Slightly shorter chapter today, but Tuesday's will be quite a bit longer I think, so that will hopefully make up for it!
Sirius sent our owl back the very next morning. It fluttered down beside Harry at the same moment that a tawny owl landed in front of Hermione, clutching a copy of the Daily Prophet in its beak. She took the newspaper, scanned the first few pages, said, "Ha! She hasn't got wind of Crouch!" then joined us in reading what Sirius had to say on the mysterious events of the night before last.
"Harry — what do you think you are playing at, walking off into the forest with Viktor Krum? I want you to swear, by return owl, that you are not going to go walking with anyone else at night. There is somebody highly dangerous at Hogwarts. It is clear to me that they wanted to stop Crouch from seeing Dumbledore and you were probably feet away from them in the dark. You could have been killed.
Your name didn't get into the Goblet of Fire by accident. If someone's trying to attack you, they're on their last chance. Stay close to Ron and Hermione, do not leave Gryffindor Tower after hours, and arm yourself for the third task. Practice Stunning and Disarming. A few hexes wouldn't go amiss either. There's nothing you can do about Crouch. Keep your head down and look after yourself. I'm waiting for your letter giving me your word you won't stray out-of-bounds again"
"Who's he, to lecture me about being out-of-bounds?" said Harry in mild indignation as he folded up Sirius's letter and put it inside his robes. "After all the stuff he did at school!"
"He's worried about you!" said Hermione sharply. "Just like Moody and Hagrid! So listen to them!"
"No one's tried to attack me all year," said Harry. "No one's done anything to me at all —"
"Except put your name in the Goblet of Fire," said Hermione. "And they must've done that for a reason, Harry. Snuffles is right. Maybe they've been biding their time. Maybe this is the task they're going to get you."
"Look," said Harry impatiently, "let's say Sirius is right, and someone Stunned Krum to kidnap Crouch. Well, they would've been in the trees near us, wouldn't they? But they waited till I was out of the way until they acted, didn't they? So it doesn't look like I'm their target, does it?"
"They couldn't have made it look like an accident if they'd murdered you in the forest!" said Hermione. "But if you die during a task —"
"They didn't care about attacking Krum, did they?" said Harry. "Why didn't they just polish me off at the same time? They could've made it look like Krum and I had a duel or something."
"Harry, I don't understand it either," said Hermione desperately. "I just know there are a lot of odd things going on, and I don't like it. . . . Moody's right — Sirius is right — you've got to get in training for the third task, straight away. And you make sure you write back to Sirius and promise him you're not going to go sneaking off alone again."
"Hermione, he didn't sneak off alone. He was with Krum" I said
"Oh of course you'd take your boyfriend's side!" Hermione replied
"No mate, she's just stating a fact!" Harry said
"Yeah, and him being my boyfriend has nothing to do with it, I'd have agreed with him regardless" I said, but it was no use.
The Hogwarts grounds never look more inviting than when you have to stay indoors, and I really felt for Harry as we helped him learn various spells over the next few days. We were spending all of our free time doing this, and Harry was trying to master the Stunning Spell, which he had never used before. This was a rare time where Ron was the most help out of all of us, as he had used it on Avery on the train last summer. Even Hermione hadn't yet done so.
The trouble was that practicing it involved certain sacrifices from Ron, Hermione and I.
"Can't we kidnap Mrs. Norris?" Ron suggested on Monday lunchtime as he lay flat on his back in the middle of a Charms classroom, having just been Stunned and reawoken by Harry for the fifth time in a row.
"Let's Stun her for a bit. Or you could use Dobby, Harry, I bet he'd do anything to help you. I'm not complaining or anything" — he got gingerly to his feet, rubbing his backside — "but I'm aching all over. . . ."
"Well, you keep missing the cushions, don't you!" said Hermione impatiently, rearranging the pile of cushions they had used for the Banishing Spell, which Flitwick had left in a cabinet. "Just try and fall backward!"
"Once you're Stunned, you can't aim too well, Hermione!" said Ron angrily.
"Yeah, can't lie Hermione that's not one of your more intelligent comments" I added.
"Why don't you take a turn?" Ron said to Hermione.
"Well, I think Harry's got it now, anyway," said Hermione hastily.
"Of course you say that now, so you don't have to take the hit" I said, though privately I had to agree, Harry was looking very good at it.
"And we don't have to worry about Disarming, because he's been able to do that for ages. . . . I think we ought to start on some of these hexes this evening." Hermione continued, ignoring me.
She looked down the list we had made in the library.
"I like the look of this one," she said, "this Impediment Curse. Should slow down anything that's trying to attack you, Harry. We'll start with that one."
The bell rang. We hastily shoved the cushions back into Flitwick's cupboard and slipped out of the classroom.