Eventually, the conversation moved to the Triwizard tournament. Hagrid alluded to the fact he knew what the first task was, something Fleur seemed extremely interested in. Whether Hagrid had seen her expression or he genuinely wanted to keep the first task a secret, the man stubbornly refused to reveal even a single clue.
As the afternoon turned into evening, a light drizzling started to patter against the hut, making them glad of the fire's warmth. Then Hagrid stood up and went over to the chest of drawers next to his bed. At first Harry paid it no mind, then a truly horrible smell assaulted his nose. Beside him, Fleur went as far as to cover her nose with a handkerchief and look offendedly towards the man. Even Luna looked uncomfortable.
"Hagrid, what's that smell?" Harry demanded
"Er, eau-de-Cologne." Harry muttered, inexplicably blushing. "Maybe, it's a bit much, I'll go take it off-"
"Monsieur 'Agrid, perhaps I could be of assistance?" Fleur offered from behind her handkerchief mask.
"Oh, if yeh want. I guess yeh can' make it worse."
With a swipe of her wand, Fleur was able to remove the smell from Hagrid, then with a flourish she applied some sort of scent charm on Hagrid.
"I 'ope you like it. It is a combination of petrichor and moss, which has been popular back home for a while now. I thought it would suit you well." She said anxiously.
"Blimey, it smells great. Like takin' a walk in the forest after a storm." Hagrid announced happily, clearly pleased with Fleur's choice. The man then stood up straight and peered through his window before saying "Er, excuse me you lot, there's someone I need to talk to. If yeh would lock up fer me Harry? Ta."
With that, the man left his cabin without a single backward glance. When he craned his neck, Harry was able to watch Hagrid stroll up to Madame Maxime, who had just exited her carriage, and engage her in conversation.
"We got ditched." Harry announced numbly as Madame Maxime and Hagrid began walking up to the castle together, the Beauxbatons students having to jog to keep up with the pair. After sharing a look, the three of them left the cabin, pausing just long enough for Harry to lock the man's door with a spare key.
"It is a shame Monsieur 'Agrid didn't talk more about the tournament." Fleur said
"Well given you are likely to be Beauxbatons champion, I think that would give you a bit of an unfair advantage." Harry commented blithely.
"What do you mean? The Goblet has yet to make its decision." Fleur asked, looking at him in confusion.
"Ah. Well, you see it looks like the Goblet picks the champion based on who has the most magic, which seems to be you."
"But 'ow could you-… You can see magic? You 'ave the vue magique?" She demanded.
"I call it mage sight, but yeah. I've had it since I was a kid. It's… quite useful."
"But this is amazing!" Fleur announced as they entered school, before Harry motioned for her to stay quiet. It seemed the Beauxbatons delegation, and as a consequence Harry, Luna and Fleur, had arrived early to dinner, seeing as the great hall was almost entirely empty. As such, when they entered several heads turned towards them, before their owners returned to whatever they had been doing.
Sitting down, Harry reached under the table and stuck a plate of mithril to the wood, which then cast a privacy spell around them.
"Ok, it's safe to talk now. I don't really want the whole school to know about my power, so if you could keep it quiet that would be great."
"Of course. I wouldn't dream of it. But there must be so much you can see that others can't! What does a person's magic look like?"
"Well, mainly it looks like a ball of magic that seems to float near the heart, inside your chest. From there the magic flows through the body, saturating it with magic. Everybody has a different colour and then a different shade within that colour and I have yet to see two identical magical signatures. The exception is white, black and grey magical signatures. From my observations, nobody naturally has those three.
"If somebody has grey magic then it means they are trying to hide their magical signature, making it impossible to tell who the grey magic belongs to. I've rarely seen white magic, but Hogwarts is made almost entirely of it. I think it's formed when an inorganic structure or object gets imbued with enough magic to become… sentient I guess."
"Oui, Beauxbatons is the same. While the palace was built from stone, it has a feeling of self awareness. As if you are living inside a great benevolent creature."
"Exactly! Well, given time such structures start to become capable of producing their own magic instead of relying on another being's power. When this happens, I suspect their colour shifts from their creator's and takes on the pure white colouration."
"It is a sound theory. What about black magic then, is that caused by dark magic?"
"Oh, no. I've never seen anything with a black signature… apart from in a dream. Dark magic seems to turn your magic into a darker, murkier shade, but they still don't go pure black. I've also seen light wizards with naturally dark shades, even if they've never touched dark magic."
"What about my magic then? What is my shade?" She asked excitedly, the food in front of her forgotten.
"Your magic is unique from anything I've ever seen before, aside from just being a different colour. You magic, I would describe it as 'flickering yellow', because it constantly changes, subtly. It's like your magic is made up of a beautiful soft fire."
"It sounds wonderful, I don't suppose you can teach me how to see as you do?" She asked hopefully
"I'm afraid not, mage sight is something that has to be self taught. I have it because when I was a child my entire life revolved around my magic, so over time I was simply able to see it. Currently the only way I know of developing a weaker version of my sight is to either spend so much time around a high concentration of magic that you can start to see it. I think there are a few books that can help. Or you can use an artifact like professor Moody, although that is far more limited."
Shivering, Fleur said humorously "I think I would rather keep both my eyes, thank you. But I would appreciate any books. Who knows, this skill may help me win the Tournament if you are so sure I will be the champion."
"If you can learn enough for it to be useful before the tournament is over, then I don't think you'd need the advantage mage sight can give." Harry laughed.
"Hmm, perhaps. So tell me, who will I be facing as my competitors?"
Pausing, Harry looked around at the students that had steadily streamed into the hall as they had talked, trying to work out who had the most power.
"Well, amongst the Durmstrang students, it looks like Krum has the most magic. So I would say him, except for all I know there was a student who had more magic in the morning when they entered their names, then cast a lot of magic."
"Surely casting a spell does not affect your magical core?" Fleur cut in, looking shocked.
"Not in the way you're imagining. You see, your core is made up of two parts, which I refer to as your magical potential and your magical possibility. For now, I'd suggest thinking of them like a body, with the potential being your skeleton and the possibility being the muscles. Your potential is fairly static, such that it only grows when you are a teenager and stops around your 20th birthday.
"Your possibility is far more fluid, since it grows and shrinks depending on your actions. So if you spent every day doing magic, then your possibility would grow, while if you stopped doing magic for a long time it would shrink. There seems to be no limit to how much it can grow, which is why older wizards like Dumbledore grow so powerful.
"However, that is only part of it. So the two together make up your core, which then gets filled by magic. If you have a generously sized potential or work hard to raise your possibility, then you can hold more magic than an average person. Unless I get close and have time to look, all my magesight reveals is how much magic is currently stored within somebody, but I can't know if they have a full core, or an almost empty one."
"I think I understand. So, if we assume Mr. Krum's core is full, there might be another student with a larger core, which currently isn't full but could've been this morning?"
"Exactly! I know for a fact you were the strongest when you entered your name because I was there to see it, but because I wasn't there for the Durmstrang students I can only guess. The Hogwarts students are easier, but then I don't know who has entered and who hasn't. If I had to guess… Rumour has it Cedric Diggory from Hufflepuff has entered his name, which makes him likely to win. If I had to rank him, I'd say he's the third strongest in the school."
"Only third? Who are the other two then, are they not also volunteering?"
"Well, Naomi Shinso in Slytherin is the second strongest student in terms of magical power, but since she's in her final year and has been made Head Girl, she's made it quite clear she isn't interested in competing. As for the strongest, well that's me and I am both underage and unwilling to compete."
"Surely you jest?" Fleur asked, giggling.
"Of course he isn't. Surely you can feel his power?" Luna asked, cocking her head to the side.
"But… 'ow can 'e be so strong? 'Arry is so much younger!"
"Age had little to do with it." Luna pointed out, waving her pudding covered spoon towards Fleur. "Since he was a child the wizarding public have considered Harry to be an extraordinarily powerful wizard, why are you so surprised that their belief came true?"
Seeing that Fleur looked gobsmacked, Harry decided to step in.
"Basically, our running theory is that the continued belief of the public in my perceived power made my magic significantly stronger than it would've otherwise been. Then, because I had studied ahead and had a lot of experience with magic, I arrived at Hogwarts and basically proved to everyone that I was as powerful as the stories said, which further boosted my power."
"But why should their belief in you increase your power?" Fleur eventually asked
"Because the public have magic, silly. Get enough magicals to believe in something and their collective magic will try to make it a reality." Luna stated, as if it should've been obvious.
Any further discussion was halted by Dumbledore getting to his feet. After announcing the Goblet's imminent selection, the man waved his hand and lowered the lights until just the floating pumpkins and the Goblet were alight. It was an impressive display of power, unless you saw the only magic he had cast was to instruct Hogwarts to lower the lights.
As Harry had predicted, the first champion to be chosen was Viktor Krum, giving him the chance to send a cocky grin Fleur's way. She only rolled her eyes in response, although that didn't stop them sharing a grin when her name was the next to be chosen.
With Fleur gone, he was able to properly study the Goblet when the final champion, Cedric Diggory from Hufflepuff was chosen, which just happened to give Harry a perfect prediction score. Alongside the red flash and sparks, a spike of magic would leave the Goblet and seek out the chosen volunteer, leaving behind a much stronger connection.
While he could only guess, he suspected the new connection bound the champion to the tournament, making it impossible for them to change their mind. In short, it was further evidence to support his decision to avoid the tournament.
Then against all odds, for a fourth time the Goblet turned red and spat out a piece of paper. Even before Dumbledore could catch the paper, Harry already knew who had been chosen. After all, the icy chill of dread which had settled upon him alongside the thick cord of magic which was now bound around his magic was evidence enough.
This chapter was going to carry on for the aftermath, but I simply ran out of time because I forgot I was going to see Marvel's 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings'.
I will also be on holiday for a week, after which I plan to once again go through and improve my first few chapters.
I honestly don't know how long that will take, but I will try to keep to my normal schedule. In this case it will be a revised chapter every two weeks. As such, if you want to keep up with the 'new' chapters then I'd suggest checking every Friday, with the latest chapter having a ~#~ at the top.
For a more immediate story, I'd suggest (Once again) 'Blindness' by AngelaStarCat, 'Fantastic Elves and Where to find them' by evansentranced and 'Magicks of the Arcane' by Eilyfe. All three are fantastic Harry Potter stories, each of which also inspired this story in several ways.
And finally, shout out to my friend for the name suggestion of 'Naomi Shinso', who thought I wouldn't catch the reference.