Vengeance| Harry Potter

eleven. delaying the inevitable

Viola leaned slightly towards him and whispered, "I think you've got an admirer."

"Er— what?"

"Bagman. When Rita dragged you away, he told me to tell you that you can come to him, if you ever need some help."

"What, and he didn't tell you the same thing?"

"Nope. If you ask me, he seems to be rooting for you to win."

"Yeah, well the odds of that happening are pretty slim, aren't they?" he said bitterly.

"Actually, given everything you've done in the past three years, I think you—"

"May I introduce Mr. Ollivander?" said Dumbledore and Harry and Viola's attention both snapped to the tables covered in velvet. "He will be checking your wands to ensure that they are in good condition before the tournament."

She felt Harry jolt slightly from beside her; following his gaze, she noticed he was staring at Ollivander.

"Mademoiselle Delacour, could we have you first, please?" said Ollivander, stepping into the middle of the room.

Fleur sauntered over to Ollivander and handed him her wand, Viola watching with a slight frown on her face. Surrounded by all the champions and judges, it was beginning to register a bit more in her mind that this was real. No matter how much she told herself this was some elaborately constructed dream, it was her reality whether she liked it or not.

She could scream or cry or hex anyone who told her she had to compete, but in the end she would have to suck it up and push all of her resistance behind her so that she could focus her energy on trying to not die— because on one particular night after her name came out of the goblet, she was having immense difficulty with trying to push away the nauseating thoughts of being put in some sort of arena with an unknown danger, and gave up on trying to wait for some kind of tranquil wave to wash over her racing mind.

After giving up on the Astronomy Tower— because not even the clutter of silver stars constituting a part of the galaxy was helping; not even gazing up at the endless abyss of the inky sky was able to remind her that she was just some miniscule part of the cosmos— she retired to the library.

It may have been a stupid idea, but she couldn't sleep anyway. And after spending the previous few days shoving any thoughts of the upcoming tournament to some concealed part of her mind— to try and dodge the horror that was threatening to possess her at the most of random moments— she found that holding back the panic would just make it so much worse when it finally caught up on her; delaying the inevitable would just cause the inevitable to be a hell of a lot more unpleasant when it could be delayed no longer.

So perhaps it was the stress awakening some rebellious part of her that caused her to sneak into the library that night; after all, she had a lot bigger problems than detention now.

And it was with a mindset that Viola called intelligent, that she picked out a book about the Triwizard Tournament. And despite wanting to skip past certain pages, she forced herself to take it all in.

The pages, which revealed the tournament in all of its gory history, were not at all comforting to her, but comfort wasn't what she wanted.

A quote she had heard many times— something about facing your fears makes you a braver person— was resonating in her head as she forced herself to turn over each page to what could possibly be an even more agonising page than the previous one.