Chapter 11: The Goblet of Fire
Harry stayed sat, aware that everyone in the Great Hall was watching him. He felt dazed and groggy. No one applauded. A buzzing sound of enraged bees began to fill the room. Some of the students got up to get a better look at Harry, who was still sitting in his place.
At the teachers' table, Professor McGonagall rose and walked over to Dumbledore, to whom she whispered impetuously. Professor Dumbledore bowed his head to her, frowning slightly.
Harry turned to Ginny who took his hand and squeezed it, lending him her support and making him stop so that he could start moving forward, while shaking his head indicating him not to say anything and just go.
He saw that all the other occupants of the long Gryffindor table were staring at him with their mouths open.
"I didn't put my name in," Harry said, unable to help but speak. "You know it."
Both returned the same dazed look. Harry got up and walked through the gap between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables. It seemed like a very long road. The professor's table didn't seem to be any closer, even though he walked toward it, and he could feel the gaze of hundreds and hundreds of eyes as if each of them were a searchlight. The buzzing was getting louder and louder.
He walked like an automaton and ignored the other champions, especially Cedric, feeling extremely guilty about his fate. He didn't realize what was going on until he heard strange voices rising.
"What does it all mean, Dumbledog?" The director of Beauxbatons asked imperiously.
"That's what I'd like to know, Dumbledore," said Professor Karkarov. He smiled tensely, and his blue eyes looked like pieces of ice. "Two Hogwarts champions? I don't remember anyone explaining to me that the host school was entitled to two champions. Or have I not read the rules carefully enough?"
He let out a short, unpleasant laugh.
"C'est impossible!" Madame Maxime exclaimed, resting her huge hand full of superb opal beads on Fleur's shoulder. "`Hogwag´ can't `hag´ two champions. It's unfair."
"We thought your age line would reject younger aspirants, Dumbledore," Karkarov added, still smiling, though his eyes were colder than ever. "Otherwise, we would have brought in a wider selection of candidates from our schools."
"It's nobody's fault but Potter's, Karkarov," Snape interjected in a honeyed voice. Malice gave a special gleam to his black eyes. "Dumbledore is not to blame for Potter's determination to break the rules. Since he arrived here, he has done nothing but push boundaries..."
"Thank you, Severus," Dumbledore said firmly, and Snape fell silent, though his eyes continued to flash malevolently through the curtain of greasy black hair.
Professor Dumbledore looked at Harry, and Harry stared back, trying to decipher the expression in his eyes behind the half-moon glasses. "Did you put your name in the goblet of fire, Harry?" Dumbledore asked calmly.
"No," Harry replied, well aware that everyone was watching him closely. Half-hidden in the shadows, Snape uttered a soft exclamation of disbelief.
"Did you ask any older students to put your name in the Goblet of Fire?" The headmaster asked, ignoring Snape.
"No," Harry replied vehemently.
"Ah, of 'cougrse' he's lying!" Madame Maxime shouted. Snape shook his head from side to side, a rictus on his lips.
"He couldn't cross the age line," Professor McGonagall said sternly. "I guess we can all agree on that point..."
"'Dumbledog' may have committed some mistake," replied Madame Maxime, shrugging her shoulders.
"Of course, that's possible," Dumbledore admitted politely.
"So could his little girl, Miss Weasley start the rumor at the beginning of the year that the champion of Hogwarts would die, Headmaster, even when you questioned her, she refused to say anything. Maybe they planned it, with the rumors no witch put her name, and the wizards who put it were few." Snape insisted with that malevolent smile.
"Ginny has nothing to do with this." For the first time, Harry lost control and raised his voice.
"Then you admit you did it," Snape said with satisfaction.
"I don't admit anything, and if you decide not to include me in the tournament, I'll consider myself well served." Harry said calming his tone, if they were looking to blame someone, he would rather carry the stigma himself before a small suspicion fell on Ginny,
However, in the end, they came to a consensus that he would be obliged to participate, Mad-Eye's intervention put suspicion on Karkarov, insinuating that he had done it to kill him because of his past inclinations.
Harry refused to say another word and only listened to Mr. Crouch's instructions before he could leave.
o-o-o-o
Ginny stayed and ignored everyone when they yelled at her and cursed her for having cheated on them, everyone believed her and that's why few had signed up for the tournament, and now they blamed her. Any one of them could have become a champion and won, only knowing that whoever was champion of Hogwarts would die had stopped them.
She ignored them and advanced between Colin and Dennis who provided her with moral support and accompanied her to Gryffindor Tower.
"You should have told us the truth!" Fred yelled. He seemed partly angry and partly impressed. "How did you manage to get Harry in?"
"Incredible!" George shouted.
"Someone put it in to damage him, I'm not going to let Harry get hurt." Their sister said calmly, shutting them up, luckily in the morning she had informed her mother of what would happen, she would already have enough martyrdom at school and she didn't want to receive complaints from home too. "Harry didn't want to come in and none of us did, I hope you'll support him now that he's going to have to participate."
At that moment Harry came in and could only mumble, "I didn't. I don't know how..."
But Angelina was rushing at him at that moment. "Oh, since it's not me, I'm glad it's at least someone from Gryffindor."
"Now you can get your revenge on Diggory for the last Quidditch match, Harry!" Katie Bell, another of the Gryffindor team hunters, shrieked. "We've got some food, Harry. Come and have a drink..."
"I'm not hungry. I've already eaten enough at the banquet."
But no one wanted to hear that he wasn't hungry, no one wanted to hear that he hadn't put his name in the goblet of fire, no one at all realized that he wasn't in the mood for celebrations...
Everyone wanted to find out how he had done it, how he had circumvented Dumbledore's age line and managed to get the name into the goblet of fire. Even though they were furious with Ginny, they were satisfied that someone from their household would be the winner, as no one doubted that Harry would win.
Harry managed to detach himself from everyone and climb up to the bedroom as fast as he could. To his relief, he saw Ron lying on his bed, fully clothed; There was no one else in the bedroom.
He looked at Harry as he closed the door behind him.
"Where have you been?" Harry asked.
"Oh, hello," Ron said.
He was smiling at him, but it was a very strange smile, very tense. Suddenly, Harry realized that he was still carrying the Gryffindor banner that Lee Jordan had placed on him. He hurriedly took it off, but it was tied up very tightly. Ron sat still on the bed, watching Harry's struggles to loosen the knots.
"Well," he said when at last Harry took off the banner and tossed it into the corner, "Congratulations."
"What do you mean by 'congratulations'?" Harry asked, looking at Ron. "A part of him was hopeful that Ginny had made a mistake and Ron wouldn't take a nefarious attitude..."
"Well... You and Ginny planned for you to be champion from the beginning," Ron said. "She did it so that almost no one participated, and then you put your name in the cup, how did you do it? With the cloak? "
"The invisible cloak wouldn't have allowed me to cross the line," Harry replied.
"Oh, well. I thought that if it had been with the cloak, you could have told me... Because it could have covered us both, couldn't it? But you found another way, didn't you?"
"Listen," Harry said. I didn't put my name in the cup of fire. "Someone had to do it, I don't know who."
Ron raised his eyebrows. "And why is he supposed to have done it?"
"I don't know," Harry said. It seemed to him that it would sound too melodramatic to reply, `To see me dead´.
Ron's eyebrows raised so high that they were almost hidden under his bangs.
"Okay, fine. You can tell me the truth," he said. "If you don't want anyone else to know, great, but I don't understand why you bother lying to me. You're not going to get into any trouble for telling me the truth. That friend of Fat Lady, this Violet, has told us all that Dumbledore has let you in. A prize of a thousand galleons, eh? And you're going to get rid of final exams..."
"I didn't put my name in the cup!" Harry exclaimed, starting to get angry.
"All right," Ron replied, using the same skeptical tone as Cedric. "But I know you'll win, she'll tell you how to win, I know you planned it... I'm not that dumb, you know?"
"Well, no one would say."
"Yes?" Any hint of a smile, forced or otherwise, faded from Ron's face. "I suppose you'll want to go to bed already, Harry. My sister is almost coming to gloat over you for making us all fools."
He tugged at the canopy hangings of his bed, leaving Harry standing by the door, staring at the red velvet curtains that now hid one of the few people he would never have thought he wouldn't believe him.
o-o-o-o
The next few days were among the worst Ginny spent at Hogwarts.
The closest thing she'd experienced had been those months, when she was in first grade, when a large part of the school suspected that Harry was the one attacking his classmates, but this time Ron had been by his side. She could see how much it hurt Harry that his brother ignored and blamed him, and she grew more and more furious with him.
It didn't matter how many times she hit Ron, how many times she yelled at him until she was tired, how she confronted him. Nothing changed his stubbornness and his belief that they had planned it.
She didn't care what anyone thought of her, but she couldn't bear to have Harry take the blame. He felt lonely and received nothing but contempt from all sides. Harry told her that he was able to understand the attitude of the Hufflepuffs, even if he wasn't amused because they had a champion of their own to support. he also didn't expect anything but insults from the Slytherin people. But he had hoped that the Ravenclaws would find as much reason to support him as they did Cedric. And he had been wrong: most of the Ravenclaws seemed to think that he was desperate for a little more fame and that was why he had tricked the Goblet of Fire into accepting his name.
Harry thought the worst of himself, and the insecurities he had increased with the coldness he was treated compared to Cedric (something Ginny was inwardly grateful for) She would not hesitate to pull out the hair of the girl who tried to approach her boyfriend with romantic intentions.
Days passed and the first test began to approach. She didn't care about morality when it came to preventing Harry's death, so she didn't have many scruples, when Charlie sent her a letter telling her what day would come, she dragged her boyfriend into the forbidden forest and showed him what would await him. She ordered him to put on the invisibility cloak and not to open his mouth.
o-o-o-o
Dragons! Roaring and snorting, four huge, fierce-looking adult dragons stood on their hind legs within an enclosure of thick wooden boards. Fifty feet above the ground, fanged mouths hurled torrents of fire into the black night sky.
At least thirty mages, seven or eight for each dragon, tried to control them by pulling chains attached to the strong leather collars around their necks and legs.
Fascinated, Harry looked up and saw the black dragon's eyes, with vertical pupils like those of cats, totally bulging; whether it was out of fear or anger, Harry ignored it.
"Don't come close, baby!" A magician warned from the fence, tugging on the chain. "They can throw fire at a distance of twenty feet! And I have seen this horntail cast out at fourteen!"
"It's dangerous!" Another wizard shouted. "Stun Enchantments, when I count three!"
Harry saw all the dragon keepers pull out their wands.
"Desmaius!" They shouted in unison.
The stun enchantments shot out into the darkness and as soon as they took effect, they hurriedly tightened the chains and secured them with iron stakes, which they drove into the ground using their wands.
At that moment he became the wizard who had called Ginny `baby´, and Harry discovered who it was: Charlie Weasley.
"Is everything alright, babe?" He asked, panting, leaning over to talk to his sister. "Now they shouldn't give us any problems. We gave them a numbing dose to bring them in because we thought it would be better if they woke up in the darkness and tranquility of the night, but you saw that they were not very amused, not funny..."
"They're pretty, brother, I see why you like them, what race are they?" Ginny said, looking at the nearest dragon, the black one.
"This is a Hungarian horntail," Charlie explained. "There is a Common Welsh Green over there, which is the smallest; a Swedish Short-Snout, which is silvery blue, and a Chinese fireball, the red."
"I thought you'd bring your boyfriend," Charlie said, scowling. "Champions aren't supposed to know anything about what they're going to get, but Mum says you're very worried about him."
"Four... One for each champion, right? What will they have to do, fight against them?" she asked with all intent, she was keeping her word, technically she wasn't giving Harry any information herself.
"No, just to outwit them, I think," said Charlie. "We'll be nearby, just in case things get ugly, and we'll have extinguishing enchantments ready. They asked us to be females in the incubation period, I don't know why... But I'll tell you what: I don't envy the one who blows the horntail. A fierce bug. The tail is as dangerous as the horn, look."
Charlie pointed to the tail of the horntail, and Harry saw that it was full of long bronze-colored spikes. Five of Charlie's companions at that moment approached the horntail, carrying on a blanket a clutch of huge eggs that looked like gray granite and placed them carefully beside the animal.
"I've got them counted, Hagrid is coming in a while, he wants to see them," Charlie said with a chuckle shared by his sister. Then he added, "How's Harry? You didn't tell me why you didn't bring it, babe."
"Well," Ginny said, not taking her eyes off the eggs.
"Well, I hope he's still well after he's faced with these," Charlie said gravely, looking over the fence. "I didn't dare tell Mum what awaited him in the first test, because she's already had a nervous breakdown thinking about him..." Charlie imitated his mother's almost hysterical voice, causing Ginny to laugh: "––How they let him participate in the Tournament, with how small he is! I thought there was going to be a little bit of security, I thought they were going to put a minimum age!–– She began to cry her eyes out at the Prophet's article. ––He still cries when he thinks of his parents! I would never have imagined it! Poor thing! –– "
"I'm not happy either, but there's no other choice. How could Harry dominate one of them?" Ginny walked over to her brother and took his arm as they walked through the shadows of the trees.
"Well, it's going to be difficult, in the fourth year they don't teach spells particularly useful."
"Couldn't he confuse it?"
"That would be silly, it could attack him more angrily, and I don't want to think about him harming her eggs by accident." Charlie said with a frown, evidently more concerned about the eggs than Harry.
"Could he make himself invisible?" All of Ginny's questions were rushing through Harry's mind.
"It might, but a dragon has an excellent sense of smell, it wouldn't do him much good," Charlie said
"Fly?"
"Baby, dragons are kings in the air."
"Harry's the best flyer. " Ginny said indignantly as she folded her arms and frowned at him.
"All right, all right, if he's as good as you say he could try, maybe if he put a fire charm on his broomstick and clothes he'd do just fine. Want to help?" He said, trying to please her.
"Of course, I don't want my boyfriend to be roasted, we agreed not to talk about this, so if you show me the charm I'll show it to him, but I won't tell him about dragons." Ginny said with a smile, to which Charlie reluctantly agreed.
o-o-o-o
Harry returned to the dormitories earlier, he was scared by the dragons, but at least he already had a plan to face them. At that moment, with Hermione's help, he began to practice two simple incantations.
Even though Ginny told him not to even think about mentioning dragons, he couldn't help but tell Cedric, he felt bad for him, since when he had come out of the forest, he found Hagrid on a date with the headmistress of Beauxbatons and Karkaroff hanging around the dragons. Cedric was the one at the biggest disadvantage.
"What did you do?" Ginny was horrified, she had never expected Harry to go against what she said. She was filled with anger, for the first time directed at her boyfriend, and before she could realize what she was doing she slapped him on the cheek. Shock filled them both, but Ginny was still furious, so she lunged at him and started hitting him with her hands. Harry just covered his glasses and meekly accepted the blows, this fact stopped Ginny from her frenzy, and saw what she had done, he had bled from his nose and his face was swollen.
"Forgive me Harry, forgive me, I don't know what happened to me, I won't do it again, I'm so sorry." Ginny screamed as she hugged him and begged for his forgiveness. Harry worried more about hurting her than about her blows and just hugged her.
It wasn't the first time he'd been beaten, and it was not like his girlfriend had much strength, at least she didn't have any more strength than an obese grown man, her white hands were more bruised than his face.
"It's okay Ginny, you can hit me if you want, just…"
Ginny screamed again, telling him not to repeat that barbarity, that she had no right to hit him and would not do it again.
Harry only comforted her, even though no tears were shed, he knew that she was too upset by what she had done.
She avoided him for the next few hours, and he didn't look for her, he practiced incantations all the time with Hermione and couldn't afford to look for her. Even on that night, she stopped going to him, giving the excuse that she wanted to let him rest.
o-o-o-o
For Ginny, discovering that part of herself capable of hurting the person she loved completely upset her. In the face of her emotional state, her visions worsened, giving her all the terrible endings that Harry could have. A full morning, the day after Harry's beating, she spent on Luna's lap, hugging her to try to comfort herself.
Luna had been so good, as had Colin, who helped her to give Harry a potion to deflate his blows shortly after she had hit him. She was too ashamed of herself to do so and felt a little relief to see that Harry had indeed used it.
There wasn't enough regret for her to accept, she couldn't bear the thought that she had acted the same way as Harry's abusive uncle, who had beaten him, and he had resigned himself to the blows without daring to defend himself, which drove her even madder. He needed to learn how to defend himself, from anyone, including her.
She spent those sad moments with her friends, but the hours were torture. Without even having Percy to come with him. It was her self-inflicted punishment, she felt like the worst trash in the world, but that night before the first test an epiphany came to her mind.
Suddenly she understood what her visions showed her, it was as if suddenly in that state of exaltation, the meaning of each line of events revealed itself, as if each vision was glued to another on a long ribbon, like a photograph showing all the scenarios.
It all made sense, every line, the one that was most likely to pass, the one that was most beautiful at the beginning, with years of peace and happiness, and how horrible it became. And the other, more likely, in which she brought about the destruction of the world as she knew it, in which after the destruction would come rebirth. And all the horrible variants of every line.
And she suddenly realized that Colin was right.
And she knew the most horrific truth she had ever experienced.
She would do even worse things to the love of her life.
She would hurt him deeply; it was something she was obligated to do if she wanted to avoid the disaster that was to come.
And she had to force herself to let go of all guilt for every decision she made from that point on.
Thanks for the comments
I didn't remember that the use of – in English is not normal, in the next chapter I will use "
