The arena crowd was still filing out when Kevin and Harry finally emerged from the champions' tent, each carrying a golden egg.
Hermione saw Kevin coming and ran.
She covered the distance between them at a sprint and crashed into his arms, and Kevin caught her without adjusting his footing at all. He held her. She had her face pressed into his shoulder, not saying anything.
He murmured something low into her hair.
His golden egg bounced off his arm and began rolling down the hill.
Harry watched it go. He turned to Kevin. Kevin was busy pressing a kiss to the top of Hermione's head.
"Kevin," Harry said. "Your egg."
No response.
"Kevin, the—"
"Ron!" Harry called. "The egg!"
Ron had already clocked it. He was off at a run before Harry finished the sentence, Ginny right behind him.
Harry looked at Kevin and Hermione one more time. Kevin had shifted to patting her hair with the specific patient attention of someone who had no plans to move anytime soon.
Harry jogged after Ron.
The golden egg had built up significant speed by the time it left the hill. It crossed a stretch of flat ground, found the path of least resistance, and rolled all the way down to the narrow stream that fed into the Black Lake — an offshoot, not deep, running clear over pale stones.
Ron reached the bank first, slightly out of breath, and spotted the glint of gold under the water. He exhaled.
"There. It stopped."
The three of them looked at it for a moment.
Harry waded in. The water was cold enough that he registered it through his boots. He reached the egg, crouched, and pulled it to the surface.
It was open. Just slightly — the fall had knocked the catch. Bracing himself for the shriek, Harry lifted it further.
Nothing. No sound at all.
He frowned and raised it higher. Still nothing.
"It broke?" Ron called from the bank.
Harry started to lower it back into the water to check, and as it submerged the sound began — not a shriek, but something else entirely. Something with melody. A voice, or several, layered over each other in a way that was almost harmonious. Underwater, the noise from above was gone, and what came through was clear and bright and unlike anything he'd expected.
He yanked his head below the surface.
Mermaid voices. A whole chorus of them, singing the same words in a repeating pattern — the complete clue for the second task, laid out plainly if you knew to listen for it below the water.
Harry burst up, gasping. "Ron! Chuck me your egg!"
Ron grabbed it off the bank and lobbed it. Harry caught it one-handed.
He put Kevin's egg under the water and snapped it open.
Ducked down.
Same song. Same clue, word for word.
He came up, snapped it shut, and tossed it back to Ron. Then he waded to shore.
"I've got it — the clue is underwater — achoo — you put the egg in water — achoo — it sings — achoo—"
"Right," Ron said. "Dry off first, then explain."
He bundled Harry's soaked outer robes off him and wrapped his coat around his shoulders. Harry sneezed four more times in quick succession, cheeks pink from the cold.
Ron tucked both eggs under one arm and steered Harry firmly back toward the castle. Ginny flanked the other side, looking like she was trying not to laugh too obviously.
Meanwhile, Kevin and Hermione walked back to the castle at a pace that suggested they had nowhere pressing to be.
Gryffindor Tower, boys' dormitory. Harry was in bed with three blankets, nose red, still sneezing intermittently.
Kevin sat on the end of his own bed, examining his egg with the detached interest of someone doing a crossword.
"You could have retrieved it from the stream first," Kevin observed. "Then found a bath or a bucket to open it in."
"You could have held onto it," Harry said, muffled by blankets.
"I was busy."
"You were hugging."
"I was catching Hermione. She ran at me."
"The egg—"
"Is fine. You retrieved it. Everything worked out."
Harry made a noise of profound suffering from under his blankets. Kevin flipped his golden egg once in the air and caught it.
The door opened. Ron walked in holding a pair of deep maroon dress robes at arm's length, inspecting them with the expression of a man confronted with something he doesn't fully understand.
"Mum sent these. Out of nowhere." He held them up under his chin, looking at Kevin and Harry for their honest assessment.
Kevin looked at them. "Nice."
"Really?"
"Very distinguished."
He meant it, more or less. Vintage wizard fashion had its own logic.
Ron puffed up slightly. Then his brain caught up with him. "But why did she send dress robes?"
"The Yule Ball," Kevin said. "Christmas Eve. Didn't you hear?"
"I heard nothing."
"You've heard now."
Kevin had already written ahead to the Grangers. Matching outfits for a formal occasion — they'd know what was needed. He just needed the official announcement before asking Hermione properly.
Professor McGonagall gathered the Gryffindors the following morning with the energy of someone who had been looking forward to this talk and also dreading it.
"The Yule Ball is a tradition associated with the Triwizard Tournament. Christmas Eve. The Great Hall. Our guests will be present, and I expect Gryffindor to represent the house with genuine elegance."
She split the room — boys to the left, girls to the right — and proceeded to cover dress codes, appropriate behaviour, and the evening's structure with methodical precision.
Most of the fourth-years perked up noticeably. Some of the younger students looked like they'd just discovered a new dimension of social anxiety.
"You will be dancing," McGonagall continued. "Properly. This is a formal occasion, not a Quidditch celebration."
She demonstrated basic steps without a partner, moving with the composed grace that characterised everything she did, and Kevin watched from the side with careful attention. He had precisely no prior dance experience, and he intended to remedy that before Christmas.
"Mr. Kevin." She looked directly at him. "Come and partner with me."
Kevin blinked. The universe had decided he wasn't getting out of this one.
He glanced across the room at Hermione. She had her hand over her mouth.
He stepped forward.
McGonagall positioned his right hand at her waist, took his left hand with her right, and held her arm out at an even extension. "Left arm straight. Relax your elbow."
The music started. She led, counting the beat, guiding him through the basic box step.
"One, two, three. One, two, three. Kevin. You're holding yourself like a castle turret."
From the girls' side of the room, Hermione was visibly shaking with suppressed laughter, shoulders bouncing. She had her teeth in her lip. She was failing.
Kevin nailed the footwork and the timing without much trouble. The positions were logical, the rhythm was findable. But the quality of movement — the naturalness, the smooth transfer of weight from step to step — that was something the body learned gradually, and his body hadn't learned it yet. He moved correctly and stiffly, every step technically exact, the overall effect somewhere between a diagram and a person.
McGonagall persisted with the patience of long professional experience.
Kevin got through it. He was fairly certain that somewhere in the twelve attributes the System tracked, there was no column for dancing talent. He'd checked.