clxxx. filthy blood
"It simply isn't possible."
The book came closed with a harsh snap!, setting loose a cloud of ancient dust.
"Not probable in the slightest."
The second book dropped onto the first, followed by a third and a fourth.
"It's impossible!"
Hermione huffed another harsh, irritated breath and scowled at the books as if they'd personally insulted her.
"Hermione," Elara said across the library table, looking up from her Charms essay. "Will you kindly leave it alone?"
"No!" Hermione argued, lowering her voice when a passing Madam Pince shot them a look that could have scared the skin off a Shirvelfig. "I will not leave it alone! I want to know how he did it."
"Can you at least let me work on this in peace?"
"You should have finished that two days ago."
"And you should be rereading the Arithmancy chapter." Elara sighed. "Does it really matter how Longbottom got his name in the Goblet?" she asked, tracing her thumb along the feathered edge of her quill. "It's done. The contract is apparently inviolable, and he has to compete. That Karkaroff man tried to pull Krum in a huff, insulted or blowing smoke. Krum's stuck in the Tournament too, according to Crouch."
"How do you know this?"
"Wayne Hopkins in Hufflepuff. Who heard it from Cedric."
Puzzled, Hermione nonetheless shook her head to clear her thoughts and get back to the subject at hand. "It does matter how he managed to pull it off. Listen, I know Fred and George Weasley are—." Honestly, Hermione didn't quite know the word to describe the irascible red-haired Gryffindor duo. She took long enough to speak that Elara supplied her own.
"Annoying?"
"Well…."
"Mean-spirited?"
"I wouldn't go that far—."
"Rude?"
"Yes, yes," Hermione said, crossing her arms. She gave another testy huff that had Elara smirking toward her parchment. "Whatever else they are, the Weasley twins are quite clever with their spellwork when they put their mind to it. If they couldn't figure out how to get past Dumbledore's Age Line, I want to know how Longbottom—Longbottom! Of all people!—managed to do it."
Elara gave another disinterested shrug of her shoulder, and Hermione exhaled through her nose, wishing her friend understood her desire. Longbottom was not crafty. She wouldn't consider him stupid or untalented, but she often thought of Neville as the only student in the group who got a study guide before the test; his name—his persona—had an advantage.
She remembered reading about the Boy Who Lived in the summer before she arrived at Hogwarts. She'd mostly shut herself in her room—decadent as it'd been with the Malfoys—and studied. She'd read everything she could get her hands on, including The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and the many, many pages extolling Neville Longbottom. Their savior.
She recalled a single paragraph, added like a chapter footnote; "James and Lily Potter were both subjected to the Killing Curse by V— on the evening of October the 31st. V— ruined their residence with a Blasting Curse, overlooking the Potters' daughter, who survived in the wreckage."
Most of the books that touched upon the war never bothered to mention the Potters at all. Wasn't it funny, how fate and history worked? How Salazar Slytherin existed in the annals as a crazed, hateful bigot, when he'd been nothing more than a man in love with a woman and his people. How Harriet Potter existed as little more than an unnamed daughter to two people caught in a madman's crossfire, when she's=d survived the Killing Curse not once, but twice.
So no, Longbottom was not crafty. He was not clever. He was not anything, really; a fairly unremarkable wizard, aside from his massive ego, given resources and training not available to others. Nevertheless, he'd gotten past the Goblet, which meant he'd gained the ability or information from someone—and that someone was capable of subverting Dumbledore. Hermione wanted to know who.
"Hey, Hermione! Hey, Black."
Hermione looked around from her introspection and found Terry Boot approaching their table—specifically the chair at her side. Hermione sat straighter. Elara scoffed under her breath.
"Hello, Boot."
"Hello, Terry," Hermione greeted, clearing her throat when her voice wavered. "Are you having a good afternoon?"
"Yeah, good enough." He settled his satchel on the table and slid into the chair, smiling at Hermione. It was a smile that turned Hermione's face a delicate shade of pink and had Elara quietly cackling. That cackling cut off with a thud—Elara scowling at Hermione after catching a kick to the shin.
Meanwhile, Terry studied the spines of the books Hermione had grabbed, opening the top one to the title page. Terry—unlike Longbottom—was clever, and so he needed no further coaching to put two and two together.
"Trying to figure out how Longbottom got past the Age Line?" he asked. Hermione blushed again and wished her face would stop doing that. It was ridiculous.
"Yes," she said, eying Terry. She wondered if he'd think her silly too.
"You know, he says he didn't enter. He says he thinks someone else entered him who wants to see him compete. Naturally, he said it in a bit more…high-handed manner."
"Really?"
"Really. But I'm not certain he's telling the truth." Terry leaned closer in that universal gesture of having something interesting to say, and Hermione reciprocated. "In History of Magic, him and Weasley weren't sitting together. And I heard from Seamus that Ron got angry about Neville not telling him how he entered." Terry leaned back again, though he propped his arm over the top of Hermione's chair, still facing her. "Anthony and I talked about it, and Padma heard from Parvati in Gryffindor that Longbottom seems to be playing both sides. He wants to be the victim who had no choice and the clever clogs who got past Dumbledore."
"Well, that doesn't clear anything up at all," Hermione muttered.
"And the Hogwarts gossip mill continues to grind us all to dust," came Elara's droll response. She punctuated her statement with a sharp flick of her quill across her parchment.
"Not much on gossip, Black?"
"No."
"Come on. Everyone likes to hear about a rumor now and again. I bet you gossip just as much as the rest of us."
Elara rolled her eyes. "I don't gossip. I gather information."
"Mhm," Terry said as if this very much proved his point. Hermione couldn't disagree with him, though the "information" Elara gathered proved true more often than not.
Elara levied Terry a blank look. "Will you two desist in your flirting and let me finish this essay?"
Hermione immediately sucked in a funny breath and swallowed wrong, resulting in her choking on her saliva. "Flirting?!"
"Shhh!" Madam Pince hissed from the stacks.
Terry's cheeks pinked, but he told Elara, "Fine, we will, if you're going to be such a curmudgeon," and stood. "Would you like help putting away your books, Hermione?"
For her part, Hermione's heart leaped to her throat, and she swore to Merlin she was going to hex all of Elara Black's socks chartreuse when she got back to the dorms. Instead of answering, she nodded and returned Terry's bashful grin. They both grabbed a stack of dusty old tomes.
She pointedly ignored Elara's murmured, "Finally," as they left.
"Merlin, she's prickly," Terry said as they walked. They both did an awkward half-step, jostling the books. Hermione felt hyper-aware of how their elbows brushed. "I find it hard to believe you're friends. Oh—not that I dislike Black! You're just…a lot warmer than she is."
"Elara's lovely when she wants to be. I'm incredibly lucky to have her in my life." Hermione paused to take one book and slide it back on the proper shelf. "She's just being difficult because she put off her Charms essay so long. Her and Harriet got into a row about Harriet stealing clean jumpers from Elara's trunk and—well, anyway." She cleared her thoat. "You think Neville's lying about entering the Tournament? Or that he did enter?"
"I'm not sure. Neville—I know he's the Boy Who Lived, and he's a good fellow, but I…sometimes he seems so full of it, doesn't it?" Terry lowered his voice to a whisper so as to not be overheard. Though many Slytherin spoke poorly of Longbottom, the predominant sentiment in Hogwarts and the Wizarding world at large was pro-Boy Who Lived. "He's been telling his friends and the Headmaster he didn't enter, all while winking at others about how someone must be eager to see him win the Tournament."
Hermione didn't suppress her eye roll.
"I would say…hmm. I think he doesn't know what's going on any more than the rest of us."
He returned one of the books, and Hermione handed him another to put next to it. "But who would enter him?" she wondered aloud. "I don't believe his ridiculous suggestion for an instant about it being a fan or such rot. It had to be someone who could get past the Age Line."
"What about one of the older students? He's friends with the seventh-year Gryffindors."
"Yes, but you forget that he's not simply the Hogwarts champion; he's a fourth champion. The Goblet was tampered with. It had to be. A magical artifact that's been used for centuries doesn't just suddenly decide a school need an extra competitor."
"It's quite old, Hermione. Perhaps the Charms have gone off."
"No, I don't think so. I'm sure Dumbledore—and the Ministry, for that matter—would have checked the Charms beforehand, lest they look foolish in front of the foreign dignitaries." She tapped her chin in thought. "The person might have confused the Cup into believing there were two Hogwarts champions, and Neville's name appearing is a fluke. That's quite a coincidence, though. Hmm."
She remained quiet as she and Terry dispensed with the last of the books she'd borrowed. Worthless, the lot of them. "Or…they confused the Cup into thinking there was a fourth school and entered Neville as the only name under it. That way, he was guaranteed to be chosen."
"But why would someone do that?"
"I'm not sure."
As she considered that train of thought, and Terry seemed to waffle over something he wished to say, a group at the end of the aisle they passed caught Hermione's attention. She paused—then grabbed Terry by the arm so they could both hide by the shelf and peer around the corner.
"Look at that," she whispered.
"What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"That!"
Terry leaned and craned his neck, bemused. "What? Potter?"
"Yes!"
Harriet stood by the shelf with her satchel hanging off her shoulder as if she'd been on her way to meeting them and had been waylaid. A dozen short heads surrounded her, small hands holding up scribbled parchments or asking for directions to reference material or other questions. Harriet did her best to answer them, all the while looking wide-eyed and baffled by the attention.
"It's uncanny," Hermione said as she watched her best friend. "They've been following her, asking for help in every subject—from Slytherin mostly, but Ravenclaws too, and Hufflepuffs. She's like a mother duck accruing very irritating and inconvenient ducklings."
Terry snorted and tried to hide his laugh in his hand. "For tutoring? I didn't know Potter offered tutoring."
"Well, not officially. She's much more accomplished than she'd let you think, especially with past content." A shadow of disbelief flickered through Terry's face, and Hermione raised a brow in challenge. "Really. She's very knowledgeable."
"I'm not doubting it." Terry fidgeted with his sleeves, and Hermione stared at the knot of his Ravenclaw tie, clearing her throat. "As interesting as it is that Potter's adopted a flock, I, um, wanted to ask you something. Would you—?"
Terry cut himself off, blinking.
"What is it?"
"Is—is that the Minister?"
Hermione whipped herself around to find the Minister for Magic in all his horrid, refined glory standing in the Hogwarts library.
What on earth is he doing here?!
She nearly toppled into Terry and was certain he received a face-full of hair when she flipped her rampant curls back over her shoulder. Hermione stiffened her spine.
Harriet was still fending off the first and second years, her voice just barely audible.
The Minister would never lower himself to slink, but Hermione thought it an apt word for how he made his way down the wide aisle separating the stacks. He kept his hands behind his back and surveyed the tables, absent his entourage or anything that would mark as other than another staff member at a glance. Busy with their schoolwork, no one seemed to notice him.
"Minister Gaunt!" Hermione greeted—her voice loud, resounding in the usual quiet of the library. Gaunt whipped his head around and glared at her with frank frustration while Madam Pince came darting out of the archives in high dudgeon. The old witch spotted the Minister and blinked.
Hermione peered from the corner of her eye toward the group of murmuring children crowding the far end of the shelves, away from Gaunt's point of view. Harriet had dashed for the doors.
"Minister Gaunt, excuse my outburst. It's nice to see you again," Hermione told the wizard with the widest, most fake smile she could muster. Terry stood next to her, suddenly uncertain with Gaunt's attention solely fixed on Hermione.
"Miss Granger," Gaunt said as he approached. "There's no need to make a scene. How pleasant it is to meet once more."
"I didn't know you'd be at Hogwarts today, sir. The Headmaster made no mention of it." She opened her eyes wide, pretending faux-guile. "I'm sure it was only an oversight on his part."
Why was he here? Several days had passed since the announcement on Hallowe'en, and so Hermione guessed Gaunt meant to use the Tournament to meddle as much as humanly possible. It made for a perfect guise to get onto the school's grounds.
To see Harriet? To get closer to her? To observe?
"Of course. Or it could be the fault of my Undersecretary. He's terribly overworked, you see. It makes poor Fudge…nervous." Gaunt's lips flattened as he pursed them and smiled. "It is an unfortunate side effect of my work that I often make people nervous."
There was a threat there of some sort, though Hermione didn't know the extent of it. Maybe he only meant to menace; he certainly did that well. Sweat beaded on the back of her neck despite the relative chill in the drafty library.
"I imagine it's a trying career, being Minister. Very demanding." Hermione nodded along with her own words. "Especially in the wake of the Dark Lord, right on the heels of Grindelwald's uprising. I doubt anyone would blame you for wishing to retire and get away from the stress."
Terry flinched. He didn't have any context to this conversation, but even he could recognize how borderline improper Hermione's comment had been. "Hermione…."
She nudged his shoe.
By now, Gaunt stood barely a foot from them, and what measure of courage Hermione had summoned to shout his name and notify Harriet of his presence had flagged. His blood-red eyes glinted in the candlelight, ghastly and cold, his expression unvexed and untried. He was a man of confidence—a man looking upon a little girl he could crush under his heel.
Hermione refused to yield.
"Ah…you would do very well in the Ministry, Miss Granger," he softly said. Gaunt leaned forward and added in an undertone, "It's a shame about your filthy blood."
Hermione didn't react as the wizard swept away in an elegant swish of emerald green and expensive cologne. Instead, she grit her teeth and swallowed the need to retort. Nothing would come of it.
Nobody believes nasty little Mudbloods anyway.
Terry had watched the Minister leave, and he turned back to Hermione, confused. "What did he say? I didn't quite catch it."
"Nothing," she replied. "Nothing important."
Was it possible Gaunt had entered Neville's name? When would he have had the chance, and to what end? The incident had not reflected well on the Gaunt administration, especially in the Department of Magical Games. They appeared incompetent at best, dishonest at worst.
"Hermione?"
If not Gaunt, then perhaps…Voldemort? The Triwizard Tournament was notorious for danger in the past, and many champions had died during the trials. Perhaps this was another frankly elaborate attempt on Neville's life.
"Err…Hermione…?"
But then, how would he have managed it? It wasn't as if the Dark Lord could stroll through the front gates and pop a little curse on the Goblet of Fire in the middle of the entrance hall.
"Sorry, Terry. What were you saying?"
Terry shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his face red again. "I wanted to ask if, well, you'd like to go to Hogsmeade some time? With me, I mean. Just us."
All thoughts of Dark Lords and muddled Goblets and fake boy saviors left Hermione as her heart slammed into her sternum. A tingle seemed to spread from her toes to the top of her head. "Really?" she asked, biting her lip.
A bashful smile turned Terry's mouth up as he nodded.
"I…I would like that, yes. I would love to go."
"Good."
He reached out, hesitated, then touched her hand. Terry's fingers curled over it for half a moment—and then Madam Pince, who'd watched the debacle with the Minister, cleared her throat. Terry snatched his hand back.
"I should be off. Anthony probably thinks I got lost," he said, scratching his cheek. He had a single dimple when he smiled, his mouth hitching slightly higher on one side, and Hermione didn't know why it fascinated her so. "I'll see you around?"
"See you."
She watched him leave—one backward glance over his shoulder that sent flutters through her middle. Hermione kindly told the butterflies in her stomach to stop being silly, and took a deep, centering breath. She told herself to return to the table and concentrate on her schoolwork.
Still, Hermione waited until Terry vanished from sight before she left.