Here We Go

chapter 15

Chapter 15: More Games

Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale. There will probably be changes in the first hour or so as I find things that didn't come out the way I wanted.

They'd found out some interesting things when Miroslav came back to judge the first task….. the fact that he wasn't happy at first to see Bulgaria's Pride of the Nation, the youngest professional seeker ever having fun as he played in the informal inter-school quidditch competition wasn't too much of a surprise as the Bulgarian government was hanging their hopes on the brooding young quidditch star's image to make their country look better, but it didn't take too much to get him to step back and look at it from a different angle. Once they'd planted the seed of the idea and nudged him in the right direction, he began to see how contrasting the happy, friendly schoolboy Viktor was here with the brooding, intense professional added a depth to Viktor's image that could only improve it. Being a politician, it was of course reframed as his idea as soon as he was on board with it, but they were prepared to take that along with the benefits for Viktor and others.

The biggest news was the fact that Karkaroff had been tried and executed when he returned to Bulgaria, so Professor Branimir was now Durmstrang's Headmaster. What they hadn't realised, because they had enough to worry about in Magical Britain, was that after Albus Dumbledore was replaced as Magical Britain's representative to the ICW by the Wizengamot's nomination, a lot more information was shared about the Death Eaters and how they were now being dealt with in Britain, and most other European countries in the ICW adopted Magical Britain's automatic try and punish rule for Death Eaters and their ilk. The thing was, it hadn't been generally known that Karkaroff was a Death Eater in Bulgaria until Hogwarts' wards reacted to his dark mark and he hurriedly got out of Britain before he could be arrested, tried and punished for his crimes when he was supporting Riddle, but Bulgaria's Aurors were waiting for him when he returned because Popov had reported the reason he had been kept out of Hogwarts.

They had known that Grindelwald was quietly tried and executed for his crimes after Harry outed the fact that Dumbledore had been secretly keeping his ex-lover alive in Nurmengard after he attacked him from behind and captured him, rather than killing him to end the threat as he'd implied to the rest of the world. Apparently Nurmengard was now being used to house dangerous criminals who escaped the death penalty, rather than being kept just as a secret hidey hole for Grindelwald. While no-one was overly happy about that, they had to concede that it was better to have those types locked away, and Nurmengard didn't approach the foulness of Azkaban with its dementors.

Of course, as soon as the rest of the students were told about the ball, they were all besieged with requests to be others' dates to it. The girls had to get quite aggressive with some of their would be paramours, as they wouldn't accept that the fact that they were betrothed was a good enough reason to refuse their invitations…. Harry, Sirius, Remus, Ulfr and Snorri had to step in more than a few times to ward off the trouble that would have come from the enraged girls killing or seriously damaging the arseholes who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.

Who was to go with whom was eventually resolved by Fleur and Hermione going with Harry, Susan and Ginny with Neville, Angelina and Luna with Fred, Katie and Daphne with George and Alicia and Astoria with Lee….. Jean-Pierre was attending as France's Head of International Cooperation and one of the signatories of the tournament contracts, and no-one would dare object to Apolline and Gabrielle accompanying him. The rest of the family were going as staff and Ulfr, Snorri, Efa and Emyr went as part of the goblin guard (under glamours as 'ordinary' goblin guards of course).

While they were all training to make it through the second task, there was one major point of the preparations that they were putting off until after the Christmas break, the dragonhide armour that they would be wearing as or under their robes. Fleur and Gabi's grandmother Agathe was the current Veela Matriarch, because her Veela bonding was one that only happened once every two or three centuries at most, so this had only happened about a dozen times since Veela first came about from the Ancient Greek Avian Sirens mating with powerful wizards (the origin of the eternal feud between Veela and Mers)…. This bonding created what they called a Veela Matriarch, one who had been given access to the collective energy and knowledge of the Veela race, similar to how the Head of a House gains the House's Magic and Knowledge but on a much larger scale. There was a curse attached to these bondings though, the odds were astronomical against all the myriad required conditions being met, but the Veela's mates died when they were, not one of the Matriarchs' mates had survived to date, and usually their attendants at the bonding died as well.