SMILE » n. longbottom

vii

"THE FIRST TASK, PART TWO"

Several eerily quiet minutes passed as the crowd exchanged glances and murmurs. The professors and headmasters of the the schools gathered around each other and conversed in shushed voices, careful not for the students to hear. "What are we going to do?" Mrs. McGonagall murmured. "Mr. Potter could face death ... again! Have you seen that creature that he was facing? That beast could be mauling him to pieces by now. Y—"

"Minerva, calm yourself," Dumbledore interrupted the hastily-concerned witch. He, too, was also worried about the fate of Harry Potter. But common sense was Albus' first option to contemplating such situations at-hand. Dumbledore then pulled out a muggle candy from his pocket he called "lemon drops," and popped one into his mouth, "If Harry Potter can bypass Voldemort — may I remind you: one of the wizarding world's most powerful wizard at the age of a baby ... then surely, he can also bypass that "beast" of a dragon at his current age."

Just as the old wizard finished speaking his sentence, students from the crowd began to point up to the sky, towards a figure that had smoke flowing from it. To everyone's surprise, this wasn't The-Boy-Who-Lived inside of the dragon's jaws, but the boy himself! He seemed to have lost the dragon, as there was no sign of the beast following him. But the smoke coming up into the smoke was coming from his broomstick, which appeared to have been broken. He fell in the dragon's nest to the golden egg and won this task.

"Is she okay?" the boy spat out as the witch cast a spell on the Hufflepuff girl for her to levitate. Neville was concentrating on the first task that he became unable to sense the events occurring around him.

Alana Wallace had began to cough out blood and bodily fluids onto the wooden planks as Harry Potter landed in the dragon's nest, and as the crowd cheered for him.

She passed out on Neville's shoulder — dropping to the floor in lifeless plop, she was urged to Mrs. McGonagall, whom cast a levitation spell on her.

"Mr. Longbottom," the witch spoke. She walked in brisk pace to arrive at Hogwarts' hospital wing shortly before the rest of the Tri-Wizard Tournament's audience were to arrive in Hogwarts' castle grounds as well. "Please return to your common rooms, I have to escort Mrs. Wallace to the hospital wing."

"But—"

"Mr. Longbottom, her situation is urgent. Return to Gryffindor's common room — that is an order, sir, not a suggestion!" Mrs. McGonagall spat as she practically sped to the castle.

"Alright ..." Neville slowed with his eyes droopy. He looked ahead as the witch ran to the hospital wing with the body of his friend floating behind. The boy remembered the time when Alana escorted him to the hospital wing, he felt that he should've been the one to escort his Hufflepuff friend to the hospital wing now.

Alana heard voices as she slept. She didn't remember falling asleep though, and it seemed that she wasn't in her dormitory. She could vaguely make the voices out in her mind as the blurs of words softly appeared in her mind.

"What happened?"

"She passed out, Poppy, what else?"

"What's wrong with her?"

"She has lungs of liquid, its a medical condition of a Muggle-sort called Pneumonia. Ghastly name if you ask me, it's as though it was my grandmother's."

"Pneumonia? I thought only Muggles got that. And I thought Wallace is a Pureblood family!"

"Well ... her mother is a Muggle, Poppy."

"What?!"

"I know, it seems impossible, but here Alana Wallace is."

"How curious."

The voices died down, and Alana Wallace decided of it as a dream. She remembered both of the voices to seem familiar, and she thought that it could've been her roommates' voices and that she was hallucinating.