Chapter 173 — A Face in the Fire

At a quarter to one, Ron began explaining why we should have gone to bed. Harry reminded him that staying awake had been his idea, while Hermione supplied the name of the device she had proposed before we rejected sleep entirely.

‘An alarm,’ she said. Ron considered her over the top of his cup, then requested that she stop remembering everything.

I put down my tea. It had ceased helping and become another reason I would eventually have to get up. The last other students had gone upstairs, leaving us with the fire, the clock and the occasional page turning beneath Hermione’s fingers.

Harry asked how she could still read. She wanted to know what happened, she replied, sliding the book towards him when he claimed the same desire had failed to keep his eyes open.

‘I meant with Sirius,’ he said after inspecting the page. Hermione smiled and took it back, while I checked my watch without helping the remaining minutes pass.

At one we all looked towards the portrait. Nothing happened there, but the fire made a sharp sound behind us. The embers brightened and a face formed low among them, drawing Harry off his chair before the voice reached us.

‘Sirius,’ he said, kneeling beside the hearth. We gathered around him as the face in the fire checked that the room was clear.

Sirius looked tired, although the moving flames made it difficult to separate shadows from his face. He studied each of us before confirming that he had received both letters. Harry let out a breath and told him he could have said so.

‘I didn’t want an answer going straight back along the same route,’ Sirius replied. ‘I’m sorry I left you waiting.’

That did not erase the days of wondering, but Harry moved closer anyway. Sirius turned towards me and asked for my own answer about entering the Tournament. I denied submitting my name or asking anyone else to do it.

‘Then someone wanted you chosen,’ he said. I told him we had reached that part, and his mouth twitched. ‘What have the school and Crouch told you?’

I described the binding, the refusal to select again and the letters to Emma. The inquiry had given us no usable explanation. I also told him about the trophy room, watching his expression change as I reached the spells.

‘Against another champion?’ he asked. I confirmed it, and he wanted to know whether she had attacked first.

‘No.’ The silence lasted long enough to make me wish I had not needed to explain. I kept looking at him instead of trying to fill it.

‘Keep that temper where you can use it,’ he said at last. ‘Somebody who wants you in trouble doesn’t need you doing half the work.’

I nodded. He gave the advice with an edge of experience, rather than the manner of somebody who had never acted in anger. Hermione leaned forward to ask about the World Cup.

‘It could be connected,’ Sirius answered. ‘That doesn’t tell us how, or why they chose Oswald. Harry, tell me the dream again from the beginning.’

Harry described the room, Wormtail, the small figure in the chair and the other man. I watched him pause when he reached the face, then repeat that it resembled our attacker at the campsite. Sirius asked how certain he was.

‘I didn’t always have a good view,’ Harry said. ‘My scar hurt at the campsite, and I’d been on the ground. But when Oswald described him afterwards, and we talked on the train, it fitted.’

Sirius looked towards me. I confirmed that I had seen the face before it was burnt, clearly enough that I thought I could recognise it again.

‘Recognising him isn’t knowing his name,’ I added. Sirius agreed and waited while I described the man, keeping his appearance separate from our guesses about him.

Harry supplied what he remembered from the dream. Darkness, pain and a fight had not given either of us perfect conditions for observing a face. Neither account would improve if we pretended otherwise.

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Sirius asked whether Dumbledore knew. Harry explained that we had spoken to him at the start of term, and Sirius told us to report any change: another dream, a face recognised or something said which did not fit. Ron shifted on the rug before reminding him that whoever submitted the parchment needed access to the Goblet.

‘Or somebody to take it there,’ Hermione added. I confirmed that McGonagall had heard those questions, and Sirius nodded.

‘There are people in that castle I wouldn’t trust,’ he said. When I asked whether he meant anyone in particular, he gave Karkaroff’s name.

Harry looked up sharply. ‘The headmaster?’ he asked. Sirius’s answer left the crackling hearth sounding unusually loud.

‘He was a Death Eater. Gave names to save himself.’ His gaze moved between us. ‘Arriving with a school delegation doesn’t guarantee where his loyalties lie.’

‘Does that mean he works for Voldemort now?’ Hermione asked. Sirius replied that he would not turn his back on him, a clear answer to a slightly different question.

‘Do you have anything connecting him to my name?’ I asked. Sirius looked at me before saying no. ‘Then I’ll record it as someone you’d watch.’

He gave a short nod. Crouch’s position should not stop us asking questions either, he added, making Ron ask whether the Ministry official was also a Death Eater.

‘I think he’s a hard man who can make almost anything sound necessary once he’s decided to do it,’ Sirius said. I remembered the record on the trophy-room table, though it did not establish who had arranged the selection.

‘His own son was convicted as a Death Eater,’ Sirius continued. ‘Barty Crouch junior. He sent him to Azkaban.’

Hermione checked that the son had the same name, and Sirius confirmed it. I had met the father at the World Cup; this was the first time I had heard of a son with whom that name could be confused.

‘Did you see him there?’ I asked. Sirius’s expression tightened before he answered.

‘I was in Azkaban. I remember him.’ For a moment I expected more, but he looked past us as though checking the room remained empty. ‘His father didn’t give him mercy.’

Hermione quietly pointed out that this did not prove Crouch worked for Voldemort. Sirius agreed, saying that it was a reason not to rely on a Ministry title to make someone care what happened to me. I could use the warning without turning it into a verdict.

Karkaroff had a past Sirius distrusted. Crouch held authority over the Tournament and had a history I scarcely knew. Both might deserve more attention; neither had been shown to have written my name.

‘There could be others,’ Sirius said. ‘Don’t decide you’ve found the answer because I’ve given you two names.’

‘I wasn’t going to stop at two.’ He approved of that, but Harry still wanted to know why Voldemort would go to all this trouble if he was responsible.

Sirius looked at him for a long time. He wished he knew, he said, and the four of us fell quiet around the fire.

‘The Tournament supplies danger somebody wouldn’t have to explain afterwards,’ he continued, turning back to me. ‘They might want you hurt in a task or taken somewhere you wouldn’t otherwise go. I can’t tell you which.’

‘Then I’ll prepare for what I can see.’ I glanced towards the notes beside my chair. ‘I’m not going to make it easy for them.’

‘Stay alive long enough to be difficult,’ Sirius said. Harry smiled faintly, and the face turned towards him. ‘You too.’

Harry had questions unrelated to the Goblet. I watched him try to choose before he asked whether Sirius was all right.

‘I’m managing,’ Sirius answered. Harry protested that it was not much of an answer, which softened his voice. ‘It’s what I have tonight. Keep writing, and if I’m slow to reply, don’t assume I’ve forgotten you.’

Harry nodded. Then Sirius disappeared, leaving ordinary embers in a space which looked far too small to have held him. We stayed by the hearth for a moment before Ron sat heavily on the rug.

‘A headmaster and a Ministry official,’ he said. I reminded him that they were two people Sirius distrusted, and we needed to separate the parts we could check. Hermione fetched ordinary paper from her bag.

We listed Karkaroff’s past, the younger Crouch’s case and the public record of his father’s decisions. Comparing those with what we observed seemed likelier to help than cornering either man and demanding a confession. My map, returned by Lupin last term, lay in my trunk. It could show where someone was at a particular moment, but not who had approached the Goblet weeks earlier.

Harry reminded us that whoever arranged it might already have left. A helper could remain, I suggested, or nobody involved might still be there. Keeping our eyes open did not mean we could look everywhere.

Ron offered to ask about old newspapers. Hermione proposed the library, and I proposed sleep before either. She corrected tomorrow to later today after looking at the clock, but did not object to the essential part of the plan.

Harry watched the ordinary fire for another moment before standing. We went upstairs together, leaving our notes folded where we could find them after some rest.

I met Luna after a late breakfast and gave the account I had promised. She listened without converting Sirius’s suspicions into facts, then took my hand when I finished.

‘Did it help?’ she asked. I thought about Harry kneeling near the hearth and said he had needed to see Sirius. ‘And you?’

‘Things to look up,’ I answered. ‘And I still have to decide what to do when somebody puts a dragon in front of me.’

She suggested a walk. Books and unanswered questions waited, and after poor sleep I felt as though sitting still wasted time without making me less tired. I tightened my fingers round hers and agreed. We went outside.