2/2

Whether it was the hundreds of eyes staring behind them, or the sounds of the boys' shoes on the raised professors' dining area, or having watched the tiptoeing pair walk around the walls of the Hall towards the back; Hagrid and Sprout were both wilfully ignoring them.

The boys, who could be no older than thirteen a piece, felt safe when they were directly behind the guards and walked right up to the Goblet, gingerly stepping over the magical line Dumbledore had drawn around the area after dinner last night.

What they clearly didn't notice in their sneaking, and what Gaara focussed on in those seconds, was that despite their feet never touching the whispy, floating line, it seemed to catch on them. As they walked those last couple of steps to the stone Goblet, it was dragged along by them. And when they raised their hands, holding their names, the Age Line snapped taut and flung the boys out of the area, head over heels.

They landed with thuds and thunderous applause by the amused onlookers, even a great deal of Slytherins, who would always applaud Gryffindors hurting themselves like idiots. Gaara, however, was less amused by the stupid children trying to volunteer for certain death.

Harry was thinking along the same lines. Who in their right mind, especially those even younger and less skilled than him, would want to enter?

"Who in their right mind would even want to enter?" Ron scowled over his morning porridge, making Harry smile at how their minds were in sync.

They watched Sprout finally turn to tell the boys off and make sure they weren't hurt too badly. Hermione said she hoped they knocked some sense into themselves. "Honestly! Trying to get past an Age Line that Dumbledore drew himself!" She huffed, scooping some scrambled eggs onto her toast.

"Well, I mean, I can't really blame them for trying." Ron said. "Stupid wanting to enter but you don't try, you never know..." Ron looked oddly contemplative at the end.

Harry began to wonder if they were thinking the same thing after all.

"Ron, you're not honestly thinking of entering, are you?"

"Of course not, Herm." Ron said, his attention drifting away from the conversation again. His eyes had been periodically darting to where he had last spotted the twins, to make sure they hadn't disappeared amongst the lingering crowds. Ginny was at the far end of the table doing the same thing. Between them, they had the pair under total surveillance.

Harry and Hermione both sympathised with Ron, having to spy on his brothers under threat of his mother's wrath, just as Ginny was. They knew how scary Molly Weasley could be when she was angry, not that she had ever acted that was towards either of them. They had seen her angry at her own children often enough, though.

Mrs Weasley was adamant that her youngest children would stop the twins in every way that wouldn't get them arrested for interfering in the Tournament.

It was in the late morning, as the flow of entries into the Tournament had begun to slow and the audience had begun to begun to diminish as the students wandered away, that the twins made their move. Ginny spotted them first as Ron had been heatedly debating with Hermione the relative health benefits of eating a third chocolate frog before noon. Harry thought he was putting up a pretty good argument, all things considered.

Mortified to show more of her family drama in front of her friends and classmates, but more afraid of her mother's wrath should she fail, Ginny jumped to her feet and moved to block the twins' path. They smiled as they approached, looming over her with the latest of their growth spurts, and she realised that the illegality of her physically stopping her big brothers would not be the only reason she did not try that method.

Highly conscious of the number of eyes on her, she stood on her tiptoes and leaned between her brothers to whisper a number of threats, some centred around their parents and a great deal more that were purely violent in nature. She felt she had been pretty creative with her threats so she deflated a little when the both snickered, took turns patting her on the head, and then barged past her, almost knocking her over.

She screamed something at them that she would have certainly lost House points for were it not for the fact that the only professors in the Hall were busy reminiscing about their summer activities.

The twins sauntered up to the Goblet brazenly and tossed their names in before turning and bowing in front of their applauding public. They looked so proud of themselves until they noticed their little sister jogging out of the Great Hall. It dawned on them that some of the things Ginny had threatened might not have been empty, and that she was now on her way to rat them out to their mother.

Following the soft applause came a round of laughter as everyone watched the pair sprint down the steps and along the centre of the Great Hall after Ginny.

"Aren't you going to follow and make sure she's alright?" Hermione said, readying herself to give chase alongside Ron.

"Nah, she'll be fine. Nothing they ain't done to her before." Ron said, pulling out a piece of parchment and his quill that he'd had stashed in his sleeves. "Did you bring Hedwig, Harry?"

"Yeah, she's waiting above the Courtyard." Harry said, having leaned back in his seat to watch the twins disappear out of the Hall and up the stairs after Ginny, hoping she would be alright as Ron had said.

"I'm surprised you're so ready to tell on them." Hermione said. "I mean, I'm not criticising but normally you wouldn't be so eager." She said while Ron scratched away at the parchment.

"He's not eager, Herm. Mrs Weasley told him and Ginny that whoever is last to tell her will be punished as bad as them." Harry said.

"That doesn't seem very fair." She said.

"It's not, but I'm not letting Ginny beat me." Ron said, finally signing his name with a hasty flourish and folding the note. He rose to his feet but Hermione remained sat with Harry as Ron darted out of the Hall and headed towards Hedwig had been handily stationed. He was bound to beat Ginny now. It would take her ages to write her own note, run up to the owlery and send off Pigwidgeon, all while evading the twins. Hedwig was much faster and she had at least a ten minute head start.

He showered Hedwig with praise when she flew down to him but she took no notice of his flattery and instead set off on her journey. She was a one-human bird and had no time for her keeper's associates.

He was breathing heavily by the time he got back to the Hall. Wheezing, he offered his thanks again to Harry and drank a mug of pumpkin juice.

"What do you think your mum's gonna do to the twins and Ginny?" Harry asked.

"I dunno, mate, but if it's half as bad as what mum wrote, I wouldn't want to be them tomorrow." Ron said, a haunted look in his eyes.

Gaara had watched the Weasley family drama and listened to Draco's disparaging commentary on how they were probably arguing over a morsel of cheese.

A couple of hours after breakfast had actually ended, Gaara bored of the trickle of name submissions and left the Great Hall. Draco gravitated towards his other friends and they chatted for a while, the conversation repeatedly drifting back to the ceremony last night. Draco blushingly spoke of it but always diverted the conversation back away from it.

Now that the event had happened, he was released from his confidentiality and he would have to explain his complicity to his parents. They would understand, they had to, but no doubt he would still receive a scathing response from his father and an embarrassed one from his mother. His mother would tell him that being a thespian was not a suitable hobby but that nobody would 'hold this instance against him', while his father would say something similar, rant about Fudge, and then tell Draco to publically disavow the event in the strongest possible terms.

It would go unsaid that both were proud he had been asked to play Salazar Slytherin, out of all the participating Slytherin students.

At least Gaara never had to deal with this pressure…

Draco realised he had just wished his parents dead and had envied the life of hardship Gaara had been raised in, so he spent five minutes feeling hideously guilty before rejoining the conversation. He would properly punish himself for his callousness by writing to his parents before lunch.

His letter would also need to pre-empt his mother's questions about how he was, how Gaara was, and reassure her that neither he nor Gaara were stepping within twenty feet of the Goblet… unlike the Weasleys. As if that were in doubt.

There hadn't been any morning post, as they had been warned, and there would not be any evening post either. Letters were being allowed out but someone (Fudge) was not letting any owls into the castle. An attempt, Draco assumed, to stop parents from making one last plea to prevent their children from entering. It was cruel but Draco understood the reason.

Father really was right, though; Fudge's days were numbered if he was resorting to preventing parents from talking to their children so he could force them to perform deadly stunts.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Gaara had been wandering the corridors of Hogwarts, during the daylight hours for a change, to stretch his legs and gets some fresh air. Well, as fresh as the air inside could be, since he had no desire to venture out into the frigid autumnal Scottish cold. He had hoped beyond reason that last year had been an outlier, that normally the country was warmer than it had been…

Turned out, last year had been mild.

That said, no matter how cold it was outside, Gaara was eventually forced to endure it to escape the crowds.

He fled after a small group of Beauxbatons boys had cornered him with the intention of ingratiating themselves with the local celebrity. For some reason, they thought the best way to do this was to follow him around, repeatedly asking for stories of the Attack on Hogwarts, to introduce them to other interesting Hogwarts students, and to discuss any one of a hundred different subjects he had no interests in. When one started on the topic of fashion and the correct use of eyeliner, Gaara pushed past them and fled without having spoken a single word to any of them.

Gaara was soon too far away to hear one of the French students calling him the rudest person he had ever met.

A passing Ravenclaw pair did the perplexed Beauxbatons students a favour and explained that Gaara was entirely without tact and that they shouldn't take it personally. The pair then proceeded to discuss with the French boys the prevailing theory in the Ravenclaw tower, that Gaara was in fact a rare form of daytime Vampire (a 62% probability according to the latest analysis).

The foreign students left that exchange further confused, not just by this bizarre theory, but by the fact that such a popular and damning belief did nothing to diminish the respect everyone seemed to feel for Gaara. Clearly he was someone to be revered, whether human, new breed of vampire, or something else entirely.

By then, while the Beauxbatons students were disseminating the rumours of Gaara's power and influence across the school, the redhead himself was in the Forbidden Forrest, wrapped heavily against the weather, taking a nap on top of Fluffy, who was also snoozing.

Even without having witnessed that undignified scene, many Slytherins who heard the reverence with which the Ravenclaws were speaking of Gaara to the Beauxbatons students were quick to spread the other side of the story. They balanced out the scales with a number of anecdotes about Gaara not knowing how to perform rudimentary spells, his single attempt at flying on a broom, and quite a few stories beyond.

Frankly, beyond the specifics of respect or failings, Gaara would have been mortified to hear so many people talking about him. He also would not have appreciated Draco, who had been approached quickly by those who had been told of their friendship, telling everyone how feckless he could be.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Luna had taken her customary table in the Library and placed upon it her customary tower of books like it was any other day. Though, unlike many previous days, she was almost totally alone in the expansive repository of knowledge, as even her Housemates had deserted the books for other pursuits.

Before settling there, Luna had tried looking for Gaara since she hadn't seen him much as of late. She had no luck finding him, which meant he was probably in the forest or in the Slytherin dorms. She couldn't blame him, either way, since Gaara didn't like crowds or attention, and the school was terribly busy and everybody seemed to be abuzz about him.

She had approached Draco towards the end of her search, since he was about the best authority on Gaara and his comings and goings. He had been her last stop since he had never made much of an effort to obfuscate his dislike for her so she was always reluctant to rely upon him for such things.

He was difficult to read when he was with his other friends, so Luna could not be totally sure if he was lying when he said he didn't know where Gaara had gone off to. It was a shame, after having gone to the trouble of approaching him under such scrutiny, to be turned away having gained nothing but contemptuous looks.

If even Draco didn't know his location, Gaara almost certainly did not want to be found.

Still, if Gaara was going to hide, it would have been nice if Ginny weren't also detained. She had some sort of family emergency to deal with, apparently.

Far from the pleasant companionship or conversation Luna had been seeking, she soon found herself under the same scrutiny that had driven Gaara from the castle. They had found her shortly after she entered the Library, but she did not want to talk to the boys and girls from Beauxbatons. They only wanted to gossip about her friend and she knew that was rude so she asked them politely to leave, unless they wanted to discuss one of a number of different subjects (none of them ostensibly related to Gaara, though one was about Tanuki…)

Once the overly-curious boys and girls had rejected the idea of conversing further with Luna, as so many had before them, they took a look around the famous Hogwarts Library. The tour didn't last long as they were apparently not the most studious pupils attending Beauxbatons, and one library looked like any other to them. They skirted around the undeniably odd blonde girl on their way out.

She watched them go out the corner of her eye and then she delved back into her book. Professor McGonagall had mentioned an obscure form of Transfiguration involving automated transfigurative magical artefacts, mixing Transfiguration with Charms, yesterday.

Her teacher had insisted that the practice was rare, difficult, and would not be covered unless they decided to continue their Transfiguration education after leaving Hogwarts, but this did nothing to deter Luna's interest. She found the three books in the Library that mentioned it and the one that actually covered the subject in full, and had decided now was the time to get lost in the subject.

Hopefully someone would rouse her from her studies when it was time for the selection this evening, otherwise there was a good chance she would forget. She had read through meals, nights, and lessons before, all without noticing anything was amiss.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Albus had not stayed to watch the entries, it was agitating him too much.

No matter how omniscient some of his students (and ex-students) in the school thought him to be, Albus did not see or know everything that happened here. However, he was usually aware of what went on, and today he was definitely aware of what had not happened.

Sick with guilt as he was, driven from the Great Hall by what he had been forced to do and what he had failed to prevent, Albus was still waiting on Gaara's entry. He had covertly asked one of the less talkative portraits to come and notify him if a certain redhead entered their name into the Goblet.

A worrying thought, even worse than the notion of what he was waiting on, occurred him: what if Gaara did not enter?

If Gaara reneged on their deal and refused to enter, it was too late to do anything more. It was the eleventh hour and a regular child might be the Champion forced to participate thanks to their greed or hubris.

At least Harry had not been foolish enough to wander near the Goblet. He had also asked Sir Philipe Van Hansen's portrait to come and tell him if the boy did enter.

Albus had work to do, papers piling up on his desk and the promise of countless parental complaints tomorrow morning, but all he could do was count down the hours until this evening's ceremony.

It was on days like this that Albus would step over to his most secure files and he would take out a single scroll he had drafted sometime after 1971. It had been then that he realised his second greatest sin and for which he had spent the last twenty years trying to atone, through battle and subterfuge.

On that day, after the disastrous meeting that had opened his eyes to his utter failings, he had written out his resignation with plans to submit it soon after. And then, before long, stirrings of the impending first war began to appear and he knew he could not step down just yet. There was still work to be done, and good that he could accomplish as headmaster.

Now, again, as he often did in times of stress, Albus looked down at the scroll and wondered if this year would be the year for him to retire. His decisions over the last few years had begun to feel less and less like the path to the greater good, and more like compromises that were only compounding his sins.

He could fight Tom's return away from here, surely. He could devote himself fully to the fight.

And once that was done and the war was won, he could finally rest. Maybe start writing that book he started in the forties. So far it had five pages and an outline of the last chapter…

With a sigh, he dropped the scroll back into the drawer and re-secured it. Not today. Too much still to be done.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

As the autumnal skies dimmed and the evening chill settled, the students who had drifected out of the Hall during the course of the day began to flock back there, ready for the next ceremony to begin. This process started over an hour before the selection was supposed to start, giving the teachers ample time to track down the stragglers and corral them towards the Hall.

"She's not so much a cat as a border collie." Pomona stage-whispered to Hagrid as they both watched the Gryffindor head follow behind a group many times larger than any other that a teacher had brought with them.

Hagrid chuckled a little but looked away before Minerva could look his way.

When the entire student body was gathered, minus the two teenagers stuck in the infirmary that night (they would hear about how they missed the most exciting dinner for months to come), and there was only thirty minutes left until the allotted twenty-four hours elapsed, that Gaara ambled back into the room.

He was one of the last to arrive at the Hall, having avoided all of the teachers sent to collect him, but he was pretty easy to spot when he did get there. The red hair and scowl really stood out from across the room so Draco immediately stood and waved him over. He had arrived earlier after leaving the Hall around the lunchtime, and had saved Gaara's seat.

Draco was surprised when Gaara didn't look his way, since Gaara did not like to linger and always went straight for his seat. Instead, a strange wav of anxiety washed over him as Gaara continued walking down the centre aisle. Draco assumed Gaara had seen him out of the corner of his eye and was just going around the long way to their seats.

But Gaara did not follow the table around and come back towards Draco when he got to the end, instead, in front of every student from Hogwarts, the collected staff, and the assembled visitors, Gaara strode right up to the Goblet between the guards and threw in his name.

The silence lasted another beat before a steady applause rose amongst the onlookers for the first time in hours. Gaara had not turned to see the acclaim, instead he paused, stood between the Goblet's guards, and glared directly at the Headmaster.

The clapping ceased and the awkwardness of the moment silenced the room for a moment. Nobody knew why Gaara, who had inexplicably just entered himself into the Triwizard Tournament of all things, would hold such animosity towards Albus Dumbledore.

Before the whispering could start up, Gaara turned on his heel and descended the steps back to the main floor of the Hall, walking slowly back to his seat under the gaze of the room. He didn't meet Draco's eyes, however, as he approached.

Draco, on the other hand, was so shocked that his mouth was literally agape.

Conversations picked up again by the time Gaara had reached him, so Draco was feeling less self-conscious about the piece of his mind he was about to give his friend over this latest lie. Hell, even if everyone in their House heard this, it was high time he told Gaara what he thought.

When Gaara was upon him, still averting his eyes like an errant schoolchild (which he technically was), Draco took a deep breath in preparation of the tongue-lashing he was ready to give, but then the chatter that had arisen suddenly stopped and the Hall went deathly silent.

Draco looked up at the head of the room, his focus having been on Gaara for the past minute or two, and he realised that Dumbledore was about to commence the ceremony. Gaara silently took his seat at Draco's side and the platinum blond let out his impotent breath and tried to quell the rage-induced headache he could feel coming on.

Screaming at Gaara would have to wait until this was over, since. While Draco was content to let Slytherin hear Gaara's bollocking, he was not yet ready to air their dirty laundry in front of the collected British press.

Draco couldn't be sure, but he was beginning to think that Gaara had somehow timed his entry to coincide with the arrival of the reporters and Minister Fudge.

With the ensuing ruckus, Draco's attention was reluctantly called to proceedings happening at the end of the Hall, but the thought still remained in the back of his mind: Gaara lied to him again.

He would have to make sure Gaara did not sneak away at the end of the ceremony.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

A/N: I hope that in spite of its length, and the fact that I haven't had a chance to properly proof-read it, you enjoyed the chapter.

Hopefully I will be back soon with more.