Eternal Patience

The All-Wizard Tournament

The castle and grounds continued their slow de-thaw as February melted into March. Flowers were beginning to blossom, unicorn foals were being born, and the sun made occasional appearances from behind the woolen gray blanket that was the cloudy sky.

Barnaby usually thought of Spring as a fresh spark of life, but this season, he and all his friends seemed do be decaying from the inside out. 

Everyone was extremely on edge to learn that Sarah was being tailed by someone who wasn't afraid to use the unforgiveable curses, and who'd threatened to kill one of her friends by the end of the year. On top of that, two more students had been found trapped inside portraits, and students were often late to classes as they avoided that set of stairs by any means. 

Rowan had been deeply affected by the imperius curse incident. She looked over her shoulder everywhere she went, worried her attacker might try to curse her again. 

Add to that the fact that their OWLs were now only a couple months away, and the entire fifth year walked around like their bones were made of glass. 

Barnaby didn't know whether to be glad or worried when he received a message from Kettleburn to come to the Magical Creatures Paddock for a surprise. He'd fallen behind on his studies, and he still hadn't managed to get any better than an "Acceptable" on all of Rowan's practice exams. But, he couldn't help but feel his heart lift as he joined his friends on a large boulder in the paddock, Hagrid and Kettleburn grinning down at them all. 

They announced that something called the Tri-Wizard Tournament might be coming soon, and that Kettleburn and Hagrid were throwing a kind of practice tournament to test the magical ability, intelligence, and courage of the students who had the most potential to become Tri-Wizard tournament champions. 

"I've got potential? Says who?" he blurted. 

"Professor Dumbledore himself!" cheered Hagrid. 

Barnaby hardly listened to the rest of the announcement. As soon as they were dismissed, he ran down to his dormitory to write a letter to his grandmother. 

     Dear Gran, 

     Hope your well. I got chosen by Dumbledore to be in a tornamint called the All-Wizard                      Tornamint. It decides the students with the most curage, intelligence, and magical ability.             Only eleven people got chosen and I was one of them. 

   I reckon that's better than getting all my OWLs. Do you think I could stay at Hogwarts now?

  Barnaby

He got her reply a couple days later at breakfast. 

     Win, then we'll talk. 

     Belladonna 

Barnaby put down the letter with a sigh. He was chuffed just to be chosen. He'd never imagine he'd be in a tournament where intelligence was one of the requirements. But he'd never actually win. All his competitors were so much cleverer than he was. With Sarah and Merula competing, no one else stood a chance, really. 

Still, he figured the odds of him winning this tournament were better than him getting all his OWLs, so he knew he had to try. 

When it was time for the first task, everyone arrived at the History of Magic classroom in various states of apprehension. They'd done a lot of research on the Tri-Wizard tournament to see what the tasks were like, and learned they'd been so dangerous that competitors had died. 

However, the task turned out to be relatively tame. All they had to do was find the largest number of shiny objects hidden around the room. The catch was that a dozen nifflers had also been set loose in the room. Not only were they much better treasure hunters, they would sneak up behind competitors and steal the objects they'd already collected.