Chapter Text
"Harry Potter"
Hermione had heard wrong. She must have. It was the only explanation that made any sense. Professor Dumbledore had read someone else's name from the slip of parchment that shot out of the Goblet of Fire, not Harry's. Her ears were simply not working right.
In fact, who was to say that her eyes were working? Or her brain? Perhaps she wasn't even in the Great Hall? She might still be in bed, trapped in some terrible blend of stress-induced nightmare and wild hallucination. Any moment now, she would wake up, bright and early on Halloween morning, with Crookshanks nestled at the foot of her bed and Lavender snoring from the other side of their dormitory.
But then, in a calm and steady voice, Professor Dumbledore shattered that desperate hope. "Harry Potter," he repeated, like he was calling roll at the start of class.
Hermione winced. She hadn’t heard wrong. Slowly, she turned to Harry, who sat frozen beside her, his face white with terror. He stared at them both, her and Ron, and said blankly, "I didn't put my name in. You know I didn't."
"Of course you didn’t!" she wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat. Harry, their Harry, put his name in the Goblet of Fire? Somehow, he had bypassed Dumbledore's measures to keep out underage students and then made the goblet spit out a fourth name? It was enough to make Hermione laugh. Yet, all the laughter had gone from the world, and she wasn't sure it would ever return.
"Harry Potter," Dumbledore called again, "Harry! Up here, if you please!"
Harry looked at her and Ron. He didn't know what to do. Before she realized what she was doing, her hand moved to his side, and she gave him a gentle push.
"Go," Hermione breathed, quietly enough that she couldn't be heard, even through the silence of the Great Hall.
She regretted it the moment he'd turned his back on them, treading on his robes as he stumbled through the gap between the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables. Was he as scared as she was? Could he feel the eyes of almost every student from Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beauxbatons burning holes in his back? Or was the shock of what had happened numbing his brain like a shot of lidocaine?
When Harry reached the front of the hall, Hermione saw Dumbledore's lips move, but without the barest hint of a smile. Then Harry, turned and moved towards the doors the other champions had disappeared through. Hermione felt like she'd received an electric shock. They wouldn't. They couldn't. They weren't going to make him compete. Were they?
As Harry vanished behind the double doors, Hermione started to rise. A hand grabbed her wrist. Ginny Weasley had slid into Harry’s empty seat and was looking up at her with an intense expression. She shook her head and gave Hermione’s hand a gentle tug. Reluctantly, Hermione returned to her seat.
Whispering broke out among the students. The nearby Hufflepuffs sounded incredulous. Their House had rarely been in the running for the kind of glory promised to the tournament's winner, and the idea that Gryffindor — already rolling in glory since Harry was sorted three years ago — might take even more was enough to make some of them livid.
Meanwhile, at the Ravenclaw table, Hermione could hear them voicing one of the questions she had been silently screaming in her head for the last few minutes: How could this happen? Half-baked theories and explanations — ranging from dark magic to a series of levitating pulleys — circulated around the table. However, they were operating under the assumption that Harry had somehow slipped his name into the cup and tricked it into picking him — a falsehood that her fellow Gryffindors seemed all too ready to believe.
While a few were upset that Harry hadn’t shared his secret with them, most of Gryffindor was brimming with energy — thanks in no small part to the excited chatter from the rest of the Quidditch team, spurred on by Fred and George. Hermione even heard Angelina say that if they didn’t get another shot at the Quidditch Cup this year, at least Harry could win the Triwizard Tournament, as if it were already decided.
Hermione didn't care much for whatever salacious whispers were made around the Slytherin table. Though, without much effort, she imagined they were split between being outraged or fantasizing about Harry's death.
Then there were the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students, who, with a chorus of mixed French and Eastern European accents, were all crying the same thing: Foul Play. And they were just about ready to riot. But, Hermione's attention was focused forward.
Up at the staff table, Dumbledore, Mr. Crouch, Mr. Bagman, and the other two headmasters had gathered in a tight circle, discussing what had just happened. Hermione found it hard to read Mr. Crouch or Mr. Bagman, but Professor Karkaroff and Madame Maxime were clearly agitated. If she strained her ears, she could pick out a few words she vaguely recognized from the Bulgarian supporters at the end of the World Cup, and she heard Madame Maxime bellow “connerie” more than once. Only Professor Dumbledore remained calm, but it was not the usual confident calm she had grown used to these past four years. It was something colder, more calculated — like her father when he was preparing for a complicated surgery.
After a moment, Dumbledore whispered something, and the other tournament heads seemed to agree. The rest of them filed through the champion's doors while Dumbledore stepped forward to address the hall.
"Prefects will lead their Houses to their dormitories. Further instructions will be conveyed by your heads of House later," he announced. Then he turned to Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape, gave a nod, and proceeded to join the other tournament heads in the Champions’ Chamber. They followed him a moment later.
As the rest of their house started to file out, Hermione remained firmly rooted in her seat. Her eyes were locked on the door that led to the Champions’ Chamber. She felt Ginny tug at her arm. She tugged again when Hermione didn't move. When Hermione failed to acknowledge her for the third time, Ginny leaned over and whispered, "Come on. We have to go."
"But, Harry-"
"Hermione," Ginny said, cutting her off, "You can't help him."
Hermione winced. Ginny was right, of course; there was nothing she could do right now. But more than that, she needed to leave the Great Hall — needed to get as far away from where it had happened, clear her head, and just think. So, reluctantly, she got up and joined the rest of the Gryffindors on the return trip to the common room.
The shift in mood was like night and day once the portrait of the Fat Lady swung shut. No longer required to contain themselves, the Gryffindor common room erupted with raucous joy. Everyone was thrilled that Harry had been chosen. Not since they had won the Quidditch Cup last year had the common room been this full of energy. Hermione’s mouth went dry.
"He didn't put his name in," she said, though through the roar of celebration, she may as well have whispered.
Tears threatening to spill over, Hermione bolted through the common room and up the stairs to the girls’ dormitories. Ginny was close behind, but Hermione slammed the door shut. Thankfully, the younger Weasley exercised more tact than her brothers and did not press further. Once safely in her room, Hermione rushed to her bedside table and began rummaging through the books piled on top.
A box of S.P.E.W badges fell on her feet, but Hermione kicked it away, all thoughts of House Elf Welfare pushed aside in her fervor. Where had she put it? It had been a month since she’d last seen it, but she knew she hadn’t returned it to the library. At the very bottom of her pile of books, beneath an old Arithmancy assignment she’d forgotten to throw out, she found what she was looking for: a well-worn book with a black cover, its title spelled out in silver lettering — Danger and Glory: A History of the Triwizard Tournament.
She had checked it out at the start of term to read up on the tournament. However, as the days went by, it occupied less and less of her thoughts, and in a manner most uncharacteristic of Hermione, she had forgotten much of it. But there was one detail about the book — and the tournament her friend had just been entered into — that she hadn’t forgotten. It was something that had seemed plain and unobtrusive, cloaked in the softening veil of history, but now struck her like an arrow to the chest. Flipping to the back of the book, she found the passage she’d been looking for and read it aloud in a croaky, hushed whisper.
1792 marked the end of the Triwizard Tournament. What had begun as a test of magical skill and courage between the three great wizarding schools ended in tragedy that year when all three champions were killed during the final task, none older than sixteen. The horror of these deaths led to widespread outcry, and the British Ministry of Magic, alongside its counterparts in mainland Europe, agreed that the tournament's dangers had far outstripped its ancient vision. In a unanimous decision, it was decided that the Triwizard Tournament was to be discontinued indefinitely.
She dropped the book and slid to the floor, leaning against the side of her bed. Her mouth formed the words "killed during the final task" as they echoed in her head. People died in this tournament. Dumbledore and Mr. Crouch had said so at the start of the year, but she had been too busy rolling her eyes to understand, to really understand, just how dangerous the tournament was.
And someone had entered Harry's name.
Tears began to bead at the corners of her eyes. Someone was trying to kill Harry. This shouldn’t have shocked or frightened her as much as it did — she had been through this before. All of last year, she’d believed Sirius Black was out to kill Harry. The night after he broke into Gryffindor Common Room, she’d cried herself to sleep, not knowing that he had been after Ron's rat, thinking that both Harry and Ron had only escaped death by an inch.
But so much more had happened since then — so much that made death feel closer and more real than ever before. Rising from the depths of her memory came the final moments of last year, when she, Harry, and Sirius were surrounded by Dementors. She had felt herself slipping away, helpless as one lowered its hood and began to lift him up, just before the darkness took her.
Then, just this summer at the World Cup, Death Eaters had marched through the camps, chanting and singing, lifting a muggle family into the air and twirling them about like rag dolls as they sent flashes and sparks into the sky. And then the Dark Mark had appeared — it had all been like something out of a dream.
A bad dream.
Hermione's eyes widened. She remembered, in vivid detail, that day at the Burrow after they had come back from the World Cup. Harry had taken them up to Ron's room and told them about the dream he'd had the Saturday before he'd left his Aunt and Uncle's and the conversation he'd overheard You-Know-Who having with Wormtail.
"They're planning on killing….someone," he'd said, unable to meet Hermione's eyes.
Him. They were planning on killing him. Harry hadn’t said it outright, but she should have realized it when he’d told them. They had a plan to kill Harry, and this was it. A chill ran up Hermione’s spine as she realized the awful truth.
Voldemort had put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire, and he had a Death Eater inside Hogwarts.