"I'm not sure about this duel," Cedric said with a hushed tone to Harry as he looked down at the arena with worry.
Harry remembered what Cedric had muttered and looked at him with confusion. "Why? Sure, Daphne is a Slytherin, but I don't think she is like Malfoy and the rest of his lot." Harry said with a shrug, he knew that Susan was not exactly the duelling type, but he was sure this fight would not end badly for either of them.
"I would agree with you, Harry, but Susan's aunt and Daphne's family have...history with one another, and is not one of love and happiness," Harry was surprised to hear that; he knew Susan's aunt was this very dangerous witch, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcment, Nymphadora's Boss, and he knew from what he had heard that Amelia was solely resposible for quite a few deaths of Death Eaters when the war started between Voldemort, and His Death Eaters against the Light Side. But he had never thought that Daphne and Susan had any kind of hostility towards one another. He had been in Hogwarts for three full years now, and had known Susan for two of them; he never saw any hostility between them. Maybe he just hadn't noticed. Before Harry could ask for more information, the duel started.
The duel began with a flash of light.
Susan moved first, her wand snapping forward with more confidence than Harry had expected. "Rictusempra!" A jet of pink light streaked across the platform toward Daphne, who sidestepped it easily.
"Tickling Charm," Cedric observed from beside Harry. "Interesting choice."
Harry said nothing. He wanted Susan to win. But watching her open with Rictusempra against someone like Daphne Greengrass felt like watching someone bring a butter knife to a sword fight.
Susan wasn't weak. Harry knew that. She was smart, resourceful, and braver than most people gave her credit for. But dueling required a particular kind of aggression, a willingness to hurt, and Susan had never been comfortable with hurting people. It was one of the things Harry liked about her. It was also the thing that might cost her this match.
Daphne didn't waste time with pleasantries. Her wand carved a sharp downward arc. "Nebula Glacialis!" A rolling wave of pale blue fog erupted from its tip. The fog spread across the platform like a living thing, crawling toward Susan. Where it touched the stone surface, frost crystals bloomed like ice flowers. The temperature in the arena dropped noticeably, even in the stands. Harry felt the chill bite through his robes.
"Nebula Glacialis," Luna murmured beside him, sounding impressed. "That's fifth-year material at least."
Susan's eyes widened as the freezing fog rushed toward her, but she didn't panic. Her wand thrust forward. "Incendio Maxima!" A torrent of orange flame poured out, meeting the fog head-on. Fire and ice collided in a hissing, spitting explosion of steam that billowed upward in a massive white cloud, completely obscuring both duelists from view.
The crowd gasped collectively. The containment barrier around the arena shimmered as it caught the expanding steam, holding it within the platform's boundaries like an invisible bowl. The entire dueling surface became a white void, neither combatant visible to the audience.
"Can't see a thing," Cedric muttered, craning his neck forward.
Harry's hand drifted to his own wand instinctively, even though he wasn't the one fighting.
Through the steam, they could hear spells being exchanged. Flashes of colored light pierced the white cloud like lightning through thunderheads. Red, blue, gold, each burst illuminating the fog for a fraction of a second before being swallowed again.
Then Daphne's voice rang out through the steam. "Condenso!" The steam shuddered, then began collapsing inward. The massive cloud condensed rapidly, water droplets forming from the suspended moisture and falling to the platform like sudden rain. Within seconds, the steam was gone, replaced by a wet, glistening surface and two soaked duelists glaring at each other from opposite ends of the platform. Well, only one was glaring.
"Clever," Harry admitted grudgingly. Daphne had turned their combined mess into nothing, clearing her own line of sight while leaving the platform dangerously slick.
Susan pressed forward before the water had even finished falling. Her wand moved in rapid succession, spell after spell flying across the platform. "Locomotor Wibbly!" A Jelly-Legs Jinx. "Flipendo!" A Knockback Jinx. "Rictusempra!" Another Tickling Charm. "Titubatio!" A Tripping Hex. "Vespertilio Mucosa!" A Bat-Bogey Hex. The barrage was impressive in volume if not in lethality. None of the spells were designed to genuinely harm Daphne. Every single one was meant to incapacitate, to disable, to end the fight without causing real injury.
Daphne dodged most of them; she even looked bored. Where Susan threw spells like someone trying to overwhelm through quantity, Daphne moved like someone who had been taught that quality mattered more.
But one got through.
The Tickling Charm caught Daphne across the ribs, and her composure cracked. A giggle escaped her lips. Harry was sure this was a good opening.
Then Daphne pressed her own wand against her side and muttered "Finite Incantatem." The laughter cut off like a faucet being turned off. Her expression reset to cold indifference in the span of a heartbeat, and when she looked at Susan again, there was something almost pitying in her green eyes.
"Really, Bones?" Daphne's voice carried across the platform. "Tickling Charms? That's your strategy?"
Susan's jaw tightened, but she held her ground.
Daphne twirled her wand between her fingers, almost lazily. "You're not going to win a duel by making me giggle. This isn't a playground. You should know better than anyone that laughter doesn't stop the monsters."
Something changed in Susan's face.
The blood drained from her cheeks so fast, Harry feared she might lose consciousness. Her eyes went wide, then something very rare to see in Susan's face, anger.
Harry wondered what Susan would do now, it was clear Daphne had pushed the wrong buttons, and he saw as she moved her wand to use a spell, but that wand movement was very familiar to Harry.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Silver light exploded from her wand tip. A badger burst forth, its silver form solid and bright as it charged across the platform. The crowd erupted in shocked murmurs. A fourth-year casting a corporeal Patronus was impressive by any standard. Harry knew firsthand how difficult the spell was, how much emotional clarity it demanded.
But even as he felt a surge of pride for Susan, confusion quickly followed. A Patronus was brilliant magic, but it was designed to repel Dementors and Lethifolds and to send messages. Against a human opponent in a regulated duel, it was essentially useless. A very pretty, very impressive waste of energy.
Daphne clearly thought the same thing. She watched the silver badger with one eyebrow raised, her wand still held at the ready, but her posture relaxed.
"Impressive parlor trick, Bones," Daphne called out, her tone bored. "I may be cold, but I'm not a Dementor. What exactly is your little badger going to do? Nuzzle me into submission?"
A few people in the Slytherin section laughed.
Susan's response was to cast again, but this time her wand pointed not at Daphne but at her own Patronus.
"Gaudia Resonare!"
The silver badger shuddered, its form rippling like a reflection in disturbed water. The color shifted, silver bleeding into gold and then into a brilliant, almost blinding yellow. The Patronus threw back its head and opened its mouth.
It laughed.
The Patronus laughed, and the laughter was not a normal sound. Harry felt a sudden rush of warmth. Suddenly, memories appeared before his eyes.
Hagrid's enormous hand, holding out an envelope with green ink. The gamekeeper's beetle-black eyes shining with kindness as he said the words that changed everything. "Yer a wizard, Harry."
The Sorting Hat's voice booming across the Great Hall. "RAVENCLAW!" The blue and bronze table erupting. A new home. A place where he belonged.
Professor Flitwick's face, beaming up at him from behind the desk. "Mr. Potter, I believe we've found Ravenclaw's new Seeker." The tiny professor practically vibrating with excitement.
Second year. Cedric Diggory cornering him in an empty corridor after the Chamber of Secrets attacks had started. The older boy's face fierce and frightened. "Was it you? Tell me the truth, Potter. Are you behind this?" Harry had told the truth; he had nothing to do with it, and Cedric had believed him. That had been the beginning.
Luna Lovegood, barefoot in a third-floor corridor, her shoes missing again. "Hello. You have very kind eyes. Would you help me find my things? The Nargles have been busy." Harry had helped. He'd found every shoe, every book, every stolen belonging, and he'd hexed the people responsible.
Sirius. Sirius kneeling in front of him in a dusty room in the Shrieking Shack, his eyes wild and desperate and full of a love that twelve years of Azkaban hadn't managed to kill. "You're never going back to the Dursleys, Harry. Never. I swear it on my life."
A bathroom. Second year. The sound of someone crying. Susan Bones curled against the wall, her face buried in her knees, her whole body shaking. Harry sitting down beside her without a word, without asking why, just being there. She'd never told him why she was crying that day. He'd never asked.
And then, very strangely, Fleur. The way she had stepped out of that carriage, the way she had looked at him when he had directly challenged her in the Ravenclaw Common Room. Her blue eyes flashed with anger and intrigue.
Harry blinked. That last memory surprised him. Why did this memory appear?
He shook himself free of the golden haze and looked around the arena. The effect of Susan's modified Patronus was written across hundreds of faces. Students were smiling, most of them with the soft, distant expression of people reliving their happiest moments. Some were wiping their eyes. Others were laughing quietly.
Harry's gaze found the Beauxbatons section. Fleur sat among her classmates, and for the first time since Harry had known her, her mask was gone. She was smiling. Not the sharp, competitive smile she wore like armor, not the practiced, polite curve she gave to people she tolerated. A real smile. Almost vulnerable. Whatever memory Susan's spell had conjured for her, it had reached past every wall Fleur had built.
Something about seeing her like that made Harry's heart beat faster. Suddenly, she blinked, and she was back again. The smile turned polite again. Harry noticed a look of confusion written on her face, and her eyes turned to look at him. Green met Blue, and the two looked away from one another.
But then his eyes caught something else, something wrong. Not everyone was smiling.
Several students in the stands were frowning deeply, their expressions twisted with discomfort rather than joy. A Durmstrang sixth-year had his head in his hands. Two Slytherin fifth-years looked physically ill.
And Viktor Krum was bleeding.
A thin line of dark blood trickled from Krum's left nostril, running down his upper lip and dripping onto his fur-lined collar. The Bulgarian Seeker's face was contorted in what looked like pain, his heavy brows drawn together, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles stood out beneath his skin. He wasn't smiling. He looked like someone had reached inside him and twisted.
"Bloody hell," Cedric whispered, having noticed the same thing. "What's happening to him?"
Harry could not understand. This spell that Susan had performed caused him to experience happy memories, and from the smiling faces of many students, it seemed to have been the case for many of them, so why was Krum bleeding?
Harry's gaze snapped back to the platform.
Daphne Greengrass was not smiling either.
She stood rigid on the platform, her wand arm trembling at her side. Her face had lost all color, gone from its usual pale composure to something approaching gray. A thin trail of blood ran from her nose to her chin, a mirror of Krum's condition. Her green eyes were wide, unfocused, staring at the laughing golden Patronus with an expression of someone being forced to look at the sun.
The spell had hit her hardest of all, and whatever it had found inside Daphne Greengrass, it wasn't happiness.
Susan saw her opening. Her wand thrust forward, and a blast of concussive force shot across the platform. "Depulso!"
The Banishing Charm screamed toward Daphne, aimed perfectly to catch her center mass and send her flying off the platform's edge. It was a clean shot, and Harry knew for certain that Susan would win this fight.
Daphne moved.
Even bleeding, even shaken, even with whatever Susan's spell had done to her still echoing through her body, Daphne's reflexes saved her. She threw herself sideways, the Banishing Charm blasting through the space she'd occupied a fraction of a second earlier. The dodge was ugly, graceless, nothing like her earlier moves, but it worked.
The golden Patronus flickered and faded. Susan's concentration had broken when she shifted to offense, and the modified spell couldn't sustain itself without her full focus. The warm glow dissipated from the arena like a dream evaporating in morning light.
In the stands, smiles faded. Krum wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, his expression dark and unreadable.
Daphne straightened slowly, wiping her own blood away with the sleeve of her robe. Something had shifted in her expression. The cold indifference was gone. What replaced it was colder still.
Her wand slashed downward. "Glacius!"
The Freezing Charm didn't aim for Susan. It hit the platform floor, spreading outward from the point of impact in a rapid crystalline expansion. The stone surface, still wet from the earlier steam, froze instantly. Water became ice, coating the entire platform like a cold blanket.
Susan, already wet from the same steam, didn't stand a chance. The cold hit her like a wall. Frost crawled up her robes, her arms, her wand hand. Her boots locked to the icy surface. Her movements became stiff, sluggish, her fingers losing dexterity as the cold sapped warmth and will alike.
Harry's stomach dropped. "It's over."
"She can still break free," Cedric shouted.
Several Hufflepuffs started shouting. "Move Sussy." "Beat her ass, Bones, you can do it." "Melt that bitch." one shouted, earning looks from the others.
Susan struggled against the ice, trying to raise her wand for a counter-charm, but she could hardly move. The Freezing Charm hadn't just frozen the floor. The residual water on Susan's clothes and skin had frozen too, turning her into a half-encased statue of frost and desperation.
Daphne walked toward her across the ice. She stopped ten feet from Susan, close enough to be heard without shouting.
"You know what your problem is, Bones?" Daphne's voice was quiet now, stripped of performance. "You think happiness is a weapon. You think good feelings and warm memories can protect you."
Susan glared at her through the frost. "Don't."
Daphne tilted her head, studying Susan like an insect pinned to a board. "Your parents thought the same thing, didn't they?"
The arena went quiet. Harry glared at Greengrass. How dare she?!
"All that happiness, all that hope, and they still ended up in the ground."
Harry was on his feet before he realized he'd moved. Cedric grabbed his arm, holding him back, but Harry could feel the older boy shaking with his own fury.
"That's crossing a line," Cedric hissed.
In the Hufflepuff section, students were standing, their faces twisted with outrage. Several were shouting, though the containment barrier muffled their words. Hannah Abbott was openly crying.
Susan's face crumpled. Not with defeat, but pain unlike Harry had ever seen before.
Daphne raised her wand. "Depulso."
The Banishing Charm hit Susan in the chest. The ice encasing her shattered on impact, fragments scattering like broken glass, and Susan flew backward off the platform's edge. She sailed through the air and hit the ground below.
The magical detection wards flared. A crystalline chime rang out across the arena.
"DAPHNE GREENGRASS WINS!" Bagman's amplified voice boomed with excitement.
The Slytherin section erupted. Green and silver banners waved. Students stamped their feet and chanted Daphne's name, celebrating the win. Daphne raised her chin, accepting the applause with the same cold composure she'd worn throughout the match.
Harry didn't wait.
He was moving down the stands before the cheering had fully started, taking steps two at a time. Cedric was right behind him. Behind them both, a tide of Hufflepuff students in yellow and black surged from their section, all of them were furious.
They reached the ground level where Madam Pomfrey was already attending to Susan. The mediwitch had removed the remaining frost with quick warming charms and was running diagnostic spells over Susan's shivering form.
Susan sat on the grass, wrapped in a conjured blanket. She stared at the ground, her Patronus-casting hand still trembling.
"Susan." Harry knelt beside her. "Hey. Look at me."
She didn't look up. "I lost."
"That spell you did," Harry said firmly. "The modified Patronus. That was extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it."
Susan's laugh was small and bitter. "A lot of good it did."
"It made the entire arena remember why they're happy to be alive," Harry said. "That's not nothing. That's not even close to nothing."
Cedric crouched on Susan's other side. "He's right. You showed everyone in this arena something they'll remember for a long time. Greengrass might have won the match, but she didn't win the way anyone will want to remember."
Susan pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and said nothing.
Harry stood and turned toward the platform, where Daphne was descending the enchanted stairs. She looked composed, untouchable, the blood from her nose already cleaned away.
Harry walked directly into her path.
Daphne stopped, her ice blue eyes meeting his without flinching. Up close, Harry could see that Susan's patronus had affected her more than she wanted to show. Whatever it was that she had seen, she hadn't forgotten it yet.
Harry didn't care.
"Enjoy your win, Greengrass." He told her with a very calm voice, he wasn't one to shout in anger, that was the job of a Gryffindor. "Keep winning until you face me."
Daphne's expression didn't change, instead she smiled a little. "Is that supposed to be a threat, Potter?"
"It's a promise."
"How touching. The noble hero, defending the fallen maiden." Daphne's lip curled. "I won. Fairly, within the rules. It's not my fault your friend can't handle the pressure. Some people simply aren't made for competition. They're too soft, too emotional, too busy casting happiness spells to remember they're in a fight."
"You brought up her dead parents," Harry said flatly, keeping his voice low enough only for her to hear. "In front of the entire school."
"I stated facts." Daphne's chin lifted. "If people can't handle the truth about the world they live in, that's their weakness, not my cruelty. I didn't break any rules. I didn't cast anything forbidden. I won, and I refuse to apologize for winning."
Harry leaned slightly closer, not threatening, just making sure she heard every word. "There's winning and there's what you did. You knew exactly what those words would do to her, but you didn't care."
"Think whatever makes you feel righteous, Potter." Daphne stepped around him. "I'll be in the next round. Will you?"
She walked away toward the Slytherin section without looking back, her blonde hair swinging with each step.
Cedric appeared at Harry's shoulder. "Forget her. Susan needs us right now."
Harry nodded, forcing the anger down into the cold place where he stored things he'd deal with later. He turned back toward Susan, who was now being helped to her feet by two medical assistants. Hannah Abbott had broken through from the Hufflepuff group and was holding Susan's hand, her own cheeks streaked with tears.
"We'll walk you to the hospital wing," Harry told Susan.
Susan shook her head. "I'm fine. Just cold."
"You're not fine, and that's allowed," Luna said quietly. Harry hadn't noticed her arrive, but there she was, standing beside the medical assistants. "Being hurt by cruelty doesn't make you weak. It makes you human. The ones who aren't hurt by it are the ones we should worry about."
Susan's composure wobbled at that, her lower lip trembling, but she held it together. The medical assistants guided her toward the arena exit, Hannah on one side, a Hufflepuff prefect on the other. A small army of yellow and black followed, closing ranks around their wounded member. Eventually, they had to come back; the rounds were not over yet.
Harry watched them go. Cedric stood beside him.
"She'll be alright," Cedric said with absolute certainty. "Trust me, I know Sussy, and she might be soft, but trust me, she is stronger than even me."
Harry couldn't help but feel that Cedric knew more about this than he was letting on.
Before Harry could respond, the Sorting Hat's voice rang out across the arena.
"SECOND DUEL OF THE RACE."
Harry's stomach tightened. He still had his own match coming. With this many competitors, it could be hours before his name was called.
"HARRY POTTER. FOURTH YEAR. RAVENCLAW. HOGWARTS."
The Ravenclaw Section erupted like a volcano. Cheers, boos, excited whispers, it all merged into a wall of sound that hit Harry. His name echoed off the arena walls. Harry was a little surprised; all of them seemed to have forgotten that they still were supposed to hate him for being the Fourth Champion of Hogwarts. Sure, some Ravenclaws had apologised, but he hadn't expected all of them to start shouting his name, not just them; some Gryffindors were shouting his name too, and maybe three Hufflepuffs.
Cedric clapped his shoulder. "Speak of the devil."
Harry's heart hammered. He began walking toward the platform, his wand already in his hand, all his anger turned into calmness. The crowd noise faded as he entered that quiet place inside himself where dueling lived, where everything was stripped down to wand and will and the distance between him and whoever stood on the other end.
"AGAINST..."
The Hat paused. It definitely had a sense for drama.
"ROGER DAVIES. SEVENTH YEAR. RAVENCLAW. HOGWARTS."