Brighter Than the Sun

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Sirius sent our owl back the very next morning. It fluttered down beside Harry at the same moment that a tawny owl landed in front of Hermione, clutching a copy of the Daily Prophet in its beak. She took the newspaper, scanned the first few pages, said, "Ha! She hasn't got wind of Crouch!" then joined Harry, Ron, and I in reading what Sirius had to say on the mysterious events of the night before last.

Harry — what do you think you are playing at, walking off into the forest with Viktor Krum? I want you to swear, by return owl, that you are not going to go walking with anyone else at night. There is somebody highly dangerous at Hogwarts. It is clear to me that they wanted to stop Crouch from seeing Dumbledore and you were probably feet away from them in the dark. You could have been killed.

Your name didn't get into the Goblet of Fire by accident. If someone's trying to attack you, they're on their last chance. Stay close to Ron, Hermione, and ESPECIALLY ASH. Do not leave Gryffindor Tower after hours, and arm yourself for the third task. Practice Stunning and Disarming. A few hexes wouldn't go amiss either. There's nothing you can do about Crouch. Keep your head down and look after yourself. I'm waiting for your letter giving me your word you won't stray out-of-bounds again.

Sirius

"Who's he, to lecture me about being out-of-bounds?" said Harry in mild indignation as he folded up Sirius's letter and put it inside his robes. "After all the stuff he did at school!"

"He's worried about you!" said Hermione sharply. "Just like Moody and Hagrid! So listen to them!"

"No one's tried to attack me all year," said Harry. "No one's done anything to me at all—"

"Except put your name in the Goblet of Fire," I said. "And they've done that for a reason." "Snuffles is right," Hermione said. "Maybe they've been biding their time. Maybe this is the task they're going to get you."

"Look," said Harry impatiently, "let's say Sirius is right, and someone Stunned Krum to kidnap Crouch. Well, they would've been in the trees near us, wouldn't they? But they waited till I was out of the way until they acted, didn't they? So it doesn't look like I'm their target, does it?"

"They couldn't have made it look like an accident if they'd murdered you in the forest!" said Hermione. "But if you die during a task—"

"They didn't care about attacking Krum, did they?" said Harry. "Why didn't they just polish me off at the same time? They could've made it look like Krum and I had a duel or something."

"Harry, I don't understand it either," said Hermione desperately. "I just know there are a lot of odd things going on, and I don't like it."

"Sirius is right," I said. "You've got to get in training for the third task right away. Luke and I can help you with that."

"And you make sure you write back to Sirius and promise him you're not going to go sneaking off alone again," Hermione added.

For the next few days we spent all of our free time either in the library, looking up hexes, or in empty classrooms, which we sneaked into to practice. Luke and I helped Harry learn how to dodge hexes if he lost his wand and even threw in a bit of sparring, just in case. It was kind of fun to surprise-attack him to test his reflexes. I kept worrying Harry would question why we knew so much about self-defense, but he never did. Harry was concentrating the most on the Stunning Spell, which he had never used before. The trouble was that practicing it involved certain sacrifices on our part.

"Can't we kidnap Mrs. Norris?" Ron suggested on Monday lunchtime as he lay flat on his back in the middle of their Charms classroom, having just been Stunned and reawakened by Harry for the fifth time in a row. "Let's Stun her for a bit. Or you could use Dobby, Harry, I bet he'd do anything to help you. I'm not complaining or anything —" he got gingerly to his feet, rubbing his backside "— but I'm aching all over..."