lyra had written her on Wednesday morning that Hermione would be participating in the First Task, taking what sounded an awful lot like the leadership role in their team. Emma, of course, had already been planning on attending — she was practically required to make an appearance at the Order of Merlin induction ceremony, seeing as she was the Blacks' official representative in the Wizengamot, and their heiress was one of the honourees — but Lyra had invited both Emma and Dan to join them for a pre-Task brunch with the families of the champions (which was now a more extended pre-Task luncheon and altogether less private than Emma had been led to expect, with the champions and their families simply joining everyone else in the Great Hall).
But Hermione hadn't mentioned that she was participating in the Task in her latest letter — which had arrived Wednesday afternoon — and certainly hadn't indicated that she might want her parents there to cheer her on. It wasn't, she'd thought, entirely out of the question that their showing up for the express purpose of watching Hermione's performance would add to the pressure and nerves she was already obviously feeling. She wouldn't have had the heart to tell them not to come, of course, but the look on her face when she'd realised that Emma was planning on staying for the Task, the way her voice had jumped immediately to tense and anxious, and the way she'd practically thrown Tienne at Emma to distract her (because apparently Dan's youngest sister was a witch?), she knew she'd been right.
Even if Dan would be furious with her, if he knew.
Not that she was planning on telling him. Not now, when the only thing it would accomplish would be hurting him.
It was hardly the first time she'd neglected to mention various details about Magical Britain to him. Their wards had been tested by potential intruders on two different occasions since her introduction to the Wizengamot, though they had (thankfully) worked as designed. Both times, the intruders had skived off before Sirius and Andromeda had gotten there, Emma had only been told about the incidents after the fact. If someone did manage to make it through the first layer of protections Emma and Dan would be alerted, but Lyra had argued that most people wouldn't get that far — it would be stupid for them to keep port-keying out of their own house at the drop of a hat, especially since Emma found port-keys nearly as unpleasant as the Floo. They could only assume Dan would be equally nauseated by them. She also hadn't told him that she and Sirius had both received death threats — those the Aurors had managed to track back to the Minister's bloody undersecretary — or discussed the violence at the World Cup with him in any degree of detail.
(Hermione had been somewhat disappointed that Lyra hadn't thought to invite her along, but knowing how many people had died in the riot, and the role the Blacks had played in it, Emma was actually incredibly relieved she hadn't.)
She certainly hadn't explained exactly why their daughter's fourteen-year-old girlfriend was basically being knighted (or the closest honour the mages had, anyway). Not only had the warding trick she'd pulled off been incredibly dangerous, but it had also resulted in permanent mental damage to eight individuals who'd managed to get themselves trapped in the form of clouds of smoke for several days — apparently that wasn't good for a brain, who would have guessed — on top of the three she'd just outright killed.
And while Emma was fully aware of the crimes the Malfoys and the Blacks had committed in the War, Dan definitely wasn't. He'd asked, when the papers had come out with that quote of hers, asking whether the interviewer (a freckle-faced cub reporter who couldn't have been out of school more than a year or two) was familiar with the atrocities Bellatrix had committed over the years. (Narcissa might be a conniving, ruthless bitch whose political machinations had certainly worked against the interests of muggleborns and muggles in the past, but so far as Emma knew she'd never killed anyone.) And Emma hadn't entirely avoided answering. She'd just...made a point of keeping her answer vague. Dan wasn't nearly as comfortable with violence as she was. He'd found it horribly shocking when he'd first learned that she'd actually killed things, growing up in the South — the American South, obviously — and that had just been learning to hunt and fish like practically everyone in the area.
She, as the Blacks' Wizengamot representative, had needed to fully understand the way the House was viewed by members of other Noble (and Common) Houses, which necessarily entailed understanding the crimes they had committed against them in the decades before their twelve-year hiatus as a political entity. Dan didn't. And he really didn't need to have the same crime scene images burned into his brain that she had. (How and why Narcissa had a collection of copied police files on her sister's activities, Emma had decided not to ask.) He did have some idea of the sort of things Bellatrix had done — she was in history books, and Lyra had mentioned her torturing multiple people into insanity on her highly memorable first visit to their home — and by extension the sort of things mages could do to each other.
She didn't think he understood the sort of damage they did to each other casually, though. It wasn't uncommon for Sirius or Lyra to mention training injuries which would be fatal without magic, or at the very least debilitating. Narcissa had once disembowelled Sirius when they'd been children, and he'd recently broken several of Lyra's ribs in retaliation for a cutting curse that nearly took out his left eye. (Despite Lyra's insistence that he'd've looked dashing with an eyepatch while it was regrown, because apparently that was a thing that could be done.)
Lyra had been characteristically unreserved in describing the sort of spectacle which was likely to ensue, with all three schools attempting to put their best foot forward. She anticipated a relatively pitched battle which "might get messy, should be fun," which Emma had interpreted to mean school-children participating in blood-sport, and judged it to be the sort of thing it was probably better Dan didn't know about. Or at least didn't actually witness. It was one thing to hear that, say, Hermione had been throwing around spells which might seriously injure people if they went wrong — runic casting was fascinating, but also sounded rather...volatile (Lyra's actions at the World Cup were by her own estimation "kind of reckless," which probably meant no one else would think them remotely feasible, let alone a good idea) — or that Lyra was looking forward to a no-holds-barred fight with another girl who might actually be better than she was, which meant that there was a very real possibility that one or both of them would end up seriously wounded before it was over. (Lyra was absolutely delighted about this prospect, far more than she was about her admittance into the Order of Merlin.) It would be, Emma thought, a very different thing to see it in person.
She suspected that Dan wouldn't react at all well to watching schoolchildren maiming each other for fun. Quite frankly, she was already glad she hadn't brought him to witness everyone getting on edge about Síomha rejecting the honour which was being inducted into the Order (though how anyone could have expected her to do anything else was somewhat baffling). For a moment, Emma had been certain things were going to devolve into another riot, with her right in the middle of it. The Irish delegation had obviously thought the same, port-keying out to whatever fall-back position they'd planned ahead of time in response to the chaotic uproar from the spectators' stands.
Cooler heads had ultimately prevailed, and eventually everyone had been herded back inside, with a very annoyed Mirabella Zabini announcing on behalf of the Organising Committee — of which Mirabella Zabini might be the sole member, Emma had seen no evidence yet to the contrary — that the beginning of the Task would be delayed until half-past-one, and in the meanwhile please enjoy the hospitality of the Hogwarts elves (i.e., everyone piss off so we can do whatever we need to do), but it wasn't until they were in the midst of the uproar that she'd decided she'd definitely made the right choice.
She'd spent far too much time over the past three days second-guessing the decision not to tell him. After all, even if it had been easy to rationalise — especially since Hermione had apparently not wanted to invite them anyway — this was still the first time Emma had ever deliberately neglected to tell him something about Hermione.
He would hate that she was depriving him of the chance to cheer on his daughter, and she knew he would love this place, if not for the magic and whimsy hiding around every corner then for the sheer historicity of it. She'd spent the last hour or so happily getting herself lost wandering through the ornate, portrait-lined corridors and peeking into magical classrooms and talking to ghosts.
She'd found the library relatively quickly. It was amazing. Seemingly endless floor-to-ceiling shelves, forming a veritable maze of dead-end corridors and nooks, broken up here and there by islands of study tables, lit warmly by a glow emanating from no apparent source which reminded her of midafternoon summer sunlight, smelling of leather and parchment and paper and ink— She was hardly the degree of bookworm her husband and daughter were, and she'd been hard-pressed to tear herself away to continue her exploration, rather than settle in a neglected corner with some ancient and fascinating magical tome. If Dan were here, he almost certainly wouldn't have been able to make himself leave.
Emma was glad she had, though. She'd almost immediately stumbled on a convocation of Oscar Trumbulls — an artist who had apparently done a series of animated self-portraits over the course of his life, all of which had been hung in the same corridor, and all of which had gathered in the frame of an eighteenth-century lady (who was apparently in the midst of dressing for a party) to argue about which of them was the real Oscar Trumbull. Or, at the very least, which of them was the most Oscar Trumbull. The proper occupant of the painting had been loudly berating the lot of them, demanding they take their argument "outside" — that is, to a nearby depiction of a desolate beach. It was, she thought, the most surreal thing she'd ever seen (though none of the Trumbulls were, in fact, Surrealist).
And then she'd spent perhaps fifteen minutes speaking to the caretaker of the castle about the art of portraiture, his scruffy grey cat weaving gently between their ankles. Given Hermione's few brief mentions of Argus Filch in previous years, Emma certainly hadn't expected him to be so knowledgeable or nearly so cordial. He'd pointed her toward a tower — the Scrier's Tower — which supposedly had the best views of everything for miles around before dashing off to deal with an altercation between the school's poltergeist and a trio of ghost nuns. (This school, honestly.)
She'd gotten turned around somewhere, however — hardly difficult, when staircases moved and a corridor you'd just walked down from east to west might lead somewhere entirely different from the place you'd just been when traversing it west to east — so she never did find the Scrier's Tower. She simply let herself wander, trusting that Sirius could somehow track her down, as he'd promised to do whenever the security teams associated with various foreign dignitaries finished re-evaluating security measures and politicians gave up their attempts to soothe each other's ruffled feathers (or finished giving formal notice to their counterparts that said feathers would remain ruffled until further notice, thanks very much) and reprimanding their people for overreacting and/or instigating an international incident (or congratulating them — Emma had the impression Michael Cavan wouldn't be displeased by Síomha's little performance at all) and they all returned to the stands for the Task.
Emma probably shouldn't be wandering around by herself, actually, given how tense the situation was and the fact that she was quite certain there were mages here today who would gladly see her dead for having the temerity to invade their sacred halls of governance. She should be down in the Great Hall, catching up with Hermione and Lyra — more Hermione than Lyra, truth be told, she tended to see Lyra at least once or twice a week, and Lyra was far more forthcoming in her letters than Hermione — and apparently Tienne. Her sister-in-law (technically, she was so much younger than Emma she'd always thought of her more like a niece) being a witch was as much a surprise to Emma as anyone, and yet another thing Dan was going to be furious he hadn't been told. (Though, hopefully with his mother and/or sister, rather than Emma.)
But Lyra had come up with a spell to alert her if (when) Emma was in danger, and the very fact that tensions were so high at the moment meant, she reasoned, that anyone who might want to kill her would probably anticipate a much more severe response than usual should they be caught. Which they almost certainly would be, there were hundreds of portraits and ghosts around who would be able to identify a potential assassin after the fact. Plus, there had to be two thousand people in the Great Hall at the moment. It was loud and far too warm, especially after sitting outside earlier, and the excitement and tension which had had the crowd buzzing before the Order of Merlin presentation was nothing compared to the levels it had reached in the wake of the kerfuffle. It had given her a headache, sitting in the midst of it all and trying to keep up with everything going on around her.
She did want to talk to Hermione at some point — of course she did — but Hermione, understandably, was rather preoccupied by the Task, and while she hadn't actually said as much, Emma knew her daughter well enough to know she didn't want to be distracted talking to her at the moment. And Emma would much prefer they talk in private, anyway. She had a few questions about her daughter's last letter — which hadn't mentioned that she was playing the role of a commander in a violent, magical, over-the-top, three-way version of Capture the Flag, but had gone on very vaguely and at some length about Lyra possibly having done some (unspecified) bad thing, possibly on Hermione's behalf, and Hermione's reluctance to ask her about it. It was even easier to rationalise slipping away to explore the Castle, rather than hovering over her as she tried to drag Lyra and Harry into a last-minute strategy conference (taking advantage of the delay), than it had been to rationalise not bringing Dan.
For one thing, Andromeda had no intention of waiting to tell her "niece" off for her behaviour during the Order of Merlin Ceremony — amusingly, she seemed more annoyed that Lyra and Sirius had been visibly bored and fidgeting than she was with their blatant declaration of support of Síomha's fuck you to Britain. Emma had caught the phrase "worse than glamouring the tea, Lyra!" before one of them had put up a sound-blocking spell.
And for another, Hogwarts Castle was amazing. Hermione's letters really hadn't done it justice. And since almost everyone was down in the Great Hall she had these upper levels nearly to herself. It was therefore somewhat surprising that one of the few other people around seemed to want to talk to her specifically.
She was exchanging greetings with a rather stuffy ghost with an enormously oversized ruff at his collar (one Sir Nicholas de Mimsey-Porpington, apparently) when the tall brunette girl — presumably a student in her final year or one of the student-teachers Hermione had mentioned — came upon them, looking from the two of them to some object in her hand and back twice, before settling herself on a nearby window ledge to observe them. Which was rather odd behaviour, but Emma was almost accustomed to mages behaving oddly by now. The girl certainly didn't appear threatening, so Emma did her best to ignore their audience as she assured the overly-chivalrous ghost that no, she didn't need him to escort her back to the Great Hall, and no, go on, she wouldn't want to keep him, and finally (somewhat pointedly) that she enjoyed her solitude, so. He eventually floated off in a huff, to the amusement of the girl, who was still watching between quick glances at whatever she held in her hand.
As soon as the ghost had drifted through the nearest wall, she hopped down from her makeshift bench and introduced herself, grinning broadly. "Hello, I'm Gretchen, what's your name?" She had an accent which might have been German? Or more likely one of the magical states in or around Germany, Emma supposed.
"Uh...Emma. Granger," she answered, slightly put off by her abruptness. "Ah...forgive me, but did you want something from me? Not to be rude, but I know you were listening to my conversation with Sir Nicholas just now..." So, you know I just made it very clear I'm not looking for company...
"Ah, yes, but I am far better company than that miserable old ghost. As I suspected you would be as well. I would have been very surprised if I had been directed to him."
"Directed?" she asked, curious in spite of herself.
The girl held up the object in her hand. It appeared to be some sort of compass, glass and brass set in an elaborately carved wooden box. "It's supposed to show you the way to whatever you seek — and at the moment, I am seeking interesting companions with whom to watch the Task. Would you care to join me?"
"Oh. I...well..." Honestly, that was just fascinating! The things magic could do... "I suppose I could, though I think my party was expecting me to rejoin them. Maybe you're meant to come along with all of us?"
"Possibly," the girl said cheerfully. "Are you the Emma Granger who has been causing such a stir in the British Parliament lately?"
"I am, yes..." she admitted, rather guardedly — though 'causing a stir in the British Parliament' suggested Gretchen wasn't British herself, and found the fact of her existence more entertaining than anything. Her cheerful grin hadn't wavered, anyway. "My daughter is part of the Hogwarts team, but I was officially here with the Blacks for the Order of Merlin ceremony."
"Then perhaps very possibly — the House of Black has a certain reputation, you know, for being interesting people."
"That's a remarkably politic way to put it, but yes, I'm aware," Emma said drily, falling into step beside the girl, who was following her compass again, almost without thinking about it. "Are you here with the Beauxbatons delegation? or Durmstrang?" she asked, uncertain where the central European states preferred to send their children.
"Oh, neither!" she exclaimed, laughing. "Do I really look so young? I teach Transfiguration at the Whateley Academy, in the Miskatonic Valley. A primary and secondary school," she explained. Oops. Emma still wasn't quite used to estimating the ages of mages — honestly, if she didn't know better, she'd say the forty-year-old Andromeda was in her late twenties. "Technically, I was not invited to be here, but the entire Collective is buzzing with political gossip, and I couldn't resist coming to see it for myself, this experiment in international diplomacy. I find there's just something fascinating about watching things go catastrophically wrong. Like a particularly bad train wreck."
Emma winced. "Honestly, I don't know what they were thinking, nominating Síomha ní Ailbhe to the Order of Merlin."
"Oh, that is most certainly not the most serious political misstep which has been made already. I heard that the British muggles' Queen was rather displeased to learn that there may be acromantulae hunting in her lands. And the Dean has a strange sense of humour, sending Angel Black to represent the University — if there is not a civil war brewing at this time next year, I will be very surprised." Before Emma could ask for clarification on what exactly that was supposed to mean, the witch stopped abruptly, consulting the compass, and backtracked two doorways. "Let's see who's in here!" She tapped on the wood twice, a cursory warning to whoever was inside.
Certainly not enough of a warning for them to find a less compromising position to be caught in.
"Fucking— Fuck! Tonks! I thought you said you sealed the door!" a very, very embarrassed young man yelped, struggling to get his trousers up from around his ankles, his red face clashing brilliantly with his vibrant orange hair.
His young lady, presumably Andromeda's daughter, just laughed, smoothing her too-short parody of a muggle schoolgirl's skirt back over her arse and turning to lean against the desk she'd been bent over a moment before. "No, I said it's fine, don't worry about it. Hi! Emma, right? Mum talks about you kind of a lot. Er, Dora Tonks, everyone just calls me Tonks. This is Bill— Circe's tits, Weasley," she chided him, as she turned to gesture toward him and realised he was still fumbling with his clothes. "Trousers are not advanced arithmancy, pull yourself together!"
"Arithmancy I can do, trousers are far more difficult, and— And yes, I realise what I just said, and I think the absurdity is contagious. Um, sorry, ladies," he said, not entirely sincerely. Probably thought that this was all their fault, barging in like that, or maybe Miss Tonks's, for not locking the door.
"You have nothing to apologise for, Mister Weasley," Gretchen said, in what could be taken in an insinuating way, though probably wasn't intended to be as she added, "It was my fault, of course. I should have given you more time to prepare yourselves. I am Gretchen Schmidt, and this is Emma Granger. Would you like to watch the Task with us?"
"Er..."
Andi's daughter was a bit less reticent. "The fuck?"
So Gretchen explained her quest to find interesting people again, concluding with, "So, would you like to join us?"
"We may or may not be joining the Blacks," Emma volunteered. "Does your mother know you're here, Tonks? She didn't mention you were planning on coming."
"Oh, well, no, I don't think she does. I mean, I think she 'knows' I'm helping with security around Hogsmeade, undercover, for the Tournament—" Emma was fairly certain Lyra had told Sirius who had told Andromeda that Nymphadora was actually hunting Bellatrix somewhere in Italy. Andi had been rather annoyed that she'd lied about it, but far less concerned that Bellatrix might kill the young Auror than Sirius had been. "—obviously if I were, and I was supposed to be undercover, I couldn't really confirm or deny that. I was really just dropping in to say hi to Severus, but he's busy keeping the peace and otherwise being boring, all Nymphadora, I do not have time for you right now, kindly button up your blouse and make yourself useful politicking, because I'm too scared to go tell your terrifying cousin and her terrifying girlfriend and the metamorph pretending to be a peri that I haven't got time for their shite either, because your canine cousin is about to start throwing hexes at Ars Brittania on behalf of his apprentice on behalf of my apprentice, and I really can't allow Sirius Black to do anything nice for me or anyone even tangentially related to me, so I need to go throw hexes at Ars Brittania on behalf of his apprentice first. Er. Might've paraphrased that last bit," she admitted, as Bill began sniggering halfway through her imitation of...the Potions professor? She thought Severus was his first name... "But sure, I'm in. Bill?"
He shrugged, his embarrassment, frustration, and annoyance having waned somewhere in the middle of the American witch's explanation of her mission. "No other plans. Before I ran into you, I was just looking for that Durmstrang professor Black mentioned. The phrase fucking genius was used. Also turned our pointy blond cousin into a ferret — which, you two probably haven't met Draco Malfoy, but I might be morally obligated to offer to buy this man a drink. Kid's insufferable."
Lyra said the same, though Emma hadn't found him too terribly obnoxious in the few minutes she'd spoken to him earlier. It was possible he had simply been on his best behaviour under his mother's watchful eye — Narcissa had decided to join the Blacks as part of her ongoing effort to publicise their alliance — but she thought it rather more likely he was simply a very spoilt teenager. She'd met examples of the type before. (He reminded her a bit of her first boyfriend actually, she realised, cringing internally at how easily her younger self had been fooled by Johnny's self-entitled arrogance into thinking he was actually a sophisticated young man — her grandmother had approved of him, that probably should've been the first red flag...)
"Well, we might yet run into him, if he would truly make for interesting company," Gretchen said, tipping her head toward the compass. "I think the ideal number of people for our group is six, to sit and all be able to speak to each other. So, shall we?"
"Yeah, alright. How does that thing work?" Bill asked, offering Andi's daughter his arm, but she shook her head.
"Mum doesn't know I'm here, remember?" she said, her voice growing deeper as she gained about four inches in height, and another four across the shoulders. Her hair, which had been very reminiscent of Sirius's if somewhat shorter, grew straight and took on a dirty blond hue, as her jawline grew more square and her nose less distinctly aquiline. "You can call me... Oh, I don't know, make up something Russian-sounding," she– he suggested casually. He seemed far more concerned with casting several spells on a discarded robe and throwing it on over the scandalously revealing muggle clothes (which must have already been enchanted to fit no matter what, because that blouse really shouldn't have survived the shoulders inside it shifting to more masculine proportions) which had only become less appropriate as the skirt grew proportionally shorter yet.
Woah. Emma knew that Andi's daughter was a shape-changer, but like so many other feats of magic, it was one thing to hear such a thing existed and another to see it in action.
"David," Gretchen said immediately, pronouncing it in a way which made it sound distinctly foreign. "You're a former Durmstrang student whose younger sibling is on that school's team, and you know Mister Weasley through professional contacts in..."
"Cursebreaking," Bill volunteered.
"Fascinating subject," the American witch said, nodding. "Cursebreaking, then. You speak French, but not English, and have a fondness for little bunny rabbits and turkish delight." When all three of them turned to stare at her, she shrugged. "Every good persona has quirks. It makes them more realistic."
"Da. This is true," Tonks said (in French), frowning, but apparently already in character. "But if we meet Bill's professor, I cannot be the brother of a student."
"We can just tell him that you're in disguise and ask him to play along. I'm sure anyone interesting enough to attract our attention will be willing to do so."
"So, how, exactly, does that thing work?" Bill asked again, offering his arm to the American witch instead, as "David" gave Emma a little bow, presenting his own elbow.
"Shall we, Madam Granger?"
"Emma, please."
"Oh, good, this would've been awkward if you didn't speak French..."
Gretchen had let Bill hold onto the compass as they made their way back to the ground floor — navigating was significantly easier with the help of two former Hogwarts students, especially since, as Bill pointed out, they could ask the portraits for directions if they needed to — so they did, in fact, end up running into the professor he had been looking for, and then, after he had been convinced to join them — at least until the Task began, apparently he was assisting with the commentating — the Hogwarts Charms professor, a very short, jovial, half-goblin wizard who had always been one of Hermione's favourite professors.
He greeted them excitedly, giving them a sharp-toothed grin. "Mister Weasley! Congratulations on your induction!" Bill made some self-deprecating murmurs of thanks, but they were hardly necessary, since the little wizard went on, "And that's never young Auror Tonks, is it, my dear?"
"Dammit, Professor! I'm in disguise! Mum doesn't know I'm here," the shapeshifter said, glaring at him. "Call me David. And since I'm not in school anymore, maybe finally tell me how you always know who I am?"
"Oho, my apologies David!" The professor laughed, laying a finger alongside his nose with a wink. "And it is hardly so difficult to learn to recognise the magic of one of one's favourite students, especially when their face changes so often."
The tall, 'Russian' man pouted at him. "Cheater. Emma, Gretchen, this is Professor Filius Flitwick, and you've probably met Professor Sigurd Nyberg, right?" Both men nodded. "Flitwick teaches Charms, and did I hear the Dueling Club is back on?"
"It is, yes! Your sister is very enthusiastic about it," he added, nodding to Bill. "Is there a reason you're speaking French, dear?"
"I'm afraid David doesn't speak English," Gretchen explained, apparently seriously, save for the twinkle of amusement in her eyes. "Though he clearly understands it better than I expected. Gretchen Schmidt," she introduced herself.
"And a very good thing he does," Flitwick said cheerfully. "I'm afraid my accent is considered quite atrocious, even by other non-Francophones. I suspect poor Sigurd would be in physical pain if I were obliged to speak French."
"I might have to excuse myself, yes," the Durmstrang professor confirmed, though without clarifying why he would be particularly offended by poor French. "And this, Filius, is Madam Emma Granger, Speaker for the House of Black in the Wizengamot — and, I believe, Miss Hermione Granger's mother?"
"Ah, yes! I must say, Madam Granger, your daughter is a delight to have in lessons, such a shame she didn't end up in my House — Ravenclaw, you know."
Emma nodded. "And I know you're one of her favourite professors as well. Please, call me Emma."
"Emma!" a familiar voice shouted over the crowd they'd wandered into, coming down the wide, marble ceremonial staircase which dominated the Entrance Hall, people streaming through from the Great Hall back out onto the front lawn. Apparently they were heading back to the stands now — in even greater numbers than before, Emma thought, though it was hard to say for sure. Not unexpected, more people would have been coming in for the Task itself than had shown up at eight in the morning to attend what was, at its heart, a tedious political speechmaking event, and they would've been redirected up here due to the delay. It took her a moment to spot Sirius in the crowd. Incredibly, bouncily enthusiastic and energetic as he was, he was still relatively short (mages tended to be, especially the nobility). "Great timing! Pardon me, 'scuse me — move your arse, Quigley — cheers mate — damn there are a lot of people here!" he exclaimed, fighting his way through the crowd. "Worse than the bloody Cup! Meda's waiting with the others until most of this lot clear out, not like we need to fight for seats, so!" Sigurd cast a charm of some sort around them, quieting the dull roar of the crowd enough to allow them to speak normally. "Cheers. You look familiar — have we shagged?"
"I...don't think so?" the Durmstranger said, clearly taken aback at that unorthodox greeting. "This is my first visit to Britain."
"Oh. Would you like to?" the impulsive Lord Black suggested, giving the rather shocked looking professor a wink and a roguish smirk.
"Sirius!"
"Sorry, Emma, where are my manners? Mother would be so disappointed in me — one must always introduce oneself before making sexual propositions, of course. Sirius Black, lead singer and guitarist for the Flying Motorbikes." The cover band he and Lyra were Very Serious about starting...as of last weekend. So far they had a guitar, a drum set, a name, and a grungy muggle flat, because you can't be a proper cover band in a bloody mansion, Meda! Everyone knows that, Jesus! (Andi hadn't said which of the two of them had tried to justify acquiring a flat on a whim with that particular excuse, but it could have been either.) "Good to see you all. Wasn't expecting you, at least, Baby Cousin — Meda didn't mention you were coming." That was directed at 'David', who scowled at him.
"How the fuck do people keep doing that?! I know I haven't met you!"
"I saw you headed this way on the Map," he explained, brandishing a tattered old piece of parchment which appeared to be entirely blank. "My mates and I tapped into the wards when we were students here, I'm a bit surprised the thing still works."
Flitwick chuckled. "And here I thought the Weasley boys had that old thing."
"You knew about it?!" the inveterate prankster exclaimed.
"Oh, well, Argus asked me to have a look at it after you left school. I told him it appeared simply to insult anyone who wrote on it," the goblin professor chuckled. "Fascinating adaptation of portraiture charms, though I believe he considers it to be an abomination of sorts — a perversion of his beloved art. Ten points to Gryffindor for Mister Lupin."
"That one was actually Jamie," Sirius corrected him, his mood obviously slightly dampened. He quickly changed the subject. "And if you're in disguise, Cousin, you should've said something."
"Like what? Please don't call me Auror Tonks, I'm in disguise, cheers?"
"Do they not teach you hand-signs in the Academy anymore? I thought Moody trained you."
'David' just blinked at him. "Oh. Right. I forgot you were an Auror. Anyway, don't tell Mum I'm here, she thinks I'm undercover."
"Well, no, she thinks you're in Europe trying to kill Bella. This is clearly a more productive use of your time, though, I'm pretty sure she's not in Poland anymore. Don't worry, I won't tell your Senior you were skiving off."
"How does she— Damn it, Lyra! Wait, where is she?!"
"I believe the champions and their teams were meant to assemble at their starting positions while we spectators settle ourselves," Sigurd helpfully explained.
"Not Lyra, Bellatrix!"
Sirius shrugged. "No idea, but if you think she's in Poland it's because she wants you to think she's in Poland, which means she's probably not. Or at least, she's not staying there. Wouldn't be surprised if she's been making contacts at the National Library — they're kind of blatantly anti-Statutarian, probably have a few members with ties to local Resistance groups. Might be easier to pick up her trail making a list of prominent pro-Statute groups and individuals."
"Why?" the young Auror asked skeptically. "What use would she have for those people?"
"Oh, well, she wouldn't. See, you keep an eye out for apparent natural deaths in that group, and then stake out any local anti-Statutarian groups those individuals opposed particularly strongly. Assassinating a political enemy is always a nice gift to potential allies, you see — like a fruit basket, but more useful."
Everyone else just stared at him for a long moment. Emma, at least, was wondering when Sirius had developed such an interest in the international political landscape. Filius broke the silence with a rather anxious giggle. "So, is the House of Black returning to a more traditional approach to political negotiations, then?"
Sirius gave him a wolfish grin and a few words in the very, very foreign-sounding goblin language.
Flitwick's response was equally incomprehensible, but accompanied by another sharp smile.
Sirius laughed. "Bit of a lost cause, that. But I've got other priorities."
"Mind letting the rest of us in on the joke?" 'David' asked, clearly slightly annoyed.
"'Every art has its own beauty, but no one asks a smith to carve ivory or a dancer to paint,'" Bill translated for him (and Emma, and presumably Sigurd and Gretchen). "Basically, play to your strengths. And 'take care that in learning to think as your enemies think, that you do not come to feel as your enemies feel.'"
Sirius nodded. "Bella is very good at killing people, and she's also very good at identifying the individuals whose sudden removal will have the greatest effect on the political stability of a situation. I'm not terribly familiar with the anti-Statutarians myself, but Chloé and Liz follow Resistance news — they might be able to give you some idea who's most actively opposing them. Well, assuming Cissy's little bratling hasn't offended them so badly they've buggered off to sit with Beauxbatons. Speaking of which, we should get a move on if we don't want to miss the beginning of the Task," he added, heading toward a small (reasonably-sized, but small compared to the massive scale of the surrounding space) door leading off the main Entrance Hall.
Bill groaned, though he followed along as easily as the rest of them. "The Malfoys are going to be there? I might have to bugger off to sit with Beauxbatons."
"I imagine that Sigurd's presence will have a quelling effect on young Draco," Filius assured him.
Sirius snapped his fingers, stopping dead in his tracks and turning back to face them. "That's where I know you from! You turned that little ponce into a ferret! Brill! I should buy you a drink for that!"
"Damn! I was going to do that!" (The subject hadn't come up before now.)
"Unnecessary, Lord Black, Bill, I assure you," Sigurd said, looking rather embarrassed about the whole incident. As Emma rather thought he should, losing his temper and transfiguring a student into an animal — maybe it was her muggle perspective speaking, but that seemed a bit extreme. "I simply couldn't allow his cowardly, petulant attack on Mister Potter to pass unnoticed."
"Oh, I really think it is," Sirius insisted.
"Ah, yes, Bill mentioned that little abuse of transfiguration. I find I must ask, why a ferret?" Gretchen asked, sounding more amused than disapproving.
"Oh, well, there's just something inherently ferrety about this boy, especially when he's angry. It was the first image that popped into my head, so."
"Did you use a human-ferret transformation specifically, or one of the more general animal form spells?" she asked politely.
They were still discussing methods of turning humans into ferrets when they found the others a minute or two later. Because at some point, Emma wasn't certain when exactly, her life had become incredibly surreal.
So, the Map. Why didn't Sirius see BJ's name on it? Well, basically, because BJ got bloody lucky. Sirius looked at it to see where Emma was before he joined the party. When he realised that she was headed back down toward the Great Hall with Bill, Dora, and some German witch, he decided to just wait for her to find her way back, cleared the map, and went back to teasing Cissy, or whatever he'd been doing.
[received death threats...the Minister's undersecretary] — Yes, we did just write Umbridge out of the story, completely off-screen.
Dora did actually go and check up on Angel and company, but the conversation didn't really get off the ground, because just walking up and introducing yourself to someone's sort of awkward, especially because she didn't really have a reason beyond "hi, I'm also a metamorph, and apparently we're related? Sev said I should come say hi..." And then because she didn't get to have her invisible orgy on the table, when she ran into Bill one thing led to another, obviously. The 'one thing' being Dora asking, "You're a cursebreaker, now? When did you become cool? Wanna go bang in a classroom for old times' sake?" (In my headcanon, Bill and Dora had a casual thing in school. Bill asked her to marry him after she graduated. She turned him down because she was eighteen, damn it! And also Bill was sort of a nerdy loser in school.) —Leigha
Yeah, took us for fucking ever. Whoops? Both of us had distractions and writer's block galore, so, that didn't help. But also the First Task somehow ballooned up to like 90k words — yes, I realise we're wordy bitches and have problems — and it's been about eight months since we posted, so, the equivalent of 5k chapters every other week but all at once? That's not that bad, actually.
Right, we're gonna do a last read-through of the task itself and start posting in the next few days. Woo? Woo. —Lysandra