Adventures of Harriet Potter

The Third Task

"Dumbledore reckons You-Know-Who's getting stronger again as well?" Ron whispered. Everything Harriet had seen in the Pensieve, nearly everything Dumbledore had told and shown her afterward, she had now shared with Ron and Hermione — and, of course, with Sirius, to whom Harriet had sent an owl the moment she had left Dumbledore's office. Harriet, Ron, and Hermione sat up late in the common room once again that night, talking it all over until Harriet's mind was reeling, until she understood what Dumbledore had meant about a head becoming so full of thoughts that it would have been a relief to siphon them off. Ron stared into the common room fire. Harriet thought she saw Ron shiver slightly, even though the evening was warm. "And he trusts Snape?" Ron said. "He really trusts Snape, even though he knows he was a Death Eater?"
"Yes," said Harriet. Hermione had not spoken for ten minutes. She was sitting with her forehead in her hands, staring at her knees. Harriet thought she too looked as though she could have done with a Pensieve. "Rita Skeeter," she muttered finally. "How can you be worrying about her now?" said Ron, in utter disbelief. "I'm not worrying about her," Hermione said to her knees. "I'm just thinking . . . remember what she said to me in the Three Broomsticks? 'I know things about Ludo Bagman that would make your hair curl.' This is what she meant, isn't it? She reported his trial, she knew he'd passed information to the Death Eaters. And Winky too, remember . . . 'Ludo Bagman's a bad wizard.' Mr. Crouch would have been furious he got off, he would have talked about it at home."
"Yeah, but Bagman didn't pass information on purpose, did he?"
Hermione shrugged. "And Fudge reckons Madame Maxime attacked Crouch?" Ron said, turning back to Harriet. "Yeah," said Harriet, "but he's only saying that because Crouch disappeared near the Beauxbatons carriage."
"We never thought of her, did we?" said Ron slowly. "Mind you, she's definitely got giant blood, and she doesn't want to admit it —" He was ignoring the backlash from when Hagrid's heritage was found out and put in the Daily Prophet. "Of course she doesn't," said Hermione sharply, looking up. "Look what happened to Hagrid when Rita found out about his mother. Look at Fudge, jumping to conclusions about her, just because she's part giant. Who needs that sort of prejudice? I'd probably say I had big bones if I knew that's what I'd get for telling the truth." Hermione looked at her watch. "We haven't done any practicing!" she said, looking shocked. "We were going to do the Impediment Curse! We'll have to really get down to it tomorrow! Come on, Harriet, you need to get some sleep."
Harriet and Ron went slowly upstairs to their dormitories. As Harriet pulled on her pajamas, she looked in the general direction of the boy's dorm. True to her word to Dumbledore, she had not told Ron and Hermione about Neville's parents. As Harriet took off her glasses and climbed into her four-poster, she imagined how it must feel to have parents still living but unable to recognize you. She often got sympathy from strangers for being an orphan, but as she listened to Lydia's snores, she thought that Neville deserved it more than she did. Lying in the darkness, Harriet felt a rush of anger and hate toward the people who had tortured Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom. . . . She remembered the jeers of the crowd as Crouch's son and his companions had been dragged from the court by the dementors. . . . She understood how they had felt. . . . Then she remembered the milk-white face of the screaming boy and realized with a jolt that he had died a year later. . . .
It was Voldemort, Harriet thought, staring up at the canopy of her bed in the darkness, it all came back to Voldemort. . . . He was the one who had torn these families apart, who had ruined all these lives. . . .

Ron and Hermione were supposed to be studying for their exams, which would finish on the day of the third task, but they were putting most of their efforts into helping Harriet prepare. "Don't worry about it," Hermione said shortly when Harriet pointed this out to them and said she didn't mind practicing on her own for a while, "at least we'll get top marks in Defense Against the Dark Arts. We'd never have found out about all these hexes in class."
"Good training for when we're all Aurors," said Ron excitedly, attempting the Impediment Curse on a wasp that had buzzed into the room and making it stop dead in midair. The mood in the castle as they entered June became excited and tense again. Everyone was looking forward to the third task, which would take place a week before the end of term. Harriet was practicing hexes at every available moment. She felt more confident about this task than either of the others. Difficult and dangerous though it would undoubtedly be, Moody was right: Harriet had managed to find her way past monstrous creatures and enchanted barriers before now, and this time she had some notice, some chance to prepare herself for what lay ahead.
Tired of walking in on Harry, Hermione, and Ron all over the school, Professor McGonagall had given them permission to use the empty Transfiguration classroom at lunchtimes. Harriet had soon mastered the Impediment Curse, a spell to slow down and obstruct attackers; the Reductor Curse, which would enable her to blast solid objects out of her way; and the Four-Point Spell, a useful discovery of Hermione's that would make her wand point due north, therefore enabling her to check whether she was going in the right direction within the maze. She was still having trouble with the Shield Charm, though. This was supposed to cast a temporary, invisible wall around herself that deflected minor curses; Hermione managed to shatter it with a well-placed Jelly-Legs Jinx, and Harriet wobbled around the room for ten minutes afterward before she had looked up the counter-jinx. "You're still doing really well, though," Hermione said encouragingly, looking down her list and crossing off those spells they had already learned. "Some of these are bound to come in handy."
"Come and look at this," said Ron, who was standing by the window. He was staring down onto the grounds. "What's Malfoy doing?" Harriet and Hermione went to see. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were standing in the shadow of a tree below. Crabbe and Goyle seemed to be keeping a lookout; both were smirking. Malfoy was holding his hand up to his mouth and speaking into it. "He looks like he's using a walkie-talkie," said Harriet curiously. "He can't be," said Hermione, "I've told you, those sorts of things don't work around Hogwarts. Come on, Harriet," she added briskly, turning away from the window and moving back into the middle of the room, "let's try that Shield Charm again."