Chapter Text
Harry’s words incite chaos amongst the spectators of the final task. Familiar outrage, the kind that he thought he outran from the beginning of the year, reignites.
“Potter cheated!” yells a Slytherin.
“He sabotaged Percy!” yells a Hufflepuff.
Harry ignores them and the other Hogwarts students who are in uproar. Instead, his eyes drift towards the VIP box, where Percy’s family watches the scene unfold in horror. His stomach squeezes painfully. The other champions sit with them as well, wrapped in warm-looking cloaks with expressions of shock and fear. Harry quickly realises what the look on their face means: that could’ve been me.
Dumbledore guides him away from the bright lights and the crowd. “Come, now, Harry.”
Harry shakes his head wobbly, but the Portkey has left him too disoriented and off-balance to resist the headmaster’s forceful grip.
“Professor, please, I need to go back.” He glances desperately at the Portkey. Three Ministry employees—Aurors, he thinks—are examining it, casting wordless complex spells in attempts to reveal its trickery. He can't tell if it's working, the Portkey just continues to glow a brilliant electric blue.
Dumbledore ignores him in favour of dragging Harry into the private Champion’s tent and setting him down on a bench. He lands with a thump, wincing as a more bruised part of his thigh makes contact with the hardwood.
Dumbledore, with a silent swish of his wand, conjures an identical cloak to those of Fleur and Krum onto his shoulders.
“A calming-charmed cloak,” Dumbledore explains. “One of Filius’ more humble inventions, but one I quite like nonetheless.”
Harry, though frustrated by Dumbledore’s continued evasion of the topic at hand, begrudgingly agrees. It’s quieter in the tent, and combined with the effect of the cloak around his shoulders, it’s a nice feeling compared to the hellscape outside the tent walls.
His headmaster’s eyes twinkle. “The quiet is nice, isn’t it,” he says. Harry wonders, not for the first time, If Dumbledore can read his mind. “The noise-cancelling charm is another thing we can thank Filius for. He thought it might be helpful to control one’s nerves before the tasks.”
Harry hums noncommittally, running his hands along the tops of his forearms in small, meditative motions. His professor sobers up, schooling his expression into something more serious.
“I want you to tell me exactly what happened after you touched the cup, Harry,” Dumbledore speaks sternly but not unkindly. His eyes are steeled, and some of his signature twinkle dims to a more sombre level. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
Harry swallows and tries his best. For the entire duration of his retelling, his headmaster stares at him intently. It makes Harry squirm a little under his gaze. Dumbledore has always favoured him, yes, but that doesn’t make the man’s presence and eccentricities any less unsettling. When the story is finished, Harry finds that his throat is dry. For a moment, Dumbledore just hums. His eyes leave Harry’s face as he seems to mull Harry’s recollection over in his head.
“This is not ideal, my boy.”
Harry wants to laugh. “That feels like an understatement, sir.” His voice is bitter, even to his own ears.
The corner of Dumbledore’s mouth twitches upwards. “Yes, quite.”
Harry waits for him to continue. When he doesn't, Harry prompts him instead. “What do we do now, Professor?”
“You will do nothing,” he says firmly. “The Ministry will be conducting a formal investigation. The Aurors, as you’ve surely seen, are investigating the Cup and will discover the saboteur, while I and other trusted adults,” he emphasises this last word, and gives Harry a thoroughly stern look over the top of his half-moon spectacles. “Will investigate Perseus' current status and location.”
“What can I do to help?” Harry presses, “There must be something.”
“I suppose you might be able to offer your memories as evidence to support the investigation,” Dumbledore muses, “Should the Ministry choose to accept them.”
Harry frowns. “Why wouldn’t they accept them? Couldn’t that only help them?”
Dumbledore hums and a sad, almost regretful look falls over his features. “Sometimes, people in power will go to extraordinary lengths to keep it, Harry.” He levels Harry with an indiscernible look. “You will learn this soon enough.”
Harry wishes, for once, that his headmaster would stop speaking in circles. What do you mean? He wants to say, Please, just be straightforward with me.
But he doesn’t, so Dumbledore is the next to speak instead.
“Besides, my boy,” he says, rising from his seat. “You have enough on your plate as the newly-crowned Triwizard Champion.”
The title makes his heart sink like a stone. He knows, deeply, that the only person who deserves that title is Percy. He says as much to the Professor.
“Percy and I tied, sir.” He speaks stiffly now. “We touched the cup at the same time.”
“A co-champion then,” The headmaster agrees. “And should Perseus return, he will receive his half of the prize money.”
The great big if of that statement hangs in the air.
“Will you update me, sir? If you find him?” Harry flicks his gaze away from his headmaster’s eyes, unable to bear another second in his intense gaze. “Please?”
In the corner of his eye, he sees Dumbledore’s expression soften by a fraction. “Of course, Harry.”
His headmaster, as if sensing the conversation’s demise, smiles once more at Harry before slipping out of the tent and back into the chaos of the Pitch.
The moment he is alone, he is pulled back into the graveyard by his subconscious. He can almost see Percy in front of him, arms raised and tensed, his power near-tangible in the air around him as he screams at Harry and tells him to Run. You have to go. Harry, go.
There’s a rustle in the tent. Harry blinks himself back into the present. Percy’s family has been let into the Champion's tent. His reaction is involuntary.
“I’m sorry.” His eyes are wet. “I shouldn’t have left him.” A second later, there are soft arms wrapped around his middle.
Despite Percy’s physical resemblance to his father, the easy kindness his mother radiates is identical to her sons. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine that the arms around him belong to Percy, that they are in the library and that the Third Task is still months away (almost. Percy never hugged him like this. His hugs were short, one-handed greetings accompanied by a pat on the back. Different, but no-less warm).
“You did your best sweetheart.” She whispers this into the hair on the crown of his head. Harry hears himself sob. Her voice reminds him of Percy. Her consonants are soft like his. He sobs a little harder. “I know. It’s okay.”
Distantly, Harry realises that his head is wet. She must be crying too.
The shorter man, the one with salt-and-pepper hair, squeezes Harry’s shoulder and rubs the woman’s back. Percy’s double—his father—keeps his distance, watching the scene unfold with uncertainty and a small level of visible discomfort.
“None of them will believe me,” he says miserably. “When I say he’s alive. Not when I came back without him.” Not when I left him to die with a Dark Lord.
Around him, Percy’s mother’s hands stutter in their soothing movements. Slowly, subtly, she lifts her gaze to Percy’s father. The man performs a near-imperceptible shake of his head. Harry feels the other woman’s body melt in relief.
“My son is alive.” Percy’s father speaks with a certainty that even Harry cannot have. As if he knows, impossibly, that Voldemort has kept his son alive in the time that has passed between Harry’s departure and this moment. “He is strong. He will survive.” He winces and looks away from them. “We are not done with him yet.”
Percy’s mother stiffens. Harry is sure he is missing something. He glances at the salt-and-pepper-man, whose face has morphed into a confusing combination of anger and relief. Harry seems to be alone in his confusion.
“You’re not done with him?” Percy’s mother’s voice shakes. At first, Harry thinks it might be out of fear. When he looks at her face, he realises it’s in anger. “What do you mean by that?”
Percy’s father presses his lips together into a line. It’s the same expression Percy made when Harry pulled the most dangerous dragon out of the bag in the first task.
“My sister—” he spits the word, “—Has plans for him.” His face morphs into something more vulnerable. “Believe me, I am no happier than you.” For a second, Harry swears the man’s face shifts. For a moment, his jaw is more square, his nose gain’s a hump in its bridge and his haircut changes from medium-length curls to a military crop. A blink later and it's gone, replaced by the man who’d been standing there the whole time. Harry swallows. Maybe he is seeing things.
Salt-and-pepper man clears his throat as he speaks for the first time since entering the tent. “He deserves more than that. More than—” he gestures wildly. “—This. Isn’t one world enough?”
One world? Harry resists the urge to probe for more information, but only barely. He has a feeling asking will only lead the trio to clam up.
“I often ask the same,” Percy’s father mumbles. “Only the fates know why.”
“I don’t suppose this has to do with your family’s—” Percy’s mother’s eyes flick towards Harry. “—Ongoing vacation you’ve slipped away from.” From this angle, Harry realises that Percy has her nose, not his father’s (either of them). It's sloped but curves upward at the very tip. It gives the both of them a slightly ethereal, elven look.
“I dare say I can’t comment.”
Percy’s mother hums, and continues to mindlessly rub Harry’s shoulder in comfort. He wonders idly if this is what his mum would’ve done to comfort him. This softer, more direct comfort is not something he’s ever experienced before (Molly Weasely, though wonderful, prefers to comfort her children through cooking rather than pure emotional support), but it strikes him as something she might’ve been good at.
As he thinks that, he only feels worse for failing to bring this mother her son back alive.
“I think we can continue this conversation later,” Percy’s mother says. Her eyes flash towards Harry. “At home.”
Harry deflates, momentarily more upset about his foiled private investigation, than his more serious, ongoing issues. The two men nod and move toward the exit of the tent. Percy’s mother detangles herself from Harry’s arms.
“Goodbye, Harry,” she squeezes his hand. “Thank you for looking out for my boy.”
Harry wants to tell her that Percy has been the one looking out for him; that without Percy, he wouldn’t have made it through the first challenge. But his tongue isn’t working, so he shrugs awkwardly.
“Hey, Po?” She calls towards the exit. Percy’s father sticks his head back through the flap.
“Yes?”
“Do you have some pen and paper I could use?”
The man nods and pulls a miraculously crisp sheet of white paper from a cargo-short pocket and an equally new blue ballpoint pen. She thanks him and scribbles something down before folding it and tucking it into the pocket of Harry’s robes.
“Here,” she says. “I’ve written my address and contact info in there. If you have any updates on Percy you can send them to me. If I hear anything on my end, I’ll send them to you. Deal?”
Harry nods. “Yeah, okay. Deal.”
She smiles at him softly, squeezes his shoulder firmly once more and waves as she slips out of the tent with Percy’s father—Po—in tow.
Harry waves back
The moment they are out of sight, he sees a swell of light appear through the thin fabric of the tent. Puzzled, he approaches the exit, sticking his head through the flaps. The trio is gone. Impossibly, their footsteps stop in the grass, as if they disapparated (as if disapparation didn’t make a loud cracking sound, as if anyone could apparate on Hogwarts grounds). All that remains is the faint smell of salt.
Harry frowns and walks back into his tent. He doesn’t even remember to question why Percy’s father can hear through the noise-cancelling fabric.