The Seventh Task was, once again, being held in the arena they'd built for the Tournament, in the Valley outside of school grounds. Classes had been cancelled, as they had been for most of the Tasks, giving them a proper two-day weekend. The morning had started somewhat slow and lazy, the Slytherin dorms far more full-seeming than usual, but still slow and quiet — Dorea assumed there was some final preparation they needed to do on Tournament days, they actually weren't supposed to leave the dorms until they were called up to breakfast. She knew some people did slip out — mostly sneaking over to hang out with friends in other houses, a handful going up to the library to steal a little bit of study time (primarily those in OWL and NEWT years) — but most people just lingered around in the common room or the library, a handful of people in the duelling room or the baths.

(Dorea was pretty sure she hadn't stepped foot in the public baths down here even once — she realised magical culture could be different about some things, but that still seemed very strange to her.)

Around nine o'clock or so, Professor Vitale appeared to tell them breakfast was on, they could get going now. There was a bit of a crush getting through the exit, some of the people more toward the back of the common room instead turning out into the maze of passages criss-crossing the dorms, going to find a secret exit instead. Dorea's group — Millie, Tracey, Daphne with Astoria, and also Blaise (probably planning on following them to Hermione so he could meet up with Lily) — lingered in the room for a couple minutes for the way to clear before following the rest of the house up.

The Great Hall had been somewhat expanded, instead of the usual long tables countless smaller ones, each with space for maybe a dozen people, a little more — it needed to be larger to fit all the extra people. It'd been quite some time since Hogwarts had hosted an event anywhere near on this scale, it felt like the administrators were feeling out how they wanted to operate things. Initially, the public were invited to the Tasks, but they weren't allowed to just walk around the Hogwarts grounds, presumably for security reasons. (There were a lot of noble kids here, after all.) That rule had gradually loosened, bit by bit, though there was still some kind of approval process. Guests needed to submit their names ahead of time, go through some kind of check for contraband at the gates, but supposedly it wasn't too much of a hassle. There were limits to how many people were allowed to come in, but relatives of students were obviously given priority — and they were permitted to join them for breakfast, so the meals before Tasks had suddenly become much more busy.

The Entrance Hall was packed, clumps of students meeting up with friends in other houses or with their families before moving on to breakfast. Their group split up immediately — at least some of Daphne's family was coming up (Dorea wasn't certain who), along with Sophie Davis, the Greengrass sisters went to find them, joined by Tracey and Millie. Dorea was a little taken aback by Millie leaving, she'd thought she'd be sticking with them to meet up with Hermione and the others. It wasn't as though it truly mattered that much, and Millie and Tracey were quite close these days, all right. Dorea and Blaise continued on through the crowd, scanning over the groups of people all over. Blaise didn't have anyone coming — his mother and sister were going to be at the Task, but they should be with the organisers elsewhere — but Dorea had been told Sirius was coming, and probably Remus, she hadn't heard if any of the Tonkses would be able to make it...

She got her answer when another body suddenly slammed into her, making her stagger a step, arms wrapped vice-tight around and over hers. "Hello, Dorea! Fuck, you're tall, when did you get so tall?"

Dorea felt a little bit of warmth on her face — she wasn't really that tall, but she had shot up a bit over the last few years. With the Auror apprenticeship and all Dora wasn't really around much, it was possible she hadn't noticed. "Hello, Dora. Let go please? You're kind of twisting my elbow."

"Pff, you're no fun." Dora thankfully let go, backed off a step. She looked approximately her age for once — she tended to age herself down to match Dorea, so consistently that it'd taken Dorea months to realise her new magical cousin was several years older than her — though her fashion sense hadn't grown any more, ah, presentable with her recent foray into proper adulthood. Today she'd gone with light pink denims, a bit mangled at the knees and hems and hugging close around her hips, and a... Dorea wasn't certain whether it was appropriate to call it a shirt, exactly. A piece of tie-dye cotton fabric, blue and orange and green and violet, the corners tied at her back and behind her neck, leaving most of her back uncovered — and also her midriff, because the thing was barely big enough to cover her ribs, the waist of the denims low enough to show a subtle curve of hip bones. Her hair was an unnaturally vivid lime green, the tips sunny yellow, her lips coloured greenish, eyes lined with a steely blueish silver, patches of golden-bronze eyeshadow with little rainbow sparkles, her fingernails alternating green and yellow...and her toenails too, apparently, wearing little plastic muggle flip-flops that barely counted as footwear.

...Dorea couldn't say she was surprised that Dora apparently hadn't learned to dress like an adult yet.

"And who's this handsome young man?" Dora asked, eyeing Blaise — a bit of an obviously suggestive drawl to her voice, because of course. "I'll be very hurt if you got a boyfriend without telling me everything."

Dorea was still trying to come up with a response that wasn't just some variation of no way in hell am I ever telling you everything, when Blaise answered the question for the two of them. His voice low, dramatic, "Ah, but my heart has already been claimed by another. Alas."

"Damn, and here I was going to try to steal you if you weren't." Honestly, you're an adult now, Dora, that would be very inappropriate... "Anyway, I left the boys right over here, come on."

Aunt Andi and Uncle Ted hadn't been able to make it, but both Sirius and Remus were here — Remus looked a little worse for wear, thin, his plain trousers and jacket perfectly presentable but obviously...well-used. The laws in Britain restricting the freedoms of werewolves had only worsened with the scandal of a werewolf teaching Defence at Hogwarts — and Remus personally being one was common knowledge now, of course — he'd been forced to move back to France to make a living. Supposedly it was better for them there, but it could still be difficult to get by — especially for people who had professional qualifications, and thus theoretically needed less state support. He'd mentioned in a letter that he was doing some private tutoring, plus a bit of freelance enchanting work on the side, which brought in enough to keep a roof over his head while looking for a permanent position somewhere. Not the most comfortable living conditions, but he was scraping by, and he was optimistic about his chances of landing a permanent teaching or cursebreaking position in due time, so.

(Dorea had suggested to Ted that they might be able to help, but Ted had said he'd already tried, multiple times over the last decade or so, and been refused — it seemed Remus was too proud to accept their charity. Fair enough, she guessed.)

Sirius greeted her with a hug, naturally, and a couple teasing comments about her and Blaise, unsurprisingly. Remus's greeting was more reserved, but he was just like that. Blaise initially called him Professor Lupin, Remus said he wasn't their professor anymore — so Blaise started calling him Remy old chap instead, Sirius laughing at the exasperated grimace on Remus's face.

While they started searching for Hermione's group, Dora also started consistently calling him Remy old chap, the two of them joking around talking like overly formal, melodramatic aristocratic types from some period piece. Remus was clearly doing his best to ignore them, but Sirius kept snickering, would contribute his own comment now and then...in a high falsetto, more in the character of an overly formal, melodramatic lady from some period piece, Dora fighting giggles. Dorea just ignored them, shaking her head to herself — she continued to be surrounded by mad people.

"There she is," Blaise said, interrupting their little game. "Hermione — I'd recognise that big bloody hair anywhere. Come on, this way."

The group around Hermione, when they eventually got there, was rather larger than she'd expected. There was Hermione and Lily, of course — Blaise immediately sidled up next to Lily and took her hand, she smiled up at him, her cheeks going a little pink (adorably). Of the pairs who'd gone to the Yule Ball in their friend group, Lily and Blaise were the only ones who'd still been dating by the beginning of the month, which Dorea was honestly somewhat surprised by. The Hufflepuff girls were here — Sophie, Sally-Anne, Hannah, Susan — plus Padma and a girl in muggle denims and tee shirt and a Ravenclaw scarf that Dorea didn't recognise at first glance.

Then there were also a few people who definitely weren't Hogwarts students with them. There were two who looked like they could be school age, and two who were definitely too old. One of the younger ones was a girl — wearing a muggle-style dress and a knit cardigan, the sky blue Beauxbatons uniform cap partially hiding short, messy brown hair — looking a couple years younger than them, a second or maybe third year. The boy, almost certainly her younger brother, was maybe as young as nine or ten, but he was wearing the Beauxbatons uniform blazer over muggle denims and tee shirt, so it was hard to say. Then there was a young woman, late teens or early twenties, curly dirty blonde hair not quite reaching her shoulders, wearing a sundress that seemed a little flimsy for the Highlands in April — she did have a visible wand holster strapped to her forearm, so Dorea guessed she could just cast a warming charm if necessary. The last was an older woman — dark blonde hair frosting silver, wrinkles sketched across her face, probably well above a hundred (or fifties or sixties for a squib or a muggle) — in slacks and a light blouse under a knit button-up, her face shaded with a wide-brimmed straw hat.

It didn't take very long for Dorea to find out. When they caught up, there was a bit of chatter at Remus being here, asking how he was doing and all. Once that had blown over, looking and sounding rather flustered and exasperated, Hermione explained what the four strangers were doing here — apparently Dorea and Blaise had caught up quickly enough that the others hadn't gotten a chance to be introduced either, she was addressing the whole group. After pointing out everyone around, naming them and occasionally making an added comment (in French, Dorea mostly didn't follow them), Hermione said, "Everyone, this is my grandmother Athénaïs, my aunt Sébastienne, and my cousins Aimée and Théodore — Aimée and Théo don't speak much English at all."

Oh right, she'd heard about this. Over break, Liz had done a heritage test for Hermione — sort of as a Christmas gift, Dorea thought — which had led to the Grangers discovering that Daniel's mother was a squib from a French noble family. (One of the ones that was completely extinct in the modern day, Hermione's grandmother had been sent away to a muggle orphanage shortly before the Revolution really picked up.) Some of her other relatives ended up being muggleborns, but everyone had been keeping Secrecy, and so they hadn't realised each other were already in the know until Liz did that heritage test — which was, just, completely absurd, surely there'd been some way to get around that. Dorea didn't know much of anything about what happened since, Hermione never wanted to talk about it, very annoyed over the whole thing.

Yeah, Dorea was going to go ahead and, just, not step right into the Granger family drama. It was not her business, and she didn't want to make Hermione even more uncomfortable than she already obviously was.

Their group had ballooned far too large to fit at a single table, so the Hufflepuff girls (plus Padma) split off to find other friends, leaving Dorea, Dora, Sirius, Remus, and Lily and Blaise with Hermione and her family. Though, a little surprisingly, Susan and the mystery Ravenclaw girl stayed behind. Once the others left, she said, "By the way, this is Shannon," jerking a thumb at the girl. With a sharper look at Blaise, Dora, and Sirius, she added, "She's shy, be nice," before repeating herself in French.

...Right, Dorea had heard about this too. Shannon Murphy was a Ravenclaw in the year above them, muggleborn — quiet and unremarkable, Dorea might have heard her name before in passing — and she and Susan were dating now, as of a week or two ago. She'd gotten the story from Hermione: Liz had kind of set them up, made a pair of her notebooks as a low-pressure method for them to get to know each other a bit, for however long before they'd agreed to give it a try. Honestly, Liz going out of her way to help set one of her friends up with a complete stranger seemed so out of character — did she even know Murphy at all? It was nice of her, Dorea had agreed when Hermione had said so, she'd just been kind of taken aback by it.

Even being put on the spot that much had Murphy blushing and ducking her head a little — Susan hadn't said they were dating, but she might realise most of them had probably guessed — but thankfully everyone was tactful enough to just move on to breakfast.

Most of the conversation over breakfast ended up being in French. Hermione's cousins seemed very excited and enthusiastic, grinning and babbling away, Aimée all but bouncing in her seat. No idea what they were talking about, Dorea's French was only good enough to catch a word now and then. The only people at their table who didn't speak enough French to participate at least a little were Lily, Shannon, and Dorea herself — Dora seemed to be barely keeping up, and from how Hermione's cousins reacted the first time he said something she guessed Blaise must have an obvious accent, but everyone else didn't have any trouble at all. Not that Lily seemed to mind the conversation at the table being in a foreign language, spent most of it quietly eating or privately muttering with Blaise, and Dorea honestly wasn't sure how much Shannon spoke even in ordinary circumstances. (Not much, she didn't think.) It was a little exasperating to not be able to understand what people were saying, but whatever.

Dorea was very certain Sirius was flirting with Hermione's aunt — honestly, Sirius, she was far too young for him...not to mention, her mother was right there. Sébastienne (was that her name?) seemed a little bit taken aback at first, before shooting back with what Dorea was pretty sure were teasing comments of some kind. Not reciprocating, she didn't think, just joking around.

Sirius even flirted at Hermione's grandmother once. The older women just fixed him with a toothy smirk, drawled out something that had the French-speakers laughing or choking on their food or noisily snorting up coffee (Dora) — with the exception of Hermione, who just rolled her eyes, looking a little embarrassed. Dorea kind of wished she'd understood that part, at least.

They lingered for a bit, sipping at coffee or tea and nibbling at light pastries — new to Hogwarts this year, Dorea assumed they were for the benefit of the French students — until it was announced that the time had come to go out to the stands. The flood of people moving for the doors was thick enough that they stalled a while, only moving to get going when the Great Hall was already two-thirds emptied. The newly-paved drive down from the Castle made the lengthy walk far less miserable, no mud puddles to contend with, the weather today windy and cool but not too cold, the scattered clouds thankfully not threatening rain. There must be wards on the stands that would keep them from getting rained on during the Task, but those would do them no good during the walk there and back.

The arena had looked different for every Task they'd held here — the stands stayed more or less the same, but the field they were viewing changed each time. Back during the First Task, the area had been partly overgrown, a stream cut through it, providing varied terrain for the different teams to fortify their base or ambush their opponents. For the Third Task, it'd been transformed into a rocky mountaintop, the dragons' roost high and clearly visible, a maze of rock shelves providing the Champions cover from literal return fire. For the Fifth Task, the arena had been paved with the reddish-brown loose dusty clay often used as a flooring in larger duelling events.

Now, for the Seventh Task, the ground had been entirely hidden with a field of clover, speckled at random with white from flowers. At the very centre was a small platform, perhaps waist-high and a few metres across, made out of a plain tan ceramic. For those whose performance didn't require much space, Dorea assumed — some might be rather more athletic, but if they were playing music or something of the like they obviously wouldn't need to move around.

The students (and guests) had their own section of the stands, and as they got more practice at holding these events they'd trended toward bringing them in last — the crowd pressing to get in had mostly already settled before they arrived, by the time Dorea and the others got up the stairs and through the shell of the arena the other sections of the stands were already full. It was noisy, countless conversations going on in all directions, but she could tell looking around that everyone had mostly settled in, they were just waiting for the students to find their seats at this point.

This time, they'd tried to get seats closer to the front of the stands, close enough to actually see the performances directly, but the delay leaving the Great Hall meant those sections had already been full, their group shoved back toward the higher ranks. Dorea had gotten rather shaky climbing up the stairs, and even their seats were high, the slope of the rows downward making her somewhat nervous, but she just tried not to think about it. (Mages tended to build arena seating at a sharper angle, nearer to vertical, which she realised made sense for quidditch matches in particular, but it was very unsettling sometimes.) Their group had bunched up in a blob, spread across multiple rows, Hermione and her cousins and aunt at the front, Dorea with Sirius and Remus and Dora and Hermione's grandmother in the middle, and the couples at the back — Dorea between Sirius and Dora, Blaise and Lily directly behind her and Hermione and her aunt right ahead.

She'd rather not be right next Dora, she just knew the silly girl was going to be a distraction through the whole event, but oh well.

They'd barely been sitting for a couple minutes, the stands behind them not quite finished filling up yet, when there was a subtle shimmer of magic on the air, the wards coming up — a couple seconds later, and Mirabella Zabini's amplified voice boomed through the arena, brightly welcoming everyone to the Seventh Task (quickly followed by translations). There'd been a rotation of announcers for the different Tasks, Zabini taking the job on multiple occasions, likely due to her role in organising the Tournament in the first place and also being considered somewhat more neutral of an option than anyone directly associated with Hogwarts. And Dorea did have to admit she was good at the job, a very charismatic sort of person, no matter how much the rumours of her being a serial killer made Dorea a bit uncomfortable whenever she encountered her.

(Surely if she were, and everyone knew she was, she would have been caught by now. Blaise was absolutely no help at all, whenever he was asked about it he refused to confirm or deny it — he might just be playing into the rumours for fun, it was honestly impossible to tell.)

Once she got through the opening welcome, Zabini started off with 'introducing' the Champions, going over a quick summary of the Tournament so far — she was apparently going up the rankings from bottom to top, meaning Ingrid Hannasdottir was first. Ingrid had done poorly in the more direct Tasks — as Zabini spoke, illusions projected up over the arena showing a recording of Ingrid's failed attack on the Hogwarts base in the First Task, getting immediately eliminated in the duelling tournament, her catastrophic failure against her dragon in the Third — while doing better in more indirect events. She'd done middling in the quidditch tournament, handily beating both Beauxbatons teams but losing to both of Hogwarts's, and also obviously Krum's — multiple snapshots from the tournament scattered in the air, presumably critical moments from her games, but Dorea didn't follow quidditch deeply enough to really identify any of it — but she'd done excellent in the healing event, showing skill in the subject far beyond what one would expect for a student her age. She seemed to be better with the more methodical applications of magic, meaning she might actually do quite well in today's event — though she was a whole seven points behind the nearest contestants, meaning she would have a very difficult time catching up before the final.

They currently had a tie in third place, between Artémisia Cæciné and Cedric Diggory. Cæciné's performance had been the inverse of Ingrid's in some ways: she'd done very well in the more direct Tasks, and less well in indirect ones. She'd only gotten a middling score in the First Task, despite her demonstration of excellent duelling skills (the illusions showing a few flashes from the mock battle), but those had later come in handy in the Fifth Task, which she'd won with seeming ease. She'd also gotten the highest score in the Third Task, using mind magic to completely overwhelm her dragon, the same talent also providing her a good (but not excellent) score in the Second Task. On the other hand, Cæciné had done poorly on the healing tests — her work had been barely passable, only a shade better than Liz, who'd managed to accidentally 'kill' one of her patients — and had lost every single one of her matches in the quidditch tournament. Cæciné had spent fully half of the Tournament in first place, the way scores had bounced back and forth meaning she was only three points away from the leaders — this Task didn't seem like it would be in her favour, but she might have a surprise up her sleeve, it was anyone's guess whether she'd be able to close that distance today.

On the other hand, Cedric's score had been very consistently good, but not excellent. After a somewhat disappointing performance in the First Task, he'd regularly gotten fives (out of seven), showing a consistent level of competency but not quite enough to put him over his competitors. The exceptions were the Sixth Task, where his team had won handily against Cæciné's and barely scratched out a win against Ingrid, but lost every other match, putting him in second to last above Cæciné, and in the Fourth Task, where his proficient and orderly healing work had him tying for first place. As consistent as his performance had been so far, it was a good bet that he'd come up with something, but there was really no telling whether it would be good enough.

There had been cheering for Ingrid and Cæciné, but for Cedric it was thunderous, a lot of screaming and whistling and pounding of feet, some chanting coming from somewhere in the stands — Zabini actually had to stop to let the crowd calm down multiple times before she could keep going. Of course, the crowd only burst into cheering all over again when Zabini introduced their second-place Champion, two points above Cedric and only one point under the leaders, because Viktor Krum hadn't stopped being an international celebrity at any point over the last several months.

Krum had made a very strong first showing, excellent flying and battlefield transfiguration and tactics carrying the win in the First Task for Durmstrang, but then had done poorly in the Second and Third Tasks, penalised for inadvertently starting a fight in muggle Edinburgh and accidentally destroying a bunch of dragon eggs. His mediocre performance in the healing Task had been followed with an excellent showing in the duelling tournament, winning the senior division as handily as Cæciné had the junior. (As Zabini spoke, there was an illusion projected of the final match of the tournament, Cedric trying to match Krum's transfiguration but getting turned on his back foot when he abruptly switched tack and started blasting things to pieces with curses and elemental spells, quickly overwhelmed.) And, naturally, he'd easily won the quidditch tournament — another interruption of cheering from the crowd — the only teams to put up any resistance at all being Delacour's and Liz's — twice, once in the qualifying matches and an even closer match in the final. Krum was a very strong and creative duellist, and a brilliant flyer, but he tended to lag in the less direct Tasks, so this was likely to be difficult for him.

Zabini's frank comment immediately resulted in a roar of boos from some sections of the crowd, but Dorea didn't think she was wrong. Krum didn't strike her as the artsy type.

The first of their Champions tied for the lead was Fleur Delacour. (Zabini seemed to be introducing tied Champions in alphabetical order.) Delacour's performance so far had been very consistently good or excellent. She'd put up a very strong showing in the First Task — some judges had commented that she'd had the best personal performance, but had been let down by her team — and had breezed through the Second Task with no difficulty at all, said in a way that suggested her middling score wasn't fair. Which, honestly, it probably wasn't — the judges were definitely biassed in their own ways. She'd easily put her dragon to sleep (Zabini again implying her scoring was unfair), and had tied Cedric's and Ingrid's perfect score in the healing Task. Her weakest scores had been in the most recent Tasks, eliminated in the semifinals for the Fifth Task (by Cedric, in fact), and barely making third place in the Sixth Task. Given the event of the day, Zabini assumed they could expect a better performance from Delacour today — she'd even used performative magic once already, to put her dragon to sleep — so she was likely the Champion to beat today and going forward.

Liz's named was met with another outburst of applause, perhaps even louder and dragging longer than for Cedric — smiling to herself a little, Dorea couldn't help thinking that, if Liz were listening to this right now, she was probably very embarrassed. Her performance so far had been consistently excellent, with only a few down spots. She'd put up a very strong showing in the First Task, helping to hold her team's base against superior forces and personally downing both Ingrid and Cæciné, and then again in the Second Task, her team breezing through their series of riddles with hardly any hesitation at all. (In large part due to Hermione interpreting their instructions, but selecting a good team was part of the Task, so that counted.) Her staring contest with a literal dragon in the Third Task had been very dramatic, followed by her worst performance so far in the Fourth Task, the only one of the Champions who didn't manage to successfully treat all of their 'patients'. She'd done very well in the Fifth and Sixth Tasks, only losing to Cæciné and Krum respectively in the final matches, her scores in the early Tasks more than enough to keep her in the lead despite recent setbacks. Today's event didn't seem to be in line with Liz's demonstrated skills, but more than once over the course of the Tournament she'd pulled tricks out of her sleeves nobody was expecting of a mage of her age, so it was truly anyone's guess how it would turn out.

Dorea knew Liz must be planning something big, she'd spent a fair amount of time working on it in private over the last few weeks. It would be a surprise, though, she'd refused to answer any questions about it. Hermione was the only one who knew anything — she'd admitted that she'd helped Liz refine whatever it was — but she was keeping the secret too, more than once had just gotten up and left when people stubbornly kept asking. All she'd said was that they'd be impressed, and maybe to bring some tissues or a handkerchief along.

Honestly, she was a little jealous that Hermione and Liz had remained as close as they'd ever been, and here Dorea was left out of the loop. But she realised that was mostly her own damn fault, so.

There was a brief pause in Zabini's announcements, presumably waiting for something to be straightened out before going straight into the first performance, chatter from the crowd increasing a little as they waited. Raising his voice a little over the noise, Sirius said, "Lady's got a point, about this not being Liz's game — doesn't exactly strike you as an artsy sort of girl, does she. Do you have any idea what she's going with?"

Dorea shrugged. "Hermione does, but I don't."

"And I'm still not telling you," Hermione said — leaning back a little to look at them over her shoulder, her hair brushing against Dorea's legs. "I think she has a good shot of winning, honestly, but who knows what the other Champions will be doing. Delacour might do well, I think."

If Dorea had to guess, she was probably thinking of the dragon Task, when Delacour put hers to sleep with a song. That was a demonstration that she already had talent with performative magic, if nothing else — and her singing voice really was very nice — but she was maybe forgetting that Delacour had been penalised for influencing the crowd that day. Granted, it was possible that might not be a problem this time — arguably, the point of performative magic was to influence the crowd, it was a different situation from an unintentional spillover. Unless certain judges had only been using that as an excuse to mark down the only nonhuman in the Tournament, in which case those circumstances would obviously still apply, it was hard to say.

"Bloody Gryffindors," Sirius groaned, sarcastically, "keeping their friends' secrets for them, what is this shite? Obviously it's better to not be loyal to your friends when it's inconvenient for the best godfather in the world."

"I guess I'm a bad Gryffindor, then." Hermione turned back forward, obviously dropping the subject, muttering with her aunt in French.

Nudging her in the side with an elbow, Dora said, "Hey, you really don't know anything about what she's doing? I thought you were just playing dumb earlier."

Dorea sighed. "No, Dora, I really don't know. We're not that close anymore, she doesn't tell me things."

"...Oh." Dora was quiet a moment, blinking to herself and frowning off into the distance. It wasn't really that much of a surprise that she hadn't noticed, Dorea guessed — she'd been very busy with her Auror apprenticeship the last couple years, she hadn't been around much. After a few seconds, she muttered, leaning in close so Dorea could actually hear, "What happened? I mean, if you don't want to..."

She kind of didn't want to tell her, honestly. But it wasn't exactly a secret at this point — of course their family knew, and Hermione, she wasn't sure how many of their friends it'd spread to. (By how cautious Susan could be about it around her sometimes, she assumed at least some.) Admitting it probably wasn't a big deal at this point, it was, just, kind of embarrassing, in retrospect... "Um, she told me she likes girls, and I reacted...kind of badly." Dora's eyebrows arched up, her eyes flicking colours, Dorea added, "I'm better about it now, just, I'd already hurt her, and it's too late to fix that."

"Right. Okay." Her voice dropping even further, leaning in with a crooked smirk, "Well I hope you really are better about that, because I'm going to try to shag Maïa's pretty young aunt tonight."

...Well, that was a better target than Blaise, Dorea guessed. Except, "I'm pretty sure she's straight." That was the impression she'd gotten from the teasing over breakfast, anyway.

"I'm pretty sure that's a solvable problem," Dora said, her voice suddenly lower and obviously masculine — she hadn't actually changed her appearance at all, just making the point.

...Would she actually— Nope, that wasn't Dorea's business, she wasn't going to think about that anymore.

While Dorea was still trying to shake off her morbid curiosity — the idea that Dora would be willing to turn herself into a boy just so she could have sex with a particular person was a weird thought — Zabini's voice came back. "Apologies for the wait, but I'm told we're ready to start now. First up for today, is Ingrid Hannasdottir." She was temporarily interrupted by a surge of noise from the crowd (mostly from the Durmstrang section in the stands, little more than polite clapping from elsewhere). The door down there swung open, and Ingrid walked out — wearing plain trousers and tunic, a sack of some kind swung over one shoulder, she gave the crowd a shy sort of wave with her free hand. "All of the Champions have provided some basic information on their performance, so the judges may know precisely which elements are their own work, and may evaluate them accordingly. Ingrid's demonstration was designed herself, using techniques taught to her by a Master Tyra Holgersdottir of Jæren. Let's see what she has for us, shall we?"

Ingrid's performance was very plain and uninteresting, until suddenly it wasn't. She went up to the platform in the middle, set her bag down. The noise of conversation from the crowd increasing again as it became obvious nothing was happening right away, Ingrid started pulling out these...clay? They might be clay. They were bricks, roughly square, with markings on them that Dorea couldn't quite make out through the projection. Ingrid would pull out a brick, check the markings, and either set the brick aside or add it to the arrangement she was building, starting with a circle of bricks and then stacking them up. By the time she ran out of bricks, the circle wasn't perfectly even all the way around, higher in some places and shorter in others. The last thing she retrieved from her bag was a wooden box, she slid off the top to reveal some kind of glass (or maybe crystal) bowl — small, like the size of a somewhat large soup bowl, shimmering and glinting with refracted sunlight, enough that it was difficult to make out the exact shape. A couple seconds of fiddling, seeming to align something on the bowl with the markings on the bricks, and Ingrid gently set it down in the middle of the ring, nudged it a couple times a centimetre this way or that. Once she was satisfied, she turned and walked away, hopped off the platform...and then further, her footsteps leaving little flat spots in the clover, slowly springing back up in her wake.

She backed off a good twenty metres, at least, before she stopped, turned back to face the platform. For a moment she simply stood there — the quality of the projection was good enough that Dorea could see she was staring at the platform, taking big, slow breaths in and out. Then she made a sharp gesture with her right hand, as though grabbing something and yanking it back, the motion exaggerated with a backward step of her right foot. Then her left hand started moving, starting at her waist and rising in a spiralling motion, her fingers spread and twirling, until she reached her shoulder, where her hand turned to push straight upward with her palm — as she did, her right hand came up to meet her left, in the projection Dorea could cleary see her right pointer and middle finger coming to touch her left wrist, thumb and smaller fingers curled into a fist. She held that position for one breath, two.

Then she dropped her hands and started over. Leaning forward a bit so she could properly yank back, fingers twirling up and then palm pushing, right hand coming up to meet her left, fingers against her wrist, exactly the same as the first time. And she held that final pose again, for a moment.

And then she started over and did it again...and again...

...Was it just not working? "What's she trying to do?"

"Some kind of weather-witchery, I think," Sirius said. He was intently watching Ingrid, his eyes narrowed — not watching her through the convenient illusion projected up to them, but directly. Dorea knew he had pretty sensitive magesight, maybe he could make out something from here that she couldn't.

Hermione let out a long fascinated ooh sound, leaning forward. "Really? I've read about it, but I don't know..." She trailed off at one of her cousins starting to speak (in French), answered whatever question that was.

All right, then. Dorea was only vaguely familiar with the concept — it was one of those old forms of traditional witchcraft that had faded out of common practice at some point, in part because it required a natural aptitude that most people simply didn't have. (Sort of similar to mind mages or animagi in that way, but rarer.) They'd once been very valuable to farming communities and the like, but as they'd developed other means to ensure consistent harvests they'd become gradually less important, the numbers of capable weather-witches declining along with demand for them. There were still some, especially outside of Europe — they were particularly common (by comparison) in Africa and central Asia, she'd heard — but it was a far rarer discipline in the modern day than it used to be. There were almost certainly less than five capable weather-witches in all of Britain, and they were a relatively agricultural country, so they were probably even rarer in other European countries.

Assuming the Master Zabini referenced earlier was a weather-witch, she and Ingrid could literally be the only ones in all of Scandinavia. Though they might actually have as many as or more than Britain, when Dorea thought about it — they did tend to be into more traditional witchcraft up there than in southern Europe...

"Do we know how long this is going to take?" Blaise asked. "Weather magic is often pretty slow, and there's—"

Suddenly, instead of simply holding the pose Ingrid slashed down with her pointer and middle finger, and in a blink was reduced to a silhouette in front of an intensely bright flash of light, a deafening blast of thunder ringing through the stands and shivering through Dorea's bones.

Dorea cringed, nearly falling backward into Lily's legs, one hand pressing against her forehead and trying to cover her eyes — ow.

There was a lot of shocked shouting and chatter from the crowd, Dorea's ears still ringing, she felt a hand on her knee, tight with tension. "Hey Doe, you okay?"

"I'm fine, just..." She groaned, gesturing vaguely at her own head. "Not an epilepsy moment, just headache." Sirius's hand twitchily loosened, then lifted away a second later. She took a few breaths, the tension slowly dribbling out of her as the hard throb in her head softened, the ringing in her ears fading. It took a couple blinks to get her eyes to focus, finding the illusion in front of her.

Woah.

A colourful glass sculpture had appeared on the platform. A vaguely human-looking, feminine figure, standing on a low wave, another wave rising up behind her, the water a deep blueish-greenish, the edges sparkling in the light. The figure didn't seem to be entirely separate from the water, the colour only gradually transitioning into the red of her gown, seeming frozen in mid-flutter, the 'fabric' 'embroidered' in wandering curls and spirals in yellow and black and green, a shock of brilliant yellow visible under the shawl. The skin tone was oddly greenish, sleeve falling back to show most of one arm, hand raised in the middle of some gesture, head tipped back to look up toward the sky. The details in the gown were tiny, but, Dorea hadn't noticed before, where the wave curled down, as though about to crash over the figure's head, instead of foam there were dozens of flower blossoms, in a random mess as though they'd been tumbling along on top of the water, now frozen in place. The entire thing seemed to be made out of one huge piece of glass, colours smearing together in places and in others sharp and jagged, shining and shimmering in the sunlight...

How did she do that?

As the surprise gradually wound down, there were some appreciative ooh noises here and there, gradually taken over with clapping, shouting and whistling from some directions, growing louder and louder as the seconds went by. Ingrid gave a somewhat stiff bow toward the judges, before turning and walking back toward the entrance, occasionally nodding or waving up at one part or another of the stands.

"No seriously," Dorea said, her voice feeling a little shaky (still unsettled by the lightning striking far too nearby), "how did she do that?"

Sirius shrugged. "Beats me. I'd guess those blocks she set up were enchanted to define the shape, and filled with some kind of alchemical catalyst. But that really is just a guess, not something I know very much about. Really very good work, didn't see that coming — and using a lightning bolt to make a bloody statute is awesome. Very metal, I like it."

Dorea rolled her eyes...but she had to admit, it was very dramatic. And impressive, the detail she'd managed to get out of that...

Some Tournament workers showed up to remove the statute — it took them a moment to figure out how to detach it, apparently melted in place — and do some minor repair work on the platform. The intensity of the lightning had also scorched some of the clover nearby, but it looked like they had a greenspeaker on staff — one person in a robe circled the platform, one hand hovering at their hip, the damaged clover springing back to full health in their wake. After a couple minutes, Zabini's voice was back, praising Ingrid for her clever exploitation of weather magic, again reminding the audience that everyone's scores would be presented together at the very end. Gathering a basis of comparison, Dorea guessed.

Krum was next — unsurprisingly, the crowd went mad, lots of shouting and screaming and jumping around, she could feel the stands vibrating beneath her, the noise grinding into her skull. After a few seconds, Sirius cast a paling around their group that cut down the noise somewhat, that was much better, thank you. Zabini tried to get her announcements out over the cheering, not helped when Krum actually appeared on the field, accompanied by a second boy, both in their Durmstrang uniforms. It was somewhat difficult to understand what Zabini was saying, but Dorea thought she named the second boy, and explained the...something was done primarily by Krum, with some advice from...someone, and adjustments from the second boy. The pair didn't walk to the middle of the field, where the platform stood, instead angled halfway between the platform and the edge of the arena floor. They spaced out some metres, Krum on the left and the other boy on the right, and drew their wands.

It very quickly became obvious that this was a duelling match. Not an actual fight, she meant a show, choreographed ahead of time. She knew that was a thing that people did, sometimes, though it was more common to do it with, like, quarterstaffs or (fake) swords or something, or even just completely unarmed — wands were disfavoured for that kind of performance, for whatever reason. Aunt Cassie had brought Dorea to a couple shows, years ago now, mostly during the few trips they took out of the country — the 'art' was much more popular in places like the northern Italian states, or Spain and Portugal — though it'd been a while now. From what she'd been told, there tended to be some overlap with professional duellists, but it was actually more common for people doing it to be dancers, or sometimes actors — which made perfect sense, since often this kind of show would be a scene in the middle of a ballet or play or something. Also, they were normally accompanied by music.

The performance from the pair of Durmstrangers was underwhelming, to say the least. It was impressive enough in its own way, she guessed, just kind of bland? Since they were just showing off, they could whip out bigger flashier magic than they usually had time for in normal duels, Krum filling the air with flying discs and balls, wolves or boars or owls joining the fight. At one point, Krum conjured a huge bloody bear, to catch an oversized boulder flying at him, his 'opponent' once got a little tornado going. Like, the magic was kind of impressive, but the performance was slow-paced, very obvious they were each waiting for the other person to be ready for the next move, and it wasn't as flashy as it could be. Maybe Dorea was biassed, having seen actual professional performances before, but she didn't think it was very good.

By the gradual increase in conversation going on around them, Sirius to one side slumping in place a little and looking very bored, Dorea guessed she wasn't the only one who thought so. Dora had even stopped paying attention entirely, leaning over her knees to chat with Hermione's aunt in somewhat awkward-sounding French.

...Dorea was pretty sure her silly cousin was flirting. She wasn't sure what gave her that impression — the way Dora was kind of looming over Sébastienne in the row in front of her, something about the smiling? It didn't seem like she was bothering Sébastienne too badly, at least, she seemed more bemused than anything. So, whatever, that just wasn't Dorea's business, she guessed...

Eventually Krum's performance came to an anticlimactic end. As Krum and his partner walked off the field, the applause was relatively muted, apparently even his fame not enough to make up for his lacklustre showing. A few people came out to repair the field again, the chewed-up ground smoothed over, the greenspeaker calling up more clover to fill the gaps left behind. They were at it a little longer than the first time, the damage left behind by the duel spread over a larger area — the greenspeaker even needed to take a short breather partway through — the noise of countless conversations in the crowd building into a constant low roar, filling the air.

Good thing Sirius had put up that paling for them — as loud as the crowd was even through the barrier, Dorea would end up with such an awful headache by the end of the event...

"And it seems we're ready for our next performance." The noise filling the arena softened significantly as Zabini's voice was again carried out — not dropping to nothing, of course, but enough that Dorea could actually hear what she was saying. "Third on the schedule is one of our first-place Champions, Elizabeth Potter of Hogwarts." There was another burst of cheering, as the door out to wherever the Champions were waiting swung open again, Liz stepping out onto the field of clover. In one of those somewhat old-fashioned-looking linen dresses she'd taken to wearing lately — Seer-friendly clothing she'd ordered special, according to Padma — she had a large cloth bag slung over one shoulder, presumably holding whatever materials she needed for whatever she was doing.

Her step hitched shortly into the arena — the projections for the audience switched on in time to catch her looking rather taken aback, blinking up at the stands, which was kind of funny. She'd said in previous Tasks that she couldn't hear the audience at all down there, apparently that was different this time.

Once the cheering had calmed down somewhat, Liz continuing on to the platform in the middle, Zabini continued. "Miss Potter's demonstration will involve some manner of projected illusions — the projections built into the wards will be turned off for the duration, so as to not interfere. The device used to generate them was adapted from a book, though Miss Potter performed the enchanting herself. The content of the projection is entirely original work, with some assistance in the planning process from Hermione Granger, a fellow fourth-year student at Hogwarts." There was some muttering in the student stands at that, various people around turning to look in their direction — their friends knew Hermione had helped, but it seemed that wasn't common knowledge — but Hermione was ignoring it, just watching Liz approach the platform at the middle.

After a moment of hesitation, glancing around, Liz stepped up onto the platform. Her wand appeared in her hand, she cast some kind of charm right in the middle of the platform, before shrugging off her bag and sinking down to her knees, facing the stands. Reaching into the bag, she pulled a pair of what looked like potion racks with some kind of cover on top, held on by a scarf tied around. Setting those down one to each side, she then pulled out a pair of padded cotton bags, unwrapping them to reveal the same clay blocks they used for practice in Runes class, covered in glyphs and inset with little metal discs and wires. The materials were obviously basic, but that certainly looked like complicated enchanting work — definitely a more complex project than Dorea could do at this point.

But then, that wasn't really a surprise, was it? Liz had been playing around with her own enchanting projects for over a year now. How well Liz did in different classes was very mixed, but Runes was one of her best subjects. That did look rather advanced for her age, which was appropriate, because Liz was advanced for her age.

Liz set one of the identical devices on each side, the racks about at her knees and the devices more toward her heels. Finally, she retrieved a thick roll of paper, tossing the now empty bag aside, when she dropped the paper in front of herself it unravelled into a large, floppy sketchbook of some kind. Sitting back on her heels, she flipped the book open to the first page — Dorea couldn't make out the contents through the projection — and untied the knotted scarves and lifted away the covers, revealing dozens and dozens of reservoirs, the clear crystal sparkling in the sunlight.

At that point, the projections abruptly cut out. It was a little hard to see, as far away as the platform was — Liz being quite small probably didn't help — but Dorea didn't think she was starting right away. It looked like her head dipped a little, her hands resting loose in her lap. Gathering herself for whatever she was about to do, Dorea guessed.

She started moving after a moment, but it was hard to tell from here. Made some kind of sharp gesture, her hands going to the devices at her sides, one and then the other... "What's she doing?"

"Attuning them, I think," Sirius said. "It looks like she cut her fingers and drew some kind of rune on the little bronze plates on those things — I can't tell which rune from here, but that she's attuning the enchantments to better sync with some part of the show is my best guess."

...

So, if Dorea understood correctly, Liz was, just, openly doing blood magic in public? Not that she could really say she was surprised, but honestly, Liz...

It was hard to tell from here, but it looked like Liz was removing one of the reservoirs from each rack, fitting them into the devices. And then there was a sudden hard thrum — not a physical feeling so much as a magical one, some kind of echo carried through the magical environment — and an oversized illusion appeared in the air, rising in a cone over Liz's head nearly as tall as the stands. The image was somewhat murky, shades of black and grey in blotches, it wasn't until a flicker of zigzagging blue-white light shot through it that Dorea realised they were supposed to be storm clouds. As vague as the image was, there was something almost calming about it, cool and heavy and—

No wait, that wasn't her feeling — that was something being pushed on her, part of the magic Liz was doing. It was very subtle, less like normal compulsions more like the influence proper performative magic had on people, or that of veela and lilin. Dorea didn't think Liz could do that kind of magic directly — not to mention she didn't have anything near the power necessary to affect the whole crowd — it must be something she'd enchanted those devices to do.

There was a little hiccough in the magical pressure around her, the illusion winked out and was replaced by another — very quickly, like blinking her eyes. The storm clouds above and the ground below, the bland blocky shapes of suburban houses, a heavy surge of anticipation, and lightning stabbed downward, striking the ground—

Another image, a woman — bland and featureless, really more an outline than anything, not the focus of the image — lifting a baby off of the ground, at the centre of a circle in the grass charred black. The baby had a mop of messy black hair, her chest slashed with a tangle of dark red messy wounds, leaking thin trails of blood. Dorea was mostly sure the baby was a girl, anyway — it didn't look like she was wearing anything, but shadows seemed to be clinging to her, almost physical, blurring her form somewhat, including the, er, obvious parts.

Another image, indoors now, the woman talking to a larger, broader figure, a man — neither the man nor their surroundings were in my detail at all, just the outline, the colours vague and washed out, the girl the only part properly in focus. There was no sound, the figures making vague gestures at each other—

And another image, a creeping edge of dread slipping down Dorea's spine, the girl was set down on the floor inside of a small, empty space, and the door was closed, the projection turning solid black, and...

Oh.

Not just a small, empty space — a cupboard.

Oh, no. This story was going to be autobiographical, wasn't it?

There was a somewhat longer pause between images, and then the next came on, accompanied with a subtle feeling of exhaustion. A kitchen/dining area, again just vague shapes with little detail, but the impression Dorea got from it was a bit dated — as in not a modern kitchen, but more like some preindustrial farmhouse or something. The girl (who Dorea assumed was supposed to be some fantasy version of Liz) was older, maybe primary school age, with a tangled mane of raven-black hair and wrapped in wafting shadows, especially below the waist, washing out any specific detail. Oddly, the wounds on her chest still looked fresh, still weeping thin lines of blood, not sure what that was supposed to mean. It must be referencing the scars on her chest, obviously, but Dorea didn't know why she'd decided to show them like that. The girl was balancing some food — indistinct, vaguely looking like crumpets and sausages — on a pair of plates, moving from the kitchen area to the dining area—

Another cut, showing the man, the woman, and another small child (rather larger and rounder than the girl) eating at the table — this time Dorea could make out a roast, potatoes and carrots, some kind of pudding topped with whipped cream — in the background, half-hidden by shadows clinging in a corner, the girl was sitting on the floor with a few scraps of bread, gnawing on shavings of potato skins, a subtle tiredness itching at Dorea's eyes, hunger aching in her stomach—

In a tiny dark space — the cupboard again — feeling comfortable, warm, the girl was drawing on the walls, blobs of colour suggesting flowers and trees and houses, hanging over them a large bird, black wings outstretched—

Another image, a slight hint of nervousness tingling at the back of Dorea's neck, the man and woman and child were in somewhat nicer clothes — though again, the details were more hinted at than shown, more vibrant colour and a glint of metal — clearly going out somewhere, the girl — seemingly still clothed only in clinging wavering shadows — watching them and looking a little uncomfortable. They were turning to leave, the girl moved to follow them—

Confusion and disbelief rocking through her, sudden and intense enough for a second it felt like the bench was tilting beneath her, dizzy, the girl staggered back, her hand coming up to her face, looking up at the man, who still had a hand threateningly raised, obviously having just struck her...

Apparently, if Dorea was reading this right, Liz's reaction to being hit by her uncle had just been confusion. Trying to stay calm, not lingering on the feeling being pushed on her, she grit her teeth — she had a feeling this was going to get worse before it got better.

Another cut, showing the girl inside of the cupboard again, the walls had been painted over a plain stark white, covering the drawings, the girl pressing a hand against the wall, Dorea's stomach squirming and her head spinning with confusion and hopelessness, her eyes stinging—

The girl was outside, in a garden — again, not much detail, rows of green speckled with blobs of coloured flowers — carrying a pot with some kind of plant in it. The other child was there, tripped her, the pot falling and the plant spilling out, cold dread dropping through Dorea, her stomach sinking, shadows started to sprout from two spots high on the girl's back—

She was being yanked along by the man, shoved against the wall, fear crackling along Dorea's spine, and the length of a whip was extending from the man's hand, snapping in at the girl—

Back in the cupboard, the girl curled up on the floor, new wounds slashed across her back to match the ones on her chest, both leaking thin streams of blood, shaking with horror and head spinning with confusion, the girl hugging herself and shivering, Dorea couldn't look away—

And then another image, in the kitchen again, the girl — still bleeding from wounds on both sides, hand-sized blobs of shadow sprouting high on her back — working at the stove, tired and sore — communicated to Dorea through the magic as just a vague, directionless ache—

There was a flash of white and red, a hard jolting feeling making Dorea jump in her seat, and then simmering pain and exhaustion and hopelessness, the girl curled up in the dark again—

The girl was out in the garden again, doing something in one of the beds, hot and tired and sore and thirsty, the sun beating down on her—

There was a flash of white and red, a hard jolting feeling making Dorea jump in her seat — again — and then simmering pain and exhaustion and hopelessness, the girl curled up in the dark. She thought that was the exact same image from before, but it was hard to tell...

The girl was in a bathtub — again little in the way of detail, just the vague shapes — the shadows sprouting from the backs of her shoulders noticeably larger now, and then the man was there, a hard surprised thrum shooting through Dorea, feeling hot and shivering with humiliation, and then the man was yanking her out of the tub and—

There was a flash of white and red, a hard jolting feeling and then simmering pain and exhaustion and hopelessness, the girl curled up in the dark — definitely the same image, and it made Dorea jump again, she couldn't help it, she wasn't even sure what to call that feeling, but it took her by surprise every time, a hot ache starting to build in her throat and her eyes prickling—

The family eating at the table again, the girl sitting half-hidden in a corner, she didn't seem to be eating anything at all, Dorea's stomach tight with hunger and fear, an ache of exhaustion spreading through her limbs—

Exhausted and sore and cold and empty, the girl was sitting up a tree, looking up at the sky, a few V-shapes of a flock of birds flying by—

Back in the cupboard, aching and hungry and cold but simmering with a tight hard feeling Dorea didn't know how to put a name to, pressing her hand to the wall again, the shadows in the small space seeming to twist, looming up over the girl in a pair of arches—

In the tree again, the sky above crowded with more birds in flight, anticipation hard in her throat and an odd giddiness bubbling in her stomach, the girl crouched on a branch, the shadows sprouting from her shoulders seeming to stretch and shiver—

Fear simmering through her, but along with a hard sort of denial, Dorea turning twitchy with nerves, the man was throwing the girl against the wall again, the whip unravelling from his hand—

A surge of a hard tense feeling Dorea didn't know how to describe filling up her chest, the blobs of shadow sprouting from the girl's back abruptly surged up into a pair of outstretched wings — they didn't seem to be covered in feathers, instead just made out of swirling flickering shadow — and the man staggered back, the whip in his hand bursting into flames—

The girl was surging up off the ground, the shadowy wings gently flapping, the house receding beneath her, feeling light and hot and free, the feeling bubbling in Dorea's stomach, an intense almost dizzying sort of giddy glee, burning tense in her throat and stinging in her eyes—

The next image was just the girl flying against a backdrop of cloudy sky, the feeling that came with it cool and calm and relaxed. Liz held it much longer than the others — if Dorea had to guess, giving the audience a moment to catch their breath. Didn't know about anyone else, but Dorea certainly needed it, her throat thick and her eyes wet. She took a few deep breaths, wiping at her face, trying to smooth out the shivering in her fingers.

That had been a lot, that was all. It would have been difficult enough just to watch, but with the feelings Liz was putting into it, just...

The cool wave of calm pressing down on her started to waver, weakening — perhaps intentionally, but Dorea suspected Liz's hold on whatever she was doing wasn't up to keeping it going this long. There was another subtle skip in the pressure on the magical environment around her, and the image was replaced with another, very similar, the girl gliding through the air. She was still half-hidden with shadows clinging to her, thin trails of blood still leaking from the wounds on her chest and back, and she was flying closer to the ground now — mostly featureless, green and brown and grey blobs — and again Dorea felt exhaustion pulling at her, a generalised soreness. Sort of like the ache she might get from doing more physical things than she was used to, but not focussed in any particular place, distributed evenly. (She guessed Liz's magic could convince people's minds they were feeling a bit sore and tired, but couldn't get any more specific than that.) The way the girl was gliding, the ground nearby, Dorea guessed she was coming in for a landing—

And then there were people below, watching her come in, Dorea reflexively cringing a little as her skin crawled, her spine stiffening, feeling unnervingly observed. Tension crackling through her, hesitating, shadowy wings making a big backflap to slow down as she came in for a landing—

Confusion and surprise lurching through her, the people on the ground threw things at the girl — rocks or something, not enough detail to tell very well — and brandishing weapons — spears and swords, looked like—

The girl surged up into the air again, safely above the arc of more rocks thrown at her, frustration clawing hot in Dorea's throat, the ache of exhaustion only getting worse—

She tried to land again, as she was still gliding down there was already an angry crowd below her, pulled up again, tired and hot and thirsty—

Below, there was a little girl dangling off the edge of a roof, clearly in trouble, the girl circled around, wariness and nerves squirming in Dorea's stomach, her skin prickling—

With an odd cool tingle in her chest Dorea didn't know how to read, the girl approached the dangling child, scooped her up out of the air, drifted down to the ground—

They were standing on the ground now, the child backing away from the girl, obviously terrified — the details still weren't very good, but enough of the body language and her face came through to pick out that much. The girl just watched, a hot sharp lurch through Dorea's chest, it hurt, but it wasn't really a surprise, coming with a bland, tired sort of resignation, as though she hadn't expected any different—

A blob of angry people approaching, the girl threw herself up into the air before they could get close, the resignation blunting the frustration somewhat, just feeling tight and cold and sore—

Ahead and below, there was a figure with bright red hair, surrounded by three other children, pushing and kicking the red-haired one between them. A funny ache in Dorea's chest, the girl watched, still tight and hot with exhaustion, stomach squirming with something...

Some kind of hot-cold, sharp, burning feeling Dorea didn't know how to read surging in her chest — angry, sort of, but that didn't feel like quite the right word — the girl came slamming down to the ground close to the red-headed one, a wave of fire shoved out at the attackers, they turned and fled—

The red-headed girl had been knocked down to the ground, blinking wide-eyed up at the girl, some kind of feeling squirming in Dorea's stomach, her skin warm and prickling — almost embarrassed, uncomfortable being watched. This one wasn't afraid or running away, like the little girl from before, a prickle of confusion—

But the girl took up into the air again anyway, burning with exhaustion, a cold numbness dragging over Dorea—

Not far away the land ended, the sea spreading out into the distance. The girl wavering in the air, a wave of tingles sweeping over Dorea, her hair almost standing on end, something simmering in her throat—

Hard cold resolve dipping into her stomach, numbing, the girl turned toward the water, slowly flapping on—

Below, following the girl's flight to the sea, was the red-headed girl from before. A prickle of confusion coming through the numb cold, the girl slowing somewhat—

And there were more people down there, not just the red-headed girl, waving up at her, no spears or swords in hand, nobody trying to throw rocks or anything, the confusion growing sharper, along with a hard lurch through her chest, her skin tingling and hot in her throat, yearning

The girl hung in the air for a moment, looking out over the sea, an odd prickle of nerves crawling over Dorea, an edge of fear, and she turned away—

She circled over the people following her, the red-haired girl jumping and waving, smiles on faces, beckoning her down. Confusion and suspicion simmering, wariness churning in her stomach, warm and twitchy and tense—

The girl landed a short way away from the group, and the red-headed girl was running at her, nerves thrumming through Dorea sharp and hot—

And then the red-haired girl was hugging her, Dorea's head spinning from a wave of shock and confusion, something clawing at her throat—

The redhead was leading the girl back to the rest of the group by the hand, crackling and squirming with anxiety and incomprehension and reluctance—

But the group stayed all smiles, closing in around her warm and soft and almost protective, Dorea rather bewildered — a copy of Liz's confusion that anyone actually wanted anything to do with her, she'd guess — her throat tightening with some kind of feeling—

There was another cut, and they were indoors somewhere, the girl clutching a mug of some kind of hot drink with both hands. The red-haired girl was poking at the shadows that made up the girl's wings, a dark-haired man applying a greenish substance to the wounds on her back, the ones on her chest already bandaged over, Dorea feeling tight and warm, an odd, overwhelming mix of shivering exhaustion and confusion and affection—

A hard knot tightening in Dorea's throat, her eyes prickling, the girl was pinned between the man and the red-haired girl, their arms around her, a blonde girl playing with her hair — plaiting beads into it by the look of it — feeling tight and warm and comfortable and safe, relief so intense she was all but shaking with it, tears streaking down the girl's cheeks—

Pulling back a bit, showing the group around the girl, more people looking on, the girl's shadowy wings spreading out and curling around, enveloping the whole room and everyone in it, warm and soft and prickly with affection and disbelief and gratitude—

And then the illusion winked out, the pressure of the magic around her vanishing — the arena almost seemed to lighten, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. It was over.

Dorea was left shivering in her seat, her breath harsh and shaking, hard to get past the thick hot knot in her throat. She couldn't put a word to what she was feeling exactly, but it was a lot, swirling and dizzying, her eyes watering. She covered her face with both hands and tried to breathe, swallowing to loosen up her throat a bit — the interruption got her a little out of breath, of course, so maybe that wasn't the best idea. Ugh, she'd realised this was going to be bad very early on, but she'd like to calm down now, please...

At a touch on her arm she twitched a little, but after a second she realised it was just Sirius. His arm wrapping around her, she shuffled closer against his side, turning her face into his shoulder. They weren't exactly very touchy most of the time — Sirius was probably more cautious about it than he needed to be, aware that they'd been practical strangers a year ago, didn't want to push too hard — but the hug was very much appreciated at the moment, his arm around her tight and warm, fingers coming around to gently stroke her hair. The tears leaking through her eyes a little bit, she just ignored it, leaning into Sirius's side, focussing on the pressure around her and the sweet flowery perfume (striking Dorea as rather feminine, but she realised purebloods weren't so picky about that), taking slow, deep, somewhat shaky breaths.

(Her relationship with Sirius was still a bit weird and awkward at times, but he did try.)

It seemed like Dorea wasn't the only person who needed a moment. She wasn't looking, her face turned too much into Sirius's shirt, but there wasn't an immediate wave of applause, just a low undifferentiated hissing — from nearby, she heard shuffling, some sniffling, clearing of throats. Gradually, though, the noise did start to increase, clapping seeming to start in multiple different places in the stands and gradually spread, eventually joined with whistling...

By the time Dorea looked up — not leaning very far away from Sirius, just turning her head so she could see out — the projections had been turned back on, Liz already most of the way done packing up her things again. Her head was turned downward, not looking at the crowd, looking a little stiff and uncomfortable. Dorea noticed her face was very, very red.

She hoped Liz wasn't regretting this, because that was... Well. Dorea wasn't sure what to call it, honestly.

As Liz started walking off toward the exit, Sirius give her a little wiggle, muttered, "Are you all right, Doe?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Taking a last swipe at her eyes, a final subtle sniffle, she pushed herself upright — Sirius's arm resisted for a second before loosening and pulling away. "That was just a little overwhelming, you know."

"...Yeah." Sirius didn't say anything more than that, grimly watching Liz slip away through the door. She noticed his eyes were a bit red, a slight flush on his cheeks and his throat.

There weren't any repairs to the field to do this time, but Zabini also didn't introduce the next Champion immediately. If Dorea had to guess, she realised that Liz's performance had been a bit much, and was giving the audience a few minutes to pull themselves together. She did announce that there were drinks and snacks available down below — they wouldn't be pausing that long, but still a few people here and there got up and moving, apparently deciding they needed a pick-me-up more than they needed to catch the next performance. Honestly, Dorea could probably use something to drink herself, but she still felt a little shaky, so.

She wasn't surprised, glancing back, to see Lily had snuggled up with Blaise, red-faced, her cheeks wet. She was a little surprised that Susan and Murphy were holding hands — Murphy noticed her noticing, ducking her head, wary, so Dorea turned back forward.

After turning the thought over for a moment, Dorea leaned forward, cleared her throat again. "Um, Hermione?"

"Yeah?" Hermione's voice sounded a little croaky, which wasn't really a surprise either.

"The little girl, the one that was falling but she brought down safely, and was scared of her after. That, er... Was that supposed to be me?" She remembered how it hurt, like a sudden hot stab in her chest, but also like it hadn't been a surprise, expected. And, that realisation she'd had on the train, helped along by Blaise and Hermione, that Liz believed she was a bad person — definitely something she'd internalised from her shitty childhood — was often a bit confused by people actually liking her, of course it wasn't really a surprise when people were afraid of her, but it still hurt...

Hermione glanced over her shoulder at Dorea, meeting her eyes. But she didn't say anything, turned back to face forward without a word.

Dorea winced — she was going to go ahead and take that as a yes.

Eventually, Zabini's amplified voice broke out over the arena again, starting the introduction for their next performance. Next up was Cæciné, along with a short list of additional people needed for her show. The choreography was done primarily by Cæciné herself, with a couple revisions from an unfamiliar name — perhaps a professor at Beauxbatons? — and the music was spliced together from a few different sources, planned out by Cæciné but the actual editing done by so-and-so — that was a veela name, Dorea was pretty sure. She hung up for a second on the use of the word "choreography" — she wondered what kind of performance this was to be that called for that term, before quickly realising it was probably a play-acted duel, like Krum's earlier. Though it did sound like Cæciné had arranged it to music and everything, so likely a far more professional version of it.

Cæciné walked out onto the clover field with...three more teenagers, and one adult. They were dressed plainly, if in a somewhat old-fashioned style — Cæciné's dress with a long, ankle-length skirt and a bodice laced up the front, the three teenagers in matching trousers and thigh-length tunics. Only the adult was in anything nice-looking, like an archaic military uniform of some kind, knee-high boots and a long deep blue jacket with red accents along the collar and the wrist and the hems, over a grey button-up shirt of some kind, the buttons and the like gleaming bronze in the sun. Dorea didn't recognise the uniform off-hand, but it looked like something that might be in some old period piece from, like, the Civil War or the Napoleonic Wars or something.

All four of the others were armed, but not with wands — two of the teenagers were carrying spears, one of them instead with a sword belted at his hip, and the adult also had a sword in a rather fancier-looking scabbard. Presumably they were all blunted to not be able to actually hurt anyone, but they certainly looked real from here. Cæciné didn't have any obvious weapon, instead just a short walking stick, too plain to be a proper staff used for casting.

Dorea was guessing the three teenagers would attack first, Cæciné would beat them up with her walking stick, and then take the sword to fight the adult. That was really the only that made any sense...unless they planned on having Cæciné lose...

"Damn, there really wasn't time to get down there," Blaise said. "Probably have to wait until everyone's done and they're finalising the scores, I guess."

Sirius turned to look over his shoulder, his knee nudging Dorea's leg. "Nah, there probably won't be time then either, that won't take long. Why, did you need something?"

While the crowd cheered — ticking up a bit when Cæciné made a quick little bow to the stands — the group spread out a bit, the three teenagers sticking together, the adult a few steps away from them, Cæciné several more metres ahead, nearer the platform in the middle. A few seconds glancing around, a few comments that couldn't be heard at all over the noise, and Cæciné waved a hand over her head.

"Lily could use something to drink, yeah."

"Mm, I wouldn't say no to a bottle myself."

"Well, I wasn't thinking wine, but..."

That wave must have been a signal they'd arranged ahead of time, because the music started up a moment later — fully orchestrated classical music, seemed to be, like might back up the actors in an opera or something. It started off with a light, bouncy melody, Cæciné carelessly walking over the clover, but after only a few bars a dark note started to slip into it as the trio moved to shadow her...

"I can go down to pick up a couple things, if we want," Remus said. "I could stand to stretch my legs anyway." Dorea was aware that Remus's joints could bother him sometimes if he stayed in one position too long, part of why he'd spent so many of their Defence classes idly pacing at the front of the room. Lycanthropy did gradually cause incremental joint damage, and he'd been infected a good three decades ago now, so.

There was then a jumble of people asking what they were likely to have down there and if Remus could bring them this or that, including some questions and requests in French — not even bothering to translate, since Remus spoke French just fine. Out on the field, Cæciné had 'noticed' the people following her, the music turning low and tense and anticipatory, glancing over her shoulder every couple steps...

As Remus was working up a list — on conjured paper, to help remember it all — Sirius asked if Remus had that kind of money on him, rather bluntly. He probably meant to offer to pay for it, but he could have been more delicate about it. Before Remus could answer, Dorea said, "I'll go with. I'm not much for this kind of performance anyway." She honestly didn't find violence entertaining, and had trouble understanding why so many other people seemed to — even quidditch was a bit much for her, honestly.

Sirius shot her a glance, frowning a little, but then just shrugged. "Sure, if you want. I'm guessing Delacour's might be a mite stressful too, if you want to stall long enough to try to miss it."

...He might be assuming part of the reason she was volunteering to go was because she was still feeling overwhelmed from Liz's show. Which she kind of was, so fair enough.

Once they had the list, she and Remus shuffled their way out of their row, Dorea nearly tripping and falling when she stepped on someone's foot. They were just reaching the aisle when there was a sudden uptick in the music, a thumping of percussion and jittery runs on strings — she glanced up to see the two teenagers with the spears were jabbing in at Cæciné, she spun and dipped out of the way, occasionally whacking one aside with her walking stick. It was way more elaborate than Dorea assumed would be done in a real fight — too much spinning, her hair and skirt whipping around, flashy flourishes of her stick — but it was also far more fast-paced than Krum's performance earlier, without the obvious pauses. And it looked like Cæciné's steps were even falling on beats more often than not, her and her attackers' movements tight and coordinated, obviously quite well done. Maybe not quite professional-level, and not her kind of thing, but still very good for amateurs.

Unless something went wrong later on in the show, Cæciné might actually end up winning this event — it really depended on whether some of the judges penalised Liz (and later Delacour) for influencing the audience...

The food stands were apparently in a hall covered by the seating further down, the opposite direction of where they'd come from. The aisle was mostly empty, most people's attention on the show and few moving around, so she and Remus were able to go straight down with little interruption, Dorea keeping one hand firm on the handrail and smoothly taking one step at a time. (More cautious than she probably needed to be, but her drop attacks back when the dementors had been around had made her a little paranoid about stairs.) After going down multiple sections, approaching the space for the judges and special guests at the front, they came to a little open square, with doors leading inside. Dorea took a quick glance up at the projections — Cæciné spinning inside the reach of one of the spears, a rapidfire series of blows with her walking stick at his arm and his chest and the back of his head, the hits matching the rhythm of an energetic burst of horns, before sweeping his feet out from under him, the spear flying from his hands — before turning to follow Remus inside.

It was noticeably warmer in here, within the environmental wards, and somewhat noisy, lines of people stretching out from this kiosk or another throughout the space. This space was maybe half as wide as the stands, and taller than she'd expected first time she'd been in here, the ceiling rising at an angle to match the stands above. (Though the angle didn't look quite right, less sharply vertical than it'd felt going down, there must be some space-manipulation trickery going on.) Dorea and Remus wandered around for a bit, looking over the food and drink stands in here — not quite the same as last time they'd been here, vendors had to re-apply for a licence with each event so they got a rotation of different people — seeing if they could find everything on their list, or what might work if they had to make substitutions...

Eventually they had a plan worked out, and got into one of the lines on their itinerary — the line for some kind of croquettes seemed to be rather short, they figured taking the shortest lines first made the most sense. (The lines for food were generally shorter than the ones for drinks, Dorea guessed fewer people were hungry at the moment.) They stood quietly for a minute, before Remus asked, "So, Dorea, how have you been? It's been a little while."

Dorea shrugged. "You know, all right. I've been a lot better since the dementors were removed from the school — still get migraines, but. Oh, you heard I have another baby brother, right?"

"I did, yes, but I haven't had the opportunity to see your mother yet. No problems there, I hope."

"No, it went fine. We're pretty sure Ian is a mage, so, there's that too."

"Well that's good — it can be difficult for muggleborns sometimes, when they're the only mage in the family."

Dorea wasn't technically a muggleborn, of course, but the same principle applied. "Yeah. There's been some personal drama going on this year but, you know, teenagers. How about you, how are things in France?"

"Well enough. I can hardly say I'm living the high life at the moment, but given how much more difficult it is for werewolves to get by in Britain, I have no complaints. Did you know France provides the potion for resident werewolves free of charge?"

"Oh, no, I didn't know that." That alone was probably reason enough to stay in France, when she thought about it — even the werewolves in the custody of the Ministry weren't given free Wolfsbane...

"It's part of a programme introduced under Comtois's Premiership, as I understand it. They didn't have the modern potion back then, of course, but there have been reforms to— Ah, we're about up, I think."

After picking up the croquettes, the package shrunk and carefully tucked into Remus's bag, they went by a pastry stand to pick up a couple things — Dorea hadn't planned on getting anything, but she bought a baked apple bun that caught her eye on the spur of the moment. They'd picked up a few bottles of juice and cider and butterbeer — in greater numbers than requested, but someone else might decide they wanted one, and the bottles were sealed so they would keep if they weren't all used — and slipped into the back of the line leading to a stand where they were selling wine. She still thought it was a little odd that selling bottles of wine at events was a perfectly normal thing to see at magical events, but maybe that was just her primarily muggle childhood speaking. Besides, there were a fair number of French people here, and everyone knew how the French could be about wine.

And this was the longest line they'd been in so far, which shouldn't really be a surprise, because everyone knew how the French could be about wine.

"How have you and Sirius been getting on?"

Dorea blinked, glanced over at Remus — that question was out of nowhere. "All right, I guess. Why?"

"I've been wondering. We don't talk much."

"...Really? You came here together and, you know, you were... I don't know, I just assumed."

Though, now that Remus drew her attention to it, Dorea couldn't remember if Sirius had even mentioned him to her at all. He would talk about his time at Hogwarts now and then, and Remus would come up as appropriate in those stories — he did edit out Pettigrew, or replace his name with insults, occasionally breaking to mutter curses, but Remus he just talked about normally — but when it wasn't in that context...

It was like James, reminiscing about the past but not talking about anything in the present. She hadn't noticed that until just now, honestly, hadn't been paying that much attention. Like she'd said, she'd just kind of assumed.

Remus sighed, drooping a little, for a blink seeming small and frail and weary. "It's... It's complicated. He'll be polite with me, but it isn't..." He frowned, glaring unfocussed into the near distance — when the line advanced, he took a step forward, then shuffled in place a little, uncomfortable. "When I came to see him, after the trial, the very first thing he said to me was a demand for an explanation for not checking in on Hazel. Liz, I mean, he was still reflexively calling her 'Hazel' at the time."

"...Ah." Dorea wasn't surprised by that, whenever it came up it was obvious that Sirius was still angry at anyone and everyone even indirectly involved with Liz's awful excuse for a childhood.

Probably most angry at Dumbledore — last Dorea had heard, he was still stubbornly refusing to even talk to him. Dumbledore had apparently been getting back in contact with some Order of the Phoenix people, since Voldemort was known to be in the country and there'd been suspicious activity from Death Eaters, but Sirius had so far resisted any attempts to get drawn back in. Maybe not the best idea, long-term, but Dorea couldn't say she didn't understand where he was coming from.

But being angry with Remus about it wasn't particularly rational...and a bit hypocritical, when she thought about it. Sirius was Liz's godfather, taking care of her was supposed to be his responsibility — and that wasn't the only responsibility he'd temporarily forgotten about in his attempt to get revenge on Pettigrew. She'd already forgiven him for that, so she couldn't really blame him for abandoning Liz either (that would be hypocritical on her part), but pinning it on Remus was just making excuses for himself. "What does he expect you should have done, anyway?" Dorea asked, hearing the exasperation on her own voice. "It's not like you even knew where she was, and, even if it would have been a good idea to try to get custody of her yourself, that would never have worked. It'd be too big of news, the papers would find out about you very quickly, and that would be the end of that." No way in hell would the Ministry let a werewolf claim custody of the Girl Who Lived, it would simply never happen.

"He knows that. He thinks I should have tried to insert myself into her life anyway, just to make sure she's being taken care of. I admit," he said, a dark, bitter tone slipping into his voice, "that he's not entirely in the wrong. I didn't know where she was, but there were all manner of objects at the house I could have used in a tracking spell. Finding her would have been trivial. It simply never occurred to me to do so. I did not want to complicate matters for her — and besides, Albus told me she was safe and cared for, so I believed him." The bitterness growing especially sharp toward the end, which was fair. Dumbledore had screwed up, badly — some of his opponents were hardly clean themselves, but most of the justifications for his removal from the various positions he'd held were completely legitimate.

"Surely he can't blame you for trusting Dumbledore. So did he, once." He could blame Remus for his self-hatred over being a werewolf keeping him away — she guessed that was what he meant by not wanting to complicate matters for Liz — but not that part.

Remus sighed again. "That's just the thing, Dorea: Sirius didn't trust Albus, not really. He followed the rest of us into the Order because we were his friends. For all your father's faults, loyalty is not one of them — he would have willingly laid down his life to protect any one of us, if it came down to it." There was a sharp edge to that, angry...at himself, Dorea would guess, for ever believing even for a second Sirius had been a traitor all that time. "He didn't like Albus's politics, could find him personally grating — he was very snide at Order meetings sometimes — but at least the Order was doing something. He was in the Order more for us than for him, and for the opportunity to directly fight the Death Eaters, and everyone at the time knew it.

"Sirius didn't follow Albus — he was an ally of convenience, nothing more. And what little faith he'd had in Albus's good will was shattered when he failed to protect James and Lily, and then abandoned him to rot for a dozen years in Azkaban without trial. He does not accept having trusted Albus as an excuse, he called me a fool when I said as much."

...That made a lot of sense, really, when she thought about it. "He's always been like that, hasn't he?"

Remus turned to look at her, blinking. "Like what?"

"I was just thinking, after the education vote, he was..."

"Ah, I think I heard something about him punching a Lord in the face and storming out."

"Yeah, he was... I don't know what to call it, exactly. He didn't like the final package, thought we'd compromised too much."

"Sirius doesn't believe in the virtue of compromise," Remus said — an odd, heavy tone on his voice that Dorea didn't know how to read. "He never has. To him, the morally correct thing to do is always to stand for one's principles, to fight for them if it comes to it, no matter the cost to oneself. To compromise is to surrender. Doing so may be necessary now and again, but there is no honour in it."

Dorea suspected the use of the word "honour" might be pointed, referring to some old, militaristic, aristocratic sense of personal virtue. That Sirius's principles might have changed, that his politics might be vastly different from those of the people around him growing up — but he was still a product of that environment, in other ways. After all, the House of Black had a long history of holding themselves apart, even from the rest of the nobility. She could imagine Nymphadora Black saying something very similar about the nature of compromise.

Thinking about that, how bitter Sirius had been about the education vote, his insistence that he couldn't play along anymore, was giving Dorea a creeping, wary feeling.

"I don't mean to— Your father is a good man, in his own way. I'm only trying to explain why it's been...difficult, to get reacquainted. I don't imagine the abandonment he felt at none of us doing anything about his imprisonment is any help." Not that Remus could have done anything about it — making a fuss about it would only have ended in getting himself in serious trouble anyway — but she guessed that was hardly an excuse to someone who didn't believe in the virtue of compromise. "It's complicated. I don't think our friendship will ever go back to the way it was."

Her stomach churning, Dorea said, "Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Kind of reminding me of what happened with me and Liz, honestly." Not as extreme of a situation, of course, but some of the themes were pretty similar. Which wasn't making her feel any better about it, really. Or about where Sirius and Liz being the way they were might lead, with the country as much of a mess as it was at the moment...

They lapsed into silence at that point, both of them retreating into their own thoughts. Remus didn't try to interrogate her about what had happened with Liz, which she honestly appreciated — today had already been emotionally stressful enough, she'd rather not get into it again.

By the time they got back out onto the stands, it looked like Cedric was just starting his performance — with how long they'd been in there, she was guessing that they'd missed Delacour's, which was probably for the best. Cedric was doing a lot of conjuration and transfiguration, transforming the area around the platform in the middle into some kind of stage, a low wall in a ring around, some standalone steps, a few oversized mesh balls, some big hoops, and then he was conjuring animals, smaller things like dogs and ducks, but also larger animals, like deer and lions and a bear and even a great bloody elephant — somewhat small for an elephant, Dorea thought, but still pretty damn impressive — the animated constructs moving around to...

Ah, he was putting on an old-fashioned circus animal-taming sort of thing, it looked like. Dorea wondered how he even knew about those — as far as she knew, they'd only ever existed on the muggle side.

There were some oohs and aahs from the crowd during the initial flurry of transfiguration, but as Dorea and Remus started up the stairs, the actual show starting up behind them, that mostly trailed off, gradually building into a low roar of hundreds of conversations going on all at once. Not a particularly entertaining performance, apparently. After a bit, there was a wave of giggles — they happened to be passing by some seats filled with younger students at the time — Dorea glanced over her shoulder to see Cedric was lecturing at one of the lions, complete with wagging finger in its face, one of the dogs snuck up behind him while he was 'distracted' and snatched away the loop in his hand, Cedric 'chasing' after it to another pattering of childish laughter. Okay, maybe it wasn't bad, but just meant for a younger target audience.

Cedric's performance went on for a little while, the animals doing various tricks, climbing up the stairs or jumping through the hoops or balancing on the balls or whatever — and occasionally they'd 'rebel' and 'refuse' to do what they're 'supposed' to do, sometimes to some more giggles, mostly from the younger students. Very silly, slapstick sort of thing, she guessed it was fine. By the time he was finishing up, he and the animals all bowing to the crowd — some of them having trouble with unnaturally contorting to stand on two feet like that, toppling over and flailing like overturned turtles, which Dorea guessed was also part of the show — Remus and Dorea had returned to their seats and passed around the things. Dorea ended up with some of the wine in a conjured cup, munching on her apple bun as Cedric cleaned up his conjurations. Before long everything was cleared away, and Cedric was walking toward the exit, summoning some applause from the crowd with a cheery wave.

Oh good, they had missed Delacour's performance — Zabini's voice rose over the stands again to say to that the judges would need a few minutes more to finalise the scoring. "So, what did Delacour end up doing?" Dorea asked Sirius.

"She recited a memory song. It's a veela tradition," he added, apparently realising she didn't know what that was, "they memorialise the life story of deceased family members in song, recite them at special events, holidays and anniversaries and the like. I know about them, but I've never heard one in person before — it's not the sort of thing they normally share with outsiders, I bet she needed to get permission to do it. It was nice, I enjoyed it, but it was very intense. You might not have liked it."

Probably not, no. Dorea didn't really like having her feelings jerked around by performative magic — she knew it was just part of many kinds of performing arts to mages, but it was unnerving and overwhelming sometimes. She was more comfortable with the way things were done in Britain, where such magics were far less common.

The arena was filled with the noise of countless ongoing conversations, in their little group mostly going over the events, who thought was going to win — their consensus was that it was probably going to be Liz or Cæciné — or random other gossip, about their friends or things going on outside of Hogwarts. Things had calmed down somewhat since the World Cup, but still somewhat tense, especially with nationalists running around making nuisances of themselves...

Dora was definitely flirting now — and it didn't seem to be going badly for her, either. Sébastienne had turned halfway around in her seat to better face her, Dora leaning over close, the two of them muttering in a mix of English and French. (Hermione's aunt's English wasn't excellent, very obviously accented and stumbling a little now and then, but Dorea suspected it was better than Dora's French.) It seemed to Dorea that Sébastienne still looked a little awkward, uncertain, but just in blinks now and then, all smiling and smirking, occasionally even giggling. Hermione would cut her an occasional confused glance, which Dorea took as a sign that she, at least, had thought her aunt was straight, and that this was as weird and unexpected to her as it seemed to Dorea.

Maybe it really didn't matter if the person was a metamorph? Or at least that Sébastienne was curious enough about it to, er, experiment. Which was a bloody strange thought to Dorea, but she guessed it wasn't her business.

After at least a few minutes — Dorea had finished her apple bun a while ago, but still had some wine left — Zabini's amplified voice broke out over the stands once again, the various conversations going on gradually dropping to a murmur. "Thank you for your patience, everyone. The judges have finished their deliberations, and we can move right along to the scoring. Let's have our Champions come back out, shall we?"

There was an explosion of cheering as the Champions stepped back out onto the clover filling the arena, unsurprisingly, Zabini didn't even try to continue talking over it. Sirius's sound paling had lapsed at some point — Dorea cringed against the noise, gritting her teeth, just for a couple seconds before he got it back up. The projections kicked back on, displaying an illusion of the six of them walking in a disorderly clump. Some of them waved up at the stands (sparking louder spikes in the cheering), but Liz seemed to be pretending the crowd wasn't there, stiffly walking with her arms crossed behind her back and her head ducked. The Champions reached the platform at the middle, but didn't step onto it, instead spreading out in front — in no particular order, it seemed like, just wherever they ended up.

It took a moment for Zabini to get the crowd to settle down enough to talk again, calling for their attention multiple times, an illusion appearing of her standing in front of the judges' table, holding up a hand for quiet. Eventually, she started, "As a reminder, all of the judges will give each Champion a score out of seven; those scores will then be averaged, and added to the Champion's running total. In the Final Task, Champions will be given advantages or disadvantages depending on their score — earning points now will give them an easier time claiming victory, but those trailing behind can still compete in the end.

"So, let's get on to our scores, shall we? Our first performance today was from Ingrid Hannasdottir of Durmstrang, who used a clever application of physical alchemy and weather-witchery to craft a sculpture out of glass." As Zabini spoke, an illusion came up, showing a couple seconds of Ingrid setting up the bricks, and then the lightning striking at a downward slash of her fingers, then the surprisingly complex glass sculpture, twinkling in the sun. There was a brief resurgence of applause at the summary, Ingrid giving a little shallow bow in response, Zabini waited a short moment before continuing on. "Yes, quite impressive. Let's see how the judges feel about it, shall we?"

Zabini stepped to the side a little, so they could better make out the row of judges. After a couple seconds, more or less in unison, all nine of them cast an illusion of a number over their head. Fours and fives, mostly, it looked like. The, er, younger Durmstrang judge — Dorea still wasn't certain how to pronounce his name — had given her a three, Ingrid's lowest score, despite representing her own school. On the other hand, she'd gotten two sevens, one from Dumbledore and another from Aritsa — the artist had stylised her illusion, the number jagged and splintering like a bolt of lightning itself, edged with petals, much like the falling wave from Ingrid's sculpture.

There was a mix of cheering and booing from the crowd, once it'd quieted down enough Zabini said, "There we have it. These average out to a final score of five — very respectable, congratulations, Ingrid." Ingrid gave another quick bow, there was some more applause, but somewhat muted, as the numbers faded out and Zabini stepped back into the middle of the projection. "Our second performance today was from Viktor Krum of Durmstrang, a competent exhibition duel choreographed by the Champion himself." There was a little bit of booing mixed in with the cheers as an illusion of bits from his turn were projected up, but Dorea suspected at least some of that was in response to Zabini's characterisation of his performance as only competent. "And what say our judges?"

Krum's scores were obviously worse, fours and threes and twos — Zabini came back after a moment to announce an average of three. In the illusion showing the Champions, Krum looked a little exasperated, but he didn't otherwise react, to the scores or the stubborn cheering from his fans. "And next we have Elizabeth Potter of Hogwarts, who crafted a story with projected illusions, accompanied by a complex, well-formed sympathetic component. Yes, very well done," Zabini said to the resurgence of applause. This time, there was no illusory summary of the performance — Dorea guessed they couldn't be captured properly to re-display — staying on the line of Champions instead. Liz's head had ducked down even further, staring down at the clover, Dorea could clearly see the pink on her face. (Still self-conscious about the performance, she would guess, it'd been very private.) "And what do our judges think?"

Quite positively, it turned out — Dorea saw three fives and three sevens, the latter from Oskarsson, Maxime, and Aritsa. (The arist had again stylised her illusion, the top bar of the seven formed into a feathery wing, fire flickering around the base.) Dumbledore had given her a four, which wasn't a surprise — Dorea was aware he didn't approve of that kind of magic — and she'd gotten a three from Barthe, and a two from Báinfhéigh. The low scores were kind of a surprise...but maybe they had an issue with the magic too? She guessed they'd have to see how they scored Delacour. Once the cheering and the booing died down a little, Zabini said Liz's scores averaged out to a five, putting her in a tie with Ingrid.

As the cheering and whistling went on, the stands vibrating under Dorea from some foot-stomping going on somewhere, Liz's face just got redder and redder, seeming to hunch in on herself a little. She quick dipped in a stiff, awkward little curtsey, which didn't make the crowd settle down any quicker.

Zabini moved straight on to Cæciné, once the crowd was quiet enough for anyone to hear her. She praised the skill and athleticism and artistry put into the performance, the illusions showing snippets of it, Cæciné dancing around spear thrusts or whapping at someone with sticks or trading a quick and flashy series of blows with the uniformed swordsman, the crowd cheering along again forcing her to pause. The judges gave her mostly fives and sixes, with a four from Dumbledore and sevens from Oskarsson and Aritsa — again, she'd stylised hers, this time the number silvery and glinting and straight-edged like a blade. Her scores averaged out to a six, putting her in the lead.

While Zabini described Delacour's performance, with a very brief explanation of what a memory song was — the one she'd sung was the life story of Delacour's multiple-times-great-grandmother, it turned out, who'd lived through the chaos during the transition to Secrecy — an illusion was projected of Delacour standing on the little platform, surrounded by a ring of fire burning knee-high. Oddly, the flames came in all colours of the rainbow, flickering red and green and orange and violet and gold and blue, rising and falling with Delacour's breath. Some kind of veela magic to project her voice, maybe? At least it was pretty, Dorea guessed. The judges gave her a mix of fours and fives, plus another seven from Aritsa (this one made of roiling rainbow flames), her lowest score a three from Báinfhéigh — that came to an average of five, tied with Liz and Ingrid.

Dorea noticed that the judges who'd marked down Liz — Dumbledore, Báinfhéigh, Barthe — had all scored Delacour higher. Each only by one point, true, but that suggested they hadn't only done it because they didn't approve of magic messing around with people's heads. She wondered what that was about.

And then last was Cedric. For his technically impressive but only mildly entertaining performance, he was given mostly fours, with a couple fives from Gamp and Dumbledore and a couple threes from Karkaroff and the younger Durmstrang judge. Pretty mediocre scores — if Dorea remembered correctly, he and Krum were the only ones not to get a seven from anybody at all — but the lack of any strong negative ones meant he'd averaged out only one point above Krum and one under Liz.

There was some more cheering from the crowd, Dorea didn't think so much for Cedric specifically as the Champions in general, Zabini again holding up a hand for quiet. They didn't cooperate right away, her voice raised a bit, speaking slowly, she asked, "Do you want to hear the running scores or not?" The crowd obediently started settling down at that, though it did take a moment. Eventually, Zabini said, "Thank you. With the addition of the scores from today, the current rankings are...

"In last place with twenty-six points, Ingrid Hannasdottir of Durmstrang." No surprise there, she'd spent most of the Tournament at the bottom. There was some polite applause, Ingrid giving the crowd another bow — she didn't look too stiff or irritated, Dorea guessed she was probably used to the fact that she was losing by now.

"In fourth place with thirty-two points, Cedric Diggory of Hogwarts." Cedric smiled and waved up at the crowd, the applause in response was rather louder than Ingrid's, despite him not doing that much better — she assumed that Hogwarts had their entire student body here and that it was specifically Cedric Diggory helped. She did hear some very feminine-sounding shrieking mixed in with the noise, so, good bet.

(Cedric was handsome, of course, he was popular for good reason, she was just saying.)

"Dropping down into third place, with thirty-three points, is Viktor Krum of Durmstrang." Some more cheering, nearly as enthusiastic as Diggory's — it was Viktor Krum after all. The famous quidditch star hardly even reacted to the noise, just sullenly staring out into the distance, seemingly just waiting for this to be over.

"Climbing up into second place, with thirty-four points, is Artémisia Cæciné of Beauxbatons." In response to the noisy cheering, Cæciné dipped into a florid, graceful curtsey, smiling all bright and sweet. Looking very girly and innocent, which didn't at all match the violent show she'd put on, but Dorea guessed that some girls into duelling were just like that sometimes — Liz was too, in her own way.

It took a moment longer for the applause to die down this time, partly just because Cæciné's turn had been pretty loud to begin with, but also Dorea thought some people had simply figured out what was coming through process of elimination. "And we have— Excuse me," Zabini said, raising her voice a little. She quickly gave up at getting the crowd to behave, and just kept going, speaking more loudly and slowly to be understandable over the noise. "We still have a tie in first place, at thirty-six points, between Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons and Elizabeth Potter of Hogwarts!"

The noise was, of course, completely unbearable — she was thankful Sirius had gotten the paling back up, she'd have such an awful headache right now without it. Liz seemed very self-conscious, standing there shifting on her feet, her shoulders hunched, while Delacour just smiled and waved. They'd ended up standing next to each other — or, perhaps, Delacour realised they'd still be tied in the lead so had put herself next to Liz on purpose — after a few seconds of cheering Delacour sidled closer to Liz, took her hand. She startled, twitching and half-stepping away, Delacour leaned over to say something. Liz rolled her eyes, but she cooperated anyway — joined at the hand, using their free hands to pull out their skirts, the two curtsied in unison. The roaring from the crowd just intensified, Liz's face very red by now.

Dorea felt her lips twitching, shook her head to herself. If Liz legitimately was irritated with how she kept doing so well, as she claimed to be, she really wasn't doing a very good job of losing.


There's that, woo. Was a little slower in coming than I'd hope, I've had a lot of slow writing days lately. Sleep is hard.

I'll be jumping over to First Contact for a couple chapters before coming back to this fic. See you all then.