One day, the Quidditch field was as it had always been; by the next morning it was covered in low hedges that formed a maze.
Harry and Steven went with the other Champions to examine the maze while Ludo Bagman bragged that the walls would be twenty foot high within a month. There would be obstacles, but the first to reach the center of the maze and take the prize would be the winner of the contest.
Peridot's video screen innovation had been enormously popular; sales of omniocular recordings from the last task were still brisk despite the limited number of them. There wasn't time to set up enough equipment to cover the entire maze, but there would be viewers at key points along the route.
Future events would be better prepared, Bagman assured them. Wizards were already crafting equipment that could be rented for all sorts of events, especially culturally important ones.
Harry wondered if Peridot was getting a cut of the profits, or even recognition of her role in the creation of the system. Given Wizardly disdain for non-humans, it seemed unlikely.
Of course, he wasn't sure Peridot really understood the concept of money, so it was possible she didn't care. After all, she didn't eat, and most of her equipment came from Muggle junk piles. She didn't need clothing and she lived in a cave. Most things humans need money for weren't an issue for her at all.
"Do you have any idea what Hagrid's got cooking up for us?" Harry asked Steven as they left the maze.
He could already see that the maze was going to be huge, far outstripping the Quidditch field. Given Wizards' abilities to bend space, the inside of the maze might be even bigger than the outside. It was likely going to be a nightmare.
Steven shook his head soberly. "He's been really careful about telling us, and I've been trying not to ask. After what's been happening in the papers lately, I don't want to give the Purebloods any reason to fire him.
Harry nodded. If they got rid of Hagrid, Amethyst was the obvious next target, followed by Pearl. It was possible that they'd lose their right to have a temple of Hogwarts grounds at all, in which case they'd have to use the fidelius charm to disappear.
Of course, Steven was probably just concerned about his friend.
"Hey," Harry said suddenly. "Do you see that?"
Steven turned and squinted. "Is that Mr. Crouch?"
The Triwizard judge had been missing since the last task, although there had been notes from Percy Weasley that he was just ill.
He looked more than ill now; he looked dazed and confused, with hair sticking up. He obviously hadn't shaved for days. His robes were torn and scuffed at the knees.
If Harry hadn't known who he was, he'd have taken him for one of the homeless.
They both approached him.
"Can we help you, Mr. Crouch?" Steven asked cautiously.
He was talking to a tree. He sounded like he was dictating a letter to his secretary, and his eyes were bulging.
"Mr. Crouch?" Harry asked.
Crouch lunged forward, grabbing at Harry's robes. "Dumbledore...I need to see Dumbledore."
"OK," Harry said. "If you'll just get up we can go to..."
"I've done...a stupid thing. Must...tell...Dumbledore." The man looked utterly mad now, his eyes staring, and drool coming from his mouth.
"Warn him!" the man said intensely.
A moment later he blinked and turned to the tree again. He began to dictate another letter, sounding fluent and bored as though he did this every day.
Steven glanced at him, then sighed. He spit on his hand and slapped it on the man's forehead.
Crouch didn't react at all.
After a moment of waiting for something that didn't happen, Steven sighed and said, "We'd better get him to Dumbledore. My spit should have healed any physical injuries he would have had."
Before Harry could ask what Steven meant, he stepped close to the other man and picked him up, holding him above his head. The other man was tall enough that if he'd put him over his shoulder his feet would have dragged.
"You could just get taller," Harry said.
Steven shrugged. "My pants have been getting tight and short lately and I haven't had a chance to get any more."
Harry took that to mean that he was growing taller, not fatter. Like Neville, his baby fat was slowly dissolving as he grew older, though Steven was aging more slowly than any of the rest of them.
Still, it looked uncomfortable, holding the other man directly over his head.
They started walking back to the castle. They were almost there when there was a flash of green light from the edge of the forest.
It hit Mr. Crouch, who'd been rambling on talking about his wife.
The man immediately sagged and went limp in Steven's arms. Steven immediately dropped to the ground and pulled up his bubble, which covered the world in a haze of pink.
It wouldn't do any good against another Avada Kedavra spell, and Steven knew it.
He grabbed Harry in one hand and Mr. Crouch in the other and he started to run, zigging and zagging until he was able to find cover.
Mr. Crouch's legs dragged on the ground, but by this point he was beyond caring as he was very dead.
Aurors swarmed Hogwarts, looking for clues to what was assumed to be an assassination attempt directed toward Harry Potter.
The assumption was that Mr. Crouch had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Avada Kedavra spell had been cast from a great distance, and from that distance it was easy to make mistakes.
Both Harry and Steven had voluntarily offered up their Pensieve memories for examination, but none of their memories seemed to have helped the Aurors at all.
The area where the attack had come from had been meticulously examined, but no one had found enough evidence to lead anywhere.
Harry wasn't at all certain that the attack had been directed at him. Crouch had certainly had something he'd thought was important to say to Dumbledore, and shortly after revealing it, he was dead.
The worst effect of all of it was that the Aurors assigned Harry an escort. Two Aurors were to follow him at all times until the third task began.
This was a disaster; not only did it irritate his teachers, but it meant that he could no longer visit Sirius at the temple. Sirius was still wanted for murder, and he'd be arrested the moment he was seen by any Auror.
Furthermore, it was hard to live a normal life when he had adult eyes on him every waking hour.
The only way it could have been worse was if they'd brought the dementors back or simply swarmed the school with an army of Aurors. As it was, Harry felt like he was in prison. For the first time he found himself hoping that the third task would finally arrive so that Voldemort could try whatever he was going to try and get the Aurors off his back.
He tried complaining to Dumbledore, but for once the Headmaster refused to intervene on his behalf. The Aurors were there for the duration, which meant any chance he had for a normal life was over.
He began to spend all his time either in the library looking up hexes or in empty classrooms practicing them. For once the Aurors proved useful, as some of the friendlier ones were willing to offer advice about what he was doing wrong.
He quickly learned to look forward to some Aurors while others he came to dread, as they refused to do anything but stare off into the distance. It was usually, but not always the younger Aurors who were friendly.
The Aurors presence irritated some of his professors, especially Professor Snape, but given his past as a Death eater, the Aurors refused to stand outside the door to the classroom. It made Snape even more irritable and snappish than he usually was, and Harry found himself losing his house even more points than usual.
All of it was exhausting, which was why he found himself nodding off in Binn's class. He'd often nodded off before, given that Binn's class was enough to make the living feel like the dead, but the urge was even more powerful now.
He was flying on the back of an eagle owl, sailing through the blue sky toward an ancient house covered with ivy. The house was on a hillside, and it grew larger and larger until they sailed through a broken window and through a long passageway into a darkened room.
The windows were boarded up, and everything was cast in shadows.
He left the back of the owl and it fluttered across the room to a large chair with two figures on either side. One was a monstrous snake, and the other was Peter Pettigrew.
Harry had only seen him once, but he'd know the face of the man who'd betrayed his parents like the back of his hand. Although the Ministry had declined to charge Pettigrew with anything, believing his story about being terrified by Sirius, he'd vanished and hadn't been seen since shortly after the Auror investigation ended.
A high pitched voice spoke from the chair in which the owl had landed.
"It would seem that your luck holds, Wormtail." The voice wasn't the voice of a child, but Harry couldn't understand what was wrong with it. "Your foolishness hasn't ruined everything. He is dead."
"Thank you master," Pettigrew said, fawning gratefully.
"However, this will create suspicions that threaten everything. Security has been tightened and the plan will only become more difficult because of it."
"I'm sorry, Master." Pettigrew bent lower to the floor and his shoulders tightened.
"One more blunder..." the voice said. "Nagini has been peckish lately. Perhaps she needs an...addition to her diet."
"No, master, please."
"Then a reminder of why any more mistakes won't be tolerated."
"No, mas-"
"Crucio!"
One moment, Pettigrew was screaming. The next Harry found himself on the floor of Binn's class. The Aurors were standing over him, wands drawn as they looked for an invisible attacker.
It took Harry a moment to understand what had happened. He'd had another dream. It had taken him a long time to realize that there might be some kind of link between him and Voldemort, but Sirius had told him what do do if he had another one of these kinds of dreams.
"I need to see Dumbledore," he said quietly to one of the Aurors. "Now."