DISCLAIMER: THE BOOK BELONGS TO J. I HAVE ONLY BORROWED BOTH CHARACTERS AND PLOTLINE.
FANSERVICE : )
CHAPTER 59
A week after Harry had made his decision, they'd found out that they would be doing a photo session, complete with an interview with a reporter from the Daily Prophet itself, followed by the weighing of their wands with Mr Olivander the wandmaker, and unfortunately for Harry both bits of information gave him a serious case of jitters.
He hated the press for obvious reasons, that being, he hated all the attention. As for seeing Mr Olivander, he'd realized that the man would find out that his wand's core had changed since he'd last seen it, ando would figure out the difference the moment he touched it, now he could only hope that the man would not create a big ruckus over it.
Luckily Miss. Reeta Skeeter couldn't have cared less about Harry; the only things she'd mentioned about him, almost as an afterthought, were that he was the fourth champion, a position he'd probably gotten by dubious methods and that his eyes were green, she'd been staring at them for nearly fifteen minutes flat while licking her red lipstick off, quite grotesquely, so Harry had been prepared for that already.
There were nearly two pages on Darren alone, who'd set the paper on fire at breakfast creating quite a panic for a minute when it went up in flames and also quite a bit about Cedric 'The Greek Hero-like boy' which included a small poem about his superb physique.
Hermione seemed to have been ignored almost completely even though she was the only female participant, with only a tiny sentence about her being a champion and that she was a girl. She had received tons of letters by the end of the day about feminism and women empowerment, leaving her quite shocked, a little happy but scared, while Ron was out of breath from all the laughing.
Mr Olivander had seen them individually in a private room, which made Harry a feel bit relieved. He'd assessed all the others wand's and had deemed them to be in perfectly working conditions, gloating about the durability of his own workmanship when he finally called Harry into the room for his turn.
Taking his wand from him, Mr Olivander closed his eyes and tried to feel out the core of Harry's silvery wand and had promptly dropped it with a gasp. His eyelids flew open revealing his filmy grey eyes, "I can't make sense of the core in your wand!" He whispered to Harry, looking stunned "I remember very clearly the day you selected your wand from my shop, it was Holly with a unicorn's tail hair, now it feels completely different somehow. Did you get a new wand?" He asked Harry almost accusingly, while the boy stood shaking his head, no, and bent to pick up his fallen wand.
Grabbing it from him once more, Mr Olivander stared at the shimmering wood and said "This finish is not of my making, in fact I have never seen the likes of it before and when I touch the wood, I feel the magic so strongly it's as if it has imbibed the core itself. I can also tell you quite confidently that right now that your wand is feeling discomfort from being held by me, like it can't stand being in my hands longer" he said, looking almost hurt at that thought. Twirling the wand around, he watched mesmerized as golden sparks shot out from its end.
"It's a powerful wand Mr Potter, guard it well and maybe someday show it to me again so that i can thoroughly examine it" he said and turned away, after giving him his seal of approval for Harry to be able to use it during the tournament.
Time flew by and he and Draco found themselves way ahead of the others in class, so instead they concentrated on practicing fighting and Occlumency in their secluded classroom, finding the space confining and difficult to maneuver in, but, safe from being intruded upon.
A week before the task Darren had come to Harry while they were sitting near the lake and he'd said while panting for breath "I know what the first task is!"
"What?" asked Harry curiously; knowing that whatever it was his would be harder than theirs.
"It's dragons! Ron told me that he'd found out by accident. There are only three of them so i can't be sure if you'll be doing the same thing as us but just prepare anyway, yeah? "
Harry stood staring out into the lake when Darren had left and thought; if the first task for them was fighting a dragon, then his would probably be a frigging Manticore or something! It was definitely the more dangerous of the two, and if it was indeed a dragon for Harry then he'd breeze past the task, being a Dragon Tamer and all that. Shit! He was royally screwed.
"Can't you have visions about my task, Dray?" he asked, almost sounding plaintive.
"None yet Harry, but maybe tonight you'll get lucky and I'll dream of you being mauled by some ghastly beast in the tournament, so don't worry, I promise to take a real close look!"
Harry kissed him mockingly on his cheek and said "Ah my best friend, always rescuing a poor bloke in distress!" and turned away laughing, not noticing Draco's beet red face at all.