The next few days had Draco living in a state of complete solitude. Nobody noticed him anymore; he didn't bother speaking up in class; he never ate in the hall (why bother, the food was disgusting to him); he spent most of his free time just looking at the thestrals - never actually approaching, just looking and wondering. Wondering about how different everything would be if Voldemort had won, if Potter had died. Mostly, he focused on one key detail; the notice stuffed into the waste bin in the common room wouldn't exist.
The notice his father had been sent to prison and his mother was on severe house arrest.
He had half a mind to go up and get it a day after he'd thrown it away. But re-reading it and determining a false meaning behind straight-forward words wouldn't help. His father was in Azkaban, being tortured by dementors - his mother had an ever-constant threat of being subject to the same things. There was no denying it. And it had been day after day of Kingsley lurking in the Great Hall, monitoring the goblet twenty-four/seven and everyone who put a name in. Almost a week. The Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor had grown on him since the day they'd 'met'...
But at the current moment in time, he could be found sitting on the floor of the common room. The bookshelves were officially 'integrated', as the students called it now, since Slytherins and Gryffindors, for the most part, got along. He was staring at his hands, committing what the Germans called 'Veldschmirtz'. He didn't notice Potter rummaging through the waste bin furiously, swearing and saying something about a lost quill. He didn't notice when he picked up the rumpled notice Draco had carelessly disposed of. And he didn't notice when Potter looked at him, twiddling his thumbs idly in a corner, staring into what appeared to be empty space. But he could hardly notice when Potter sat down right beside him, clutching the paper.
"Sorry about your parents," he said. Nothing more.
Draco tore the paper from his grasp and in one fluid movement stood and fed it to the fire. It crackled with the new fuel, casting a glow brighter than before.
Harry didn't say anything and didn't judge. He joined Draco, staring at the fireplace.
"Today's Champion Day," said Potter casually, as if expecting nothing more from Draco as the blond boy's eyes gazed between the wars of separate flames. "We get to know who's in the Tournament."
Draco didn't respond.
"You ought to come. You're Head Boy."
"And you're Harry Potter. People will care more about you being there than my existence in general."
"True."
Draco hated it, but he couldn't say anything bad about Potter right then. He as being completely fair and polite, not to mention honest. He wasn't lying about anything. Not even Draco's last statement, which they both knew to be exactly as he'd declared: true.
"Just out of curiosity, why do you never eat in the Hall anymore?"
"Not hungry for the food there," said Draco quietly. Both boys' eyes were still trained on the fireplace.
"You sound like Hermione in fourth year," said Potter, fighting to keep the laughter out of his voice. "She kept calling it 'slave labor' when she found out it was made by house elves..."
He trailed off and moved toward the door. "Coming?"
It took Draco a split-second to decide. "Fine."
The two eighteen-year-olds moved toward their destination in comfortable silence.
"Why didn't you tell her?"
Potter hadn't broken stride, nor had he looked at him; Draco glanced at him quickly, and then in front of himself again as they continued walking. "Who?"
"Bellatrix. At your house. When she asked if it was me."
Draco's breathing momentarily caught, and then reminded himself that, family or not, Aunt Bella had been evil. He should not mourn her...
"I didn't know it was you," he lied.
"That's a lie, but I'll thank you for any reply whatsoever."
"You've no room to call me a liar, Potter. 'It'll be okay, it'll be fine -'"
"How dare you?" exclaimed Potter, stopping in his tracks and wheeling to face him, his eyes wide with incredulity.
Draco bowed his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "You shouldn't know the real answer, and as you're very well aware -" he looked up again with a slight grin "- I like to make fun of my conversational partners."
Harry couldn't repress his grin, either, and they both gave a small fit of laughter before rearranging their features into somber masks and walking forward.
The reached the Great Hall, nodded to each other, and entered, Potter continuing on to side beside Weasley/tte and Draco stopping at the seat nearest the door and placing himself on the seat gently. A serving for one appeared before him, while the whole feast was down at the other end, and he lifted a spoon and carefully tested the french onion soup, almsot gagging as the soured liquid mucked up his throat. He took, instead, a glass of punpkin juice, poured it into the bowl of soup he wouldn't eat, and filled it with water using Augamenti. Even it tasted too filtered, but he put up with the too-thin water and waited for Kingsley to speak. He couldn't help noticing Hermione, whispering pleadingly to Weaslette, to stubbornly refused to be polite.
As Kingsley approached the goblet, it acted of its own accord, and for a split, terrible second, Draco swore he saw a flash of the torturous scene that had been seen before.
And then the flames turned blue and spat out a piece of paper.
Kingsley caught it just before it hit the floor, and read: "Einsworth Champion is: Brant Kensworth!"
A boy who'd sat at the Ravenclaw table from the first school - Draco didn't care enough to remember the name of it - stood and walked proudly toward Kingsley, who shook his hand, looking disgruntled, and ushered him through the room he'd seen Potter disappear into way back when. Everyone cheered as the boy beamed and strutted away, but it died down as the Goblet gave a small roar.
The goblet spit again. "Cabaronn Champion is: Simis Trevelton!" shouted Kingsley, reading the charred paper and looking disgruntled more still. This boy looked completely shocked, but pleased with himself. He stood and almot swayed over with the onslaught of cheers and shouts of approval, but made it to the room, disappearing with a tentative smile.
The Goblet's roar was magnificent.
It filled the hall with the battle cry of the king of the jungle, the flames changing colors so rapidly it looked like a rainbow was weaving through them. Its intense light burned across the room, heating it to a sweltering degree of uncomfortableness; several screaming, others cried, and still others hid under the tables.
And then, through the image came the clean one of Hermione Granger, exactly as she was at the prefects' table, terrified and bushy-hired, red from close proximity to the goblet and from fury at finding an image of herself placed upon it.
"No!" she shrieked against the roar; she was so loud, everyone heard her, not the goblet. "No, how is this possible? I didn't enter! Who put me in?"
The roar had died down, but Granger's frenzied panic, doubled by her image acting the same way, had everyone lsitening. She hyperventilated; she pulled at her hair, and a sob ripped apart her chest. She screamed again, "Who put me in?" and nobody could answer her. Trevelton and Kensworth poked their inquisitive heads around the door.
"Hermione," said Potter. He seemed incapable of fulfilling his sentence, but it had said enough. Inside it had been all the despair Hermione had shown when she thought Potter had been dead, but it was paired with the knowledge that he'd probably have to watch as it happened. His one, quiet word made the rest of the sentence irrelevant, and it was echoed, though not quite as strongly, throughout the hall. Draco had seen enough of that happen to none other than himself.
Professor McGonagall and Professor Yasmen raced toward the hysterical Champion, but McGonagall reached her first. With a surprisingly motherly worry, she wrapped her arms around Hermione and hushed her, rocking back and forth while the barely-adult tried and failed miserably to control herself.
"Who put her name in?" bellowed Yasmen, louder than Draco had heard anyone speak.
"Nobody did," Kingsley said, disgruntled to the furthest degree. "I watched every name and every person myself. Nobody put her name in."
Everyone let this news sink in, and Hermione's gasps and wails were the only sound besides McGonagall's occassional "Shh, shh."
"Then how did it choose her?" Yasmen screached louder than before. "How did she become a Champion?"
Kingsley looked to Potter, who would not look back, and then to McGonagall. "We knew it was acting up," he said, his voice low. "And her name didn't come out of it like the other names did. Her image did."
"Are you saying it took her presence and turned it into an option?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
There was no sound.
A Ravenclaw second-year stood up abruptly. "You can do it, Hermione!" she shouted, her meek voice powerful in its passion. "We know you can!"
She was followed by a chorus of similar encouragements from a group of fifth-year Gryffindors, who stood up and began to clap. and then Hufflepuffs year one through three stood up, and then the entire Slytherin table, after which everyone was standing and clapping and shouting their belief of the Head Girl falling to pieces in front of them in the arms of the Headmistress.
Draco fought his way through the throng of students, in an undetermined effort to reach Hermione and help, help in any way, to stop her from falling to the fate that was a very possible outcome of this Tournament. He'd managed to push his way close enough to hear, through the chaos, the voice of Potter, half-dead with fright and anxiety.
"Please don't make her," he was choking at Professor Mcgoagall.
"As I'm sure you remember, Mr. Potter," said Mcgonagall, his tone matched in hers and tainted with maternal concern, "the Goblet creates a binding magical contract you cannot escape from. She is, from this day forward, a Triwizard Champion."
She stopped holding Hermione and put her hands on the girl's shoulders, looking her straight in the eye. "And she will be the best one yet," she said in a whisper Draco had to strain exceptionally hard to hear. "You, Hermione, will not let us down. You can live through these challenges and you will pass them with flying colors, like you pass everything else. You are strong enough. Remember that, and it'll be true."
And with that, she set a grim smile on her face, and pumped Hermione's fist in the air, proclaiming: "We have our Champions!"
Hermione tried very, very hard to look like she was fine, and that she was going to make it, but she couldn't. Her brave face was no longer brave. It was broken, and so was Potter's, Weaslette's, Neville's and Luna's.
That aroused his curiousity. He'd never known Luna to be broken before. She was spunky, she was. Impossible, incorrigible sometimes, but she was strong in her beliefs and proud of herself, now more than ever. But Draco watched as the dirty blonde stood and moved with jerky, not fluid, motions toward Hermione as Neville reached for her, and then embrace her with starch-like movements; sharp, jagged and nothing like her normal, floating, flourished ones. Hermione nestled her head into Luna's shoulder and remained extremely still, even as the cheers wound down.
Luna was joined by Neville, who leaned his forehead against Luna's and whispered comforts to both girls. Weaslette looked beyond horror; Weasley, on the other hand, looked drained. Completely drained. Couples all around them were embracing at the possible loss of the only girl in and the brains of the Golden Trio and Weasley was all alone, sitting on a bench, mourning his brother and could-have-been wife, though she wasn't dead yet.
Luna and Hermione, heads down, began exitting the room, waalking slowly but assuredly across the floor. They were soon joined by Weaslette, who, for maybe the third time in her life, looked ready to cry.
Draco had the horrible feeling he was watching someone walk to their death, and when Hermione riased her head and looked toward him, he thought he saw Pansy bading him goodbye for one last time.