Ma Chérie

“Ron, pumpkin pasties simply just aren’t as good as treacle tart. You’re only lying to yourself at this point, mate.”

“Nah, pasties are the elite desert- look at the consistency of pastry right here-“

Hermione interrupts Ron and Harry’s conversation with a pointed whisper,

“Shh, you two- Dumbledore’s going to announce Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. And treacle tart’s better anyway, sorry Ron.”

Ron looks annoyed, but is also interested in the other two wizarding school’s arrivals, so stops talking and turns to the front of the Great Hall, as does Harry. Dumbledore is smiling at them all and, after a few pleasantries, announces, “Let the schools enter!”.

First is Beauxbatons, with fluttery music and pretty, flowery uniforms to match. All of the French students seem to be abnormally beautiful, and Harry doesn’t know where to look.
He spots Hugo in the group, seeing him shoot Draco a quick smile as the Beauxbatons group dance to the front of the Hall. Hugo’s still pretty (in his trust fund way) and Harry feels a twinge of jealousy at the look Hugo shares with Draco.
Would Hugo be Draco’s next snog in a dark corridor at the Halloween party next week? Has he been already? Ugh, Harry needs to stop thinking about this- Draco’s love life is nothing to do with him.

Almost straight after the prim Beauxbaton students enter, those from Durmstrang thunder in. This entrance is alarmingly different, with huge sticks being thrown and spun, fire shooting out of them- matching their collective dried-blood-red uniforms.
Through their red crowd, suddenly, comes Victor Krum, whom the rest of the Durmstrang students make way for. He is rather handsome, Harry thinks, blushing as he does so. He glances to his right to see Ron staring in awe, mouth basically drooling just to see his hero in the flesh.
Harry and Hermione exchange a grin at this reaction from Ron.
Harry does notice that Hermione is blushing slightly, though, so perhaps she is impressed by Krum too?

Once the whole hall has calmed down, Dumbledore brings out the infamous Goblet of Fire, levitating it over to the middle-ish area of the huge room. He informs them all that any student 17 and over is able to enter their name into the Goblet, if they wish to compete, and one name from each school shall be chosen as Champion.

This news gets a lot of grumbles, especially from Fred and George who had both been going on about wanting to enter (and win the prize money for their joke shop) ever since Dumbledore first announced the Tournament a week ago.
The students file out, Harry overhearing Fred muttering to George about ageing potions. He grins to himself, knowing they don’t have much chance getting past that Goblet.

*

The day after the arrival of the two other schools, Harry hears from Ron who hears from Luna who hears from Theo, that Draco hasn’t gone to any lessons today, after period 2. None of his other friends or even Snape seem able to find him, either.
Ron tells Harry this quietly in the common room. Apparently something happened in Moody’s Defence lesson with the Slytherins, but he doesn’t know what and the Slytherins refuse to say.

This year, Slytherins and Gryffindors don’t have Defence together which is both a blessing and a curse- Harry enjoyed competing with (and beating) Draco in Defence the past few years. Now 4th year Gryffindors are with the Ravenclaws, which is rather uneventful compared.

Harry is instantly worried at this news, because if the Slytherin’s defence lesson was anything like the Gryffindor’s last few, then it will have included a lot on the unforgivable curses. Moody had made the Gryffindors all watch as he performed the three curses on live spiders.
Harry and Ron had thought it was interesting, if a bit messed-up, until Hermione told them Neville had been having nightmares since the lesson, especially including the Cruciatus curse. Hermione said she had reason to believe that Moody knew about Neville’s parents being ‘Crucio’d’ into madness by Bellatrix Lestrange, which the boy had told the trio (on the day she escaped from Azkaban) about two weeks ago. Harry had then realised the cruelty in what Moody had demonstrated, especially in how carelessly he’d done it.

Since then, Harry has been wary of the professor, especially because the man apparently turned Draco into a ferret the other day. Harry hadn’t seen this happen, but when he tried to talk to the blond about it, Draco shot him a furious look and slammed his book closed, leaving their study spot with a statement of ‘Oh, of course, you want to have a laugh at me too.’
Since this incident, Harry hadn’t mentioned it but Draco had quietly apologised one evening for his anger at Harry. They’d been playing chess, Draco obviously beating Harry, and the blond had murmured “Look, Harry, I’m sorry about my um, outburst, yesterday. I’m just a bit on edge recently, but it’s nothing to do with you Scarhead, so- I’m sorry.”

Now, though, Harry realises he should’ve persisted more in asking Draco what was going on.
After running up to his suitcase to grab the Marauder’s Map, Harry locates Draco on the topmost floor of the Astronomy tower. Harry immediately thinks the worst and starts sprinting down and out of the common room, barely responding to Ron’s worried shout.

He reaches the Astronomy tower panting and red-faced, relieved to see the (shocked) thin face of Draco Malfoy looking up at him, sitting on the wooden floor. The Slytherin’s knees are pulled up to his chest and he looks unusually vulnerable, unlike his normal proud, dangerous demeanour. Harry pauses to catch his breath, Draco still staring at him with a strange, analysing look on his face.
Harry notices the red rims under Draco’s eyes and the slight glisten to his cheeks.
He goes to sit beside the other boy, shoulders touching, and is quiet for a while until he says,

“You’ve been crying.”

Draco makes a non-committal sound.

“Tell me who it was, I’ll hex them. Even if it’s Moody- I’m not afraid of him.”

Draco turns to Harry slightly, the analysing look back in full force. He mutters,

“You’re never afraid, Potter, that’s your problem. Sometimes it’s good to be afraid of things that are fucking scary.”

“You have a point there. But you’re wrong, I am scared sometimes. A lot of the time, actually.”

What Harry’s thinking is: ‘of you, of how gorgeous you are and how I can’t tell you this because i’m afraid of what you’ll say.’ Harry wonders if any part of Draco’s mind suspects this is what he’s trying to say.

Draco nods, acknowledging Harry’s (voiced) opinion. He turns back to look at the wooden floor again and mutters,

“Did you know that I started that rumour about me being afraid of heights, in second year. It was just so I could come here and no one would find me if they were looking. To be quiet, you know. But you always find me- even without that infernal map.”

Harry smiles slightly. He likes it when Draco is just himself with him, like this. It’s rare, but everything he learns about Draco in these moments he stores in a fond part of his mind.

“So. What happened with Moody. I won’t say or do anything about it if you don’t want me to, by the way.”

Draco lets out a tired sigh, before responding,

“The first few lessons, he introduced us all to the Unforgivables, got us to practice on spiders and stuff. That wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad at all compared to today. He..”

Draco breaks off here and Harry quietly waits for the blond to continue.

“He started talking about all of our parents. You know, Slytherins and all, most of us have at least one family member who was a death eater. Moody obviously knows all the death eaters from his auror days, too. So.. he kept saying all this stuff about them, like personally seeing Blaise’s dad get locked up, you know, stuff like that. Then he turned on me, and, um, said a few things about dear old daddy. I wonder if he knew I share the same views on my shitty father- but I guess not. Then the worst part- he practiced Crucio and Imperio on-on students…”

Harry, listening with growing horror, understands what Draco’s implying by this.

“Which one?”, he asks Draco very very softly.

The blond’s answer is distant and said in a scarily quiet voice,

“Crucio.”

Harry grits his teeth but can’t stop the gasp escaping his mouth. Draco finally looks up at him, biting his lip worriedly. Harry pulls the boy into a warm hug, forgetting his normal rule of not hugging Draco (he’s not really sure where the unspoken no-hugging rule came from). The boy starts to cry into Harry’s shoulder, who holds him tight, promising to keep this moment locked in the safety of the Astronomy Tower, with the dusk and breeze enveloping them.

After getting back to Gryffindor tower (Harry had walked with Draco to Snape’s office, where he’d left him to talk to his Head of House and decide how to proceed) Harry considers what to do.

He had asked Draco a bit more about what happened and why no other Slytherin students were saying anything, and the blond had told him that Moody pretended to be testing out the Imperius curse on the whole class, but had done it on everyone but Draco, who he then pulled Crucio on for a few minutes. When Harry asked if Moody said anything, Draco said that just before he cast the Crucio he said something about Lucius Malfoy being a ‘dirty two-sider’. Whatever this means, Moody clearly isn’t a Malfoy fan.
Draco had then legged it out of the classroom as soon as Moody lifted the Crucio spell, even though he’d barely had enough energy to stand, and assumed that everyone else didn’t remember what happened due to the imperius.
At least, Theo had seemed to think that Draco was just upset about being put under Imperius (which is illegal too) and that’s why he disappeared- this was what Luna told Harry when he found her later and asked her for more info on what Theo told her.
Harry still doesn’t know how Luna and Theo are somehow friends now but it’s cool. They compliment each other well as friends, it’s true.
Ginny doesn’t seem too happy about it though. The red-head girl keeps grumbling about Theo taking Luna away from her.

Draco would probably have no chance claiming that ex-Auror Moody Crucio’d him, especially with no other witnesses, so the next obvious plan of action would be revenge (and distancing) against Moody himself. Harry thinks Snape will be very good at this particular plan, and has decided to leave the two to it.

*

“Cedric Diggory”, Dumbledore calls out the name on the piece of parchment, to much applause from the Hogwarts students. Harry cranes his neck to see the handsome Hufflepuff stand up and walk over to the champion’s room, behind the Hall.
This is the third slip of paper the Goblet has spat out, and Fred and George are already making bets on who the winner will be, muttering down the Gryffindor table.
Harry is looking forward to a year where the attention isn’t on him so bloody much, for once. He is still clapping for Diggory when the fire turns blue. Again.

This isn’t right- and the Hall is filled with confused murmurs, Dumbledore turning back to the Goblet with a frightened expression. A piece of paper flies out, into Dumbledore’s outstretched hand.

The headmaster glances at the paper, eyes widening. He announces, in a low, ominous voice,

“Harry Potter”

*

What utter shit, Harry thinks to himself that evening while lying in bed pretending to be asleep. The curtains are drawn around his four-poster bed, and he’s cast a silencing spell to block out the inevitable whispering from his other dorm mates. He decides he needs to write a letter to Sirius about this whol situation, but that can wait till tomorrow.

After a thorough interrogation in the room with the other champions from a decidedly not-calm Dumbledore, Harry had gotten back to the common room and was only greeted with a jealous, angry Ron.

Ugh, he’s so done with it all. Harry hadn’t really thought anything as he walked through the stunned silence of the hall to the champion’s room. He tries now to recall what Draco’s face looked like when his name was called, but he honestly can’t remember, he was so shocked himself. Even more so when Dumbledore told him he can’t not compete, because then he’ll die due to the clauses of the Goblet. And that someone is probably trying to kill him by putting his name in the Goblet.

It really just tops it off that Ron believe Harry put his name in behind his best friend’s back, so he could ‘get all the glory’. Seriously, what? At least Hermione and Neville seemed to believe him.
And Draco had, too.

The blond had waited outside the hall for him, even though he must’ve been standing there for at least an hour while the teachers discussed what to do, in the champion’s room (behind the hall). Draco had appeared businesslike when he approached Harry, disguising his worry in a tight smile. He’d said to Harry straight away,

“Okay, so it’s got to be Karkaroff or perhaps even Madame Maxime, although that doesn’t check out with her background as a spy against Voldemort. And, she doesn’t seem the type.”

Harry had stared at Draco blankly, wondering what on earth the boy was on about. He had expected to be confronted about why Harry would be so stupid as to apparently put his name in the Goblet, like Dumbledore had implied at first. Draco sighs laboriously and adds,

“The suspects for who put your name in the Goblet, idiot! They’re trying to kill you, or at least hurt you badly. Please tell me Dumbledore realises you didn’t put your name in- you’re a Gryffindor but not that much of a Gryffindor!”

Harry found himself breaking into a huge smile, and then burst into laughter, Draco watching him, utterly bemused at Harry’s reaction.
Harry had then gotten control of himself and explained,

“Sorry, Blondie. It’s just, no one believed I didn’t put my name in. The teachers all interrogated me just now for ages to arrive at that very decision. Apart from Snape- he was the only one who believed me which was a very strange turn of events.”

Draco scoffed at this, looking like he had something (expletive) to say to such teachers. Harry continued,

“Anyway, yeah, I agree Karkaroff seems suspicious. Madame Maxime not so much though. We should reconvene with Hermione and Ron, to make a list of suspicious people-who-want-me-dead. We already have a few lists like this from first year, so should be easy.”

Draco smirked at this, before nodding. He had looked like he was about to hug Harry for a second, but hesitated and instead just ruffled the Gryffindor’s hair.
The blond murmured a goodbye of “Don’t get yourself killed just yet, Potter”, and was gone.

So yeah, at least Draco believes him too.

*

Harry goes to the Halloween party the next evening no longer caring about the whispers and looks people give him, Ron (who’s ignoring him) in particular. His maid costume, complete with black cat ears isn’t even the main thing they’re all gossiping about, but tonight he doesn’t care.
Pansy had lent him the costume that day along with a choker, reminding him of their deal, but also letting him know he doesn’t have to go to the party if he’s not feeling it, due to all the whispering since he was announced as fourth Champion.
He had gone though.

The party consists of drunken hoola-hooping, Draco dressed as an incredibly hot and posh David Bowie, and a lot of dancing.
The next day’s hangover is worth it for the sultry, open-mouthed look Draco gives Harry upon first seeing his costume, and the way his eyes graze over Harry all night but pretend not to.
Hermione even giggles in Harry’s ear at one point about the way Draco keeps looking at him, “the tension!”.

*

Three weeks after his name was pulled from the Goblet of Fire, Harry still has no idea what the first Task is, for the Tournament.

That is, until he’s skipping stones one day down by the lake with Luna and Ginny, when Hermione comes striding towards him from the castle, followed by Ron who stands a little back, near the trees.
Hermione’s being trying her best to split her time evenly between Ron and Harry, even though she believes Ron’s in the wrong, and is constantly trying to get him to apologise to Harry. He hasn’t yet, though.

Hermione glances nervously at Ron, before telling Harry,

“Hi Harry. Me and Ron, erm, well, just me, came to tell you something. Seamus told Parvati who told… wait”

Hermione pauses and marches back up to Ron to angrily ask something, before walking back to continue,

“Yes, Parvati told Lavender, who then told… Dean who told.. me.”

She gives an annoyed sigh before continuing what she’s trying to say.

“That Hagrid wants to meet you at the Forest edge tonight, Harry. Something to do with first task. That’s it. Oh, and Ron says he is sorry Harry, really.”

Harry is thoroughly confused, as are Ginny and Luna who give Hermione odd looks. He tells her,

“Okay, erm, thanks. But you can tell Ron to-“

“I am not an owl!”, Hermione shouts in exasperation, shaking her head at both him and Ron, who still stands guiltily a bit behind her.

*

After finding out the not-fantastic news that the first task is basically battling a dragon, Harry rushes off to tell Cedric, as he knows that both Karkaroff and Maxime have found out about the dragons themselves, and therefore Cedric would be the only one the didn’t know.

The golden-blond boy is grateful, and thanks Harry with a chivalrous smile that makes the Gryffindor blush slightly. He’s still blushing when he almost walks into Draco after leaving the courtyard where he just talked to Cedric. The blond boy seems a bit annoyed, and mutters to Harry, “Arranging your next date to Madam Puddifoots with Diggory, then, Potter?”

Harry rolls his eyes. For an insult from Draco, it’s not one of his best.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that. I heard a rumour about you and him riding the Giant Squid together or something stupid like that.” He actually had as well. Draco laughs at this, but changes the conversation to a more serious focus.

“It’s dragons, by the way.”

Harry raises an eyebrow,
“I’m not even going to ask how you found that out, but you’re a bit late to the news mate. I just found out last night.”

Draco’s eyes widen,
“So that’s what you were telling Diggory! You shouldn’t help him, Scarhead! It’s a competition, not a fun team-building activity. In that vein of thought, please tell me you have a plan for what to do tomorrow.”

Tomorrow is the first task. Yay. Harry doesn’t want to tell the blond the truth, knowing he’ll be angry, but Draco sees it in Harry’s hesitation.

“Salazar, Harry. I am not letting you get killed by a dragon of all things, although that would probably be a very Gryffindor way to perish. Imagine the tomb stone engraving. Anyway- you need to focus on what you’re good at…”

Harry sighs, leaning against the old oak behind him, shooting Draco a pleading look,

“But I’m not good at anything, except maybe Quidditch. And Parseltongue, I guess. And the Patronus charm, although fat lot of good that’ll be...”

Draco taps his lip thoughtfully; Harry’s stressed mind getting distracted by the soft curve of the blond’s lips, and their close proximity to his own. He’s snapped out of his thoughts by Draco’s exclamation,

“Quidditch, that’s right! You’re like a dragon yourself on a broom. We need to get you on your broom somehow… let’s go find Hermione, she’ll have an idea.”

*

Harry gets the golden egg, to an uproar of cheers from the stands, from Slytherins and Gryffindors alike. He’s second fastest, after Cedric. Even with his flight (chase) about the Hogwarts castle, Norwegian Ridgeback close on his tail.

He finds himself pulled into a quick, tight hug from an ashen-faced Draco, who mumbles something unintelligible in his ear before letting go suddenly, in order to let Hermione hug him too. The rest of his friends all congratulate him excitedly. After the crowd calms down a bit, Harry spots Ron standing a bit behind the rest of their friends, and goes over to him.

The red-haired boy looks awkward, but determined as he says to Harry,

“I am a massive and utter ass, and I’m really sorry, mate. I didn’t really think you put your name in, after all that stuff you said the night of the Champions being chosen, but I was too much of a proud idiot to admit it and apologise. Seeing you fight that dragon just now- I know for sure you would never enter this thing by your own choice Harry. So, I’m sorry.”

Harry pretends to consider Ron’s apology for a second, even though he knows he just wants his other best friend back. He breaks into a grin, as does Ron, and nods. They then behind excitedly talking about the dragons and everything they need to catch up on, Hermione, Draco, Pansy and Theo occasionally joining in.