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 29
Harry slogged through the final school term one day after the other. The teachers had made no announcement about what had happened to Crouch, so by the time the Daily Prophet reported on his death, Ron, Hermione and Harry were the only students who knew that the man had died on Hogwarts grounds.
Though the connection to Crouch was missing, rumors were still running wild as teachers patrolled through the castle much like they had last year, when Sirius had still been on the run. But whoever the attacker had been, they didn't seem to have returned after the murder. Harry was glad that the whole thing was kept under wraps. He had enough nightmares without people trying to interrogate him.
He spent hours in the owlery writing letters to Sirius, and he stayed behind after Potions class for no reason other than to get away from his friends for a while. They were trying not to be overbearing, but he could tell that it was getting more and more difficult for them to keep quiet.
At least with Sirius it was easier to manage since they weren't face to face. While Harry could just stop reading his letters whenever he wanted to, he couldn't as easily leave Ron and Hermione mid-conversation.
Hagrid asked to see him that week. He pulled Harry aside during class to arrange a time and picked him up at the castle when usually he'd have just sent a note via owl.
"Where are we going?" Harry tried to sound nonchalant even as they made their way down to the edges of the forest.
"Professor Snape figured I should show you," Hagrid mumbled. "Was worried it might be too soon, but... 's got a point, Snape has. Better this way than... Wouldn't want ye to get spooked..."
"Hagrid." Harry now felt more exasperated than nervous. "Why are we here?"
Harry only understood why he was being introduced to a herd of magical creatures once Hagrid explained to him what they were and what made them special. He watched mutely as Hagrid fed some raw meat to the nearest thestral and patted one of them on its boney shoulder. He didn't come any closer to them himself.
"Got some bad reputation, these guys do," Hagrid said, stroking one of the thestrals' snouts. "Undeserved, if ye ask me. Not their fault people can only see them after... y'know. Very loyal, they are. Reliable. Can fly incredible distances."
"You can see them, too," Harry said quietly. "Why—Since when—"
"Me dad." Hagrid's hand faltered. The thestral nearest to him huffed out a snort, so he kept petting it in firm, repetitive strokes. "But it's not so bad, really. Was tough at the time, sure. But I don't think of him every time I see the thestrals or nothin'."
Though he said it very casually, Hagrid kept his eyes locked on the thestrals. Thinking of the nausea he felt whenever anybody came close to breaching the topic of Crouch, Harry decided not to ask anything more.
He felt weird just standing around in silence, so he stepped closer to Hagrid and let him slap some wet chunks of meat into his hand. He'd barely handed it over before the thestrals let themselves be pet, and though their leathery skin didn't exactly feel pleasant to touch, Harry didn't complain.
They really weren't so bad, as far as skeletal, reptilian-looking horses went.
"Come on. We haven't met up with them in ages."
"You can go if you want."
"Don't be stupid," Ron said. "You're coming with us."
"I don't feel like it."
"Just for a few minutes," Hermione coaxed. "You can just say you forgot to send a letter or something if you want to leave."
"I don't know," Harry muttered. He pretended not to notice his friends exchanging a meaningful look.
Harry hadn't been spending time with anybody except his two closest friends. They'd been asked to join Cedric and the others more than once, but Harry kept declining. He only really felt bad about it because Ron and Hermione felt like if he didn't go, they shouldn't, either.
"You know," Hermione lowered her voice considerably, "I think it would do your grades some good, too."
"My grades are fine."
"So far," Hermione said. "But you have to admit that you've been slipping. I don't think Professor McGonagall is going to let you barely pass her assignments for much longer."
Harry scowled, but said nothing. She'd hit a sore spot. Though Harry hated receiving special treatment with a passion, he'd been shamelessly exploiting his teachers' sympathy. He hadn't gone to class at all for a few days after finding Crouch (everybody other than Ron and Hermione thought he'd had some nasty side-effects from one of the twins' special candy), and all essays he'd submitted since had been half-heartedly written at best.
He knew that with the exams looming, he couldn't really afford to wallow for much longer. Still, whenever he tried to pick up a quill he found his attention slipping before he'd written so much as a complete paragraph.
Ron would have usually picked a fight with Hermione over her nagging. He didn't now, which was way more alarming than anything Hermione could have said.
"Alright," he caved, feeling even worse at seeing the relief flickering over their faces. He was already thinking of excuses to leave as quickly as possible.
Not for the first time, Harry wished that Sirius had made true of his threat of breaking into the castle to come and see him. Harry had needed three letters to convince him he was alright—and he was now regretting it terribly. Being back at Spinner's End for a while had helped, but Harry found himself missing Sirius more than ever before.
If you change your mind, just say the word, Sirius had written. Honestly. One word, and I'm at the castle before any of the teachers can stop me.
If Sirius knew just how close Harry was to taking him up on his offer, he'd have already come running.
"How've you guys been?" Cedric asked once they'd (in various stages of reluctance) met up in the library, the trio joining last while all the champions were already there. "It's been a while."
"Just busy." Harry shrugged, willing him to let it go.
Luckily, Cedric had more tact than both of his friends combined. They exchanged some more smalltalk before they dug up their books and got to work.
Harry could quickly tell that he wouldn't get any more done than he had all week. He stared at a chapter of their Charms textbook without taking in any of what he was reading, rolling his quill between his fingers. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get himself interested in the similarities and differences of the Cistem Aperio charm and Alohomora.
"Do you need ink?"
Harry looked up from his still-blank parchment. "What?"
"Your quill," Fleur said. She pronounced the word like it had two syllables and an additional 'e' at the end. "You have been staring at it."
"Just thinking." He wasn't lying. He'd been wondering what animal it had been taken from, and whether Snape could pull off his wandless magic trick with it. "You know how there's different wand cores? Ollivander uses unicorn hair, dragon heartstring or phoenix feathers, but I know there's more. Do you guys have any different ones?"
Viktor took the change in topic with a stride and jerked his head. "Dragon heartstring."
"That is what you have been thinking of?" Fleur flicked a strand of hair over her shoulder. "Mine does not use any of those. It has the hair of a Veela. My grandmother."
"So you are part Veela!" Ron pointed at her with a 'gotcha!' sort of gesture. He looked like he wanted to swallow his words right after he'd said them. "Sorry. Nevermind. There's just—rumors, you know."
Fleur clicked her tongue impatiently. "You could have asked."
Ron's face turned a deep red. "I know. Sorry. Just... Would've been stupid to be wrong about."
"Does your wand work better for you than it would for other people?" Hermione asked. "Because of the blood relation? Or because you're part Veela?"
"I cannot say for sure," Fleur said slowly. "Veela have powers much different from that of wizards, but I am not even half Veela."
Harry could tell that everybody wanted to ask the same question, but nobody quite dared when Fleur already sounded annoyed.
But Fleur, picking up on the loaded silence, only rolled her eyes. "I will not be offended."
"So you didn't inherit any of your grandmother's powers?" Cedric asked right as Ron and Hermione both opened their mouths. "The... you know." He made a weird throwing gesture with his hand that reminded Harry of the Veela performance they'd seen during the Quidditch tournament.
"I cannot throw fire with my hands," Fleur said flatly.
Hermione's shoulders slumped and Ron muttered, "Bummer."
But Fleur didn't leave it at that. She turned her head as though to check if somebody else was watching and leaned forward. Harry and the others instinctively mirrored her, drawing their circle tighter.
"I can do this," Fleur said quietly, and as they watched her nails grew a little longer and her facial features sharpened. Some half-formed feathers poked out of her blonde strands along her hairline.
She didn't look like a harpy like her distant relatives at the Quidditch game. If anything, she looked a little like she'd failed a human transfiguration.
"It is not very impressive," she said, shifting back. "My mother can do an almost entire," she made a grasping gesture with her hand, "a full... transformation." She pronounced it French, so the word must have been the same in both languages.
But Fleur was the lone person who thought that her transformation wasn't impressive. Hermione was soon asking question after question after question; Harry thought she probably held herself back from taking notes only so.
He only remembered that he'd meant to make up an excuse to leave when Madam Pince shooed them out of her library hours later. But the trio wasn't ready to call it a day just yet. They had no classes in the morning, so—feeling bold after so long having spent tiptoeing around each other—they snuck into the Great Hall after curfew to stargaze.
They'd gotten the idea from last year, when the entire student population had been evacuated after what they'd thought had been an attack from Sirius, and they'd all gotten to spend the night underneath the enchanted ceiling.
They were lucky. Only a few, tiny specks of clouds covered the sky, and they spent hours identifying constellations—Hercules and Virgo and Ursa Major and Cassiopeia—while occasionally checking the Marauder's map, making sure that nobody would catch them.
Despite sleeping through breakfast and lunch, they still felt groggy well into the afternoon the next day. They spent it lounging in front of the fireplace in the common room, playing the occasional listless game of exploding snap or trying to discourage the twins from testing some of their new products on them.
The past weeks had sucked, but Harry felt a little better knowing that he could still enjoy acting like a regular, misbehaving student once in a while.
He almost always managed to cast a wandless Lumos these days. Once Harry managed to feel enthusiastic about magic again, he had to restrain himself from using up too many feathers just to keep proving to himself that he could do it.
Snape had promised to show him more once he'd reached this milestone, and though they hadn't found the time for it so far, Harry couldn't wait. Though mastering the Patronus charm last year had felt amazing, this was somehow even better. Though far less useful than the Patronus, Harry knew that this was something almost nobody else knew how to do.
While the exam week had felt endless last year, it blew by so quickly this time that Harry hardly remembered it afterwards. He didn't think he'd failed anything too badly (though even if he did, a part of him had trouble caring).
They hardly saw the champions anymore, as they were all busy studying for exams or practicing for the tournament or both.
The day of the third task, Harry felt better than he had in a long time. Summer had settled over the castle grounds, and the weather had cleared up just in time for the last game of the tournament.
It was set to take place in the late afternoon, so Harry made the most out of the day. He spent the morning with his friends, paid Hagrid a visit after lunch, wrote one last letter to Sirius before they'd see each other during the holidays, and even let Snape drag him down to the greenhouses to help gather ingredients they didn't have growing at Spinner's End.
"You know everybody'll think you got in one last detention before the holidays, right?" Harry grumbled half-heartedly as he raked the soil, mindful of the yoxard's fragile roots.
"That is a sacrifice I am willing to make," Snape said.
Harry scoffed. He carefully separated the brown-rimmed leaves from the tree he was working on, having finished plucking off all the ripe berries.
By the time it occurred to Harry to check his wristwatch, there were only a few more minutes until the start of the third task. They'd lost track of time, and since Snape was one of the proctors, Harry offered to sprint to the castle to drop off their harvest in Snape's office.
The castle was already deserted when Harry—now somewhat out-of-breath—made his way through the entrance doors and down the school grounds to the Quidditch field. Quidditch games were typically rowdy and crowded, but the entire school (as well as the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang) had come to watch the task. Lured in by the excited tension, Harry fell into a light jog.
A magically enhanced voice rang across the grounds. Harry couldn't make out the words, but it seemed like the task was starting.
"Harry!"
Harry wrenched his arm away before he even realized who'd tried to grab him. "Ron?" His heart pounded. He hadn't heard Ron walking up to him at all. "Why aren't you with the others? It's about to—"
"It's rigged," Ron cut him off. "I overheard."
"What—The task?" Harry sputtered. "What do you mean, rigged?"
"Come on, we gotta do something!"
Ron reached for his wrist, but Harry reflexively dodged. When Ron turned towards the sounds of the tournament, Harry followed. "Wait—Ron! Who rigged it?"
A sound boomed across the grounds like a cannon going off. Harry felt his heart skip a beat.
Ron met his gaze with a grim expression. "It's starting."
Harry fell into an uneasy sprint beside him. Who would want to mess with the game? He knew that none of the champions would try to cheat. Was Karkaroff trying to secure Krum's victory? Was Madame Maxime trying to boost Fleur out of her last place?
Harry realized that Ron was heading for the maze. He stopped, steering him towards the stands—and their teachers—instead. "We have to tell someone."
"I already tried," Ron snapped. "They didn't believe me."
"Why not?"
"Thought I was trying to talk the other champions down to make sure Hogwarts won."
For a fleeting moment, Harry wondered if that was exactly what was happening. But there was no way. Ron could be competitive, but he wouldn't lie to Harry. He wouldn't try to cheat Fleur or Viktor out of the game, either.
The cannon went off a second time. Ron muttered, "Cedric's inside now."
Harry was reluctantly trotting after Ron when he caught a glimpse of a figure in pitch-black robes near the hedges of the maze—Snape, patrolling the field as one of the proctors.
"We can tell Snape! He'll believe us."
"Are you kidding?" Ron's expression contorted. "I just told you I already tried! Why would you want to tell him?"
Harry'd hoped they'd gotten past this by now. "Come on," he said tersely, pulling Ron along.
The cannon went off for a third, final time. Now all of the champions were inside the maze.
"Harry." Ron came to a dead-stop beside him.
"What?" Harry snapped, having no choice but to skid to a halt. "You just said we had to hurry!"
"Catch."
Harry had a second to register something slightly larger than a snitch in Ron's hand—he'd carefully peeled it out of a wad of fabric without touching skin—before Harry caught it with the reflexes of a seeker.
A hook pulled at his navel. Ron's expressionless face was the last thing he saw before the portkey carried him away.
A/N:
Snape, shoving a traumatized Harry at Hagrid: fix him
Hagrid: What—
Snape: fix him
xxx
Ron: what are those three bright ones over there?
Hermione: they belong with the two stars below them and they form—
Harry: it's libra
Harry: or so I've heard
Ron: how do you know that
Harry: … so snape has this magical plant
Ron: nvm i don't wanna know
xxx
Huge thanks to my wonderful betas To Mockingbird, Igornerd, flyingcat, fishbake, Gasmeros and ethirielalways!
~Gwen