The First Task was on a Tuesday toward the end of November. Pansy and Harry were crowded into the stands with the rest of Hogwarts and the representatives of the other schools. There was a whole other section of stands for the general wizarding public on the opposite side of the huge arena, and large, covered cages directly adjacent. A tent stood opposite the cages, where the Champions were no doubt making last minute preparations for what lay ahead.

"Where's Blaise?" Pansy asked, again. Harry shrugged and searched the crowd, again. Hermione and the other Gryffindors had agreed to sit with them as well, and it was getting difficult for Harry and Pansy to hold seats for five other people by themselves. As the stands filled, the filthy glances only became more obvious. Pansy had resorted to ordering Harry to sit with his legs taking up several seats, and had placed her bag on the bench an indecent distance away.

"He said he'd be along in just a minute," Harry grumbled, and glanced around again, hoping that 'speak of the devil' would apply and Blaise would just appear. Instead, it was another five minutes of being slowly edged out of their extra five seats before he finally showed up.

"Where have you been?" Harry demanded, moving his feet gratefully as a sixth year Hufflepuff tried to sit on them. "Bugger off," he said, and Pansy beamed with approval.

Blaise sat where the Hufflepuff had been only moments before, and their paltry three seats rose back to five. "I was dealing with some business," he said. "Ludo Bagman offered me a deal I couldn't refuse."

"Ludo Bagman?" Harry asked. "The one who was taking bets by the lake?"

Blaise grinned. "Exactly. He's from the Ministry, you know."

"How much did you bet, then?" Pansy asked, clearly unimpressed.

"Twenty five thousand galleons, on Diggory." He looked like he'd just bribed his way onto the Wizengamot. Harry's mouth fell open.

"Why?" he asked, feeling as though he would have spluttered if he wasn't so shocked.

Blaise continued preening like a particularly smug cat. "It's a win/win situation," he said. "Bagman ran into problems with goblins after the World Cup. He looked pretty desperate when you saw him, didn't he?"

Harry nodded, though admittedly his attention had been more focused elsewhere.

"I bet him just enough to cover his losses, and I gave him odds he couldn't refuse." Blaise grinned. "He couldn't say no. And now, he can't let himself lose. He'll try to rig the Tournament for sure, any way he can."

Pansy cottoned on immediately, if her expression was anything to go by. Harry got it as well, a second later.

"You're going to blackmail him?" he asked.

"If possible," Blaise said, shrugging. "He might just get caught. Or, who knows? Diggory might actually win. Then he'll be in real trouble. Mum doesn't like it when people don't pay their debts."

Pansy snickered. "Clever, Blaise," she said. "I hope it works out."

Harry smiled reluctantly. "Why, though?" he asked. "Why get involved at all?"

Blaise shrugged. "It's an opportunity. Blackmail material is nearly always useful, and if he gets caught, that's his own problem. If he has to deal with my mother, well, she'll have a use for him."

Pansy accepted this with a nod, but Harry had been in Slytherin for too long, and spent too much time being told how terrible he was at it, to miss the glance Blaise gave her. He raised his eyebrows at Blaise, and cast a sidelong glance at Pansy.

Blaise's expression was suitably impressed. He nodded, and an expression of wrath flashed across his face. Harry tried very hard to think of what Bagman could possibly have done to Pansy that would warrant Blaise's attempt to ruin him. Pansy certainly wasn't aware of any of Bagman's sins against her, else she'd have attempted her own revenge by now.

Harry resolved to ask later, and resumed searching the crowd for the rest of their group. Ron's vivid red hair was almost immediately recognizable, and after spotting Hermione's bushy head nearby, Harry excused himself to bring them back.

Fighting his way through the crowd and out of the stands was enough of a distraction for him to lose them completely by the time he reached the grass. He made himself as tall as possible to try to see over the bustling crowd of people, and jumped when someone touched his arm.

"Harry," a voice exclaimed, and the accent told Harry exactly who it was. He sighed and turned around to greet Poliakoff with a half-hearted smile.

"Hi," Harry said. "Aren't you supposed to be sitting with everyone else from Durmstrang?"

"Oh, yes," Poliakoff said. "I just saw you and wanted to say hello. What do you think the Task is going to be? I cannot wait to see."

"Me either," Harry said. "Hey, do you see a really tall redhead anywhere nearby? You're tall enough to see over this crowd."

Poliakoff glanced around. "I don't think so," he said. "I have not talked to you in a long time, Harry." He looked hurt, and Harry felt guilty again. Poliakoff was good at making him feel like that.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I've been pretty busy lately." Poliakoff continued watching him with that hangdog expression, and Harry shifted his weight onto his other foot uncomfortably. "So, uh, what do you think the Task is going to be?" he asked lamely.

"Oh, I hope it is something exciting," Poliakoff said, suddenly eager again. "I hope the judges will allow Dark spells. We learn them at Durmstrang, you know. I do not understand why they are not allowed here at Hogwarts."

Harry blinked. "Because, well, they're illegal in England," he said. "Mostly. I think. I know the Unforgivables are, anyway."

"The Unforgivables?" Poliakoff scoffed. "Why they are even called that, I do not know. They are spells, just like any other."

Harry frowned, stepping closer as someone jostled him. "My parents were killed by an Unforgivable," he said. "If you knew who I was before you met me, I would have thought you would be aware of that. It's kind of why I'm so well known."

Poliakoff shrugged. "Yes, and that is terrible, but that is only one use of one of them. Dark magic is just a different kind of power, and more spells to use."

It might have just been the casual way Poliakoff dismissed Harry's parents, but Harry wasn't biting. "Actually," he said curtly, "I'm pretty sure they're classified as curses, not spells."

Poliakoff frowned down at him, the way Harry had seen him frown at dinner over a steak that he was having difficulty cutting into.

"I cannot hear you very well," he said finally. "It is very loud here. I think we are miscommunicating."

Harry regarded him with cool eyes. "I don't think we are," he said, and stepped back from the conversation, looking pointedly at the now thinning crowd. "The Task is going to start soon. I should go find my friends."

Poliakoff glanced around again. "You were looking for a tall red haired person?" His tone was conciliatory, and though Harry was still feeling irate, he nodded. "I saw him head in this direction." Poliakoff led an unwilling Harry away from the crowd, toward the back of the stands where the stairs to the higher levels stood.

There were less people back here. Everyone else had probably already found seats. In fact, it was just Harry, Poliakoff, and an older blonde woman who didn't look at all like she belonged in the student section. Poliakoff seemed annoyed at her presence, and moved to block Harry from view.

Despite his efforts, she had already spotted them, and sped over with a wide smile which contained several gold teeth. She swept Poliakoff aside as though he didn't exist and addressed Harry directly.

"Harry!" She smiled at him again and lifted her arms as though to hug him, though she didn't. Harry was incredibly grateful. "Harry, it's so good to finally see you in person, at last!"

"Er," Harry said. "Hello."

"Oh, but introductions must be made, of course." The woman brought her hands together in front of her chest and clutched the handles of the alligator handbag that swung from one of them, as though she had never been more pleased about anything. "I am, as I'm sure you know, Rita Skeeter! We spoke last year about the dementors and that lovely godfather of yours, the poor dear. You may call me Rita."

Harry remembered what he had been told about Rita Skeeter. She was as fake as her teeth. Between Poliakoff's surly expression and Skeeter's toothy grin, Harry decided that, right now, this was the last place he wanted to be. Hermione and the rest had probably long since found Blaise and Pansy. He should never have gotten out of his seat.

Even so, he figured he had to at least try to be polite. She 'd helped him significantly.

"Lovely to meet you, ma'am," he said, forcing himself to smile.

"Oh, the pleasure is all mine," she replied, and snapped open her handbag. "Now, I was thinking. We haven't spoken in so long. How about an interview? What do you think of all this Triwizard business? Do you know the Hogwarts Champion very well? What do you think of the other Champions? The public doesn't know very much about you, Harry, but we can change that."

Harry blinked several times. While firing question after question at him, she had managed to produce a roll of parchment and a quill, which she positioned in midair next to her. It was scribbling away madly as she continued to speak.

"How about a follow-up to last year's expose? How are you and your godfather getting along now that he's a free man? I hear you spent the summer with him."

"Erm," Harry interjected. "I'm not really interested in how much the public knows about me."

Rita raised a delicately tweezed eyebrow. "Oh, Harry, don't be so shy," she said cajolingly. "Who is this lovely young man with you? A friend of yours?" She eyed Poliakoff, who stepped backward almost convulsively. "Durmstrang, are you? And you're in Slytherin, aren't you, Harry? You two hit it off, did you?"

"I should be going," Poliakoff said, and backed away until he reached the stairs, leaving Harry alone to his fate. Harry had never liked him less, even when he'd been spouting about Dark magic.

"Look, the Task is starting soon," Harry said, backing toward the stairs himself. "I should really be getting back to my seat."

Rita pursed her heavily painted lips. "We'll get that interview in afterward, then?"

"Er, no," Harry said. "Why don't you interview the Champions? They ought to have something to say, right?"

He didn't wait for her to answer, vaulting up the stairs and leaving her alone, quill still scribbling furiously.

On his way back to his seat, he had to pass right by where Draco sat, surrounded by his new group and laughing. When the dragons were finally revealed, Harry almost wanted one of them to set the stands on fire, just so that he wouldn't be the only one in a bad mood.

Diggory came out with the best score in the end, something Blaise was intensely satisfied about.

"Bagman'll be panicking right about now," he assured them. "He can't let Diggory win the Tournament. I'll have to owl mum about keeping an eye on him."

Pansy shook her head, smiling. "Blaise, you're such a bastard," she said. Blaise preened.

"Well," he said, glancing away and lowering his eyes, which failed to hide his smirk, "Yes I am. Thank you for noticing."

"And he's so modest, too," Pansy continued. Harry sighed quietly. Pansy and Blaise did this sometimes. He knew it could go on for hours if he didn't stop them now.

"Remember when the Beauxbaton Champion's dragon snored and set her on fire?"

Pansy and Blaise looked over at Harry, and Blaise laughed. "Yeah, and then she tried to put it out with her wand and nearly woke it up. That was my favourite part."

"What about Diggory?" Pansy asked. "Delacour only had her skirt set on fire. He had half his face flaming at one point."

"That was kind of funny," Blaise agreed. "He flailed and everything. I don't know how he got the highest marks."

"He got highest marks because Krum's dragon stepped on half the eggs," Harry said. "And Delacour took longer putting out her skirt than Diggory did putting out his face."

"Well I should think he had a lot more incentive," said Pansy. "She can fix the skirt fairly easily. Diggory's face is another matter. It's too pretty to be marred with all those burns."

"Pomfrey wouldn't let the Hufflepuff's precious face go untreated for very long," Blaise said. "She's probably half done treating him already. Harry, when are you and Draco going to start talking again?"

Harry's easy reply about Diggory's 'precious' face died when he registered Blaise's question. He glanced around and, sure enough, there was Draco, walking with the older Slytherins.

"We talk sometimes," Harry said. "Just yesterday he asked me to pass him the butter at dinner."

Pansy raised her eyebrow. "He asked Poliakoff to pass him the butter, Harry. And you acted like you hadn't heard him, anyway."

"We'd like to be able to talk to both of you sometimes," Blaise said. "You know, at the same time, preferably in the same room? He was looking at you just now. You should talk to him."

Harry craned his head past a group of Ravenclaws and eyed Draco, who was decidedly not looking at him. "I'll talk to him when he talks to me," he said after a moment. "I'm not the one who cut off contact."

"It's November," Pansy said firmly. "Thats nearly three months since term started, and you haven't spoken the entire time. It's not about who started it anymore. Blaise and I want it finished, for all our sakes."

Harry glared sullenly at the back of Draco's head. "Have you talked to him about this?"

"Yes, actually," Blaise responded. "He wants to talk to you again." Blaise's earnest expression faltered under the waves of skepticism pouring off of Harry. "Well, he didn't say exactly that," Blaise backpedaled. "But I could tell."

Harry shook his head. "He doesn't want to talk to me. If he changes his mind, he can tell me himself. Until then, I'm not going to fight it."

A group of Durmstrang boys cut off their view of Draco, and Harry turned away.

Breakfast the next morning was not pleasant.

"What did you do, Harry?" Pansy whispered, dismayed. She, Blaise and Harry were all sitting on the same side of the table huddled around a newspaper, reading one of the front page articles with increasing horror.

"I just told her I wasn't interested in publicity and to interview the Champions instead," Harry replied, struck dumb. "I had no idea she'd -"

"Why on earth not?" Blaise cut him off, shaking his head at a particularly biting paragraph. "We told you about her. We told you not to piss her off. You've seen what she can do with that quill of hers."

It wasn't the top story, but that only meant that the headline was one inch tall instead of two. The headline, POTTER: DURMSTRANG/DARK ARTS ADMIRER? was blazoned across the right half of the page. Harry had spent the past ten minutes grimacing every time someone glanced at him. Poliakoff hadn't even shown up to breakfast, which was odd, considering he wasn't even mentioned by name in the article. He probably just didn't want to face Harry after getting him caught by Skeeter.

"She is good at alliteration, anyway," Harry muttered. "How bad is it?"

"It's bad," Pansy told him. "You should probably read it."

Harry put his head down on the table. "Bugger. What did I do?"

"Well," Blaise said, and cleared his throat. "Apparently you're 'very close with the Durmstrang students, as this reporter has spotted them talking together on more than one occasion.' You also have 'in-depth discussions of the Dark Arts, which, as we all know, are quite illegal in the UK'."

"That's what I said!" Harry exclaimed. "How does she even know about that? We weren't talking about it when she showed up."

"Harry, it's Rita Skeeter," Pansy reminded him. "You know, you should really sit up and read the rest of this. She pointed out that you're in Slytherin again. Third time so far in this article."

"Bint," Blaise said. "She was in Slytherin too, you know."

"Why am I not surprised?" Harry asked in a monotone. "What else is she saying?"

"She's insinuating that you're considering a transfer to Durmstrang, so you can learn more Dark Arts," Pansy said. "And..." She paused. "She's also implying that you're not as opposed to the Dark Lord as we all think."

"No wonder they're all staring at me," Harry groaned. It was true. Those who receieved the Daily Prophet had begun passing it around, and nearby Hufflepuffs were watching him fearfully.

"It's just Hufflepuffs," Blaise said comfortingly. "Don't worry about them; no one else does."

It turned out to be more than just the Hufflepuffs. By Harry's first class, it seemed that everyone had read the Prophet. The Ravenclaws' narrow eyed suspicion wasn't quite as bad as Flitwick falling off his chair when Harry passed by, but it was close enough. Only Anthony acted normally, but normal for Anthony meant ignoring Harry anyway, unless he struck up conversation. If Harry had been unaware of Anthony's plans to eventually read the entire world, he would have doubted whether Anthony even knew what the problem was.

Lunch was worse, though. His yearmates had mostly left him alone during class, but the House in its entirety was not so kind, and neither were the other Durmstrang students, who laughed uproariously at the idea of Harry learning anything Dark through contact with Poliakoff, of all people. It seemed that, rather than improving Poliakoff's reputation, his association with the Boy-Who-Lived had only brought Harry down to his level.

Harry soon gave up on lunch, and left early. His next class was DADA, and he wasn't looking forward to dealing with Moody's paranoia, on top of everything else. So when he heard his name being called, he hunched his shoulders and walked faster.

"Harry, wait," the voice said impatiently, and Harry recognised it.

He turned around and gave Draco a cool stare. "Are we talking again all of a sudden?"

Draco caught up to him and stopped, eying him thoughtfully. "Can we? Preferably not in the middle of a corridor? I want to ask you about that article."

Harry's face darkened. "Just say whatever you want to say. I don't need this from you, too."

"How true is it?" Draco asked, raising his eyebrows.

Harry frowned. "It's Rita Skeeter. That should answer your question."

"There's always some truth to what she says," Draco disagreed. "Where's the truth? How often do you talk to that Poliakoff guy?"

"As often as I want," Harry said, feeling defensive. "You'd know if you ever talked to me -"

"Are you really getting into Dark Arts?" Draco interrupted. Harry bristled.

"Of course not!"

"Look, I've heard things about that guy," Draco began. Harry cut him off.

"Yeah, I know, no one likes him," he said. "Not my problem."

"No, I mean weird things," Draco said, and glanced down the hall. "Strange things. Just stay away from him. Stay away from all the Durmstrang students, actually."

This whole conversation was frustrating Harry to no end. Draco was finally speaking to him, only to spend the entire time lecturing as if Harry was a child. "What gives you the right?" he snapped furiously. "You don't even talk to me anymore -"

"Harry-"

"No." He glared at Draco, who just looked exasperated. It was infuriating. "You ignore me for three months, and only talk to me again when Rita Skeeter starts telling everyone I like Voldemort." Draco flinched, and Harry sneered. "I heard about your father, you know," he said. "That he was a Death Eater. Maybe that's why you're talking to me again."

Draco's mouth dropped open, and Harry glared at him. "I'll talk to whoever I want." He turned to leave, then paused. "And if you want to apologise, you should do it quickly, before I transfer to Durmstrang like Skeeter said."