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Chapter 43
On the morning of the third task, Harry Hermione and Fleur all went down to breakfast together. That Fleur was in between Harry and Hermione with an arm around each of them as they walked was missed by only a few who were more focused on other things, but one person who didn't notice was Dumbledore. He was too busy in his office retrieving bracelets that he had been forced to make by the French ministry. One thing Dumbledore had not anticipated when he agreed to this tournament was a foreign champion having muggle parents. If one of his muggleborn or half-blood students had been the champion, then the muggle parents would of course already accept that they couldn't come to the school. However, the French ministry had insisted on the old rules being followed when Miss Tucker was selected as a champion, and that meant her muggle stepfather was going to need to be allowed into his school. However, now that one muggle had to be let in, he could no longer keep up the ruse that it was impossible to let muggle parents into the castle, and he also couldn't justify leaving out Miss Granger's parents as she would be the first to notice and kick up a fuss if her parents were excluded. So, Hogwarts would have its first non-magical visitors in over two hundred years.
Bracelets in hand, Dumbledore made his way through the school to the front gates where the parents of the champions were due to arrive by portkey any moment now. A part of him wanted to wait and arrive by phoenix travel, to make an entrance. However, for now he was better off keeping a lower profile. He may have gotten off lightly in the Wizengamot, but he had had to burn through most of the good will he had accumulated over his career. It was a temporary setback, but one that left him in a vulnerable position where he couldn't yet afford to make a mistake.
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Dan and Emma wished that they had declined the portkey and had taken the fire travel to Harry's house in the nearby village and walked the rest of the way. The fire travel, while not fun, had been a lot less unsettling than being spat out of what Dan could only think of as a wormhole twenty feet in the air. They looked around, and the only thing they could see that broke up the Scottish countryside was an old ruin of a castle. And even though they knew that it was an illusion to keep people like them away, they suddenly felt the need to go home quickly and probably would have left if the next family to arrive after them wasn't the Tuckers.
"Dan, Emma!" Their old friend Sarah rushed over to them and gave the two dentists the traditional French greeting of kissing the air next to their cheeks. Steve was back in Britain for the first time in a few years and so dusted off his British manners and left out the air kiss. However, he quickly fell under the effects of the castle's anti-muggle wards, and it was left to Sarah to keep her friends and husband from leaving while they waited for Dumbledore to arrive and counter the school's wards.
Other families started to pop out of nowhere, slowly falling to the ground as they were deposited by their portkeys. Soon the path outside the ruins of the old castle were filled with people, and a mis-mash of European languages and accents were heard as people greeted old acquaintances. Dan and Emma both recognised Sebastian Delacour and assumed that the two women next to him (one adult and the other maybe eleven or twelve) had to be his wife and daughter. Apolline and Gabrielle, if they remembered correctly what Monsieur Delacour had said when they met him at Christmas. They were soon introduced when Sebastian spied them and led his wife and younger daughter over to the group.
"Dan, Emma it is a pleasure to see you all again! May I introduce my lovely wife Apolline and my beautiful daughter Gabrielle." He then turned to his wife and daughter and switched to French. "This is Dan and Emma, they are the parents of the girl that Fleur has found herself involved with and Harry Potter's current guardians."
Apolline Delacour smiled at them politely, but it was obvious she was reserving her judgment. Her smile became a lot more genuine, however, when Emma spoke up in fluent French. "Welcome to Britain. Fleur told us you live just outside Nice, we usually spend a few weeks there every year with our friends who live there." She then went on to introduce Steve, who had gone glassy eyed at the sight of the woman who was absolutely gorgeous, and Sarah. It turned out that Sarah and Apolline had been in Beauxbatons a few years apart and, while not close, knew of each other.
An old man with a beard whose ridiculousness was only surpassed by his wardrobe suddenly stepped out of the castle ruin that Dan and Emma knew wasn't truly a ruin and addressed the crowd of parents. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and to our former students welcome back. I am Albus Dumbledore, the current headmaster. First off, can Emma and Dan Granger and Steven Tucker please step forward? I have your ward passes here." They stepped forward and the old man handed each of them a bracelet. The three non magicals slipped their hands into the loop of silvery metal and suddenly the scene before them changed. The ruins that were all they could see until now were suddenly gone and replaced by the massive castle that they had only seen from a distance from inside the protection of the wards on Harry's house. Up close, the castle was simply spectacular: huge, more like a small fortified town than just a castle. "Right, if you will all follow me, I will show you up to the castle where you can wait for the champions to join you." Dumbledore said, then turned and started to walk back up to the school. "Hogwarts has a long and impressive history. It was founded almost 1000 years ago by…"
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Harry was trying to get Fleur to eat something for her breakfast; her nervousness about the third task had robbed her of her appetite and she would need her strength later that evening. "I understand Fleur, I do, I used to be the same before my Quidditch matches. But from my experience, I can say I performed better when I forced down something," Harry said as he tried persuading one of his girlfriends.
"I am just too, um, what's the English word for nauséeux?" Fleur asked.
"I would guess nauseous given the context and how close it sounds to the English word," Harry said.
"Yep. Both words have the same Latin root word. But then you never passed Latin, did you." Hermione teased him.
"You know I absolutely suck at Latin, Mione. But focus, we need to get Fleur to eat something."
Hermione looked at Fleur. "He's right and you know it. You should have something even if it's just some dry toast."
Fleur looked between the two people who had her sandwiched between them and gave up. She picked up a croissant and started to tear it apart, eating it one tiny bit at a time. Harry gave Fleur a peck on the cheek. "Thank you," he said, causing Fleur to blush a little.
About 10 minutes before the end of breakfast, Professor McGonagall went around the hall and collected all the champions as she went. Their group was the last, but as they had seen what she was doing they had already put their things in their bags. "Miss Delacour, Miss Granger, Mr. Potter, I need you to come with me. Don't worry about being late for class, all champions are excused from lessons today."
No clue what was happening as the task wasn't for hours yet, the trio got up and joined the crowd of champions and followed the Scottish witch. She led them to a ground floor classroom, opened the door, and motioned them inside. There were a few squeals of happy surprise from the students who were first in the room, but it wasn't until one of the Hogwarts champions went in that Harry worked out what was happening, when Cedric called out "Mum! Dad!" before rushing into the room.
Both Hermione and Fleur also beelined into the room, while Harry stepped into the room and looked around for his godfather, only he wasn't there. He wondered why his godfather hadn't come, but before he could say anything Emma had pulled him into a quick hug as Hermione had let her mum go and had moved to hug her dad.
"Hey Emma. I thought mundane people couldn't get into the school?" Harry asked, confused.
Emma held up the bracelet. "Apparently these bracelets protect us from the school wards."
"Like the one you got from Fleur for Christmas?" Harry asked.
Emma nodded. "Exactly the same, but for some reason these are tied to Hogwarts and will only last for twenty four hours."
"That's going to stir things up a bit. We were always told it's impossible for non-magical people to come here. It's why you couldn't come in our second year when everything happened with Hermione." Harry was mostly musing out loud, but he didn't miss the hard look the woman shot at the headmaster.
Harry was soon dragged over to greet Fleur's mother and sister. Apolline Delacour was much more personable this time, as their meeting wasn't being held in the hospital wing with Fleur recovering from bad injuries. Most of the men in the room caught themselves staring at her more than once, much to the exasperation of the women when the man staring was their husband or son. Harry and Sebastian Delacour seemed to be the only ones who were immune to the effect, though Dan did put up a lot more resistance than everyone else - an impressive feat given that he was doing it by willpower alone without the aid of any magic.
Gabrielle was a lot like Daphne's little sister in that she was a bundle of energy, only her English was about as good as Harry's French, so while she seemed nice enough they could only talk if someone was willing to translate for them. Harry liked Apolline, but he had to endure her story about having to teach his mother how to change his nappy. It was embarrassing, but it was embarrassing in the family way, and while he didn't feel that close to her yet, she was Fleur's mum and that made her his future mother-in-law.
The three students took the Delacours and the Grangers for a tour of the school. In a flash of inspiration, Hermione had them start at the top of the school and work their way down, doing all of the upward climbing of stairs while their legs were fresh. The first visit was therefore the astronomy tower. Even though most students were in class preparing for their exams and end of year tests, the astronomy tower was only used at night for lessons, so they were the only ones up there. As none of the adults with them had attended Hogwarts, and the Delacours had only been here once for an emergency and hadn't done any sight seeing, they all found the view rather enchanting. "Beauxbatons is spectacular, but looking at this view I can see why ze British love their school so much," Apolline admitted as they all took in the scenery.
The elder and youngest Delacours were shocked at the magic of the Room of Requirement, but Dan just opined that it was like the holo-deck on Star Trek and that all magic was amazing. However, what really went over well with the Grangers was whenever they showed off a section of the castle, Hermione would pull them into an unused classroom and demonstrate the magic they learned in the subject. The Grangers were ecstatic to finally see an actual demonstration of the education that had now been paying for for four years. Harry did suggest a friendly duel between him and Hermione, but Fleur was the voice of reason and vetoed it. They didn't want to exhaust themselves before the third task, and there was always a risk that they could hurt each other, and being stuck in the hospital wing all day wasn't a good plan either.
Harry called Dobby when it was time for lunch, and instead of joining the crowds in the Great Hall they took a picnic by the lake. The warm sun combined with a slightly cool breeze made it perfect weather for the combination of French and British foods that the elf had put together for them, and the atmosphere was perfectly relaxing. "So Hermione," Apolline was careful with pronouncing the name. "How did you and Harry meet?" That simple question started the Delacour parents' interrogation. Both Harry and Hermione answered honestly, both explaining about themselves and each other to a mother who was concerned about her eldest daughter. Harry only understood about half of what was being said, as the group often broke out into French, especially whenever Gabrielle was talking. When Fleur's father asked Harry about his lack of French after having spent so long with Fleur, his answer that they had been too busy setting aside time to prepare for the tournament and that he was terrible at learning languages had been accepted, but by the looks everyone was giving him he thought that he wouldn't be able to go much longer without seriously putting effort into learning the language. Given what happened while he tried to learn Latin, Harry wasn't looking forward to it.
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The rest of the day passed quickly, but as the task grew closer the three champions increasingly suffered from nerves. By the time dinner came around, none of them were eating properly, though all the parents in the group tried to get them to eat something. Soon they were called down to the Quidditch pitch to prepare for the final task. The three of them stopped by the Room of Requirement first to collect their keys from where they had hidden them. After all, there were no rules against stealing other champions' keys, so they didn't want to take any chances. There was a lot of waiting around for the judges and crowd to settle in, but soon Dumbledore stood up and addressed the students and visitors who had bought tickets.
"Ladies, gentlemen, and of course students and guests, welcome to the final round of the Triwizard Tournament." Dumbledore paused as a cheer ran through the crowd. "This has been an exciting tournament so far, with the surprises starting right from the selection, with the Goblet of Fire giving us not the three champions we expected but twelve immensely talented students organised into four teams of three." Dumbledore was not a bad hype man but Bagman was giving Dumbledore dark looks for taking over the man's job
"First, we have the team from Durmstrang! Leonid Poliakoff, Emilia Ivanova, and Viktor Krum." The attention was put on the Durmstrang students who started to wave to the cheering crowd. "Secondly, we have the team from Beauxbatons! Alison Tucker and Marie and Alexandre DeVilliers!" Angin the focus of the crowd shifted, and this time it was Ali and the twins who were basking in the spotlight. "Third, we have Hogwarts' own team: Roger Davies of Ravenclaw, Marcus Flint of Slytherin and Cedric Diggory of Hufflepuff!" The Hogwarts team got the loudest cheer yet, and Marcus Flint and Roger Davies both puffed out their chests basking in the reaction of the crowd, even if that reaction had more to do with the fact they were representing the home team than any of their performance in the previous tasks. "And finally the biggest upset of the whole tournament, representing no school, but the spirit of coming together that the tournament aims to inspire in us all. Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons, Hermione Granger of Hogwarts and of course the man, the legend, the Boy-Who-Lived himself, Harry Potter!" The crowd went nuts, but Harry barely noticed, he was too busy being pissed off at Dumbledore. The headmaster had just reinforced all the crap Harry hated, and it was being broadcast live on the radio. He was also sure Dumbledore had just insinuated something, if the light blush that he saw on Hermione's cheeks was anything to go by.
Dumbledore continued. "The final task is a race to the finish right up there." He pointed to a platform that was floating in the middle of four giant glass towers. "Each team will enter their tower at the start of the task and will have to navigate up the floors of their tower. Each floor has a different challenge for them to overcome. However, the previous tasks earned each team some advantages. In the first task, they could collect clues to the location of keys in the second task. Each key collected in the second task will allow the champions to bypass one challenge and advance to the next floor. The scores as they currently stand are: The Beauxbatons champions have two keys! The Durmstrang and Hogwarts champions each have three keys! And the inter school champions have four keys!"
The headmaster continued on explaining the rules to the crowd, but as this was the same stuff they had been told a month ago about the task, the champions just tuned it out. They already had their plan on how they were going to use their keys. The plan was simple: they would attempt to pass a floor without the use of the key first. If they were stuck they would use a key, until they got to the end. Then, if they had any keys left they would power through to however many floors they had keys for. They were soon moved to the starting platforms, one for each tower. The task was due to start the moment the setting sun touched the horizon, so there were a few nervous minutes for the three of them to fill.
"So Fleur, what do you think our parents are talking about?" Hermione asked. Both Fleur and Harry looked where they knew the parents of the champions were sitting. He was a little surprised to see Sirius and Remus sitting with them, as he hadn't seen them before now. But he focused on what Hermione had pointed out and saw Dan and Emma in conversation with Apolline and Sebastian.
"They are probably making plans for the summer," Fleur guessed.
Harry jokingly grumbled. "Probably plotting to take away all my free time and replace it with French lessons."
Hermione pulled him into a quick hug before saying, "That could be fun to Harry. It depends on who your tutors are."
Fleur hugged him from the other side making a Harry sandwich. "Oui, it could be fun, non?"
Harry couldn't help but smile. He knew his two girlfriends were playing it up to distract all three of them from the task they needed to do. "I don't know, Fleur, you haven't seen my Latin scores. They were terrible."
"That's true." Hermione admitted.
"But French is easier than Latin, especially for you English. You stole half your English words from us," Fleur reassured him a little.
"I bet it was the other way around. You stole the English words." Harry teased
"Don't put your money on that Harry." Hermione said next to him. "After the battle of Hastings in 1066, William the First of France took over the country and replaced a lot of the nobility, and French became the language of the upper classes, at least in muggle Britain. I don't know what happened on the magical side. A lot of French words fell down into English from the servants, who had to speak French to the nobility. English has always been a language that steals from other languages, though. Before the French it was the Vikings, before the Vikings it was the Romans. That's why a lot of places in England are not spelt like they are said. There are rules from at least two different languages in play."
They were brought back to reality when Bagman called out a one minute warning. The two girls untangled themselves from Harry and they turned to face their glass tower ready to run in as soon as the door opened. "30 seconds" Bagman called out more for the crowd than the champions. "20… 10, 9 ,8," the crowd started to join in the countdown. "7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!" There was a loud bang and Harry, Hermione and Fleur all started to rush forward.
"Accio tournament keys!" Harry's eyes widened as he heard Allison's voice casting a spell trying to swipe everyone's keys. He felt the bag in his pocket start to move, but his seeker reflexes clamped down on it before the pouch could leave his pocket.
Apparently Marcus Flint wasn't as quick as Harry because Harry heard him shouting "My key!"
"And Alison Tucker of Beauxbatons opens by trying to summon all the keys but only getting one. The Beauxbatons team will now be going in with three keys instead of two…" Bagman compensated for the crowd, but his voice was cut off when the three of them passed into their tower and the door shut behind them, locking them In.
The first floor was darker than Harry expected, and he looked at the wall expecting to see if the other towers were the same, only to find that from this side the wall was opaque. It still looked like glass, but more like black obsidian than anything you would use to make a window. The inside of the room was pretty barren, just a stone floor and a six-foot-across purple circle that was painted on the floor. "What do you think that's for?" Hermione asked.
"My guess is that there are runes underneath that have been painted over to conceal them," Harry replied.
"But they aren't hiding it from us." Fleur added. "So are we supposed to know it's there but not what it does?"
"Can you conjure any animals?" Harry asked Fleur; it wasn't anything he had seen from the woman yet.
"I can do birds and small mammals, but that's all," She admitted.
"Why don't you conjure something and put it in the circle, see what it does?" Hermione understood what Harry was thinking.
Fleur conjured a rat and tossed it into the circle with a flick of her wand there was a tiny pop and the rat disappeared.
"That was an Apparition pop. It looks like this Apparates us to the next level," said Fleur. Without warning, Hermione stepped into the circle and disappeared. A few seconds later, both Harry and Fleur, who were standing there a little stunned, each felt one of their bracelets warm up and vibrate. It was an all good signal from Hermione. Harry felt a wave of relief washed through him and his sigh of relief was echoed by Fleur.
"I'm going to kick her ass when we get out of here!" Fleur sounded mad, but that was reckless even if it was definitely the Gryffindor thing to do. However, it was probably what Harry would have done if he had thought of it, but what was done was done. He took Fleur's hand and the two of them stepped into the purple circle. Instantly, he felt like someone had stretched the inner tube of a bicycle and then shoved him inside while putting a vacuum cleaner on the other end, and he absolutely hated it. He much preferred his own method of Apparition; it was far more comfortable. When they were spat out on the other side, Harry staggered trying to keep his feet, but he fared better than Fleur, who also threw up. "Putain! That's the worst Apparition I have ever experienced." She used a few flicks of her wand to clean up as Hermione watched with slight concern.
Harry gave her a significant look. "That's what it's always like for me." He could see the understanding on her face. She knew that his family Apparition didn't like other forms of magical transport, and she knew not to say anything more about it.
The three of them looked around the room, of which they were on one side. There was a blue circle they had arrived in, and about eight feet from the circle was a table with a number of items on it. On the far side of the room was a pure white stone monolith and a purple circle. Fleur tried to go and look at the circle and the monolith but when she got half way across the room she bumped into an invisible wall. A check revealed that the wall was floor to ceiling and wall to wall, perfectly cutting the room in half.
Blocked from the other side of the room, the three of them went to examine what was on the table. There was a circle of glass, a block of modelling clay, and a scroll. Hermione opened the scroll and read out: "'To open the way, place the rune on the obelisk', and there is a rune drawn on the page" she showed them. Harry recognized the Elder Futhark rune tiwaz, which was an arrow pointed up. It had a few meanings, but he was sure it was meant to mean success here. However, he wasn't sure he knew what to do, so on a whim he picked up the clay and the glass to see if they would pass through the invisible wall. They didn't, so he put them back on the table.
"There has to be something that uses these things to put the rune on the monolith," Fleur said as she examined the items.
"How can we use a glass disk and a bit of clay to put a rune on a slab of stone over there?"
"And a roll of parchment," Fleur pointed out.
"Isn't that just the instructions?" Harry asked.
"If they were, they could have written them on a sign on the other side of the wall, but it's on a full piece of parchment rather than a scrap that would be all you would need for the instructions," Fleur pointed out.
"Oh of course, it's so simple!" Hermione exclaimed, bouncing on her feet as she spoke. "Harry, can you use the clay to put the rune on the glass, please." She was definitely excited. "Do you remember the overhead projector they use in muggle schools?"
Harry understood and started working on putting the rune on the glass; it only took a few moments and soon he was done. He handed the disk to Hermione, and she rolled the parchment around the disk so it formed a tube. Then, holding it carefully, she held it like a kid would make to pretend it was a telescope. She put her wand in one end and cast the Lumos spell, and the light came out of the outer end like a torch and the clay on the lens cast a shadow in the shape of the rune. With a little adjusting, the rune was projected onto the weight stone. There was a glow from the stone, and a matching glow came from the center of the room for a few seconds. When the glow disappeared, Harry noticed the wall was gone. The three of them walked over and stepped into the next purple circle.
A/N
The shadow rune puzzle is one I came up with for my dungeons and dragons games. I find it takes a party about half an hour to work it out if you want to use it. Just make sure they have the light spell or add lit candles to your discretion of the room.
The circles basically work the same as a vanishing cabinet.