Chapter 5
"I didn't even submit my name!" I balked, pressing further and further into Professor Aragon's robes, his steady presence behind me the only thing preventing me from darting out of the room.
"Don't be ridiculous. It says your name right here," Professor Everard said dismissively, waving a thin slip of paper through the air.
I felt a pair of hands squeeze my shoulders comfortingly, but it did nothing to soothe. Everywhere I looked, people stared at me like I had finally lost my mind, even many of my closest friends, though they weren't who I was searching for. They didn't matter. Finally, my eyes landed on the face I most wanted to see.
I expected worry, but the expression on my brother's round face gave me pause. He looked so... hopeful. Proud, even. That shining smile I so rarely got to see anymore... He actually wanted me to be the champion. Thomas had always been my greatest weakness, since the day our mother had handed me his wrinkled little form swaddled in rags. I couldn't take yet another thing away from him, after all we'd been through.
You can't protect him from them if you're dead, a snide voice in the back of my head taunted. I quickly shoved the thought away.
People didn't die that often in the tournament, did they? If I actually managed to win and get the prize money, then Thomas would be mine to take care of — by myself. No one would hurt him, or me, ever again. I would make sure of it.
Without even realising, my feet carried me to the Headmaster. Numbly, I snatched the slip of paper from his weathered hands and read.
__________________
Alice Lucretia Lovett
Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry
__________________
It was my name, all right. What's more, even the handwriting seemed to match my own. Who would bother to put my name in, and even go through the trouble of making it seem like I wrote it myself? Who stood to gain from that sort of prank?
"Straight through those doors, dear."
Professor Everard pointed to a closed door behind the staff table, nudging me along. The situation was so bizarre, I didn't fight his guiding hand leading me through the doorway. After all, I knew the tournament rules better than most. Even if I never put my name in myself, I couldn't back out. Such was the nature of the tournament's binding magic.
"Allow me to introduce you to your fellow champions," Everard said, guiding me to a chair by the fire. He gestured vaguely to a fair skinned boy, who's blonde hair, nearly white, curled down past his ears. "Frey Gyldenstierne, and, of course, I'm sure you already know the lovely Durmstrang Headmistress."
As a matter of fact, I didn't know her, and "lovely" was certainly not the first adjective I would have used to describe the creature before me, nor one of the first fifty.
"You kept us waiting," Frey observed, only the slightest of accents peaking through his words, as he tucked his furs in around himself more comfortably. "Any particular reason?"
"The reason," a cool voice behind me drawled, "is because obviously Hogwarts had no acceptable champion for the Goblet to choose from." I turned around just in time to see the owner of the voice shoot me a disdainful look, one, due to years of training, I swiftly matched with equal disgust. "Just look at her. I can tell a street urchin when I see one. Is that honestly the best Hogwarts has to offer?"
"Quiet, Nikolas," a weathered, bearded wizard I hadn't noticed admonished firmly. I had no doubt he was the Beauxbatons headmaster. "We are being guests in their home."
Nikolas, who looked ready to argue, was silenced with a stern look.
The more I got a good look at him, the more I realized, with a great deal of irritation, that he had been one of the Beauxbatons boys that Lyra jokingly considered for her harem a few weeks earlier. Everything from his clothes to his demeanor screamed of fine breeding and a spoilt childhood. Everything I lacked.
Everard watched the exchange with apparent growing concern, no doubt having heard of his new champion's penchant for troublemaking, but I wasn't that stupid. I knew when to pick my battles, at least most of the time.
"It is perfectly alright, sir," I said, giving my best effort at a demure smile. "It just proves I was chosen by merit of my own ability, unlike some people."
I shot Nikolas a meaningful look.
"What are you trying to imply?" Nikolas growled, taking a step forward.
"Imply?" I blinked in apparent confusion. "Why, I don't know where you would get the idea that I was insinuating you lack talent. I said nothing of the sort."
On second thought, maybe I didn't know when to pick my battles after all.
I could have sworn I heard Frey snort, though I couldn't be sure. Nikolas obviously was not fooled by my blatantly insincere assurances and looked ready whip out his wand and challenge me to a duel then and there.
"Miss Lovett," Professor Aragon interjected calmly, distilling the growing tension. I hadn't even noticed him come in. "That's quite enough."
He leaned in a would-be-casual manner against the doorframe, though I knew better than to believe it. He was still weak from his potion and needed the wall for support.
Regardless, Everard looked at him like he was an angel sent down from the heavens.
"Oh, Walter — I mean, Professor Aragon! I was wondering when you planned on joining us," Everard stuttered, relief written plain as day across his face.
"Headmaster, I believe it is getting late. I know for a fact that Miss Lovett here has lessons first thing on the morrow. Let us wrap things up for now. Our champions need their rest, do you not agree?"
Seeing the vengeful glint in Nikolas's eyes, I couldn't help but wholeheartedly agree myself, yet I kept my mouth shut, only giving Nikolas a serene, and hopefully infuriating, smile.
"Er... quite right, quite right," Professor Everard said, eagerly nodding his head. "Let us be off to bed. No doubt the Daily Prophet will be breathing down our necks soon enough, so I want you all to be well rested for when they arrive."
Before I could move a single inch, Nikolas shoved past, deliberately bumping my shoulder on his way out the door. I couldn't help but wonder what, besides simply breathing, I had done to warrant his wrath. Certainly, I'd done plenty to deserve it from other people, but not to him specifically. I knew it couldn't be personal, considering we had only spent a grand total of five minutes in each others presence, yet my nosy, inquisitive nature wanted to know what his problem was.
If a person started taking out their anger on me, by my logic that made it my business.
"I am glad I am not on the receiving end of that glare," Frey noted lightly, striding up beside me.
"Who's? His or mine?" I asked, watching Nikolas storm around the corner, followed by his Headmaster at a leisurely pace.
"I have not yet decided."
He winked, trailing out the door after his portly headmistress.
"Miss Lovett?" Professor Aragon prompted. "You, too. Off to bed."
"Of course, professor." As I breezed past, I added under my breath so the headmaster wouldn't hear, "Your impeccable timing may have just prevented my untimely murder."
"Hm... that's not exactly a thank you," he mused, falling into step beside me. "Would you care to rephrase that?"
"I imagine it's somewhere in your teaching vows to stop harm from befalling your students, so I don't think so."
"You don't know that for certain," he countered playfully, the serious Deputy Headmaster from before nowhere to be found. "And besides, there are really so many rules to keep track of. You can't expect me to remember them all."
"Whatever you say, professor." I rolled my eyes, slowing my pace so that his weakened gait could keep up. "But I still don't understand what I've done to earn the Beauxbaton's champion's hate quite so early into the competition."
"Other than speak?" he teased, slowly trudging up the stairs with a hand braced on the wall.
"Yes, other than that, professor."
"Use your mind, Miss Lovett. You have a perfectly good one, though full of cobwebs it may be."
I shot him an annoyed look.
"I could easily push you down these stairs, sir," I pointed out, helping him to the landing.
"My point," he continued, "is that the answers to all of your questions are right within your grasp. You need only connect the dots."
"Please, oh please don't turn this into a lesson, sir," I moaned. "Can't you simply give me straight answer? For once?"
"Then you wouldn't learn," Aragon stated simply. Abruptly, he drew back a tapestry that I had never paid much attention to to reveal a dark passage. Stepping into it, he added, "Now, why might a Frenchman, like that boy Nikolas, in this glorious year of seventeen-hundred-ninety-two, dislike an English, muggle-born peasant such as yourself?"