Chapter 202: The Rules Do Not Forbid It

The hour ran out and the barrier went with it, the pale blue thinning off the water like smoke off a dead fire, and the lake opened again.

Figures came up all across the bay and made for the bank, and it was possible to read the whole morning off their faces before any of them had said a word.

Harry got both hands on the grass, hauled himself out, and started shouting before he was properly on his feet.

"That was not a competition. That was a stitch-up."

His glasses had gone crooked and he did not touch them. He was soaked through with his robes hanging off him, and the only thing in his hand was an empty pouch.

Cedric came ashore behind him with weed plastered across one cheek and an expression nobody at Hogwarts had seen on him before.

"The Durmstrang four never separated once," he said. "Not once in the whole hour. Krum sat in the middle picking the fragments up at his leisure and the other three worked the ring around him. Impedimenta and Incarcerous, over and over, across two thirds of the lake floor. We could not get inside it. Anybody who tried was put on the ground before he got near enough to look."

Adeline came up the shingle white to the lips and unsteady on her feet, with one fragment held so hard her knuckles had gone the same colour as her face.

"I went at it from the flank." Her voice was not entirely under her control, and it was temper as much as cold. "Vasiliev put three Impedimentas into me and drove me back off the shelf, and then Sokolov used a Cutting Curse and I very nearly went into the deep current sideways. They will call it self-defence. It is not defence, it is a fence."

The rest came ashore around them. Fleur Delacour shook the water out of her hair with two fragments in her fist and a face like the far side of winter.

"Two. Between four of us we found two, because everywhere the pieces actually were had four Durmstrang champions standing across it in a line," she said toward the platform rather than to anyone near her. "That is not a contest."

Margot Dupont and Elodie Lemair and Lena Moreau were nodding behind her before she had finished.

The Durmstrang four came out last and unhurried. Krum had a cloth bag that hung heavily and clinked when he moved it, and the look on him was not triumph so much as a man confirming an expectation. Vasiliev, Sokolov and Petrov came up behind him and arranged themselves without being told to, and every one of the three was enjoying himself.

"There is nothing in the rules against working together." Krum's English was slow and entirely unbothered, and he lifted the bag so that the sound of it carried. "We used the method that worked. If the method is against the spirit of the thing, then somebody should have written the rules better."

"You made a wall out of four people and drove everyone else off." Harry had gone red to the ears. "That is not a method. That is four of you on one of anybody."

"Mr. Potter, mind how you speak." Karkaroff had come down off the platform very quickly for a man in that much fur, and he was smiling with the lower half of his face only. "My champions demonstrated teamwork and the sensible use of what was in front of them. Is it envy that Hogwarts teaches, or is it simply that you have not been beaten before and find you dislike it?"

Draco was on his feet before Edward could put a hand out, and he crossed the grass and stood in front of Edward so that Karkaroff had to look at him instead.

"Envy," he said as though holding the word away from himself. "We are to envy a school that wins by standing on the board so nobody else can reach it. Is that the Durmstrang principle, Professor? That the result is the only part that counts? It would explain a great deal about what comes out of your castle."

"Mr. Malfoy." Professor McGonagall's voice cracked across the bank, and her brows had come down hard, and it was extremely clear that she was rebuking the manner and not one word of the substance.

After that the bank stopped being orderly. Hogwarts and Beauxbatons had found each other on one side of the argument and Durmstrang were shouting back from the other, the staff were trying to get between them, and it was getting louder rather than quieter.

"Quiet."

Dumbledore did not raise his voice, and it went through the noise as though the noise had been asked to step aside. The bank fell silent in a moment and every face on it turned.

He came down off the platform without hurrying, and the low sun put silver along his beard, and he stopped in front of Krum.

"Viktor. The Hogwarts and Beauxbatons champions say that your four held the greater part of the search area by force and prevented the rest from looking. Is that a fair account of the morning?"

Krum did not shift his feet and did not drop his eyes.

"Yes, Professor. And as I have said, the rules permit it. We did what won the task."

"The Triwizard Tournament examines the whole of a champion," Karkaroff put in immediately. "Planning. Cooperation. Adapting to circumstances. My students understood the conditions better than anybody else in the water, which is not cheating. It is intelligence."

Madame Maxime made a sound that carried, and came forward, and the platform seemed smaller for it.

"Intelligence." She let the word sit. "I call it low cunning. It destroys the balance the tournament was built on, and had I known that this is what would be allowed, Beauxbatons would not have crossed the Channel for it."

Dumbledore said nothing for some time. His fingers moved against the side of his wand while he weighed it, and nobody on that bank made a sound.

"Read as it is written," he said at last, and there was real regret somewhere under it, "the rule does not forbid what was done. The scores from this task stand."

Durmstrang went up like a firework. From the Hogwarts and Beauxbatons side came a long ugly noise of disagreement, and Harry actually stamped, and Cedric looked at the grass.

"However." Dumbledore raised one hand and had them again. "From the third task onward the rule will read differently, and I will see it written before tonight. Coordinated action intended to monopolise a search area, or to prevent another champion from competing, is prohibited. This tournament measures what a champion can do. It does not measure which school is best at standing shoulder to shoulder."

Karkaroff's smile went stiff for perhaps a second before he found it again and inclined his head.

"Naturally we respect the ruling of the committee."

Underneath it he was entirely comfortable. The round was won and the total was theirs, and there would be time enough to think about the last one.