4th November 1994, Hogwarts Castle, the Room of Requirement, 1:14 PM
The Room had assumed, by Harry's quiet morning request, the configuration that suited their purposes for the afternoon: less duelling-arena than scholar's hall, with the high vaulted ceiling preserved but the central mat replaced by a long oak table at which several people could sit and spread their books and notes; the practice-targets along the walls had become deep window-alcoves with the same unreal autumn forest beyond their glass; the floor had become broad pale flagstones; a small fire burned softly in a hearth at the far end, throwing a comfortable warmth over the entire space without ever crossing the threshold of too warm.
Harry sat at the table with his elbows propped, his glasses pushed slightly down his nose, and a heavy bestiary open before him.
He was reading—or had been reading, until the last forty seconds—about Manticores.
Hermione, opposite him, had spread her cumulative research across approximately a third of the table's length: notes in her precise small handwriting, three open volumes from the library, and her own running index of Possible First Task Beasts, Confrontations, and Acquisitions, with Annotations. She had pinched her quill between her index and middle finger in the way she did when she was holding a thought, and her brow had taken on the small concentrated furrow that meant she was disagreeing with someone.
The someone was, characteristically, Luna.
"—but a Sphinx," Hermione was saying, with the precise warm careful patience she had developed over four years of debating with Luna and discovering that the precise warm careful patience was the only debating mode that worked, "a Sphinx is almost certainly a riddle-creature, Luna. They don't generally engage in physical combat unless their riddle is mishandled. The First Task historically prefers physical engagement—"
"They engage in physical combat very rapidly if their riddle is mishandled," Luna said serenely, from where she sat cross-legged on a soft cushion in one of the window-alcoves with another bestiary open across her knees. She had her radish-earrings in. The cushion appeared to have arranged itself around her with the precise contour she preferred, which the Room had figured out in approximately the first three minutes of her presence in it. "And the Sphinx of Tournaments historically has very poor riddles. There is a record from1684 where the Sphinx asked a Champion to compute the cube root of 2743, and the Champion correctly answered 14 and the Sphinx ate him anyway. The riddle was bad, Hermione. The Champion was robbed."
Hermione's mouth opened. She closed it. She opened it again.
"That—Luna, where did you read that?"
"Magical Beasts of the Pre-Modern Tournaments, by Gladwyn Dunmoor, 1812. Volume Two. It is in the Restricted Section. Father has a copy at home; he reviewed it for the Quibbler in eighty-six."
"Luna," Hermione said, with the particular small stunned admiration of a girl who had just received a citation she had not expected.
"Yes, Hermione."
"You knew about Magical Beasts of the Pre-Modern Tournaments."
"I have known about it since I was nine."
"And you did not say this yesterday, when I was assembling the bestiary list?"
"I did not know it would be relevant yesterday. I know it is relevant today."
Harry, watching them, could not quite suppress the small smile at the corner of his mouth. Hermione and Luna in cooperative debate were one of the great quiet pleasures of his life. Hermione brought the systematic rigour of a girl who had read everything in order; Luna brought the lateral, dreamlike, correct knowledge of a girl who had read absolutely whatever she had felt like and had retained, somehow, all of it. Together they generated, with reliable consistency, a third kind of thinking that neither of them produced alone.
He glanced down at the open page of the Manticore entry and his small smile faded.
The illustration was—well. The illustration was a Manticore.
The body was that of a great red-coloured lion, low and heavily-muscled. The face was the face of a man, but not a kind one—wide-mouthed with a triple row of needle-fine teeth, close-set yellow eyes, a flat broken nose. The tail, which was disproportionately long, ended in the segmented bulb of a scorpion's sting. The illustration had been rendered in the precise unforgiving woodcut style of nineteenth-century natural philosophy and, beneath the picture, in the small cramped italic of the engraver, was the legend: Manticora rugiens. Native to Persia and the Caspian. A man-eater. Resistant to most spell-work below the level of N.E.W.T.
Harry let out a long slow breath.
"All right?" Luna asked, without looking up from her own bestiary.
"Mm."
"You are looking at the Manticore."
"Yes."
"Hermione will not let it be a Manticore. If it is a Manticore she will write to the Ministry herself."
"It can't be a Manticore," Hermione said, with the precise flat finality of a girl who had decided this hours ago. "The Tournament's safety protocols would not permit anything class-five at minimum. Manticores are five-X. The reinstatement charter explicitly excluded five-X creatures. We need not lose sleep over it."
"Mm," Harry agreed.
He breathed out again, slowly, and the small orb of Lumos he had been keeping above the table dimmed by perhaps ten per cent in unconscious sympathy. He registered this, refocused, and the orb returned to its previous brightness.
The door opened.
It was the door's particular opening—the small rune-tested confirmation that the people on the other side were on the approved list, which Harry had been quietly designing with the Room over the last two days and had, by yesterday evening, settled into a configuration he was satisfied with. The doorframe pulsed, briefly, a soft amber. Two people stepped through bearing a tray of food between them.
"Right," Ron announced, with the precise satisfied enthusiasm of a boy entering a warm room with hot food. "Lunch."
"The kitchen elves," Draco added drily, "send their compliments. Ron asked for second helpings. They were delighted."
"They like me," Ron said simply, depositing the tray on the cleared end of the table.
The tray contained two large plates of shepherd's pie steaming gently under a Stasis charm, a tureen of carrot-and-lentil soup, a board of fresh bread, four apples, a small dish of butter, a jug of pumpkin juice, and a generous portion of the spiced honey-cake from the Uagadou table that Adaeze had quietly slipped Ron three days ago and that had, since, become the unofficial dessert of the Room.
Hermione set her quill down. Luna closed her bestiary. Harry pushed his Manticore page firmly out of view. They cleared the table of paper and books with the well-practised efficiency of a study-group that had been having lunch together since they were eleven, and settled to eat.
It was, by the small unspoken consensus that had developed over the past two days, the part of the day that was not about the Tournament.
For approximately four minutes, conversation drifted to Quidditch, to the new Potions essay, to the third Norwegian moonbeam observation Luna had recorded last weekend, to the Italian Healing-journal article Draco was working through. Then Ron, who had been chewing a piece of bread, swallowed and said, with the careful neutrality of a boy raising a topic he knew the others would not enjoy—
"Theodore Nott was at it again this morning."
Hermione's spoon paused.
"In what way?"
"Corridors. Loud comments. Some of his lot were laughing."
Draco's grey eyes had gone very still. "What kind of comments?"
"The usual." Ron waved a hand. "Cheating. Famous Potter. The general theme. Daphne handled most of it—she has a way of telling a third-year to grow up that even I find quite frightening, frankly, but Theodore... has been working at this for the last week, and he's getting bolder."
A small silence.
The truth of it was that Theodore Nott's quiet campaign of the last fortnight had begun to find purchase in the school in a way that the four of them, Luna, and the Greengrasses had been collectively pretending not to track.
The simple maths of Hogwarts was that a fourteen-year-old who had been entered in a Tournament reserved for seventeen-year-olds was, to a great many people, going to look like a cheat regardless of what he himself said. All four schools and a fair number of Hogwarts students who had never spoken to Harry directly had, in the last seven days, settled into the comfortable assumption that he had done something. The other Champions—Cedric, Robert, Adaeze, even Fleur—had publicly stated otherwise, but their voices, against the broader noise, had been thin.
In Potions yesterday, the Slytherins of Theodore's faction had arrived wearing badges. Small enamel pins. Potter Stinks, the badges had read in flickering letters that, on a charm-cycle, switched to SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY—THE REAL HOGWARTS CHAMPION. Ron had—Harry remembered with weary precise affection—gone the colour of a postbox and had drawn his wand on Theodore directly across the Potions table; only Draco's quick hand on his wand-arm and Daphne's brisk Ronald, no had prevented the firing of a hex that would, undoubtedly, have earned Ron a week of detention with Filch.
Harry had simply lowered his eyes to his cauldron and continued slicing his ginger root with the precise unbothered focus of a boy who had decided long ago that giving Theodore Nott a visible reaction was to give Theodore Nott exactly what he wanted.
The classroom and corridor parts of his life had become, in the last week, a great wearing irritation. The Great Hall had become a place to eat as briskly as possible. The library was Hermione's territory and required her presence. The dormitory was his only at night.
Which was why, when the five of them had assembled in the Room of Requirement on the Wednesday afternoon and looked at one another across the long oak table, Hermione had said simply—
"This is the only place that works. We make this our base."
It had taken approximately two seconds to agree.
Harry had, the same evening, written to Ethan a letter explaining the Room and asking if any further refinements to its security were possible. Ethan's reply had arrived by Hedwig the following morning—Hedwig having returned from her protective enchantments with a small new silver thread woven into the feathers of her left wing that Harry suspected he would not learn the function of for some years—and had been, by Ethan's standards, long.
Harry,
Of course you've found the Room.
I called it the Room of Imagination when I was your age, because Imagination is closer to what it does than Requirement, but the older name is the standard one. I spent a great deal of my own seventh year in it.
There is a portion of the room you have not yet found that opens only to a particular set of triadic Runes. I will draw the set on the back of this letter; commit it to memory and then burn the page. The Runes set the Room to admit only those whose magical signatures you have personally invited within the previous twenty-four hours; everyone else who walks past Barnabas three times will receive a different Room, sized for them but not yours.
This will, I think, solve your privacy problem.
The Room can also create more than you have yet asked it to create. It cannot make food (Gamp's). It cannot make a living thing with self-aware mind (no one has ever managed it, though the Department of Mysteries has tried). Within those limits, it is one of the most flexible pieces of architecture in Britain, and you are well-suited to using it.
On the matter of the Task: I am proud of how you and the others are organising. Continue. You may not receive direct help from any adult, but the rules do not forbid you from receiving help from your father about the architecture of a Hogwarts room, since this falls outside the Tournament's scope.
A final thing. I will be at Hogwarts during the Tournament's three Tasks, in some capacity that I will tell you about closer to the time. I do not say this to alarm you. I say it because you should know I will be near.
Read the Runes. Burn this. Train hard. Eat properly. Sleep.
All my love,Dad
The Runes had been precise and elegant, drawn in Ethan's small precise hand. Harry had committed them to memory in approximately three minutes and burned the letter in the Room's hearth, which had, helpfully, blazed up cleanly to consume the parchment without leaving ash.
Hedwig had departed with a brief preening and a small approving look at him over her shoulder.
Now the Room admitted only the five of them, plus Astoria and Daphne when they came after their Slytherin classes, plus Hedwig and Jasper when they chose to perch in the upper rafters.
It had become, with great speed, a home.
The lunch progressed at its comfortable pace. Hermione produced, with a small flourish, a list she had drafted that morning of every magical beast that the Tournament had used in its First Task in the past three centuries. Luna pointed out, mildly, that Hermione had missed an Acromantula reference from 1658. Hermione, with the precise exhilarated dismay of a girl whose research had been improved upon, made a note. Draco asked a careful follow-up question. Ron, who had finished his shepherd's pie and was working on his second slice of honey-cake, observed:
"You realise the new safety protocols rule out half of what's on that list."
"They do," Hermione agreed.
"So we should be ranking by what they're allowed to use, not by what's been used."
"Yes, Ron. That is exactly what I have been doing for the last two days."
"Just checking."
"You are learning."
"Don't."
... Then came that day,
The amber rune-light at the door pulsed, briefly, and the door opened.
It was Colin Creevey.
Colin stood in the doorway with the particular self-effacing posture of a boy who had been led by Luna to a room he was reasonably certain did not, by ordinary geography, exist, and who had been told that he was permitted in only because Harry had specifically authorised him for the purposes of a specific message. He had a camera around his neck and an expression of unselfconscious delighted nervousness.
"Harry," he said. "Sorry. Sorry. Mr Bagman sent me. The wand-weighing's in twenty minutes. He wants you in the Trophy Room. The other Champions are already there. There's—there's a journalist."
Harry's stomach did the small precise drop it always did when journalist was mentioned in a sentence concerning him.
"Rita Skeeter?"
"Yeah."
"Mm."
Hermione's hand had already gone, automatically, to the small pocket of her cardigan where she kept the Wiggenweld cream she had been carrying since Tuesday. She withdrew, instead, a small folded square of parchment which she pressed into Harry's palm.
"Luna and I prepared this," she said briskly. "Three pages of safe phrases. Vague affirmatives. Polite deflections. Non-quotable platitudes. If she asks anything she shouldn't, you give her one of these. She cannot twist a non-answer."
Harry looked at the parchment. "You wrote me a script."
"I wrote you several scripts," Hermione clarified.
"Hermione."
"She is dangerous, Harry. Robert told us. How unpleasant it was talking to that woman."
"I know."
Luna had risen from her cushion. She crossed to Harry and tucked his collar straight with the absent precise care she gave such things. "Father's voice," she said softly. "If Rita gets hard, do Father's voice. Calm and short. Or Ethan's. Either works."
"Mm."
"And the smile."
"Ethan's business smile."
"Yes."
She kissed his cheek with a small fond decisiveness that had, six months earlier, not been quite a habit. Harry, whose ears responded as they always did, registered with a small private pleasure that he had stopped, somewhere over the last six weeks, being embarrassed by this in front of the others. The others had stopped registering it. Ron was pouring himself more pumpkin juice. Draco was reviewing his Healing notes. The world had simply incorporated the small affectionate ritual.
"All right," Harry said. He pocketed the script. He gathered his satchel. "I'll be back for dinner."
"Bring Robert," Luna said. "And Cedric, if he wants to come. They have been alone with the Champions' burdens for a fortnight. They could use a place to sit that is not under observation."
Harry, who had not thought to invite either of them but registered the rightness of the suggestion at once, nodded. "Yes. All right. I'll ask."
He followed Colin out.
4th November 1994, Hogwarts Castle, the Corridor outside the Trophy Room, 1:42 PM
The corridor outside the Trophy Room was empty when Harry arrived—Colin having darted away to fetch Cedric, who had apparently been delayed by his Charms class—and it was therefore not yet busy enough to require Harry's full social composure.
A figure was leaning against the wall some paces ahead.
Viktor Krum had his hands in his pockets and the precise mildly-uncomfortable expression of a young man who had been waiting for something for some minutes and was passing the time looking at the trophies through the glass of the closed door. He looked, when he saw Harry, the way he had looked across the breakfast Hall the previous morning when their eyes had briefly met: attentively pleased.
"Harry Potter," he said, straightening. "I have been hoping I would see you alone."
"V-Viktor."
Harry noted, with the small interior calibration he did automatically these days, that the hoping was for a specific conversation rather than a general one.
"You are about to be interviewed by the woman Skeeter," Viktor said. "Yes?"
"Yes."
"I have been interviewed by the woman Skeeter."
"Oh."
Viktor's mouth pulled into the particular wry expression Harry remembered from the library chronicle Hermione had described—the small tired half-smile of a boy who had encountered a specific kind of unpleasantness more than once in his life. "She asked me, in our interview last week, whether my parents had pressured me into Quidditch as a small boy. The answer is no. The article she published said yes. She asked me whether I considered Bulgarian Quidditch fundamentally inferior to British. The answer was no. The article said probably yes. She is—" he searched for the English word, "—she is a vampire."
"That is a very good word for her."
"The Champion Thornwood—Robert—has had the same experience, I think. He told me she asked him about his American protests and quoted him saying things he never said. He is cross."
Harry registered, with some quiet pleasure, that Robert had been speaking to Viktor too. The Champions, then, had been forming their own small alliance off-stage. 'Good.'
"So," Viktor continued, with the careful clarity of a young man ensuring his English landed correctly, "I tell you. Say only what you would write in a letter to your grandmother. No more."
"I do not have a grandmother."
"Then your father."
"Right. Yes."
"And do not let her ask you about your friends. She will ask. She will use them to make a story. Especially—" Viktor's expression underwent a precise small shift that Harry did not entirely manage not to register, "—especially the small fluffy one. The one who is your friend. The clever one. With the books."
Harry's mouth twitched.
"You mean Hermione."
"Hermin-ee-nee."
"Hermione," Harry said gently, with the small affectionate care of a boy delivering a pronunciation.
"Hermin-ee-nee," Viktor repeated, with the sincere effort of a boy who had been working at this for a fortnight, getting the m fractionally closer. "I am sorry. The English. The vowels. They are—many."
"You're closer this time. Hermione will appreciate the effort."
"You think?"
"I do."
A small careful pause. Viktor's dark hawk-eyes had taken on the quality Harry had once seen on Ron's face when Ron had been about to ask Harry whether it was all right to give Lavender a Christmas present last year and had not been certain he was permitted to, by the rules of friendship as he was constructing them.
"Harry," Viktor said carefully, "your friend. Is she—is there—" he considered the English, "—is there an understanding with the boy Weasley, or the boy Malfoy. They are her best friends, yes? They are with her every day. I do not wish to be rude... I do not wish to be the foreign Seeker who misunderstands..."
Harry, whose face had not changed, registered with a small quiet inward pleasure that the most-talked-about athlete in Europe was standing in a Hogwarts corridor sincerely asking him for permission to like his best friend.
"They are her best friends," Harry said, with great care. "They are only her best friends. There is no understanding. Ron has—" he selected the precise honest word, "—unrelated affections elsewhere. Draco is not interested in girls in that way, I think, and certainly not in Hermione that way. She is free, Viktor."
Viktor's shoulders, Harry registered, dropped half an inch with an audible quiet exhalation.
"Thank you," Viktor said simply.
"You're welcome."
"Also—I would like—if you are willing—I would like to be friends. Not because of Hermin-ee-nee. Because of you, and your friends. I have watched the small Slytherin girl protect the Lovegood girl from a mean second-year in the library yesterday, and I have watched Weasley help an Ilvermorny student carry her books to her room, and I have watched you let Robert sit beside you in the Champions' antechamber when you could have sat alone. You are—" Viktor searched, "—good people. I have not had many friends like that. The Quidditch Academy is small and the boys there do not read Brontë."
Harry, who had been bracing for something in this conversation but had not been bracing for this, had to take a moment.
"V-Viktor," he said, "I would like that very much."
"Yes?"
"Yes."
"Then we are friends."
"We are friends."
Viktor, with the precise grave warmth of a young man who had decided something important, extended his hand.
Harry took it.
They shook, with a brief solemnity that Harry would later think of as one of the small unexpectedly-significant handshakes of his life.
The corridor began to fill behind them: Cedric arriving with Colin in tow, Robert arriving from a different direction with a smile of recognition for Viktor and a small wave for Harry, Fleur appearing at the head of a group of three Beauxbatons students whom she dispersed at the corridor's mouth with a single elegant gesture. Adaeze arrived last, walking with the easy confident stride of a girl who had decided that the corridor's energy was, on balance, beneath her interest, and gave Harry a small warm nod as she passed.
The Champions had assembled.
The Trophy Room door opened.
4th November 1994, Hogwarts Castle, Trophy Room broom cupboard, 1:51 PM
Rita Skeeter was wearing a magenta cloak and had her acid-green Quick-Quotes Quill already poised in mid-air when Harry was, against all dignity, ushered into the broom cupboard with her by an apologetic Ludo Bagman.
The cupboard smelt of beeswax and old felt. There was barely room for two adults in it, let alone a journalist, a fourteen-year-old, a self-writing quill, and a press-folder.
"Harry," Rita said, with the specific predatory warmth that she had clearly designed for this exact opening. "May I call you Harry. I always feel that Mr Potter puts such distance between an interviewer and her—"
"Y-yes, Miss Skeeter."
"Rita, please, dear."
"R-Rita."
The Quick-Quotes Quill twitched. Harry watched it. He had heard about Quick-Quotes Quills from his father at length and at length again in Ethan's brief about-this-press-tactics primer at the start of every summer. The quill required only the most marginal of stimuli to begin writing, and what it wrote was less your words than the journalist's preferred narrative attached to the moment of your speech.
Harry pulled, with the small careful interior settling Ethan had taught him, his composure together.
He thought of his father at the Atid Stella press conferences. He thought of Ethan's business smile—the small precise warm one that gave absolutely nothing away.
He produced it.
Rita's quill twitched. It hesitated. It did not write.
"Harry." She leaned in slightly. "How are you feeling, about being entered into a Tournament you did not consent to?"
Harry paused. The script in his pocket was unnecessary; he could feel the right answer in the precise empty shape Ethan had taught him to feel. "I have a great deal of confidence in the Tournament's safety protocols, and in the professionalism of the judges. I look forward to the Tasks."
The quill twitched. It scratched, briefly, a small line. It paused.
"That is—a generous answer." Rita's smile sharpened. "Tell me, between us, Harry: who do you think did enter your name? You must have suspicions."
"That is a question I trust the Headmaster and the relevant Ministry departments to answer."
"You have no idea?"
"I have a great deal of confidence in the relevant authorities."
The quill scratched a small unhappy mark.
"Harry. Your parents, now. They died protecting you from a Dark wizard. Tell me—do you ever wonder what they would say, seeing you in this Tournament? Do you—forgive me, dear, I know this is painful, but our readers feel for you so very deeply—do you sometimes feel their spirits? Their love? Their guidance?"
Harry's expression did not flicker.
He thought of his mother. He thought of the green light. He thought of Ethan, calm and unhurried, sitting beside his bed at age nine and saying 'You may speak about your mother and father whenever you wish, Harry, and never when you do not. Other people's curiosity is not your obligation.'
He smiled the small business smile.
"I have a great deal of confidence," he said, "in the privacy of those personal matters. I would prefer to focus on the Tournament."
The quill, frustrated now, scratched a small precise sound.
"But Harry—"
The cupboard door opened with the precise authority of a Headmaster who had decided that exactly this much had been enough.
Albus Dumbledore stood in the corridor outside, his half-moon spectacles bright in the lamp-light, his expression the careful mild courtesy he reserved for occasions when he was rescuing someone from something with great dignity.
"Mr Potter. Forgive me, Rita. The wand-weighing ceremony is about to begin. Mr Ollivander is quite particular about his timing."
"Of course, Albus." Rita's smile had gone sharp. "Of course. We can resume—"
"I am sure," Dumbledore said pleasantly, "that you have what you require."
He extended a hand. Harry took it gratefully and exited the cupboard with the careful composure of a boy who had survived precisely the encounter he had been dreading. As he passed Dumbledore in the corridor, the Headmaster gave him a small almost imperceptible nod that Harry recognised as well done.
4th November 1994, Hogwarts Castle, the Trophy Room, 2:02 PM
The Trophy Room had been arranged for the wand-weighing with the particular formal care of a Tournament occasion. A long table draped in deep red velvet had been placed before the largest cabinet. The five judges sat behind it: Bagman, Crouch, Madame Maxime, Karkaroff, Headmistress Fontaine of Ilvermorny, and Headmistress Akingbade of Uagadou, with Dumbledore at the centre. A single high-backed chair beside the table had been reserved for the wand-weigher.
Garrick Ollivander rose to greet the Champions.
Harry had not seen Mr Ollivander in person since he was eleven years old, and the man had not changed by any noticeable measure: the same wild silver hair, the same pale moon-eyes, the same small uncanny knowing-smile, the same fingers that touched a wand with the precise reverent attention of a man for whom each one was a known individual. He greeted each Champion in turn, took their wand, and conducted his small ritual examination—the eye, the bend, the cast of a small testing spell.
Fleur's wand: rosewood, nine and a half inches, with a strand of Veela hair from her grandmother. "Springy," Mr Ollivander pronounced, "and rather temperamental. In good condition."
Viktor's: hornbeam, ten and a quarter inches, dragon heartstring. "Thicker than I usually make. Aggressive. Suits its master. In excellent condition."
Cedric's: ash, twelve and a quarter inches, unicorn hair. "A pleasingly springy wand. In excellent condition."
Robert's, from the Ilvermorny wandmaker Shikoba Wolfe, a Wampus-cat-whisker core: "A continental cousin to my own work. Beautifully made. In perfect condition."
Adaeze's, which was not, technically, a wand but a small carved staff of polished blackwood that she carried at her belt and used principally for focus rather than power: Mr Ollivander examined it with the precise admiring care of a craftsman encountering an entirely different tradition. "This is not my discipline, Miss Okonkwo, but I recognise excellent work. Your craftsperson is a master. In perfect condition."
Then Harry's.
Mr Ollivander's pale eyes flicked to him with a small bright recognition. "Mr Potter. Holly. Eleven inches. Phoenix feather core. Nice and supple. I remember it well." He turned the wand in his fingers. The familiar magical signature of a wand being read by its maker passed through the Trophy Room, and Harry felt a small private fond pulse at his sleeve, where the wand belonged. "Excellent condition. Better than excellent. You have been caring for this wand, Mr Potter."
"Y-yes, sir. With wand-oil. Every Sunday."
"Quite right. Quite right." Ollivander's small smile widened a fraction. "It is thriving. Sit down."
Harry sat. The photographs began.
They went on for, by Harry's eventual count, approximately forty-seven minutes.
4th November 1994, the Room of Requirement, 5:34 PM
He returned to the Room as the November sky was darkening to dusk, with Robert and Cedric in tow and a vague distinct warmth in his chest that had been growing steadily on the walk back. The Room had assembled itself, by Luna's evident afternoon request, into its dinner configuration: the long table, the warm fire, the soft candles, six places already laid—and, by some arrangement Harry suspected was Ron's, two extra places for the visitors.
"Robert!" Hermione cried, with the warm uninhibited delight of a girl who had not quite shed her American summer's affection for a fellow scholar. "Come in. Sit. And Cedric—Cedric, please. You both look exhausted."
"We're alive," Robert said, settling into the offered seat with a long exhalation. "Cedric looks worse."
"I have been photographed," Cedric said, with the precise outrage of a Hufflepuff who took his composure seriously, "for forty-seven minutes."
"Yes, Cedric."
The dinner expanded gracefully to accommodate the two new arrivals. Conversation flowed. Robert and Hermione discovered they had, separately, both read a particular obscure French treatise on protective charms; Cedric told Ron a story about Oliver Wood that had Ron leaning back in his chair with helpless laughter. Adaeze did not arrive—she was, Cedric explained, dining with the Hufflepuff table tonight, where she had been, by quiet design, integrating herself for the past fortnight. Fleur sent her regrets via a small note, polite and precise, declining on the grounds that she had a Beauxbatons commitment.
Harry, halfway through his shepherd's pie, remembered the conversation with Viktor.
He glanced at Hermione.
He glanced at Luna. Luna's eyebrow rose. He raised his.
He took a small sip of pumpkin juice.
"By the way," he said, with the precisely neutral conversational tone of a boy raising a topic of no particular consequence whatever, "Viktor wanted me to tell you—" he turned to Hermione, "—that he has been working hard on your name, Hermione."
The fork paused halfway to Hermione's mouth.
"My—name."
"He says Hermin-ee-nee, now. He's getting closer. He's quite proud."
There was a small, precise silence.
Hermione, very carefully, set her fork down. Her ears, as Harry watched with quiet pleasure, turned a remarkable shade of pink that travelled, in approximately four seconds, from the lobes upward into the actual hairline.
"He—asked you—about my name."
"He asked me a great many things, Hermione."
"What things."
"Oh," Harry said serenely, "this and that. He called you small and fluffy."
"Fluffy?"
"He meant kind, I think. He didn't quite have the English."
Robert, on Hermione's other side, had gone very still and was suddenly—impressively—deeply interested in his peas. Cedric was looking determinedly at the candle. Ron and Draco were exchanging the precise look of two boys who had registered, simultaneously, the development they had been faintly suspecting since the first match of the World Cup. Luna was smiling at her plate with her small contained pleased smile.
Hermione, with the precise dignity of a girl whose ears had achieved a colour she had never previously witnessed in herself, placed her napkin on the table, folded it, and announced: "I am going to the kitchen to fetch more bread."
"There is bread on the table, Hermione," Draco observed mildly.
"Different bread."
She rose, with the regal composure of a queen withdrawing from a court that had embarrassed her, and marched to the door. The Room, with the careful tact it had developed for its inhabitants, opened the door and closed it behind her.
Around the table, eyes met.
Ron broke first. "Mate," he said, "Krum?"
"Apparently," Harry confirmed.
"Krum, Hermione?"
"He's actually quite nice, Ron."
"Krum."
"He reads Brontë."
"He what?"
"Brontë, Ron. Wuthering Heights."
"Krum reads Brontë?" Robert raised his eyebrows
"He really does."
Robert was, by this point, openly grinning. Cedric had given up the candle entirely and was laughing into his napkin. Draco's mouth had pulled into the particular small dry pleased smile of a Slytherin who had been waiting for exactly this development. Luna, beside Harry, leaned her shoulder gently against his.
Outside, the November sky over Hogwarts had darkened to the deep blue of a long evening, and inside the Room of Requirement, in its warm candle-lit dinner configuration, six friends ate slowly and laughed quietly, and the long table held them all.