The morning light filtered through the enchanted windows of the Room of Requirement, not the harsh grey of a Scottish November, but a soft, golden hue that Hermione had likely programmed to wake them gently.
Harry blinked, his eyes adjusting to the scene. It took him a moment to remember why his left arm was numb. Fleur was draped across it, her silver hair spilling over his chest. To his right, Hermione was curled into his side, while Tonks was sprawled across the foot of the bed, one leg hanging off the edge, snoring softly.
For a few minutes, Harry just lay there, letting the residual warmth of the night wash over him. It had been... incredible. Intense.
He shifted slightly, and Hermione stirred. Her eyes fluttered open, brown meeting green, and a slow, sleepy smile spread across her face.
"Morning," she whispered, her voice raspy.
"Morning," Harry replied. "Sleep well?"
"Better than I have in weeks," she admitted, stretching like a cat. The movement jostled Fleur, who let out a soft protest in French before blinking her brilliant blue eyes open.
"Is it morning already?" Fleur murmured, pushing herself up on one elbow. The sheet slipped down, exposing her bare chest, but she didn't seem to care. "I feel as though I could sleep for a century."
"If we do that, Dumbledore might send a search party," Harry said, though he didn't make a move to get up.
A loud snort from the foot of the bed announced Tonks's return to the land of the living. She sat up abruptly, her hair a chaotic bird's nest of brown and pink.
"Bloody hell," Tonks yawned, cracking her neck. "I feel like I've been run over by the Knight Bus. In the best possible way, mind you."
Harry laughed, the sound vibrating in his chest. "Glad I could be of service."
The laughter died down into a comfortable silence, but Harry could feel the weight of the previous night's confession in the common room hanging over them. He needed to address it.
"So," Harry started, looking between the three of them. "Last night... at the party. During Truth or Dare."
"You told everyone you were involved with more than one girl," Hermione finished for him, sitting up and pulling the sheet around her.
"Yeah," Harry said, running a hand through his messy hair. "I didn't name names, but... people aren't stupid. Lavender and Parvati already suspected." He looked at them anxiously. "Is that... are you all okay with that? With people knowing I'm not... traditional?"
Fleur waved a hand dismissively. "It is not really important to me what ze others think, 'Arry. In France, we are perhaps a bit more... relaxed about matters of ze heart. Passion does not always follow rules."
"Besides," Hermione added, shifting into her lecture mode even while naked under a sheet, "it's not exactly unprecedented. I did some reading when I realized where my feelings were going. While monogamy is the standard in modern magical Britain, there have been numerous documented cases of a wizard forming bonds with multiple witches, or vice versa. It usually happens in powerful magical lineages."
"Really?" Harry asked, surprised.
"Yes," Hermione nodded. "The last public case in Magical England was actually only twenty-one years ago. Lord Black, Sirius's grandfather had a mistress he openly acknowledged alongside his wife. It was scandalous, yes, but not illegal. The Prophet will have a field day, and the girls in our year will gossip incessantly. Lavender will probably ask for every single detail, but they can't do anything about it. Some might call me names for sharing you, say I have no self-respect, but I know who I am. And I know what we have."
"My fellow Beauxbatons students," Fleur sighed, leaning her head on Harry's shoulder. "Some of zem will not be 'appy. Jealousy is... common at my school. But most will not care what I do. Zey know I walk my own path."
Fleur frowned slightly, a shadow crossing her face. "However, Madame Maxime... she will not be pleased. She is very protective. She will likely think you are manipulating me, 'Arry. Or zat I am distracting myself from ze Tournament. She worries about ze reputation of ze school."
"I can handle Maxime," Harry said firmly. "I'm not manipulating anyone."
"I know zis," Fleur said, kissing his cheek. "And eventually, she will see it too."
"It's not quite the same for me, I'm afraid," Tonks said. Her voice was serious, dropping the playful tone she usually carried.
Harry looked at her, concern spiking. "Tonks?"
Tonks sighed, rubbing her face. "Look, Harry, you're great. Last night was... mind-blowing. But I'm an Auror. I'm on active duty assigned to protect the school and the champions." She looked him dead in the eye. "My job is to keep you alive, not get my back blown out by one of the people I'm supposed to be guarding."
"Tonks!"
"What? It's true," she grinned. "Lady Bones is a very understanding woman, she's fair. But there are lines. If concrete proof came out right now that I'm shagging a student, even if you are the Boy Who Lived and practically an adult in magical power. I could lose my badge. Fraternizing with a protectee is a fast track to a disciplinary hearing."
"I didn't think about that," Harry admitted, guilt washing over him. "I don't want you to lose your job."
"And I won't," Tonks said firmly. "So, for now, in public? We are just best friends. I'm the cool older Auror who's keeping an eye on you because of Sirius. Nothing more. If anyone asks, you were talking about Hermione and Fleur last night."
"We can do that," Harry agreed immediately. "Your career comes first."
"Good," Tonks said, relaxing. She crawled up the bed and gave him a quick, hard kiss. "Doesn't mean I'm going anywhere, Potter. Just means we have to be sneaky. And I'm very good at sneaky."
"We should keep the details of last night secret regardless," Hermione said, looking between them. "What happened here... the Parseltongue, the magic... that's ours. Not for the Daily Prophet."
"Agreed," Fleur said.
Harry looked at the three of them. He felt a surge of affection. "You're all amazing. You know that, right?"
Fleur smiled softly and reached out, her long fingers tracing the skin of his left arm. Harry looked down. The carved words from the nightmare—Failure, Worthless, Fraud—were fading, but the skin was still raised, white and angry against his tan.
"Zey are still 'ere," Fleur whispered, her fingers ghosting over the word Failure.
Harry shrugged, flexing his hand. The pain had all but disappeared; he felt a small tingle on the skin, but it was nothing compared to the real nightmare. "It's fine. I don't really care much about them."
"You should," Hermione said softly, her eyes sad. "It was torture, Harry."
"Maybe," Harry said, looking at the scars. "But they prove I beat it. I went into my own head, faced the worst things I could imagine, and I came out on top. They're not marks of failure. They're proof that I survived."
Fleur made a soft noise in her throat, her eyes dark with emotion. "You are incredible," she murmured. She leaned in, pressing a kiss to the scar on his forearm, then trailed her lips up to his bicep, her hand moving from his arm to his chest.
Harry's breath hitched as Fleur moved over him. She kissed him on the lips, slow and deep, tasting of strawberries and sleep. Harry's hands came up automatically, finding the weight of her breasts, his thumbs brushing over her nipples. Her skin was soft, warm, and he felt his body responding instantly, the exhaustion of the previous day forgotten.
"Fleur," he groaned into her mouth as she pressed her hips against his.
"Just a little morning appreciation," she purred, pulling back slightly, her eyes half-lidded and hooded with desire. "Before we go..."
"As much as I would love a repeat performance," Hermione's voice cut in, sounding strained but firm, "we really can't. Tonks has a shift in twenty minutes, Fleur needs to get back before Maxime does a headcount, and you have a meeting with Dumbledore, Harry."
Harry dropped his head back against the pillow with a groan. "Right. Dumbledore."
"Later," Hermione promised, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "We can do this later."
"Fine," Tonks said, rolling off the bed and standing up. She stretched unabashedly naked, then grabbed her wand. "But rain check on the morning appreciation."
The next ten minutes were a flurry of activity. Tonks dressed in her clothes, then scrunched up her face in concentration. Her hair shifted from the messy brown to a professional, short purple spike, and the dark circles under her eyes vanished. Her skin brightened, looking fresh and awake.
"Cheater," Hermione muttered as she buttoned her shirt, trying to tame her own bushy hair.
"Perks of the trade," Tonks winked. She leaned down and kissed Harry on the lips. "Stay safe, Harry. Don't let Dumbledore grill you too hard."
"I'll try," Harry said.
"I must go as well," Fleur said, having slipped back into her silver dress. She looked effortlessly elegant, though she used her wand to freshen her breath and smooth the wrinkles in the fabric. She turned to Harry, framing his face with her hands. "Be careful, mon coeur. Send me a message when you are done?"
"I will," Harry promised.
Fleur kissed him one last time, nodded to Hermione and Tonks, and slipped out the door, moving with the silent grace of a hunter.
Tonks followed a moment later, checking the corridor before vanishing under a Disillusionment Charm.
"Just us then," Hermione said, finishing tying her tie. She looked at Harry, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his trousers. "Are you ready for Dumbledore?"
"Yes. Professor Dumbledore probably just wants to know from me what happened in that nightmare," Harry said with a determined look. He had no reason to fear or be nervous about this.
⚯ ͛
⚯ ͛
The stone gargoyle guarding the Headmaster's office leaped aside the moment Harry approached, almost as if it had been expecting him—which, given Dumbledore's uncanny sense of timing, it probably had been. Harry stepped onto the moving spiral staircase.
He knocked once on the heavy oak door.
"Enter," came the calm, resonant voice from within.
Harry pushed the door open. Fawkes the phoenix, perched on his golden stand, let out a soft, trilling note as Harry entered.
Dumbledore was seated behind his desk, looking very much awake despite the early hour. He wore robes of a deep, midnight blue embroidered with silver stars, and his hands were folded atop a piece of parchment.
"Good morning, Harry," Dumbledore said, his blue eyes surveying Harry over the rim of his half-moon spectacles. "Please, sit down."
Harry took the chair opposite the desk, suppressing a wince as he settled.
"Sherbet lemon?" Dumbledore offered, extending a crystal bowl. "Or perhaps a Licorice Snap? Although I must warn you, the last batch has been rather... aggressive. One nearly took a piece of my thumb."
"No thanks, Professor," Harry said, eyeing the snapping black sweets warily. "I haven't had breakfast yet. I don't think my stomach is ready for combat with confectionery."
"A wise decision," Dumbledore mused, withdrawing the bowl and popping a Sherbet Lemon into his own mouth. "Breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day, or so I am told. Though I find a good cup of tea often suffices."
He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, the silence stretching comfortably between them, before he leaned forward slightly. The twinkle in his eyes dimmed, replaced by a grave curiosity.
"I suspect you know why I asked you here, Harry?"
Harry let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding since he woke up. "The First Task. What happened in the dome."
Dumbledore nodded slowly. "Precisely. May I see your arm?"
Harry didn't hesitate. He rolled up the sleeve of his robes and his shirt, exposing his left forearm. The angry, raised welts from yesterday had receded significantly, leaving behind faint, silvery lines. The words Failure, Worthless, and Fraud were barely legible now, looking more like old spiderwebs than fresh carvings, but the skin around them was still tender.
Dumbledore reached out, his long, withered fingers hovering just millimetres above the scars without touching them. He murmured a quiet incantation, and a soft blue light washed over Harry's arm. The Headmaster frowned, a deep furrow appearing between his brows.
"Troubling," Dumbledore murmured, leaning back. "Most troubling."
"Madam Pomfrey said they're fading," Harry said quickly, feeling defensive. "She said my body is healing quite fast."
"It is," Dumbledore agreed. "And remarkably fast. But Harry, the troubling matter is not that they are healing, but that they exist at all. This... should not have happened."
Harry frowned. "What do you mean? The Noxlings trap you in a nightmare. In my nightmare, I had to... I had to do things that hurt me. It felt real."
"It felt real to your mind, yes," Dumbledore said, his voice firm. "But the First Task was designed as a psychological test, not a physical one. I personally oversaw the warding of the House of Mirrors. The enchantments were specifically woven to ensure that any harm sustained within the dreamscape remained there. If you fell off a cliff in your nightmare, you would wake up terrified, perhaps with your heart racing, but your bones would be unbroken."
Harry looked down at his arm. "So, the wards failed?"
"It appears so," Dumbledore said, his expression darkening. "And not just for you. I visited Mr. Diggory in the hospital wing late last night. He has distinct, bruising rope marks around his neck."
Harry swallowed hard. He remembered Cedric looking like he'd been hanged. "He wouldn't say what happened."
"Indeed. Mr. Diggory is... understandably reticent to discuss his ordeal," Dumbledore said. "And Mr. Krum has severe burns on his palms, as if he had been gripping something scorching hot. He, too, refuses to speak of the specifics."
"What about Fleur?" Harry asked; he had seen no wounds on her body, he would have noticed them. "She didn't look hurt. Just tired."
"Lady Delacour appears to have escaped physical injury," Dumbledore observed, watching Harry closely. "I suspect this is because the nature of her nightmare was existential rather than physical. Loss of self does not necessarily leave a bruise."
"I read about Noxlings," Harry said, remembering the frantic research in the library. "The books said they can cause physical symptoms if the fear is strong enough. Heart attacks, strokes..."
"In the wild, yes," Dumbledore interrupted gently. "But these were contained specimens, Harry. We dampened their abilities. We layered protections. For the physical manifestation of injuries to bypass my wards... it suggests an anomaly. A variable we did not account for."
Harry looked at his hands, watching the faint golden aura that sometimes shimmered beneath his skin when he was stressed. "My Holy Magic," he said quietly. "You think it reacted with the dome? Or the creatures?"
"It is a possibility I cannot discard," Dumbledore admitted, interlacing his fingers. "I possess very limited information on what Holy Magic is truly capable of, Harry. It is possible that when you engaged your magic to break the nightmare—and I did feel that surge, Harry, it was like a beacon in the night—it may have shattered the boundaries between the dreamscape and reality for everyone inside the dome."
Harry slumped in his chair. "So it's my fault Cedric and Krum got hurt."
"I did not say that," Dumbledore corrected sharply. "I said it is a possibility. There are others. Sabotage is always a concern, given the irregular nature of your entry into this Tournament. Or perhaps the Noxlings themselves are more potent than we believed."
Dumbledore stood up and walked over to Fawkes, stroking the bird's crimson feathers.
"Because of this uncertainty," Dumbledore continued, "I have sent an owl to an old friend. I have asked Newt Scamander to come to Hogwarts immediately to inspect the creatures and perhaps shed some light on what occurred."
Harry's head snapped up. "Newt Scamander? The Fantastic Beasts author?"
"The very same," Dumbledore smiled, his eyes twinkling for the first time that morning. "He has a certain... affinity for the misunderstood and dangerous."
"He's a legend," Harry said, a grin breaking through his anxiety. "Hagrid is going to lose his mind. They'll probably end up best friends within five minutes."
"Or they will accidentally set fire to the Black Lake while discussing the dietary habits of a Plimpy," Dumbledore chuckled. "But yes, I believe they will get along famously. Newt's insight will be invaluable."
Dumbledore turned back to Harry, his expression sobering. "Now, onto the second matter. Have you examined the memory you retrieved from the corpse?"
Harry shifted in his seat, rubbing the back of his neck. "Er, not yet, sir. Last night... well, the house threw a party. It was loud. I was... busy celebrating."
Dumbledore's eyebrows rose slightly, and he gave Harry a look that suggested he knew exactly what kind of 'celebrating' Harry had been doing, and exactly who he had been doing it with.
"I figured as much," Dumbledore said dryly. "Youthful exuberance is a powerful restorative, I suppose."
Harry felt his face heat up and quickly looked at his shoes.
"I intend to look at it today," Harry promised.
"Good," Dumbledore said. "To that end, I have made arrangements to facilitate your preparation. Viewing a memory requires a Pensieve, and they are rare artifacts. I have ensured that four are available for the champions. One has been placed in Miss Delacour's carriage, one in the Durmstrang ship for Mr. Krum, and one in the Hufflepuff common room for Mr. Diggory."
He paused, fixing Harry with a meaningful stare.
"And one, Harry, has been placed in that room on the seventh floor. The one with the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy."
Harry blinked. The Room of Requirement. Dumbledore knew. Of course, he knew. He probably knew Harry had slept there last night.
"Right," Harry said, his voice slightly higher than usual. "That room. Thanks, Professor. That's... convenient."
"I aim to be helpful," Dumbledore said innocently. "However, before you go... I must ask. The creature within the dome tailor-made the nightmare for you. It reached into your subconscious and pulled out the scenario most likely to break you. What did it show you, Harry?"
Harry stared at the silver instruments spinning on the desk. "It was about... saving people," Harry whispered. "It told me I had to choose. That I couldn't save everyone. That I had to let people die to save others."
He looked up at Dumbledore, his green eyes dark. "It made me choose between my parents and... and the people I care about now."
Dumbledore went very quiet. The ambient noise of the office—the whirring, the ticking—seemed to fade away. He looked at Harry with an expression of profound sorrow.
"The burden of the survivor," Dumbledore murmured.
"I felt like a monster," Harry admitted. "Because I wanted to save them all, but part of me... part of me just wanted it to stop."
Dumbledore walked around the desk and rested a hand on Harry's shoulder. It was a rare gesture of physical comfort from the Headmaster.
"Harry," Dumbledore said, his voice resonating with a deep, quiet power. "The hero's tragedy is not that he cannot save everyone. It is that he is the only one who notices who was left behind."
Harry looked up.
"You have a vast capacity for love," Dumbledore continued. "And because of that, you feel the loss of every soul you cannot shelter. But you must remember: you are not a god. You are a man. And a man can only hold the umbrella for those closest to him, and hope the storm passes before his arm tires."
Harry let out a shaky breath. "My arm is pretty tired, Professor."
"I know, my boy," Dumbledore said gently, squeezing his shoulder. "I know."
He stepped back, the moment of vulnerability passing as he regained his Headmasterly demeanor.
"Now," Dumbledore said, his tone shifting to something brisk and businesslike. "I suggest you head to the Great Hall for some breakfast. You will need your strength."
"For the memory?" Harry asked, standing up.
"For that, yes," Dumbledore said, moving back to his chair. "But mostly for the... surprise waiting for you."
Harry froze halfway to the door. "Surprise? What kind of surprise?"
Dumbledore picked up a quill and began inspecting the tip, avoiding Harry's eyes. "Well, let us simply say it involves you, the morning edition of the Daily Prophet, and the impending arrival of two rather spirited witches who I believe are currently looking for you."
Harry's stomach dropped through the floor. He thought of the article Hermione had mentioned might happen. He thought of the 'Truth or Dare' confession. He thought of Lavender and Parvati.
"Rita Skeeter," Harry realized with horror.
"Among others," Dumbledore said pleasantly. "I believe the headline involves the word 'Heartthrob'."
Harry closed his eyes and exhaled sharply.
"Bugger," he cursed under his breath.
"Language, Harry," Dumbledore chided, though his eyes were twinkling madly again. "Off you go. Best not to keep your public waiting."