A Hogwarts Legend: Chaos Begins [4] (SLOW UPDATES)

Chapter Twenty Eight

Chapter Twenty Eight - "Teen angst brain."

The prospect of talking face to face with Sirius is all that sustains me over the next fortnight, the only bright spot on a horizon that has never looked darker. The shock of finding myself school champion has worn off slightly now, and the fear of what's facing Harry and I is starting to sink in. The first task is drawing steadily nearer; I feel as though it's crouching ahead of me like some horrific monster, barring my path. I've never suffered nerves like these; they're way beyond anything I've felt before a Quidditch match, not even my last one against Slytherin, which decided who would win the Quidditch Cup. I'm finding it hard to think about the future at all, as if my whole life has been leading to the first task ...

Admittedly, I don't see how Sirius is going to make me feel any better about having to perform an unknown piece of difficult and dangerous magic in front of hundreds of people, but the mere sight of a friendly face will be something at the moment. Harry writes back to Sirius, saying that we'll be beside the common-room fire at the time Sirius suggested, and Harry, Hermione and I spend a long time going over plans for forcing stragglers out of the common room on the night in question. If the worst comes to worst, we're going to drop a bag of Dungbombs, but we hope we won't have to resort to that - Filch would skin us alive.

In the meantime, life is relatively the same for me (Maya and Elinor continuing to ignore me), but becomes even worse for Harry within the confines of the castle, for Rita Skeeter has published her piece about the Triwizard Tournament, and it turned out to be not so much a report on the Tournament, as a highly coloured life story of Harry. Much of the front page had been given over to a picture of Harry; the article (continuing on pages two, six and seven) was all about Harry, the names of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang champions (misspelled) had been squashed into the last line of the article, along with my name, and Cedric hadn't been mentioned at all.

The article appeared ten days ago, and it's still the talk of the school. Rita Skeeter had reported him saying an awful lot of things that I can't remember Harry saying in the broom cupboard.

"I suppose I get my strength from my parents, I know they'd be very proud of me if they could see me now ... yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I'm not ashamed to admit it ... I know nothing will hurt me during the Tournament, because they're watching over me ..."

But Rita Skeeter has gone even further than transforming Harry's 'er's into long, sickly sentences: she interviewed other people about him, too.

Harry had at last found love at Hogwarts. His close friend, Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen out of the company of one Hermione Granger, a stunningly pretty Muggle-born girl who, like Harry, is one of the top students in the school.

From the moment the article appeared, Harry has to endure people - Slytherins, mainly - quoting it at him as he passes them, and making sneering comments.

"Want a hanky, Potter, incase you start crying in Transfiguration?"

"Since when have you been one of the top students in the school, Potter? Or is this a school you and Longbottom have set up together?"

Hermione has come in for her fair share of unpleasantries, too.

"Stunningly pretty? Her?" Pansy Parkinson shrieked, the first time she'd come face to face with Hermione after Rita's article had appeared. "What was she judging against - a chipmunk?"

"Ignore it," Hermione says in a dignified voice, holding her head in the air and stalking past the sniggering Slytherins girls as though she couldn't hear them. "Just ignore it, Harry."