Chapter Text
“Please, Madam Pomfrey?” Harry said, giving the healer his most winning smile. “It's about the Tournament. We were going to talk about strategies for the first task.”
The healer was unmoved. “The only strategy Mister Diggory needs to be thinking about right now is resting, Mister Potter. One visitor at a time, and those visitors are not to excite him! He nearly died yesterday!”
“I know, I was there,” Harry said stupidly.
That, surprisingly, did get the Healer to soften. Just barely, but Harry had spent a lot of time around her, here in hospital himself. He could tell. “You did an excellent job, Mister Potter. Your mother would be very proud.”
That, like Delacour’s praise, would mean a lot more if Harry had actually done anything. (Riddle just sort of preened silently at the back of his mind.)
“But Mister Diggory really does just need to rest and focus on his recovery—”
“Madam Pomfrey?” Cho interrupted softly, slipping out from a curtained bay. She looked like she'd been crying, her face all puffy. “Ced says that it would put his mind at ease if he could talk to Harry about the Tournament. They— He's very concerned about the first task. I can come back later.”
Madam Pomfrey huffed at her, but bustled off toward Cedric’s bay, which Harry took as tacit permission to follow her into the ward.
Cho stopped him, catching his arm. “Harry, I... Thank you,” she said, her voice strained with the intensity of her barely-contained relief. She pulled him into a hug, which he was too surprised to resist. (Not that he really wanted to resist, he just never knew what to do with his hands when people hugged him, and he barely knew Cho, and—)
____How can you possibly be this pathetic, Harry? Riddle asked, taking over to wrap Harry's arms around Cho, not too tightly, but definitely not hesitantly, either. He was a few centimeters taller than her, but she had kind of pinned his upper arms, so Riddle put one arm sort of around the bottom of her ribs and the other went more up, his hand doing a comforting little petting thing in the vicinity of her shoulder blades. And that's not relief, it's gratitude.
“I– I don't know how I could have lived with myself if—” She choked on the idea, cutting herself off with a little whimpering gasp.
____“Hey-hey-hey, just breathe, Cho. I've got you,” Riddle murmured.
She positively melted into him, letting him hold enough of her weight that if he'd let go, she would have fallen, letting her head rest on his shoulder for the space of two deep, shuddering breaths. It was...
Harry didn't want to say it was good, or nice, given that Cho was clearly in distress, but it felt...warm and right. Fulfilling and sort of exciting, like—
Oh, God, no! This was the worst possible time, he didn't want to get a boner while a girl was crying on him! Yes, Cho was very pretty, even aside from the Narrator's interest in her, and warm and soft and her hair smelled really good, but she was crying, that should be a huge turn-off!
Why?! Riddle, I blame you for this! That had to be it, he was in control, and Harry wasn't the kind of freak who would get it up over someone crying! Control yourself, damn it!
____I hate to break it to you, but that's all you, and at your age, these things often don't have a rhyme or reason to them. In this case, however, it's almost certainly because you really like how strong and protective it makes you feel to have her literally leaning on you for support in her time of need. Fucking sap. “Cedric is going to be fine, and even if he wasn't, it was an accident. It wasn't your fault, okay?”
...Oh.
Well, can you make it stop anyway before she notices and tells everyone I'm a perv?
He didn't really need to, though, because almost as soon as Harry thought it, Cho took a third, less shaky breath, and pulled herself together, tipping back so she was no longer pressed up against him in a way that she'd definitely notice (Thank God...) though she was still very close to him, one hand still holding the arm Riddle had put around her waist.
“That's what he said, too.”
____“Smart bloke, that Cedric Diggory,” Riddle said, giving her a little half-smile and letting Harry's eyes dart shyly away from hers. Had Harry mentioned lately how creepy it was to watch Riddle be so sincerely, convincingly nice? Because it very much was.
____You should be taking notes, Riddle thought at him, apparently seriously. There’s more to dealing with people who are being emotional at you than just learning how to hug them back. “And you don't need to thank me. I'm sure he would've been fine, even if I wasn't there. Fleur was keeping his heart beating, and Madam Pomfrey got there in time.”
“Fine. Just... Just know that I won’t forget this, Harry. If there’s ever anything I can do...”
____“I’ll keep it in mind,” Riddle promised, mostly to placate her. Harry could tell he didn’t really think that Cho had much of anything he (or Harry) wanted, or was likely to in the near future. That and, I wouldn’t hesitate to call in a favour for arguably saving someone’s life, but it would be out of character for you to do so. It’s kind of a dick move putting a price on your help after the fact, especially if you weren’t actually asked to help, and just volunteered like a good Samaritan.
Cho nodded. “Okay. I’ll...see you around, Harry.”
Riddle, the bastard, let Harry take over again as she was leaving, so it was his awkward, “Um. Okay. Bye?” that followed her to the doors.
Thankfully, Madam Pomfrey flicked Cedric’s curtains back just a few seconds later. “Half an hour, Mister Potter. Then it will be time for his next dose, and he’ll need to sleep. Understood?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Half an hour wasn’t very long, but he also didn’t really think they had that much to talk about, especially since he and Ron hadn’t gotten a response yet to the letter they’d sent off to Romania.
Cedric looked much better than he had yesterday. He did look tired, but there was colour in his face and he was smiling, propped up on several pillows. A small mountain of gifts and candy was piled on his bedside table, enough to rival the pile of crap Harry had gotten after the Quirrell Incident.
“Hey, morning, Potter,” he said, his voice a pale imitation of his usual enthusiastic cheer. “I hear you saved my life.”
Harry shook his head. “Fleur Delacour, you know, the Beauxbatons champion? She was the one who kept your heart beating. I barely did anything, really.”
“Making sure that blood was actually getting to my brain wasn't nothing, Harry. Madam Pomfrey was very impressed. She said you reminded her of your mother out at the pitch, and all your analyses were spot-on. Don't sell yourself short.”
Harry wondered how Madam Pomfrey would feel knowing that it had actually been Riddle, a.k.a. young Voldemort, who reminded her of Lily — or, for that matter, that Lily had probably gotten her ability to work under pressure from him.
“Thanks, Cedric. But, um. Pomfrey also said I can only stay half an hour, so. Dragons?”
“Uh, yeah. So, we've been talking about it in Hufflepuff, and we think we should try to plan for the most difficult potential challenge — unless you found out more about what we actually have to do with the dragons?”
Harry shook his head. “I think about half of Gryffindor is trying to spy on anyone who might have more info for me, but nothing so far.”
Cedric nodded, all business. “In that case, I think we should be prepared to subdue the dragons. Without hurting them, if possible. That was the hardest possible challenge we could come up with. If it turns out they just want us to get past the dragon or even kill it, those should be easy if we can incapacitate it first.”
“Yeah, okay. Makes sense.”
“Well, that's the easy part. All the books we've found say it's impossible for a single wizard to incapacitate a dragon, especially without hurting it. It takes dozens of simultaneous stunners to take one out. We've been focusing mostly on looking for spells that can protect a person from dragonfire, since we figured those would be helpful no matter what.” And actually exist went unsaid.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione had found more or less the same thing. There were a few different shield charms that seemed like they should work, Harry had been practising them, just in case, but hopefully — if everything went to plan — he wouldn’t need them.
“Ron and I wrote to his brother, Charlie, who works with dragons in Romania. Hopefully he'll have some advice, but we're not betting on it.”
____“So we've been thinking outside the box. We aren't going to be able to knock out a dragon with standard charms. That just leaves performance magic, wish magic, and low ritual.”
“We only get to bring in our wands,” Cedric reminded him. “No instruments or potions. Though I don't know if there's a potion that would knock out a dragon, either. And I can't do wish magic. If you can, though, you should. That would be wicked, like second-coming-of-Merlin wicked.”
____“I was thinking of enchanting, actually, when I said low ritual. Not potions. How are you at conjuration?”
“Pretty good, but you can't conjure enchanted objects,” he reminded Harry.
And yes, Harry was familiar with Gamp’s Law, and the Exceptions, and Riddle’s argument that that particular exception was debatable. You don’t need to go off on that tangent again, he warned the voice in his head. He was pretty sure that wasn’t where Riddle was going with the question, anyway. If he couldn’t get Harry to do his plan for the First Task — the one he would use, if he was actually the Champion (or could defy the Narrator to do whatever he wanted in Harry’s body) — then he was going to try to get Cedric to do it.
____Yes, I am, because witchcraft is just as useful as wizardry and more people should appreciate that is a much better statement to make with the platform of the Tournament than I’m not happy to be here, fuck you all.
Maybe I’ll be over it enough to do your silly witchcraft idea next time, Harry conceded. He was sure Riddle would come up with a witchcraft plan for every single task. But right now, I’m really feeling I’m not happy to be here, fuck you all. Besides, fighting the Narrator isn’t easy. I’d rather keep it simple than try to focus on runes while that thing is trying to force me to run at the dragon with a sword or whatever stupid fucking thing it comes up with.
Riddle didn’t respond to that because they’d had this argument already, and he’d already conceded that Harry did have a point about the complexity thing.
____“You can conjure blocks of quartz or slates, though,” he told Cedric instead. “And enchant them in the arena. It wouldn't have to be anything too complex, just suspended, directed stunners or sleeping spells or whatever on a timer to go off simultaneously.”
“I...guess that would probably work,” Cedric said, mulling it over. “It'd be really freaking slow, but yeah, it would probably work. Maybe I’ll use that as a backup plan.”
____“I have a way to etch and activate the runes, if you’re not squeamish about blood,” Riddle offered.
Cedric’s eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. “Well that doesn’t sound incredibly sketchy or anything. How the heck would you know anything about blood magic, Harry?”
____“I know many things, Cedric,” Riddle said deliberately cryptically. Then he shrugged and admitted, “The witch Mags stays with over summers taught her. It’s dead easy.”
“Alright, let’s hear it,” Cedric said sceptically.
____“It’s an indirect contact transmutation spell using your own blood as a focus. You paint the runes in your own blood, imparting intent like you would if you were painting or carving them normally, and maintain contact with them like you would with a broom. The incantation is ‘adustulare’. It imparts the blood with properties similar to alkahest for approximately three seconds, and thereby burns the runes into the substrate, depth dependent on the energy you put into it.”
Cedric blinked at him. “Holy shite. Is that legal?”
____“We’re using I.C.W. laws for the Tournament, so using your own blood as a focus medium is legal, and inanimate-target transmutation spells are legal everywhere, just, you know, not popular.”
Harry had never heard of a transmutation spell before Mags asked how this spell actually worked, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Cedric apparently hadn’t, either. “Okay, but transfiguring anything into alkahest has to be illegal,” the prefect frowned.
____“Transfiguring it would be. Transmutation — temporarily altering the magical properties of an object — is legally distinct. The specific properties associated with alkahest aren’t illegal or controlled, only the substance itself and its production.”
Probably, Harry thought, because no one had considered that it was even possible to use wizardry to imitate alchemy and imbue the property of destroy anything this shite touches into blood or ink or anything else, much less that some teenager would come along and make a spell to do exactly that because he couldn’t be arsed to carve runes the hard way.
(Riddle didn’t comment, so Harry assumed that was exactly why he had invented the spell.)
“That still seems absurdly dangerous. If you’re using your own blood as the medium, isn’t there a chance you’ll accidentally transmute the blood that’s still in your body?”
Riddle raised one of Harry’s eyebrows at Cedric like he was being an idiot.
____He is. “It’s not fucking Fiendfyre, Cedric. Obviously the target of the spell is directed by your intent. If you don’t want to melt yourself, just...don’t want to melt yourself?”
You taught Mags a spell that could theoretically kill her if she fucks up the intent?! Riddle!
____Sirius taught her, actually, if you recall, and no, you would have to actually intend to target the blood in your body, it’s not a matter of weak/fuzzy intent default-targeting all of your blood. Honestly, that didn’t even occur to me when I was reifying the spell, because I’m not a fucking moron. It wasn’t a possibility, therefore the original spell-form is inclined to target spilled blood by default, if anything. “Look, if you don’t want to use the spell, don’t. Keep the option of conjuring a chisel and hammer as well as your blocks as a back-up plan, and I’ll let you know if Charlie has any ideas about charms we could use instead.”
“Are you going to use that spell? I really don’t think you should, Harry.”
____“It’s plan ‘B’,” Riddle admitted. He didn’t sound grudging, but Harry could feel his annoyance.
“What’s plan ‘A’?”
____“That would be telling, Cedric,” Riddle said teasingly, his annoyance still detectable only to Harry. “But I guarantee it’ll be a show-stopper. You better hope you don’t have to follow me,” he added, grinning.