Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003585181
Chapter 2: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003585386
Chapter 3: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003589099
Chapter 4: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003589999
Chapter 5: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003590737
Chapter 6: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003592048
Chapter 7: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003593450
Chapter 8: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003594715
Chapter 9: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003595876
Chapter 10: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003596713
Chapter 11: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003597502
Chapter 12: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003598647
Chapter 13: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003600597
Chapter 14: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003602821
Chapter 15: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003605031
Tags: @MeowTasticCat @Bellatrisblack @Diantha Angelina Black @CatsAndRoblox @Kakaonut
Chapter Sixteen: The Weighing of the Wands
When Harry woke up on Tuesday morning, it took him a moment to remember why he felt so miserable and worried. Then the memory of the previous night rolled over him. He sat up and ripped back the curtains of his own four-poster, and ready to go talk to Allison. Harry dressed and went down the spiral staircase with Theodore into the common room. The moment he appeared, the people who were in the room broke into applause again. The prospect of going up into the Great Hall and facing the rest of the Slytherins, all treating him like some sort of hero, was not inviting; it was that, however, or stay here and allow himself to be cornered by over energetic first years.
As Harry and Theodore maneuvered their was to the enchanted wall they were joined by one other. Harry felt his harm be tightly gripped and he was now looking into the hazel eyes of Tracey.
‘I’m going to ask this once and you better answer truthfully, did you put your name into the Goblet?’
‘No Tracey, I swear. Where’s Allison, I need to tell her the same.’
‘Not sure, she was already gone when I woke up. She might still be at breakfast if we hurry.’
They walked quickly over to the enchanted wall, walked through it, and found himself face-to-face with his sister.
‘Did you do it Harry! Did you put your name into the Goblet?’ Canini asked almost franticly.
Harry was not expecting this ambush. ‘I didn’t know you knew where the Slytherin Common Room was?’
‘I didn’t, I’ve been searching for over an hour, now did you actually do it?’
‘No Cani, I’m just as confused and in the dark as the rest of the school. Now I don’t mean to be rude, but I am hungry and getting really annoyed with people asking me if I put my name in. Can we drop the subject and just head to breakfast?’
She thought for a moment then nodded, ‘Yes, let’s get breakfast before class starts.’
So they climbed the steep stone steps, making their way to the great hall. A lot of whispering started the moment he entered the Great Hall but thankfully he wasn’t swarmed again. He scanned the Slytherin table and sported Allison’s shoulder length pitch black hair sitting around the middle, to Harry’s shock she was sitting with Draco, Daphne, and Millicent. Harry, Theodore, Canini, and Tracey made their way over to her.
‘Hey Allison, we need to talk.’ Harry said calmly, but she just kept her attention to her cereal.
‘Allison, I know you’re mad, but I didn’t do it. I don’t know how-‘
‘Leave her alone, snapped Millicent. ‘She doesn’t want to talk to traitorous liars.’
This was to much for Tracey, ‘He didn’t do it Alli, I know why you’re mad but you got to understand that he’s innocent.’
Allison may have made some sort of commitment to not speak to Harry, but it didn’t apply to the others. She took her last spoonful of cereal the stood. She looked so furious Harry had half a mind to run away, but he stood his ground, as did his friends.
‘You two!’ she said while referring to Theodore and Tracey. ‘I thought you were on my side, I thought we were in agreement that he was in the wrong! How much did he have to say to get you back into his good graces, on sentence, two? You’re both gutless cowards, get out of my sight, all four of you, now!’
Not seeing another option at the moment, Harry, Canini, and his friends backed off. Canini went to sit with her fellow Hufflepuffs and Harry and his gang sat at the other end of the table to have their breakfast.
When Terence came down for breakfast Tracey ran over to him and explained everything, he looked like he understood, but like Theodore had expected he would need some time to cool down from his frustration, so he went and sat with Lucian. Harry was ok with this as he knew Terence would soon come around, but Tracey wasn't taking the drama to well. Two of her closest friends at odds with the rest of the group, she obviously felt split in two.
It wasn't just Harry's friends that were at odds however, once classes started it became clear that the rest of the school, just like the Slytherins, thought Harry
had entered himself for the tournament. Unlike the Slytherins, however, they did not seem impressed. The Hufflepuffs, who were usually on good terms with Harry since the end of his second year, had turned remarkably cold toward him and his friends. One Transfiguration lesson was enough to demonstrate this. It was plain that the Hufflepuffs felt that Harry had stolen their champion’s glory; a feeling exacerbated, perhaps, by the fact that Hufflepuff House very rarely got any glory, and that Cedric was one of the few who had ever given them any, having won several Quidditch games. Ernie Macmillan and Justin Finch-Fletchley, with whom Harry normally got on very well, did not talk to him even though they were sitting in desks right next to one another—though they did laugh rather unpleasantly when Harry's guinea pig still had several feathers at odd spots. Professor McGonagall, who was Head of Gryffindor house and normally had a small soft spot for Harry, was cold and dismissive.
That evening he received an owl from home. He opened it instantly, it was in Sirius’ handwriting.
“Harry, I don’t want to cause you to panic, but this is very worrisome. Something or someone malicious is manipulating events and I highly doubt that the final goal is to simply increase your fame. I know better than anyone that you can look after yourself and while you’re around Dumbledore and Moody I don’t think anyone will be able to hurt you. However, someone seems to be having a good try. Entering you in that tournament would have been very risky, especially right under Dumbledore’s nose. Be on the watch, Harry. Before I told you to keep an eye out, but now I am telling you to truly keep your guard up for the foreseeable future. Something foul is boiling, and I want you not taken by surprise when it arrives. For now, just focus on the tasks, being prepared isn’t simply the strategy to winning the challenge, it is also the key to simply surviving them.
Stay safe my growing fawn.
~Sirius Black”
The message wasn’t quite the encouragement he was expecting, but the advice was helpful. With no way of knowing the first task however, Harry’s focus remained on his classes. The only class he looked forward to at this point was Care of Magical Creatures, taught by a teacher that still liked Harry, and was partnered with the Gryffindors who very rarely were against Harry.
But when Harry arrived at Hagrid’s hut Monday afternoon there were two disappointing shocks waiting for him, the first being that besides Ron, Hermione, and Neville all the Gryffindors were equally mad at him as the Hufflepuffs, and that Pansy and her goons were waiting for him.
‘Oh look, the famous celebrity decided to honour us with his presence. First you’re famous across our world for doing nothing, then you just had to join Quidditch a year before the rest of us are allowed, you shared the spotlight with Lockhart any chance you got, and now you just had to compete in the first Twiwizard in over a century. An attention freak like yourself should be up at the castle trying to fix that rats nest of a head.’
Blaise Zabini laughed so hard at what Pansy said, that Harry thought he might keel over. ‘She’s right Potter, you just crave attention, so when the first task begins you’ll be so distracted by the cameras that you’ll be dead before the first minute is over.’
Harry was used to these jerks insults, he normally didn’t take them to personally, but he was emotionally warn down from people he cared about not believe him, and his own godfather not sugar coating the fact that he was in danger. So were he normally would just have a snarky comeback, he marched over to Pansy and got right up in her face.
‘I’m going to make myself clear, if one more person insinuates that I put my name in the Goblet of Fire I will drag them to the center of the forest and let fate decide what happens.'
Pansy temporarily backed off, but even Tracey and Theodore looked a little intimidated. 'Harry, that was intense.'
'Well I am not in the mood to deal with their insults.'
Hagrid then emerged from the back of his cabin balancing a teetering tower of crates, each containing a very large Blast-Ended Skrewt. To the class’s horror, Hagrid proceeded to explain that the reason the skrewts had been killing one another was an excess of pent-up energy, and that the solution would be for each student to fix a leash on a skrewt and take it for a short walk. The only good thing about this plan was that it distracted Pansy completely.
'We are supposed to tie these dangerous things to us?' she said slightly horrified, staring into one of the boxes. 'And then just hope they don't take their pent-up energy out on us? Where do we even put the leash?'
'Roun’ the middle,' said Hagrid, ignoring the first part of her question. 'Er—yeh might want ter put on yer dragon-hide gloves, jus’ as an extra precaution, like. Harry—you come here an’ help me with this big one...'
Hagrid’s real intention, however, was to talk to Harry away from the rest of the class. He waited until everyone else had set off with their skrewts, then turned to Harry and said, very seriously, 'So—yer competin’, Harry. In the tournament. School champion.'
'One of the champions,' Harry corrected him. He was running out of energy constantly talking about the tournament.'
Hagrid’s beetle-black eyes looked very anxious under his wild eyebrows. 'No idea who put yeh in fer it, Harry?'
'You believe I didn’t do it, then?' said Harry, concealing with difficulty the rush of gratitude he felt at Hagrid’s words.
'’Course I do,' Hagrid grunted. 'Yeh say it wasn’ you, an’ I believe yeh—an’ Dumbledore believes yer, an’ all.'
Harry's mood was lifted somewhat, when Harry first arrived at hogwarts Hagrid treated Harry differently for being a Slytherin, he didn't trust him. But over the last three years Hagrid had gotten to know Harry and now when everyone was saying Harry was just a sneaky Slytherin Hagrid believed he was telling the truth. 'I just wish I knew who did do it.'
The pair of them looked out over the lawn; the class was widely scattered now, and all in great difficulty. The skrewts were now over three feet long, and extremely powerful. No longer shell-less and colorless, they had developed a kind of thick, grayish, shiny armor. They looked like a cross between giant scorpions and elongated crabs—but still without recognizable heads or eyes. They had become immensely strong and very hard to control.
'Look like they’re havin’ fun, don’ they?' Hagrid said happily. Harry assumed he was talking about the skrewts, because his classmates certainly weren’t; every now and then, with an alarming bang, one of the skrewts’ ends would explode, causing it to shoot forward several yards, and more than one person was being dragged along on their stomach, trying desperately to get back on their feet.
'Ah, I don’ know, Harry,' Hagrid sighed suddenly, looking back down at him with a worried expression on his face. 'School champion...everythin’ seems ter happen ter you, doesn’ it?'
Harry didn’t answer. What Pansy had said earlier was partially right, everything did seem to happen to him, but it was never by choice. Harry didn't choose to be orphaned, he didn't choose to be the youngest Seeker, he definitely didn't choose to be Lockharts favourite student, or to be a Parseltongue, and he did not choose to have fought Lord Voldemort three times.
The next few days were some of Harry’s worst at Hogwarts. The closest he had ever come to feeling like this had been during those months, in his second year, when a large part of the school had suspected him of attacking his fellow students. But back then Allison had been by his side, she and Tracey had gotten Harry through that dark year.
Allison still wasn't talking to him, she would either sit with Draco's group, or with her second cousin Terry Boot. Occasionally she would talk to Tracey, but anytime Tracey brought up Harry she would shut her out to.
'I think she is hanging out with Terry more than just to have someone to talk to,' Tracey soon revealed, 'she wouldn't tell me why, but I think there is something else going on then just her being ma at you Harry.'
Harry couldn't tell if this was true or not, all he could tell was that she wouldn't talk to him. He thought he could have coped with the rest of the school’s behavior if he could just have his best friend back back, but he wasn’t going to try and persuade Allison to talk to him if she didn’t want to. Nevertheless, it was lonely with dislike pouring in on him from all sides.
He could understand the Hufflepuffs’ attitude, even if he didn’t like it; they had their own champion to support. But he had not expected the hate he was receiving from the other two houses. He had so many friends in Gryffindor that he thought they would have persuaded the others to be on his side but they weren't, and he had hoped the Ravenclaws might have found it in their hearts to support him as much as Cedric. He was wrong, however. Most Ravenclaws seemed to think that he had been desperate to earn himself a bit more fame by tricking the goblet into accepting his name.
Then there was the fact that Cedric looked the part of a champion so much more than he did. Exceptionally handsome, with his straight nose, dark hair, and gray eyes, it was hard to say who was receiving more admiration these days, Cedric or Viktor Krum. Harry actually saw the same sixth-year girls who had been so keen to get Krum’s autograph begging Cedric to sign their school bags one lunchtime.
Professor Trelawney was predicting his death with even more certainty than usual, and he did so badly at Summoning Charms in Professor Flitwick’s class that he was given extra homework—the only person to get any in the shared Slytherin-Ravenclaw class.
'I can help you if you want, Harry,' Tracey offered him as they left Flitwick’s class—she had been making objects zoom across the room to her all lesson, as though she were some sort of weird magnet for board dusters, wastepaper baskets, and lunascopes. 'You just need to know the exact wrist movement.'
'Yeah...thanks...' said Harry, his focus wasn't on her offer though, his attention was on Cedric Diggory who had just walked past, surrounded by a large group of simpering girls, all of whom looked at Harry as though he were a particularly large Blast-Ended Skrewt. 'Um, er— what other classes do we have today?'
The rest of the day they had Defence Against the Dark Arts and Tracey helping Harry catch up in Charms, and before they knew it Friday had arrived with more double Potions.
Double Potions was always a horrible experience, but these days it was nothing short of torture. Being shut in a dungeon for an hour and a half with Snape, seven angry Gryffindors, Pansy's gang, and Allison still ignoring him. It was if the universe was determined to punish Harry as much as possible for becoming school champion against his will. He already struggled under Snape's Potions class under normal circumstances, Harry didn't know how he was going to get through Potions under these knew challenges.
When he, Theodore, and Tracey arrived at Snape’s dungeon after lunch, they found that Pansy's gang was waiting outside, each and every one of them wearing a large ribbon pinned to their robes. He wasn't entirely sure what they were at first—then he saw that they all bore the same message, in bold yellow letters that burnt brightly in the dimly lit underground passage:
"Support Diggory, the True Champion!"
'What do you think Potter?' said Pansy loudly as Harry approached. 'They're becoming quite popular, look-'
She pointed at the Gryffindors waiting for class to start, several of them were wearing the ribbons as well, though they looked hesitant with Harry seeing them.
'Cute,' Tracey said sarcastically to Pansy and her gang, who were laughing harder than anyone, 'how many brain cells did it take you to come up with this?'
Harry spotted Allison with Draco, Daphne, and Millicent, her just standing there really bothered Harry.
'If you like them so much Davis you can have one,' said Pansy coldly, 'but I'll have to toss it at you, don't want your filthy blood traitor hands touching mine.'
Tracey never let insults about her muggle father go to her head, and usually Harry followed her lead, but some of the anger Harry had been feeling for over a week seemed to burst through a dam in his chest. He had reached for his wand before he’d thought what he was doing. People all around them scrambled out of the way, backing down the corridor.
'It isn't worth it,' Theodore said warningly.
'Coward, you are all bark and no bite,' Pansy said quietly, drawing out her own wand. 'I knew your threat from the other day was empty—'
For a split second, they looked into each other’s eyes, then, at exactly the same time, both acted.
'Furnunculus!' Harry yelled.
'Calvorio!' screamed Pansy.
Jets of light shot from both wands, hit each other in midair, and ricocheted off at angles—Harry’s hit Goyle in the face, and Malfoy’s hit Tracey. Goyle bellowed and put his hands to his nose, where great ugly boils were springing up—Tracey, whimpering in panic, was clutching her head.
'Tracey!' Allison cried out.
Allison and Theodore hurried forward to see what was wrong with her; Harry turned and saw what the curse had done. Tracey's beautiful big afro of curly tight locks where falling out in hug clumps. In a manner of seconds all her hair was on the floor, leaving her head completely bald. Panic-stricken, let out a terrified cry.
'And what is all this noise about?' said a soft, deadly voice.
Snape had arrived. All the Slytherins clamored to give their explanations; Snape pointed a long yellow finger at Pansy and said, 'Explain.'
'Potter cast a spell at me, I fired back in self defence, sir—'
'We attacked each other at the same time!' Harry shouted.
'— and look what he did to poor Goyle—just look—'
Snape examined Goyle, whose face now resembled something that would have been at home in a book on poisonous fungi. 'Hospital wing, Goyle.'
'Sir, look what Pansy did to Tracey,' Allison said angrily. 'Harry just used a jinx, but Parkinson used a full on curse on her.'
Tracey was just in shock, holding pieces of her hair in her hands. Pansy, Zabini, and Crabbe were doubled up with silent giggles, pointing at Tracey from behind Snape’s back.
Snape looked coldly at Tracey, then said, 'Its just hair.'
Tracey let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears, Harry was disgusted with what Snape said. He had no idea how long it took to grow to that length, how much effort it took to maintain it, years of work was now on the floor. Tracey couldn't take the starring or humiliation any more, and ran off.
It was lucky, perhaps, that Harry, Theodore, and Allison started shouting at Snape at the same time; lucky their voices echoed so much in the stone corridor, for in the confused din, it was impossible for him to hear exactly what they were calling him. He got the gist, however.
'Let’s see,' he said, in his silkiest voice. 'Fifteen points from Slytherin and a detention each for Potter, Runcorn, and Nott. Now get inside, or it’ll be a week’s worth of detentions.'
Harry’s ears were ringing. The injustice of it made him want to curse Snape into a thousand slimy pieces. He passed Snape, walked with Theodore and Allison to the back of the dungeon, and slammed his bag down onto the table. Allison was shaking with anger too—for a moment, it felt as though everything was back to normal between them, but then Allison turned and sat down with Draco, Daphne, and Millicent instead, leaving Harry and Theodore at a table by themselves. On the other side of the dungeon, Pansy turned her back on Snape and started imitating Tracey grabbing at her hair.
Harry sat there staring at Snape as the lesson began, picturing horrific things happening to him...If only he knew how to do the Cruciatus Curse...he’d have Snape flat on his back like that spider, jerking and twitching...
'Antidotes!' said Snape, looking around at them all, his cold black eyes glittering unpleasantly. 'You should all have prepared your recipes now. I want you to brew them carefully, and then, we will be selecting someone on whom to test one...'
Snape’s eyes met Harry’s, and Harry knew what was coming. Snape was going to poison him. Harry imagined picking up his cauldron, and sprinting to the front of the class, and bringing it down on Snape’s greasy head—