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Three of the desks had been pushed into a rough square in the middle of the room, and someone had thrown a soft rug over the flagstones, which was a kindness Harry recognized as Luna's.
Cedric finished tucking the corners of the tablecloth under the desks and surveyed his work.
"It's not bad," Susan said, from the floor, where she was unpacking what looked like the entire output of the Hufflepuff kitchen for that morning. "Considering you only have the one working arm."
"Two working arms," Cedric said. "One mostly working arm. There is a difference, Susan."
"What's the difference."
"The difference is that I made the tablecloth and you made jokes."
"Fair."
She handed up two paper-wrapped parcels that turned out to be roast beef and horseradish, then a third that smelled, when Harry leaned closer, like cheese and pickle, and then four bread rolls that had been split and stuffed with chicken and something green. There were also two small jars of what Susan informed them was Mrs. Abbott's plum chutney, sent up by Hannah with strict instructions that the jars were to come back empty or not at all. Cedric set the butterbeer in a neat row on the lectern. Luna placed a wooden bowl of pears, apples, and one rather suspicious orange in the middle of the desks like a centerpiece.
Harry lowered himself onto the cushioned chair Cedric had pushed against the desk for him. Cedric had, Harry noticed, transfigured the back of it so that it sloped slightly forward, the way Harry had been holding himself all morning to keep his weight off the worst of the burn. Cedric did not say anything about it. Harry didn't either. He just sat down carefully, found that his back was, for the first time since the Hospital Wing, supported the way it actually wanted to be supported, and exhaled by a small, grateful fraction.
"All right," Cedric said. "Eat. There's enough here for nine people and only four of us, and Hannah will hex me by proxy if any of it goes back."
"Hannah doesn't hex people by proxy," Susan said, distributing butterbeers. "She just looks sad at you until you cave. It's worse."
"It's much worse," Cedric agreed.
Harry picked up the cheese-and-pickle sandwich. He took a bite. He took another bite, larger, and Susan watched him chew with a satisfied expression.
"You looked terrible coming out of that tent, you know," she said.
"Susan."
"I'm just saying. Worst I've ever seen anyone look. And I've seen my uncle in the morning."
"My self-esteem is fragile right now."
"Then it's an excellent time to develop character."
Cedric had just taken a sip of butterbeer when she said this. The butterbeer left his mouth at velocity. Most of it went up the inside of his nose. He coughed, and then he honked, in a way that was so unbecoming of Cedric Diggory that Harry stared at him for a full three seconds before he could process it.
"Sorry," Cedric wheezed, eyes streaming. "Sorry. Susan. Warn a man."
"I never warn anyone of anything," Susan said serenely. "It's part of my charm."
"Your charm is going to kill someone."
"It hasn't yet."
"Hasn't yet." Cedric wiped his face on his sleeve and reached for a napkin. "This is going to be in my hair for a week. I can smell butterbeer in places butterbeer should not exist."
"It's been," Luna observed mildly, "approximately twenty seconds and I have heard more laughter in this room than I have heard in any room at this school in the last month. The Wrackspurts are fleeing en masse. There's a whole stream of them going under the door right now. I can practically see the queue."
"They have a queue?" Susan said.
"They're very polite when they're in retreat."
Harry laughed. It hurt his back, and he didn't care. He took another bite of the sandwich, and Luna nudged a butterbeer toward him with her foot, and Cedric, having recovered his dignity to roughly seventy percent of operational capacity, took a careful, measured sip of his own butterbeer.
"How's the arm, properly?" Harry asked.
"Stiff. Two more days and I'm cleared for everything, in theory. Possibly three. She keeps revising the estimate. I think she enjoys watching me try to negotiate."
"She enjoys it a lot. I think she has a chart."
Susan, halfway through her own sandwich, was watching them both a little smile. She caught Harry's eye, and the smile widened slightly.
"What," he said.
"Nothing. It's just nice. The four of us."
"Mm," Luna said. "It's the right number. Three is unstable, five is a meeting, four is a friendship."
"Luna," Cedric said, "you really do come up with the best ratios."
"They come up with me."
They ate in companionable quiet for a few minutes. Harry got through most of his sandwich. Susan ate a roll, half a pear, and was already eyeing the chutney. Cedric had taken his sling off, which Harry noticed with some concern and which Cedric noticed Harry noticing and waved off with his good hand. Luna peeled the suspicious orange carefully.
The conversation drifted on the small currents of food and warmth, around to homework and back, around to Filch and back, around to the Weasley twins' latest infraction (a Hufflepuff prefect had walked into the Great Hall yesterday morning to find that every spoon in the silverware drawer had been transfigured into a slightly smaller spoon, recursively, fourteen levels deep), and then, inevitably, because all roads at Hogwarts in the next four days were going to lead here, it drifted to the Second Round of the Duelling Race.
Susan went quiet.
She looked at her sandwich. She set it down.
"I've been thinking," she said, "about my duel."
Cedric's eyes flicked to her.
"With Daphne. I keep going over it in my head. The order of the spells. Where I was standing. What she said." She paused. Her mouth pulled flat. "I wish I could have another chance at it. Just to prove I could do better."
"Susan," Cedric said, gently, "you did do better. The Patronus thing, that was-"
"I lost, Cedric."
He stopped.
"Brilliantly losing is still losing," Susan said. She wasn't quite looking at any of them. She had pulled a small piece of bread off the edge of her roll and was rolling it between her fingers. "Everyone's been very kind about it. And I appreciate that, I do. But the cup goes to whoever wins, not whoever was admirable about losing."
Harry set down his butterbeer.
"Susan."
She looked up.
"Look at me."
She was already looking at him. Harry composed his face into the gravest expression in his repertoire. He sat up straighter, ignoring the protest from his back, and folded his hands on the table the way he had once seen Dumbledore do at the start of a Sorting Feast.
"I, Harry James Potter," he said, "do solemnly swear, on this glorious occasion of stolen Hufflepuff sandwiches-"
"Borrowed," Susan said automatically.
"Stolen."
"Borrowed via Hannah's official sanction."
"Stolen with paperwork. Don't interrupt the oath, Bones, this is serious."
Susan made a small choking noise that was the start of a laugh she was actively trying to put back in.
"On this glorious occasion of stolen Hufflepuff sandwiches and one suspicious orange," Harry continued, "in the presence of two witnesses and Cedric, I do solemnly swear that I will personally see Daphne Greengrass humiliated in front of the entire school. If she stands between me and the next round, I will dismantle her duelling technique so thoroughly that her grandchildren will feel embarrassed."
"I object to being grouped with Cedric as not-a-witness," Luna said.
"Noted, witness. Resume your duties."
Susan was laughing now. She covered her face with one hand. Cedric had reapplied his careful butterbeer-sipping technique and was, this time, succeeding.
"What if you don't get matched with her?" Cedric said, eyebrows raised.
Harry made a small, magnanimous gesture. "Then I'll wait. I'm patient. I can hold a grudge for a very long time, as Ravenclaw has recently discovered."
"That," Cedric said, "was a very weighty understatement."
"Thank you. I've been working on weight."
"Harry, you don't have to do that," Susan said. The laughter was still in her voice, but she had got her face back.
"I know I don't have to," Harry said. He shrugged, and his back reminded him not to shrug. "But it'll be fun. And someone needs to remind her that bringing up...what she did in a school competition is not, in fact, a personality trait."
Susan's mouth did something complicated.
"The Nargles have been telling me Daphne needs to be humbled," Luna offered. "They've been quite insistent. I told them they should try someone else, because I'm not the duelling type, but they were very specific. Apparently they have been gathering around her for weeks. Building up. There's a sort of pressure behind her eyes when you look closely, like she's a kettle approaching the whistle."
"Luna," Cedric said, "I love you, but I am not entirely sure that's a real thing you can see."
"That's because you haven't looked properly."
"That's a fair point."
Susan, very quietly, said, "Thank you. Both of you."
There was a small pause. Harry took a sip of butterbeer. He was, he realized, not as hungry as he had been ten minutes ago, which was probably because he had eaten an entire sandwich, but also because something in the room had loosened, and his body had taken that as permission to set down a thing it had been carrying. Susan picked up her sandwich again. She bit into it. She chewed. She kept her eyes on the table for a moment, and then she looked up at the rest of them and gave the small, watery smile of a person who would only be embarrassed about the watery part later.
"All right," she said, briskly. "What's everyone's plan for the round, then. Because if I'm out, I'd like to at least know who I'm betting on."
"You're betting?" Cedric said.
"I am absolutely betting. Hannah and I have a pool with the Macmillan twins and Weasley twins."
"I want in on this pool."
"You can't be in the pool, you're in the race."
"That's exactly why I should be in the pool."
"That is exactly why you can't be in the pool, Cedric."
Cedric muttered something that sounded like fine and took a slightly aggressive bite of his roll.
Cedric set down his roll. He looked at Harry.
"Harry."
"Mm."
"What you said. About the first round. About me being too by the book."
Harry waited.
"It's been chewing at me," Cedric said. "I barely scraped my first duel. I won because Volkov made a mistake, not because I outfought him. And you were right. If I had run into Krum, or one of the Slytherins who actually duels, I'd have been carried off the platform on a stretcher."
"Probably not on a stretcher," Harry said. "Pomfrey's gone all-in on the conjured cushioning, since the dragon."
"On a conjured cushion, then."
"More dignified."
"Slightly."
Cedric drew a small breath.
"Will you train with me?" he said. "Properly. Not the by-the-book version I've been doing alone in the empty Charms classroom on Thursdays. The other version."
Harry nodded without thinking much.
"You're sure?" Cedric said. "You're injured. And we'd be opponents, if we got matched."
"If we get matched, we get matched," Harry said. "I'd rather you be brilliant and lose to me than be predictable and lose to Krum or someone worse."
Cedric's mouth twitched. "You're assuming you'd beat me."
"I'm assuming we'd both fight properly. The rest sorts itself out."
"Tomorrow," he said. "Fourth-floor classroom. The one down the corridor. I'm allowed to walk, I'm just supposed to lie about how much magic I'm doing. We can start slow. Footwork, mostly. We'll save the spellwork for when I'm allowed to lift my arms above my shoulders again."
"Footwork," Cedric said. "I can do footwork."
"You really can't, that's the problem. You move like someone who's been taught duelling by a man who was taught duelling by a textbook."
"That's exactly what happened to me."
"I know."
Susan was grinning. "And what about you, Luna?"
"Me?"
"Yes. Plans for the round."
"I plan to lose," Luna said placidly. "Gracefully, if possible. I gave it my best the first round, and I think I did rather well, but I have no desire to advance any further. Trying and winning are different things. I'm here to have a nice time and put people to sleep when it's strictly necessary."
"Luna," Susan said, "you have to try."
"I will try not to be hit by anything. Beyond that, I am being honest about my ambitions. Sleep spells are gentle, and gentleness is undervalued in duelling. I shall be the conscience of the bracket."
"Bloody hell," Cedric muttered. "I love you, Lovegood."
"I know."
Harry chewed thoughtfully through the last of his sandwich.
"All right," he said. "If we're talking matchups. Who actually scares you, out of the field. Honestly."
Cedric leaned back, considering. "Krum. Obviously. After what he did in the first round, I'd rather not be near him with a wand."
"Thornfield," Susan said. "Marcus Thornfield, the Slytherin seventh-year. He's terrifying. He didn't even seem to be trying in the first round. Disarmed Whitby in about a minute and walked off looking bored."
"Lyra Nott," Cedric said. "Sixth-year Slytherin. The footwork. I have never seen anyone move like that, and I've watched a lot of duels. She didn't get hit once."
"Ekaterina Sokolova," Harry said. "Whatever that spell was. The red rain. I have never read about that anywhere and I have done quite a lot of reading recently."
"You have done a worrying amount of reading recently," Luna said.
"Thank you, Luna."
There was a pause.
"Fleur," Harry said.
He hadn't quite meant to say her name aloud. He had been intending to list her, casually, as part of the threat assessment, the way you listed any other competitor. But the word came out at a slightly different pitch than the others.
"Delacour," he said, more briskly. "She's. She's the one I'm most curious about facing, actually. Out of all of them. I don't know why."
The silence at the table did a small, very particular thing.
Cedric, very slowly, set down his butterbeer. He looked at Susan. Susan, who had been mid-sip, lowered her bottle and looked back at Cedric. Their eyes met across the table, and a whole conversation passed between them that Harry was almost entirely sure he wasn't supposed to see.
Luna smiled.
Harry kept his eyes very firmly on his sandwich.
"I don't know why," Cedric said slowly.
"I don't know why," Susan repeated.
"He doesn't know why," Cedric said. "He's mystified. It's a complete mystery to him. Of all the competitors in the Tournament, the one he most wishes to face is the most beautiful witch in Europe, and Harry has no theories about this. No working hypotheses. The Ravenclaw in him is, I'm sure, deeply troubled."
"Cedric," Harry said.
"It is a curious thing, scientifically." Susan was warming to it. "We have, on the one hand, Krum, who could breake Cedric in three places. On the other, Thornfield, who could probably duel underwater. And then we have Fleur Delacour. Whom Harry has chosen."
"I didn't choose anyone."
"You did, mate," Cedric said. "You absolutely did."
"I listed her last."
"You listed her last," Cedric agreed solemnly. "You know what they say...cherry on top of a cake."
"Luna," Harry said. "Help."
"I'm afraid I can't help with this one, Harry," Luna said serenely. "The Nargles have been very clear with me about this particular situation for some weeks now, and I have been instructed to remain neutral."
"You're not neutral. You're laughing."
"I'm smiling. Neutrality permits smiling."
Cedric was grinning now. "Tell me, Harry. When you caught her in the tent. Three days ago. What was that, exactly?"
"That was me preventing a fellow champion from cracking her skull on a tent peg."
"Sweet of you."
"It was basic decency. I would have done it for you."
"Would you have held my hand for ten minutes afterward."
Harry choked.
"He held her hand," Susan said, to Luna, as if making a note for the record.
"I heard," Luna said.
"Pomfrey told Hannah, who told me. I have it on excellent Hufflepuff authority. Ten minutes, Harry. You sat on the floor of the tent with a champion of Beauxbatons unconscious in your lap and held her hand for ten minutes."
"I was checking her pulse."
"For ten minutes."
"Pulses can be elusive."
"Can they."
"They can if you're not concentrating."
"And what," Cedric said, "were you concentrating on, exactly, for ten whole minutes."
Harry felt the back of his neck heat up. He was, at the same time, distantly impressed at his own ability to blush given how much blood he was fairly sure was currently being prioritized for spinal repair.
"All right," he said. "Cedric."
"Mm?"
"How is Cho Chang doing these days."
Cedric's grin froze.
Susan put down her butterbeer.
"Excuse me," Susan said, "what."
"I just thought I would inquire after her," Harry said pleasantly. He had recovered most of his footing. "Cho. Ravenclaw Seeker. Fifth-year. Hair, very dark. Eyes, also dark. The Hogwarts schedule for sneaking around in the Astronomy Tower corridor at quarter past ten on a Thursday night is, I believe, quite specific, and the corridor is, I believe, frequented at that hour by approximately two people who have not been seen by any of the prefects on patrol because the prefect on Thursdays is Cedric. Funny coincidence."
"Harry," Cedric said.
"Yes, Cedric?"
"You are a deeply, deeply unpleasant person."
"I learned it from you. You introduced me to the corridor map in third year."
"I introduced you to the corridor map for academic purposes."
"You introduced me to the corridor map because you wanted to know if there was a route from the Hufflepuff basement to the Astronomy Tower that didn't pass any portraits."
Cedric had gone the colour of a stop sign. Susan was looking at him with an expression that was rapidly progressing from confusion to delighted outrage.
"Cedric Diggory," she said.
"It's not what it sounds like."
"It sounds like you've been sneaking around the Astronomy Tower with Cho Chang for. How long, Harry?"
"I genuinely don't know. I was just trying to estimate it from the number of Thursdays Cedric has been impossible to find at quarter past ten this term."
"Harry."
"It's only an estimate. I'd have to consult my notes."
"You do not have notes."
"I have a vague impression that pretends to be notes. Same effect."
"Hannah is going to lose her mind," Susan said. "Hannah has had a theory about you and Cho since September."
"Susan."
"So," Harry said. "To recap. I held a girl's hand for ten minutes in a tent."
"You did," Cedric muttered.
"And Cedric has been sneaking off to the Astronomy Tower every Thursday at quarter past ten, on prefect duty, for at least three months."
"Allegedly."
"Allegedly. Are we calling it a draw?"
"I am calling it daylight robbery, but I will accept a draw under duress."
"Excellent."
"I hate you."
"You love me."
"Both can be true."
Susan was wiping her eyes. "I'm telling Hannah."
"Susan, no."
"Susan, yes. Hannah has been theorising for weeks. She has earned this."
"Susan, I will give you anything."
"You can't bribe me with anything, Cedric. I'm a Hufflepuff. We're famously loyal but also, it turns out, easily bought with gossip of this calibre. Hannah will weep."
Fleur Delacour
The carriage rocked gently on its springs as the wind off the lake found it. Fleur could hear the soft creak of harness leather from the stables behind the carriage, where the winged palominos shifted in their stalls, and somewhere further off the high, brassy laugh of Amélie in the common room. The sound came muffled through the silk-lined walls. It made the chamber feel further from the rest of the world than it actually was, which was a thing Fleur appreciated more on some days than others. Today, she appreciated it more.
She sat at the small round table by the window with her back held very straight, if she didn't keep her spine straight, the pain would return. Pomfrey had cleared her. Pomfrey was a competent woman. Pomfrey had also given her a small green vial to take twice a day for the next week, which Fleur was taking exactly as instructed. It seems the British were terrible with food and their houses, but at least they took their medicine seriously.
Two cups of tea sat on the table between her and her father. The tea was good. The Beauxbatons elves had brought their own; if Fleur had been forced to drink English tea in addition to everything else, she felt she might genuinely have written a letter to her father asking for evacuation.
Papa sat across from her, both hands wrapped around his own cup. He had not slept well in three days.
"So tell me, ma chérie," he said. "How do you find this place?"
"It needs color," she said. "Everything here is grey, or stone, or some other shade of dreary. The architecture is impressive, I will admit. The vaulted ceilings, the magic in the stairs. But it feels like living inside a tomb. A very large, very intelligent tomb, but a tomb."
Papa laughed softly, and Fleur liked hearing him laugh like that.
"And the food, Papa." She put a hand to her temple. "Mon Dieu, the food. How do these people not starve to death from sheer culinary despair? Everything is boiled, or fried, or covered in some heavy sauce. There is no balance. There is no artistry. They have no respect for the ingredients."
"And yet you survive."
"Barely. The Beauxbatons elves brought their own provisions, otherwise I would have wasted away weeks ago. The Hogwarts kitchens are, I am sure, run by perfectly skilled house-elves who have been given the wrong recipes by some long-dead matron who hated joy."
Papa smiled.
"And besides the architecture and the food," he said.
"The library is impressive," she admitted. "I had heard so. I had not expected to be impressed. The grounds are also beautiful in their wild way. There is a lake. The lake is very large and contains a giant squid, of which the English speak as if it were a household pet. And the students."
"The students."
"They are mostly the same as back home, many cannot look away, the girls are jealous and like to gossip, so the usual. But there are some who are diffierent... who are...interesting to have around..." Harry's face appeared before her, and he was smiling at her, his charming smile.
She did not finish. Papa did not push. He drank his tea instead, and let the silence settle, and watched her with that same attention.
"Your sister," he said. "She has been very busy trying to write the perfect letter for you. And this," Papa said, sliding the parchment across the table. "She insisted I bring it. She made it the night she heard about the dragons. I should warn you. The dragon has a sad face. I do not think she entirely understood what happened."
Fleur unfolded the parchment.
Gabrielle had drawn her in great careful strokes with a quill nearly too heavy for her small hand. The wand in her drawn-Fleur's hand was the largest object in the picture, longer than the figure was tall, throwing off small spiky stars of magic. Beside her stood a dragon roughly twice her size, with three teeth and very large, very downturned eyes. The dragon had a tear running down its cheek. Gabrielle had written MA SOEUR EST LA PLUS COURAGEUSE. Underneath, slightly smaller, S'IL TE PLAIT NE MEURS PAS.
Fleur looked at it for a long time. The dragon's sad face was, somehow, the worst part. She did not quite know how an eight-year-old had managed to convey such genuine sorrow with three lines.
"She asked me if you were going to die," Papa said quietly. "I told her no, of course you were not, because you are my brilliant daughter and brilliant daughters do not die in tournaments. She believed me, because I am her papa and I have never lied to her about anything important. Please, Fleur. Do not make me a liar."
Fleur reached across the table and took his hand. His fingers closed around hers. His palm was warm.
"I will be careful, Papa," she said. "I promise."
"Careful is not the same as safe."
"It is what I can give you."
He pressed her hand once, hard. He did not say anything. He looked away first, at his teacup, and gave himself a moment.
Then he hesitated. She could see him choosing the next sentence carefully.
"Your mother," he said, "sends her love."
Fleur's expression cooled.
"Does she."
"She does, Fleur. She is proud of you. She watched the task through the viewing mirror I arranged for her. She cried when you were hurt."
"She cried," Fleur said, "but she did not come."
"She had reasons."
"She always has reasons, Papa." Her accent had thickened. "I do not wish to discuss her today. Not after everything. Please."
"As you wish," he said.
There was silence between them again, and she hated it, she didn't want there to be silence between her and her Papa.
She changed the subject. She asked about the Ministry, about the new appointment to the Department of International Cooperation, about Tante Yvette's garden and whether the rosebushes had survived the autumn. They spoke for half an hour about nothing very important, and the tea cooled in their cups.
When at last Papa stood, he stood slowly. He put on his coat. He picked up his battered Muggle paperback from the side table and put it into his inner pocket, and Fleur felt the corner of her mouth lift very faintly at the gesture, because it was so wholly her father.
She rose with him. She walked him to the door of her chamber. He paused with his hand on the doorframe.
"Fleur," he said.
"Hmm?"
"The boy who caught you. Potter."
She stiffened. She felt herself stiffen, and she knew, even as it happened, that he had seen.
"What about him."
"I watched him," Papa said. "After the task. When they brought you back into the tent. He was already on his feet, although by all accounts he should not have been. He caught you when you fell. He sat with you for some minutes before they took you to the Wing. He was holding your hand."
"He was probably checking my pulse."
"Perhaps," he said with amusement. "Perhaps not. I only mention it because you mentioned in your letters that he was a cheater, and now you are turning all red. That's not your usual reaction to people you dislike."
She opened her mouth. She did not, in the half-second she had, find anything to say.
He bent and kissed her forehead before she could find the words.
"Rest, ma chérie," he said. "I will see you again soon."
He went.
The door clicked shut behind him. Fleur stood in the middle of her chamber for a long moment, looking at the door. Her hand had come up to her forehead, where his kiss had been, and she lowered it slowly.
She walked, carefully, to the small writing desk under the window. She sat. She unrolled a fresh sheet of parchment. She dipped her quill. She wrote Ma chère Gabrielle, at the top of the page.
Then the quill hovered.
She thought of his voice in the tent. Easy. You're safe. She thought of how she had called him 'Arry, and she felt the heat rise into her cheeks at the memory. She thought of his face in the Hospital Wing when she had thanked him. The way his ears had gone red. The way he had said properly back to her in that dry careful voice of his, as if the word were a small object he was handing back to her with both hands.
She thought of every cold thing she had said about him for a month. Every time she had used the word tricheur in her head. Every assumption she had made the moment his name had come out of the Goblet.
"Avais-je tort?" she said aloud, in the quiet of her chamber. Was I wrong about him?
She did not have an answer.
She thought of Karkaroff's smug pinched face in the Hospital Wing. Of Harry's voice the moment her score had been announced, before his own. The way he had spoken without hesitation. He had been injured. He had been in pain. He had spoken anyway.
If I'd wanted to enter, he had said in the tent, weeks ago, when she had still been calling him a cheat to his face, I wouldn't have needed to rely on whatever convoluted method someone used to enter my name.
She remembered how he was on the first day. When he was just their guide to this new school.
' "I am always open to learning, Potter," Fleur countered, her accent becoming more pronounced. "But I prefer teachers with experience beyond four years of magical education."
She had expected him to get angry, but once again, he had surprised her. He had laughed with amusement. "Fair point, Miss Delacour. I'm merely a humble tour guide, not a professor. Though sometimes the newest books have the most interesting stories, while the most impressive-looking tomes contain nothing but stale air between their covers."
It has been a long time since she was so offended by someone. "Some stories are not worth reading, no matter 'ow new ze binding." '
Fleur had been so irked by him that day. The way he smiled at everyone, the way he countered everything she said. It had irked her. Yet, now, a part of her wanted to argue with him again, she wanted to hear his voice again....That Annoying Ravenclaw!
She set down the quill. She closed her eyes.
She stayed like that for perhaps a minute.
Then she opened her eyes and pushed her chair back from the desk and stood up, slowly, mindful of her back. She walked to the wardrobe. She pulled out her practice robes, the close-fitting blue ones she dueled in, and laid them on the bed. She unbuttoned her day robe and let it fall over the back of the chair. She caught her reflection in the long mirror beside the wardrobe and paused for a half-second, looking at the long mark down her back where the dragon's tail had caught her, still faintly visible beneath the thin chemise, a pink line that would fade and not quite disappear.
She turned away from the mirror. She dressed for training. She tied her hair back from her face in the high tight knot she used when she was about to work properly. She picked up her wand from the bedside table.
The Second Round was in four days.
She had been Beauxbatons' finest for years. She had not earned that title by sitting at a writing desk, wondering about an English boy with green eyes and unfair reflexes and a habit of catching her when she fell, and how handsome he was.
Whatever she thought, or did not think, about Harry Potter could wait.
The competition could not. The win would be hers. She would win. She would win all the rounds on her own, by her own sweat and blood. And when the final round came, and it was just her against him, she would win that round too.
And she knew, unlike last time, this one was not affected by her allure, so no matter what...it would be a clean fight between equals.
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