24th June 1995, the Tournament viewing pavilion, 5:14 PM
The viewing pavilion on the evening of the Third Task was something else entirely from the Second Task's cold February morning.
June had brought a long warm golden light that lay across the Hogwarts grounds in the particular unhurried way of an English summer evening that had decided to stay. The grandstand was dressed in Tournament colours — deep red and gold banners hung between Atid Stella's gleaming ornamental posts, and the five school flags caught the light breeze above. Below the grandstand, the Quidditch pitch had been entirely consumed by the maze. Twenty feet high, dark green, its hedges pressed tight and impenetrable against each other, it filled every inch of the pitch and sent its sharp fresh smell of cut vegetation into the warm air. From the grandstand's upper tier, you could see the maze's full geometry — the complicated winding corridors turning back on themselves, the dead-ends, the open central clearing deep in its heart where, by Ludo Bagman's announcement, the Triwizard Cup waited.
Harry stood on the lower tier with Ron and Draco and looked at it.
'It's bigger than I thought,' he registered. The maze, from inside, was going to be something else entirely.
"Mate," Ron said.
"Yes."
"That is very large."
"Yes, Ron."
Draco, beside them, said nothing. He was studying the maze's geometry with the composed attention of a Slytherin whose precise mind had already begun mapping probable routes inward.
Around them, the pavilion was filling steadily. Students of all five schools spread across the tiered seating in their school colours, their various languages mixing in the warm air. The mood was, by every observable signal, considerably more festive than the Second Task's pre-dawn chill — this was evening, the sun was warm, and the maze standing below them was unambiguously, dramatically spectacular.
"Harry!"
He turned.
Colin and Dennis Creevey were making their way through the crowd with the combined energy of two small boys who had spotted precisely the person they had been hoping to see. Both of them were carrying Atid Stella Instant Cameras — the new model, released that spring, which produced a small framed photograph in approximately three seconds and played back a brief magical loop of the image. Colin had apparently been hired, by the evidence of the small leather satchel of coins at his hip, as an informal photographer for any student willing to pay two Sickles a portrait.
"Harry, will you — can we — just one photograph, Harry, with the maze behind—"
"Of course, Colin."
Harry felt his scalp tingle faintly at the familiar Creevey-proximity, but the genuine smile came naturally enough. He put an arm around each brother's shoulders. Dennis held up the Instant Camera at arm's length. The three of them faced it.
The shutter clicked. The photograph emerged — a small framed square showing Harry, grinning slightly awkwardly, flanked by two enormously pleased Creeveys with the full green wall of the maze rising behind them.
"Brilliant," Colin breathed, studying it reverently.
"Brilliant," Dennis agreed.
Harry left them to it and turned back to find Ron being cheerfully dragged in the direction of a small group of sixth-years by Lavender, who had apparently decided that the Atid Stella Instant Camera was the best invention of the decade and intended to document the entire evening. On Harry's other side, Draco had been intercepted by Daphne and Astoria, who were waiting at the pavilion's east edge.
Harry crossed to them.
Astoria looked better than before — the pallor was still there, faint and careful, but her eyes were sharp and her smile was the small dry composed one Harry had come to know as her particular expression for I am watching everything and finding most of it either amusing or idiotic.
"Astoria."
"Potter. You look ready."
"Trying to be."
"Where's Luna?" She glanced at the space beside him.
"She and Hermione are on a mission. They'll be back shortly."
Astoria's eyes narrowed into a knowing gaze. "The beetle theory."
"You know about it?"
"Draco tells me most things." She smiled. "Anyway.. Good luck tonight, Harry."
He walked on.
The pavilion's upper tier gave a full view of the maze, and Harry paced its length slowly, ostensibly taking in the geometry, until he realised with a quiet inward laugh that there was no advantage to memorising the top-view of a magical maze that would rearrange its own corridors. He stopped pacing and simply looked.
Around him, the other Champions were with their families. He could see Cedric further along the railing with his parents — his father, Amos Diggory, talking at considerable volume to a couple nearby with the proud proprietorial manner of a man whose son was joint-first in the Tournament standings. Fleur was surrounded by a cluster of her family's careful Beauxbatons elegance. Viktor stood slightly apart with a small group of Durmstrang staff, composed and quiet, noticing Harry's gaze, Viktor gave a nod.
Harry watched them all for a moment.
The thought arrived before he'd quite invited it — the Dursleys, the cupboard under the stairs, the particular quality of a house where you learned early that you were the problem. Whatever had happened there, whatever they had been and had not been, they were... the first family he had known.
And then Ethan.
He smiled without meaning to — the whole sequence of it, the years of it, unrolling in his mind with the warmth of something he had almost not had. Ethan's amber eyes. Luna's hand in his. Sirius's laugh. Lupin's careful patience. Uncle Sam, Hermione, Ron, Draco...
A warm hand settled on his hair and ruffled it gently.
He turned.
Ethan was standing behind him, in his clean Atid Stella travelling coat, his amber eyes warm in the long evening light. Luna was at his side, her grey eyes soft and her dirty-blonde hair loose in the summer air, with the small private smile of a girl who had just returned from a satisfying expedition.
"Nervous?" Ethan asked.
"Yes," Harry said honestly. "But I also know what I can do."
"That is the right answer."
Harry turned to Luna. "How did it go?"
Luna's smile widened into the mischievous composed bright thing. "Positive. Now we wait."
"Right." Harry didn't ask further. He trusted the smile entirely.
"Sirius and Lupin?" he asked Ethan.
Ethan pointed along the tier.
Mr and Mrs Weasley were standing at the railing a little further down, and beside them — looking considerably tidier than ever — were Sirius and Lupin, both in clean cloaks, both apparently in the middle of a warm animated conversation with Arthur that had Molly shaking her head in fond exasperation and reminiscence.
It was then Harry immediately pulled Ethan's sleeve. "Oh Wait. Before we go over." He was already reaching into his enchanted satchel. His own Atid Stella Instant Camera emerged. He looked around, found Denis Creevey nearby just finishing a portrait for a Hufflepuff couple.
"Dennis. One more?"
Dennis's face lit up approximately as bright as a wand-light. "Course, Harry!"
Harry stood between Ethan and Luna. Ethan put a hand on his shoulder. Luna laced her fingers through Harry's.
The shutter clicked. The photograph emerged. Three figure brimming with joy in their eyes, the wind ruffled through their hair as the afternoon sun illuminated from their behind blending with the greenery, painted a warm, colorful scenery.
Ethan took it.
The Weasley contingent had, by the time Harry, Ethan, and Luna reached them, grown to include Bill — taller than Harry remembered, with his dragon-fang earring catching the evening light — and the whole warm collective energy of a family that filled every space it occupied.
Molly Weasley enveloped Harry before he had quite finished saying hello.
"Harry, dear. You look so thin."
"I'm fine, Mrs Weasley."
"You are not fine, you're thin, you need feeding. Now, have you been sleeping? I've been telling Arthur since Easter that champions ought to have a dedicated—"
"Molly," Arthur said mildly.
She released Harry and took a breath. "You'll do wonderfully. I know it."
"Thank you, Mrs Weasley."
It was then that Amos Diggory appeared at the railings nearby. He was, by every visible signal, the kind of man who found public pride in his son as natural as breathing and who was, right now, breathing very heavily indeed.
"Remarkable turnout," he announced to no one in particular, at a volume suited to a Quidditch pitch. "Mind you, with Cedric joint-first, you'd expect — well, it's not every year Hogwarts produces a champion of his calibre. Joint first, of course," he added, with a sidelong glance at Harry that suggested he had opinions about the joint portion.
Molly Weasley's chin went up approximately one inch.
"Harry has had a remarkable tournament himself, Amos."
"Oh, certainly, certainly. Good effort. Considering he's only fourteen."
"Considering—" Molly began.
"Amos," Mrs Diggory said quietly from behind her husband's elbow.
Amos subsided. A few feet away, Cedric — who had appeared at the railing with Cho Chang's hand in his, their fingers laced with the ease of two people who had long settled into the fact of each other — caught Harry's eye.
Harry caught his back.
They shared a wry smile of two boys who had been joint-first all term and were now, on the evening of the Third Task, united in their private amusement at the adults beside them.
Arthur, clearing his throat, said to Harry: "I'm afraid Percy isn't here this evening."
"I noticed."
"The Crouch situation — the Ministry has had him in for rather a lot of questioning. The instructions he'd been relaying, apparently, may not have actually been sent by Crouch at all. Fudge is taking it seriously, which—" he paused diplomatically, "—is not always Cornelius's strongest register. He'll be the fifth judge tonight, in Crouch's place."
Harry glanced at Ethan.
Ethan glanced back at him with the small amber-eyed look that said I already know.
Of course he did.
A small commotion at the far end of the pavilion railing announced the arrival of Howard, almost like how Ethan, Harry and Luna first met him at New York the man still carrying that carefree attitude as he dressed in a wide linen shirt and the amiable expression of a man who had spent the past three weeks wandering the United Kingdom with genuine delight.
Ethan's face broke into a genuine warm grin. Howard clapped him on the shoulder.
"Ethan!"
"Howard. You managed to arrive for the actual Task."
"I nearly missed it for the Atid Stella tent alone, I'll tell you that—"
"Professor," Robert said.
"The catalogue of products they have in there, Ethan, I want to speak to Verrona about—"
"Professor."
Harry laughed. Luna was already smiling. Arthur, who had listened with the delighted attention of a man meeting a kindred spirit, immediately inserted himself into the conversation about the tent's catalogue.
"Arthur," Molly said, in the exact tone she used for all Arthur-Weasley-technical-enthusiasm situations.
"He's just like me, Molly, he's just—"
"He is just like you, Arthur, and that is exactly the problem."
Ethan said, with a perfectly straight face: "Don't worry, Molly. Between the two of them, they won't come up with anything more alarming than a second Ford Anglia."
Molly turned a meaningful look on her husband.
Arthur appeared to consider this insufficient deterrent.
By the time the rest of the Weasley children had arrived — Fred and George trailing their particular aura of barely-contained mischief, Ginny bright-eyed and pressing in beside Ron — and Hermione had reappeared with the composed, slightly flushed expression of a girl who had just finished an experiment and was keeping her conclusions carefully to herself for now, the pavilion was full and warm and loud.
Molly, catching Hermione in a quick embrace, said: "I've been meaning to say, Hermione dear, about that dreadful article—"
"Most of it was completely false, Mrs Weasley," Harry said immediately.
"All of it... practically," Ron added.
Molly's eyes narrowed with the focused attention of a mother who had been reading between lines for twenty years. "Then what part was true?"
Ron opened his mouth. Hermione's elbow connected with his ribs with the composed efficiency of four years of practice. He wheezed.
Molly Weasley looked between them. Then she looked at Hermione. Then she smiled — the small knowing warm smile of a woman who had worked it out for herself — and gave Hermione a firm, approving thumbs-up.
Hermione's composed face went a very specific shade of pink.
Below the pavilion, the maze rose green and silent in the long June evening.