Trying to hide her disappointment, Mioha tried hard to not let herself become discouraged.
She had to keep going, she kept telling herself. Harry needed her help and she wouldn't figure out her problem with her magic by laying in bed sulking.
And there was the unicorn disease as well as her memory issue.
Sometimes Mioha felt like there weren't enough hours in the day.
June passed more quickly than she had thought. Harry continued practicing and he had a strange dream during Divination, which caused him to fall off his chair. In his dream, Wormtail was being tortured by Voldemort, which only added to her load of questions.
At the end of June, when they should have been studying for their exams, Mioha approached Harry, Hermione and Ron during one of their practice sessions in an empty classroom.
"Guys", she said slowly, shooting Hermione a nervous look. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
Harry had just stunned Ron, the latter flying backwards and landing on his bottom, missing the pile of pillows Hermione had arranged a meter to his left.
"Ouch!", Ron exclaimed, rubbing his aching back as he stood up. "You couldn't have made me land over there, mate?"
"Sorry", Harry muttered before turning to Mioha. "What's wrong?"
Mioha knotted her hands anxiously, noting how Hermione looked at her encouragingly.
"Uhm, well", she stammered.
"You see, I- I, well....., ok, uhm... you can't tell anyone about this, alright? I don't want everyone to know but you guys are my best friends so.... uhm....I can't use a wand, as you know. But I'm not totally useless, I mean, I can do magic, it's just-", she took a deep breath. "I can only do wandless magic."
There. Now she had told them.
Hermione beamed at her proudly, but Mioha's eyes were fixed on the two Gryffindors before her.
Harry looked very much like a fish, his mouth forming a perfect 'o', while realization dawned on Ron's face.
"Blimey", said Ron slowly, "you told me in second year you could heal without a wand. I should have known you didn't need one."
"And you knew, Hermione?", asked Harry, noticing how Hermione didn't seem to be surprised.
She nodded. "I saw Jess doing wandless magic in second year."
"You could have told us, you know", muttered Ron, sounding a bit disappointed.
He and Harry shared a look.
Mioha's heart dropped.
"Why did you tell Hermione and not us?", asked Ron grumpily.
"Well-"
"She didn't tell me, Ron", Hermione interrupted Mioha. "I told you, I saw her doing wandless magic. She summoned your broken wand in second year when you were about to hex Malfoy, remember?"
Ron's face had gotten a sulky expression. "But still, you could have told us at least", he said sourly.
Harry was staying rather quiet.
"It wasn't my secret to share!", Hermione protested.
"Then why didn't you, Jess?"
Ron turned towards her. He looked extremely disappointed.
"I still felt kind of new to everything", Mioha explained carefully. "I was a muggle born, sorted into Slytherin. I didn't want to stand out even more, especially after the drama in first year."
She sighed.
"I kind of always avoided thinking about telling you", she admitted looking down at her feet. "I didn't want you to think I was weird."
Harry nudged Ron into the side, who looked like he was trying to swallow his discontentment.
"Jess", said Harry slowly. "You've fallen asleep on the Astronomy tower in third year. How could you not be weird?"
He grinned, showing her he wasn't angry.
Ron mumbled something under his breath.
"How are you okay with that, mate?", he asked, still sounding a little upset.
"Everyone has stuff they don't want to share", said Harry seriously.
Mioha glanced at him surprised.
Ron looked up, and Mioha held her breath nervously. She kind of understood how he felt.
"Don't think I didn't tell you because I thought you were awful friends", she said quickly.
"I just wasn't sure how to say it."
Ron's blue eyes remained on her face for another moment.
"You are weird", he said suddenly.
"Ron!", Hermione gasped.
"Well, you can't forget the Blast-Ended Screwts", he grumbled and shook himself.
"They just loved you. And if that isn't weird, I don't know what is."
Mioha breathed out in relief when she realized he was trying to get past his anger.
"And the troll", said Harry.
"Norberta", Hermione jumped in.
"The Abraxans."
"The garden gnomes."
"Esma and Sisi."
"Mrs. Norris", said Ron distastefully.
"Okay, I get it", mumbled Mioha, rolling her eyes. "I'm a little weird. But-", she got serious again. "Are you a lot mad because I didn't tell you?"
Harry shook his head, as did Ron a moment later after Harry and Hermione both glared at him.
"No", the latter said slowly, sighing. "I'm kind of done acting like a prick this year", he shot her an apologetic look, and Mioha knew he was talking about the Yule Ball.
"But you don't have to keep secrets from us, you can tell us everything, Jess, we're your best mates."
She sighed in relief.
"Now that that's settled", Hermione grinned and clapped her hands to get their attention.
"Harry, I think you should practice with Jess for a bit. Just some simple hexes."
"Come and look at this," said Ron one evening, who was standing by the window. He was staring down onto the grounds. "What's Parkinson doing?"
Harry, Mioha and Hermione went to see. Pansy, Gregory, and Vincent were standing in the shadow of a tree below. Gregory and Vincent seemed to be keeping a lookout; both were smirking.
Pansy was holding her hand up to her mouth and speaking into it.
"She looks like he's using a walkie-talkie," said Harry curiously.
"She can't be," said Hermione, "I've told you, those sorts of things don't work around Hogwarts. Come on, Harry," she added briskly, turning away from the window and moving back into the middle of the room, "let's try that Shield Charm again."
Ron looked confused.
"What's a tallie wallie?"
As June the twenty-fourth drew closer, the castle bustled with excitement. The third task was the one of the two topics of the school, especially what the champions would have to face in the maze. Sisi started doing her rounds above the lake again, documenting everything that happened in the maze. After a few days, there was a charm on the hedges that prevented the eagle from seeing anything that happened in between them. Mioha assumed the Professors wanted to prevent that any bird could tell her what was being set up in the maze.
The other thing that was on the students' minds, was the exams. Mioha crammed all her studying into her free time, often spending hours in the library at night.
On the morning of the twenty-fourth, all students got early to the Great Hall, too excited to stay a moment longer in bed than necessary, despite the dreaded History exam being today.
Mioha, Astoria and Erica joined Harry at the Gryffindor table, who looked a little paler than usual.
"Good luck", Mioha wished him.
"Thanks", Harry mumbled.
"I'll be sitting in the front row", she tried to cheer him up. Whether it worked or not remained unclear because a screeching owl decided to drop a roll of parchment right in front of their noses.
Hermione grabbed it, unfolded the paper, glanced at the front page, and spat out a mouthful of pumpkin juice all over it.
"What?" said Harry, Mioha and Ron together, staring at her.
"Nothing," said Hermione quickly, trying to shove the paper out of sight, but Ron grabbed it. He stared at the headline and said, "No way. Not today. That old cow."
"What?" asked Harry. "Rita Skeeter again?"
"No," said Ron, and just like Hermione, he attempted to push the paper out of sight. Mioha caught a glance at it, but only saw the word DISTURBED.
"It's about me, isn't it?" suspected Harry.
"No," Ron said and shook his head, his tone entirely entirely unconvincing. But before Harry or Mioha could demand to see the paper, Pansy Parkinson shouted across the Great Hall from the Slytherin table.
"Hey, Potter! Potter! How's your head? You feeling all right? Sure you're not going to go berserk on us?"
Pansy was holding a copy of the Daily Prophet too. Some Slytherins up and down the table were sniggering, twisting in their seats to see Harry's reaction.
"Let me see it," Harry said to Ron, who tried to push the paper to Hermione. "Give it here."
Very reluctantly, Ron handed over the newspaper. Harry turned it over, Mioha looking over his shoulder, and they read:
HARRY POTTER "DISTURBED AND DANGEROUS
The boy who defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is unstable and possibly dangerous, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. Alarming evidence has recently come to light about Harry Potter's strange behavior, which casts doubts upon his suitability to compete in a demanding competition like the Triwizard Tournament, or even to attend Hogwarts School.
Potter, the Daily Prophet can exclusively reveal, regularly collapses at school, and is often heard to complain of pain in the scar on his forehead (relic of the curse with which You-Know-Who attempted to kill him). On Monday last, midway through a Divination lesson, your Daily Prophet reporter witnessed Potter storming from the class, claiming that his scar was hurting too badly to continue studying.
It is possible, say top experts at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, that Potter's brain was affected by the attack inflicted upon him by You-Know-Who, and that his insistence that the scar is still hurting is an expression of his deep-seated confusion.
„He might even be pretending," said one specialist. "This could be a plea for attention."
The Daily Prophet, however, has unearthed worrying facts about Harry Potter that Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, has carefully concealed from the wizarding public.
"Potter can speak Parseltongue," reveals Pansy Parkinson, a Hogwarts fourth year. "There were a lot of attacks on students a couple of years ago, and most people thought Potter was behind them after they saw him lose his temper at a dueling club and set a snake on another boy. It was all hushed up, though. But he's made friends with werewolves and giants too. We think he'd do anything for a bit of power."
Mioha reached over Harry's shoulder and pulled the article from his hands.
"Don't read it", she said calmly while closing the newspaper. "They want to distract you."
"How did she know your scar hurt in Divination?" Ron asked. "There's no way she was there, there's no way she could've heard -"
"The window was open," mumbled Harry. "I opened it to breathe."
"You were at the top of North Tower!" Hermione hissed. "Your voice couldn't have carried all the way down to the grounds!"
"Well, you're the one who's supposed to be researching magical methods of bugging!" said Harry annoyed. "You tell me how she did it!"
"We've been researching", Mioha tried to calm him down. "But now is not the time. We have our History of Magic exam in ten minutes."
Hermione's eyes widened in panic.
"I need to revise! I have totally forgotten my plan!"
And with that, Hermione seized her school bag and dashed out of the Great Hall.
Shaking her head amused, Mioha left the Gryffindor table and followed her friend.
"How was your exam?", Mioha asked Hermione when they left the room at lunchtime. "I thought it was a little hard."
"I didn't have time to write as much as I wanted to", Hermione frowned. "I wanted to elaborate on Bodrog the Bearded and his role in the goblin wars."
"It will be fine", Mioha tried to soothe her. "I barely wrote a sentence about him. Come on, I need brain food."
For lunch and dinner, Mioha joined the Gryffindor table. Mrs. Weasley and Bill had come to cheer for Harry, and she could tell Harry enjoyed their company very much. It seemed to distract him from the fact that the third task was drawing nearer. The red-haired witch acted a little coldly towards Mioha, but quickly warmed up after Harry cleared up the little misunderstanding caused by Rita Skeeter's article.
As the enchanted ceiling overhead began to fade from blue to a dusky purple, Professor Dumbledore rose to his feet at the staff table, and silence fell.
"Ladies and gentlemen, in five minutes' time, I will be asking you to make your way down to the Quidditch field for the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament. Will the champions please follow Mr. Bagman down to the stadium now."
Harry got up. The Gryffindors all along the table were applauding him; the Weasleys, Mioha and Hermione all wished him good luck, and he headed off out of the Great Hall with Cedric, Fleur, and Viktor.
Mioha was about to join Hermione on her way out of the Great Hall, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around and found herself face to face with Professor Moody.
"Miss Lince", he grumbled, "come with me. I need your help with something."
Mioha furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, but she nodded, gesturing to Hermione to go ahead.
She followed the professor through the crowd of chattering students. Leading her out of the hall through a side door, Mioha walked behind Professor Moody through several corridors until they stopped in front of his office.
"Alohomora", the old wizard grunted and pointed his wand at the lock. It clicked, and the wooden door slowly swung open to the inside.
Professor Moody gestured to her to wait in the room, while he walked into another through a narrow side door behind his desk.
Looking around curiously, Mioha realized she had never been in this room before. Weird-looking creatures filled every shelf, as well as interesting objects. There was a mirror behind the desk, but it didn't show her reflection. Taking a step closer, she saw that there were white figures floating around in the glass, their faces all fogged up.
Huh, she thought confused. Must be broken.
Her gaze fell down onto Professor Moody's desk, where his metal flask stood.
I wonder what's inside, she thought and glanced at the half open door, through which Professor Moody had disappeared.
Moving carefully, ready to step back at any moment, Mioha leaned forward and picked up the flask. She opened it and tilted the bottle slightly into her direction, taking a deep breath.
A sharp stench filled her nostrils.
Mioha flinched and almost dropped the flask in surprise. She had smelled that before in Potions and she would never forget that stinking lesson.
It was Polyjuice Potion.
She looked into the flask to make sure she wasn't mistaken. Why the heck did Professor Moody have Polyjuice Potion?
That potion was usually used to impersonate someone else...Oh...
A sharp pain echoed through her head. She dropped the flask and pressed her hands to her forehead, barely realizing that the liquid spilled onto the desk and the floor. Snippets of conversations raced through her head, moments she couldn't recall experiencing...
...There is something...dark around Professor Karkaroff, similar to Professor Moody...
...But why would Professor Moody, an Auror, have the same aura as a Death Eater?...
...That could only mean, whoever was in there, was not Alastor Moody...
Mioha gasped in relief when the pain faded. Her eyes watering strongly, she slowly lowered her hands.
She stared aghast at the flask, which had fallen onto the desk. The brown liquid was dripping slowly onto the floor, each drop echoing in her ears.
She remembered.
She remembered the night of the Yule Ball, how she had entered the castle, how she had bumped into Professor Moody and that he was....oh.......ohh......
Mioha looked up in panic and found herself staring at the weird mirror with the foggy faces. But one face was staring at her, its wrinkled features very clearly.
It was Professor Moody's face.
Something sharp whacked against her head and knocked her out.