fic: the first triwizard task!
I TOLD YOU I WAS WRITING THIS. Ha.
9147 words, Hilary/Jerry, Hilary/OMC, PG-13. Part 5 of the current 12. Master post here. Betaed by the_antichris and sleepfighter.
It was quite cold when Hilary woke up Saturday, which of course meant that Wimsey had summoned the champions outdoors at the unconscionable hour of nine in the morning. The jacket and knickerbockers with which she'd been furnished, trimmed in Ravenclaw colours and emblazoned with the Hogwarts crest on one arm, were warm enough, and she had a heavy cloak besides; she felt rather sorry for the Beauxbatons champion, who was shivering in his shirtsleeves with a pale grey waistcoat and trousers. But her nerves and the sudden onset of frost were getting to her all the same, and she hugged herself as she stared up at the dark mass of the Forbidden Forest before them.
She had never been inside the forest; Sep Weasley had once in his third year, well before she'd known him--either on a dare or to impress a girl, she couldn't recall which. When asked, he always claimed that the place had really just been terribly damp and boring, but there had always seemed something unconvincing about how he said it.
"Miss Thorpe," said Professor Dippet gently at her side. "Are you all right?"
"Of course," said Hilary, immediately warmed by indignation. She considered for a moment pretending that her parents were among the crowd of students gathering at their back, but she wasn't sure whether the thought made her feel better or worse. She certainly wasn't going to look over her shoulder and see if she could spot any of her friends there, though the thought was tempting. She didn't doubt they'd be there; an enormous set of bleachers had sprung up overnight, with three enormous round glass lenses on poles in front; they looked unsettlingly like Quidditch goal posts, or enormous magnifying glasses, but Hilary guessed they were to allow the crowd to follow the progress of the champions.
Wimsey cleared his throat, and for all her anxiety Hilary was relieved to transfer her attention to him from Dippet. "Your task this morning," he announced, "is a fairly simple one. You are no doubt aware, thanks to the learned Mr. Kettleburn--" there was a soft ripple of laughter among the gathered Hogwarts students, which Wimsey chose to ignore-- "that among the animals living in this forest is a herd of wild unicorns. Your task this morning--and you do have until noon to complete it--is to go into the forest and return with a single freshly-collected unicorn hair. I'm told the creatures shed rather copiously, so I will be testing the hairs to see how long they've been parted from the animals that grew them. It is now--" he produced a watch from the sleeve of his robe-- "nine-seventeen."
There was an expectant pause.
"Well?" said Wimsey, and spread his hands meaningfully.
Louis Renard glanced back and forth between Hilary and Katerina, shrugged, and began abruptly to shrink. Before Hilary could even decide whether she ought to be alarmed, he had been reduced to knee height--indeed he no longer looked himself at all. Instead a large swan stood there, pure white but for the same shock of black atop his head. He ruffled his feathers in what was somehow a very self-satisfied manner, picked up his wand in his beak, and shot up into the air; soon he was lost to view amid the gloom of the forest.
"That cannot be fair," said Hilary, addressing Katerina for sympathy rather than Wimsey, from whom she knew she would have none, and strode off among the trees after him.
The gloom crowded around her quickly, so that within a few minutes she might have thought it was already night again. "Lumos," Hilary murmured. The word seemed--not to echo exactly, but to be answered by a rustle in the forest not far off, and the view that greeted her when her wand lit was scarcely any more encouraging than the surrounding gloom. Thanks to two years and change with Professor Kettleburn--who knew his subject, whatever else might be said of him--she could name dozens of animals both magical and ordinary that lived in this forest, but none were stirring within view. She couldn't even see Katerina, which was even eerier, because Hilary could have sworn she'd only seen one path leading into the forest. Perhaps the other girl had found another route after all; it didn't necessarily mean anything.
Hilary glanced back over her shoulder; the glint of sunlight from the edge of the forest was growing dim, and it occurred to her that having once lost sight of it she might have a difficult time getting back. "Levilumos," she said uncertainly, having never tried the spell before, and gave her wand a brisk shake. To her surprise and delight, a small globe of light split off, glowing bright orange, and flitted up to hover over her head. Hilary took a few experimental steps down the path, but it remained where it was. "Perfect," she said aloud, "now mind you stay there," and continued down the path with somewhat more confidence, leaving hovering lights at appropriate intervals--even though she began to notice after a few more minutes, that they were starting to attract insects. Very large insects.
"Idiot!" said someone shrilly behind her and Hilary yelped and whirled around, nearly dropping her wand. The glow at its tip went out, and while she was fumbling to relight it something rustled past her leg. "Silly girl," said the voice gleefully, and added a few more epithets that were outright obscene.
Having got her light back, Hilary looked around to see who was talking, but no one was there; the voice had fallen silent the moment it was bright again. "Who's there?" she demanded. Perhaps Wimsey had sent people in to trip them up; it could easily be part of the challenge.
The only reply was a fit of high-pitched giggles. Then something brushed her leg again, and she flinched away and looked down at the ground. Something long and furry was grinning up at her, easily the size of her forearm, with a long nose and bright beady eyes. "Silly girl," it squeaked again, "great ugly noisy girl. Go away!"
"You little bastard," said Hilary, in the spirit of speaking the thing's own language, "you frightened me," and prodded the Jarvey away from her with one foot.
It squealed indignantly and lunged up at her, teeth bared. Hilary jumped back, stumbling over a rock and nearly falling, but she wasn't quite quickl enough; the Jarvey sank its teeth into her arm and then shot away into the trees with a cackle so grating that it left Hilary's ears ringing.
Hilary pushed her jacket sleeve up and inspected the neat set of teeth marks that had been left in her arm. "Oh, hell--Episkey." Healing spells were not her forte, and even less so when she needed to hold her wand left-handed to get at a wound in her wand arm. It stopped the wounds bleeding, at least, and to the best of her knowledge Jarveys weren't poisonous, so she supposed that was the best she could do for now. She left an extra-bright globe on the spot, out of spite, and continued on down the path.
She still had not found a good answer to the central questions: first, how to locate a unicorn, and second, how to coax one into letting her remove a hair from its tail. Being airborne, Louis would have an advantage at the first, but Hilary consoled herself that--also being the only male champion--he would be at a disadvantage later in the process. She thought she might have an idea about how to procure the hair, but it seemed rather a silly one, and her ears were still ringing.
It couldn't have been the jarvey, Hilary decided; its voice had been shrill, but not so awful as to leave her ears still ringing what felt like ten or fifteen minutes later. She knew some people whose wands hummed quietly when they cast Lumos, but hers never had, and anyway this didn't sound like that either. Indeed, as she crept deeper into the forest the sound deepened and began to be more of a low hum, almost palpable; Hilary glanced upward, but saw nothing that might be producing it. Setting the problem aside for a moment, she checked her watch and found it was just shy of ten o'clock. Nearly a third of her time gone, and she'd hardly accomplished a thing yet. As far as she could tell the trail of light she'd left behind her was intact, but every bit of this forest so far looked more or less alike--except no, something was glinting silver a little ways off the path.
Hilary flicked another light into the air, just to be sure, and then went to investigate. It certainly looked very much like a unicorn hair; not too much help to her, but nonetheless a hopeful sign that made her spirits rise.
The low hum, from which Hilary had momentarily been distracted, gathered its strength and rose into a great boooonnnng. Somewhere far overhead, Batty Thomas was tolling out the hour.
Hilary recognized it at the first strike, and was only mildly confused; at the second, she remembered that Batty Thomas had no business being anywhere near here, nor indeed had any bell at all. It was the bell, though, quite unquestionably; she knew all their voices just as well as those of her family, or her professors. By the fourth, she had all but forgotten the long silver hair still clutched in her hand; one ring she might have imagined, but certainly not four, and there had to be a reason. Surely it was better to try and work out the problem than to give in to the panic she could feel creeping in at the back of her mind.
By the time the tenth and final note faded away, Hilary was shaking, back pressed against a convenient tree. For the moment she had quite forgotten any intention of puzzle-solving; she was just waiting for it to end, and half-afraid that the bell might go on tolling past its ten allotted notes. Even once the noise faded, down even to the low hum that had bothered her before, she seemed to feel something buzzing in her bones. She had wondered before what it might have been like for Deacon, in his last hours, and she wondered it now more than ever; was this what it had felt like at first, when the old year was rung out and he first realized what it was he was in for, this sensation as though every last particle in his body was about to shake apart?
Hilary dug her nails into her palms and stood upright, though not without another wary glance upward. She would have given a great deal of money to know where the other champions were within the forest, and whether they had heard the bell too. In the meantime, she still clutched the shed hair in her fist--so tightly, indeed, that it was cutting into her fingers. She held it up and watched it glimmer in the light of her wand; it was a long time since first-year Potions, when Professor Vane had taught them how to distinguish unicorn hair from other kinds, but it certainly looked right. Perhaps the animal had shed more, and she would thereby be able to follow it, but no more glints of silver were immediately visible. Hilary sighed, chose a direction nearly at random, and set off once more, checking behind her occasionally to be sure that her trail of orange lights was staying where she'd left them.
After a while she noticed that the lights were beginning to flicker--not the ones further behind her, funnily enough, which for all their distance shone small but quite steady, but the several nearest behind her. She paused and watched for a moment, and found that it didn't look as though they were in danger of going out, but rather as though a great number of small things were flitting around them. Not moths, Hilary hoped, and shuddered as she continued on her way.
It was just occurring to her to check on the time when she began to hear a high chittering noise. "Oh, bugger off," said Hilary, taking pleasure in knowing there were no teachers about to hear her say it. "You can't have liked the taste of my arm that much."
It wasn't the Jarvey. It was a whole flock of small creatures that swarmed around Hilary, tugging at her hair and clothes (and, she was nearly sure, her shoelaces).
"Get off," she said breathlessly, flailing at them and clutching her wand; unfortunately, then the pixies took an interest in that as well, and she was forced to shove it safely up her sleeve before she could think of a spell to get rid of them. She would have given anything for her old Beater's bat just then. If anything, the pixies seemed to enjoy being swatted at--or else it made them angry; it all sounded like a lot of frantic high chittering to Hilary, and all she knew was that she was making it worse. She greeted the inevitable tug on her ears almost with resignation; at least that meant they'd be done with her soon, and surely it couldn't be that much worse than riding a broomstick.
It was infinitely worse than riding a broomstick, in fact, with nothing at all holding her up in the air but a handful of little creatures the size of her hand, and the ground getting further and further away all the time. Hilary had to force herself after a minute or so not to squeeze her eyes shut, or to struggle, but she knew she had to keep an eye on what was happening.
At long last the swarm dropped her unceremoniously on a branch and streaked away, squeaking gleefully all the way; the branch, which was very high and a little thin for comfort, creaked and bowed in surprise under Hilary's weight. She clutched at it, her hands slipped despite her gloves--and then she found a grip and the branch decided to hold, at least for the moment.
Hilary edged very slowly over until at last she was pressed up against the trunk of the tree, about as secure as she could expect to be for the moment. A breeze rustled past her--not a strong one, but the tree swayed alarmingly, and she clung to it until the movement passed. In the midst of her incipient seasickness, Hilary had an idea; when she felt relatively safe again she withdrew her wand from her sleeve and tapped it into the palm of her free hand. "Epoximise minima," she said, improvising desperately, and was amazed to find that it worked; now, when she pressed her gloved hand against the trunk of the tree, it clung but could still be pulled away. "So there," Hilary added, to no one in particular, as she performed the same charm on her other glove; for the first time since her name had been spat out of the Goblet, she began to feel a bit like Triwizard material.
Having guaranteed her safety as best she could, she kept her grip on the tree trunk with her non-wand hand and had a look round. She was terribly far up--it was difficult to estimate, but she thought maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet, in a tree she couldn't easily identify without its leaves. The pixies clearly took pride in their work; she was level with the tops of many other trees in the forest, and if she risked climbing a bit higher she might have quite a good view of the surrounding area. Hilary looked up uncertainly; there was a good bit of tree to go, but she hardly trusted this branch, let alone the ones still further up.
As she sat there, trying either to decide whether to climb further up or to think of a spell that would make the climb safer, she realized she must have quite lost track of time, for Batty Thomas began to ring out once more and cracked her nerve all over again. Hilary glanced at her wrist, found her watch gone--the pixes must have taken it--and merely leaned into the tree trunk, shivering and counting the bell strokes. It must have been up there somewhere, for she felt the vibrations roll through her much more strongly than before; even the tree was humming with the noise, and she imagined for a panicked second that it might simply fall to bits under her. But there was no bell in sight, and she couldn't seem to fix on a direction from which the sound might be coming. "Stop it," said Hilary aloud, uselessly. Her cheeks were damp, and she could feel bark rubbing her skin raw where she'd pressed her face against the tree. She could hardly hear her own voice. "Please--I know you're not here, you can't be, please stop."
It was difficult to concentrate, but she was nearly certain the bell had rung eleven o'clock. There was no way to be sure whether it was accurate, of course.
Hilary clenched her fists around her branch. She couldn't go on like this; she had an hour left and hadn't even found a unicorn yet, and purely for the sake of doing something she pointed her wand up at a spot ten feet or so above her and said "Funio!"
She had been a little too emphatic, if anything, and the rope shot out of her wand and knotted itself around the trunk several feet further still above where Hilary had wanted. But it was still a perfectly good rope--Hilary gave it a few sharp tugs to be sure--and with a last regretful pat to her branch, Hilary transferred her grip to the rope and began to climb. The tree creaked and bent in protest, and it seemed to take forever, but at last she had crawled up to a new branch nearly twenty feet higher and done her best to find herself a new perch on it. It seemed steady enough, but Hilary tied the other end of the rope around her waist all the same.
Up here, she was high enough to be in the sunlight, and Hilary wasted a minute or two just basking in being able to see again. She would have liked to see Katerina or Louis, somewhere out there, but she saw no sign of them; the edge of the forest was only just visible from here, and the dark bulk of a crowd gathered beyond it. If one of the other champions had already made it out again, she wasn't sure there was any way to tell from this distance, though she consoled herself with the thought that the gathered spectators might not seem nearly so calm if anyone had already finished the task.
Hilary now turned her attention to her immediate surroundings. The tree's own leaves were gone, but there was some kind of yellow moss growing in patches all over the trunk. It took some brain-racking--Herbology had always been one of Hilary's more difficult subjects--but Hilary was sure she remembered Professor Beery showing dried samples of it at some point. Third year, she thought--Beery and Kettleburn had given joint lessons for a few weeks about what plants to feed to what magical animals, Ravenclaws doubled with Slytherin, and Flaxman had wandered off during one of them and gotten bitten on the nose by a geranium at the other end of the greenhouse. Hilary had enjoyed the event rather too much at the time, and she enjoyed the memory of it rather too much now.
Golden Fleece! Of course, that was what the stuff was called; it certainly looked the part. Not much in the way of magical properties, apart from a slight shimmer one wouldn't expect from Muggle plants, or nutritional value for that matter; but there were several magical creatures who were quite fond of the taste all the same, and could be coaxed to eat when ill if some of the moss was added to their food. Hilary couldn't remember whether unicorns were among them, but it couldn't hurt to bring some along and try. She pulled a few handfuls away cautiously--one never knew when plants were likely to emit poison gas, or scream, or something, but the moss didn't seem to mind--and bundled them up in her handkerchief for safekeeping.
And now she had no choice but to address herself to the most urgent problem: getting down from this tree. Hilary was sure there must be magical ways to fly without a broomstick, but she didn't know of any. She tried conjuring another rope, but she couldn't see far enough straight down to tell whether it had reached the ground or not. All the same, it was the best option Hilary had, and she was just steeling herself to begin climbing back down when something snorted behind her, nearly startling her off the branch prematurely. "What now?" she said tiredly, gripping tightly to the tree as she tried to look behind her.
Hovering behind her was a very young thestral; Hilary had never seen a cub before, but there was something awkwardly adolescent in the movement of its wings that made her smile. "Hello," she said, and touched its nose gently, being careful to keep the sticky palm of her glove off its skin. She was nearly used to seeing the full-grown creatures Hogwarts used, but she had never been this close to one before. It felt warm and dry and a little slippery under her hand--almost like handling a snake. "I thought you lot only liked meat."
The thestral let out a high-pitched croak, clearly intended to be a friendly noise.
Hilary stripped off her glove and offered it a handful of moss, which it snatched happily out of her hand with small sharp teeth. "I wonder," she said thoughtfully, wobbling on her perch as she watched it. It was always difficult to tell how much thestrals understood of what was said to them, but she might as well try. "By any chance have you got a mum nearby?"
As luck would have it, the foal had, although the larger beast appeared suspicious of Hilary's motives. After a few careful negotiations that required giving up the better part of her pocketful of Golden Fleece, and some exciting near-falls, Hilary was successfully transferred from her branch to a thestral's back. It didn't feel much more secure, but at least she was mobile now, and had a creature who might be helpful if she lost her grip. They stayed above the treetops--the full-grown thestral had far too great a wingspan to stay in flight between the trees, and in any case Hilary was keeping an eye out for anything white.
"There," she said at last, stunned but sure of what she'd seen. She only barely had the presence of mind to note the direction in which the edge of the forest lay before the thestral dropped earthwards, and Hilary yelped and clung more tightly around its neck. Even once it had landed, folding its wings around her, she stayed a moment longer to recollect her wits. "Thank you," she murmured once her feet were back on solid ground, keeping an eye on the glint of white between the trees as she gave the beast's shoulder an absent rub, and the thestral emitted an affectionate sort of death-rattle in response and stalked away.
Had Hilary been barefoot, she would have wiggled her toes in sheer relief at having the ground under her feet again--even the ground in the forest, riddled with inconvenient tree roots and slippery with damp fallen leaves, felt like the best surface she'd ever stood on. As it was, she didn't think she had much time left, and her heavy leather shoes weren't conducive to toe-wiggling anyway.
The unicorn was grazing idly among the trees, but the moment she took another step its head jerked up, looking around for the source of the noise. Hilary very nearly apologized, but she was terrified of scaring it off entirely, so she reached into her jacket pocket and skipped directly to offering it her last handful of Golden Fleece.
The unicorn stared at her--at her hand, most likely--all but vibrating in fear. It really was beautiful, shining amidst the general murk of the forest, and Hilary felt terribly guilty all of a sudden. "I'm sorry," she breathed. "I won't hurt you, I swear I won't." Surely it could smell that on her, or something. "Just a moment--I only need a moment."
The unicorn came one cautious pace nearer, than another, nostrils flared.
Hilary forgot to breathe entirely. "Please," she said, without really meaning to, and gave the moss a bit of a rustle.
It felt like years, but at last the unicorn came within arms reach and began to nibble delicately at the moss in Hilary's hand. Hilary was fairly sure that by now her heart had stopped as well as her breath, but she touched the unicorn's nose gently and found it inconceivably soft.
"Thank you," she murmured, slipping her wand into her hand as subtly as she could manage, and pointed it at the unicorn's tail. "Crinisectio!"
She hadn't a very good shot at the unicorn's tail, and had counted on this to keep the spell from cutting the whole tail short; in fact several hairs fell to the forest floor, and the unicorn didn't even notice their loss. Hilary gave its nose another apologetic rub, wondering at last how to get out of the forest; having once had the opportunity to be this close to the beast, she was reluctant to break the moment.
At last the decision was made for her when Batty Thomas began once more to toll above her head. The unicorn leapt away into the trees, so fast that it almost looked as though it had Disapparated; Hilary shuddered and hunched in on herself, but forced herself to look up and try to spot the source of the sound. She thought she saw a hint of gray up among the trees--the grey of stone, most certainly, but misty and so insubstantial-looking that it might have been a trick of the light.
Three short notes this time, and then the bell fell silent. Hilary forced herself to think fast; the whole matter was so completely incongruous. She had abandoned the theory that Wimsey had laid traps deliberately, but it was a great deal of coincidence that she should be haunted by the one object that frightened her more than--oh.
"Idiot," said Hilary to herself, already laughing a little just in relief; and then she pointed her wand straight upwards, ducking her head in case anything went wrong, and said "Riddikulus!"
A few seconds later, something small fell from on high and hit Hilary's hands, with which she had been shielding her head, and then slid to earth with a protracted tinkling noise. Hilary straightened up cautiously and picked it up; it was a string of sleigh bells. Hilary grinned, turning it over in her hands, and then remembered that she had less than fifteen minutes to get out of the forest and hurled it into the bushes before the boggart could recover its wits.
She was long out of sight of the trail of lights she'd so carefully left herself, but she supposed having a compass would be better than nothing, so she gathered the unicorn hairs up from the ground, said "Point me!" and, once her wand had found its bearings, began heading due east.
She reached the edge of the forest in much less time than she'd anticipated, but nearly a hundred yards down from where she'd entered; from here Hilary could make out the crowd of Hogwarts students huddled in the bleachers, and Wimsey and the judges at their table further forward, and--was that Katerina already there standing with them?
Hilary ran for the judges' table, only to find that Katerina had already beaten her there; appeared to be waiting quite comfortably in fact, accompanied by a few other Durmstrang, although she greeted Hilary almost apologetically. There was no sign of Louis, and Chauvinieux was beginning to look distinctly restless. Heart pounding, Hilary produced her unicorn hairs and handed them to Wimsey, who pulled out his wand with raised eyebrows. "Not one to do things by halves, I see."
Hilary shrugged, unaccountably embarrassed. It occurred to her for the first time, with very inconvenient timing, to wonder whether Jerry ever talked about her to his uncle; he certainly boasted to her readily enough every time Wimsey made it into the papers, which was often. "I thought it couldn't hurt to be sure," she said, which was true enough, and clenched her fists anxiously in her jacket pockets.
Wimsey touched his wand to the hairs, and after a moment they glowed a warm blue; he nodded, and Hilary relaxed, even though she had known perfectly well they were barely ten minutes old. "Very neatly done, Miss Thorpe. And very well-timed, too." He produced his watch and showed it to her; it was just a few minutes shy of noon.
"Thanks," said Hilary, feeling much surer of herself now. She wanted to ask what would become of the hairs, and if perhaps she could keep one for herself, and whether Louis had been misplaced, but before she could she was grabbed from behind and yelped in surprise.
A small horde of people had descended upon her from the bleachers: half the girls in her year, it seemed like, Cattermole and Kapoor and a lot of Hilary's other friends, along with Jerry and Sep and a handful of Gryffindors Hilary didn't even know whom they seemed to have brought with them by accident. Even Winnie had tagged along after Jerry, and Flitwick after her, though he didn't look entirely sure of how he'd gotten there. "You were splendid," Amy Kapoor was saying; she was the one who had gotten Hilary around the waist.
"Hallo, Uncle," said Jerry brightly, as though they had run into each other at the Leaky Cauldron and it were all a pleasant surprise, and the entire group somehow managed to shuffle off to the side where they could sit on the grass before the enormous crystal lenses.
Two of these were now blank; the third showed some part of the forest, but with neither boy nor swan in sight. "What happened?" inquired Hilary, fascinated all the same.
"Wufflegritt fouled these things up," said Violet, with a hint of satisfaction; Professor Wufflegritt was not terribly likeable. "Adjusted the charm on them to follow people, not birds."
"Too small," Sep explained, "and too fast. We haven't seen him for hours. The Beauxbaton head's just about to blow his top--have you seen him?"
"Afraid so," said Hilary unhelpfully; much as she wanted to be sure Louis was all right, she was suddenly exhausted, and the better part of her attention was given to the sad thought that her chances of getting a nap after this didn't seem very good. She shivered, pulling her cloak more snugly around her shoulders.
"We nearly lost you." Jerry sounded suspiciously gleeful at the thought. "That flying trick you pulled to get out of the tree--how'd you manage that?"
"Made friends with a thestral." Hilary smiled wanly at him.
"I'd love to try it myself," said Jerry, a little dreamily.
"You ought to count yourself lucky you can't see the things," Hilary pointed out, and suddenly sat up straighter, grabbing at whoever's arm was nearest. (It turned out to be Amy.) "Look--I think that's him."
Louis was emerging from the forest, not too far from where Hilary herself had come out but looking significantly the worse for wear. He didn't look badly injured apart from a slight limp, but his clothing was rumpled and torn, and he was shimmering oddly; it took Hilary a moment to realize that this was the last of his feathers vanishing from his arm.
"I wish I could do that," said Winnie, startling everyone--including herself, it seemed, for she gulped and went quiet again.
"You'd come out as a kitten," Jerry said, absentmindedly but with an absolute certainty that suggested he'd considered the matter before. "One of those little grey ones that's mostly fluff."
Winnie hugged her knees sulkily.
"Well, it seems he hasn't been eaten by anything, at least." Hilary craned around to see better, with little success; Chauvinieux was helping Louis to a chair, and certainly quite a lot was being said, but it was impossible at this distance to tell what any of it was.
"Surely they'll tell us what happened," said Sep optimistically.
But whatever story Louis had told, neither Wimsey nor the judges passed it on. Only the scores came back--Louis's points totaled a mere fourteen out of thirty, but Hilary had earned a very respectable twenty-three, and Katerina a quite impressive twenty-six. These numbers were announced in haste before Louis was bundled up to the Hospital wing; Hilary suddenly remembered the bite in her arm, and offered to go with him as combined guide, crutch, and fellow-sufferer, but whatever hopes she had of getting information out of Louis were dashed by Chauvinieux's insistence on accompanying them.
Once in the hospital wing, they were separated; Madam Horrell healed Hilary's bite almost perfunctorily with a quick tap of her wand, not even pausing to scowl at Hilary for having made such a shoddy job of it, and agreed to Hilary's request for a few hours' privacy and sleep without really seeming to pay attention to the question.
-------
Hilary stumbled out of the hospital wing a few hours later, better-rested but still a bit rattled. Louis was nowhere in evidence, so she hoped that whatever had happened to him had been fixed and he was feeling better. She thought about going down to the Great Hall to see if it was dinnertime, but it felt too early for that yet; and then Hilary remembered about the enormous crystal lenses, and that the entire school had probably seen her huddled in a tree crying over a silly old church bell, and thought she'd better just go quietly back up to her dormitory to change.
She answered the doorknocker almost at a guess, and was frankly surprised when the door opened for her--and even more surprised to find that the common room was stuffed full of people. Not only people but food, streamers, and a vague sparkly haze drifting through the air--in fact, there seemed to be a party going on in her honor, which made it all too easy to guess who was responsible.
"There you are." Jerry appeared out of the crowd, taking Hilary's arm firmly. "You can't go skiving off your own party. It simply isn't done. We've all been terribly worried about you, you know."
"Yes, I can see that." Hilary eyed the table full of food, half tempted and half wary. "Who provided that lot? It wasn't you and Weasley, was it?"
"You needn't worry about any of it having been tampered with, if that's what you--" Jerry was interrupted by a shriek, and glanced sheepishly over towards the fireplace, where a handful of first-years were drifting slowly up towards the ceiling.
"Needn't I?" Hilary tried to fold her arms, but couldn't while he still had a hold on one of them.
"I didn't say we hadn't tampered with any of it," said Jerry cheerfully. "I was only going to promise to tell you which bits were safe. And thus: no worry required on your part."
Hilary patted his arm and firmly extracted herself from his grip. "Tell me in a minute, would you? I'm sick of these clothes--I've got to go up and change."
"I'll save you some punch," Jerry promised solemnly. "It hardly turns your hair green at all."
"I need some better friends," Hilary mourned, but in truth she was feeling much better already, and she ran upstairs to change into the first jumper and skirt she happened to get out of her trunk. The Triwizard kit she folded carefully away; one never knew when one might need some good practical outdoor wear.
-------
It was quite nice at first, having a party thrown in one's honor, but parties were hardly a rare occurrence in any Hogwarts common room, and it got awfully wearing after a while when one kept having to explain over and over again about Thestrals, as though most of one's friends weren't Ravenclaws who damn well ought to be able to work it out for themselves.
After an hour or two Hilary slipped back out of the common room to sit on the staircase outside; her head was pounding, but mercifully the door almost entirely muffled the music that had been struck up within. She wished almost immediately that she had brought a cloak along so that she could go outside for a walk, but it was too late for that now unless she wanted to navigate back through the crowd and up to her dormitory to get it. At least it was much quieter out here and just a little bit cooler; Hilary took what she could get and sat quietly for a good few minutes, slumped back against the outer wall of the staircase. A few people came or went, but she gave them all the same stiff smile and reassurance that really, she was fine, and they passed on.
Eventually Jerry stuck his head out the door, said "Aha! We're playing hide-and-go-seek, I see," and claimed the step below hers without asking, stretching his legs out across the stair. Hilary sincerely hoped no one else meant to come up the stairs any time soon; they weren't likely to see the obstruction until it was nearly too late.
"If you've found me," said Hilary at last, inanely, "aren't you meant to be hiding now?"
"Don't rush me." Jerry glanced sidelong at her. "What is it now? You're done with the task, you tackled it splendidly, and you haven't a thing more to worry about until February, which is lifetimes away. You might give in and enjoy yourself for once."
"I'm quite capable of enjoying myself, and you know that perfectly well--and it isn't that I don't appreciate your party, either. I'm sure you spent at least ten good minutes throwing it together." Hilary smiled at him. "I'm a bit tired, that's all, and I was beginning to get a headache. It feels as though I've had a terribly long day, though it's barely dinnertime."
She thought her reassurance had been fairly convincing, but Jerry's eyes narrowed. "Are you all right? Really? It looked as though you had a rough time of it in the forest this morning."
Hilary had been asked this several times already, some more sympathetically than others; most people she had brushed off as quickly as possible, but none were friends as close as Jerry was. Not to mention that Jerry had a way of encouraging confidences by being relentlessly sympathetic in the most irritating way possible. "Boggart," she explained shortly. "They're rough on anyone, I suppose. And I may not be as steady about heights for a little while as I once was."
"You'll have to find someplace else to live, then," Jerry observed, leaning over precariously to peer down between the stairs. "Do you think it's too late for the hat to re-Sort you into Slytherin? Nice and close to the ground, that one."
"I'd rather Hufflepuff than Slytherin any day." Hilary grimaced. "They at least have windows. But then, imagine having Beery for Head of House."
"I suppose you'll just have to make do, then--oh, hello." Jerry accepted her head on his shoulder with good grace, slipping his arm around her waist. "Are you quite sure you're all right?"
"Of course I am." Hilary frowned down into her lap. "The Goblet wouldn't have chosen me if I couldn't bear up, would it?"
Jerry hummed. "That depends. Did Wufflegritt charm it?"
"I think it was Dippett, actually, and for all that he's, well--" Hilary made a vague expansive gesture with one hand by way of expressing what Dippett was like-- "he's quite good at actually doing magic. I don't doubt him."
"There you are, then," said Jerry triumphantly. "Why should you trust in Dippett's strength of character over your own?"
Hilary laughed, lifted her head, and kissed him quickly.
The ensuing several seconds, which she largely spent figuring out just what she'd just done and all the things that were wrong with it, were about as awkward as a silence could possibly be. At last Jerry coughed and said, "You probably don't want to make a habit out of that, you know."
"Did you really mind that much?" demanded Hilary, who knew perfectly well that he hadn't. The girl had yet to be found whose kiss Jerry would find objectionable.
"Of course not." He grinned down at her. "But my skill might ruin you for all other men, and then what would become of you?"
"It doesn't seem any great loss to me," said Hilary, spurred to contrariness. "After all, given the day I've had, haven't I earned a kiss or two?"
"Well, when you put it like that, I'm practically obligated. But you shan't blame me for the long-term consequences." Jerry turned his head and kissed her again, with great care.
Hilary hadn't quite thought her argument through this far, but she couldn't very well object to the results. Surely, she thought, it was only a brief kiss; surely they would break apart in the next moment, or the next, or a few more seconds after that. But Jerry went right on kissing her, and it wasn't as though she wanted it to end, so she twisted around--rather carefully, to avoid falling down the stairs--to be closer to him. The stair was still too narrow, though, and she slipped down off it right into Jerry's lap.
"Going so soon?" Jerry laughed, slipping his other arm around her waist as well to keep her in place. He sounded quite breathless, in a way that made Hilary feel inexplicably accomplished.
"Not just yet." She shook her head, leaning in for more, and Jerry kissed her yet again, a good bit less carefully than before.
Admittedly Hilary's prior experience of kissing was rather limited--a few perfunctory experiments with boys and other girls both, mostly for curiosity's sake, and that one mead-fueled accident a year ago--but none of it had been remotely like this. She was pushing herself as close to Jerry as she could, short of breath and altogether too warm; he made a small noise that made her laugh, almost a muffled groan, and his fingertips crept up above the waist of her skirt to brush her bare skin.
"Oh," said Hilary, a little strangled-sounding. For a moment she was entirely unable to think of anything but the few small places where his fingers had found her skin. They were no longer kissing, but only because Jerry was nuzzling her neck, and at some point she had turned to face him fully and kneel astride one of his legs. It was only then that she fully realized the situation they were rapidly heading towards--and, furthermore, that she didn't mind the prospect one bit. She would have trusted Jerry with anything at all, and she had done so much today of which she would never have thought herself capable; why not this? If nothing else, she was desperately in need of a good physical mindless distraction.
On the other hand, she realized dimly, if they were going to investigate further, they needed to find somewhere else to do it.
"Jerry." She let her head fall forward, pressing a kiss by his ear, and dug her fingers involuntarily into his shoulders when he responded in kind. "Mmmm--what are we--"
It was the wrong way to begin. He blinked, shook his head sharply, and stared at her. "Hilary--oh hell, you're right." Jerry shifted her hastily off his lap. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. That isn't what I meant to happen at all."
"But," said Hilary stupidly, staring up at him as he scrambled to his feet. It was as though they were having two completely different conversations, and she'd hardly even said anything. Surely he must have been interested in the same thing she had been.
Jerry was flushed and fidgeting; he looked terribly guilty about something all of a sudden, but she couldn't imagine what. "I'm sorry," he said yet again. "I've just remembered, I've got detention with Kettleburn tonight, must dash--" and incredibly, he did, clattering away down the stairs before Hilary could even get her wits back, let alone a word in.
"Oh for Merlin's sake," Hilary said, much too late, when she had more or less got her breath back, and went back into the common room. Her party still appeared to be swinging merrily along without her, and she slipped through the crowd as discreetly as she was able to fetch her cloak from the dormitories.
-------
It wasn't as chilly outside as she had feared; if anything, it had warmed a few degrees from the frosty morning she'd spent in the forest. The air was crisp, but not at all unpleasant, so Hilary let her cloak hang loose around her shoulders as she walked. She had thought at first of finding Jerry, but she knew perfectly well that he didn't have detention and would be actively avoiding her. If he wanted to be chivalrous with her and only her, she decided, that was his own damn business, and it wouldn't be any use talking to him anyway.
Not that talking was what Hilary necessarily wanted to do just then. For all her annoyance, she still felt restless and overheated; the feeling wasn't exactly unfamiliar, but no one had ever encouraged her in it before. Her curiosity and her physical instincts had both been frustrated, and Hilary wasn't one to deal well with frustration without doing something about it. Her best hope was that a walk might clear her head a little and disperse the spare energy buzzing in her.
More by accident than design, she found herself near the lake, not far from where the Beauxbatons carriage had been parked. Still not feeling particularly social, Hilary decided not to go any nearer; instead she sat down on the grass near the lake. The squid was at the surface tonight, tentacles thrashing lazily about and batting at whatever unfortunate birds happened to be passing overhead. "It must be so lovely and simple to be you," said Hilary bitterly, folding her arms on her knees. "I suppose you've never had a boy friend. Or thought about having one. I expect you don't even remember your parents."
The squid didn't appear to be listening.
After a few minutes she decided it had more or less the right idea and took out her wand; she hadn't anything particular in mind, but just lay back on the grass and made patterns of varyingly-colored sparkles in the air above her, trying to see how subtly she could control the variations in color. It wasn't terribly productive, but it was surprisingly soothing and the effect was quite lovely at night, and in the process Hilary lost track entirely of time.
"It's very pretty," said someone overhead, after a while.
Hilary sat up quickly, so quickly that she put her face into her own cloud of sparks and winced at the prickly heat of them as they dissipated. "Good evening," she said, and smiled politely.
"Good evening." Louis Renard smiled back. He was fully dressed this evening, and with a cloak of his own, though lighter and silkier-looking than Hilary's. "May I join you?"
"Of course." Hilary patted the grass next to her and he sat down, gathering his cloak around him. "You seem to be doing much better than you were this afternoon," she observed; in retrospect this was a bit blunt, but Hilary didn't feel she had much patience for small talk right now.
"I am--thank you." If anything, Louis seemed more composed than Hilary, who became suddenly self-consciously aware that she was plucking up grass for no reason at all. "More frightened than hurt--or so your Madame Horrell told me."
Hilary smiled ruefully. "She doesn't seem a terribly sympathetic soul, does she? But she's quite a brilliant Healer, really. I suppose one would have to be here, with children thinking up new accidents to have everywhere. Not that that's really the point--I expect you wouldn't care to tell me what happened to you in the forest?"
"It's really quite straightforward." Louis said, and ducked his head. "But I shall tell you--if you tell me how it went for you."
"Fair enough," said Hilary resignedly, and gave him a few minutes' short retelling which she had had ample time to perfect during the evening. With the exception of a few listeners whom she had known would understand, she had learned quickly to gloss over the matter of Batty Thomas, but she felt that though she barely knew Louis that would do him some kind of disservice as her fellow competitor, and stumbled awkwardly over the subject instead.
"About that bell," Louis observed afterwards, as she had feared he might.
Hilary drew up her knees. "It was a boggart," she admitted. "I think I kicked it out from under a stone. I didn't realize at first--I've only ever met one in my second-year Defence Against the Dark Arts class, and it was something different then."
Louis let out a thoughtful hmph. "The thing you fear most is bells?"
"One particular bell." Hilary glanced sidelong at him, but at least he wasn't laughing yet. "The village I grew up in--it's been largely witches and wizards for ages and ages, and the Muggles there sort of politely pretend there's nothing queer going on, but hundreds of years ago the village was attacked and some poor wizard tried to cast a protective spell to keep the soldiers out of the church. Only it went wrong somehow, because he was in such a hurry, and one of the bells has been all queer ever since and ever so often there are nasty accidents. I used to think there wasn't much in it when I was small--children used to dare each other to climb up in the bell tower, that kind of thing. But something did happen two years ago and ever since--" She swallowed.
"I don't think this will comfort you," began Louis, "but I think your bell almost killed me."
Hilary looked up in surprise. From the majority of her friends, she might have thought it a tasteless attempt at a joke, but Louis seemed such a serious type, and if he were keeping his face straight he was doing it very well. "You don't mean that."
"It isn't much fun," said Louis solemnly. "Having an enormous noise like that start up when one is quite small and in midair. It stunned me quite badly."
"Oh, hell," said Hilary, suddenly horrified. "I am sorry. And here I was quite jealous of you."
"It is quite a nice skill," said Louis, with a bit of an apologetic smile. "I will admit to showing it off somewhat."
"I thought so." Hilary laughed. "Serves you right, then, for trying to show us both up--though I really am glad you're all right."
"And then," Louis went on, "there was a--I don't know the English word? A huge flying thing with hooves and a beak. I think it thought I was dinner."
"A hippogriff," Hilary suggested, through her astonishment. "They eat birds."
"Yes--that, of course." He shook his head. "I never even got close to a unicorn. I made a mess of taking my usual shape again, took a nasty fall in the process, and then realized the time and only wanted to get out of the woods. Not a very impressive first showing, was it?"
Hilary shifted a few inches closer to him. He might have been her competition, but she felt it wasn't exactly sporting to get one's opponent nearly eaten, even if it had been quite unintentional. "I've heard everyone always has one task that turns out utterly beastly for them. Surely it'll go better for you in February. And horribly wrong for me, and then you can take your turn at sitting here and telling me how exciting it sounds that I fouled everything up."
"I do hope that won't be necessary." Louis was smiling outright now. "But I am glad to have found you here tonight. You have been very reassuring--very gracious."
He ducked his head and kissed her; it was gentle enough to feel almost like a courtesy, but Hilary touched his jaw by way of encouraging him to linger. She had only just succeeded in tamping down the hopes that Jerry had frustrated, and had thought herself safe from them, but Louis's kiss sent that warm confusion flowing back through her out of all proportion to how much he was actually doing to encourage it.
Louis blinked at her once they had separated; he looked almost confused. "I hope you realize," he began apologetically. "I am not usually like this--eager with girls, I mean. After all, you hardly know me, and I wouldn't like you to think I meant to push you."
"Don't be sorry." Hilary swallowed hard. She was shocked at herself--both for doing this now, and rather belatedly for what she had done with Jerry earlier. Having goes at two boys in one evening was surely rather indecent, but after all Jerry had turned her down, and surely two chances in a row might also be some sort of sign in her favour. And damn it, whatever attempts she made to justify herself, she realized that she wasn't in the least thinking straight; she wanted someone's touch very badly, never mind who, and it was Jerry's own fault that he'd missed his chance to be of use.
Perhaps, then, now would be a good time to stop thinking about Jerry for the next little while.
"I'm not either," she admitted. "I hardly ever go out with boys at all, really. But it's been such a strange day, and I don't--look, I don't want to talk about it any more, but I should very much like some company all the same."
Louis had a look on his face rather as though he meant to ask if she was sure, really and truly sure, and so forth, so Hilary curtailed the process by kissing him again on the logic that the more she did it the less cause she would have to be nervous about it. So far she thought it might be working.
"Please," she said at last, the only remaining argument she could think of, and guided his hand under her skirt to rest on her knee.
9147 words, Hilary/Jerry, Hilary/OMC, PG-13. Part 5 of the current 12. Master post here. Betaed by the_antichris and sleepfighter.
It was quite cold when Hilary woke up Saturday, which of course meant that Wimsey had summoned the champions outdoors at the unconscionable hour of nine in the morning. The jacket and knickerbockers with which she'd been furnished, trimmed in Ravenclaw colours and emblazoned with the Hogwarts crest on one arm, were warm enough, and she had a heavy cloak besides; she felt rather sorry for the Beauxbatons champion, who was shivering in his shirtsleeves with a pale grey waistcoat and trousers. But her nerves and the sudden onset of frost were getting to her all the same, and she hugged herself as she stared up at the dark mass of the Forbidden Forest before them.
She had never been inside the forest; Sep Weasley had once in his third year, well before she'd known him--either on a dare or to impress a girl, she couldn't recall which. When asked, he always claimed that the place had really just been terribly damp and boring, but there had always seemed something unconvincing about how he said it.
"Miss Thorpe," said Professor Dippet gently at her side. "Are you all right?"
"Of course," said Hilary, immediately warmed by indignation. She considered for a moment pretending that her parents were among the crowd of students gathering at their back, but she wasn't sure whether the thought made her feel better or worse. She certainly wasn't going to look over her shoulder and see if she could spot any of her friends there, though the thought was tempting. She didn't doubt they'd be there; an enormous set of bleachers had sprung up overnight, with three enormous round glass lenses on poles in front; they looked unsettlingly like Quidditch goal posts, or enormous magnifying glasses, but Hilary guessed they were to allow the crowd to follow the progress of the champions.
Wimsey cleared his throat, and for all her anxiety Hilary was relieved to transfer her attention to him from Dippet. "Your task this morning," he announced, "is a fairly simple one. You are no doubt aware, thanks to the learned Mr. Kettleburn--" there was a soft ripple of laughter among the gathered Hogwarts students, which Wimsey chose to ignore-- "that among the animals living in this forest is a herd of wild unicorns. Your task this morning--and you do have until noon to complete it--is to go into the forest and return with a single freshly-collected unicorn hair. I'm told the creatures shed rather copiously, so I will be testing the hairs to see how long they've been parted from the animals that grew them. It is now--" he produced a watch from the sleeve of his robe-- "nine-seventeen."
There was an expectant pause.
"Well?" said Wimsey, and spread his hands meaningfully.
Louis Renard glanced back and forth between Hilary and Katerina, shrugged, and began abruptly to shrink. Before Hilary could even decide whether she ought to be alarmed, he had been reduced to knee height--indeed he no longer looked himself at all. Instead a large swan stood there, pure white but for the same shock of black atop his head. He ruffled his feathers in what was somehow a very self-satisfied manner, picked up his wand in his beak, and shot up into the air; soon he was lost to view amid the gloom of the forest.
"That cannot be fair," said Hilary, addressing Katerina for sympathy rather than Wimsey, from whom she knew she would have none, and strode off among the trees after him.
The gloom crowded around her quickly, so that within a few minutes she might have thought it was already night again. "Lumos," Hilary murmured. The word seemed--not to echo exactly, but to be answered by a rustle in the forest not far off, and the view that greeted her when her wand lit was scarcely any more encouraging than the surrounding gloom. Thanks to two years and change with Professor Kettleburn--who knew his subject, whatever else might be said of him--she could name dozens of animals both magical and ordinary that lived in this forest, but none were stirring within view. She couldn't even see Katerina, which was even eerier, because Hilary could have sworn she'd only seen one path leading into the forest. Perhaps the other girl had found another route after all; it didn't necessarily mean anything.
Hilary glanced back over her shoulder; the glint of sunlight from the edge of the forest was growing dim, and it occurred to her that having once lost sight of it she might have a difficult time getting back. "Levilumos," she said uncertainly, having never tried the spell before, and gave her wand a brisk shake. To her surprise and delight, a small globe of light split off, glowing bright orange, and flitted up to hover over her head. Hilary took a few experimental steps down the path, but it remained where it was. "Perfect," she said aloud, "now mind you stay there," and continued down the path with somewhat more confidence, leaving hovering lights at appropriate intervals--even though she began to notice after a few more minutes, that they were starting to attract insects. Very large insects.
"Idiot!" said someone shrilly behind her and Hilary yelped and whirled around, nearly dropping her wand. The glow at its tip went out, and while she was fumbling to relight it something rustled past her leg. "Silly girl," said the voice gleefully, and added a few more epithets that were outright obscene.
Having got her light back, Hilary looked around to see who was talking, but no one was there; the voice had fallen silent the moment it was bright again. "Who's there?" she demanded. Perhaps Wimsey had sent people in to trip them up; it could easily be part of the challenge.
The only reply was a fit of high-pitched giggles. Then something brushed her leg again, and she flinched away and looked down at the ground. Something long and furry was grinning up at her, easily the size of her forearm, with a long nose and bright beady eyes. "Silly girl," it squeaked again, "great ugly noisy girl. Go away!"
"You little bastard," said Hilary, in the spirit of speaking the thing's own language, "you frightened me," and prodded the Jarvey away from her with one foot.
It squealed indignantly and lunged up at her, teeth bared. Hilary jumped back, stumbling over a rock and nearly falling, but she wasn't quite quickl enough; the Jarvey sank its teeth into her arm and then shot away into the trees with a cackle so grating that it left Hilary's ears ringing.
Hilary pushed her jacket sleeve up and inspected the neat set of teeth marks that had been left in her arm. "Oh, hell--Episkey." Healing spells were not her forte, and even less so when she needed to hold her wand left-handed to get at a wound in her wand arm. It stopped the wounds bleeding, at least, and to the best of her knowledge Jarveys weren't poisonous, so she supposed that was the best she could do for now. She left an extra-bright globe on the spot, out of spite, and continued on down the path.
She still had not found a good answer to the central questions: first, how to locate a unicorn, and second, how to coax one into letting her remove a hair from its tail. Being airborne, Louis would have an advantage at the first, but Hilary consoled herself that--also being the only male champion--he would be at a disadvantage later in the process. She thought she might have an idea about how to procure the hair, but it seemed rather a silly one, and her ears were still ringing.
It couldn't have been the jarvey, Hilary decided; its voice had been shrill, but not so awful as to leave her ears still ringing what felt like ten or fifteen minutes later. She knew some people whose wands hummed quietly when they cast Lumos, but hers never had, and anyway this didn't sound like that either. Indeed, as she crept deeper into the forest the sound deepened and began to be more of a low hum, almost palpable; Hilary glanced upward, but saw nothing that might be producing it. Setting the problem aside for a moment, she checked her watch and found it was just shy of ten o'clock. Nearly a third of her time gone, and she'd hardly accomplished a thing yet. As far as she could tell the trail of light she'd left behind her was intact, but every bit of this forest so far looked more or less alike--except no, something was glinting silver a little ways off the path.
Hilary flicked another light into the air, just to be sure, and then went to investigate. It certainly looked very much like a unicorn hair; not too much help to her, but nonetheless a hopeful sign that made her spirits rise.
The low hum, from which Hilary had momentarily been distracted, gathered its strength and rose into a great boooonnnng. Somewhere far overhead, Batty Thomas was tolling out the hour.
Hilary recognized it at the first strike, and was only mildly confused; at the second, she remembered that Batty Thomas had no business being anywhere near here, nor indeed had any bell at all. It was the bell, though, quite unquestionably; she knew all their voices just as well as those of her family, or her professors. By the fourth, she had all but forgotten the long silver hair still clutched in her hand; one ring she might have imagined, but certainly not four, and there had to be a reason. Surely it was better to try and work out the problem than to give in to the panic she could feel creeping in at the back of her mind.
By the time the tenth and final note faded away, Hilary was shaking, back pressed against a convenient tree. For the moment she had quite forgotten any intention of puzzle-solving; she was just waiting for it to end, and half-afraid that the bell might go on tolling past its ten allotted notes. Even once the noise faded, down even to the low hum that had bothered her before, she seemed to feel something buzzing in her bones. She had wondered before what it might have been like for Deacon, in his last hours, and she wondered it now more than ever; was this what it had felt like at first, when the old year was rung out and he first realized what it was he was in for, this sensation as though every last particle in his body was about to shake apart?
Hilary dug her nails into her palms and stood upright, though not without another wary glance upward. She would have given a great deal of money to know where the other champions were within the forest, and whether they had heard the bell too. In the meantime, she still clutched the shed hair in her fist--so tightly, indeed, that it was cutting into her fingers. She held it up and watched it glimmer in the light of her wand; it was a long time since first-year Potions, when Professor Vane had taught them how to distinguish unicorn hair from other kinds, but it certainly looked right. Perhaps the animal had shed more, and she would thereby be able to follow it, but no more glints of silver were immediately visible. Hilary sighed, chose a direction nearly at random, and set off once more, checking behind her occasionally to be sure that her trail of orange lights was staying where she'd left them.
After a while she noticed that the lights were beginning to flicker--not the ones further behind her, funnily enough, which for all their distance shone small but quite steady, but the several nearest behind her. She paused and watched for a moment, and found that it didn't look as though they were in danger of going out, but rather as though a great number of small things were flitting around them. Not moths, Hilary hoped, and shuddered as she continued on her way.
It was just occurring to her to check on the time when she began to hear a high chittering noise. "Oh, bugger off," said Hilary, taking pleasure in knowing there were no teachers about to hear her say it. "You can't have liked the taste of my arm that much."
It wasn't the Jarvey. It was a whole flock of small creatures that swarmed around Hilary, tugging at her hair and clothes (and, she was nearly sure, her shoelaces).
"Get off," she said breathlessly, flailing at them and clutching her wand; unfortunately, then the pixies took an interest in that as well, and she was forced to shove it safely up her sleeve before she could think of a spell to get rid of them. She would have given anything for her old Beater's bat just then. If anything, the pixies seemed to enjoy being swatted at--or else it made them angry; it all sounded like a lot of frantic high chittering to Hilary, and all she knew was that she was making it worse. She greeted the inevitable tug on her ears almost with resignation; at least that meant they'd be done with her soon, and surely it couldn't be that much worse than riding a broomstick.
It was infinitely worse than riding a broomstick, in fact, with nothing at all holding her up in the air but a handful of little creatures the size of her hand, and the ground getting further and further away all the time. Hilary had to force herself after a minute or so not to squeeze her eyes shut, or to struggle, but she knew she had to keep an eye on what was happening.
At long last the swarm dropped her unceremoniously on a branch and streaked away, squeaking gleefully all the way; the branch, which was very high and a little thin for comfort, creaked and bowed in surprise under Hilary's weight. She clutched at it, her hands slipped despite her gloves--and then she found a grip and the branch decided to hold, at least for the moment.
Hilary edged very slowly over until at last she was pressed up against the trunk of the tree, about as secure as she could expect to be for the moment. A breeze rustled past her--not a strong one, but the tree swayed alarmingly, and she clung to it until the movement passed. In the midst of her incipient seasickness, Hilary had an idea; when she felt relatively safe again she withdrew her wand from her sleeve and tapped it into the palm of her free hand. "Epoximise minima," she said, improvising desperately, and was amazed to find that it worked; now, when she pressed her gloved hand against the trunk of the tree, it clung but could still be pulled away. "So there," Hilary added, to no one in particular, as she performed the same charm on her other glove; for the first time since her name had been spat out of the Goblet, she began to feel a bit like Triwizard material.
Having guaranteed her safety as best she could, she kept her grip on the tree trunk with her non-wand hand and had a look round. She was terribly far up--it was difficult to estimate, but she thought maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet, in a tree she couldn't easily identify without its leaves. The pixies clearly took pride in their work; she was level with the tops of many other trees in the forest, and if she risked climbing a bit higher she might have quite a good view of the surrounding area. Hilary looked up uncertainly; there was a good bit of tree to go, but she hardly trusted this branch, let alone the ones still further up.
As she sat there, trying either to decide whether to climb further up or to think of a spell that would make the climb safer, she realized she must have quite lost track of time, for Batty Thomas began to ring out once more and cracked her nerve all over again. Hilary glanced at her wrist, found her watch gone--the pixes must have taken it--and merely leaned into the tree trunk, shivering and counting the bell strokes. It must have been up there somewhere, for she felt the vibrations roll through her much more strongly than before; even the tree was humming with the noise, and she imagined for a panicked second that it might simply fall to bits under her. But there was no bell in sight, and she couldn't seem to fix on a direction from which the sound might be coming. "Stop it," said Hilary aloud, uselessly. Her cheeks were damp, and she could feel bark rubbing her skin raw where she'd pressed her face against the tree. She could hardly hear her own voice. "Please--I know you're not here, you can't be, please stop."
It was difficult to concentrate, but she was nearly certain the bell had rung eleven o'clock. There was no way to be sure whether it was accurate, of course.
Hilary clenched her fists around her branch. She couldn't go on like this; she had an hour left and hadn't even found a unicorn yet, and purely for the sake of doing something she pointed her wand up at a spot ten feet or so above her and said "Funio!"
She had been a little too emphatic, if anything, and the rope shot out of her wand and knotted itself around the trunk several feet further still above where Hilary had wanted. But it was still a perfectly good rope--Hilary gave it a few sharp tugs to be sure--and with a last regretful pat to her branch, Hilary transferred her grip to the rope and began to climb. The tree creaked and bent in protest, and it seemed to take forever, but at last she had crawled up to a new branch nearly twenty feet higher and done her best to find herself a new perch on it. It seemed steady enough, but Hilary tied the other end of the rope around her waist all the same.
Up here, she was high enough to be in the sunlight, and Hilary wasted a minute or two just basking in being able to see again. She would have liked to see Katerina or Louis, somewhere out there, but she saw no sign of them; the edge of the forest was only just visible from here, and the dark bulk of a crowd gathered beyond it. If one of the other champions had already made it out again, she wasn't sure there was any way to tell from this distance, though she consoled herself with the thought that the gathered spectators might not seem nearly so calm if anyone had already finished the task.
Hilary now turned her attention to her immediate surroundings. The tree's own leaves were gone, but there was some kind of yellow moss growing in patches all over the trunk. It took some brain-racking--Herbology had always been one of Hilary's more difficult subjects--but Hilary was sure she remembered Professor Beery showing dried samples of it at some point. Third year, she thought--Beery and Kettleburn had given joint lessons for a few weeks about what plants to feed to what magical animals, Ravenclaws doubled with Slytherin, and Flaxman had wandered off during one of them and gotten bitten on the nose by a geranium at the other end of the greenhouse. Hilary had enjoyed the event rather too much at the time, and she enjoyed the memory of it rather too much now.
Golden Fleece! Of course, that was what the stuff was called; it certainly looked the part. Not much in the way of magical properties, apart from a slight shimmer one wouldn't expect from Muggle plants, or nutritional value for that matter; but there were several magical creatures who were quite fond of the taste all the same, and could be coaxed to eat when ill if some of the moss was added to their food. Hilary couldn't remember whether unicorns were among them, but it couldn't hurt to bring some along and try. She pulled a few handfuls away cautiously--one never knew when plants were likely to emit poison gas, or scream, or something, but the moss didn't seem to mind--and bundled them up in her handkerchief for safekeeping.
And now she had no choice but to address herself to the most urgent problem: getting down from this tree. Hilary was sure there must be magical ways to fly without a broomstick, but she didn't know of any. She tried conjuring another rope, but she couldn't see far enough straight down to tell whether it had reached the ground or not. All the same, it was the best option Hilary had, and she was just steeling herself to begin climbing back down when something snorted behind her, nearly startling her off the branch prematurely. "What now?" she said tiredly, gripping tightly to the tree as she tried to look behind her.
Hovering behind her was a very young thestral; Hilary had never seen a cub before, but there was something awkwardly adolescent in the movement of its wings that made her smile. "Hello," she said, and touched its nose gently, being careful to keep the sticky palm of her glove off its skin. She was nearly used to seeing the full-grown creatures Hogwarts used, but she had never been this close to one before. It felt warm and dry and a little slippery under her hand--almost like handling a snake. "I thought you lot only liked meat."
The thestral let out a high-pitched croak, clearly intended to be a friendly noise.
Hilary stripped off her glove and offered it a handful of moss, which it snatched happily out of her hand with small sharp teeth. "I wonder," she said thoughtfully, wobbling on her perch as she watched it. It was always difficult to tell how much thestrals understood of what was said to them, but she might as well try. "By any chance have you got a mum nearby?"
As luck would have it, the foal had, although the larger beast appeared suspicious of Hilary's motives. After a few careful negotiations that required giving up the better part of her pocketful of Golden Fleece, and some exciting near-falls, Hilary was successfully transferred from her branch to a thestral's back. It didn't feel much more secure, but at least she was mobile now, and had a creature who might be helpful if she lost her grip. They stayed above the treetops--the full-grown thestral had far too great a wingspan to stay in flight between the trees, and in any case Hilary was keeping an eye out for anything white.
"There," she said at last, stunned but sure of what she'd seen. She only barely had the presence of mind to note the direction in which the edge of the forest lay before the thestral dropped earthwards, and Hilary yelped and clung more tightly around its neck. Even once it had landed, folding its wings around her, she stayed a moment longer to recollect her wits. "Thank you," she murmured once her feet were back on solid ground, keeping an eye on the glint of white between the trees as she gave the beast's shoulder an absent rub, and the thestral emitted an affectionate sort of death-rattle in response and stalked away.
Had Hilary been barefoot, she would have wiggled her toes in sheer relief at having the ground under her feet again--even the ground in the forest, riddled with inconvenient tree roots and slippery with damp fallen leaves, felt like the best surface she'd ever stood on. As it was, she didn't think she had much time left, and her heavy leather shoes weren't conducive to toe-wiggling anyway.
The unicorn was grazing idly among the trees, but the moment she took another step its head jerked up, looking around for the source of the noise. Hilary very nearly apologized, but she was terrified of scaring it off entirely, so she reached into her jacket pocket and skipped directly to offering it her last handful of Golden Fleece.
The unicorn stared at her--at her hand, most likely--all but vibrating in fear. It really was beautiful, shining amidst the general murk of the forest, and Hilary felt terribly guilty all of a sudden. "I'm sorry," she breathed. "I won't hurt you, I swear I won't." Surely it could smell that on her, or something. "Just a moment--I only need a moment."
The unicorn came one cautious pace nearer, than another, nostrils flared.
Hilary forgot to breathe entirely. "Please," she said, without really meaning to, and gave the moss a bit of a rustle.
It felt like years, but at last the unicorn came within arms reach and began to nibble delicately at the moss in Hilary's hand. Hilary was fairly sure that by now her heart had stopped as well as her breath, but she touched the unicorn's nose gently and found it inconceivably soft.
"Thank you," she murmured, slipping her wand into her hand as subtly as she could manage, and pointed it at the unicorn's tail. "Crinisectio!"
She hadn't a very good shot at the unicorn's tail, and had counted on this to keep the spell from cutting the whole tail short; in fact several hairs fell to the forest floor, and the unicorn didn't even notice their loss. Hilary gave its nose another apologetic rub, wondering at last how to get out of the forest; having once had the opportunity to be this close to the beast, she was reluctant to break the moment.
At last the decision was made for her when Batty Thomas began once more to toll above her head. The unicorn leapt away into the trees, so fast that it almost looked as though it had Disapparated; Hilary shuddered and hunched in on herself, but forced herself to look up and try to spot the source of the sound. She thought she saw a hint of gray up among the trees--the grey of stone, most certainly, but misty and so insubstantial-looking that it might have been a trick of the light.
Three short notes this time, and then the bell fell silent. Hilary forced herself to think fast; the whole matter was so completely incongruous. She had abandoned the theory that Wimsey had laid traps deliberately, but it was a great deal of coincidence that she should be haunted by the one object that frightened her more than--oh.
"Idiot," said Hilary to herself, already laughing a little just in relief; and then she pointed her wand straight upwards, ducking her head in case anything went wrong, and said "Riddikulus!"
A few seconds later, something small fell from on high and hit Hilary's hands, with which she had been shielding her head, and then slid to earth with a protracted tinkling noise. Hilary straightened up cautiously and picked it up; it was a string of sleigh bells. Hilary grinned, turning it over in her hands, and then remembered that she had less than fifteen minutes to get out of the forest and hurled it into the bushes before the boggart could recover its wits.
She was long out of sight of the trail of lights she'd so carefully left herself, but she supposed having a compass would be better than nothing, so she gathered the unicorn hairs up from the ground, said "Point me!" and, once her wand had found its bearings, began heading due east.
She reached the edge of the forest in much less time than she'd anticipated, but nearly a hundred yards down from where she'd entered; from here Hilary could make out the crowd of Hogwarts students huddled in the bleachers, and Wimsey and the judges at their table further forward, and--was that Katerina already there standing with them?
Hilary ran for the judges' table, only to find that Katerina had already beaten her there; appeared to be waiting quite comfortably in fact, accompanied by a few other Durmstrang, although she greeted Hilary almost apologetically. There was no sign of Louis, and Chauvinieux was beginning to look distinctly restless. Heart pounding, Hilary produced her unicorn hairs and handed them to Wimsey, who pulled out his wand with raised eyebrows. "Not one to do things by halves, I see."
Hilary shrugged, unaccountably embarrassed. It occurred to her for the first time, with very inconvenient timing, to wonder whether Jerry ever talked about her to his uncle; he certainly boasted to her readily enough every time Wimsey made it into the papers, which was often. "I thought it couldn't hurt to be sure," she said, which was true enough, and clenched her fists anxiously in her jacket pockets.
Wimsey touched his wand to the hairs, and after a moment they glowed a warm blue; he nodded, and Hilary relaxed, even though she had known perfectly well they were barely ten minutes old. "Very neatly done, Miss Thorpe. And very well-timed, too." He produced his watch and showed it to her; it was just a few minutes shy of noon.
"Thanks," said Hilary, feeling much surer of herself now. She wanted to ask what would become of the hairs, and if perhaps she could keep one for herself, and whether Louis had been misplaced, but before she could she was grabbed from behind and yelped in surprise.
A small horde of people had descended upon her from the bleachers: half the girls in her year, it seemed like, Cattermole and Kapoor and a lot of Hilary's other friends, along with Jerry and Sep and a handful of Gryffindors Hilary didn't even know whom they seemed to have brought with them by accident. Even Winnie had tagged along after Jerry, and Flitwick after her, though he didn't look entirely sure of how he'd gotten there. "You were splendid," Amy Kapoor was saying; she was the one who had gotten Hilary around the waist.
"Hallo, Uncle," said Jerry brightly, as though they had run into each other at the Leaky Cauldron and it were all a pleasant surprise, and the entire group somehow managed to shuffle off to the side where they could sit on the grass before the enormous crystal lenses.
Two of these were now blank; the third showed some part of the forest, but with neither boy nor swan in sight. "What happened?" inquired Hilary, fascinated all the same.
"Wufflegritt fouled these things up," said Violet, with a hint of satisfaction; Professor Wufflegritt was not terribly likeable. "Adjusted the charm on them to follow people, not birds."
"Too small," Sep explained, "and too fast. We haven't seen him for hours. The Beauxbaton head's just about to blow his top--have you seen him?"
"Afraid so," said Hilary unhelpfully; much as she wanted to be sure Louis was all right, she was suddenly exhausted, and the better part of her attention was given to the sad thought that her chances of getting a nap after this didn't seem very good. She shivered, pulling her cloak more snugly around her shoulders.
"We nearly lost you." Jerry sounded suspiciously gleeful at the thought. "That flying trick you pulled to get out of the tree--how'd you manage that?"
"Made friends with a thestral." Hilary smiled wanly at him.
"I'd love to try it myself," said Jerry, a little dreamily.
"You ought to count yourself lucky you can't see the things," Hilary pointed out, and suddenly sat up straighter, grabbing at whoever's arm was nearest. (It turned out to be Amy.) "Look--I think that's him."
Louis was emerging from the forest, not too far from where Hilary herself had come out but looking significantly the worse for wear. He didn't look badly injured apart from a slight limp, but his clothing was rumpled and torn, and he was shimmering oddly; it took Hilary a moment to realize that this was the last of his feathers vanishing from his arm.
"I wish I could do that," said Winnie, startling everyone--including herself, it seemed, for she gulped and went quiet again.
"You'd come out as a kitten," Jerry said, absentmindedly but with an absolute certainty that suggested he'd considered the matter before. "One of those little grey ones that's mostly fluff."
Winnie hugged her knees sulkily.
"Well, it seems he hasn't been eaten by anything, at least." Hilary craned around to see better, with little success; Chauvinieux was helping Louis to a chair, and certainly quite a lot was being said, but it was impossible at this distance to tell what any of it was.
"Surely they'll tell us what happened," said Sep optimistically.
But whatever story Louis had told, neither Wimsey nor the judges passed it on. Only the scores came back--Louis's points totaled a mere fourteen out of thirty, but Hilary had earned a very respectable twenty-three, and Katerina a quite impressive twenty-six. These numbers were announced in haste before Louis was bundled up to the Hospital wing; Hilary suddenly remembered the bite in her arm, and offered to go with him as combined guide, crutch, and fellow-sufferer, but whatever hopes she had of getting information out of Louis were dashed by Chauvinieux's insistence on accompanying them.
Once in the hospital wing, they were separated; Madam Horrell healed Hilary's bite almost perfunctorily with a quick tap of her wand, not even pausing to scowl at Hilary for having made such a shoddy job of it, and agreed to Hilary's request for a few hours' privacy and sleep without really seeming to pay attention to the question.
-------
Hilary stumbled out of the hospital wing a few hours later, better-rested but still a bit rattled. Louis was nowhere in evidence, so she hoped that whatever had happened to him had been fixed and he was feeling better. She thought about going down to the Great Hall to see if it was dinnertime, but it felt too early for that yet; and then Hilary remembered about the enormous crystal lenses, and that the entire school had probably seen her huddled in a tree crying over a silly old church bell, and thought she'd better just go quietly back up to her dormitory to change.
She answered the doorknocker almost at a guess, and was frankly surprised when the door opened for her--and even more surprised to find that the common room was stuffed full of people. Not only people but food, streamers, and a vague sparkly haze drifting through the air--in fact, there seemed to be a party going on in her honor, which made it all too easy to guess who was responsible.
"There you are." Jerry appeared out of the crowd, taking Hilary's arm firmly. "You can't go skiving off your own party. It simply isn't done. We've all been terribly worried about you, you know."
"Yes, I can see that." Hilary eyed the table full of food, half tempted and half wary. "Who provided that lot? It wasn't you and Weasley, was it?"
"You needn't worry about any of it having been tampered with, if that's what you--" Jerry was interrupted by a shriek, and glanced sheepishly over towards the fireplace, where a handful of first-years were drifting slowly up towards the ceiling.
"Needn't I?" Hilary tried to fold her arms, but couldn't while he still had a hold on one of them.
"I didn't say we hadn't tampered with any of it," said Jerry cheerfully. "I was only going to promise to tell you which bits were safe. And thus: no worry required on your part."
Hilary patted his arm and firmly extracted herself from his grip. "Tell me in a minute, would you? I'm sick of these clothes--I've got to go up and change."
"I'll save you some punch," Jerry promised solemnly. "It hardly turns your hair green at all."
"I need some better friends," Hilary mourned, but in truth she was feeling much better already, and she ran upstairs to change into the first jumper and skirt she happened to get out of her trunk. The Triwizard kit she folded carefully away; one never knew when one might need some good practical outdoor wear.
-------
It was quite nice at first, having a party thrown in one's honor, but parties were hardly a rare occurrence in any Hogwarts common room, and it got awfully wearing after a while when one kept having to explain over and over again about Thestrals, as though most of one's friends weren't Ravenclaws who damn well ought to be able to work it out for themselves.
After an hour or two Hilary slipped back out of the common room to sit on the staircase outside; her head was pounding, but mercifully the door almost entirely muffled the music that had been struck up within. She wished almost immediately that she had brought a cloak along so that she could go outside for a walk, but it was too late for that now unless she wanted to navigate back through the crowd and up to her dormitory to get it. At least it was much quieter out here and just a little bit cooler; Hilary took what she could get and sat quietly for a good few minutes, slumped back against the outer wall of the staircase. A few people came or went, but she gave them all the same stiff smile and reassurance that really, she was fine, and they passed on.
Eventually Jerry stuck his head out the door, said "Aha! We're playing hide-and-go-seek, I see," and claimed the step below hers without asking, stretching his legs out across the stair. Hilary sincerely hoped no one else meant to come up the stairs any time soon; they weren't likely to see the obstruction until it was nearly too late.
"If you've found me," said Hilary at last, inanely, "aren't you meant to be hiding now?"
"Don't rush me." Jerry glanced sidelong at her. "What is it now? You're done with the task, you tackled it splendidly, and you haven't a thing more to worry about until February, which is lifetimes away. You might give in and enjoy yourself for once."
"I'm quite capable of enjoying myself, and you know that perfectly well--and it isn't that I don't appreciate your party, either. I'm sure you spent at least ten good minutes throwing it together." Hilary smiled at him. "I'm a bit tired, that's all, and I was beginning to get a headache. It feels as though I've had a terribly long day, though it's barely dinnertime."
She thought her reassurance had been fairly convincing, but Jerry's eyes narrowed. "Are you all right? Really? It looked as though you had a rough time of it in the forest this morning."
Hilary had been asked this several times already, some more sympathetically than others; most people she had brushed off as quickly as possible, but none were friends as close as Jerry was. Not to mention that Jerry had a way of encouraging confidences by being relentlessly sympathetic in the most irritating way possible. "Boggart," she explained shortly. "They're rough on anyone, I suppose. And I may not be as steady about heights for a little while as I once was."
"You'll have to find someplace else to live, then," Jerry observed, leaning over precariously to peer down between the stairs. "Do you think it's too late for the hat to re-Sort you into Slytherin? Nice and close to the ground, that one."
"I'd rather Hufflepuff than Slytherin any day." Hilary grimaced. "They at least have windows. But then, imagine having Beery for Head of House."
"I suppose you'll just have to make do, then--oh, hello." Jerry accepted her head on his shoulder with good grace, slipping his arm around her waist. "Are you quite sure you're all right?"
"Of course I am." Hilary frowned down into her lap. "The Goblet wouldn't have chosen me if I couldn't bear up, would it?"
Jerry hummed. "That depends. Did Wufflegritt charm it?"
"I think it was Dippett, actually, and for all that he's, well--" Hilary made a vague expansive gesture with one hand by way of expressing what Dippett was like-- "he's quite good at actually doing magic. I don't doubt him."
"There you are, then," said Jerry triumphantly. "Why should you trust in Dippett's strength of character over your own?"
Hilary laughed, lifted her head, and kissed him quickly.
The ensuing several seconds, which she largely spent figuring out just what she'd just done and all the things that were wrong with it, were about as awkward as a silence could possibly be. At last Jerry coughed and said, "You probably don't want to make a habit out of that, you know."
"Did you really mind that much?" demanded Hilary, who knew perfectly well that he hadn't. The girl had yet to be found whose kiss Jerry would find objectionable.
"Of course not." He grinned down at her. "But my skill might ruin you for all other men, and then what would become of you?"
"It doesn't seem any great loss to me," said Hilary, spurred to contrariness. "After all, given the day I've had, haven't I earned a kiss or two?"
"Well, when you put it like that, I'm practically obligated. But you shan't blame me for the long-term consequences." Jerry turned his head and kissed her again, with great care.
Hilary hadn't quite thought her argument through this far, but she couldn't very well object to the results. Surely, she thought, it was only a brief kiss; surely they would break apart in the next moment, or the next, or a few more seconds after that. But Jerry went right on kissing her, and it wasn't as though she wanted it to end, so she twisted around--rather carefully, to avoid falling down the stairs--to be closer to him. The stair was still too narrow, though, and she slipped down off it right into Jerry's lap.
"Going so soon?" Jerry laughed, slipping his other arm around her waist as well to keep her in place. He sounded quite breathless, in a way that made Hilary feel inexplicably accomplished.
"Not just yet." She shook her head, leaning in for more, and Jerry kissed her yet again, a good bit less carefully than before.
Admittedly Hilary's prior experience of kissing was rather limited--a few perfunctory experiments with boys and other girls both, mostly for curiosity's sake, and that one mead-fueled accident a year ago--but none of it had been remotely like this. She was pushing herself as close to Jerry as she could, short of breath and altogether too warm; he made a small noise that made her laugh, almost a muffled groan, and his fingertips crept up above the waist of her skirt to brush her bare skin.
"Oh," said Hilary, a little strangled-sounding. For a moment she was entirely unable to think of anything but the few small places where his fingers had found her skin. They were no longer kissing, but only because Jerry was nuzzling her neck, and at some point she had turned to face him fully and kneel astride one of his legs. It was only then that she fully realized the situation they were rapidly heading towards--and, furthermore, that she didn't mind the prospect one bit. She would have trusted Jerry with anything at all, and she had done so much today of which she would never have thought herself capable; why not this? If nothing else, she was desperately in need of a good physical mindless distraction.
On the other hand, she realized dimly, if they were going to investigate further, they needed to find somewhere else to do it.
"Jerry." She let her head fall forward, pressing a kiss by his ear, and dug her fingers involuntarily into his shoulders when he responded in kind. "Mmmm--what are we--"
It was the wrong way to begin. He blinked, shook his head sharply, and stared at her. "Hilary--oh hell, you're right." Jerry shifted her hastily off his lap. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. That isn't what I meant to happen at all."
"But," said Hilary stupidly, staring up at him as he scrambled to his feet. It was as though they were having two completely different conversations, and she'd hardly even said anything. Surely he must have been interested in the same thing she had been.
Jerry was flushed and fidgeting; he looked terribly guilty about something all of a sudden, but she couldn't imagine what. "I'm sorry," he said yet again. "I've just remembered, I've got detention with Kettleburn tonight, must dash--" and incredibly, he did, clattering away down the stairs before Hilary could even get her wits back, let alone a word in.
"Oh for Merlin's sake," Hilary said, much too late, when she had more or less got her breath back, and went back into the common room. Her party still appeared to be swinging merrily along without her, and she slipped through the crowd as discreetly as she was able to fetch her cloak from the dormitories.
-------
It wasn't as chilly outside as she had feared; if anything, it had warmed a few degrees from the frosty morning she'd spent in the forest. The air was crisp, but not at all unpleasant, so Hilary let her cloak hang loose around her shoulders as she walked. She had thought at first of finding Jerry, but she knew perfectly well that he didn't have detention and would be actively avoiding her. If he wanted to be chivalrous with her and only her, she decided, that was his own damn business, and it wouldn't be any use talking to him anyway.
Not that talking was what Hilary necessarily wanted to do just then. For all her annoyance, she still felt restless and overheated; the feeling wasn't exactly unfamiliar, but no one had ever encouraged her in it before. Her curiosity and her physical instincts had both been frustrated, and Hilary wasn't one to deal well with frustration without doing something about it. Her best hope was that a walk might clear her head a little and disperse the spare energy buzzing in her.
More by accident than design, she found herself near the lake, not far from where the Beauxbatons carriage had been parked. Still not feeling particularly social, Hilary decided not to go any nearer; instead she sat down on the grass near the lake. The squid was at the surface tonight, tentacles thrashing lazily about and batting at whatever unfortunate birds happened to be passing overhead. "It must be so lovely and simple to be you," said Hilary bitterly, folding her arms on her knees. "I suppose you've never had a boy friend. Or thought about having one. I expect you don't even remember your parents."
The squid didn't appear to be listening.
After a few minutes she decided it had more or less the right idea and took out her wand; she hadn't anything particular in mind, but just lay back on the grass and made patterns of varyingly-colored sparkles in the air above her, trying to see how subtly she could control the variations in color. It wasn't terribly productive, but it was surprisingly soothing and the effect was quite lovely at night, and in the process Hilary lost track entirely of time.
"It's very pretty," said someone overhead, after a while.
Hilary sat up quickly, so quickly that she put her face into her own cloud of sparks and winced at the prickly heat of them as they dissipated. "Good evening," she said, and smiled politely.
"Good evening." Louis Renard smiled back. He was fully dressed this evening, and with a cloak of his own, though lighter and silkier-looking than Hilary's. "May I join you?"
"Of course." Hilary patted the grass next to her and he sat down, gathering his cloak around him. "You seem to be doing much better than you were this afternoon," she observed; in retrospect this was a bit blunt, but Hilary didn't feel she had much patience for small talk right now.
"I am--thank you." If anything, Louis seemed more composed than Hilary, who became suddenly self-consciously aware that she was plucking up grass for no reason at all. "More frightened than hurt--or so your Madame Horrell told me."
Hilary smiled ruefully. "She doesn't seem a terribly sympathetic soul, does she? But she's quite a brilliant Healer, really. I suppose one would have to be here, with children thinking up new accidents to have everywhere. Not that that's really the point--I expect you wouldn't care to tell me what happened to you in the forest?"
"It's really quite straightforward." Louis said, and ducked his head. "But I shall tell you--if you tell me how it went for you."
"Fair enough," said Hilary resignedly, and gave him a few minutes' short retelling which she had had ample time to perfect during the evening. With the exception of a few listeners whom she had known would understand, she had learned quickly to gloss over the matter of Batty Thomas, but she felt that though she barely knew Louis that would do him some kind of disservice as her fellow competitor, and stumbled awkwardly over the subject instead.
"About that bell," Louis observed afterwards, as she had feared he might.
Hilary drew up her knees. "It was a boggart," she admitted. "I think I kicked it out from under a stone. I didn't realize at first--I've only ever met one in my second-year Defence Against the Dark Arts class, and it was something different then."
Louis let out a thoughtful hmph. "The thing you fear most is bells?"
"One particular bell." Hilary glanced sidelong at him, but at least he wasn't laughing yet. "The village I grew up in--it's been largely witches and wizards for ages and ages, and the Muggles there sort of politely pretend there's nothing queer going on, but hundreds of years ago the village was attacked and some poor wizard tried to cast a protective spell to keep the soldiers out of the church. Only it went wrong somehow, because he was in such a hurry, and one of the bells has been all queer ever since and ever so often there are nasty accidents. I used to think there wasn't much in it when I was small--children used to dare each other to climb up in the bell tower, that kind of thing. But something did happen two years ago and ever since--" She swallowed.
"I don't think this will comfort you," began Louis, "but I think your bell almost killed me."
Hilary looked up in surprise. From the majority of her friends, she might have thought it a tasteless attempt at a joke, but Louis seemed such a serious type, and if he were keeping his face straight he was doing it very well. "You don't mean that."
"It isn't much fun," said Louis solemnly. "Having an enormous noise like that start up when one is quite small and in midair. It stunned me quite badly."
"Oh, hell," said Hilary, suddenly horrified. "I am sorry. And here I was quite jealous of you."
"It is quite a nice skill," said Louis, with a bit of an apologetic smile. "I will admit to showing it off somewhat."
"I thought so." Hilary laughed. "Serves you right, then, for trying to show us both up--though I really am glad you're all right."
"And then," Louis went on, "there was a--I don't know the English word? A huge flying thing with hooves and a beak. I think it thought I was dinner."
"A hippogriff," Hilary suggested, through her astonishment. "They eat birds."
"Yes--that, of course." He shook his head. "I never even got close to a unicorn. I made a mess of taking my usual shape again, took a nasty fall in the process, and then realized the time and only wanted to get out of the woods. Not a very impressive first showing, was it?"
Hilary shifted a few inches closer to him. He might have been her competition, but she felt it wasn't exactly sporting to get one's opponent nearly eaten, even if it had been quite unintentional. "I've heard everyone always has one task that turns out utterly beastly for them. Surely it'll go better for you in February. And horribly wrong for me, and then you can take your turn at sitting here and telling me how exciting it sounds that I fouled everything up."
"I do hope that won't be necessary." Louis was smiling outright now. "But I am glad to have found you here tonight. You have been very reassuring--very gracious."
He ducked his head and kissed her; it was gentle enough to feel almost like a courtesy, but Hilary touched his jaw by way of encouraging him to linger. She had only just succeeded in tamping down the hopes that Jerry had frustrated, and had thought herself safe from them, but Louis's kiss sent that warm confusion flowing back through her out of all proportion to how much he was actually doing to encourage it.
Louis blinked at her once they had separated; he looked almost confused. "I hope you realize," he began apologetically. "I am not usually like this--eager with girls, I mean. After all, you hardly know me, and I wouldn't like you to think I meant to push you."
"Don't be sorry." Hilary swallowed hard. She was shocked at herself--both for doing this now, and rather belatedly for what she had done with Jerry earlier. Having goes at two boys in one evening was surely rather indecent, but after all Jerry had turned her down, and surely two chances in a row might also be some sort of sign in her favour. And damn it, whatever attempts she made to justify herself, she realized that she wasn't in the least thinking straight; she wanted someone's touch very badly, never mind who, and it was Jerry's own fault that he'd missed his chance to be of use.
Perhaps, then, now would be a good time to stop thinking about Jerry for the next little while.
"I'm not either," she admitted. "I hardly ever go out with boys at all, really. But it's been such a strange day, and I don't--look, I don't want to talk about it any more, but I should very much like some company all the same."
Louis had a look on his face rather as though he meant to ask if she was sure, really and truly sure, and so forth, so Hilary curtailed the process by kissing him again on the logic that the more she did it the less cause she would have to be nervous about it. So far she thought it might be working.
"Please," she said at last, the only remaining argument she could think of, and guided his hand under her skirt to rest on her knee.