𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒-ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪 ℙ𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣❥

𝐆𝐎𝐅 𝟏𝟓

When Emily woke up on Sunday morning, it took her a moment to remember why she felt so empty and worried.

Then the memory of the previous night rolled over her.

She sat up and ripped back the curtains of the four-poster, intending to talk to Hermione, only to find that Hermione's bed was empty; she had obviously gone down to breakfast. Emily also noticed that she had fallen asleep in Hermione's bed.

She stood up and her head felt like a ton of bricks were clashing down on her, how many butter beers did I have? she thought.

Emily dressed and went down the spiral staircase into the common room.

The moment she appeared, the people who had already finished breakfast broke into applause again.

The prospect of going down into the Great Hall and facing the rest of the Gryffindors, all treating her like some sort of hero, was not inviting; it was that, however, or stay here and allow herself to be cornered by the Creevey brothers, who were both beckoning frantically to her to join them.

She walked resolutely over to the portrait hole, pushed it open, climbed out of it, and made her way to breakfast.

Emily walked in and saw none of her friends, she rolled her eyes and walked over to Draco and his friends.

"What do you want freak?" Parkinson sneered, as her friends laughed. Emily was in no mood to get picked on.

"You alright Meels?" Draco asked, Emily noticed that he hadn't eaten any of the food.

"Can we take please?"

Draco nodded and walked over to the end of the Slytherin table.

They sat down opposite each other and Draco forced some toast onto Emily's plate which she insisted on not having.

"Do believe me?" Emily asked him, finally taking a small nibble on the toast.

"Well, of course I knew you hadn't entered yourself," he said in his usual tone. "When Dumbledore read out your name you looked like someone had just shot you in the back."

"Thanks," Emily laughed slightly.

"Do you know who put your name in there then? I know Potter put his name in, wait, he didn't put your name in too did he? Oh i'll get him I swea-" Draco's lips tightened and he scrunched up his face in anger.

"Calm down tough lad," Emily said "Harry didn't put his name in, and I don't know who put mine in. Probably some joke from the older years."

After a few moments of quiet and more bites of toast, Draco pulled a letter out the sleeve of his robes "Eric wrote me this, says he would've wrote to you but it would have been to obvious,"

Emily snatched it off him immediately, ran out the Great Hall and back up to the common room.

Once she got back she settled down on the sofa and opened her letter
Dear Emily,
Ethan had previously sent me a letter explaining what your little boyfriend Harry has done. And I must say I am NOT happy, who does he think he is? Dad also agrees with me and said that you should kick him you know where. One thing I need you to remember that your worth more then you know and never let anyone tell you different AND never let anyone take advantage of you.
I love you loads and cannot wait to see you and Ethan again.
ℰℛℐ𝒞

If Emily had thought that matters would improve once everyone got used to the idea of her being champion, the following day showed her how mistaken she was.

She could no longer avoid the rest of the school once she was back at lessons, and it was clear that the rest of the school, just like the Gryffindors, thought Emily and Harry had entered themselves for the tournament.

Unlike the Gryffindors, however, they did not seem impressed.

The Hufflepuffs, who were usually on excellent terms with the Gryffindors, had turned remarkably cold toward the whole lot of them.

One Herbology lesson was enough to demonstrate this. It was plain that the Hufflepuffs felt that Emily and 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 beaten Gryffindor once at Quidditch.

Ernie Macmillan and Justin Finch- Fletchley, with whom Harry and Emily normally got on very well, did not talk to them even though they were repotting Bouncing Bulbs at the same tray, though they did laugh rather unpleasantly when one of the Bouncing Bulbs wriggled free from Emily's grip and smacked her hard in the face.

Ron wasn't talking to either of them.

Hermione sat between them all, making very forced conversation, but though they answered her normally, they avoided making eye contact with each other.

Harry thought even Professor Sprout seemed distant with them,but then, she was Head of Hufflepuff House.

Harry would have been looking forward to seeing Hagrid under normal circumstances, but Care of Magical Creatures meant seeing the Slytherins too, the first time he would come face-to-face with them since becoming champion.

Predictably, Malfoy arrived at Hagrid's cabin with his familiar sneer firmly in place.

"Ah, look, boys, it's the champion," he said to Crabbe and Goyle the moment he got within earshot of Harry. "Got your autograph books? Better get a signature now, because I doubt he's going to be around much longer. . . . Half the Triwizard champions have
died . . . how long d'you reckon you're going to last, Potter? Ten minutes into the first task's my bet."

Crabbe and Goyle guffawed sycophantically, but Malfoy had to stop there, because Hagrid 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 Malfoy completely.

"Take this thing for a walk?" he repeated in disgust, staring into one of the boxes. "And where exactly are we supposed to fix the leash? Around the sting, the blasting end, or the sucker?"

"Roun' the middle," said Hagrid, demonstrating. "Er, yeh might want ter put on yer dragon-hide gloves, jus' as an extra precaution, like. Emily 'n' Harry, you two come here an' help me with this big one. . . ."

Hagrid's real intention, however, was to talk to Harry and Emily away from the rest of the class. He waited until everyone else had set off with their skrewts, then turned to Harry and Emily and said, very seriously, "So, yer competin. In the tournament. School champion"

"Two of the champions," Harry corrected him.

Hagrid's beetle-black eyes looked very anxious under his wild eyebrows.

"No idea who put yeh in fer it, you two?"

"You believe we didn't do it, then?" said Emily, concealing with difficulty the rush of gratitude she 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."

"I love you so much Hagrid!" Emily smiled throwing herself at Hagrid and trying her best to give him a warm hug.

"There's a lot of hugging lately," Harry added to him seeing Hagrid's confused face.

"Wish I knew who did do it," said Emily bitterly.

The three 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 armour.

They looked like a cross between giant scorpions and elongated crab, 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. Emily assumed he was talking about the skrewts, because her 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," Hagrid sighed suddenly, looking back down at them with a worried expression on his face. "School champions . . . everythin' seems ter happen ter you two, doesn' it?"

Harry didn't answer. Yes, everything did seem to happen to them . . . that was more or less what Hermione had said as they had walked around the lake, and that was the reason, according to her, that Ron was no longer talking to him or Emily.

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 Ron had been on
his side then.

He thought he could have coped with the rest of the school's behavior if he could just have had Ron back as a friend, but he wasn't going to try and persuade Ron to talk to him if Ron 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.

He expected nothing less than vicious insults from the Slytherins, he was highly unpopular there and always had been, because he had helped Gryffindor beat them so often, both at Quidditch and in the InterHouse Championship.

But 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.

Meanwhile there was no reply from Sirius or Eric, Hedwig was refusing to come anywhere near him, 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, apart from Neville.

"It's really not that difficult, Harry," Emily tried to reassure 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 weren't concentrating properly."

"Wonder why that was," said Harry darkly as Cedric Diggory 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. "Still, never mind, eh? Double Potions to look forward to this afternoon. . . ."

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 and the Slytherins, all of whom seemed determined to punish Harry and Emily as much as possible for daring to become school champions, was about the most unpleasant thing Harry could imagine.

He had already struggled through one Friday's worth, with Hermione sitting next to him intoning "ignore them, ignore them, ignore them" under her breath, and he couldn't see why today should be any better.

When he, Emily and Hermione arrived at Snape's dungeon after lunch, they found the Slytherins waiting outside, each and every one of them wearing a large badge on the front of his or her robes. For one wild moment Harry thought they were S.P.E.W. badges, then he saw that they all bore the same message, in luminous red letters that burnt brightly in the dimly lit underground passage:
𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐂𝐄𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐂 𝐃𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐎𝐑𝐘 -
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋 𝐇𝐨𝐠𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐨𝐧

"Like them, Potter?" said Malfoy loudly as Harry and Emily approached. "And this isn't all they do, look!"

He pressed his badge into his chest, and the message upon it vanished, to be replaced by another one, which glowed green:
𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐍-𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐊

The Slytherins howled with laughter. Each of them pressed their badges too, until the message 𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐍-𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐊 was shining brightly all around Harry and Emily. Emily felt the heat rise in her face and neck and felt so hurt that Draco had took part in bullying her.

"Oh very funny," Hermione said sarcastically to Pansy Parkinson and her gang of Slytherin girls, who were laughing harder than anyone, "really witty."

Ron was standing against the wall with Dean and Seamus. He wasn't laughing, but he wasn't sticking up for Harry and Emily either.

"Want one, Granger?" said Malfoy, holding out a badge to Hermione. "I've got loads. But don't touch my hand, now. I've just washed it, you see; don't want a Mudblood sliming it up."

That was Emily's last straw, firsts of all the school had bullied her all her life, then they began to bully Harry because someone had put his name in and now Draco had took part in her bullying and was now calling her best friend a mudblood.

Emily raised her palms, two balls of mist circled through her hands, her face was straight and serious. People all around them scrambled out of the way, backing down the corridor, fear settling in there faces.

"Go on, then, Meels," Malfoy said quietly, drawing out his wand."I told you these people were bad influences on you."

Emily's anger was still rushing through her body but she knew that if she even tried to use her powers against Draco then there was a good chance she could've killed him. So instead she lowered her hands.

All around her she heard laughs, Harry and Hermione had been pushed away and all of the Slytherins were circling around her pointing and laughing, "Freak!" and "Told you she wasn't human!"

Emily felt as if the building was collapsing in on her, before she could run away she was pushed over by a running Harry.

He had now drawn his own wand, Hermione shortly ran after him and stood beside Emily.

"If you have the guts Potter, do it. Moody isn't here to protect you now!"

Emily watched as her boyfriend and cousin stared at each other, then, at the exact same moment, they acted.

"Furnunculus!" Harry yelled.
"Densaugeo!" screamed Malfoy.

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 slithered past Emily and hit Hermione.

Goyle bellowed and put his hands to his nose, where great ugly boils were springing up, Hermione, whimpering in panic, was clutching her mouth.

"Hermione!"
" 'Mione!"

Ron and Emily had hurried forward to see what was wrong with her; Harry turned and saw Emily and Ron dragging Hermione's hand away from her face. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Hermione's front teeth, already larger than average, were now growing at an alarming rate; she was looking more and more like a beaver as her teeth elongated, past her bottom lip, toward her chin, panic-stricken, she felt them and let out a terrified cry.

"And what is all this noise about?" said a soft, deadly voice.

Snape had arrived. The Slytherins clamored to give their explanations; Snape pointed a long yellow finger at Malfoy and said, "Explain."

"Potter attacked me, sir-"

"We attacked each other at the same time!" Harry shouted.

"-and he hit Goyle-look-"

Snape examined Goyle, whose face now resembled something that would have been at home in a book on poisonous fungi. "Hospital wing, Goyle," Snape said calmly.

"Malfoy got Hermione!" Ron said. "Look!"

He forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth, she was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had now grown down past her collar.

Pansy Parkinson and the other Slytherin girls were doubled up with silent giggles, pointing at Hermione from behind Snape's back.

Snape looked coldly at Hermione, then said, "I see no difference."

Hermione let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears, she turned on her heel and ran, ran all the way up the corridor and out of sight.

It was lucky, perhaps, that both Emily, Harry and Ron 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. But he seemed to get the gist.

"Let's see," he said, in his silkiest voice. "Fifty points from Gryffindor and a detention each for Lupin, Potter and Weasley. 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 Emily and Ron to the back of the dungeon, and slammed his bag down onto the table. Ron was shaking with anger too, for a moment, it felt as though everything was back to normal between them, but then Ron turned and sat down with Dean and Seamus instead, leaving Harry and Emily alone at there table.

On the other side of the dungeon, Malfoy turned his back on Snape and pressed his badge, smirking. 𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐍-𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐊 flashed once more across the room.

Harry looked beside him, expecting to see Emily full of rage but instead she had pulled little bits of her hair out, her eyes were glistening with tears and her thumbs were bleeding from picking at them "It's alright," Harry said, putting his hand on top of Emily's, not caring about the blood droppings.

"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 Emily's, and Harry knew what was coming. Snape was going to poison her. Harry imagined picking up Emily's cauldron, and sprinting to the front of the class, and bringing it down on Snape's greasy head.

And then a knock on the dungeon door burst in on Harry's thoughts.

It was Colin Creevey; he edged into the room, beaming at Harry, and walked up to Snape's desk at the front of the room.

"Yes?" said Snape curtly.

"Please, sir, I'm supposed to take Harry Potter and Lupin-Black upstairs."

Snape stared down his hooked nose at Colin, whose smile faded from his eager face.

"Potter and Lupin have another hour of Potions to complete," said Snape
coldly. "They will come upstairs when this class is finished."

Colin went pink.

"Sir-sir, Mr. Bagman wants them," he said nervously. "All the champions have got to go, I think they want to take photographs. . . ."

Harry would have given anything he owned to have stopped Colin saying those last few words. He chanced half a glance at Ron, but Ron was staring determinedly at the ceiling.

"Very well, very well," Snape snapped. "Potter, Lupin, leave your things here, I want you back down here later to test your antidote."

"Please, sir, they've got to take his things with them," squeaked Colin. "All the champions-"

"Very well !" said Snape. "Potter, Lupin, take your bags and get out of my sight!"

Emily swung her bag over her shoulder, got up, and headed for the door. As she walked through the Slytherin desks, 𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐍-𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐊 flashed at her from every direction.

"It's amazing, isn't it, Harry?" said Colin, starting to speak the moment Harry had closed the dungeon door behind him. "Isn't it, though? You two being champion?"

"Yeah, really amazing," said Harry heavily as they set off toward the steps into the entrance hall. "What do they want photos for, Colin?"

"The Daily Prophet, I think!"

"Great," said Harry dully. "Exactly what I need. More publicity."

"No! My hair! I look horrible, the photos, there going to be everywhere! Everyone's going to think I'm ugly!" Emily squeaked, trying to flatten out her hair and make sure her makeup hadn't smudged.

"Em, you look beautiful, now come on." Harry said.

If Harry had told her that last year then she would've believed it, but Emily knew Harry found Cho way more attractive then her, I mean, who could blame him?

"Good luck!" said Colin when they had reached the right room. Harry knocked on the door and they both entered.

They were in a fairly small classroom; most of the desks had been pushed away to the back of the room, leaving a large space in the middle; three of them, however, had been placed end-to-end in front of the blackboard and covered with a long length of velvet.

Five chairs had been set behind the velvet-covered desks, and Ludo Bagman was sitting in one of them, talking to a witch Emily had never seen before, who was wearing magenta robes.

Viktor Krum was standing moodily in a corner as usual and not talking to anybody. Cedric and Fleur were in conversation. Fleur looked a good deal happier than Emily had seen her so far; she kept throwing back her head so that her long silvery hair caught the light.

A paunchy man, holding a large black camera that was smoking slightly, was watching Fleur out of the corner of his eye.

Bagman suddenly spotted Harry and Emily, got up quickly, and bounded forward.

"Ah, here they are! Champion number four and five! In you come, Harry 'n' Emily, in you come . . . nothing to worry about, it's just the wand weighing ceremony, the rest of the judges will be here in a moment."

"Wand weighing?"Emily repeated nervously.

"We have to check that your wands are fully functional, no problems, you know, as they're your most important tools in the tasks ahead," said Bagman. "The expert's upstairs now with Dumbledore. And then there's going to be a little photo shoot. This is Rita Skeeter," he added, gesturing toward the witch in magenta robes. "She's doing a small piece on the tournament for the Daily Prophet. . . ."

"Maybe not that small, Ludo," said Rita Skeeter, her eyes on Harry.

Her hair was set in elaborate and curiously rigid curls that contrasted oddly with her heavy-jawed face. She wore jeweled spectacles. The thick fingers clutching her crocodile-skin handbag ended in two-inch nails, painted crimson.

"I wonder if I could have a little word with Harry before we start?" she said to Bagman, but still gazing fixedly at Harry. "The youngest champion, you know . . . to add a bit of color?"

"Certainly!" cried Bagman. "That is if Harry has no objection?"

"Er-" said Harry.

"Lovely," said Rita Skeeter, and in a second, her scarlet-taloned fingers had Harry's upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip, and she was steering him out of the room again and opening a nearby door.

About five minutes later he and Rita emerged from the cupboard with Harry looking severely annoyed.

"And, do you mind if I borrow her as well?" Rita pointed at Emily whilst Harry mouthed 'Good luck'

Bagman nodded, Emily walked forward with Rita skeeter beside her.

"I've heard a lot about your life," she said "that's it, it's nice and cozy in here isn't it?"

It was a broom cupboard. Emily stared at her.

"Come along, dear, that's right, lovely," said Rita Skeeter again, perching herself precariously upon an upturned bucket, pushing Emily down onto a cardboard box, and closing the door, throwing them into darkness. "Let's see now . . ."

She unsnapped her crocodile-skin handbag and pulled out a handful of candles, which she lit with a wave of her wand and magicked into midair, so that they could see what they were doing.

"You won't mind, Emily, if I use a Quick-Quotes Quill? It leaves me free to talk to you normally, Harry agreed as well. . . ."

"A what?" said Emily.

Rita Skeeter's smile widened. Emily counted three gold teeth. She reached again into her crocodile bag and drew out a long acid green quill and a roll of parchment, which she stretched out between them on a crate of Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover.

She put the tip of the green quill into her mouth, sucked it for a moment with apparent relish, then placed it upright on the parchment, where it stood balanced on its point, quivering slightly.

"Testing . . . my name is Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet reporter."

Emily looked down quickly at the quill. The moment Rita Skeeter had spoken, the green quill had started to scribble, skidding across the parchment:
Attractive blonde Rita Skeeter, forty-three, whose savage quill has punctured many inflated reputations.

"Lovely," said Rita Skeeter, yet again, and she ripped the top piece of parchment off, crumpled it up, and stuffed it into her handbag.

Now she leaned toward Emily and said, "So, Emily . . . what made you decide to enter you and Harry into the Triwizard Tournament?"

"Er-" said Emily, but she was distracted by the quill. Even though she wasn't speaking, it was dashing across the parchment, and in its wake he could make out a fresh sentence:
The broken girl opens up on her dirty little secrets and how she does her sneaking around her current school-

"Ignore the quill, Emily," said Rita Skeeter firmly. Reluctantly, Emily looked up at her instead. "Now, why did you decide to enter yourself and Harry Potter into the tournament, Emily?"

"I didn't," said Emily. "I don't know how our names got into the Goblet of Fire. I didn't put them in there."

Rita Skeeter raised one heavily penciled eyebrow.

"Come now, Emilu, there's no need to be scared of getting into trouble. We all know you shouldn't really have entered at all. But don't worry about that. Our readers love a rebel."

"But I didn't enter," Emily repeated. "I don't know who-"

"How do you feel about the tasks ahead?" said Rita Skeeter. "Excited? Nervous?"

"I haven't really thought . . . yeah, nervous, I suppose," said Emily. Her insides squirmed uncomfortably as she spoke.

"Champions have died in the past, haven't they?" said Rita Skeeter briskly. "Have you thought about that at all?"

"Well . . . they say it's going to be a lot safer this year," said Emily.

The quill whizzed across the parchment between them, back and forward as though it were skating.

"Of course, you have not been raised in the perfect environment, a brainwashed brother, a father who has killed and of course, your fathers condition. Have you ever faced life threatening situations with them before?"

"Er," said Emily, yet again.

"Do you think that having such bad family members has made you want to prove yourself? Do you think that perhaps you were tempted to enter the Triwizard Tournament because-"

"I didn't enter," said Emily, starting to feel irritated.

"Can you remember your father, Sirius Black, when you were a baby?" said Rita Skeeter, talking over her.

"No," said Emily.

"How do you think he feels about you competing in the Triwizard Tournament? Proud? Worried? Angry?"

Emily didn't know what to say, if she told her then she'd give away about knowing where her brother and father were, but she, herself didn't know the answer.

She could feel Rita Skeeter watching him very intently. Frowning, she avoided her gaze and looked down at words the quill had just written:
Tears fill those startling brown eyes as our conversation turns to her father, the mass murderer, Sirius Black.

"I have NOT got tears in my eyes!" said Emily loudly. "Have I?"

Before Rita Skeeter could say a word, the door of the broom cupboard was pulled open. Emily looked around, blinking in the bright light. Albus Dumbledore stood there, looking down at both of them, squashed into the cupboard.

"Dumbledore!" cried Rita Skeeter, with every appearance of delight, but Emily noticed that her quill and the parchment had suddenly vanished from the box of Magical Mess Remover, and Rita's clawed fingers were hastily snapping shut the clasp of her crocodile-skin bag. "How are you?" she said, standing up and holding out one of her large, mannish hands to Dumbledore. "I hope you saw my piece over the summer about the International Confederation of Wizards' Conference?"

"Enchantingly nasty," said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling. "I particularly enjoyed your description of me as an obsolete dingbat."

Rita Skeeter didn't look remotely abashed.

"I was just making the point that some of your ideas are a little old-fashioned, Dumbledore, and that many wizards in the street-"

"I will be delighted to hear the reasoning behind the rudeness, Rita," said Dumbledore, with a courteous bow and a smile, "but I'm afraid we will have to discuss the matter later. The Weighing of the Wands is about to start, and it cannot take place if one of our champions is hidden in a broom cupboard."

Very glad to get away from Rita Skeeter, Emily hurried back into
the room. The other champions were now sitting in chairs near the door, and she sat down quickly next to Harry, looking up at the velvet-covered table, where four of the five judges were now sitting, Professor Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, Mr. Crouch, and Ludo Bagman.

Rita Skeeter settled herself down in a corner; Emily saw her slip the parchment out of her bag again, spread it on her knee, suck the end of the Quick-Quotes Quill, and place it once more on the parchment.

"May I introduce Mr. Ollivander?" said Dumbledore, taking his place at the judges' table and talking to the champions. "He will be checking your wands to ensure that they are in good condition before the tournament."

Emily looked around, and with a jolt of surprise saw an old wizard with large, pale eyes standing quietly by the window.

Emily had met Mr. Ollivander before, he was the wand-maker from whom Emily had bought her own wand over three years ago in Diagon Alley.

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

Fleur Delacour swept over to Mr. Ollivander and handed him her wand.
"Hmmm . . ." he said.

He twirled the wand between his long fingers like a baton and it emitted a number of pink and gold sparks. Then he held it close to his eyes and examined it carefully.

"Yes," he said quietly, "nine and a half inches . . . inflexible . . . rosewood . . . and containing . . . dear me . . ."

"An 'air from ze 'ead of a veela," said Fleur. "One of my grandmuzzer's."

So Fleur was part veela, thought Harry, making a mental note to tell Ron . . . then he remembered that Ron wasn't speaking to him.

"Yes," said Mr. Ollivander, "yes, I've never used veela hair myself, of course. I find it makes for rather temperamental wands . . . however, to each his own, and if this suits you . . ."

Mr. Ollivander ran his fingers along the wand, apparently checking for scratches or bumps; then he muttered, "Orchideous!" and a bunch of flowers burst from the wand tip.

"Very well, very well, it's in fine working order," said Mr. Ollivander, scooping up the flowers and handing them to Fleur with her wand. "Mr. Diggory, you next."

Fleur glided back to her seat, smiling at Cedric as he passed her.

"Ah, now, this is one of mine, isn't it?" said Mr. Ollivander, with much more enthusiasm, as Cedric handed over his wand. "Yes, I remember it well. Containing a single hair from the tail of a particularly fine male unicorn . . . must have been seventeen hands; nearly gored me with his horn after I plucked his tail. Twelve and a quarter inches . . . ash . . . pleasantly springy. It's in fine condition. . . . You treat it regularly?"

"Polished it last night," said Cedric, grinning.

Harry looked down at his own wand. He could see finger marks all over it. He gathered a fistful of robe from his knee and tried to rub it clean surreptitiously.

Several gold sparks shot out of the end of it. Fleur Delacour gave him a very patronizing look, and he desisted.

Emily's wand was in perfect condition, no surprise there but her face still looked worried and Harry couldn't come to a conclusion why.

Mr. Ollivander sent a stream of silver smoke rings across the room from the tip of Cedric's wand, pronounced himself satisfied, and then said, "Mr. Krum, if you please."

Viktor Krum got up and slouched, round-shouldered and duck footed, toward Mr. Ollivander. He thrust out his wand and stood scowling, with his hands in the pockets of his robes.

"Hmm," said Mr. Ollivander, "this is a Gregorovitch creation, unless I'm much mistaken? A fine wand-maker, though the styling is never quite what I . . . however . . ."

He lifted the wand and examined it minutely, turning it over and over before his eyes.

"Yes . . . hornbeam and dragon heartstring?" he shot at Krum, who nodded. "Rather thicker than one usually sees . . . quite rigid . . . ten and a quarter inches . . . Avis!"

The hornbeam wand let off a blast like a gun, and a number of small, twittering birds flew out of the end and through the open window into the watery sunlight.

"Good," said Mr. Ollivander, handing Krum back his wand. " Mr. Potter please."

Harry got to his feet and walked past Krum to Mr. Ollivander. He handed over his wand.

"Aaaah, yes," said Mr. Ollivander, his pale eyes suddenly gleaming. "Yes, yes, yes. How well I remember."

Harry could remember too. He could remember it as though it had happened yesterday. . . .

Four summers ago, on his eleventh birthday, he had entered Mr. Ollivander's shop with Hagrid to buy a wand. Mr. Ollivander had taken his measurements and then started handing him wands to try.

Harry had waved what felt like every wand in the shop, until at last he had found the one that suited him, this one, which was made of holly, eleven inches long, and contained a single feather from the tail of a phoenix. Mr. Ollivander had been very surprised that Harry had been so compatible with this wand.

"Curious," he had said, "curious," and not until Harry asked what was curious had Mr. Ollivander explained that the phoenix feather in Harry's wand had come from the same bird that had supplied the core of Lord Voldemort's.

Harry had never shared this piece of information with anybody. He was very fond of his wand, and as far as he was concerned its relation to Voldemort's wand was something it couldn't help, rather as he couldn't help being related to Aunt Petunia.

However, he really hoped that Mr. Ollivander wasn't about to tell the room about it. He had a funny feeling Rita Skeeter's Quick-Quotes Quill might just explode with excitement if he did.

Mr. Ollivander spent much longer examining Harry's wand than anyone else's. Eventually, however, he made a fountain of wine shoot out of it, and handed it back to Harry, announcing that it was still in perfect condition.

"Miss Lupin-Black." Emily stood up and walked slowly over to Mr Ollivander and handed him her wand "Of course yes, I remember meeting you and your family, I also gave you brother his first wand. Lovely wand, I believe it is the same as Miss Grangers, yes, the beautiful vine wood and a dragon heartstring for the core. Yes very good, Lumos!"

The light shone from the end of Emily's wand and filled the room to the point she had to take it out of Ollivanders hand and mutter "Nox!"

"Very powerful! Very powerful!" He chuckled to himself.

Emily flushed a deep shade of red and tan back to her seat.

"Thank you all," said Dumbledore, standing up at the judges' table. "You may go back to your lessons now, or perhaps it would be quicker just to go down to dinner, as they are about to end-"

The man with the black camera jumped up and cleared his throat.

"Photos, Dumbledore, photos!" cried Bagman excitedly. "All the judges and champions, what do you think, Rita?"

"Er, yes, let's do those first," said Rita Skeeter, whose eyes were upon Harry again. "And then perhaps some individual shots."

The photographs took a long time. Madame Maxime cast everyone else into shadow wherever she stood, and the photographer couldn't stand far enough back to get her into the frame; eventually she had to sit while everyone else stood around her.

Karkaroff kept twirling his goatee around his finger to give it an extra curl; Krum, whom Emily would have thought would have been used to this sort of thing, skulked, half-hidden, at the back of the group.

The photographer seemed keenest to get Fleur at the front, but Rita Skeeter kept hurrying forward and dragging Harry into greater prominence and putting Emily at the very back so no one could see her.

Then she insisted on separate shots of all the champions. At last, they were free to go.

Harry and Emily went down to dinner. Hermione wasn't there, Emily supposed she was still in the hospital wing having her teeth fixed.

She and Harry ate alone at the end of the table, then returned to Gryffindor
Tower, thinking of all the extra work on Summoning Charms that he had to do.

Up in the dormitory, he came across Ron.

"You've had an owl," said Ron brusquely the moment he walked in. He was pointing at Harry's pillow. The school barn owl was waiting for him there.

"Oh-right," said Harry.

"And we've got to do our detentions tomorrow night, Snape's dungeon," said Ron.

He then walked straight out of the room, not looking at Harry. For a moment, Harry considered going after him, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to talk to him or hit him, both seemed quite appealing, but the lure of Sirius's and Eric's answer was too strong.

He shouted Emily's name and in almost an instant she was at Harry's side looking over his shoulder.

Harry and Emily strode over to the barn owl, took the letter off its leg, and unrolled it.

Harry,

I can't say everything I would like to in a letter, it's too risky in case the owl is intercepted, we need to talk face-to-face. Can you ensure that you are alone( obviously with my daughter and son) by the fire in Gryffindor Tower at one o'clock in the morning on the 22nd of November?
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. I still want to hear about anything unusual. Let me know about the 22nd of November as quickly as you can.
Tell Emily and Ethan I can't wait to hear from them and that Eric misses them terribly.
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