Chapter 22) Saboteur

Selected Listening: Zombies- The Cranberries

"Anastasia, are you alright?" Hermione asked, placing a comforting hand on her arm.

As the girls reached the Great Hall for dinner, all that had happened that day set in once again. Anastasia would soon be facing her supposed soulmate with nothing to say to him. She stared desolately at the door.

"I-I'm—" she wanted to say she was fine, but she wasn't. Her boyfriend was a jerk. She could give him the cold shoulder. She could ignore his taunts towards the people she loved. She could pretend it didn't hurt when he acted like a blood purist prick.

But ignoring him wouldn't fix anything, and breaking up with someone she was magically connected to seemed like an equally pointless endeavor.

"It's okay. You don't have to pretend," Hermione offered. "We can go somewhere else. I can eat with you."

Anastasia shook her head. Hermione deserved the chance to show off her new pearly whites, to have a moment of pride in a rather horrible day.

"No, you go ahead. I want some time to myself. See you later."

Hermione nodded and slipped into the Great Hall.

Anastasia used the back stairwell to reach her bedroom in the headmaster's suite. She climbed into bed and pulled the maroon velvet duvet and patchwork quilts all the way over her head. She didn't bother lighting her torches.

She lay there, unmoving, mind reeling, for an hour.

When she realized she couldn't sleep, that the Gryffindors would worry about her, she wandered to her bookshelf, grabbed a few CDs to try with her repaired player, and departed the same way she came.

If Draco was going to be a jerk, at least the gift could make up for some of it.

The next morning, Anastasia awoke with her stomach growling so loudly she couldn't possibly avoid another meal again. She slumped down to the Great Hall with Hermione, careful not to make eye contact with anyone once they left Gryffindor tower. She stared at her feet as they descended the last flight of stairs and walked to the hall's entrance.

A hand reached out and caught her elbow. She stopped short and looked up into familiar ice blue eyes, blond locks falling around his heart shaped face.

He'd been waiting.

"Anastasia," Draco said, drawing her to the side. "Can we talk?"

She snatched her arm away.

"Not after you were such an arse yesterday. How dare you call Hermione that? How dare you wear that stupid badge. You are so full of it, Draco Malfoy!" she shouted, face flustered. Hermione stood by, waiting to jump in if needed.

Draco drew back, surprised at her outburst, brow creased.

"Look, I'm sorry for causing a scene."

"Is that all?"

Anastasia stared at him meaningfully. He flashed a glare in Hermione's direction.

"I'm not apologizing for accusing your Gryffindork friends of cheating. It's obvious they did it."

"Did what?" Hermione asked. Her feigned boredom turning into anger. "Put Harry's name in the cup?"

"And hers!" Draco hissed, pointing. "Don't you realize what you've done? Because of your little stunt, we have no idea what's going to happen or how the lifeline will react during the tournament!"

Anastasia winced. Hermione's jaw fell.

"Anastasia…that last paper out of the Goblet?"

Anastasia waved Hermione closer so they could discuss. Hermione and Draco looked warily at each other, but the muggleborn witch stepped forward bravely anyway.

"Yes, it was most likely my name," Anastasia continued, "and it was in the same damn handwriting of whoever wrote Harry's."

Hermione's eyes widened.

"Then you have to compete too—" she started. Anastasia shook her head.

"I don't know yet. Grandad and I…we're trying to figure it out…It was burned right through the middle. We don't know if it counts."

"Someone's trying to kill both you and Harry…"

"Wait, Granger, you didn't know—" Draco's irritation at Hermione had given away to true surprise. Anastasia sighed and raised one eyebrow at him.

"Of course, I didn't know, because I didn't do it, Malfoy! Why would I enter my best friend in a tournament she's entirely against?!"

Draco buttoned his lip and crossed his arms in a huff. A stalemate.

"Honestly," Hermione scowled and walked into the hall for breakfast.

Silence lingered between the two magics as Anastasia decided what to say next. She remembered his reasoning from the day before. He thought Harry would want her in the competition too, just to save her when she was in trouble. It was so insulting. He was jealous, always jealous.

"I need to go to the library today to figure out this tournament business…" she began and carefully debated the next part of her sentence, "…would you like to come with me?"

Draco sighed, losing whatever retort he was preparing and gazed off to the side.

"I'm entertaining Durmstrang in a casual quidditch match with Slytherin."

Anastasia fumed.

"Why are you bothering with them?" she shot. "They're cruel. I've heard they practice dark magic."

Draco winced. She continued.

"Do you know how Krum treated me when he met me? Karkaroff still thinks I'm an obscurus—"

"Exactly," Draco snapped, "I can't have them looking too closely at us…for the time being, I need to appear to be what they expect. Unassuming. Pureblood. Normal."

Anastasia stepped back, dejected.

"It's to protect us…" he clarified, "I promise."

A trample of footsteps approached. Draco reached up, brushed a lock of hair out of her face, and broke away, joining the chortling Durmstrang and Slytherin jockeys. They departed from the front door of the castle, laughing in a tone she despised.

That afternoon, Anastasia lay with her head on the table in the library, staring out the window. Hermione had joined her. She had a book of Triwizard Tournament history spread open between them.

"Here it says in 1673 champions were tricked into drinking poison and then—honestly, I can't even think—"

"What?" Anastasia looked up.

On the other side of the aisle, Viktor Krum had claimed his own table. He had his nose stuck in a book of defensive spells. One table past him, a gang of Hogwarts girls giggled incoherently.

Anastasia hadn't even noticed.

"He should just go somewhere else if his presence is going to cause an uproar," Hermione chided in a whisper.

Krum slammed the book shut and left immediately, the girls trailing behind him. He glared at Hermione as he left.

Hermione bit her lip guiltily.

Anastasia realized if Krum was there, he must not have gone to play quidditch with Slytherin after all. Her gaze drifted sadly to the spot where she and Draco used to study. That innocent time seemed so far away.

The next evening, Albus and Anastasia tucked in at their private table with Ludo. The kitchen elves busied about bringing plates and dishes, food and drink, fruits and meats and bread and wine and everything piled high in the middle.

"I'm so glad you invited me to this little gathering, it's been delightful to see the castle like this. I can't recall ever being in here in all my time at Hogwarts," Ludo said at the beginning of the meal. He had a wide goofy smile that one couldn't help but take a liking to.

"But let's cut right to the chase, you didn't call me here just to see the kitchens, Albus." Ludo said forwardly as he sipped his wine. As soon as he had set it back down on the white linens, Albus lowered his hand beneath the table and signaled to one of the elves to refill the glass.

"You're quite right—"

"You must be interested in recruitment," he twinkled, looking down at Anastasia.

"I'm sorry? Recruitment?" she asked.

"For quidditch teams, yes?" he asked. "No need to be shy, girl. I've seen the game articles on you. Quite a lot of press for a reserve player. Of course, you'll need to specialize at some point if you want to make it to the big leagues."

"Oh, um, no, I—"

"Thank you, Ludo, quite keen of you," Albus cut her off with a glint. Ludo finished his glass of wine and set it back down, again the little elf filled it right back up without him seeing.

"Now, I always recommend the Hollyhead Harpies to female players first, such a time-honored team, and you'd never have to worry about making it into the boys club—but I could see the Montrose Magpies or the Kenmare Kestrels being a good fit for you as well—"

And so, for half an hour, Anastasia tried to nod along and have opinions about the quidditch career she wasn't sure she wanted. She quickly realized that for all her time reading muggle fiction, she hadn't learned much about the business side of quidditch at all.

Eventually, Ludo was well inebriated, talking about his good old days with the Wimbourne Wasps, his stories scattered with hiccups. Anastasia was thankful for this because it meant she didn't have to keep trying to sound intelligent about quidditch politics.

But quidditch wasn't truly what they were there for, and as Ludo began to list to one side, Albus drew his voice to turn the conversation to the true subject.

"You know what I think the most interesting part of quidditch is, Ludo?" Albus asked in a jolly tone.

"Hmm?" Ludo hiccuped again and uprighted himself. Three elves, who were once refilling the glass, now stood at his right side, ready to catch the man should he pass out in front of them.

"It's not the game itself…but the strategies…the secrets behind the game, don't you think?"

"Oh certainly! In fact, did you know chasers were allowed to harass the keepers until 1583?"

"Really?" Albus feigned curiosity.

"Yes! The game was so littered with fouls, and the keeper turnover rate was so bad—" Ludo let out a large burp, "—the department decided to ban all chaser-keeper interference. It's quite smoothened out things since then, but there are still little rules here and there that act as loopholes."

Albus leaned his head onto his hand thoughtfully.

"If there are such things for quidditch…I wonder if there are such things for the Triwizard Tournament. Caveats and such."

Ludo, despite his drunkenness, shrunk inward.

"Oh, Albus, I'm not sure I'm supposed to talk about those things. The game is so old…it's all hearsay at this point. The wizards who made the Goblet of Fire are long gone."

"Well then there's no harm in it," Albus pressed. Ludo narrowed his eyes.

"Oh, I'm suppose that's true…let's see here…um…um…"

Albus gave Anastasia a hopeful side-eye.

"Yes, yes, for example it used to be that if one champion was discovered cheating, they were immediately expelled from school, and the headmaster publicly shamed. And that was allowed until 1653."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, it was that year that the headmasters realized everyone was cheating, and they wouldn't be able to stop it if they tried."

"How surprising…" Albus commented in a rather unsurprised way.

"And then there are rumors…" the goofball of a man drifted off, one finger raised in the air, "…of a special role in the tournament. A secret role to help break ties in the case of multiple champions with a high likelihood of victory. It usually comes in a puff of smoke—the name of someone who was almost champion, but not quite."

Anastasia and Albus shared a meaningful glance.

"And what is that role, Mr. Bagman?" Anastasia stuttered out.

"A traitor! A saboteur if you will," he emphasized, beaming out of his stupor for a moment of excitement.

"A saboteur?" she asked. Albus's gaze flickered to her in a panic.

"Yes! From the moment their name is drawn, their purpose is to mess with the competition, every single player! The win then comes from how the champions cope from unlikely challenge rather than the task itself. Intriguing, isn't it?"

Anastasia froze up as she tried to draw a coherent response.

"But I'm not—I mean—surely that person wouldn't want to betray any of the champions unless they really didn't like them," Anastasia tried. Ludo laughed heartily.

"That's where the magic lies. They can't help it! Eventually they'll run into some situation that will allow them to ruin a champion's game, and they might not even realize what they've done until afterwards!" Ludo barked in excitement.

Albus's eyes had gone wide. Anastasia's expression matched. Dumbledore senior recovered first.

"Ludo, certainly there must be some sort of record or diary about these so called traitors? Is there a chance we could learn about any of them?" Albus asked. The little elves, noting the change in tone, began taking their plates away, including Anastasia's abandoned toffy pudding.

"I'm sure I have something in my office," Ludo mused, "Mind you, it might take some digging. I'm not always there to tidy up. But why are you so curious—"

Ludo stared at Anastasia's uncomfortable shifting, and then he smiled a sleepy cheshire smile.

"Oh, it's you, isn't it? What fun! This will make the game much more interesting. I was worried we may have too many top-scorers with the caliber of champion we have this year!"

Anastasia's heart thudded against her chest.

"Grandad, I'm not feeling well. I'm going to go lie down a while."

Albus nodded and watched as his daughter wandered out of the kitchens.

In a daze, Anastasia pulled on her winter cloak, tucked her CD player safely in the pocket, and pulled on her headphones.

"Where are you going?" Hermione asked, enchanting more SPEW badges. "It's already seven thirty. Curfew's in half an hour. What did you learn from Mr. Bagman?"

"I-um-I need to clear my head," she said, and left, listening to the album she had picked from her shelf the other day—The Cranberries.

Anastasia thought the walking would help, but as she made her way across the darkening, grounds, shrugging her cloak close to her form, her thoughts only grew cloudier.

It wasn't fair. She thought. She hadn't done anything to deserve this. She had tried to keep her head down, stand up for others, do the right thing. And where did it get her? Her relationship was on the fritz and now she was going to sabotage four people in an already dangerous game, one of which was her close friend.

She couldn't do it. She had to stop herself. But how?

These thoughts plagued her as she walked, and despite her cloak, she felt her internal temperature drop, the thoughts hanging over her head, a cloud she couldn't shake until she was immersed in shadow.

"Gah!" Anastasia's shoulder slammed into something hard. She fell to the ground, headphones falling off her head as she landed on a plot of shrubs and gnarled roots.

She looked up. Above her, tree cover stretched in every direction. Across from her, Barty Crouch also lay askew on the ground, flabbergasted.

"Miss Dumbledore, what are you doing? Surely you know the forest is out of bounds…particularly this area of the Forbidden Forest!" he bellowed as he reached his feet.

"Um," she stumbled to grab her CD player and shove it back in her robe pocket. It had fallen on top of a dark purple, velvet bag, which she grabbed and handed to Mr. Crouch.

When she touched it, something sparked under her fingers.

"What did you do?" Crouch growled.

"Nothing!" she shouted as she got to her feet. "I'm sorry, I must not have been paying much attention."

Crouch grumbled as he rummaged through the bag. A spiral of flames curled out of the hem.

Satisfied with the contents, Crouch pulled the drawstring shut and tucked it into the pocket of his overcoat.

"You'll be going now?" he asked.

"Of course…" Anastasia murmured, turned around, and walked back out of the trees.

Had she really been so out of it that she walked straight into the Forbidden Forest without thinking? She was usually much more careful. Anastasia stared at the CD player and headphones in her hands as she returned to the castle and climbed back through the Gryffindor porthole. They felt heavier than they ever used to be.