[From Litha to Lammas]: More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man's Pondering, goblin Harry, 5/5
Part Four.
Part One.
Title: More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man’s Pondering (5/5)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None, gen
Content Notes: AU (goblin-raised Harry), violence, present tense, angst, humor
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 5800
Summary: AU The second half of goblin-raised Harry’s third year and the first half of his fourth year at Hogwarts. Harry is a proud participant in the next goblin rebellion, getting justice for his godfather, freeing artifacts who shouldn’t have to be enslaved to humans, and creating alternatives to silly human traditions.
Author’s Notes: This will really make no sense unless you’ve read the three previous stories in this series: “Music Beneath the Mountains,” “In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke,” and “The Dragon-Headed Door.” Like those fics, this one takes its title from Tolkien, specifically the poem “The Bidding of the Minstrel”; the section titles come from that as well as other Tolkien poems. This should have five parts, and will be posted over the next five days as part of my “From Litha to Lammas” series.
Thanks again for all the reviews! This is the end of this part of the story, but the arc will continue, with the second half of Harry’s fourth year, when I next update this story between Samhain and the winter solstice.
The Song I Can Sing
There are lots of objections to Harry participating in the Tournament. Harry has answers to all of them. Honestly, they should have had better answers to his questions about why their torture of the Goblet was necessary, and then maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
“But there should only be three Champions!”
“I’m part of the Realm of Song, not a Champion for a school. Unless you’re going to say that goblins shouldn’t get to participate in a human competition?”
“You’re stealing the glory from Cedric!”
“I’m not the Hogwarts Champion, so it shouldn’t count.”
“You’re too young!”
“The Goblet and the Age Line didn’t think so.”
“You’re going to get killed!”
“Why me and not the other three people who think they’re skilled enough to survive the Tournament?”
“You’re only doing this to ruin the Tournament!”
“Yes? I told you that.”
The Daily Prophet runs lots of stories about how Harry probably cheated and he’s probably conspiring with goblins to ruin the Tournament, but that just gets half the money taken away from the reporters’ vaults-mostly one reporter, Rita Skeeter-the way it did from Dumbledore’s, so then they print retractions. They would probably be filling out the stories with comments from Fudge, but his tongue locks up when he gets within one hundred meters of a reporter. Harry is, frankly, amazed and sad. How hard can it be not to tell a lie? Harry is only fourteen by human reckoning and he manages it all the time.
Luna is a little worried about Harry, but she understands when Harry explains that he’s doing this to avenge the Goblet, and the twins think what he did is brilliant. Ginny is the one who comes and finds Harry in the library one day when he’s studying ways wizards conduct blood feuds and gives him a tragic stare.
“What is it?” Harry asks, putting away the book so he can concentrate on her. “Are you okay? Did one of your knives break?”
“I’m so worried you’re going to get killed,” Ginny whispers, and practically collapses into the chair across from him.
Harry gets up and goes around the table to hug her. She clings to him, and Harry pats her shoulder. He didn’t think about this. Luna is the only other human he knows really well who’s Ginny’s age, and Luna is perfect and unique. He didn’t think about how someone who acts more human would take it.
“Sorry,” he says gently. “But it really is the best way to get vengeance on the people who tormented the Goblet and put my godfather in prison without a trial and owe debts to the goblins.”
Ginny sniffles and hugs him, then sits back. “But couldn’t you just curse them all, the way you did with Minister Fudge?”
“I cursed him partially to prevent his murder.” Harry sits down in the chair next to her, which hums pleasantly. “He was in the bank and insulted us, you see, and there was no way he was going to be able to leave in one piece unless I did something. Even then, some of the goblins think my curse was too merciful. I would be dishonoring Sirius if I’d cursed Crouch instead of declaring the blood feud with him.”
Ginny sighs. “Do you even know what the Tasks are?”
“The first one, I’m hearing about.” Harry has heard the whispers of the trees in the Forbidden Forest, and he’s going to go out and confirm them later tonight. “But remember, I’m not going to participate in them or try to win them. I’m going to mess them up.”
“Doesn’t the magic of the Goblet force you to participate in them?”
Harry shakes his head. “It makes it so that you can’t withdraw, but that’s all right with me. I don’t want to. I could stand in front of a manticore and get stung if I wanted to and it would still count.”
“A manticore.”
Harry probably shouldn’t have said that, he reflects. Ginny looks like she’s worse off now than before. Harry pats her shoulder, a little awkwardly. “Um, I mean, I don’t think there will be any manticores in this Tournament. There was one in a past Tournament, though.”
“So why wouldn’t they bring it back?”
“They don’t want to bring back tasks they already did once.” Harry rolls his eyes a little. “It makes it less entertaining or something.”
Ginny is silent for a little while, then sighs. “I still wish you’d managed to do it in a different way that wouldn’t put you in danger, but the more I hear about it, the more I think that you really need to destroy this Tournament.”
“That’s because you’re sensible,” Harry says.
*
Harry stands staring, stunned and indignant, at the huge stone enclosures they have the nesting dragons in.
Nesting dragons! Here with their eggs!
Harry is so indignant that he nearly gets caught when Crouch and Bagman come over to have a conversation about how “exciting” the Task is going to be, and then when Karkaroff sneaks through the forest to, of course, get some intelligence he can take back to Krum. Then Hagrid comes escorting Madame Maxime, and of course she’s going to tell Delacour what’s going on. Harry waits for a little, concealed in the roots of a tree that happily grew up and around him when he asked, but no one comes past for Diggory.
So Harry decides he’ll need to send an owl to him, and he trots back to the school shaking his head. This is outrageous that they pulled sensitive nesting dragon mothers here. He doesn’t know if he should tell Luna or not. He’s afraid that she’ll cry.
He can handle this, better than he was able to handle the fire tormenting the Goblet, but he’s going to need help. Harry grimaces. At least it’s still a couple weeks until the First Task and he has the time to send messages to his people.
Melodies Strange
“You realize that there will be a charge for this.”
Harry steps back with a small bow to Ruby, the large goblin in front of him who’s the premier Master Singer in all the Realm. “I know that, sir. I’m willing to do anything.”
Ruby nods. He doesn’t need Harry to specify that it would be anything that doesn’t go against his honesty or honor. Real goblins understand that. “Well, then.” He moves away from the tunnel that opens, with a flicker of fire, in the center of the Forbidden Forest, and studies the dragons in their stone enclosures. “I’m glad that we came as seven.”
Six other Master Singers follow Ruby. Harry stands carefully off to the side and out of their way. All of them wear garnets, the stones more perfectly tuned to music than any other. Master Singers don’t just study musical magic, the way other goblins do, but dedicate their lives to it. They can do things with notes in the ways Master Smiths can with metal.
“Nesting mothers?” Ruby’s nostrils flare as he glances at Harry.
Harry nods. “Yes, sir.”
“Humans aren’t idiots, but sometimes they desperately want you to think so,” Ruby mutters, and taps his garnet. The others do the same at the exact same moment, and the night fills with a low hum.
When the Master Singers begin to vocalize, it’s hard for Harry to hear at first. There’s a reason that he didn’t train as a Master Singer, beyond smithcraft intriguing him more. His ears are still human, and he has a hard time hearing the higher notes.
But then they begin to descend into the whispering shrillness he can hear, and the dragons’ heads appear over the edge of the barrier.
The Hungarian Horntail is the first one to begin to sing back, her voice deep enough that Harry feels it mostly as muffled booms under his feet. The Chinese Fireball joins in second, the delicate fringe around her head lifting and blowing back, dancing more than she sings. The Welsh Green ornaments her song with small movements of her wings, and the Swedish Short-Snout with tiny blasts of fire.
The fire makes Harry worry lest someone comes into the Forest to see what’s going on, but Ruby and the other Master Singers appear calm. Their voices are weaving visible lines of light through the darkened air, twisting back and forth above the ground like creations of gold and silver wire. Harry watches in fascination, but keeps his gasps to himself. The last thing their song needs is disruption from his voice.
The wires rise and slowly slide forwards, hovering outside the stone barriers. The dragons must make the final decision about whether to accept the goblins’ help.
Again the Hungarian Horntail moves first, thrusting her head through the first loop of gold. It trails across her scales in endless patterns, until it looks as though she’s standing in the middle of a waterfall reflecting light. Harry is held still by awe now. He’s amazed that he managed to live well enough to see something like this happen in the middle of a shining forest at night.
The Welsh Green is next, seizing one of the silver “wires” to draw it towards her. She snorts as it caresses her wings, but doesn’t stop them from flapping. Harry shakes his head. Yet another reason he could never be a Master Singer. He’s used to immediate results from the song magic. This is taking so long that he knows he wouldn’t have the patience to adjust his voice, bit by bit, to the reality of what’s happening here.
The Swedish Short-Snout also gets covered in silver, and the Chinese Fireball in gold. Towards what Harry knows must be the end of the first movement-he can tell that much from the way the goblin and dragon voices are rumbling and gaining momentum-the dragons look like sculptures lit from within. Harry blinks back tears.
Then the second movement begins, and this time, the dragons are trumpeting and squealing along. Harry shoots a worried glance towards the castle, but relaxes when he sees a drifting wall of white notes between him and it. He should have known the Master Singers would have protected their project from being overheard. An interruption right now would be disastrous for all of them.
It happens with the Hungarian Horntail first, again. She rears up and spreads her wings wide, as if she wants to bathe in the miracle that is light and magic and music combined. And the gold builds to a rich spark on her chest and wings, and then slides up her neck, and a second, perfect replica of herself steps away from her.
For a moment, it glows gold. Then that fades, and it folds its wings and gives the night an evil glare, and Harry does have to bite his lip against the laughter this time. He wouldn’t know that wasn’t the real dragon if he hadn’t seen the formation of the copy happen.
There are, a few minutes later, a silver Swedish Short-Snout and a golden Chinese Fireball glowing and then forming themselves into copies the same way. For some reason, it takes longer to get a silver Welsh Green, but none of the Master Singers seem upset about that, so Harry relaxes. Then the loops of light leap dancing into the air and separate many times, over and over, budding like a tree, and Harry wonders why until he realizes that the Master Singers are copying the eggs.
The dragons seem less calm about this part of the process. One of the silver loops actually goes into the Hungarian Horntail’s mouth. But she doesn’t stop singing, and there’s a calming thread throughout the music that feels to Harry like someone answering her doubts, so in the end it doesn’t harm anything.
As the eggs appear one by one like sparks beneath the copied dragons, they react like good mothers, bending down their necks and rolling the eggs underneath their bodies. Harry is relieved to see that their tails scrape across the stone barriers and the ground with realistic sounds. To create a copy that can be felt and heard and smelled as well as seen is a special talent of the Master Singers, but Harry has only seen the ones that are meant to fool the eye alone before.
It takes an enormous expenditure of magic, but, well, humans don’t have the right to force dragons to do something like this for a stupid Tournament. And the replicas only have to last a few weeks, so after that the music will come back to the Master Singers.
When the copies are finished, the Master Singers approach the enclosures and open the doors, freeing the dragons of the chains holding them captive. Harry was warned to stay well back during this part of the procedure, but he didn’t actually need the warning. He would smell human to the dragons, and he didn’t join the singing. There’s every chance they’ll be suspicious of him.
Two Master Singers remain behind the others, crooning softly. The magic that comes from them forms into crystalline dragons that Harry’s eyes can barely make out in the darkness. He’s betting they’ll smell strongly to the dragons they’re meant for, though. And they carry baskets like chandelier drops on their claws. When the dragons are formed, they fly over and begin to gather the mothers’ eggs.
The mother dragons watch vigilantly, but make no attempt to interfere. When the crystalline ones turn and arrow into the sky, the mothers follow right behind. Harry smiles. He’s sure that they’ll keep going after their eggs, back to the dragon preserves they came from, rather than stopping to devour a random human here or there.
Harry relaxes with a long sigh as the last notes of the song begin to spiral down and fade. It feels ridiculous, since he’s only the one who watched and not the one who contributed any of the magic or his voice, but still, his head aches and his hands are trembling as he watches the last flap of dragon wings leave the area and the copies settle down behind their stone fences.
“Will any humans see them?” he asks quietly.
Ruby gives him a tolerant look. “Of course not, amaracazh. The crystalline dragons will guide them along paths that humans don’t frequent, by night, and do have the magic to shield themselves and their followers if humans might see them anyway.”
Harry nods with some relief. He would hate to think that something he argued for put anyone, dragon, goblin, or human, in a more awkward position.
He also notices, as he waves good-bye to Ruby and the others, that the Master Singer chose to refer to him simply as a speaker instead of “young” amaracazh. That makes another pulse of happiness surge through his soul. He’s growing up, and he hopes he’s doing it with honor.
The Music Is Broken
“Mr. Potter.”
Harry eyes Dumbledore. The man invited him to his office, for tea, and Harry accepted because it was polite. But they’ve just been sitting here for ten minutes, with Dumbledore twitching a little and looking at the walls and fireplace. Harry has started to wonder if he’s waiting for someone. Who, though?
At least now he’s spoken.
“Sir,” Harry says, and watches Dumbledore slowly huff out a breath.
“I want you to tell me why you haven’t protested what we’re doing with the dragons.”
Well, so Dumbledore isn’t going to pretend to keep the secret of what the First Task involves. That’s interesting. Harry eyes him. “What do you mean, sir? I thought you would be upset if I protested. You didn’t want me to ruin the Tournament, did you?”
“I did not.” Dumbledore’s voice is clipped. The fire pops, and he leaps in his seat and looks over his shoulder. Harry waits until he turns around again.
“Why, then? What do you want me to do? Did you want me to go and free the dragons?”
“No!” Dumbledore reaches towards his face, then drops his hand. “I wanted to know why you weren’t protesting.”
“Because I know what’s going to happen,” Harry says simply. “And many people have told me that the dragons aren’t going to be harmed or in danger. In fact, the Dragon-Keeper I talked to told me the Champions were more likely to be in danger, going up against such huge beasts.”
A Dragon-Keeper who introduced himself as Charlie Weasley, Ginny and the twins’ brother, did say that to Harry. Of course, he doesn’t know that the goblins replaced the dragons. But it was sincerely meant all the same. Harry thinks he could get to like Charlie, who was obviously more concerned with innocent beasts hauled here against their will than silly people who put their names in the Goblet on their own.
“What if someone does hurt a dragon?”
“I just don’t think it’s likely to happen.”
“What if you have to hurt a dragon to survive?”
Harry grins. “What makes you think I’m going to treat this as a contest at all, sir?”
Dumbledore shakes his head. “Get out, Mr. Potter. And keep in mind that if you really are an adult, you can be tried under human laws for interfering with the Tournament.”
“I’m an adult by goblin standards, but not human ones. Although, if you’ve changed that, then it changes other things, too. It means that you should tell me all the secrets you’re hiding instead of pretending that I’m too young to hear them. And it means that Snape should duel me, and so should Crouch, instead of hiding behind the idea that-”
“Get out!”
Harry chuckles and stands. He enjoys fighting the Headmaster with words, since it’s the only way the man will ever consent to fight him. “All right, sir.”
As he leaves, there’s a sharp snap from the fire, and Harry looks back in time to see a Howler manifesting there. It tears itself open and begins to speak in Blackeye’s precise, dry voice that she only uses when she’s really angry, telling the Headmaster that she knows he was up late last night instead of sleeping the way he should.
Dumbledore lifts his wand as if he’s going to shoot a curse at the letter. Harry shakes his head and leaves.
*
“You are a leetle boy who should not be here!”
“And you’re an insulting Veela.”
Harry doesn’t bother looking up from where he’s sharpening his daggers. He won’t actually need them in the coming Task, of course, but it’s the thought that counts. He hears Delacour’s gasp, and then she comes over and stands in front of him.
“You cheated to get your name in the Goblet!”
“And you put it in there thinking you were really going to win eternal glory? Come on, Delacour. Which of us is really the stupid one here?”
There’s a long pause. Harry can sense Krum and Diggory looking at him and Delacour, but he doesn’t bother staring back. The other Champions don’t seem to know what to make of him. Sometimes they treat him as a serious competitor, sometimes they accuse him of cheating like Delacour did, and sometimes they just act upset that he wants to ruin their silly fun.
Like it would have been fun for the dragons! Like it was fun for the Goblet!
Harry sighs away his anger. That’s why he’s avenging the Goblet and he made sure the dragons were safe. The humans should have considered them, sure, but they didn’t. So it’s up to him.
“I will show that my school is the best one.”
Harry looks at Delacour. Her nose is so far up in the air that the tent ceiling is taking note. “By getting yourself half-killed and some of your hair burned off?”
Delacour lifts her hand to her hair before she can stop herself, then lowers it and glares at Harry. “It will not burn off my ‘air!”
“Okay,” Harry says, and then Ludo Bagman bustles in and starts telling them to get ready, that the crowd is waiting. Krum is going first, apparently.
Harry smiles and stands up, moving over to the side of the tent entrance where he can see both the dragon, a Chinese Fireball, and Bagman’s face. He hopes the twins enjoy what’s going to happen in just a minute.
Krum struts out into the middle of the arena and lifts his wand. Harry tenses in anticipation. Krum barks a curse that lifts straight and true from his wand, aimed at the eyes of the replica Chinese Fireball.
The curse touches, the replica throws its head back and screams-
And explodes in a shower of sparks.
The audience leaps back with a cry. The sparks rain down among them harmlessly, of course. They’re as much illusions as the replica dragon was in the first place. Harry wonders, for a second that darkens his mood, what they would be doing if the dragon had been real and hit by Krum’s curse. Would they be cheering while the poor thing staggers around, crushing her eggs and screaming in pain?
But then he shakes that off and glances sideways at Bagman, who seems to have stopped breathing entirely.
He’ll keep that memory for the twins.
“A-a remarkable reaction!” Bagman croaks, shaking his head and trying to return to the commentary. “One must assume that young Mr. Krum doesn’t know his own strength-”
The Chinese Fireball’s eggs begin to explode into bright showers of sparks as well. One by one, they all leap up like candles on a Muggle birthday cake, and Harry chuckles a little as he watches them. In seconds, they’re gone, and the golden egg that the Champions were supposed to “take” is the only one left lying there. The Master Singers’ music didn’t catch it because it wasn’t a living, organic thing, the only kind of matter their song was aimed at.
There’s silence for a second before shrieks arise. Most of them, Harry notes in interest, are accusing Krum and Headmaster Karkaroff of cheating. It seems humans really like to do that.
“How could you do this?” a voice, louder than the rest, booms. That must be Madame Maxime, Harry thinks, watching her idly. She denies her giant heritage, from what he’s heard, but she’s taking advantage of it now. She stands up to loom over Karkaroff, her hands on her hips. “We all want our Champions to win, but this is going too far!”
“I had nothing to do with this!” Karkaroff yells back. “Do you think that-”
“Um, excuse me.”
Harry turns his head. Krum has gone in and picked up the golden egg they were “supposed to win,” and he’s holding it as he glances back and forth between the shouting people. “Have I won?” he demands.
There’s more shouting. Harry lounges back and observes, while Bagman tries to interject and other people accuse Karkaroff and Karkaroff accuses Dumbledore and Dumbledore is obviously looking around for Harry.
“Did you have something to do with this?”
It’s Diggory, standing beside Harry and also staring at the chaos. Harry nods. “Of course. I did warn them that I was going to ruin the Tournament.”
“But it’s an important effort in international magical cooperation!”
Harry tilts his head towards the chaos of tirades about cheating. “Does that sound to you as if anyone’s interested in that, instead of upset that they think Karkaroff did something to help Krum win?”
“I mean,” Diggory mumbles. “They could have been, if you hadn’t interfered.”
Harry shakes his head. “Everyone wanted their own school to win. You know that someone would have helped you to cheat if I hadn’t told you about the dragons. And Maxime and Karkaroff were helping their people cheat. And no one cared enough about my cheating to try and get me out of the Tournament. Bagman even told me he thought it would make the bloody thing more exciting.” He snickers as he sees the forlorn expression on Bagman’s face now. “This was never about cooperation. It was about distraction from the stupid, terrible job Fudge and Crouch are doing.”
“But why ruin it?”
“Crouch put my godfather in prison without a trial for twelve years.”
“But he’s free now.”
Harry just shakes his head as Bagman calls for Diggory to come out. Diggory gives Harry a half-suspicious look from the corner of his eye and walks out to face the Swedish Short-Snout.
Diggory Transfigures a rock into a dog, which runs around and distracts the illusory dragon for a while. The crowd starts cheering again, probably thinking that Harry’s vengeance is over. But then the dragon’s “fire” brushes against the Transfigured dog, and the Short-Snout and her eggs go up in sparks, too.
There’s more yelling. More shouting. Bagman’s jaw is getting acquainted with his chest. And Diggory goes in and takes the golden egg, then stands there with it like Krum is doing.
Now people are accusing Dumbledore of cheating, using the same trick that Karkaroff did. Harry gives in to the urge to put his hand over his eyes. They’re that stupid?
“But it is not true.”
Harry glances at Delacour. “Of course it isn’t. But they would prefer to think that someone cheated than that someone took the dragons away from this bloody game.”
Delacour turned to look at him steadily. “All the dragons are gone?”
“Free. Back in their reserves.”
Delacour sighs and walks out of the tent without another word. Harry watches her face the Welsh Green, and begin to use some kind of enchantment that seems designed to put it to sleep. Maybe she thinks that if she doesn’t directly touch the dragon or any egg except the golden one, the dragon won’t turn into sparks and she’ll put on more of a show.
But of course, the instant that she comes near enough and the dragon opens her “eyes” and shoots her “fire,” it ends up dissolving into sparks. Delacour looks more upset that the illusory fire touched her hair than anything else. But she goes over and gets the golden egg and stands there defiantly, while people start accusing Madame Maxime of cheating.
Harry wants to bang his head against something, but the flimsy walls of the tent are nothing like good, solid stone. He settles for tapping a dagger against the back of his head.
Then the tent entrance stirs, and Dumbledore marches in. Harry brightens up. Maybe Dumbledore will let Harry ram his head against Dumbledore’s skull. It must be pretty solid, what with everything.
Dumbledore doesn’t appear to be in a good mood, though. “You did this!” he screams, wagging one finger in front of Harry.
Harry calms himself down. That’s not Dumbledore saying that he could take Harry with one finger in a duel, because they’re not in Gringotts. “Of course,” he says. “I thought you would be relieved. Weren’t you upset because I wasn’t doing something?”
Dumbledore appears to be speechless. Then Bagman calls stubbornly, “Harry Potter, to face the Hungarian Horntail!”, and Dumbledore picks up Harry and practically throws him out of the tent.
Harry rolls easily and lands on his feet, but he already knows that he’s going to have to tell Blackeye about the signs of Dumbledore’s deteriorating mental state. He looks up at the illusory Hungarian Horntail, who bends down towards him and opens her mouth.
Harry stands there and lets the fire wash over him. Of course the audience screams, and of course the illusion explodes. The fake eggs disappear, and Harry could walk over and pick up the golden egg if he wants to.
He doesn’t particularly want to. In fact, he’s been spending most of the time when the other Champions were studying dragon-defeating spells studying one particular spell. He lifts his wand and whispers, “Aurum obdico.”
The golden eggs spark and whir in their owners’ arms, and then crack down the middle, releasing an inelegant screeching noise that sounds a lot like Mermish. Harry wrinkles his nose. That didn’t work the way it was supposed to, which was to completely and painlessly destroy the golden eggs.
Then he realizes why it didn’t work, and scowls. Humans are cheap, and they didn’t make the eggs out of pure gold, but used some gold-plated metal. Brass, apparently, from the complaining voices coming from the eggs. Harry sighs and uses the right spell to Vanish the brass.
“Harry Potter!”
From the sound of his voice, Dumbledore has largely lost it. Harry generously decides not to hold anything he says against him. You can’t demand that people duel you or be responsible for what they say when their mind is melting.
He does glance into the stands and wink at the twins, who give him evil grins and thumbs-up gestures.
And he finds Crouch, and mouths, This is just the beginning.
Crouch looks ill, as he should. Well, maybe he’ll cancel the rest of the Tournament and Harry won’t even have to do anything.
Who Now Can Tell
“Mr. Potter, you must have a date to the Yule Ball.”
Professor Flitwick looks unhappy, saying that. Harry sighs. The dragons weren’t enough to force Crouch to cancel the Tournament, and so they have to all do this nonsense, along with waiting for more golden eggs to be delivered.
“It’s all right, Professor,” he says, and pats Professor Flitwick’s shoulder. “I know it’s not your fault. I’ll have someone.”
Professor Flitwick looks happy now that he’s delivered the message and Harry hasn’t blamed him, and they are alone in the Charms classroom, so he switches to Gobbledegook. Apparently Dumbledore has been telling him not to speak it in front of human students because it “makes them nervous not to understand.” Harry proposed language lessons, but he also accepted Professor Flitwick’s solution of just not speaking it in front of those students.
“Perhaps Miss Lovegood? It seems to me that you understand each other well.”
Harry smiles in amusement. “We do, but she wouldn’t want to go as my date. Other people’s expectations constrain her enough. People already think she’s mad, and they would think she was my girlfriend if we went together. And people would have expectations of me, too. They would think I’m willing to date humans. I don’t want to spread false messages.”
Professor Flitwick blinks. “You are only attracted to goblins?”
Harry nods. “Of course. The humans I know who have the kind of integrity and understanding that I desire in a partner are pretty rare, and I want to marry within my culture.”
“Well, I suppose you’re right about that, and about not wanting to send false messages,” Professor Flitwick admits. “Even I had assumed that Miss Lovegood was your girlfriend, or perhaps Miss Weasley.”
“They’re my friends,” Harry says simply, using the Gobbledgook word that means “accepted, trusted friend who is not interesting to me romantically.”
That gets him a nod. “I regret that more humans cannot understand our language,” Professor Flitwick adds. “There would be fewer misunderstandings, not only between goblins and humans, but also between humans of different intentions.”
Harry agrees with that fervently, but he also knows that it’s not going to change any time soon. He wonders if that’s a sign of maturity that he can accept that.
*
“Mr. Potter, you must have a date.”
Harry blinks at Dumbledore, who has suddenly appeared in the little room in front of the doors of the Great Hall where the Champions and their dates are waiting. Delacour is standing with an older Ravenclaw named Roger Davies, and Krum with a Gryffindor girl named Granger who Harry knows is friends with Ginny. Diggory has Cho Chang with him. It makes Harry doubly glad that he never dated her like Luna thought he might.
“Oh, I do, sir,” he says. “Here she comes now.” He heard the footsteps in the corridor before Dumbledore did, but then, he has keener hearing than most humans.
Dumbledore turns with a little frown, and then freezes as Blackeye steps into view. She’s adjusting the flowing diamond battle-armor draping her, the nearest thing to robes she has. She takes Harry’s arm with a faint smile before she focuses on Dumbledore.
“We shall have much to talk about later concerning your health,” she says, and points one clawed finger at him. “You are not to stay up too late or drink too much alcohol, and refrain from abusing your face and chest.”
The other Champions are staring so hard that they almost don’t walk forwards in time when a horn blows and the doors open. And then everyone stares at Blackeye and Harry as they walk into the Great Hall.
Blackeye doesn’t care. She turns to Harry and nods solemnly, acknowledging the favor she’s doing him. Harry bows deeply in return and draws his daggers as Blackeye snaps a circle of blue stones into being around her head.
“The second battle-dance,” Blackeye says.
“Yes, of course,” Harry murmurs, warmth rising in his veins. This is the goblin kind of dancing. If they didn’t want to see it, he thinks, they had every chance to cancel the Tournament, but they chose not to.
Blackeye lifts her hands. The blue stones dash towards Harry. He uses his daggers to deflect them, leaping and dodging and spinning in place. He also sends sparks off his daggers towards Blackeye that she has to dodge, dancing herself to control the stones and complete the movements of the second battle-song.
People still stare. One of the ones staring hardest is Crouch, but he turns it into a glare when Harry looks at him. Harry laughs at him. He had his chance, but he refused the duel, he refused to cancel the Tournament, he refused the weregild, he refused every honorable means to pay back his debt to Harry and Sirius. He deserves whatever he gets.
Luna has come as the date of Michael Corner, who’s got better about deciding goblin rebellions are illegal, and she spins around him and Blackeye, clapping. Ginny has the Longbottom boy on her arm, and he watches with what looks like amazement and terror as she draws her knives and takes up an outer position in the dance that will only require her to dodge one missile a minute.
Professor Flitwick toasts Harry from the professors’ table. Dumbledore is staring at Blackeye in frozen dread. Snape is looking off to the side so that he doesn’t have to meet Harry’s eyes.
Harry smiles. There’s plenty wrong with the wizarding world, and he’s old enough now not to think he can change everything or it’s going to be perfect, but he’ll get to be a goblin in the middle of it, and that’s wonderful.
The End.
Harmonies Unconquerable, part five.