Seven Drops and Asphodel Blooms
Summary: When Harry blows up his aunt during the summer, Dumbledore is much quicker to react. Snape finds him far before the Minister does, but his plan of dropping him off with a lecture and half a dozen additional summer assignments doesn't work out.
In which Harry spends the summer at Spinner's End.
Chapter 23
Harry's nights were haunted by Death Eater masks. After his dream (his vision?) during the summer Harry hadn't dreamed about Voldemort again, but ever since the riot at the Quidditch Tournament, Harry couldn't shake the image of hooded, masked figures marching—not towards anything in particular, just onwards.
Almost always, he was torn out of his sleep by his scar.
"You should tell somebody," Hermione said the first time he mentioned it to his friends. "It can't be normal for it to hurt so often..."
"I don't know." Ron looked unnerved but not nearly as worried as Hermione. "Maybe that's just normal for a curse scar?"
"If that was the case Harry would have noticed when he was younger," Hermione argued. "It can't be a coincidence that it starts hurting when You-Know-Who is trying to return..."
"I already told Snape," Harry said. "He says I should let him know if it gets any worse."
His lessons with Snape continued, though not as often as Harry would have liked. He wanted to practice much, much more—he was itching to get his hands on some hippogriff feathers and practice in secret, without waiting for Snape to carve out some time for him after classes. If the teachers hadn't started swamping them with school work, he would have probably tried to do exactly that.
At least he would have until the memorable occasion in which Snape agreed to test some of the materials they'd thought up as potential wand cores over the summer. Snape wouldn't let him try any of them himself, which annoyed Harry up until one of the trials (using the bark of a mature weeping eytelia) exploded in Snape's face. Only a hastily conjured Shield charm saved Snape from more than minor burns.
Harry had the icy-cold realization that weeping eytelia had been one of his suggestions. "Professor—"
"And this," Snape said, pulling out a small vial with liquid he trickled onto his burns, "is why you listen when I say not to experiment on your own."
Harry (who Snape had insisted stay back) hadn't taken any damage, though his madly pounding heart suggested otherwise. His enthusiasm considerably dimmed, Harry had an easier time sticking to Snape's rules after that.
It must have been the months Harry had spent having actually decent lessons from Snape—be it Potions at Spinner's End or spellcraft—but Harry got to appreciate from an entirely new perspective just what an atrocious teacher Snape chose to be during their actual Potions classes.
The worst part wasn't the blatant favoritism towards his Slytherin students. The worst part wasn't even the delight he seemed to find in dealing out bad grades. No, the worst part by far was that without Harry taking the brunt of Snape's awfulness—having lost the privilege of being Snape's least favorite student—Neville was now once again his prime target.
Between the argument about Snape's past and Lily's letters, Harry hadn't felt like he'd had any leverage to do something about it last year. But now? Harry had long lost the self-preservational instinct of feeling cowed by Snape's glares.
"Can you stop picking on Neville all the time?"
Snape narrowed his eyes. "Excuse me?"
"It's not like things aren't stressful enough." Their workload was growing by the week, and Neville was only barely keeping up. "He's terrified of you."
"How unfortunate," Snape said in a tone that suggested he meant 'Good. He ought to be.'
"Just give him a break. Maybe he'll surprise you."
But going by Snape's expression, Harry might as well have suggested Crabbe and Goyle would soon be aiming for their NEWTs, if only Snape started to hold their hands during exams.
The first task of the Triwizard Tournament neared. With it, the nosy journalist—Skeeter—published another article in the Daily Prophet. Only the headline referenced the tournament; everything after it summarized Krum's career and detailed Harry's past adventures at Hogwarts, all of which were well-known (if in parts hopelessly exaggerated) by most of the Hogwarts population.
This time, she hadn't mentioned Cedric and the Beauxbatons champion at all.
He got some nasty glares from Hufflepuff students (which was annoying, seeing as Harry hadn't asked her to write the stupid article), but going by Cedric's helpless shrug when they stumbled into each other in the halls, at least he didn't blame Harry for Skeeter's brazen attempt at garnering attention.
They spent more time in the library than ever before. Hermione—determined to get a head-start so her year wouldn't be as stressful as the one before—demanded they start their homework early and dragged the two of them along, insisting it would "do you some good not to start at the last second for once."
Harry, though as annoyed as Ron at first, decided to make the best out of the situation and used the time to do some background reading for Snape's extra lessons.
"He never teaches me anything until I get the theory down," Harry shrugged at Ron's incredulous look.
Now in the minority of two against one, Ron surrendered to his fate and alternated between reluctantly joining Hermione with their homework or letting Harry explain what he was reading to make sure he'd understood it well enough.
Hermione—not wanting to miss out—kept pushing away her work to listen.
The library was usually the ideal place to study due to Madam Pince and her bat-like hearing, but lately there'd been whole groups of students sneaking their way inside no matter how many times the irritated librarian chased them out. It wasn't hard to guess what kept bringing them back. Today, roughly half a dozen giggly fifth-years had taken shelter two bookshelves to the right of Viktor Krum.
"I wonder why he's in the library so often," Harry said quietly, watching the girls fight over a small peephole one of them had made in the bookshelf by rearranging books.
"Who cares why he's here." As he said it, Ron craned his neck to get a better glimpse, looking not much different from the girls. "Scoot to the side, Hermione. I can't see..."
"Oh, please." Hermione rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't care that he's here so often if his fans didn't trail after him." She glared first at the fifth-years, then at Ron, who was still trying to nudge her into moving her seat.
Harry had no idea how Krum managed to get anything done with so many distractions around him all the time. He didn't envy him. He even thought he might have found out the reason Krum kept coming back, as one afternoon it was Karkaroff who bustled into the library instead of a group of fans.
Krum disappeared behind a bookshelf so quickly, it was almost as though he hadn't been there at all.
"Have you seen Viktor?" Karkaroff demanded, spotting Harry in the nearest row.
He'd called Krum by his first name during the Halloween feast, too. Him, and him only of all of his students. Back then, Harry couldn't help but think of Dudley: dotted on by his parents and spoiled. Krum, as a famous Quidditch player at age eighteen, at least would have had a reason for being an arrogant prick.
But if Krum liked the attention, would he really spend all of his time cooped up in a library?
"I saw him heading for the lake earlier," Harry lied, carefully not looking towards Krum's hiding place.
Karkaroff was about to turn when his eyes flickering to Harry's scar. Before Harry could brace for the typical reaction he got when people recognized him, Karkaroff's expression grew tight. He stormed out without another word.
Harry had gone back to his search for a specific book when Krum shuffled his way into the row to say a stiff thank-you.
"No problem," Harry said, feeling awkward. "Didn't look like you wanted to talk to him."
Since Sirius had given his permission as his godfather (and was no longer the subject of a nation-wide manhunt), Harry could now join his friends on their visits to Hogsmeade without being forced to make use of his invisibility cloak. Harry was glad since not only were his trips into the village indefinitely less stressful, but also because sneaking out of the castle last year had sparked an argument between him and Snape he still didn't like thinking back on.
They spent the trip to the Three Brooms theorizing over what the first task of the tournament might be. Hermione put up her nose at Ron's suggestion of a duel with an ogre.
"They better have thought of something more interesting than that," she huffed. "The tournament is supposed to challenge its participants in all branches of magic, not just the combat-type."
Most people (other than Malfoy and his gang) had stopped harassing Harry over the stupid articles Skeeter had written, and while Harry didn't know for sure, he thought Cedric might have been the reason for that. He'd spotted him in the halls elbowing classmates that had been staring at Harry.
In retrospect, Harry felt kind of bad about not having spoken up when some of the other Gryffindors had said unflattering things about Cedric after his name had come out of the Goblet. Some—like Ron and his siblings—were still cross about Gryffindor's loss against Hufflepuff last year, but Cedric had never been anything but nice to Harry.
While they kept practicing magic whenever Snape could spare the time, Snape only occasionally agreed to let him practice wandless magic. The rest of the time they spent tackling spells Harry found in the scribbled-full textbook he wasn't allowed to use in class.
Snape wouldn't teach him all of them ("Ask again after you've convinced me you wouldn't try to pass them on to your friends while unsupervised."), but after a few weeks Harry had learned Muffliato (which filled a person's ears with an insistent buzzing and hid personal conversations from eavesdroppers), Langlock (which glued someone's tongue to the roof of their mouth and seemed like the sort of spell Snape had thought up as a student) and was working on Levicorpus during the week the first task was set to take place in.
He'd been especially excited to learn the last one since it was a non-verbal spell, but it had taken some convincing until Snape had obliged. Harry didn't know why he was so reluctant, but eventually Snape agreed to let him have a go at a quickly conjured life-sized puppet.
"I better not be hearing about students falling victim to this spell in the hallways," Snape told him after Harry sent the dummy careening into the air on his first try.
He beamed, proud of himself for having managed it this quickly. "I thought you said non-verbal magic was really hard to do."
"This one is unique," Snape said, the corner of his mouth still distinctly tugged downwards. "It is meant to be cast this way. Other spells are more difficult to master non-verbally."
Harry didn't let himself be deterred and basked in the success. He wouldn't go around practicing on random students like Snape had warned him not to do, but he might just wait for Ron to ask about what he'd learned and kindly offer a demonstration.
He had to keep reminding himself that Snape might stop teaching him if he misused his spells, no matter how tempting it was to practice the Langlock charm every time Malfoy decided to open his annoying mouth during class.
Hagrid pulled them aside after his lesson one afternoon. He'd been in an unusually chipper mood for a week, which was usually cause for concern. If Hagrid had gotten his hands on another dangerous creature he now wanted to keep as a pet, Harry, Ron and Hermione wanted to stay as uninvolved as they possibly could.
But Hagrid wouldn't accept no for an answer, and so—following his cryptic instructions—they put on Harry's invisibility cloak and snuck out of the castle that evening.
"I swear, if he's got another three-headed dog parked in the forest, I'm out," Ron hissed furiously after they'd been forced to sneak past Filch out on a nighttime stroll.
Harry adjusted the cloak to make sure they were still completely covered. "I'd rather meet another Fluffy than Aragog."
"Don't even say that," Ron moaned.
What Hagrid wanted to show them turned out to be neither giant dog nor spider.
It was dragons.
"We have to tell Diggory," Ron said as soon as they'd left Hagrid, the forest and the three wild dragons behind.
"We can't tell him." Hermione frowned. "It wouldn't be fair. Hagrid shouldn't have told us in the first place, but we promised we'd keep it a secret."
"You saw Maxime sneaking around same as we did! How is it fair if only that Beauxbatons girl knows what's coming?"
"You kept complaining about Diggory being the Hogwarts champion. Now you want to help him?"
"Do you want Hogwarts to lose?"
"I'm more worried about the task." Hermione frowned. "They can't expect them to actually fight dragons..."
"Dumbledore wouldn't let anything serious happen," Harry said slowly. "Would he?"
"They said they'd taken much more security measures," Hermione said. "But still, there are recorded accidents that ended lethally in past tournaments..."
They shared a concerned look. Harry wanted to believe that Dumbledore could stop anything bad from happening, but the magical world was unpredictable. Dumbledore hadn't been able to stop Dobby from cursing a bludger to break one of his arms. He hadn't been able to stop a horde of dementors interrupting a Quidditch game, causing him to faint over a hundred feet in the air.
"I'll tell Cedric," Harry decided, thinking of Maxime and how the Beauxbatons girl—Fleur? He couldn't remember her last name—would definitely know about the dragons by morning. "Just to make things fair."
And so Harry wolfed down his breakfast the next morning to make sure he could exit the Great Hall right as Cedric and his friends prepared to head for class. Going by Cedric's doubtful look he wasn't sure the older boy believed him, but Harry had done all he could.
Spotting Krum duck behind a staircase to avoid another gaggle of fans, Harry made the impulsive decision to follow. Even though he'd be late for Charms for sure, he still sneaked down the hallway to the library while students bustled off in other directions, heading for class. The Durmstrang students must have started their own lessons later.
He cleared his throat to announce his presence to Krum. "Do you have a minute?"
Krum frowned. Harry wasn't sure if it was at him or if that was just what his face looked like naturally. "What do you want?" Krum's voice was very deep, and he spoke with a slow, heavy sort of accent.
"Dragons," Harry said curtly before he could reconsider. "The first task. You'll have to face dragons."
The furrow between Krum's brows deepened. "How do you know?"
"I found out by accident," Harry lied. He didn't want to get Hagrid into trouble.
"But why tell me? Is not, hm… it is not good for your school."
That was probably the most Harry had heard Krum speak in one go. He quietly wondered how much English the other students from his school spoke. "The Beauxbatons champion knows too," he admitted. "And obviously I was going to tell Cedric." He shrugged, feeling a bit awkward. "Now you all know, so it's fair."
Krum either did not seem to understand or believe him, because his dark brows furrowed.
Harry suddenly wanted to be anywhere else but here, alone in the library with a much older, scowling champion. "Believe me or don't," he said, trying to sound casual. "I just didn't want to put you at a disadvantage."
"What is 'disadvantage'?"
"It's like... if the others knew more than you. If they were better prepared and you had worse chances."
Krum made a grunt that could be either one of acknowledgement or dismissal.
Harry decided to take it as a mix of both and beat a swift retreat. A part of him was almost glad that the Beauxbatons headmistress had cheated so he wouldn't have to decide whether to talk to the Beauxbatons girl—Fleur—too.
Either Cedric and Krum had listened to him after all, or they were simply that good all on their own, because none of the champions ended up barbequed by the dragon they were made to steal a golden egg from.
Harry cheered alongside his friends, enjoying for once being nothing more than one person among many.
And even though Krum earned more points than Cedric in the end, Harry was quietly glad he'd warned both of them. He couldn't have enjoyed the game even remotely as much if he'd spent it feeling guilty over giving Cedric an advantage over Krum.
The day after the first task, Cedric tracked them down to thank them for the help. He admitted that he hadn't quite believed him before, but he wouldn't have been able to prepare if it hadn't been for Harry.
"I'm sorry for some of my housemates, too," Cedric said. "I told them to forget about the articles, but I'll make sure they'll stop for good."
Harry, now knowing for sure that Cedric had been quietly defending him, gave him a smile. "No problem. And good luck figuring out that egg."
"Thanks." Cedric smiled back. "Just don't go around solving it for me, this time."
A/N:
Ron, later: weird… why wouldn't Snape want to teach you that spell? it just dangles people upside down, what's the harm
xxx
Harry and Krum's interactions are what you get when you thrust together two introverts who are famous but really rather wished they weren't and forced them to be social.
xxx
Thank you as always for your patience. University is keeping me busy, and I've submitted my first original short stories to online magazines! Wish me luck! :)
Huge thanks to my wonderful betas To Mockingbird, Igornerd, flyingcat and ethirielalways!
~Gwen