Chapter 5


"What dream?" Hermione asked, her voice was both forceful, one of the only ways to get information out of the emerald eyed teen, and filled with concern, which she couldn't help but let leak into her voice.

"It was nothing" Harry told her, covering up the truth of the matter, knowing that she would worry too much if he were to tell her everything. Neville gave him a look before speaking up.

"You woke up in a sweat." Neville told honestly, Hermione shot Harry a glare. "I swear you looked like you wanted to scream, and your brother woke up the same at the exact same time." Neville explained further.

"How do you know that?" he questioned. He was sure that everyone had been asleep.

"I was trying to get back to sleep myself when you woke up, your mumbling was making it difficult and when you woke up I knew something was wrong." He remembered how Harry had sprung from his sheets in sync with his brother who had done the same, both covered in sweat and panting. "What was it about?" Hermione looked at him as though she wanted to know the same.

"It was a dream that came from my scar I think, judging by the way it burned." Harry admitted. "I saw… some old man getting killed by what I think was Voldemort" Neville chilled at the name, but Hermione did not. "It was strange, like all the dreams I'd had like that before. It was… as if I was there, like it was happening."

"I think you should talk to Dumbledore, and message Sirius, he will want to know about it" Hermione said but Harry let out a sigh.

"I might have been important or just a dream, I don't want to bother Dumbledore." He let out another sigh. "I will message serious though, I'll send him a letter after my drink."

"You need to tell the headmaster, it is better that he is aware." Hermione objected to his decision. "When your scar burns it always has something to do with Vold-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" she hesitated to say the name around Neville as he was still afraid of it.

"I'll check with Nathan before I involve him." He took a sip of his drink, noting that the other two had almost finished theirs whereas he had barely started his own. "It will probably take me a while to get Nathan to talk though, he seems to be getting worse ever since this tournament started."

"He's probably envious that you are in it and he isn't, you know he's always been like that. He wants everything; and wants to be better than you." Hermione said.

"I wonder what he'll do?" he said thoughtfully.

"Harry?"

"Nathan has a bad habit of acting rashly, pushing things further than he should. He might do something dangerous if he feels that way for much longer." Harry explained to Neville.

After the heavy topics they took to discussing ordinary things, school, lessons and assignments, as well as briefly discussing the Yule Ball which Neville informed them of thanks to his grandmother knowing of the tradition. Fearing that they would revisit the discussion of girlfriends Harry excused himself to send a letter to Sirius.

Neville wanted to send a letter of his own but remained with Hermione for another drink first. Man, I love those two, but they are driving me mad… maybe I should find someone to date and then I can stop being a third wheel to them all the time he thought as he walked back to the castle, ignoring the cold weather as he did.

It hadn't yet begun to snow, but it would soon enough. There was an ever-present chill more so than usual and every morning there was ice on the ground. He could feel the cold more so now that he was on his own walking to the castle.

"Arry?" the familiar voice of the angelic creature that was Fleur Delacour greeted him as he entered the castle.

"Fleur? What are you doing here?" he asked when he turned to see the beauty. Damn she's hot… he quickly tried to bury the thought.

"I was on my way to ze carriage, 'ow about you?" she asked, she seemed disappointed with his response to seeing her, but he paid it little mind.

"On my way back from Hogsmeade, I had to leave the love birds to it." He said with a smile.

"Oh, who are these love birds you speak of?" she asked with a raised brow.

"Hermione and Neville, I can't help but feel like a third wheel when I'm there. Don't get me wrong I love them both, they're like family after all, but it still feels really awkward" he admitted to her. He offered to escort her to her carriage, she agreed, they started to walk toward it.

"I'm sure zey don't mind" she assured him.

"Still…" he gave a sigh. "Anyway, enough of that heavy stuff. What about you? Anything new in your life?" he asked, gaining a more cheerful tone.

"Nothing, I aven't worked out how to open ze egg yet either" she admitted, although was confused as to why she was telling him her progress in the tournament. He gave a laugh. "What?" she asked, slightly perturbed by his reaction.

"I haven't either. I used every spell of that I could think on it and not even a scratch, even with me, Hermione and Neville still nothing" he admitted. She smiled.

When they got to her carriage they were both in a good mood. "Thank you for escorting me to ze carriage Arry" she thanked and give him a soft kiss on the cheek.

He touched his hand to his cheek involuntarily after the kiss, a sight that caused her heart to flutter a little. He lowered his hand quickly, realising what he was doing and blushed from embarrassment. "I-It was my pleasure" he replied, but he should've waited longer as his voice faltered slightly due to his embarrassment.

"I will see you at dinner?" she smiled. Her heart was still beating quickly, but his blush had given her something to take her mind off of it.

"Definitely" he responded quickly with more confidence. She gave a warm smile in response. "Hey, Fleur…" he started as she turned to go inside the carriage.

"Oui?" she turned back to look at him, having only made it halfway through the door.

"I was wondering… uh… never mind" to say she was disappointed would be an understatement but she had no idea why. It was frustrating to know that the usual control that she had was failing, not externally, but within her own mind, her own feelings.

xXxXxXx

It had been some time since he had had a dream that was surely connected to Voldemort somehow, but he was more concentrated on his more immediate problems. His number one worry was that he hadn't yet been able to get into the egg, all it did was scream at him whenever he opened it, and he was running out of ideas. The second problem was the Yule Ball, in which he was meant to have a date to dance before the others as one of the champions, but he wasn't keen on going at all, so it was hard to get excited about it.

Neville and Hermione had been trying their best to help him but there was nothing on the egg. There was nothing written about it, so they weren't able to do anything. It was getting cold. Very cold. And it was colder by the large lake that Harry used to spend his time in, while Neville was standing with his trousers rolled up in the water looking for a plant that was supposed to grow there and he wanted for his own thing. Harry didn't know too much about it considering Herbology wasn't his thing.

"How are things with you and Hermione?" Harry asked as he lifted his head from an old book that Sirius had given to him before the school year had begun, after the whole situation with the World Cup he became more involved with the two Potters, although Nathan was less accepting of that help for Merlin knows what reason.

"I think everything is okay, I think we passed the whole honeymoon stage though" he said with a hint of disappointment.

"What do you mean?" Harry was a little confused, he hadn't noticed a change.

"At the start it was all plus, but its hit home that we have to share everything now, problems included." He said, Harry didn't cut in, feeling that there was more for Neville to say. And he was right as Neville then continued. "I never realised how tough everything was for her… being the house genius means that she always has some kind of issue and I don't know what I can tell her to make it better, which last night turned into an argument."

"How often are the two of you arguing?"

"I wouldn't say arguing, last night was definitely an argument, but it all starts as her venting and me listening, it only became an argument when I couldn't help, and she thought that I didn't care." He continued.

"I'm not sure how to help, I haven't had a girlfriend, but if you think of anything that I can do let me know and I'd be happy to."

"Alright." He sighed. "Got anything?" he asked a minute later.

"Not really, I have one new spell to try though." He said as he stood up, placing the egg on the ground he then chanted in Latin. A stream of energy was fired from his wand, intangible energy that seemed to pass into the egg.

"WHOA!" they both said as the egg shot from the ground and into the water. "Crap, now I have to swim" Harry complained as he stripped down to his underwear. Neville took his clothes, stopping Harry from putting them on the ground.

They hadn't noticed that several other students were nearby and had noticed when he stripped. The girls seemed to approve of his slender, yet muscular appearance. He wasn't overly muscular but considering his training regime and strenuous life it wasn't a surprise that he had built up some muscle.

He dove into the water and searched for the egg. He surfaced after about thirty seconds, taking a deep breath before diving back into the water. He couldn't summon it, so he took several minutes of diving to find it.

When he pulled it from the rock it opened, but to his surprise there was no screeching sound.

"Come seek us where our voices sound,
We cannot sing above the ground,
And while you're searching, ponder this;
We've taken what you'll sorely miss,
An hour long you'll have to look,
And recover what we took,
But past an hour — the prospect's black,
Too late, it's gone, it won't come back."

The egg sung, a beautiful sound as opposed to the harsh screeching that he had before. Harry's mouth broke into a smile as he closed it and sprung from the water. "Neville!" he cried out, then the adrenalin faded, he was hit by a wave of cold.

Quickly he ran to the shore and Neville made several complicated movements of his wand before Harry was hit by a wave of heated air, warm enough for him to dry within two dozen seconds, like he had been dried thoroughly by a towel. "Thanks" he thanked Neville, who gave him a smile.

"Don't mention it. What were you so excited about?" he asked.

"I opened the egg."

"Are you ears alright? Was that the-"

"No. No, I actually heard the clue" Neville was shocked. Harry put his clothes back on and they raced as quickly as they could to tell Hermione who would be able to solve the clue… hopefully.

xXxXxXx

That night at dinner Harry and Neville were eating, but Hermione had elected to stare at the paper that she had written the clue down on. They had each made a copy, they couldn't be expected to memorise it… well Hermione could, but Harry and Neville had tried and failed.

"I think you will have to compete with the merpeople, this is definitely their language, I can't believe I didn't see it before." She ridiculed herself for missing it. Neville rested a hand on her shoulder in a comforting manner.

"You couldn't have known." He comforted her, she gave him a weak smile in reply.

"Thanks, but this means that the next task will be underwater. If that is true, then we need to find a way to make it so that you can breathe for an hour. But I don't know any spells that can do that."

"We have time to look, it should be in February, so we have time to look." Hermione tucked the paper into her robes. Then she started to eat the food that was spread on the table.

"Have you had any thought about who you're taking to the ball?" Neville asked.

Harry gave a sigh. "I wanted to ask Chang, but I heard that Cedric asked her. There's no one else that I'm interested in" his eyes drifted to the table behind theirs to look at Fleur for a moment. "Well, at least no one that I have a shot with."

"You do know that there is Ginny Weasley and several other girls that would gladly go with you, right? I'm sure there would be even more that would go with you if you were to just use the Potter thing to do it." Neville explained further.

"I'm not going to be Nathan" Harry retorted. "But other than Ginny who is there?"

"You could always ask a Beauxbatons student" Hermione re-entered the conversation. "Most of the students here are afraid to."

"You… make an excellent point, I'll try it." Harry then spotted Cedric. "Be right back." He said as he sprung from his seat and walked over to where he saw him sitting. Hermione and Neville both confused.

"Harry?" Cedric enquired as the younger boy sat down. Cedric was sitting with the french students, he hadn't taken notice but one of them was Fleur.

"I was wondering have you figured out the egg yet?" Harry asked.

"No, not yet. I've tried everything I could think of. All the spells I know, even if they didn't make sense." He explained. He then noticed the smile on Harry's face. "Wait" he leaned in close so that no one aside from their table could hear. "Do you know?"

Harry nodded. Before he could speak Cedric cut him off. "No, Harry you can't tell me. You already tipped me off about the dragons. Besides, you're the first one to work it out so you should take advantage of the advantage."

"Would you complain if I wrote it down and just happened to drop the paper in front of you?"

"Yes."

"Shame. But when we're closing in on the deadline I'm going to tell you." Harry admitted. He smiled.

"Who am I to argue with the basilisk slayer" Cedric joked. "But, when did you work it out?"

"Earlier today and it was a complete accident." He said humbly. "To be honest the thought never occurred to do what it took" he said before walking off, briefly catching a glimpse of Fleur, she had moved from her earlier seat and that is why he hadn't known she was there. A smile broke on his face as he saw her and gave her a wink.

xXxXxXx

Fleur watched as Harry left, broken from her thoughts by the voice of her friend. "Are you going to ask him or not?" she said.

"What? Who?" Fleur replied, both of them speaking in French, the students around them had no idea what they were talking about.

"Oh no one special, at least not to me" she brushed it off innocently, then she fixed her gaze on Fleur like she was trying to force her way into her mind "you on the other hand can't even stop from staring at him for two minutes. Seriously Fleur, I've known you a long time, whenever a guy asks you out or even tries to touch you everything gets really cold, at least your expression does. To be honest things physically heat up thanks to that fire of yours. It's like you're going to kill the guy, but with Harry you even kissed him on the cheek, something I've only ever seen you do to be polite and even if you do it, you don't end up leaning against a door after with cheeks so red you might as well have been a tomato."

"I do not like him like that! Friends maybe, but he's three years younger than me." Fleur protested, although even she could her the doubt in her own voice and the hesitance to even say the words.

"Right? And Merlin wasn't the greatest wizard." She sighed. "You do know that three years is only a big deal in school right? A lot of couples have gaps even larger between their ages and they are seen as perfectly alright. I don't see why that should effect you asking him out now."

"Next year I'll be out of school, if we stayed together that long then it would become very difficult and that's on top of the distance thing."

"Where does he live?"

"Not sure, why?"

"He might be able to come and stay with you. If that happened it would be fine, besides isn't he Lord Potter?"

"No, Nathan is the older of the two I'm pretty sure." Fleur replied with a slightly disappointed expression.

"That one is the future head of their house?!" she was definitely shocked. "I feel like it will collapse, or become like that blonde boy's… Malroy… no wait, that doesn't sound right… Malfoy right?" Fleur nodded, both in reply to her question and the statement. "Although I'm sure Nathan would approve of being connected to the Delacour family if you two ever wanted to tie the knot."

"Wow, slow down! I don't even know how I feel about him yet. Stop getting over enthusiastic."

"Well you might want to think fast if you want him as your date. Harry Potter is pretty famous and you don't want someone else to get to him first" she gave a smile to her friend before going back to her meal. Fleur didn't, at least not right away, she watched as Harry and his friends left, deep in thought as to what she was going to do.


Author's Note: Sorry this isn't as long as before. I hit a really bad block on this story and am cutting down the size so that I can hopefully get past that by writing slightly ahead of what I post, that way if I do stop there is some leeway so that I can get past it before running out of content. Let me know what you think in a review if you have the time.