People couldn't stop gossiping all day Tuesday. Hermione managed to grab the seat next to Harry before Transfiguration to check in with him and see how he was holding up. To her utter unsurprise, Ron was being nasty about the entire thing. Against all better sense, he thought Harry had entered himself into the tournament (not that Ron had much sense), and Ron and Harry were currently not speaking to each other.
"Ron's a moron if he thinks you'd do this to yourself," Hermione said angrily. "Even more of a moron than he usually is. Anyone who thinks that is."
"Yeah." Harry looked resigned, but he seemed relieved by her indignation. "I think Rita's article helped. People think if I was doing this for glory, I wouldn't have told everyone to cheer for Cedric instead. Maybe more people will believe me now."
"Practically all of Durmstrang believes you," Hermione told him. "Including Viktor Krum."
That seemed to cheer Harry up immensely, though they had to stop talking as McGonagall started class.
After classes were done for the day, Hermione went promptly to her dormitory and changed into her Wizengamot robes. She pulled on her heeled dragonhide boots, and she wrangled her hair up into a French twist. Tracey came in as she fought with her hair, though Hermione ignored her, busy sticking bobby pins into her curls.
"You look older," Tracey said, watching.
Hermione shot her a sideways glare. "I didn't ask for your opinion."
"I know, I know!" Tracey said, holding up her hands. "It wasn't meant as an insult – just an observation…"
Hermione scowled.
"I'm trying to look older," she admitted grudgingly. "If I'm going to kick up a fuss at the Wizengamot, I want them to take me seriously."
Tracey watched Hermione finish getting ready, before speaking up again.
"If you want them to take you seriously," she said, "take out a couple of your hair pins."
Hermione looked at her incredulously. "What?"
"Take out a few of your pins," Tracey repeated. Her eyes were gleaming. "If you get worked up and angry enough, and your hair unfurls and starts sparking all on its own…"
She trailed off, leaving the implication in the air unsaid. Hermione considered this, before turning to examine herself in the mirror.
Bellatrix Black had been known for having her hair spark with power when she was angry or dueling. Though Hermione wasn't overeager to be overtly compared to the notorious Dark witch, she did want all the adults to listen to her, for them all to be motivated to do something, and if that needed to be through fear, so be it. With the black velvet of the Wizengamot robes, Hermione thought she looked sort of forbidding. And she did have dark circles under her eyes…
With an exasperated sigh, Hermione pulled a few of her hair pins loose before she left, and Tracey grinning as Hermione stormed from the dormitory to find an empty room to Time-Turn back.
Hermione had hardly needed to try and stoke the flames of the Wizengamot with her anger; they were already raging like wildfire by the time she arrived.
"This is an outrage!" Fudge shouted, waving the Daily Prophet around. He was so mad he was spitting. "I've had dozens of Howlers coming in every hour since dawn, accusing me of being part of a conspiracy to kill the Boy who Lived! How did this happen?!"
The general hubbub of the Wizengamot was much louder and fiercer than usual this morning, and Hermione watched with cruel satisfaction as Ludo Bagman and Barty Crouch Sr. were called to the floor to account for this public relations catastrophe.
"Strictly speaking, it is possible to enter someone else into the tournament," Crouch said curtly. "The binding magical contract is made through the ink and the wizard's signature, the same as any legal contract."
"So anyone could have entered Harry by stealing his old homework and ripping his name off the top of it?" Sirius Black demanded, his eyes flashing dangerously. "There was no actual guarding against the names of the underaged, just the students themselves?"
Bagman was wringing his hands. "We weren't thinking people would enter other people into the tournament! Why would they? We just had to stop underage kids from entering themselves."
"And look how well that's worked for you," Lucius Malfoy drawled.
"So any student could have asked an older student to put their name in?" Augusta Longbottom demanded. "And it would have worked? What kind of 'protection' and 'safer tournament' is this, Dumbledore?"
"My esteemed peers, we are perhaps focusing on the wrong thing," Dumbledore said, attempting to calm the chamber. "It is not that Mr. Potter was underage that is the biggest issue here. It is that he was chosen as a champion for a fourth, unknown school – meaning someone of great power enchanted the Goblet of Fire for malicious intent."
The angry accusations subsided somewhat at this, though people were still scowling.
"What school, then?" someone demanded. "Ilvermony?"
"Does it matter?" Dumbledore asked, his voice tired. "He is entered nonetheless."
"I am curious about the details of how powerful this hex on the goblet is myself," Amelia Bones said, folding her arms. "My niece is in Potter's coven, and her magic is now at risk because of this scandal. What kind of magic could convince the goblet to claim Potter was a student of a school he'd never gone to?"
"Is it even possible to find out?" Geraint Weasley asked. "If it might help us get to the bottom of this…"
"I hardly think it matters," Barty Crouch Sr said curtly. "If the goblet was hexed to believe there were four schools, not three, and only one name was entered under the fourth school, Potter would have been chosen even if the fourth school hadn't been named."
"You seem to know an awful lot about this, Barty," Fudge accused.
"You'd know about it too if you had Alastor Moody and Rita Skeeter interrogating you all night," Crouch said sharply. "And it is my job to understand the goblet and its rules."
Ludo looked interested, though.
"Can we try, though?" he asked. "Is there a way to tell?"
Crouch looked very frustrated and irritated by this request, but a vote was called for, and the motion to audit the Goblet of Fire overwhelmingly passed.
While Bagman and Crouch vanished temporarily to go retrieve the goblet, Amelia Bones stepped forward to provide an update on Azkaban.
"The cold is getting worse, and we have found no way of contacting the Valkyrie from Azkaban," she said. "We intend on putting a full-page ad into the Prophet every day this month starting tomorrow, loudly offering the Valkyrie amnesty if she returns to the prison to fix what she ruined."
"A full-page ad?" Burke asked, frowning. "Is that really necessary?"
"Do you want her to see it or not?" Amelia snapped. "Besides, the Daily Prophet has a new ad manager, and he drives a hard bargain."
Hermione hid a smirk and made a mental note to make sure Leland got some sort of raise. If the Ministry was buying a full-page ad every day until the Valkyrie came and closed Azkaban, Hermione would have to judge the last possible moment to appear and close the hole before it got too too cold for the prisoners in order to ensure that the Ministry continued paying the Prophet for as long as possible. Though, Amelia had said 'every day this month'. Was it possible Leland Ollerton had made them pay for the entire month in advance? If that were the case, she'd just go whenever she had some free time soon.
Bagman and Crouch returned with the wooden casket containing the Goblet of Fire. Dumbledore stepped down from his podium to begin the arduous task of communicating with the goblet and convincing it to give them all an audit of the schools participating in the tournament to come.
While Hermione was sure Dumbledore was concentrating very hard and talking to the Goblet of Fire, not unlike how she'd talked to the Sorcerer's Stone, for the life of her, it looked like Dumbledore was crouched down, holding his head in his hands with his wand slightly touching the goblet, and trying very hard to poop. She stifled a giggle as she watched, the frustration warring on Dumbledore's face not making the scene any better.
Abruptly, there was a result: a flare of red fire spat out of the goblet, flames writing Durmstrang in the air where they hung for a long moment before fading away. There was a murmur of impressed voices that Dumbledore had managed it.
Another flare of fire spat out, this time scrawling Beauxbatons in the air, the audit seemingly following the order the champions had been announced in. Hogwarts came next, dissipating in flickers of flame, and everybody waited on edge, tense, for the goblet to flare out fire again—
"Blackwell?" Fudge read aloud, astonished. "The hell is Blackwell? That's no school of magic I've ever heard of—"
Hermione had to clap her hands over her mouth to hold back a sharp bark of ironic laughter. While the others resumed arguing, her lips curled in malicious amusement as Hermione got an idea.
An awful idea.
A wonderful, cunning, awful idea.
