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“The Durmstrang champion,” she called out, “is Michal Novák!”
A tall lanky boy stood up from the Durmstrang table to the cheers of almost everyone around him, with many classmates reaching across to pat him on the back. From what Gabrielle could tell he was definitely popular. If she was champion there was no way anywhere near as many people would rush to congratulate her.
The goblet lit up again, and McGonagall caught another piece of parchment.
“The Beauxbatons champion,” she called out, “is Gabrielle Delacour!”
She wasn’t wrong. When she stood up, aside from Amelia giving her a hug before she started walking, no one acknowledged her as she made her way to the intermittent room. What she did get instead, was the burning gaze of all her classmates, each believing themselves to be the rightful champion, instead of someone whose family had already competed.
She took a whilst trying to figure out what they were doing in the room. It had been announced that something special had been done for the new champions, although based off of the tiny stature of the room, she’d be surprised if they could even fit the third champion in, let alone whatever the surprise was meant to be.
“Now that we’re all here, it is time for the proper introduction to the tournament.” a man called out.
That snapped her out of her thoughts. The third champion had been chosen and she hadn’t realised. She lifted her head to look, but couldn’t immediately see the mystery champion.
“Behind you”
“Amelia!” she shouted, spinning around and pulling her into a hug. “You did it!”
“Turns out that Grim didn’t even put his name in, it was between me and Alys, and well… you know.” she said, kissing the other girl, “We did it!”
“Enough of that ladies! We’re on a tight schedule here, so if you save the celebrations until afterwards when I’m not required to be there, it would be much appreciated.” The man from before said, gesturing for them to follow him as he made his way through a set of doors that Gabrielle could have sworn were not there moments ago.
The second room was much more impressive. The room itself was domed, with dozens of archways supporting the ceiling and breaking the room up into sections that stretched on for what looked like a mile. Each subsection filled with paintings, plaques and display stands.
“This is the Triwizard Hub, a place made in conjunction between each of your 3 competing schools to celebrate 125 runnings of the Triwizard Tournament so far. I’ve been informed it serves as a connection between each school, with its students being able to travel to the hub at any time, and meet up with their international peers. And obviously, you can only go back to your own school. As you may well notice, the room is divided by archways. Each section celebrates one of the tournaments, with memorabilia, photos of key moments, plaques describing each of the tasks, and most importantly, a portrait of every single champion for a total of 376 portraits in total. 373 of them depict people who are no longer with us. They make a portrait for every death.
“Race you to the end?” Amelia asked, not waiting for a response as she took off, leading Gabrielle to chase behind. To her credit, Amelia was a fast sprinter. Unfortunately, the only event she’d be any good at, or at least in Gabrielle’s opinion, was the 100 metre.
“Gabs?” Amelia called out.
“What?”
“Come here.”
“Who’s Fleur? Is she your cousin?”
Gabrielle froze. Her sister, who had left her 8 years ago, was staring right at her, and to make it all worse her girlfriend was now asking who she was.
“Umm. She was my sister.”
“Was?”
“I haven’t seen her in 8 years. She never came back to France after the tournament. She stayed with her boyfriend and hasn’t shown her face since. Didn’t even come back to see me off on my first day - I don’t want anything to do with her.”
“8 years! Has she got her reasons?”
“She probably does. Never bothered to respond when I asked.”
“Oh. Wow. Who is her boyfriend anyway?”
“The one next to her.”
“Your brother in law is Harry Potter!? And you never thought to mention it?”
“Didn’t really want to, it’s not like he’s kept in contact with me either.”
The rest of the evening had been relatively uneventful. The mystery man (who had turned out to be Irish seeker Adrian Lynch) had had to rush to reassemble the champions, as he had forgotten to give them the details of the first task. Because of that, it was the first night that Gabrielle had successfully managed to sneak out of the carriage to meet up with Amelia. Naturally, the only option was to then break even more rules and relocate 2 school brooms to the viewing platform of the astronomy tower, and talk through the rest of the night.
“Gabs?”
“Hmm?”
“I can get you in contact with your sister.”
“Sending letters won’t work, I've tried, every week for the past 8 years.
“I thought you said you ‘didn’t want anything to do with her’”
“Well. I may have told a slight lie. But honestly, whatever you’re going to try won’t work. Owls can’t find her, she hasn’t registered any houses with the ministry, and there aren’t even records in the muggle system. You won’t find her.”
“What if we went to where they live? Would that work?”
“Well yes. But in the same way you’d be the richest woman in the world by finding a pot of a billion galleons.”
“What if I know where that pot is?”
“But you don’t.”
“I do. I went there 6 years ago.”
“Truth?”
“They’ve got a school out on some island. They took in most of the lower years when Voldemort took over. Publicly disclosing their existence defeats the point.”
Gabrielle didn’t know what to say. 8 years she believed her sister had cut herself off to be selfish, and she’d actually voluntarily cut herself off to protect the lives of innocent children.
“Gabs, do you want to go? Like right now?”