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Harry Potter
Harry had pushed the desks against the walls an hour ago. Cedric stood in the middle of the cleared space with his wand loose in his right hand and his left arm hanging at his side.
"Ready?" Harry said.
"As I'll ever be."
"Right. On three."
Cedric nodded. Harry counted down. On three, they both moved.
Cedric opened with a Disarming Charm, textbook form, wand slicing through the air in the clean arc Harry had seen a dozen prefects use in a dozen practice sessions. Harry sidestepped it and sent back a Jelly-Legs Jinx that Cedric blocked with a Shield Charm that shimmered blue and faded. Harry followed it with a Tickling Hex low and a Stinging Hex high, forcing Cedric to choose. Cedric chose the Stinging Hex and took the Tickling Hex on the shin. He staggered, laughed involuntarily, and fired a Knockback Jinx that Harry rolled under.
"You're thinking too much," Harry called, coming up from the roll and firing a Tripping Jinx at Cedric's feet.
Cedric jumped it and fired back a Body-Bind that Harry batted aside with a nonverbal Shield Charm. "I'm thinking the right amount, thanks."
"You're thinking in order. Disarm, block, counter. I can see it coming."
"Then stop seeing it."
Harry grinned and sent a Disarming Charm at Cedric's wand hand, a Jelly-Legs at his knees, and a Conjured rope at his ankles all in the span of two seconds. Cedric blocked the first, dodged the second, and got caught by the third. He hit the ground hard, swore, and Vanished the rope before Harry could capitalize. He rolled sideways as Harry's next spell scorched the flagstones where his head had been.
"That's better," Harry said.
Cedric got to his feet, breathing harder now. "You're a nightmare."
"Thank you."
They went again. This time Cedric opened with a Stunning Spell, which surprised Harry enough that he had to actually throw himself sideways instead of stepping. The spell cracked into the wall behind him and left a scorch mark the size of a dinner plate. Harry came up firing, Knockback, Stinging Hex, Levitation Charm aimed at Cedric's wand arm. Cedric blocked the first two and had to physically wrestle his own arm down from the Levitation Charm, and while he was doing that Harry hit him with a Jelly-Legs that dropped him to one knee.
"Finite," Cedric gasped, and the spell broke. He fired a wild Disarming Charm that went three feet wide and then stood up and put his hands on his knees. "All right. All right. I need a minute."
Harry lowered his wand. "You're getting better."
"I'm getting destroyed."
"You're getting better at getting destroyed. It's progress."
Cedric straightened up and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His hair was sticking up at odd angles and his face was flushed. "You're three years younger than me."
"I'm aware."
"And you just dismantled me in about ninety seconds."
"More like two minutes. Don't sell yourself short."
"Harry."
"Cedric."
Cedric stared at him for a long moment and then laughed. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Think like that. Mid-fight. I'm still planning my third spell and you've already hit me with six."
Harry shrugged and immediately regretted it when his back reminded him that shrugging was still on the banned list. "You're thinking in sequences. Disarm, block, counter, reassess. I'm thinking in layers."
"Layers."
"Layers. I'm not casting one spell and waiting to see what happens. I'm casting three and watching which one you prioritize, and then I'm exploiting the gap."
Cedric rubbed his jaw. "That's clever."
"It's necessary. You're bigger than me, you're older than me, and you've had more formal training. If I fight fair, I lose."
"So you don't fight fair."
"I fight to win."
Cedric considered that. He walked over to the wall, picked up his water bottle, and took a long drink. "You know," he said, after a moment, "that's exactly the problem."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "What is?"
"The way you think. Breaking the rules. Being creative mid-fight." Cedric set the bottle down and turned to face him. "It works for you because you're brilliant at it. But it's also the kind of thinking that gets people killed when they decide they know better than the rules."
Harry tilted his head. "You're saying I should follow the rules."
"I'm saying the rules exist for a reason. Someone who knew more than you sat down and figured out the safest, most effective way to do something, and then they wrote it down so people like us wouldn't have to learn it the hard way."
"And you think I should listen to them."
"I think you should at least consider that they might have a point."
Harry leaned against the desk behind him and folded his arms. "Cedric, I've been breaking the so-called rules since I set foot in this castle. First year, second year, third year. I'm still here. I have yet to be proven wrong."
Cedric's mouth twitched. "Your whole mission in second year was dumb."
"Excuse me?"
"The Chamber of Secrets. You went down there with no plan, no backup, and a twelve-year-old girl's diary that was actively possessing people. You survived because of dumb luck, not because you had some secret plan."
Harry opened his mouth and then closed it again. "That's fair."
"Is it?"
"For a Ravenclaw, that wasn't my finest moment."
Cedric snorted. "No kidding."
Harry pushed off the desk and walked a few paces toward the center of the room. "All right. Point taken. Second year was a disaster. But the first task wasn't."
"The first task was you flying into dragon vapor and nearly getting yourself killed."
"The first task was me winning and walking away with a burned back. Which, if you recall, is significantly better than getting my spine fractured or my chest caved in or, I don't know, killing a baby dragon in front of the entire school."
"What's your point?"
Harry stopped in the middle of the room and met Cedric's eyes. "My point is that I won because I didn't follow the rules of combat. The rules say you stand your ground, shield up, wand ready, trade spells until someone goes down. I didn't do that. I moved. I used the environment. I made the dragon angrier at the air than it was at me. And it worked."
Cedric was quiet for a moment. Then he exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. "You're right."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"You're right. In the heat of the moment, I panicked. My plan fell apart and I just wanted to survive, so I asked myself what you would do and I ran with it."
Harry stared at him. "You asked yourself what I would do."
"Yes."
"And that worked?"
"Well, I'm still alive, so yes."
Harry started laughing. He couldn't help it. The idea of Cedric Diggory, Hogwarts Champion, prefect, Triwizard competitor, standing in front of a dragon and thinking what would Harry Potter do was so absurd that it looped back around to being touching.
Cedric was grinning now too. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing. It's just, that's actually a terrible survival strategy."
"It worked, didn't it?"
"If you keep thinking like me, you'll be fine. Right up until the moment your opponent is me, and then you're screwed."
Cedric laughed. "Fair point."
They stood there for a moment, both of them grinning like idiots, and the light through the windows shifted slightly as the sun dropped another few degrees toward the horizon. Harry picked up his own water bottle and took a drink. The water was lukewarm and tasted faintly of metal, but it was wet and his throat was dry, so he wasn't complaining.
"So," Cedric said, after a moment. "What are you going to do about Fleur?"
Harry choked on the water. He coughed, swallowed, and set the bottle down harder than he meant to. "What?"
"Fleur. Delacour. The girl whose hand you held for ten minutes. That Fleur."
"I'm not doing anything about Fleur."
"Harry."
"Cedric, there's nothing to do. The Tournament ends, she goes back to France, I stay here. We'll probably never see each other again."
Cedric shook his head slowly. "That's the dumbest thing you've said all day."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
Harry folded his arms. "What exactly do you want me to do? Ask her to stay? She's got a life in France. A family. A school. I've got-" He gestured vaguely around the room. "This. A castle full of people who spent a month calling me a cheat and a dormitory full of roommates who won't look me in the eye."
Cedric walked over and leaned against the desk next to him. "You've got more than that and you know it. You've got Luna, and Susan, and me. You've got Mister Sirius, and the Tonkses, and probably half the staff even if they won't say so out loud. And you've got a girl who thanked you properly in the Hospital Wing."
Harry smiled a little at the thought of her.
"Look," Cedric said. "I'm not saying you have to marry her. I'm not even saying you have to ask her out. But if you like her, and you do, don't even try to deny it, then you should at least talk to her. Actually talk to her. Not just hold her hand while she's unconscious and then pretend nothing happened."
"I didn't pretend nothing happened."
"You said thank you properly and then walked away."
Harry exhaled and tipped his head back against the desk. "What do you want me to say to her?"
"I don't know. Anything. Tell her you're glad she's all right. Tell her you're sorry she had to deal with Karkaroff. Tell her she was brilliant in the task. Ask her on a date in Hogsmeade. Just, don't let the opportunity slip because you're too scared to try."
Harry turned his head to look at Cedric. "Since when did you become a romantic?"
Cedric's mouth curved. "Since I started sneaking off to the Astronomy Tower every Thursday night and realized that some things are worth breaking the rules for."
"That's different."
"How?"
"You and Cho are both here. You're both at school. You can actually see each other."
"We're also both going to leave school eventually. She's two years behind me. I'll be gone before she finishes her NEWTs. If I'd waited for the perfect time, I'd still be waiting." Cedric pushed off the desk and turned to face him properly. "Look, I'm not saying it's going to be easy. I'm not saying it's going to work out. But if you don't at least try, you're going to spend the rest of the year wondering what would have happened if you had."
Harry was quiet for a long moment. The light through the windows had turned gold, the kind of gold that meant the sun was almost down and dinner was probably starting in the Great Hall. He thought about Fleur in the tent, her hand in his. He thought about her voice in the Hospital Wing, saying zank you, properly. He thought about the grey-blue flecks in her eyes and the way her ears had gone red when he'd said properly back.
"I'll think about it," he said finally.
"That's not a yes."
"It's not a no."
Cedric sighed. "I'll take it." He picked up his wand from where he'd set it on the desk and twirled it once between his fingers. "One more round?"
Harry straightened up and picked up his own wand. "You sure? You've already been thoroughly destroyed thrice."
"Fourth time's the charm."
"That's not how that phrase works."
"It is now."
Harry grinned. "All right. On three."
They squared off again in the middle of the room. The light slanted across the flagstones and caught the dust in the air. Harry counted down.
On three, Cedric hit him with a Stunner that Harry barely managed to dodge, and then they were both moving, wands flashing, and the conversation about Fleur was gone, replaced by the clean simplicity of spell and counter-spell and the knowledge that for the next two minutes, nothing else mattered.
After Cedric lost again, Harry wondered if Fleur would apologize to him. She didn't feel like the kind of girl who refuses to face consequences when she does something wrong, or maybe, the reason she hasn't apologized yet it was either because she wanted to avoid it until the year ends and she is back in France, or maybe, deep down, she was still convinced that he was a cheat and there was nothing to apologize for.
5 Days Later
The Great Hall smelled like porridge and bacon and the particular kind of nervous energy that came when half the school was about to watch the other half try to hex each other into next week. Harry sat at the Ravenclaw table with a plate of toast in front of him and his back feeling, for the first time in days, like it belonged to him instead of to Madam Pomfrey's increasingly creative threat catalog.
He took a bite of toast. The burn down his spine had settled into something close to normal. Not perfect, but functional. He could lift his arms over his head without his body staging a formal complaint. He could turn without feeling like someone was driving a hot poker between his shoulder blades. Pomfrey had cleared him yesterday with a look that suggested she knew exactly what he'd been doing for the last three days and was choosing not to murder him out of professional courtesy.
"Monsieur Potter."
He looked up. Three Beauxbatons girls stood at the end of the table in their pale blue uniforms. He recognized one of them, Cosette, and the one he had spoken to a few times, Sophie.
"Morning," he said.
"We 'ave a question," Sophie said with a friendly smile. "What is your plan for today? For ze second round?"
Harry set down his toast and wiped his hands on his napkin. "A wizard never reveals his secrets."
The girl on the left, blonde, shorter than the other two, with a dusting of freckles across her nose, laughed. The other two looked at her.
"What?" the dark-haired one said.
"It is a Muggle saying," the blonde girl said, still laughing. "About wizards. Ze Muggles, zey 'ave zis idea of what a wizard is, and zey say zis about zem."
Cho Chang, who had been sitting two seats down from Harry and mostly ignoring the conversation, looked up with a confused expression. "Wait. Muggles don't know we exist, do they?"
Harry shook his head. "No, they don't. But they've got people who call themselves wizards. Stage magicians. They do tricks, sleight of hand, misdirection, that sort of thing. No actual magic involved. Just a man with good hands and better lighting."
"Zat is very sad," Sophie said with a look of pity as if those same muggles were standing before her. "To call yourself a wizard and 'ave no magic."
"I don't know," Harry said. "Some of them are pretty impressive. I saw one once who made a car disappear on live television. Took me three days to figure out how he did it."
"And 'ow did 'e do it?"
"Mirrors and a very large curtain."
The blonde girl laughed again. Cho was smiling now too. The dark-haired girl leaned forward slightly and rested her hands on the table.
"So," Sophie said. "If you will not tell us your plan, per'aps you will tell us who you wish to fight. Who do you want to face in ze bracket?"
Harry's eyes drifted across the Hall to the Slytherin table. Daphne Greengrass sat near the middle with her perfect posture and her perfectly arranged breakfast and her expression that suggested she had never been inconvenienced by anything in her life. She was talking to Tracey Davis about something.
"Her," Harry said.
The Beauxbatons girls followed his gaze. Cosetta looked disturbed.
"Ah. Ze one who spoke of dead parents. She was very rude."
"She was," Harry agreed.
He looked away from Daphne and found himself looking, without quite meaning to, at Fleur. She sat at the end of the Ravenclaw table, and she was eating a piece of melon with a fork and ignoring the conversation happening around her.
"What about you?" Harry said, louder than he'd meant to. "Who do you want to fight?"
Fleur's fork stopped halfway to her mouth. She set it down carefully and looked up at him. Her eyes were the grey-blue he remembered from the Hospital Wing, and there was something in them now that wasn't quite a challenge but wasn't quite friendly either.
She didn't say anything. She just looked at him, and the silence stretched out for two seconds that felt like twenty. Harry remembered her voice from the first day they'd met. I am a winner, Monsieur Potter. And I will win.
The message was clear without her saying a word.
"Right," Harry said. "Got it."
The blonde Beauxbatons girl was grinning. "And you, Monsieur Potter? Besides ze rude girl. Who else would you like to fight?"
Harry looked back at Fleur. Her blue eyes hadn't left his face. He held her gaze for a moment, and something passed between them that he didn't have words for and wasn't sure he wanted to have words for.
Then Fleur spoke, her voice carrying just enough to reach him. "I 'ope you are feeling better, Potter. It would be disappointing if you collapsed before I 'ave ze chance to defeat you properly."
Harry felt his mouth curve into a grin. "Concerned for my wellbeing, Delacour? I'm touched."
"Concern is not ze correct word," Fleur replied, picking up her fork again. "I simply prefer my victories to be... legitimate. Defeating an injured opponent would be unsatisfying."
"How considerate of you," Harry said. "I'll try to stay conscious long enough to appreciate your superior dueling technique."
"You will not need to try very 'ard," Fleur said, cutting her melon. "It will not take long."
The Beauxbatons girls were watching this exchange with delight, their heads turning back and forth like they were watching a particularly entertaining tennis match.
"Confidence looks good on you," Harry observed. "Though I wonder if it'll survive the first hex."
Fleur's eyes lifted from her plate, and Harry saw the amusement in her face; it felt like the first day all over again. "I could ask you ze same question, Potter. Though I suspect your confidence is less... well-founded zan mine."
"We'll see," Harry said. "I've been practicing."
"'Ow ambitious," Fleur replied with a smile. "Per'aps you will last longer zan I anticipated. Thirty seconds instead of twenty."
"Now you're just being generous."
"I am known for my generosity," Fleur said, and the way she said it made Harry laugh.
The tall Beauxbatons girl leaned toward Harry conspiratorially. "You should know, Fleur 'as not lost a duel since she was twelve years old."
"Then she's overdue," Harry said, still looking at Fleur.
Her eyes were sparkling like two blue diamonds. "We shall see, Monsieur Potter. We shall see."
"Looking forward to it," Harry said, and he meant it.
The blonde Beauxbatons girl cleared her throat. "So is zat your answer? You wish to fight Fleur?"
Harry looked back at Fleur's blue eyes. "I think that would be telling."
The Beauxbatons girls laughed. Sophie said something in rapid French to the other two that Harry didn't catch, and they all laughed again. Fleur's smile widened. She picked up her fork and went back to her melon, and Harry went back to his toast, and the conversation moved on to something else.
Ten minutes later the doors to the Great Hall swung open and Dumbledore walked in with his usual combination of serenity and impending announcement. He stopped at the staff table, said something to McGonagall that made her mouth twitch, and then turned to face the students. The Hall went quiet in the way it always did when Dumbledore wanted it to.
"Good morning," Dumbledore said. His voice carried without him raising it, which was a trick Harry still hadn't figured out. "I hope you have all enjoyed your breakfast, as some of you will be spending the next several hours engaged in activity that is both mentally and physically demanding. The Second Round of the Dueling Race will begin in one hour in the Entrance Courtyard. Those competing should make their way there at their earliest convenience. Those wishing to watch are welcome to attend; those who would prefer to spend their Saturday morning in quieter pursuits are equally welcome to remain here, explore the castle, or catch up on homework that I am sure has been piling up in alarming quantities."
A few students laughed. Harry finished his toast and pushed his plate away.
"The brackets will be announced at the courtyard," Dumbledore continued. "Competitors, please remember that while enthusiasm is encouraged, maiming your fellow students is discouraged. Madam Pomfrey has requested that I remind you she has better things to do than reassemble spines, and I am inclined to agree with her."
More laughter. Dumbledore's eyes twinkled in the way that suggested he found the whole thing deeply amusing. Harry stood up and slung his bag over his shoulder, he'd packed his wand, a spare shirt in case the first one got scorched, and a water bottle that Luna had insisted he bring. Cedric caught his eye from the Hufflepuff table and gave him a small nod. Susan waved. Luna, who had been sitting next to Harry the entire time and hadn't said a word, stood up and stretched.
"Ready?" she said.
"As I'll ever be."
"You're going to be brilliant."
"I'm going to try not to get hit."
"That's the same thing."
They walked toward the doors together. The Hall was starting to empty now, students pushing back benches and gathering bags and talking in the loud, overlapping way that meant everyone was excited and nobody was listening. Harry glanced back once and saw Fleur still sitting at the table with her melon and her fork, and when she looked up and met his eyes she gave him that same small smile from before.
He turned back around and kept walking.
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