Ron and Draco crouched behind a large rock at the edge of the Forbidden Forest clearing, watching Norbert chase Harry around in widening circles while breathing fire at his heels.
Norbert was fully grown now — a sleek, powerful Norwegian Ridgeback, one of the rarer and more aggressive breeds. A notch below a Hungarian Horntail, but not by much, and with significantly fewer reservations about expressing herself.
"Where's Kevin?" Draco muttered, watching Harry dive behind a tree that immediately caught fire. "If he doesn't show up soon we're going to need to start arranging a memorial."
Draco had been privately pleased about Harry's unexpected champion selection — the attention it had taken away from his own carefully cultivated Hogwarts reputation was galling, and watching Harry eat grass in a forest was restoring his equilibrium somewhat.
"He came early, enlarged Norbert, then left Harry here to train on his own." Ron watched Harry sprint across the clearing with the expression of someone who was both impressed and deeply concerned. "Said he had something to do."
Norbert was toying with Harry. Hagrid had spent years instilling basic restraint, so she wasn't going all-out — but she was committed to the exercise in the way that large predators often are when given a sanctioned opportunity to practise.
Harry's Water Shield had held well in the first few rounds. Then Norbert had simply swatted it apart with one paw. The smoke bombs had bought him time initially — until she figured out the solution, which was to spread her wings and blow the smoke straight back at him. The Eye-Sickness Curse had blinded her cold for nearly forty seconds, sending random bursts of fire in all directions — and then she'd adapted to it and started tracking by sound and heat signature instead.
It was becoming genuinely unclear who was training who.
"Norbert — stop! I give up!"
A tail-strike caught Harry mid-run and sent him three metres sideways. He landed hard and didn't get up immediately.
Norbert huffed, smoke curling from her nostrils, evidently pleased.
Ron and Draco vaulted the rock simultaneously and ran over. Harry was on his back, staring at the sky, cataloguing whether anything was broken.
"Fatally injured without a scratch on him," Draco said brightly.
"Try catching a tail swipe yourself," Harry said from the ground.
Ron hauled him upright and forced the recovery potion Kevin had left him down Harry's throat. Harry straightened within seconds, colour returning. Ron applied burn salve to the worst of the scorched patches — ugly work, but Kevin's enhanced formulation meant the skin was clearing even as he worked.
They left Harry with Ron while Draco handled Norbert — tossing her meat, scratching behind the ridge above her eye, praising her performance in the particular tone that she had decided she liked.
They didn't know that deep in the treeline, a figure watched with a rotating magical eye — taking inventory, calculating, deciding things.
Fake Moody had tracked them here. He assessed Harry's practical performance, weighed up whether a hint about the second task was warranted yet, and quietly reached his own conclusions.
The first task hadn't happened. But planning was planning.
He withdrew without being seen.
In Snape's potions laboratory, Kevin worked alongside him in companionable silence. Dumbledore had commissioned a stockpile ahead of the first task — it was going to be rough, and preparation was the only sane response.
They'd been working for an hour before Snape broke the quiet.
"I've been running low on several ingredients lately." He kept his eyes on his cauldron, stirring at the precise measured pace that Kevin had eventually admitted — internally, never aloud — was actually worth learning. "African tree snake skin. Lacewing flies. Leeches. Knotgrass."
"Polyjuice Potion."
Kevin said it before Snape had finished the list. The ingredients were unmistakable once you'd brewed it.
"Enough for one person. Long-term use." Snape let that sit for a moment. "It seems some rats and stray dogs have found their way into Hogwarts again this year."
The words were careful. The implication was not.
Kevin went still. Snape was telling him something — telling him without telling him, which was Snape's preferred medium.
"I'll keep an eye out."
Snape nodded once and went back to his stirring. The rest of the session passed without conversation.
Kevin checked on the group at the clearing later that afternoon. His concern had been partly about Norbert getting out of hand.
When he arrived, Norbert was asleep, curled into herself like a very large, very scaly dog. Harry, Ron, and Draco were leaning against her side, talking in low voices, comfortable with each other in the way that came from enough shared near-disasters.
"Thought you'd abandoned us," Ron said.
"I forgot you were here. I remembered Norbert."
Ron made a face. Standard.
"Kevin, can you spar with her? She's cracking everything I've got now."
Harry sat up, genuinely hopeful. Ron and Draco leaned forward.
Norbert woke from the suggestion of movement nearby, registered Kevin, remembered that she had a standing grievance with him from previous sessions, and released a warning burst of flame at the sky.
Kevin took out his crowbar.
One measured strike across the top of her skull. Norbert's eyes rolled back and she dropped into unconsciousness with a sound like a very large leather bag hitting the ground.
The assembled audience went very quiet.
Kevin picked her up and carried her back to Hagrid's hut. Hagrid, when presented with the situation, launched into the same speech he'd given three times before about responsible borrowing and not using his creatures as training dummies, which Kevin listened to with the patient expression of someone who already knew the outcome.
In other developments: Hagrid had discovered, via a series of increasingly creative excuses involving Pegasus welfare checks, that he shared a number of interests with Madame Maxime. The others had tactfully reduced their visits to the hut.
Sirius, meanwhile, had been spotted several times across the grounds in his black dog form. The papers had picked it up — mysterious stray, origin unknown — but most people had better things to worry about this term.
The morning of the first task arrived overcast and charged with the specific energy of events that couldn't be unmade.
They'd built a round arena on the hillside overlooking the lake. Students arrived before dawn to claim seats. The noise carried all the way down to the castle.
In the champions' tent, Kevin sat with his customary stillness, pouring tea. His dark blue robe and cloak — Hermione's gift, third year — was what he'd wear today. He'd declined the school-issued protective equipment without ceremony. Krum and Fleur had clocked his calm and filed it away.
Everyone knew it was dragons. The champions had found out through a variety of unofficial channels, as was traditional.
The question was which dragon.
Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and a large black dog slipped into the tent through a canvas flap while the crowd was settling into their seats.
"How are you feeling?"
Hermione came straight to Kevin, adjusting his collar with the matter-of-fact precision of someone who had decided this was a reasonable thing to do and was not going to make it strange.
"Fine now," he said.
She gave his chest a brief, affectionate smack. He caught her hand.
Ron and Ginny talked Harry through his nerves. Ginny pulled Harry into a hug that had Ron briefly looking elsewhere — something complicated crossing his face. The Sirius-dog planted both front paws on Harry's leg and submitted to having his ears scratched.
They stayed as long as they could. Quick words, solid contact, then they were gone.
Dumbledore arrived with both headmasters and Crouch. The formal part was beginning.
"Champions." He gestured to the black velvet bag in Crouch's hands. "One by one. Inside are miniature models of your opponents. The model you draw is the creature you'll face."
Fleur went first. A small Welsh Green — she showed it to her headmistress with a controlled expression that suggested she'd been hoping for something else.
Krum drew the Chinese Fireball. Karkaroff's relief was visible.
Kevin reached in third. A Swedish Short-Snout — powerful, extremely fast in the air, fire that ran to three hundred degrees. Manageable. Excellent.
Harry drew last. The miniature was small and brown, with pronounced spikes around its neck — Hungarian Horntail, the most dangerous dragon in the category, and universally considered the most difficult draw.
Crouch outlined the rules with the satisfaction of someone delivering news he'd been looking forward to all morning. Each dragon guarded a golden egg. Retrieve the egg. That was the task. The eggs contained clues about what came next — they were needed.
The champions exhaled collectively. Not killing a dragon. Retrieving an egg from one.
"No further questions? Excellent. We begin on the cannon."
Boom.
The crowd noise outside swelled.
Kevin was first. He stood, adjusted the fall of his cloak, and walked toward the entrance with the focus of someone who had been waiting for this since September.
For just a moment, Harry caught the shape of Kevin's silhouette in the entrance light — something in the set of his shoulders, the line of his cloak, oddly reminiscent of something else. Something familiar.
Then Kevin stepped out, the crowd roared, and the moment was gone.
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