Chapter 167 — The Wrong Question

Krum and Fleur stood beside a cabinet, looking at a silver cup. They turned when I entered, and Fleur’s surprise sharpened as she recognised me.

‘Oswald? What are you doing here?’ she asked. Krum looked between us, and she explained that we had met and that I was a fourth year.

‘Waiting for someone to explain it,’ I answered. Beyond the doors the voices were rising again, which did not suggest an explanation was approaching in particularly good order.

Fleur said there must be a mistake. I had begun telling her how little success that argument had achieved when Dumbledore entered with Crouch, followed by McGonagall, Snape, Moody and the visiting Heads. There was considerably more authority in the room than answers.

Crouch laid the parchment on a clear part of the table and asked whether I had submitted my name. I said no. Had I arranged for someone else to do it, or knowingly helped an attempt to evade the Age Line?

‘No,’ I repeated. ‘I watched Fred and George get thrown out of it. I didn’t help them.’ He took out a quill, and I leaned towards the table. ‘I want all three answers recorded.’

He assured me they were being recorded. My name lay between us as something other people could point at while asking what I had done, and I reminded him it was not my handwriting.

‘That does not establish who placed it in the Goblet,’ he said. The quill remained above his notes.

‘I know. I’m giving you something to check.’ McGonagall moved closer and said that they would, while Fleur looked from the name to Dumbledore.

She asked whether I was Hogwarts’ champion. When he confirmed that mine was the name produced, she objected that I was too young. I told her we had reached that part already, hearing the sharpness in my voice without troubling to remove it.

‘We were told there were rules,’ she said. ‘If he has found a way to cheat them—’

‘I haven’t.’ I turned towards her as she asked how I could be standing there. ‘That’s the question I want answered.’

Her glance went to my pouch. She began objecting to being expected to accept that a boy could simply appear, and I snapped her name. She lifted her chin, reminding me that I had entered a competition I should not be in.

I denied entering again. She called that a convenient explanation for a cheat, and my hand moved before I had decided what an answer ought to accomplish.

An empty brass bracket stood beside the cabinet behind her. I had noticed it on entering; now I threw a prepared piece towards it and spoke Reducto. Metal split with a hard crack, and Fleur flinched aside.

McGonagall said my name as Fleur’s wand rose. My second piece was already in my hand. I threw it towards the wand and called Expelliarmus, sending it clear of her fingers as Maxime reached her.

I wanted her to stop looking at me as something she could dismiss. Now her expression was entirely different, but I still threw a third piece into the clear space before me and spoke Incendio. A short flame rose; McGonagall extinguished it almost at once, and Snape caught my wrist before I reached towards the pouch again.

‘Enough,’ he said. The blackened scrap settled onto the floor, and the silence which followed was worse than the shouting outside.

McGonagall stood very still. ‘You have attacked another student in front of us,’ she said. ‘Ten points from Gryffindor. Keep your hands where I can see them.’

Snape released my wrist only after I lowered both hands. Maxime retrieved Fleur’s wand and asked whether she was hurt. Fleur shook her head, but kept watching me as the wand returned to her grasp.

I had not needed an Unforgivable Curse to do something viciously stupid. Three familiar spells had served perfectly well. The bracket hung crookedly behind her; I had aimed away from her body, but she had no reason to know that, and broken metal did not respect my intention.

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‘I shouldn’t have cast those spells,’ I said. My voice sounded rough. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You could have hit me.’ Fleur did not move towards me or lower her wand. I agreed, forcing myself to leave the answer there instead of explaining how accurately I had meant to frighten her.

McGonagall looked towards the damage. Snape stayed beside me while Krum examined the three spent pieces and asked whether I had done that without a wand. I explained that the paper was prepared, my hands beginning to shake now the anger had nothing immediate to do.

‘The boy they call the Wandless One?’ Madame Maxime asked, studying my pouch. I looked up at the unfamiliar title, and she said there had been accounts.

‘His method is unusual,’ McGonagall said. ‘His responsibility for using it is not.’

That ended the discussion more effectively than anything I could have said. Crouch put down his quill and insisted that we return to the submission. I was tired of the name on the table, and more tired of having given the people outside something real to condemn.

‘I can take Veritaserum,’ I offered. Snape turned his head towards me at once.

‘You are angry, Mercer. A poor time to volunteer access to everything you remember.’ I told him I wanted them to know I had not done it, and his expression remained unchanged. ‘A truth potion isn’t an investigator. It cannot reveal what you never knew, and what it produces is not free of every possible interference.’

I could still answer the question, I argued. He reminded me that I already had, then told Dumbledore a fresh batch would take about a month to prepare. Crouch made an impatient movement, observing that this would not resolve the evening. Snape appeared satisfied that his point had arrived.

Moody moved forward to ask who benefited from entering me. Talent did not mean I could confound the Goblet, he said, and his blue eye travelled towards Karkaroff.

‘You sound certain about how it might be done,’ Karkaroff remarked. Moody turned towards him, leaning on his stick.

‘My work required me to consider how Dark wizards thought.’ He moved closer, and Karkaroff’s smile disappeared. ‘I expect you remember.’

Dumbledore stepped between them, refusing to add old quarrels to the discussion. I looked at the parchment while they fell silent. There was an answer so obvious that I could not believe I was still waiting for somebody to suggest it.

‘Choose again,’ I said. Every face turned towards me. ‘You have candidates who entered and meet the age requirement. Set this aside and choose again.’

Moody shook his head. ‘It isn’t a raffle, Mercer. The selection has magic binding it.’

I asked whether it could bind a person who had never agreed. Crouch answered that the regulations required selected champions to undertake the competition, and I felt my jaw tighten.

‘That isn’t what I asked,’ I said. McGonagall agreed, coming to stand beside the table as Crouch looked towards Dumbledore.

He had no provision allowing him to substitute another candidate, he explained. The age condition governed entries; the Goblet had now made a selection. This time I kept my hands still while I listened.

‘Someone has broken your procedure,’ I said. ‘Why does that become my obligation?’

For a moment nobody answered. Dumbledore asked Crouch to have the binding examined, specifically what happened when a name was submitted without its owner’s knowledge. Crouch agreed to refer the question, but until a determination said otherwise, I remained Hogwarts’ champion.

‘I’m supposed to prepare to risk my life while you decide whether you could put me there?’ I asked. Dumbledore said my name, and I turned towards him. ‘That is what he said.’

He did not contradict me. The submission and the commitment would be investigated, he promised; I would not be expected to deal with either alone. I wanted something less carefully worded, but there was another person who needed more than whatever the newspapers chose to report.

‘Emma needs to know tonight,’ I said. ‘I want her to have my account too. That I didn’t enter, asked you to choose someone else and was refused.’

Crouch disliked the last word enough for it to show. I held his gaze while Dumbledore agreed that I could send my own account and promised the school would tell Emma what it knew. McGonagall said she would see it done.

The parchment remained on the table. I had not expected them to solve the mystery instantly, but I had expected the difference between volunteering and having someone write my name to matter more than it seemed to.

‘A thousand Galleons,’ I said. Fleur glanced towards me. ‘For three tasks you keep saying can kill us. An astonishingly poor bargain to make on someone else’s behalf.’

Krum looked at the name again. He remembered Mercer among the sponsors at the World Cup and concluded, after I confirmed it, that I did not need the prize.

‘That isn’t the only reason I didn’t volunteer.’ He considered my answer without replying, and Maxime drew Fleur closer as Dumbledore began explaining where further instructions would be given.

I listened because I needed to know what they meant to do. Listening felt very different from agreeing. When the Headmaster paused, I asked to leave, and he permitted it, saying that McGonagall would speak to me again before the evening ended.

Fleur still held her wand. ‘I meant the apology,’ I told her before moving towards the door.

‘Then remember it before you reach for another piece of paper,’ she answered. There was nothing she needed to hear from me, so I passed Snape with my hands empty.