Daily Prophet Special Report
Hogwarts Cancels Quidditch
Plans to Give Other Sporting Competition a Championship “Tri”
“There will be no Inter-House Quidditch matches held at Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year,” said Cornelius Fudge,
Minister of Magic from his London office this morning.
“With the World Cup match ending in a rousing victory for Ireland,
and the Quidditch field now as flat as the feeling of letdown following
so many weeks of anticipation, die-hard fans, those who look forward to
reading about the ancient House rivalries between Ravenclaw, Slytherin,
Hufflepuff and Gryffindor each year may find this news something of a
disappointment,” he continued, at some effort to keep a hint of excitement
from creeping into his tone. “At least until they understand the reason for
the cancellation. But for those to whom it is the nature of sport, the joy of
competition that counts most we are honoured to announce that, after more
than a century, Hogwarts will be hosting the Tri-Wizard Tournament.”
This tournament, a longtime tradition between the three pre-eminent
European Magic Schools, Hogwarts, Beaux Batons Academy
and Dermstrang Institute,
will commence later this fall with the arrival of their representatives and
shall continue throughout the school year.
“For those unfamiliar with the Tri-Wizard competition, a Champion will be
chosen from among qualified students, one to represent each school,” says Ludo
Bagman of the Department of Magical Games and Sports. “The final selection
will be made by a completely impartial judge- the Goblet of Fire, into which
those interested in competing will have placed their names for consideration.
The Champions will endeavour to complete three tasks that demonstrate their cleverness, courage and creative use of Magic. You can just bet it’ll be an
amazing competition!”
The venture has been undertaken as a collaborative effort between the
Departments for Wizarding Education, Magical Games and Sports and
International Magical Cooperation.
Count on the Daily Prophet to keep you in the thick of the developing story
from the ceremonial selection of the school champions to the moment by moment
descriptions of the Tasks themselves, as well as interviews with the chosen
competitors, wagering odds, historical background, reactions of professors,
officials, fellow students and much, much more!
Though not yet finalized, the anticipated ceremonial selection has
been set to coincide with Hogwarts annual Halloween feast.
Darrin deVenture
-Sports Reporter
Daily Prophet Special Report
Tri-Wizard Tournament Heats Up:
Dragon’s Breath Fires Competition
“It’s no small thing, smuggling fifty foot high dragons somewhere without
anyone being any the wiser,” says Charlie Weasley. Tall order or not,
Weasley and a team of specially trained handlers transported a mixed
group of fire breathers from Rumania to surprise the first group of
Tri-Wizard competitors in more than a century.
“You can bet,” said Ludo Bagman of the Department of Magical Games
and Sports and one of the contest’s judges. “That the rewards and risks are
enormous. On the one hand, honour and glory for their school and a
thousand galleons personal prize money, while on the other…” Wordless,
Bagman waved a hand at the specially constructed dragon enclosure
surrounded by stadium seating.
While the Champions took today’s risks, it was the crowd which was
rewarded with a tremendous demonstration of courage, resourcefulness
and a wide range of Magical undertakings.
By random draw, the four school Champions, selected several weeks ago,
were paired with their dragons. The task for each student was, armed only
with a wand and their resourcefulness and knowledge of Magic, to retrieve
a Golden Egg the dragon was guarding. Cedric Digory of Hogwarts
confounded his Swedish Short Snout with a Transfigured rock that dashed
about disguised as a dog. Fleur de la Cour of Beaux Batons used an
Entrancement Charm to lull her dragon to sleep. “Would’ve worked
Perfectly too,” said Weasley. “If Welsh Greens didn’t have a tendency to
snore.” Dermstrang Institute’s well known Champion Victor Krumm, who
performed a perfect Rhansky Feint to capture the Golden Snitch during
last summer’s World Cup match, found his way to the one vulnerable
spot of a Chinese Fireball with a conjunctivitis spell to the eye.
But it was the youngest and smallest contestant who provided the biggest
surprise. With a summoning charm Harry Potter of Hogwarts employed a
Firebolt- (regarded by experts as the fastest racing broom in the world) and
Several classic Quidditch moves to evade his dragon and, according to
Weasley. “Capture the Golden Egg as if it was just one more snitch.”
“I’d’ve laid odds it would have been Krumm to come up with that idea,”
commented Bagman. “Hero of the World Cup and all that, you know. But
then, Potter’s Father was a Quidditch player too. Seeker. Must be where
young Harry gets it from. Youngest Gryffindor player in years, y’know.”
At the end of the first round of scoring, Potter and Krumm are tied in first
place. The second of the three tasks will take place at the end of February.
“No more dragons,” says Bagman. “But by then, the competition will
be hot enough that nobody will miss them. Especially not the Champions.”
-Darrin de Venture, Sports Reporter
Date Unknown
Late Winter, Harry’s fourth year at Hogwarts
Written by candlelight in a Cave near Hogsmeade
Dear Harry,
I received your note and the parcel of ham, cheese, biscuits and fruit! Amazing! What an expedition to the Hogwarts kitchens you, Ron and Hermione must’ve made on Buckbeak’s and my behalf! The two owls that brought that food were quite thoroughly weighed down by their bundles, but delighted to examine the biscuits when I opened them and to accept an invitation to stay for dinner. So we shared all round and had ourselves a quite wonderful feast. The owls perched on a nice flat rock I use for a table, bargaining with me for bits of ham as Buckbeak settled in the corner, his sleek silvery wings fluffed warm around him, crunching an apple. Hippogriffs have a way of making them sound quite delicious!
So sorry I haven’t been more help with the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Never got to answer your question about the best way to get past a dragon. Things would have gotten quite hot enough for me in that fireplace if whoever interrupted us had caught me there! (Never did think to ask who it was!) Of course, I’d never have thought of anything like what you did. I’m not near the flier you are!
Would I have been more helpful with the second Task? Hmmm, solving the clue in the Egg… I’m not sure. But I have learned a bit about swimming!
Harry, I knew what I wrote for Albus a few months back about my life in Azkaban was uncomfortable for you to read. For my part, I’ve done things that were more fun than writing it down. (Eating my Mother’s old family recipe for eel stew or sitting my O W L exam in Potion-making come readily to mind.)
When I put quill to parchment that day, I thought it would be the last time I let my mind willingly travel back to that place. But, I told myself, if it got the dementors out of Azkaban and brought in more humane treatment for the prisoners, it was worth it. For countless nights after I passed that parchment to Albus, I slipped from this cave as a dog and wandered the back alleys of Hogsmeade. Through the wee hours, I scrounged the trash bins for old copies of the Prophet. All right! True confession time. I didn’t scrounge only for the Prophet! There were some great leftovers I carried home for Buckbeak and me. But those treats were the only rewards my search provided.
Eventually I understood that my words would not appear in the newspaper. Someone at the Ministry may have requested the Prophet not print that article of Albus’s. Or the editor found it offensive that a convicted murderer cried out against his punishment. I became convinced all that remembering went for nothing!
Then your note came. You asked me a question that changed everything.
I was saddened by what you asked. It showed me how much you were able to read between the lines of that story. I’d like to think it’s your kind heart that gives you the empathy to ask what you did. But I suspect from things Albus has said in his correspondence with me, that you also know what it is to be imprisoned. Your Muggle relatives, it seems, wanted not only to lock you inside their downstairs cupboard, but inside their world. They tried to keep you away from many of the things that make you who you are. That’s the worst sort of imprisonment, Harry. It forces you into loneliness by taking away your most loyal and constant companion- your deepest self.
But your question also reassured me you weathered those stormy days with the Dursleys without surrendering your kindness or wisdom. I don’t think anyone could have asked what you did without having experienced their own answer to it. So I revisited that island, in hopes of finding an honest reply for you.
Unlike those late-night searches in Hogsmeade, this one was rewarded!
After years in careful hiding, a memory burst through, bright and vivid! It was of another Azkaban day long before the one I described for Albus. A good six years earlier, which makes it seven years ago or thereabouts.
I hope this answers your question.
Was there a time, even a moment, you asked me, that I experienced pleasure, joy or even hope while I was there?
Now you can judge for yourself.
The Medi-Wizard
She’s a vision. Long honey hair glinting gold at the edges where the light touches it. She is wearing blue robes- a blue brighter yet softer than the color of the sky- periwinkle I think. A vision coming toward me- closer and closer still til I imagine I can reach out and touch her.
Of course, that won’t happen. She’s a dream. I’ll wake myself now, before the dementors sense the delight she is to look at. So they won’t swoop into my cell with their long grey-black robes swishing, stand over my cot and drink the joy from this dream, then distort it into a nightmare.
I can wake myself out of practically any dream. I’ve done it lots of times. It almost always works. This is only a dream, only a dream-
Only… A… Dream…
-Then all I have to do is shake myself awake. I will do it-
In a moment. That clean, shining hair. Those eyes as dark as the centers of pansies- a blue so blue it is almost black. I’d forgotten about that color.
But I will- I must- wake up now.
It’s better than watching this beautiful vision distort in some unforeseeable way.
This place is nothing but a chain of sacrifices.
I close my eyes. Funny, closing my eyes in a dream. I tell myself to listen to the crying wind. It keens loud and often lately and I think the days are growing shorter. So it must be autumn. I can still remember the kind of warmth that says I can stretch out on my cot, rather than the kind that comes only after curling up beneath a blanket, so summer must have passed not long ago.
Miserable notion, winter lying ahead.
Isn’t that a thought to banish any lovely dream?
Good to have a miserable thought. Keep the dementors away from my door.
“Sirius?”
Beyond my eyelids is a voice like a song. She is still there when I open my eyes. “Sirius Black, I am here-“
“No.” I say. It comes out deep and hoarse, barely above a whisper. Not at all like I used to sound when speech was an everyday occurrence. “You’re not here. Go away.”
“I’m with the Ministry of Magic, the Medi-Wizard Department.”
Maybe she really is here. The Ministry does inspect Azkaban from time to time. I don’t know how often. Makes sure we aren’t starving, that we have soap and blankets, the kinds of things which imply we live under humane conditions.
Or maybe I was right before. My dreams are growing more real. More devious in their attempts to draw me toward pleasure.
I resist being drawn. I back away from the blue robed figure. One step, two. There’s a sound in my throat- almost like the growl my voice becomes when I use my animagus Magic to transform into a black dog. I haven’t done that have I?
No? I’m quite certain I am standing too tall to be a dog, even though, in my canine form, I am quite large.
One of my deepest fears is that I’ll slip one day and transform without realizing it. Becoming a dog is my secret. The fact that I am an unregistered animagus is my weapon against the dementors. My thoughts are harder for them to read when I am a dog.
Until not long ago it was my refuge. When things got too bad I could transform, then pace my cell, walking away the nighttime hours on stealthy, nearly soundless pads. Not now. It’s no refuge. I can’t pace. It’s dangerous. I mustn’t cry aloud, or whimper-
But I haven’t transformed. I am standing on two legs, looking at this speaking vision.
“Sirius, I have come to examine you and to ask you a few questions.”
Her voice lilts like a brook in springtime.
“No.” But I can’t bring myself to back away again, even if there’s room for another step of retreat. Vision, dream or reality, in this precious moment, I’m not muffled in layers of exhaustion or apathy. The dementors depart during Ministry inspections, go to their own part of this place. In those hours the dampening effect of their presence grows weaker. The light is brighter. Words seem to matter. The air itself feels warmer around me. I can hear the sound of her voice, look at the shine of her hair and feel the aching pressure of grateful, unshed tears in my throat…
And if this is only a vision?
I don’t care. I don’t want to break the spell. So I stand, barely breathing, suspending time for one greedy heartbeat longer. Then another and another.
She has parchment, a quill. “I need to ask you first about your food and-”
A face like that and she asks such a stupid question!
“There’s food, they don’t starve us.”
I can hear the anger in the croaked-out words.
It’s no starvation I can explain. There are no words for how they starve us here.
I shouldn’t have snapped at her. She doesn’t live here. She can’t know.
She doesn’t flinch. Her gaze is direct, insistent, pulling mine to meet it. I don’t want to. How does one meet open kindness in another person’s eyes? I used to know. Now I dread to remember what it is to respond to kindness. It will only hurt worse when the dementors suck away another sweet memory.
Best not to remember at all, or not to look anymore at her face, at those pansy-blue eyes…
But I can’t seem to turn away.
“Maybe instead of my questions,” she says. “There are things you want to tell me.”
“There’s nothing,” I shake back my long hair. If I had the voice for it, I’d shout the words.
This is so pointless. Does she think these inspections make any difference here? The dementors don’t withhold food. We starve ourselves with our own indifference to it. They don’t deny us exercise. There’s a small yard they take us to sometimes. But if we’re too lethargic to go, they leave us in our cells to lie on our narrow cots and wrestle with our most desperate memories or nightmares.
What they do is neglect us, which we are grateful to let them do.
It’s not what the dementors do, it’s what they are that drives people mad here.
“Then maybe I can answer a question for you. Something about what’s going on in the world outside of Azkaban.”
“Why would you want to do that? You know who I am... why I’m here.”
“You’re Sirius Black. I know why you’re here. Does that mean you don’t have anything you’d like to know about?”
Only about a million things, that’s all. I could ask after Harry. How’s Harry? How’s my little Godson? Is he safe with his Muggle relatives? Is he hidden from Peter Pettigrew and his Master?
Everybody thinks Peter’s dead, that I killed him. I didn’t. Not that I wouldn’t have wanted to after he betrayed Harry’s parents to Lord Voldemort. But he was waiting for me with his plan in place. He staged his death, using the animagus Magic James and I helped him learn, to disappear. It’s because he transformed himself into the shape of the rat he really is inside, that I’ve been all these years in Azkaban. Thanks to him, three members of the Order of the Phoenix- the secret resistance movement against the Dark Lord were gotten out of the way in one fell swoop. Harry’s parents- my dear friends James and Lily- dead. Me here, accused of their murder and of Peter’s as well.
Of course, if anyone could tell me that Harry was safe from Peter, they’d know he’s alive. In that case, I wouldn’t stand accused of his death. Then I’d maybe at least get a chance for a trial to prove I hadn’t killed anyone or betrayed James and Lily’s hiding place to Voldemort.
“It doesn’t matter.” I shake my head. My question has answered itself.
“It doesn’t matter.” I say after a moment.
“Sirius,” her voice is relentlessly gentle. “Don’t you believe you deserve a chance to have your questions answered?”
“Deserve?” I look at her more intently. Deserve? I taste the foreign word and begin to speak, the sentences staggering from me in a voice gone hoarse and rusty with disuse. “Do I deserve…?” They come in a rush before I can stop them. “I… I deserve… A chance to… to say…” Almost against my will I hear the words I haven’t said to anybody. “I didn’t kill James and Lily Potter. I didn’t tell where they were hiding. They were my… my dearest friends. I knew James… since I was eleven years old. We were kids at school…”
She nods. I don’t know if I see belief in her eyes, but she doesn’t shake her head in disgust or call me a liar, so I ask. “Do you know… how long it is… since I came here?”
“Six years.”
“Six? Only six?”
“You really don’t know, do you? Don’t they give you books, papers, to help you know what’s going on in the world?”
Papers? Books? Who here has the will to read them? Involvement like that is for people who hope. Hope to rejoin the world, hope to change it, hope to see the friends they read about in those pages. I shrug dismissively. Before I can stop myself, I wince and hear my own soft groan.
She didn’t see that, didn’t hear it. Maybe she’ll think I simply don’t like newspapers…
But she’s stepping forward, shrinking the space between us, narrowing the distance from a yard… to a foot… To inches. There’s nowhere left to escape. I can already feel the coldness of the stone wall against my back.
“You’re hurting.” she says. It is not a question.
Panic. I don’t want the concern in her eyes, the terrifying tenderness there. My throat is tightening yet again, worse this time as her touch comes, burning soft on my arm.
A dog, a dog… if I become a dog, she won’t see my face, read my fear, can’t amplify it-
Sirius! Voiceless words shout in my mind, above the rush of blood in my ears. She’s not a dementor, you fool! She’s a Witch. A Witch from the Ministry, that’s all-
Still, if I could be a dog right now- I could get away from the aching kindness in that face- Run from that fortress-smashing gentleness…
My shoulders sag. Even as a dog, I can’t get away. There are bars to prevent me. Even if there weren’t I can’t run now without limping because-
“Let me see your hand, Sirius.” Why doesn’t she shout the words at me so they won’t feel so soothing sharp? Why doesn’t she command? Demand?
If I become a dog-
With something close to a whimper, I give in to her will. Grit my teeth and extend my arm from where it was cradled against my chest. For the first time I hear real sharpness in her voice. “How long ago did you break all these bones? No, no, Sirius!” Her words come now in a jumbled rush. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I’m sorry, Sirius. Don’t flinch away from me! I’m not angry with you. This injury’s not new! Someone should have tended this for you before now. What happened?”
Oh, it hurts, it hurts.
Not the pain, though I can hear myself cry out at the hot dry rub of bone against bone. But her beautiful birdsong voice. And her face- that cutting edge of compassion in her gaze.
“Fell.” I struggle the word out of a throat that wants to close down. “I was dreaming.”
A good dream it was, but I don’t tell her that. Running on a bright moonlit night with a long-legged wolf, a half-leaping, half dancing rat and a magnificent, nimble, silver-pronged stag. Me and my friends. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. Out on the grounds of Hogwarts. Running on four huge, thudding paws, my head flung up, my ears flying back and my tongue drinking the flower-scented air. “Dreaming. Dementor came in, hovered over me. It wanted… wanted my dream… I fell… trying to get away before- before it touched me-”
Sweat runs down my forehead. My breath comes in short, hard pants.
“Well, look,” she says. “I have my wand here. We can take care of these breaks in just a few minutes. Let’s go sit on your cot.”
Nodding, I follow the light touch on my sleeve, sit beside her, let her lift my twisted, white-hot hand onto her lap. Out beyond the explosion of pain, I feel the warmth of her skin beneath mine. That honey hair shimmers forward. It smells of lilacs. I grit my teeth against another cry at the aching beauty of it. “Get on with it, then.” I growl.
I see the flash of a wand. She murmurs something and crimson and orange sparks light the air. Colors of healing, warm and bright. Beautiful. Hot little jolts travel up my arm, pulsing with those dazzling, joyous colors. There is a clean sort of pain tracing the lines of my wrist, my fingers. Crimson, orange, crimson. Blurring. Multiplying through tears. Fifty times orange, a hundred times crimson… Pulsing, shattering as sobs shudder through me…
“Stop. Stop.” I try to bark the word, try to pull my hand away.
She doesn’t understand. “It’s almost over,” she says. My heart is melting in the warmth of her words. “The pain will be gone in a moment.”
“No, stop…” And I say to her the one word I swore I would never utter in Azkaban. “Pleeeeeeaaaase.”
“All done,” she says, still holding my painless hand in hers as she slips her wand back into a pocket of her robes.
Words I’ve never spoken since my first day here fill the stillness between us, hoarse and strangled by wrenching gasps. “I told them- Told the Ministry of Magic everything I know. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen! James and Lily were my friends- My dearest friends!”
She’ll have heard a different story. One that lets the people in the world beyond this island feel safe in their beds at night. The danger’s past. The Dark Lord’s destroyed, his treacherous, murdering servant, Sirius Black is behind bars. Why frighten themselves with the idea that the real servant, Peter Pettigrew, waits somewhere in hiding for a chance to see if Voldemort can rise to power again.
What I’m telling her is useless! Pointless! I should never have let her touch me. Better to live with a broken, useless hand than risk another break in whatever is left of my heart. I’m a fool to have accepted the dream of her kindness! There are no dreams in Azkaban, only mirages, only foreshadowings of wounds yet to come…
I don’t want to look at her. Don’t want to see that hot searing kindness freeze to disgust. So I stare at our hands. Mine is familiar again, no longer twisted and claw-like. It rests quiet and straight-fingered within the cradle of hers. Neither of them move. A moment passes, then two, three four moments and she doesn’t pull away. I feel it once more, the warmth of her skin under mine. Warmth. Honest warmth here in Azkaban?
The tears pouring down my cheeks are silent now. Am I defeated? Broken by kindness amidst despair? Or am I feeling humbled by it? Have I seen a truth the dementors would keep from us if they could? That in this most desolate of places there can be moments of hope, or healing that can flower, even without the promise of a future?
My hand is healed. Her work is done. She could get up and leave now. Instead, she sits on the cot beside me. I listen to her voice rise and fall. It is the music I hear, more than the words. She says she will talk to the Ministry about books and newspapers, about sunlight and exercise. I don’t know what else she pictures as she speaks.
A part of me wants to say she has no control of these things. The Ministry isn’t going to hear the recommendations of one young Witch. But she wants to believe she can make them happen. She hopes they can happen. She wants to share those hopes with me.
Whatever else I am becoming here, I am no dementor.
I will not shatter that hope for her.
So I listen to her beautiful voice and keep my silence. After a while, when her words slow, I look into her pansy-blue eyes and find something in the muscles of my face that feels reminiscent of a smile. For one instant, I allow my fingers to circle tighter around hers.
I have no words to thank her. I sit in the stillness with her for a time longer until, very gently, she asks “Are you better now?”
My nod is small. Her kindness still aches inside me, no longer a sharp edged agony, more of a clean pain, like when my hand healed.
After today, I may never see her again, much as I might like to. This is no place to wish into anyone’s future. Nonetheless, I won’t be entirely alone. She has shown me a strength I had almost forgotten is in me. She has reminded me that whatever I have done or failed to do, I am a person worthy of gentleness and of being spoken to kindly. A person who was once worthy of being named as Godfather to his best friend’s son.
I may never get out of Azkaban alive. Or prove Peter was the traitor to James and Lily. But for a while today, I held another person’s hope in my hand and kept it safe there for her. After doing that, perhaps I can find a way of remembering to protect a little hope of my own.
Thanks, Harry for asking that question.
It helped me find a memory buried so deep and precious inside me that, even since my escape, I’d never brought it out into the light of day to take a close look at it. Until now.
She didn’t return to Azkaban. I suspect she wrote an indignant report on the treatment of prisoners that rocked the Ministry’s boat a little too hard for comfort. She was likely reassigned someplace where the currents of events run through less tempestuous channels.
Fudge, after all, was Minister of Magic by then. I have a certain gratitude toward him for his part in me escaping from that island, not that he’d appreciate knowing just what he contributed to that. Reading the Prophet over the last year, I’ve got the idea he’s someone who thinks that, if he’s the one doing the stirring, the potion must always bubble smoothly, and the newspaper should be right there to notice. Hope that doesn’t end up brewing up a lot of trouble for us in the days to come. Especially where old Lord V. is concerned.
Though I never saw her but that once, over the following years, I don’t think I was ever again quite as beaten down as I had been before she came. Never quite as lacking in hope.
Now that I’m out of that place and know you, Remus, Hermione, Ron and Professor Dumbledore believe I’m no follower of Voldemort nor a murderer, the seeds of the hope she planted that day are growing.
My dreams continue to take on shape and substance.
Someday I’ll clear my name. I’ll walk outside in daylight, not hidden in the shape of a dog, but as a free Wizard. I dream my friend Remus finds a life where he’s seen for the fine person he is. It’s only hasty ignorance that causes many people to assume everyone with his condition is a cruel, vicious monster, the same way they assume all those like me, born into the House of Black, are dark wizards.
Those dreams are for later. Before then, win or lose, I dream that you will come safe through the last of your Tri-Wizard tasks. I wish for our Wizarding world that we can draw together and soon find a way to stop Voldemort from coming back to power. And if that doesn’t take too long and you aren’t too old by then to want such a thing, I dream you’ll pack your bags like you said the night we met, and come to live with me. Then I can be a real Godfather to you.
And sometimes I dream that maybe somewhere in the future, I will find that beautiful Witch with those pansy-blue eyes and that golden-honey hair!
Thanks for the question, Harry, along with the food and the good, soft blanket it was wrapped up in! Buckbeak and I will sleep warm and full tonight! I’ll write again soon.
Take best care of yourself as you prepare for your final task in that maze. I know, I know! I have said all this before, til you’re probably worn out with hearing it, but I can’t help believing whoever snuck your name into the Goblet of Fire is wanting to do you harm. Just stay as alert and as safe as you can! Don’t go off on your own, even on the school grounds, especially at night, but keep your good friends Ron and Hermione close at hand! Please give my greetings to them! And by the way, please give old Crookshanks a good scratch behind the ears for me, too. He’s a fine cat and a good friend.
And above all, since I’m handing out lists of instructions, please pay special attention to this one.
Don’t study too hard- ha ha!
Fondly,
Your very proud and grateful Godfather,
Sirius