Chapter 214: Four Men Sitting Still

 

The Durmstrang camp stood along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, three dozen black tents in rows on ground that had been flattened for them, with a ward laid round the whole of it that hummed faintly against the skin.

It was built to keep strangers out, and it had nothing to say about a student of the school walking in with his head down.

He went along the gravel at the pace of a boy sent for something he is in no hurry to fetch, shoulders rounded the way Antonov carried his, eyes on the ground three feet ahead. Two of the patrol passed him. One looked at him for as long as it takes to decide a thing is furniture, and neither said a word.

He had worked out where he was going from the afternoon: the four had arrived together and left together, and boys like that are quartered apart from everybody else. That meant the inner side of the camp, back against the treeline.

A hundred yards in he found it: a tent twice the size of the others with no guard at the flap and a thin cold thread of magic running round the seams of it.

He came at it from the side under the shadow of the forest, got two fingers into the join of the canvas, and eased it open an inch.

What he saw stopped the breath in him.

Krum, Volodya, Vasiliev and Sokolov were sitting in a row on four folding chairs with their backs straight and their hands on their knees.

They were not talking. They were not doing anything whatever. They were looking at a patch of trodden grass some four feet in front of them, all four of them at the same patch, and there was nothing whatever in any of the four faces. No temper left over from the afternoon, no sulking about a fight that had been broken up, and not even the small constant fidgeting a living body does without being asked.

Nine hours ago Krum had been throwing Stupefy at his head with his teeth bared.

He made himself look properly and found nothing: no residue of the Dark Arts anywhere in that tent, no cold, nothing that would have shown on any instrument the Ministry owned. Whatever had been done to those four had not been done tonight, it left no marks, and they were sitting there like tools put back on a rack.

He lowered the canvas and went.

The main tent stood at the centre of the camp with a ward on it heavy enough to feel from ten feet away, which was in itself worth knowing, because a man who wards his own bedroom inside his own camp is not afraid of the students.

Edward came round the back of it, kept downwind, and put the side of his head against the canvas.

Karkaroff was walking. Six paces and turn, six paces and turn, and the footfalls were heavy and out of rhythm with each other, and under them ran a voice that Edward had heard across a lake calling him a liar and did not recognise now.

"No. No, it is not far enough. They will come to it eventually, they always come to it -" A chair went over somewhere and was not picked up. "Where, then. Not the north, the north is finished, they have people in the north. Egypt. Egypt is a long way and nobody -"

The pacing stopped and started again faster.

"It failed. The whole of it failed, and the mark has not stopped burning since. He knows. He will know it was arranged and he will know whose hand was in it, and there is no accounting I can give him that he will take -"

"After the third task. The moment it is over, the same night, and not one hour after -"

Edward stayed against the canvas until it had run round twice more.

There was not one word in it about a plan, nothing about the champions, nothing that a man arranging something says to himself when he is alone and pleased with it. There was a frightened man working out which country to run to, and what frightened him was neither the Ministry nor Dumbledore.

Karkaroff was not standing behind any of this. Karkaroff was standing in front of it with his back to it, trying not to be noticed.

Edward went out of the camp the way he had come in, low along the line of the tents, and was clear of the ward with eleven minutes left on the hour.

The change came back over him on the path with his own height arriving in a rush, and he went into the Shrieking Shack as himself.

"Well?" Sirius had him by the arm before the door was shut.

Edward sat down on the crate and found that his hands wanted something to do, so he put them on his knees.

"They are all wrong, and they are wrong in two completely different ways, and that is the part I cannot get past." He took a moment over it. "The four champions are in a tent together, sitting in a row on chairs, staring at the ground. No speech, no movement, nothing behind the face. This afternoon they fought like something rabid and tonight there is nobody home. And there is no trace of the Dark Arts anywhere near them."

Lupin had gone very still. "And Karkaroff?"

"Karkaroff is terrified." Edward gave them the pacing and the muttering as closely as he could. "Where can I hide, they will find me, Egypt. The attack failed. And the mark has not stopped burning."

Sirius's face changed on the word. "That is the Dark Mark, and it burns when he calls. Which means he is calling, and that he is far enough along to be answered." He looked at Lupin. "We assumed the man had a plan. He has a summons."

"Then Karkaroff is not the one holding those four." Lupin was working it as he spoke. "Which leaves somebody who can get into a warded camp, hold four wizards indefinitely without leaving residue, and do it without the headmaster of their own school knowing it is being done under his roof."

"It was the same as the alley." Edward looked up. "The two men in London had exactly that look before they moved. The Imperius Curse does that to the eyes."

"It does, and it will not do it for a fortnight." Lupin shook his head. "The Imperius has to be held. To keep four of them under it, all day and all night, through lessons and meals and a brawl, either the caster is standing close enough to keep his hand on them -"

"Or something is doing the holding for him." Edward finished it. "Which means he is in the castle. Somebody who can cast it, who nobody has noticed in eight months, and who Karkaroff does not know is there."

"Then we go to Dumbledore tonight." Sirius was already halfway to his feet.

"No," Lupin said flatly, which was rare enough that Sirius stopped. "We have a boy's account of four students sitting quietly in a tent and a frightened man talking to himself. There is not one thing in that a court would take. And a long Imperius of that kind can almost certainly be lifted at a distance. The moment we move openly, whoever is holding them lets go, those four wake up remembering nothing, and every thread we have burns in the same minute." He met Sirius's eye. "Dumbledore cannot investigate anything quietly. Everything he does is watched, and that is precisely why they chose to do this here."

 

Edward nodded slowly. "Then we watch, and we do not touch. Whoever went to this much trouble did not do it for a joint History of Magic lesson. They did it for the third task."

"So we split it." Sirius had come back down to the crate opposite. "Remus and I keep the camp and see whether anybody comes to it at night. You warn Harry, without telling him why, and stay near enough to him during the task that the two of you can cover each other. If those four turn on you in there, you turn on them together and you do it immediately."

"And you will be careful with the rest of it." Lupin was not finished. "If Krum comes at you during the third task, that is not Krum, and you will not get anywhere by pulling your strike to spare a boy who is not in there. Your own safety comes ahead of his."

Edward said he understood, and meant most of it.

He was thinking about Karkaroff in that tent, and that a man who is running is a man with something to trade, and that the only person in this whole arrangement frightened enough to talk was the one nobody had thought worth asking.