Harry, a few weeks after almost everyone started thinking he is a cheater.

HARRY XXVII

Harry felt wonderful. He had donned his Invisibility Cloak, one of the few things he had left from his father. On this Saturday morning, they could visit Hogsmeade, and Harry decided he would go to the village wearing his Invisibility Cloak. As a result, no one could see him and throw insults, insinuations and excerpts from Rita Skeeter's article at him. Harry walked through the streets of the village with a freedom he did not experience in weeks, ever since his name came out of the Goblet of Fire.

Between the hostility of the whole school, his dispute with Ron, and the fact that most of the few people who were not outright hostile to him saw him as a hero for managing to get into the competition of the Triwizard Tournament, Harry had endured his worst time at Hogwarts, even worse than the time in his second year when people believed he was the heir of Slytherin. As a result, hiding under his father's cloak provided him with a happiness he did not experience for quite a while.

Harry wished that the few people who believed him when he said he didn't put his name into the Goblet of Fire were enough to lift up his mind, but he would be lying to himself if that was the case. Hagrid, Hermione, Dumbledore and the few others who believed in him could not compensate the level of hatred and disgust he received from his other comrades, some of which he considered good friends only a few weeks ago and who turned their back on him because they believed he cheated his way into the Tournament.

But Harry wouldn't spend the day with any of those people today. Hermione had gone with Ron to the Three Broomsticks. He and Harry barely exchanged a few words since the night his name came out of the Goblet. They only talked when necessary, and neither of them wished to talk to the other. Hermione had hoped that they could convene at the Three Broomsticks, but Harry wouldn't see Ron until he behaved like an adult, and anyway he had other plans. Even Hermione understood when he told her what he had planned for his visit at Hogsmeade. She still made an attempt to suggest he might join her and Ron later, but Harry stopped her before she could finish her thought. He told her to spend the day with Ron. As angry as Harry could be with Ron, he wouldn't deprive Hermione of the possibility to spend time with him if she wanted. And deep inside, he preferred to keep some kind a link, as weak as it could be, with Ron through Hermione.

Slowly, Harry progressed through the streets of the village, avoiding pedestrians who couldn't see him. He walked passed the boutiques where he would have liked to shop if it wasn't for the hostile stares all other people would throw at him, who would join the intrigued stares at his forehead to which he had sort of become accustomed to. He wondered how long it would take for him to become used to the hostility most students felt towards him.

As he progressed, the houses and buildings became smaller and sparser, until he reached the foot of a nearby mountain. There, two people were waiting for him, two people he wrote to intensively these last few weeks, who had been among his rare ways to not turn crazy with everything happening in Hogwarts.

"Hi, Sirius. Hi, Remus."

Both looked startled for a moment, but then smiled to each other. "Okay, Harry. You got us. You can remove the cloak," Sirius said.

Harry removed it, feeling a satisfied smile grow on his face as he hid the cloak in his pocket.

"Believe it or not, Harry, your father did that several times," Remus said, looking very amused.

"Okay, it's fine," Sirius said. "Let's head forward now. We're far from Hogsmeade, we don't have a lot of time."

They began to walk away along the road circling the base of the mountain.

"So," Sirius began, "I'm not going to ask how you are, Harry." He thanked Sirius for that. Although Harry felt better today than he had been in a long time, he couldn't say that he was happy yet. "But if you have something to tell us in person, go for it. Now is the best time to get it out of your system."

And so, Harry probably spent the next half-hour relating everything that happened since Halloween, emptying all his frustration, from the unfair judgement of all other people to his dispute with Ron, including in passing the absence of his mother who was gone who knew where.

When he was done emptying his bag of frustration, he asked Sirius and Remus the question he wanted an answer to the most.

"Do you know where Mom is?"

This was a question Harry didn't stop asking himself lately, ever since she told him at Halloween she would be gone for long and that she couldn't tell him where and why. Harry was frustrated to not be able to write to her, right when he needed it the most. Sadly, the answer his godfather and his former teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts provided was not the one he hoped for.

"I'm afraid we don't know where she is, Harry," Remus said.

"We even asked Dumbledore, and he wouldn't tell us," Sirius added, accompanying it with an additional gaze of apology.

Harry sighed in frustration. "Look, she's fine. Your mother knows how to take care of herself," his godfather said further.

"I know," he muttered.

"So, there's still no idea as to who might have put your name in the goblet?"

"No. Everyone still believes I did it," he replied sourly. "I thought the Ministry and Dumbledore were supposed to investigate about it."

"They did, and they haven't stopped," Remus said. "The problem is that the magic within the Goblet of Fire has gone dormant. It is extinguished, nonexistent. So they cannot find any magical trace of the person who would have tampered it."

"Fantastic," he said ironically. Not only the culprit was still escaping, but Harry would remain the scapegoat of everyone's insulted dignity for the rest of the year… if he survived the first task at all.

"Harry, I understand why you're feeling angry. And you have every right to be. But right now, you should focus on the first task. It will be in two days. You must be prepared."

"Constant vigilance," he uttered. The words of Alastor Moody had been roared at him so often in his classroom that they glued themselves into Harry's mind.

"On this, Moody is right," Sirius said. "He might be paranoid at times, but he's not wrong on this one."

"Okay, but how can I be prepared for this? We don't even know what the first task will be."

"It doesn't matter, Harry. You must be prepared. You might have to use every spell, every curse, every trick you ever learned for this task."

"Sirius is right," Remus approved. "And don't be so desperate, Harry. You were by far my best student last year. You learned how to repel many magical creatures, and even managed to master the Patronus Charm."

"You believe Dementors will be part of the first task?" Harry asked. This prospect was not to make him feel any better.

"I doubt it, but we cannot exclude it either," Remus reluctantly admitted.

"On the positive side, if that happens, you will definitely have an advantage, Harry," Sirius declared. "The other champions certainly don't know how to produce a Patronus. They might be older than you, but the Patronus Charm is not taught in Hogwarts. Some Aurors who work with your mother can't even manage to produce one. And I know for a certainty that Karkaroff is not teaching that kind of charm to his students, so Krum will not know how to cast it."

Harry wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that one of the only ways to have an advantage on his opponents would be to face Dementors.

"Look, Harry," Remus said, "even if you don't know what lies ahead of you, you can face it. You did in the past. You can do it again. Just remember everything you learned so far, and don't hesitate to use it when the time comes. And lean on your friends."

"Thank you. Very good advice," Harry said on a very dark tone. He didn't want to lack respect to Remus, but he just didn't feel he would be able to follow this advice, given how many people turned their back on him.

"Speaking of friends," Sirius began. "About Ron…"

"I don't want to talk about him."

One of the things he absolutely didn't want to talk about right now was Ron. Not when he was being such an idiot, and not when it hurt talking about his former friend.

"Alright," Sirius said. "We will not talk about Ron." Harry was thankful to his godfather. "But I would like to talk about your father. Would you mind?"

Harry made a sign of head telling he didn't. So Sirius went on.

"You know that your father was a great Quidditch player."

"Yes, I know." His mother told him not long after she informed him that he was a wizard and began to tell him about the sport in question. When she saw how Harry was interested in it, she told him about his father playing it as a Chaser.

"He didn't start playing in his first year like you did, Harry. But he was a reservist in his second, and got on the regular team in his third. All the while I was kept out of the Gryffindor team."

Harry knew that. Sirius told him he had wanted to play Quidditch back in Hogwarts, but he wasn't good enough to make it to the team.

"What I never told you Harry is that I wasn't happy when your father was accepted on the team," Sirius continued. "I even stopped talking to him for weeks when it happened."

"What?"

Harry was surprised. To him, his father and Sirius had always been the best friends, ever since they met on the Hogwarts Express on their journey to the school.

"Yes. That was stupid from my part. But you must understand… Your father was not supposed to join the team."

"What do you mean?"

"The captain of the team despised me. Or more precisely, he hated the Blacks, and I happened to be one, even if I was in Gryffindor. And he knew very well that your father was my best friend. So the first time your father and I applied to be part of the team, he flat out rejected me, and refused to allow your father into the regular team for being my friend, even though he clearly deserved the position. He was already better than all the other Chasers on the team."

"James was very young back then," Remus pointed out though. "It is rare for such young students to be accepted on the regular team. He would probably not have made it to the team anyway with any captain."

Sirius shrugged and continued. "Anyway, our third year came. We applied for the team again, James to be on the regular team this time. But the same captain was there. He made it very plain that he wouldn't allow me into the team and that James would never get farther than the reservists, and that he wouldn't let your father play as long as another reservist was available. But then, all of a sudden, James got accepted into the team, while I was still kept out. I didn't understand back then. The captain hated him, and all of a sudden, he accepted him without question. And at the same time, the whole team received new broomsticks from an anonymous benefactor. I thought it was your grandfather, Harry, that he managed to get James into the team in exchange for this. I confronted James about that and asked him why he didn't use the opportunity to get me into the team as well. Your father swore it wasn't his father who was behind this, and that he didn't know. I got angry. I thought my best friend not only used his family's wealth to get into the team while not using it to get me inside, even though he knew how much I wanted to join it, and that he was also lying straight to my face. The tone increased, an argument broke out, and we told each other things that… we would never have told each other otherwise. I told James he was an arrogant, spoiled brat, and he said that I got rejected from the team because I had no talent."

Sirius strangely made short laugh at this moment. "We were both partially right about the other. And so, for entire weeks, we refused to see each other, to talk to each other. Remus was caught between the two of us, and he couldn't manage to reconcile us. We got him quite desperate."

Harry looked at Remus, who indeed made a movement indicating he felt powerless.

"But… You reconciled, didn't you? You became friends again?" Harry asked. There was some hope in his heart right now.

"Yes, we did. Your father came to see me one day. He suggested that we play a trick to one of our professors at the time. We did, along with Remus. And… we were friends again, after that."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that," Sirius confirmed. "Though… your father was just as angry with me as I was with him, and he needed some convincing from a certain person to push him to take the first step." He looked at Harry with a little smile. "Your mom. She's the one who convinced him to go and talk to me again. She was like that. She and James were not dating back then. It would still be a few years before they did, but she noticed how miserable he was away from me, and she talked him into trying to reconcile."

Harry had mixed feelings about this story. It made him feel good to hear about his parents' childhood. But at the same time, he and Ron got to do something together, when Snape gave them detention for fighting Malfoy at the beginning of a Potions lesson. Harry thought they might reconcile at this moment, but they did not. It would take more than a group activity to heal his friendship with Ron. And Hermione would probably not be the person to bring them back together.

They kept walking around the village until it was time for Harry to go back to the castle. On their way, Remus took Harry apart a little and informed him that it was actually him who talked his mother into convincing James to go back to Sirius. Harry was surprised yet again, and Remus laughed a little about it, to Sirius' surprise who wasn't aware of it and looked at them suspiciously.

Overall, the day had gone well enough. Harry put back on his Invisibility Cloak to return to the Gryffindor Tower before dinner. Neville walked into the dormitory as he just hid the cloak in his trunk, and they talked a little about their day, Harry remaining evasive. He then went to the Great Hall. He wasn't wearing the cloak anymore, so people kept throwing daggers with their eyes at him, citing excerpts of Rita Skeeter's article on his way, and showing their badges in his face whenever they came across him. Harry was glad when he finally got to sit next to Hermione at the Gryffindor table, although many badges stating that he stinks remained visible.

"So, you had a good day?" she asked.

"Yes. Until now." He pointed the lines of badges facing him, including some students who turned their backs to show him their own.

"Ignore them," she said.

"What about yours?"

"It went well," she said. "Though… Ron and I got into some sort of argument."

"Ah. What is it, this time? He believes you put your name in the Goblet you too?"

"No, nothing like that. Hagrid came to see us at the Three Broomsticks. He asked us to visit him at his cabin tonight. And he said that you had to be absolutely there."

"Why?"

"I don't know. He didn't tell us. Only that he expected us all at midnight. Ron and I got into an argument because he didn't want to come if you were there."

"Well, for once, we agree on something," Harry replied darkly. "I wouldn't go if Ron was there either."

"Harry, this is stupid. But anyway, it seems that Hagrid wanted to you to come absolutely. I'm not sure you should go though. It's in the middle of the night."

"It wouldn't be the first time we would do it," he reminded her. "I'll go. It will do some good to spend time with Hagrid. And if he said I had to be there, there must be a good reason. You can come with me if you want."

Harry simply hoped that whatever Hagrid deemed important was not in relation to the Blast-Ended Skrewt.

Around eleven and a half this night, Harry and Hermione walked through the corridors of Hogwarts with the Invisibility Cloak on their heads.

"Thank you for coming," Harry told her as they crossed the park in direction of Hagrid's home, the carriage of Beauxbatons not far away.

"It's normal. It's what friends are for," Hermione whispered. "And now, let's not talk. Someone might hear us."

She was right. They walked the remainder of the path to Hagrid's cabin and knocked on his door. He opened.

"You're there?" he asked.

"Yes, Hagrid. Let us come inside," Hermione whispered.

"Come. I've got something to show you." They walked in and he closed the door behind them. Harry and Hermione removed the cloak from their heads. Hagrid looked at them with a mild surprise. "Where is Ron?"

"He couldn't come," Hermione answered quickly. "He's sorry."

"Well, never mind. You can tell him later. What matters the most is that you see them, Harry. And Ron may already be aware, anyway."

Harry frowned at this comment. What could Ron be aware of?

"Hagrid, why did you want us here tonight?" Hermione asked.

"I told you. To show you something."

"Okay. Where is it?"

"You'll see. Follow me. But keep yourselves covered with the cloak. We won't take Fang. He won't like it."

The dog was lapping Hermione's hand right now, and he didn't seem to want them to go. Still, they followed Hagrid outside his cabin as he left, keeping the cloak over their heads. To their surprise, he headed to the Beauxbatons carriage. He knocked on its door, and Madame Maxime came out of it.

"Ah, Hagrid," she said pleasantly. "It is time?"

"Bong sewer," he awkwardly said, earning a small laughter from Hermione she tried to conceal the best she could.

Harry, on his side, wondered what Hagrid wanted to show them. Certainly not Madame Maxime. They got to see her every day. She was hard to miss. But it seemed whatever Hagrid wanted to show them, he would also show to Madame Maxime. For they walked together away from the carriage, following the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. As Harry and Hermione had almost to run to follow their gigantic footsteps, Harry wondered what it was that Hagrid wanted to show him so much, for it seemed to be quite far away.

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