Time goes back ten minutes.
After leaving the Great Hall, Snape and Karkaroff hid in a dark corner of the entrance courtyard corridor, discussing something in secret.
Neither of them discussed the matter of the semi-finals. Instead, after carefully observing the surroundings, they talked about another rather secret matter -
"Severus, did you feel it?" Karkaroff asked mysteriously.
Unlike in public, he called Snape by his name, as if he was very familiar with the Potions Professor.
"… I don't understand why you are making such a fuss, Ingor." Snape said coldly, "You are just scaring yourself."
"Severus, you can't pretend this didn't happen!" Karkaroff's voice sounded panicked and hoarse, afraid of being heard. "It has become more and more obvious over the past few months. I am very worried now, and I can't deny..."
"Then run away," said Snape impatiently. "Run away, and I will exonerate you. But I will stay at Hogwarts -"
"Severus, you clearly know what I'm talking about!" Karkaroff suddenly pulled open the sleeve of his left arm and growled hoarsely, "This mark has become more and more active recently... That man is back!"
On the inside of his left forearm, there is a tattoo of a skull with a snake head spewing out of its mouth.
It was the Dark Mark representing the Death Eaters!
"If the Dark Lord can come back, wouldn't that be a good thing for us?" Snape glanced at the Dark Mark on Karkaroff's arm and said indifferently.
"Good news?" Karkaroff sneered. "Since when can you, a Hogwarts professor who joined Dumbledore as soon as the war ended, be considered a loyal follower of the Dark Lord?"
"I have my own plans, which have nothing to do with you." Snape said stiffly, "You'd better hope that I won't tell the Dark Lord about your performance today when I return, otherwise you should know your fate."
"Oh, it seems that you are determined to go back, right?" Karkaroff gritted his teeth and said, "In this case, I only ask one thing of you, Severus... After you see the Dark Lord truly return, you must tell me immediately."
"When the time comes, I will find a safe place to hide. As for how you want to describe me in front of the Dark Lord, it's up to you. Anyway, I will have left by then..."
"... I agree." Snape pondered for a moment and said slowly, "Let's stop here for this matter. Now we should discuss the game."
…
Mr. Crouch and Bagman left after explaining the game process and precautions and answering the questions of the five warriors.
Bagman had wanted to stay at Hogwarts for one more night, so that he could secretly give Harry some tips so that he could make money from the gambling, but Mr. Crouch did not let him do so.
As for Ms. Maxim and Karkaroff, they were both dissatisfied with the current format of the competition, so they quickly left the room with their students.
"Thank you so much for your help today, Larry." Dumbledore looked at the only headmaster who had not left besides himself, and smiled. "If you hadn't suddenly stepped forward, I don't know if I could have convinced Maxim and Karkaroff."
"If I remember correctly, I was the one who persuaded the headmaster... Karkaroff." Snape's sinister voice suddenly sounded beside him.
"Ah, of course, of course I have to thank you for your help, Severus." Dumbledore nodded happily, "But Professor Hicks is not an employee of Hogwarts after all, so of course I still have to take care of the guest's feelings first..."
"You're too polite, Albus." Professor Eulalie Hicks waved her hand casually. "I just said a few fair words. I sincerely hope that this little guy will not get into trouble during the game."
"Take care of yourself this school year, little one." She looked at Harry with sympathy.
"I will, Professor Hicks," Harry said with a firm nod.
After taking his eyes off Harry, Professor Hicks said to Dumbledore angrily, "Albus, you must find out who did this... They didn't even let a child go!"
"Really? The older I get, the more I hate this kind of thing..."
Muttering all this, she took John Kowalski and left the room.
"Harry, Cedric, I suggest you go back to bed early." Dumbledore then turned to the two warriors of Hogwarts, looked at them with a smile and said.
"I'm sure the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff students are waiting to celebrate with you. They finally have an excuse to make a scene, and it would be wrong to take away their opportunity."
Professor McGonagall gave Dumbledore a reproachful look, but rarely did she refrain from raising any objections.
Harry looked at Cedric, who nodded, and they both walked out of the room.
The hall was empty now, and the candles were burning very low, making the jack-o'-lantern's gap-toothed grin appear flickering and eerie.
"So," Cedric said with a forced smile, "we are rivals again, outside of the Quidditch field."
"I guess so," Harry muttered.
He had no idea what to say. His mind seemed to be in a state of confusion, as if his entire brain had been robbed.
"So, tell me..." Cedric hesitated for a while, and finally asked, "How did you get your name in?"
"I didn't," said Harry, looking up at him. "I didn't. I was telling the truth."
"Well... okay." Cedric said, and Harry could see that Cedric didn't believe him. "Okay... goodbye then."
Even though Professor Hicks's analysis of all this made sense and he believed that someone wanted to harm Harry, most students didn't think about it that way.
Compared with the dangers in the competition, the honor is more eye-catching and easier to blind.
Would anyone, besides Ron and Hermione, believe him
Harry thought this deep down.
Everyone thought that he signed up for the competition himself? But how could they think that? You know, his competitors had received three years more magic education than him. You know, the project he was facing not only sounded very dangerous, but also had to be completed in front of hundreds of people!
Yes, he had imagined it, he had fantasized about it... but it was just for fun, a fantasy, a daydream... He had never really, seriously considered participating...
Yet someone thought about it... someone wanted him to play and made sure he got selected.
Why? To do him a pretty good favor? He didn't think so.
So, was it to make him look bad? If so, they might have gotten what they wanted. As for whether they really wanted to kill him...
Could it be that someone had put Harry's name in the goblet just as a prank, as a joke? Did someone really want him dead? Harry couldn't answer the question right away.
Yes, someone did want him dead, someone had wanted him dead since he was one year old... That was Voldemort. But how could Voldemort guarantee that Harry's name would be cast into the Goblet of Fire
Voldemort should be somewhere far away, hidden, alone, weak...
But in the dream he had had, the one in which he had woken up and felt the pain in his scar, Voldemort had not been alone. He had been talking to a young man...
Harry woke up suddenly and found himself in front of the Fat Lady. There was another pale witch in the portrait. He vaguely remembered that she was originally hung in the small room in front of the hall.
"Yes, yes, that's wonderful!" said the Fat Lady excitedly. "Violet - a portrait painter friend of mine - just told me all about it. Who's just been chosen as the school champion?"
"Nonsense," said Harry dryly.
"I'm absolutely not talking nonsense!" said the pale witch angrily.
"No, no, Violet, that's the password," the Fat Lady said soothingly, and she swung forward to let Harry into the common room.
When the portrait was opened, Harry nearly fell backwards at the sudden uproar in his ears. The next thing he knew he was being dragged into the common room by about a dozen pairs of hands, facing the entire Gryffindor house, all of whom were screaming, cheering, and whistling.
"You should have told us you signed up!" Fred shouted, looking half annoyed, half excited.
"How did you get away with not growing a beard?" George yelled.
"I didn't," said Harry. "I don't know how . . . "
"We have food ready, Harry, come and eat something!" Someone pulled him to a table.
"I'm not hungry. I ate enough at the banquet—"
But no one wanted to hear him say he wasn’t hungry, and no one wanted to hear him say he didn’t put his name into the goblet. It seemed no one noticed that he wasn’t in the mood to celebrate this…
Lee Jordan had pulled out a Gryffindor house flag from somewhere and insisted on wrapping it around Harry like a cloak.
Harry had no way to get away. Every time he tried to sneak towards the stairs leading to the dormitory, the crowd moved closer to him, surrounded him, forced him to drink another glass of butter beer, or forced cookies and peanuts into his hands...
Everyone wanted to know how he had done it, how he had tricked Dumbledore's age line and put his name in the Goblet...
“I don’t know,” he said over and over again. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
But no one paid any attention to him, as if he hadn't said anything.
"I'm tired!" After about half an hour, he finally couldn't stand it anymore and shouted, "No, seriously, George... I want to go to bed."
He was particularly hoping to see Ron and Hermione, hoping to find some sense, but neither of them seemed to be in the common room.
Harry insisted again and again that he needed to go to bed, and finally got rid of the crowd and hurried upstairs to the dormitory.
To his great relief, he found Ron lying on his bed, fully clothed, alone in the dormitory. Ron looked up as Harry slammed the door behind him.
"Where have you been?" Harry asked.
"Oh, hello," said Ron stiffly.
Ron was smiling, but it was a very awkward, forced smile.
Harry suddenly realised that he was still wearing the bright red Gryffindor flag that Lee Jordan had tied around him. He tried to take it off, but the knot was tight. Ron lay motionless on the bed, watching Harry struggle to untie the flag.
"Well..." Ron said when Harry finally took off the flag and threw it into the corner, "Congratulations."
"What do you mean, congratulations?" Harry asked, looking at Ron.
"Nothing... No one else has crossed the age line," Ron laughed dryly, looking as ugly as if he was crying with his mouth pulled open. "Not even Fred and George. What did you use - the Invisibility Cloak?"
"The Invisibility Cloak won't get me across that line," said Harry slowly.
"Oh, yes," said Ron. "If it had been the Invisibility Cloak, I'd have thought you would have told me... because it would have covered both of us, wouldn't it? But you found another way, didn't you?"
"Look," said Harry, "I didn't put my name in that goblet. Someone else must have done it!"
"But why would they do that?" Ron raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
"I don't know," said Harry, who felt that what he was about to say would sound dramatic and theatrical. "To kill me."
Ron had an expression of disbelief on his face—not disbelief that someone would want to kill Harry, but surprise that Harry could say such a thing.
"Harry, you could have told me the truth!" he said. "If you don't want anyone else to know, that's fine, but I don't understand why you would lie, especially when you made up such a... ridiculous lie."
"You didn't get into trouble for it, did you? The Fat Lady's friend, Violet, told us all that Dumbledore had chosen you. A thousand Galleons, and you don't have to take the end-of-year exams..."
"I didn't put my name in that goblet!" Harry shouted.
He was feeling a little annoyed now.
"Really?" Ron said indifferently, with the same skeptical tone as Cedric on his face, "But you didn't have a chance this morning. You could have done it last night, and no one would have seen you... You know, I'm not a fool."
"You certainly make that impression on me now," said Harry grumpily.
"Really?" Ron's smile finally disappeared without a trace. "You need to go to bed, Harry. I think you need to get up early tomorrow to be photographed by the media."
The two of them parted unhappily, both fell heavily on the bed, and said no more.
Harry didn't expect that even his best friend was unwilling to believe him. He was still naive before, fortunately there were Ron and Hermione...
At the same time, in the room in front of the Great Hall, Dracula, Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were investigating who had come to the entrance hall last night and thrown the note into the Goblet of Fire.
The results of the investigation were not satisfactory.
…
…