Harry Potter: Don't touch

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Potter was lying on the bed in his room, reading a book about various spells taken from the Room-by-Wish. As soon as he was given an undeserved seven points out of fifty, Potter went to the Hufflepuff drawing room, on the way going through a small medical check-up that Madam Pomfrey had insisted on. The second test he decided not to watch. Harry was too upset about his failed performance, and now he hid away from everyone, trying not to socialise with anyone. On his way out, he stopped by the Room-by-Wish to inquire about the head bubble spell.

This solitude didn't last long, an hour and a half later Justin walked into the room with Ernie McMillan.

- Judging by your low position in the standings, you're a failure, like me," Finch-Fletchley concluded without preamble.

- Exactly," Harry said after ten seconds. He wondered whether he should show interest or remain silent. - You didn't get the hostage either?

- Yeah, I found a place. I dunked my head in the water, and there was a song playing, and I stuck my head out, breathed, and went back in. It was easy to find the spot.

- Why didn't you get the hostage?

- It was deep, they were tied at the bottom, and I was on the surface. No matter how hard I dived, I didn't even make it halfway down. So I swam back like an idiot. I was one of the last ones back.

Potter didn't say a word.

- Guess who was my hostage.

- Hermione? - Potter voiced his guess. He'd thought of her as Justin's hostage while he was still standing on the beach.

- No, but she was there too. She's Victor Cram's hostage, go ahead and try again.

- Bones?

- Which one? The older one? Ha! Okay, no, you're wrong again, you want to try again?

The question of who Justin's hostage was really got Potter interested. He wanted something to take his mind off the sadness of his failed second test.

Preparing himself for an intellectual dialogue, he suggested:

- Ginny Weasley?

- Really? I hardly ever talk to her, except on the Quidditch pitch.

- Creevey?

- Mimo.

- Maybe some kind of Delacourt relative?

- Fleur does have a sister, and no, it wasn't her.

- Padma Patil?

- Who the hell is that?

- Right. Megan Jones? Tonks? Moody?

- Yeah, Moody, very funny. Don't name the people we saw before the test, of course they're not them.

- We didn't see Megan Jones.

- No, it's not her. Any other options?

- Well, it's not Malfoy, is it?

- You got it. It was Draco Malfoy himself!

- What?!

- It was nothing. Malfoy who, Harry? Of course not! How could you even think that?!

- I don't have any ideas. I think I've listed everyone I know.

- So you're giving up?

- Yeah, I'm giving up, but wait a minute. What about Riddle?

- Absolutely right, how did you know that? Dumbledore appointed a special commission specifically for me and the second trial to extract teenagers from a century old book! They quickly extracted him, sedated him, put him down.....

- OK, I get it, you don't have to go on. Give me the answer.

- Ernie McMillan.

- Oh yeah, right," Harry looked at their roommate, who had been slowly losing his IQ the whole time, watching this guessing game.

- Professor Steble called me in and asked me to be a hostage for Justin, I refused. She offered me twenty points, I refused again, because we weren't going to get out of minus points this year anyway. Then she told me that if I didn't hostage him, I'd have to work out for the rest of the year. And that's when I agreed," Ernie answered the unasked question.

- That's how the compulsory-voluntary system works," Finch-Fletchley summed up. - All right, Harry, do you know where you stand?

- I've been thinking about it. Thirteenth?

- That's right. You're pre-pre-last in this test. Do you know your final ranking?

- I don't know, where?

- Sixth from the end. I'm third! Not at the end, of course. Don't get me wrong. I don't think we did very well together.

- It's not that bad, considering I failed both trials. Five people behind me, my arse. How did they get there? How did the others do?

- No idea. I told you I was the last one to arrive. Ask George, he was the first to finish the trial and he took Lee Jordan's monocular with the highlights.

They were silent for a while, then suddenly Ernie MacMillan spoke up.

- You know, all this time I've been a little resentful that you didn't take me to the Tournament with you. But now I realise that I would have performed in it like that shambaton who twice just gave up. I don't know how to defeat a dragon, and I don't know how to breathe in water. I would just give up before trials and that's it. So it's a good thing I'm not in the Tournament.

- Don't sweat it, what fourth year student can beat a dragon? - Justin said. - And the second test is also incredible, you only need to know one spell to pass it, if you know it, you've done it, if you don't, you've failed. It's just a very difficult task, Harry, who is either in books all day or, suddenly, books, doesn't know how to use it.

- Actually, I do," Potter put in.

- Really!" Finch-Fletchley exclaimed incredulously. - Why didn't you use it at the test?

- I've just learnt it. It only took me ten minutes to learn it. Look at this. Bubble head charm!

A hazy film formed around Potter's mouth and nose. At the wand's command, it disappeared immediately.

- It was an elementary spell, we were supposed to learn it in our second year of Defence Against the Dark Arts, except we had Lockhart, and he had his own idea of learning. So he's indirectly to blame for our failure, and you can write him a letter of thanks if you want, but I'm not going to," he continued. - "The fact that I didn't know this spell shows that I don't sit 'in books' enough, as you put it. You and I were both supposed to be going up in the standings, and we ended up going down. Our only chance to place in the top three is in the third trial. What makes me happy is that there was no clue for the third trial in the second trial, so some information about the trial will have to be given to us, and once that happens, I'll be really well prepared. Not just good, great!

* * *

Potter never left the faculty dormitory that day, but he had to go out the next day - Harry didn't want to miss some of his lessons and meals. He faced the taunts at breakfast, but they didn't bother him much; he was more concerned with the reactions of the people closest to him. Mad-Eye had expressed his disappointment with the phrase "Your failure on this test came as a surprise to me, even though I was prepared for unexpected turns." Tonks stated that he had gone into this Tournament too early, Zhou, who was really his hostage, said that there was nothing wrong with the failure, but Potter was sure she was disappointed too. Fred and George, on the other hand, were busy with more important things than analysing Potter's performance, they were distributing campaign posters around the school, which had many inscriptions on them, but the general meaning was something like "Support George Weasley - future winner of the Three Wizards' Cup".

From the twins Potter learnt the current picture of the Three Wizards Tournament standings. George Weasley was the first, unexpectedly for absolutely everyone. Using his head bubble charms, he quickly swam to his hostage, Ginny Weasley, and with the help of his brother, stole the trident from the newt, then cut the rope with it and returned to shore first. He was taken off a few points for travelling all the way with Fred Weasley, who didn't know how to handle his challenge. Second place was shared by Adrian Roux and Viktor Krum. The former transfigured an impenetrable glass around himself and somehow moved very quickly, found his hostage, who was his classmate, transfigured a rope into water, then transfigured the hostage's shirt into a rope, and, tying the rope to the glass, reached the finish line second. Krum, on the other hand, partially transformed into a shark, chewed through the rope, and grabbed Hermione Granger with his teeth to finish third. Krum was taken off a bunch of points for bad transfiguration, threatening the life of a hostage, and injuring Hermione. No, he didn't chew her limb off, but she needed medical attention, and he's only in second place because of his success on the first trial. Third was Hypotenuse, he also used the head bubble spell, but he couldn't cut the rope holding his hostage, so he came back in third. As with Kram, he's only ranked this high because of his great performance in the first challenge.

Fourth place went to Cedric Diggory, with the head bubble spell. He was taken out by the grindylows on his hostage approach. Fifth was Fleur Delacour, with the head bubble spell, she suffered the same fate as Cedric Diggory, she is lower than him in the final standings because of their different scores for the first trial, or maybe because she decided to make a fuss about the organisers kidnapping her sister Gabrielle. Sixth place was occupied by three people at once - Johan Otto, Fred Weasley and Evette Roux. Otto had killed himself and walked calmly to the hostages along the bottom; those grindylows who had risked attacking him remained there as well. The rope protecting his hostage turned to ashes. Fred Weasley's performance was judged very differently by the judges; on the one hand, he had saved his hostage and passed the test; on the other hand, he had shown no magic, he had just been taken along by George. The one knew that his twin brother didn't know about the secret of the golden egg and the workings of the head bubble spell. Because of the special charms, George couldn't tell Fred about the test, he couldn't hint about anything, even learning the head bubble spell in front of his brother wasn't allowed. All in all, the spell had been devised to perfection, and George Weasley had no chance of telling Fred of his intentions.

But the organisers hadn't taken into account that when the second trial began, the spell would end and one of the champions could take the other champion with them. The whistle sounded, George cast a head bubble spell on himself and his brother and jumped into the water with him without undressing. They, as they always did in life, acted as a team. George swam, while Fred fought the grindylow, analysed the volume of the song, and entered into conversation with the newt, from whom George was stealing a trident at the same time. They returned first with two hostages: George had Ginny and Fred had Angelina. Logically, they should have been given a total score for the two performances on a scale of one hundred points and divided by two, but the Tournament of the Three Wizards is an every-man-for-himself tournament, and because of this, many of the judges had different opinions of Fred's performance. Karkaroff gave a zero score, Percy, who had come in place of Crouch, joined him, but Dumbledore and Madame Maxime each gave a ten. After that and Percy Weasley decided to change his mark to a higher grade, and Bagman took a neutral stance, giving an A.

Evette Roux made amends for her failure on the first test and this time saved the hostage. She used a gillnet and broke the rope with a sharp rock taken from the bottom. But on the way back, she ran into trouble. The time ran out, the song stopped and she was lost, because she couldn't surface for more than a couple of seconds because of the three-hour action of the gills, so the safety people had to intervene, which cost Evet a few points.

Seventh place went to Potter himself, at least he only got some points for the second trial thanks to Bagman's generous five point assessment. In seventh place he is at the expense of the points gained on the first trial.

Johan Lundren was one point behind him. He faced the same problem as Finch-Fletchley, travelled across the surface of the water to the place where the hostages were tied up and was unable to reach them in any way. He had some successful attempts, he was able to make it so that there was an empty space between him and the water, but the rope was not affected by the Diffindo he had used, and he had not figured out how to get round the problem.

Next to stand was the suddenly well performing Nana. His hostage was... no, not a bottle of vodka, but the same girl he had danced with at the ball. Playing on the balalaika - where he got it from is a great mystery - some song about "Katyusha" that made the grindylows panic and shooting the rope holding the hostages with a Kalashnikov rifle, he coped with the task and got high marks. He placed third in the second challenge, but due to a terrible performance in the first round, he lost out to both Potter and Lundren in the overall standings.Tenth place went to Justin Finch-Fletchley, he didn't score much higher on the second time trial than he did on the first.

Eleventh was Basel Francois. The second trial did not add any points to his score.

And last place went to Juliette Laurent, the only spell she showed was the one that releases red sparks.

The results were clear, the date for the third test was announced - 24th June. Now all Potter had to do was show what he could at the last test. He probably wouldn't get first place, but he would have to defend the honour of Hogwarts.