Hogsmeade was surprisingly packed. After the marauder attack half a year earlier, there hadn't been much hope that the first field trip of Harry's fourth year would have many options. Yet the town square was brimming with stalls and people visiting them. In fact, any piece of flat ground along the road from the school gates seemed to have a tent set up. And they could see the Hogwarts Express parked at the train platform, which was unusual for during the school year.

"All these people must be here to see the first task," Parvati mused. Word had gotten out that the exact time was uncertain, but it would be early in Holy-Month, and the field trip was on the last day of Autumn-Month. So, within a week or two. Presumably some of the people that had come in on the Express were Ministry officials to help set up the challenge.

"I heard the traders were more willing to come, because they could travel in numbers," Ginny added. With regular patrols along the train route anyway, and all the extra guests, this could be a huge money-making opportunity for merchants usually vying for nothing more than student pocket money.

"What? Oh, yeah," Harry asked, not having been paying much attention as the carriage delivered him to his date. Hermione was in a similar state next to him. The heads of the other schools had wanted to to take their students into town and orient them, so riding in with their dates hadn't been an option. Consequently, Harry, Hermione, Parvati, Ginny, and Seamus were in the "singles" carriage, while their friends traveled in as couples. Harry, focusing his attention back on his friends, caught that Seamus looked just as distracted and nervous as he was; maybe the other single boy was meeting a date as well? Rather than asking about it, he just told Ginny, "Glad you're getting a real field trip for your first one."

"Parvati's going to show me the cool stalls," the redhead agreed. Harry briefly reflected on how much the social dynamic had changed over the last year, from Hogsmeade being mostly the study group traveling together to everyone splitting up to go on dates. Not that they wouldn't bump into each other again and again: the town wasn't very big.

"Oh, there's Viktor," Hermione announced, spotting the Bulgarian waiting patiently right by where the carriages were pulling up. "See you all around." Not really even waiting for a goodbye, and barely waiting for the carriage to stop moving, she slid out and walked away with her date.

"We should all be so lucky," Parvati sighed.

"Uh uh!" Ginny grinned. "Girls' day!" She dragged the older Gryffindor off with her into the crowd.

"Good luck," Harry told Seamus.

"You too," he nodded, eyes flicking around and almost skulking off to look for his presumed date.

The previous few trips to Hogsmeade, Harry's celebrity hadn't been that big a deal. The other students obviously already saw him every day, if only at meals for kids of different ages. Some of the shopkeeps and citizens of Hogsmeade had been initially keen to meet him, but were more interested in his spending money than his fame. Suddenly, though, with dozens of out-of-towners there for the tournament, Harry was wading through a sea of handshakes.

"Oh, yeah, good to meet you. Hi, yep, that's me. Sorry, I need to get moving on. A whole hug, huh, okay, um. I don't really do pictures." The walk through the crowd to where he was meeting Fleur near the inn took minutes, even though it was only a few dozen yards.

When he finally spotted his date, it seemed like she was being mobbed as well, trying to politely brush off both Hogwarts students that hadn't had time to corner her yet, and much older townsfolk. He wondered if she was famous like he was on Alfheim, or if her polite but closed-off body language was entirely an adaptation to being used to being propositioned by strangers. Had she just agreed to go with him as some kind of cover?

Honestly, that would take a load off of his mind, since he had no idea how he was going to date a supermodel who was three years older.

"Hey, Fleur, sorry, got held up," he managed to insert himself into her bubble of hangers-on.

"Sorry, everyone," she said, a look of relief lighting up her face as Harry appeared. "I 'ave to go."

The crowd was at least polite enough to realize that they shouldn't continue to mob two kids on a date and went back to shopping. "You think the other challengers are getting that?" he asked, quietly, once they had some space to themselves in the hubbub.

"We should ask zem later," she agreed, but clearly didn't believe it. "Into ze inn?"

Harry glanced through the Three Broomsticks' door as it banged open to let another group of students out, and could tell that it was packed inside. "If you're starving, sure," he said, "but… we could take a walk and try to get away from the crowd?" He had been there less than five minutes and was already kind of done.

"Gladly," she smiled beautifully, and he almost lost control of the mental muscle he was flexing to keep her from reading his mind. Honestly, it was pretty similar to the walking meditation he'd been doing to fight Mindless Ones, once he figured out the trick. "Your mind is… very strong," she observed, smile fading as she felt him block the connection as soon as it almost formed.

"Sorry," he told her. "I figure you're not really doing it on purpose? But I don't know if I want everyone seeing what you find in my head." Malfoy, in particular, would probably love to know what Harry's ideal woman looked like. That it was probably Natasha opened up a world of insults if he could find out who she was, or just by speculating about the redheads in Harry's life.

They were walking along the outer edge of the square, Harry unconsciously leading toward the trail to the Roaring Rampart. Side by side but not holding hands, he was aware that she was taller than him. Honestly, that was probably his lot in life. It wasn't like it was even that unusual: Pepper had taken to going shoeless in private, since even barefoot she was as tall as Tony with his shoes on. Being shorter meant less chance of heart problems later in life, Rhodey assured him.

"Most people like it when I'm zeir fantasy," she said, as they cleared the square and started walking along the grass toward the treeline and trailhead into the hills.

"I don't think you should have to change yourself to be what other people want," he shrugged. It wasn't even a line, it was just what he actually thought, so he didn't get why she gave him another look and intrigued smile as soon as she said it.

"Where are we going?" she asked, instead.

"There's an old fort up in the hills," he gestured. "The overlook is a good private space to talk. Lots of kids go up there on dates, and the tourists probably don't know about it. Or they think it's haunted."

She blinked, unknowingly repeating what Parvati had said about a year earlier in the same spot, "Ze castle is already full of ghosts."

He chuckled, "Yeah. And there aren't any in the Roaring Rampart. It's where a student used to go when he was having a berserker fit so he wouldn't hurt anyone. Guess him yelling is scarier than an actual haunted house. The ghosts at Hogwarts are fairly quiet."

"Except zat awful Peeves," she argued.

"He's not technically a ghost. He's something that Loki made when he was a student and they've never been able to get rid of."

"Ah. Ze fallen prince learned 'ere? We 'ear Asgard curses 'im and mourns 'im."

Harry nodded, letting her lead as they turned on a tight switchback of the trail, her robes brushing against his arm. "That's what they say. Him going to school here, I mean. I'd heard about Asgard, too. You know Thor came to Earth… er, Midgard last summer? The problems with Bifrost and all of that probably have to do with that."

"Zis I had not 'eard," she said, intrigued. "Zough we 'ear tales of new 'eros on Midgard. A man in iron?"

"Iron Man, yeah," Harry said, then realized he better get it over with, if she'd heard of Tony. "He's my aunt's boyfriend. Well, hopefully he still is. She just told him about being from Vanaheim, and I guess he didn't take it well."

Fleur nodded, "We also must be careful, sharing wiz friends on Midgard."

"Do you get to go?" he asked, interested. "I knew you spoke French, but I wasn't sure…"

"Oui. Zere are still connections between Alfheim and ze old Celtic lands, especially ze parts of Gaul zat became France. Our people came and went for zousands of years from your world. Until ze Jotun wars, when Odin forbade open contact."

"That makes sense. Lot of old fairy tales that could be elves," Harry agreed. "Do you take magical French kids to Beauxbatons the way Hogwarts and Durmstrang find them?"

"Only rarely. Ze ones wiz elf blood. Hogwarts seems to find ze ozzers."

"Probably because France is pretty close to the London sanctum," he figured. "Wait, you can breed with humans?"

"Of course," she said. "Zis is why we do not live as long as ze Aesir, and 'ow we can go in ze daylight."

"You're all dark elf/human crossbreeds!" Harry realized. "Everyone always said it was some kind of Asgardian medical magic or something that changed you from the dark elves."

"Maybe in ze beginning," she shrugged. "It was five-zousand years ago. Or maybe ze dark elves could do so if zey cared to, and just refuse?"

"Yeah, those guys are intense," he agreed.

"You've met dark elves?"

They were coming up onto the overlook over the Roaring Rampart, which was empty of other kids on dates on the chilly afternoon. "Yeah. They, uh, have some dumb prophecy thing that they need to keep me alive for, so they keep stopping short of killing me. They think I'm going to find something they want."

"You should not do zis!" she cautioned, turning to face him, eyes blazing. "Zere is nozzing zey could want zat is not a weapon to use against ze ozzer realms!"

"I kind of figured," he put his hands up to acknowledge and agree. "We're not exactly friends."

"Of course," she absently took one of his hands out of the air in her own. "I did not mean to accuse you. My family expects me to be a diplomat, warning ozzers of ze dangers of our counterparts."

Accidentally holding hands with someone who, admittedly through illusion, was more gorgeous than anyone he'd ever met through Tony, Harry momentarily lost control of his mental defenses. Part of him worried that she'd done it to break through them. But even if she had, the sudden connection went both ways.

The edges of his vision fading into orange and his scar prickling, Harry got a jolt of the Soul-Stone-powered empathy that was sometimes granted to him.

Harry didn't get feelings, so much as an intuitive understanding of feelings. Without knowing how he knew, he understood her: a deep insecurity leading to a need to prove herself, conflicted devotion to the expectations of family and nation, and the loneliness of someone frequently looked at but so rarely seen. Honestly, he could relate to a lot of that. She was gifted with an empathy that inevitably told her that anyone looking at her didn't care about her, but simply who she could pretend to be for them.

But before he could really process that, he realized that hers weren't the only thoughts he was understanding. Hers were clearly from in front of him, but there was someone else watching. Someone else in contact with him, and eagerly observing what could lead to a magical moment of romance in the woods. Someone… sitting on his left shoulder?

He glanced down and stared at the thumb-sized beetle riding along with him in the pre-winter cold where no such beetles should be, and felt it think, "Oh, shit."

"That beetle's an animagus!" Harry yelled, his hand sliding from Fleur's as the disguised wizard attempted to fly away. "We're literally being bugged."

"Spys!" Fleur shouted, her illusion snapping into the strangely feral and birdlike form that Ron had mentioned. Maybe that was what light elves actually looked like? At least her avian rage was directed at the beetle, clearly believing Harry about it.

To give credit where it was due, the animagus had reacted quickly and had the power of flight. Escape only required making the treeline without getting set alight by the fire Fleur had conjured in her hands. But the transformed wizard hadn't really considered that Harry had spent most of the last year figuring out how to deal with animagus problems. "Morphic Truth of Fylgja!" he incanted, having drawn and aimed his wand in one smooth motion.

The beetle was caught in the shotgun blast of teal light, the spell designed to catch even an agile animagus at short range. As the cloud of blue-green sparks whirled around the ones that had actually collided with the target, the animagus' form rapidly expanded from around an inch in size to a full-sized human woman. She barely managed to get her arms and legs under her to break her fall, and was fortunate that she hadn't yet gotten much higher than Harry's shoulder. She still rolled to a painful-looking stop on the cold dirt of the overlook clearing.

"Chri… Rita?" Harry gasped, catching himself and using her pseudonym just in time.

"Ze reporter!?" Fleur yelled. "Is zis 'ow you get your stories?"

"I can explain!" Christine Everhart yelled, putting her hands up to protect her face. That phrase lilted up in urgency at the end, as she got a look at exactly how much fire Fleur was wielding.

"I thought we had a deal," Harry told her, his own wand lowering since Christine didn't have one in hand and because she had admitted she wasn't very dangerous even with one. Obviously she hadn't revealed that she must have spent her time at Hogwarts learning to be an animagus. He raised his wand slightly again as he realized that might mean that she was better at transfiguration that she let on.

"We do! We do! I was going to let you proof the story!" she insisted. "It was just so cute! You were a cute couple! Please don't light me on fire."

Harry glanced at Fleur, who was mastering her surprise and anger as the threat seemed to be under control. As flames licked up her arms without burning her robes, a cloak of golden feathers spilled off of her shoulder blades, and her silvery hair stood into a veritable crown of sharp plumage… Harry still thought she was extremely gorgeous. Maybe it wouldn't be the same if that rage was directed at him, but it was a really cool look. Whatever her own empathy read off of Christine, Fleur quietly snarled, "You will never spy on eizzer of us again. And if you write anyzing negative, I will ensure your secret is known."

"You could have just asked me for an interview about my date," Harry agreed.

"Sorry. Sorry," Christine said, picking herself up, contriteness vanishing into calculation as she stood and dusted herself off. "It was just so romantic. You've heard the phrase, 'I wish I could be a fly on the wall?' Can you blame me?" As Fleur's handful of flame flared again, she said, "I agree to your terms, Ms. Delacour." She waited for the flames to extinguish before asking, "So… can I get that interview?"

She deftly dodged the two gouts of hurled flame as she sprinted off the overlook and back to the trail, running down toward Hogsmeade.

Once they were sure Christine was out of earshot and Fleur was once again calming down—flames extinguishing and feathers receding back within her normal seeming—Harry said, "That was really cool. Can I ask… is that what you really look like under the glamour?"

Fleur glanced at him and he lowered his shield against her empathy enough for her to tell that he wasn't horrified, but honestly intrigued. Almost fully back in her normal form of a supermodel with silver-blond hair rather than using the opportunity to try to bend to his desires, she gave a shake of her head and explained, "No. It's a magical gift of ze Seelie court. For when we are in danger."

"A battle form! That's so cool," Harry grinned, and it was infectious, her own mouth twitching in a smile.

"Few 'ave said so. I 'ave been called 'arpy or banshee."

"Meh," Harry shrugged. "Do that in a bodysuit and you're basically a comic book hero from Earth. It's very Hawkgirl." Now he was picturing it, and he had to clamp back down on his shields before she picked up that particular teen fantasy.

"You're kind for saying so," she said.

"So if that's not what you look like…" Harry asked, remembering what he had wanted to know before they were so rudely interrupted. "Can I ask what you look like under the glamour? To see you?"

Maybe it wasn't fair that his own empathy had made him aware that particular verb would land, but it broke through her reflexive rejection. Fixing him with a piercing gaze she asked, "You really want to know? You won't tell ozzers?" He nodded, letting his shields relax again so she could hopefully read his earnestness and powerful curiosity. "Very well."

For a moment he wasn't clear exactly what had changed. It was obvious that some kind of illusion had faded, but so much was still the same. He realized that part of it was just an illusory "makeup" as the literal loss of glamour left her fresh-faced. But it wasn't like she was less attractive. The illusion hadn't been hiding deformity or even just an average appearance. It took a long moment for him to recognize most of what she was hiding was just a subtle softness to her features that wasn't present in the angular and adult mien she usually wore.

"You don't actually look seventeen," he realized, then quickly followed it up with, "You stop aging at puberty!"

"It slows, yes," she nodded, barely looking more than a year older than him even with their three-year age difference. "It will take several years before I look a full adult, and it will slow more after zat. I wanted to be taken seriously here."

"And you couldn't if you don't look grown up," he nodded, remembering they'd speculated on that very thing when the elves had arrived. "Believe me, as the kid in over his head on this whole thing, I get it."

"I no longer believe you are in over your head," she said, regarding him with that piercing, considering gaze. She let the illusion wrap back around her, once again a precisely-made-up adult, and said, "Walk me back to town?"

"Yeah, guess Rita ruined the moment," he nodded.

"Ruin is a strong word," Fleur said, bumping him affectionately with a shoulder as they began to walk back toward town. "But I 'ave much to consider."

They walked in companionable silence down the trail. As a gesture of good faith, Harry left his shields down. Reciprocating, she didn't change her glamour from its "default" form of an aged-up and made-up vision of her true appearance. Harry, thinking about it, realized that his meditation probably had a lot to do with getting over his natural teen response to a beautiful girl. He quietly quashed a thought that maybe she was playing him, and had gotten him to lower his defenses. They were competitors after all.

"But are we?" she replied to that thought as they stepped off the trail and back into the outskirts of town, making him wonder if her empathy extended into full telepathy, or if she'd just made a really good guess. "Zank you for ze walk, 'arry," she told him with a pretty smile, before stepping over to join a trio of elves she saw at a shop on the edge of the square.

Before he had time to overthink that interaction, Ginny came running up, Parvati not far behind. Parvati clearly wanted to ask what had happened, but knew from their own date a year previous in the same spot that he would never tell her if she asked. Before that drama had time to unspool in both of their minds, Ginny announced, "Harry! Charlie is in town. My brother!"

He blinked, not having expected that. "Great! You should get some family time?"

She huffed as if Harry was not making the obvious connection she had. "My brother Charlie. Who works with dragons. Is in town. I think he has his coworkers with him. I don't think they had much advance warning they'd need to be here."

"Oh, and Hagrid mentioned something about inviting you to bring your cloak and join him when he goes and takes a walk in the forest before dinner tonight," Parvati remembered.

Harry glanced up at the sky and realized that his date had actually taken longer than he'd thought. "Cool. Thanks. Dragons, huh? You two seen all the shops yet? I guess I should buy Christmas presents and then go see what Hagrid is trying to show me."

Showing up to Hagrid's hut around sunset and knocking, the big man greeted him wearing a very formal "military" coat that was adorned with furs and had a couple of the ornamental braids that Harry had realized were Vanaheim medals. "Did you fight in a war… oh, right, Voldemort. Somehow I didn't think it would count."

"Aye," Hagrid nodded. "Even wi' Dumbledore as my lord, I earned these braids. They tell yeh I got somethin' ter show yeh? Good. Yer just in time. Get under yer cloak an' follow me."

Harry bemusedly let his cloak conceal him and followed after Hagrid as he walked to the Beauxbatons castle and picked up Madame Maxime. Luna had sadly relented on the idea that she might be an ent under an illusion, since her vocabulary was apparently much more expansive than expected for a flora colossus. But at least Hagrid had another presumably-half-jotun to date.

It seemed like Maxime knew something was up, but not exactly what, and Harry followed after them as they strolled into the forest. The trail they were following had been widened and looked to have brackets set up for torches that weren't yet placed, as if it was being turned into an avenue from the castle. Maybe the task was taking place in the woods for some reason, so attendees would need to walk. Harry just hoped that the shadow nix had moved on, and any other forest hazards were being scared off.

"Now, yeh won't tell anyone, right?" Hagrid asked his date, who demurred (in a way that Harry thought totally meant she was going to tell Fleur). "It's right up ahead."

They came upon a clearing that was really more of a wasteland. In a multi-acre swath, the forest had been burned back, and charred trunks of trees had been knocked over and moved to the edges of the space. Serious-looking people in armor were walking with purpose around the space, but they seemed to be spending less time setting it up and more patrolling. Floating in the center was a wavering, twenty-foot-diameter hole in space. The clearing was mostly lit by the sullen red glow coming from the convergence. Even from a distance, Harry felt like he was looking into a full-on hellmouth.

Suddenly, there were cries of, "One's coming. Form up!" The wizards and warriors guarding the convergence arranged themselves and started casting as the glow from the egress began to flicker madly, as if something very large was moving toward it very fast. The strangest thing was that sound didn't seem to penetrate as far, so he didn't hear the roar until the immense beast—so much larger than the baby that Hagrid had hatched in Harry's first year—shoved its head and neck through and began to blast fire across the glade.

The dragon handlers erected angled shields of magic, causing the gout to spill away from them and further blacken the earth. Those at the front stabbed with magical spears and the wizards not shielding cast fierce-looking turquoise spells to force the beast back and cause it to bellow in anger and pain as it was thwarted from crossing the portal. As it was forced back and sent to flee from crossing into Vanaheim, Harry realized that even with the shielding, several people had been burned and were being tended to by healers.

Oh. It hadn't really sunk in when Ginny suggested it. He was going to have to fight dragons.