Chapter Five- Triwizard Terror
Ah, Harry Potter's fourth year. The year that I first got to meet him. The year that my hopes for the boy were completely dashed. Potter entered himself into the Triwizard Tournament, a tournament between the three European Wizarding schools- Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Of course, he denied doing any such thing, yet was still allowed to continue. Yet another nutter ended up teaching at Hogwarts that year- Dumbledore's insane friend, Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody. Mad-Eye claimed that Potter had been entered into the Tournament by somebody else because of the nature of the Goblet of Fire, but this writer doesn't believe it for a second. Potter was desperate for fame, we'd seen it before, with his insistence of getting onto the front page of the Prophet aged twelve, his following of Gilderoy Lockhart like a heartbroken puppy, getting himself into detentions just to be in the presence of a real celebrity, albeit a useless one.
I first met Potter before the first Task of the Tournament, where he fed me a load of rubbish about being a lonely orphan, about how much he missed his parents, although he obviously didn't remember them in the slightest, and about how he was dating that pushy Muggleborn Hermione Granger- something she knew nothing about. It pains me to think about how he'd taken me in, pretending that he was sad about his parents, fabricating relationships and putting on charms he definitely didn't possess in real life. However, I soon wised up to the real Potter, and took great pleasure in sharing this with the Wizarding Community. It was a good thing I did, as it allowed us a brief respite where we no longer had to fawn over him every time he handed in an essay or finished his dinner.
After my first meeting with Potter, and my first article about him, for which I am frankly ashamed, I tried to get some information about him from his classmates, who were very helpful. I didn't interview Potter after the First Task, because I'd got the idea that there was something quite wrong with him, and I wanted a fair and unbiased view of the boy, instead of his self-deluded innocence.
I quickly found out that Potter wasn't as well liked as he wanted me to believe. He was constantly getting himself into trouble and losing points for his House, Gryffindor (why he was put there, we don't know- the Sorting Hat must have had a moment of madness). I did, however, manage to get a scoop on Potter's half-giant pal, Hagrid. Before my discovery, nobody was aware of the Care of Magical Creatures so-called "professor" had such a dangerous heritage. Potter seemed right at home with this dangerous "man", who had been expelled when he was fifteen for setting a monster on the school.
At the time, I believed that Potter had no knowledge of Hagrid's bloodline, but I'm not so sure now. Potter seems to have always had the same sort of attraction to the dangerous as Hagrid, with his friendships with Remus Lupin and Hagrid himself.
What with his Triwizard Tasks, his made-up relationships and his attraction to dangerous beasts, one would thing that Potter had enough to deal with, when it emerged that his faked relationship with Miss Granger may not have been so faked after all. Granger had attended the Yule Ball, a Christmas celebration connected with the Triwizard Tournament, with Triwizard Champion and World-renowned Quidditch player Viktor Krum. It was confirmed by their classmate, Pansy Parkinson, that Granger was controlling Krum with a Love Potion, which was banned at Hogwarts. Although Potter was becoming more and more out of control, the readers of Witch Weekly were definitely on his side, causing Miss Granger to receive rather a lot of hate mail, something she probably deserved after toying with the hearts of both Potter and Krum. What Miss Granger declined to realise is that at this time, Potter was still in the hearts of the nation, and were overprotective of his feelings.
However, this was all about to change. Potter was about to be de-throned as the nation's favourite fourteen-year-old. His mental health was beginning to fail, causing him to collapse and complain of pain in his lightning-bolt scar. This writer personally witnessed him fleeing from a Divination class. A perfectly acceptable reaction perhaps, given the subject, you might think. Unfortunately, this wasn't a simple dislike of Divination, as the Potter boy was complaining of a pain in his scar, and it seems that it wasn't the first time, as the teacher, one Professor Sybil Trelawney, barely flinched as Potter left the room. It was around this time that it was revealed, by fellow classmate Draco Malfoy, that Potter could speak Parseltongue, something he currently denies, although as mentioned before, he refuses to be interviewed for this book.
The ability to talk to snakes is considered to be linked to the Dark Arts, and whether he can converse with our serpentine friends or not, the fact that he is rumoured to have this ability is enough to make people suspicious. Combined with the fact that Potter was having funny turns and pains in cursed scars, it was becoming obvious that Potter shouldn't be even allowed to mingle with the rest of Hogwarts, let alone be allowed to compete in the remaining Triwizard Task- a suspicion that was about to be proven in a sinister twist.
It is unknown what exactly happened in the maze put up for the final task, but there was proof that Potter should never have been allowed to continue with the competition. The maze was designed so that the audience could not see what was happening.
The crowd waited for hours for Potter and fellow Champion Cedric Diggory to emerge from the maze, after Krum and Beauxbatons Champion Fleur Delacour needed to be rescued. When they finally emerged, something was immediately wrong. Instead of the smiling face of the winner of the Tournament, the crowd saw Potter, clutching the Triwizard Cup and the dead body of his fellow champion. His claim was that the apparently dead Peter Pettigrew had killed Cedric before taking part in a ritual to return the Dark Lord to his former glory. Although we now know that He Who Must Not Be Named did indeed return at around this time, and his description to Dumbledore of the ritual and the death of Cedric were vivid and highly detailed. Specialists think that the rich details that Potter managed to provide were the details only provided by the truly insane, although the mad boy seems to have been right this once.
Dumbledore naturally swallowed the whole story,and mobilised his troops immediately, and the former members of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's ludicrously named anti-Dark Lord organisation, ran around like headless chickens, holding onto his every word, while Potter looked around at the madness he had caused- and smiled.