For those confused as to why Amy was in Hogsmeade, she'd been caught trying to access the Durmstrang ship again, and was given a choice of punishment between two straight weeks of detention and losing access to all of the Hogsmeade weekends for that year. She chose the former.

Harry met me at the bottom of the stairs into the common room the following morning. He took me downstairs and into an empty classroom near the Great Hall, so that we wouldn't be overheard.

"Dragons" he told me. "That's the first task"

My mouth dropped open.

"What?! What do you have to do, fight them?!" I asked

"No, just get past them apparently, but I have no idea how I'm going to do that. Sirius said it would only take a simple spell, but he had to leave before he could tell me what it was"

"I've got an idea!" I said "A summoning charm, I'm good at them, I can teach you. Summon your broom and then you can fly around or above the dragon to get past it"

Harry raised an eyebrow

"Dragons can fly too you know"

"Nah you don't say" I said, my voice heavily dripped in sarcasm "Obviously they'll be tied down or something. It'll come as a real shock cause they don't know you already know it's a dragon, they'll give you extra points for improvisation in the heat of the moment I reckon"

Harry thought for a moment, then bent down and kissed me.

"You are amazing you know that right? You've just saved me from what would surely have been many hours of searching through library books with Hermione. You give me more reasons to love you every single day"

"It's what I'm here for, and I'll never leave"

I wrapped my arm around his waste and leant my head against his upper arm, and he bent down to kiss me on the top of the head.

"What else did Sirius say?" I asked as we broke apart.

"Karkaroff was a Death Eater"

I stumbled backwards in shock

"No way!" I said

"Yeah. He was in Azkaban with Sirius, but he managed to get out by turning in several others in exchange for freedom. The ones still in there aren't happy about it. Sirius said he was acting like he'd renounced the old ways but will instead be teaching the Dark Arts to his students, so I should watch out for Krum. He reckons Karkaroff put my name in the Goblet too, being a good actor he'd of course pretend to be furious"

I bit my lip

"Maybe Amy was on to something then" I mumbled, looking at the ground.

"You can't tell her though"

"Why"

"Because she'll ask how you know, and how are you going to explain that?"

I thought for a moment, biting my lip, then said "Yeah you're right" and nodded. "I'll have to just wait until there's proof he did it, then I'll apologise and make up to her"

"Good idea"

Over that day and the next, Harry and I practised the Summoning Charm with as much effort and intensity as we could. Harry had also let Cedric know what the task was, so that it would be fair for all of them. This was Harry's only hope of succeeding in the task and he was my boyfriend. I was not about to let him fail the task, or die trying to succeed, as someone clearly wanted! It wasn't easy though. So often things would fly halfway across the room before falling to the floor.

"Concentrate, Harry, concentrate. . . ."

"What d'you think I'm trying to do?" said Harry angrily. "A great big dragon keeps popping up in my head for some reason. . . . Okay, try again. . . ."

We skipped several classes of ours in order to keep practicing, and even continued until midnight between Monday and Tuesday, the day of the task. We would have stayed longer, but Peeves turned up and, pretending to think that Harry wanted things thrown at him, started chucking chairs across the room. Harry and I left in a hurry before the noise attracted Filch, and went back to the Gryffindor common room, which was now mercifully empty. At two o'clock in the morning, Harry stood near the fireplace, surrounded by heaps of objects: books, quills, several upturned chairs, an old set of Gobstones, and Neville's toad, Trevor. Only in the last hour had Harry really got the hang of the Summoning Charm.

"That's better, Harry, that's loads better," I said, exhausted but very pleased.

"Well, now we know what to do next time I can't manage a spell," Harry said, throwing a rune dictionary back to me, so he could try again, "threaten me with a dragon. Right . . ." He raised his wand once more. "Accio Dictionary!"

The heavy book soared out of my hand, flew across the room, and Harry caught it.

"Harry, I really think you've got it!" I said delightedly.

"Just as long as it works tomorrow," Harry said. "The Firebolt's going to be much farther away than the stuff in here, it's going to be in the castle, and I'm going to be out there on the grounds. . . ."

"That doesn't matter," I said firmly "Just as long as you're concentrating really, really hard on it, it'll come. Harry, we'd better get some sleep . . . you're going to need it."

The next afternoon, the moment of truth arrived. The entire school headed out into the grounds to watch the first task. Some temporary stands had been constructed around the dragon enclosure, which currently housed a Swedish Short Snout, Magda's biggest fear. There was a nest of eggs next to it, one of which was coloured gold. She ran out of the stadium as soon as she saw this, and I didn't try to stop her. As much as it would suck for her to miss the task, I wasn't going to force her to stay with what scared her the most.

I therefore found some seats with Hermione, Demelza, Stefan and Luna. Amy and Andrew sat a few rows away, and Ron was with the twins 2 rows behind us. As I was sitting down, I locked eyes with Amy for a few seconds, and felt a pang of guilt, knowing that she was almost certainly right about Karkaroff, but I couldn't make up with her yet.

Ludo Bagman was to commentate on the task, and briefly I wondered how Amy, Fred and George were getting on with him in regards to recovering the money he stole. If I had to guess, they probably planned to confront him after the task. I made a mental note to follow them to find out, after I had seen Harry of course. Then, Ludo's voice rang out all around us.

"Ladies and Gentleman, students, teachers, Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, good afternoon and welcome to the first task of the 1994 Triwizard Tournament! I hope you are all excited and looking forward to the beginning of what should be a fantastic competition! I'm Ludo Bagman and I will be your host and commentator throughout each of the tasks! So, in front of you now you can see a Dragon, a Swedish Short Snout to be precise, and it's nest of eggs. It will be the champion's task to retrieve the golden egg. They may do this by any means they choose, as long as they enter the arena with only their wands. Now, without further ado, let's introduce our first champion, representing Hogwarts, Mr Cedric Diggory!