Death is but the Next Great Adventure

Reflections

In the last chapter: Fleur contemplates her fellow champion. Sirius and Remus take action against the Ministry and Dumbledore for Harry's sake. Harry attends the weighing of the wands and refuses an interview with Rita Skeeter. Ginny meets with Charlie when he shows up and later on shows Harry and Anthony the dragon encampment in the forbidden forest. Harry sneaks into the camp and steals a potion. Harry realizes Cedric will be the only one that doesn't know about the dragons and decides to tell him before the first task.

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The next morning at breakfast, two of the four champions grabbed a small meal before leaving almost immediately. Harry observed this from his seat at the Ravenclaw table and figured that Fleur and Viktor had already had a chat with their headmasters and would be spending the next few short days until the first task, reading up on dragons. Harry would be doing the same as soon as he finished his breakfast, but before that, he had to speak with a certain Hufflepuff about the first task.

He looked across the hall and spotted the caramel-haired boy amongst his usual group. Harry was too far away to hear what they were saying, but he could pick up a few things just from watching them. It was clear to Harry that Cedric was distracted, although that wasn't at all surprising considering, Harry could see the anxiety lining his ridged form and how he kept seeming to slip away into his thoughts even as his friend tried to distract him and keep his spirits up. Cedric didn't yet know anything about the first task and it was taking its toll on the older boy.

Harry sighed. He liked Cedric well enough, since the World Cup and the beginning of the tournament they'd been on rather amicable terms, but that didn't change the fact that they were still practically strangers and Harry has always been reluctant to interact with those outside of his close-knit circle. Cedric Diggory, despite the aura of approachability surrounding him, was still considered firmly outside of that circle. The tournament had only started a month ago and already Harry could tell he would be interacting with the Hufflepuff more than he did with most within his own house.

Not just Cedric, either. The tournament was putting Harry directly in the international spotlight, the absolute last place he wanted to be. He'd done a fairly decent job thus far of staying out of the papers and not giving the wizarding world anything to build their ridiculous gossip on. Now . . . there would be no escaping the scandal-hungry gazes.

If Harry was completely honest with himself, it wasn't even just the need to protect his secrets that kept him so private. No, it went much deeper than that. For as long as Harry could remember, he's been a very distant, detached, and resilient person. Living with the Dursleys, Harry had always been shamefully hidden from the community and scorned behind closed doors for his unusual 'temperament.' He'd always been 'cold' and 'apathetic' but as a young child he of course had the potential to change, to manually build those bridges himself that others seemed to form naturally with their fellow humankind.

However, under the firm hand of his relatives, after years of being demonized and made to believe that Harry was 'evil,' that potential—that will to change—wilted and he settled more firmly into his frigid behaviors. Coming to the wizarding world had changed a lot for Harry, but there was still so much of him that remained unchanged. Harry now had those he cared for and he was slowly learning the same things that came naturally to others—empathy, compassion, hope, trust—but he was still so different from his peers and he felt that constant barrier between himself and the rest of the world.

For all that he was improving, Harry was still 'Harry, Master of Death, traverser of the veil, and many times un-dead necromancer' and there were certain things that felt fundamentally wrong for him. One of the most prominent examples was the public. Harry took so much comfort and stability from his solitude and privacy that having his every movement on display for hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of witches and wizards made him feel like crawling out of his own skin. Which made him automatically abhor the entire tournament and everything and person to do with it.