The Founders Awaken

Chapter 3: Tournaments and Classes

Harry and Draco were woken up by the sounds of Neville and Luna shouting their respective names. They groaned to each other, but stayed cuddled on the sofa anyway, not wanting to move as the other two burst out of their bedrooms and started stomping around the room to try and find them.

It was shocking, and yet hilarious, that it took them five minutes to notice the two bodies on the sofa who were trying not to laugh at the looks of bewilderment and fear on their love's faces.

"Harry, please don't ever do that to me again. I was worried you'd run off and gotten yourself killed again. And I can't deal with that," Neville practically begged as he fell to his knees in front of the sofa, eyes filled with concern.

"I promise I won't go running off alone, Neville. I just couldn't sleep, and neither could Draco, so we talked for a bit," Harry said, leaning over to kiss Neville's cheek gently.

"Are you both okay?" Luna asked as she knelt next to Neville, worry in her eyes also.

"We will be," Draco said, smiling at her.

"What time is it?" Harry asked.

"Just after six," Luna said.

"Then why are we all awake?" Draco almost whined.

"We have to get ready for our first day of classes, Draco," Neville grinned.

"Why? We're all mentally adults. Why can't we skip school and just sleep?" Draco said.

"Because even if we were physically adults we would have to wake up, look after the kids, and go to work," Luna said, beaming at Draco and placing a kiss on his hairline, "Come on, we have things to do, people to see," she said dreamily as she dragged Draco, and therefore Harry, up and into their bedroom.

Neville stood and smiled down at Harry, Harry smiled back up at him, marvelling at the love in those honey brown eyes. Neville held out his hand and Harry took it, allowing the taller boy to pull him up and lead him to their bedroom.

They readied themselves for the day and met Luna and Draco in the living room.

"So, what is the plan for today? Are we just going to keep an eye on things?" Neville asked.

Harry and Luna nodded, "Yes, we should just spend the next couple of weeks or so keeping an eye on things. Watching the teachers, the students, and coming up with some ideas on what we could do to change the school when we are able. Also focus on what new things are being taught now that we didn't teach, as well as what we did teach when we were around. See how advanced we are now. How the students and teachers feel about different things and such if we can," Luna said.

"I am going to focus on Professor Snape," Harry said, "I have noticed a number of things about him and his masks over the years and I want to see what I can learn, and maybe talk to him a few times about… everything,"

The others nodded in understanding.

"So, hopefully we will have a few relaxing weeks before we can start working on things," Neville sighed in relief.

Harry snorted.

"Relaxing. With me around? I doubt it with the idiots and Dumbledore probably wanting to question me more, and more, and more as time goes on," Harry said, chuckling slightly.

They enter the Great Hall, hand in hand with their love's. To their surprise, though, the entire school was there already, at seven o'clock in the morning. They paid no mind to it, though, and went to sit at the very end of the Gryffindor table, glad that there was no space for the idiots to come and attempt to join them as they clearly wanted to do based on the angry glares in their eyes.

"Good morning, all, I hope you have all managed to get a peaceful night's sleep," Dumbledore stood and said in his grandfatherly charade of a voice, "I have a little start of term announcement to make before we commence our day. This year, the interhouse Quidditch league will be cancelled,"

And didn't that statement cause an uproar, especially from Fred and George Weasley who were booing the loudest out of everyone.

"Calm down, calm down," Dumbledore said cheerfully, "It is all for a good reason,"

"There is never a good reason to cancel Quidditch," the twins yelled.

Dumbledore just smiled benignly, "I think you might appreciate this one, my boys," he said with twinkling eyes, "This year Hogwarts will be host to the Triwizard Tournament,"

Now the room was filled with cheers, by a large chunk of the students, many of them looked confused, although Harry noticed Draco suck in a breath and looked at him questioningly. Draco just shook his head and told him he would discuss it later.

"Yes, we will be bringing back this age-old tradition. The other two competing schools will be Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. They will arrive on the twenty-ninth of October, and the champions will be drawn on the thirty-first of October," it was Harry's turn to suck in a breath.

Something bad always happened on Samhain.

Something bad which included him.

Neville squeezed his hand gently, trying to comfort him, and he was grateful for the grounding energies it provided.

But still, of course it had to happen, whatever it was, on Samhain.

Just what they needed.

He shook his head as Dumbledore called for breakfast to be delivered and soon everyone was eating and chattering happily about the Tournament.

Harry noticed Draco looking around the room worriedly, a motherly look in his eyes as he looked at the students, and a glare as he looked at Dumbledore.

"Draco, what is this Tournament?" Harry asked, afraid to know the answer because if the 'champions' are going to be announced on Samhain of all days, then it can't be anything good.

"It's a Tournament between three magical schools. One student from each school is chosen from the Goblet of Fire to be that school's champion. There are three tasks which test the student's magical abilities, and for each task they get points which determine who is in the lead in the Tournament. There is also usually a Yule Ball. But these tasks… They are often very dangerous. It was cancelled hundreds of years ago because too many students were dying in it. Both the champions, and sometimes some of the spectating students and teachers would die also depending on the task. The fact that they've brought it back, now of all times, when there is a mad man trying to come back to life, doesn't mean anything good, right?" Draco explained, worry clear in his voice as he continued looking at all the students.

Harry growled, his motherly instincts peaking out also as he thought about all the possibilities of a deadly Tournament being played in their school. All the lives at risk.

And Harry had the distinct feeling that he would somehow end up a 'champion' in this Tournament, even if he didn't sign up to it himself.

Because of course he couldn't just have one year where he didn't nearly die, right?

The day passed rather annoyingly after that. Lessons were not the best with Ron and Hermione trying to steal Harry away from Neville and Draco at every opportunity. And at lunch Luna told them that Ginny had been hounding her at every opportunity she had also. The lessons themselves, once all the arguing had ended anyway, were rather boring, although they were rather disturbed by Professor Moody's lessons.

Then of course Harry's and Draco's mothering urges kicked in whenever they saw a child being bullied, or whenever someone was chatting excitedly about the Tournament and they vehemently said what a terrible idea it was to bring it back considering the reason they got rid of it was because too many students died.

But, for some reason, not many of the students seemed to care about that.

Which irked them all.

They knew that as soon as possible they would have to go to the warding room and check them out, because the wards felt off, and their wards would never have allowed something like the Unforgivables to be cast in their school.

When the four of them finally sank onto the sofa that Harry and Draco had fallen asleep on the night before, they were exhausted, and they were also thoroughly annoyed.

Dumbledore had called Harry to his office after dinner, but he didn't go. He didn't want to speak to the man if he was completely honest with himself. There was too much… off with him.

"You two really need to get a hold of your mothering tendencies," Neville laughed, although he stopped when Harry and Draco glared fiercely at him, and held up his hands in the universal symbol of surrender.

"It's a bit hard to do that when the Headmaster of our school said they were bringing a Death Tournament here, Nev," Harry said fiercely.

"And all those kids we saw being bullied didn't particularly help, either," Draco said, just as fierce as Harry.

"Too many people will ask questions if you keep mothering people, though," Neville said, calmly.

"We can't help it, Nev. It is written into our biology as bearers, and into our minds as past mothers," Harry said.

"I know. But we need to be as… normal as we possibly can. We need to make sure that people don't suspect too much, and us four hanging out is already bringing up questions from everyone. We need a plan, and we need to fix things. We can't do those effectively if everyone is hounding us all the time," Neville said.

"Why can't we just be ourselves?" Harry almost whined, he couldn't help it. He hated pretending to be something he wasn't. He had had to for three years already, now that he had his family back he didn't want to have to continue to do so. Draco nodded in agreement.

"Considering you are both Slytherins, you aren't being very Slytherin at the moment now, are you?" Luna grinned at the two, continuing to do so even as they glared at her.

"You are both very mean," Harry and Draco said at the same time, crossing their arms childishly, pouts on their lips.

Then they all burst out laughing, letting go of the pressures of the day.

When they had all finally calmed down they snuggled together under a large blanket, just taking a moment or few to rest together for the first time in… well, a long time.

"We should go and check out the wards tomorrow," Harry muttered tiredly.

The others hummed in agreement.

They weren't awake for much longer.

Hiya, how are you all?

I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I did the best I could with it with the time constraints I have at the moment with work, family drama and everything else. But we'll get there, I hope. What are you hoping to see from this story? Is there anything you're guessing at? Anything you want? I am interested in knowing your thoughts.

I have a Facebook group called Maraudering_Paige which you are all welcome to join if you want to and are able to. It is where we can talk about Harry Potter, fanfics, life, share memes, and more. It is also where I have an update schedule of sorts and will be keeping you up to date on what I am working on, both original works and fanfics, etc. If you are interested in joining then I am more than happy to accept any of you.

I hope you are having an amazing day!

Kind regards,

Paige xx