The next day, the morning post brought Sirius's highly anticipated reply. After Harry scanned the parchment, his expression soured instantly, a dark cloud settling over his
"Who is he to lecture me about being out-of-bounds?" Harry demanded in mild indignation, aggressively stuffing the freshly folded letter into the inner pocket of his robes. "Especially after all the reckless stuff he and my dad got up to when they were at school?"
"He is just worried about you, Harry," Hermione said hurriedly, her voice laced with anxious concern as she leaned across the table. "Please, just listen to him this once?"
"No one has even tried to attack me all year," he shot back quickly, his hands gesturing defensively. "No one has done anything to me at all—"
"Except covertly put your name into the Goblet of Fire," Lucifer cut him off cleanly, his voice dropping temperature of the conversation. "An act which has actively posed a very real risk of death in each subsequent Task... I don't know if they have deliberately waited until this moment to make their 'final' move, but whoever they are, clearly don't want you alive by end of this tournament. Snuffles is absolutely right."
"Okay, look, let's just say he is right," Harry countered, leaning in closer to whisper. "Let's say someone actually stunned Krum just to kidnap Crouch... Well, that means they would have been hiding in the trees right near us, wouldn't they? But they specifically waited until I was completely out of the way before they acted. So, if you look at the timeline, it doesn't really like 'I'm' their target, does it?"
"They couldn't have easily made it look like a tragic accident if they murdered you outright in the Forbidden Forest," Hermione answered him matter-of-factly, her logic was sharp, "But if you die during an official task—"
"They clearly didn't care about attacking Krum, did they?" Harry argued, shaking his head in frustration. "Why didn't they just polish me off at the exact same time? They could have easily framed the scene to make it look like he and I had a lethal duel or something."
Lucifer remained quiet for a long moment, his eyes fixed on the flickering torches on the wall as his mind raced. "What if..." he began, immediately gathering their absolute attention. "What if Crouch was actually onto something incredibly specific when he was rambling about Voldemort?" he asked.
"What are you on about now?" Harry asked, brow furrowing.
"This is just pure speculation based on everything I have observed so far," Lucifer suggested, his tone shifting into something deadly serious. "But what if they desperately needed Crouch.... out of the way to prevent him from warning Dumbledore about something critical regarding him? Because in the Third Task... whoever is orchestrating this is supposed to use the chaos to kill you."
"Lucifer," Hermione said carefully, her brown eyes searching his face with a mix of awe and profound worry. "How did you possibly come to that specific conclusion?"
"I—" Lucifer stopped himself mid-sentence. A sudden, jarring confusion pierced through his thoughts. 'How did I come to that conclusion? Absolutely nothing discussed between us or any of these mortals should have allowed me to come anywhere close to that realization... ' For the first time in a long time, he was completely at a loss for words, the hidden mechanics of his own intuition startling him.
"Well... even suppose that is true," Hermione said, breaking the heavy silence and rallying her focus. "Harry, that is all the more reason we absolutely must help you prepare for the Third Task. And we are starting--"
xxxxxx
After a week straight of helping Harry prepare, Lucifer had gotten rather tired of trying to help when he didn't seem to want it himself.
Harry tried, he wouldn't deny that, but after Day three, he seemed to grow bored of trying, and Hermione had already told him once before that training to survive the task wasn't supposed to be fun.
He had sighed and they went through it for a few more days, but Lucifer had run his limit with Harry for the time being. He was outside, sitting cross-legged, with his eyes closed, eight rocks 'floating' around him.
His face was calm and serene looking, but deep down, he had a growing, burning hatred.
One rock was crushed into dust.
It hadn't happened since that incident in the Entrance Hall, but if he had to put up with Graham's racist and prejudiced tendencies towards Hermione again, he was going to be shipped to their Manor piece by piece.
Another rock was crushed into dust.
Everett had thought she could get away with being mean to Hermione through a 'different' kind of verbal abuse, but she had been sorely mistaken. Hopefully she had gotten the message after he headbutt her before 'Care of Magical Creatures.'
A third rock crushed into dust.
Skeeter was so far the worst of them all with her article in 'Witch Weekly' about Hermione, making her out to be some sort of horrible person, which was not true, not in the way Lucifer perceived her anyway.
He had warned her that if she was mean to Hermione again, he would kill her, and that's exactly what he planned to do next time he saw Skeeter.
He wasn't afraid of the Ministry, Voldemort, and or Dumbledore. Three of the 'five' remaining rocks all turned to dust. The last two dropped to the ground as his anger was set temporarily aside and he had begun to think.
The main thing concerned him was the knowledge he had when it had never been discussed verbally.
He had no idea where it came from, but would have to be careful in the future if it ever happened again.
Unless of course, he wanted to be seen as a lunatic by pretty much everyone, including Hermione, and that was the last thing he wanted.
"Hello, Lucifer Morningstar," A dreamy sounding voice came.
He turned to see Luna standing a few feet away from him, "Hello, Luna," he greeted her, turning back to his unstrained position, "You can sit down if you want to."
She accepted his offer and sat down beside him, didn't say anything readily, though, and just looked at his profile.
He felt her gaze on him, but he said nothing to her, nor did acknowledge her staring at him. "You seem conflicted," She said to him.
"...I definitely feel such." He said after a moment's pause.
xxxxxx
Author's Note
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