The Last Black (Hermione Granger x Male Reader) Vol.1

CHAPTER SIX: The First Task

I'd spent the whole night before the first task reading up on every single spell I had ever learnt. I covered everything from basic defensive spells to advanced and offensive hexes and curses. Bridgett had tried to stay awake with me in order to help, but by half one in the morning she had fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the fireplace. I couldn't help but feel frustrated with the other champions. Every single one of them knew what they were going against. I was going into this blind though. If anything, this made me even more determined to do well.

Come the morning I had only had two hours of sleep, but I was too anxious to feel tired. My eyes were dry, and my head hurt from cramming in so much knowledge in the space of one night. Bridgett kept pouring me coffee after coffee as we ate our breakfast at the Slytherin table. People kept coming over to wish me luck and tell me how much they were betting on me. The Slytherin table was extremely crowded. About twenty people had formed a queue to come and see me, and about forty were lined up to see Krum. Cho Chang, a Ravenclaw girl in the same year as me, had just began to wish me good luck, when I turned towards the Gryffindor table and saw Hermione Granger staring at me. She flashed a sympathetic smile, before turning around to talk to Potter. I was starting to feel a little guilty for not seeing her since the day she'd told me everyone else had cheated. It wasn't exactly her fault, unless she knew what the task was, then it was her fault.

The breakfast period had hardly finished before Professor Snape barged through the queue of students trying to see me. "Champions are needed in the marques in order to prepare for their first task," he stated bluntly. He was a very no-nonsense kind of man, but I appreciated that.

Bridgett gave me one last hug, "don't get yourself killed," she said with a smirk.

"I'll try," I replied before following Snape out of the great hall.

The quidditch pitch had been chosen as the arena for the first task, and the changing rooms, which were usually used for quidditch matches, had been made into the meeting and dressing area. "Good Luck Black," Professor Snape said, shaking my hand and then letting me enter the tent. Inside there were four small off shoots with little cots inside. I looked inside the one to the far right, and my name was written on a piece of parchment atop a pile of clothes. Green, black and silver robes, similar to my quidditch ones, but made of a lighter fabric, as well as a pair of calf-high leather boots. Fleur, Krum and Harry were already dressed, and coping with their nerves in different ways. Fleur was twiddling her wand in between her fingers, Krum was sitting on his cot with his head in his hands as he muttered to himself in Bulgarian, and Potter was pacing. I closed the canvas doors to my part of the tent, stripped out of my uniform and pulled on the robes that had been left for me.

Part of me just wanted to sneak out of the tent and run away, but this seemed like a cowardly move, so instead I thrust open the canvas doors and walked into the main part of the tent. What I wasn't expecting though, was to see Hermione Granger stood beside the entrance to the tent, talking to Harry Potter. When she noticed my presence, she stopped talking, and her eyes made contact with my own. For a moment I thought she was going to leave the tent and return to the stands, but then she did something I had not anticipated. She jogged forward gracefully and wrapped her arms around my neck, standing on her tiptoes as she did so. I hugged her back around the midsection awkwardly, feeling my cheeks turn hot. "I'm sorry for not telling you what it is," she apologised frantically, "I-I..." she began, but I shushed her. Being angry at her wasn't worth it.

"It's fine," I told her, "I'd rather play a fair game and lose than cheat and win." I said the last part louder so the other champions could hear.

The loud flash of a camera and the scent of the smoke being emitted from it, distracted me from Hermione's grasp, causing me to turn and look towards where it had come from. "Young love!" Rita Skeeter exclaimed, "Oh, how stirring." Her quick quotes quill was immediately scribbling across the pages of her hovering notebook. "If everything goes unfortunately today, you two may even make the front page!" I scowled at her whilst Hermione turned pink in embarrassment.