Breakfast at the Gryffindor Table was a very noisy affair on the morning of the Third Task.
Lucifer was eating some sausages dipped in gravy when the Owl Post arrived.
Harry received a good luck letter from Sirius, and Hermione had received a copy of the Daily Prophet, like she had been getting daily.
She unfolded the paper, glanced at the front page, and spat out a mouthful of pumpkin juice all over it.
Lucifer looked to his right and caught sight of it, "That's what they were talking about the other day..." he assumed incorrectly and quietly so only Hermione heard him.
"What?" Harry and Ron asked together, staring at her.
"Nothing," Hermione said quickly, trying to hide the newspaper out of sight.
"You should show him, Hermione, he's only going to hear about it-" Lucifer started to say, but Malfoy cut him off.
"Hey, Potter! Potter! How's your head? You feeling alright?" Draco Malfoy yelled across the Great Hall, "Sure you're not going to go berserk on us?"
Hermione turned to see Malfoy holding a copy of the Prophet as well.
Slytherins all up and down the table were snickering and turning in their seats to see Harry's reaction.
All of their faces immediately dropped, and she turned to see Lucifer standing up, "You want berserk, Malfoy?" He asked over the quiet Hall, and turned to look at them, "because I'll give you berserk."
And just like that, every Slytherin had the face of emptying their bowels into their underwear, "Morningstar!" Snape yelled from up at the staff table, having also stood up, "Twenty points from Gryffindor!"
"Now see here, Professor Snape," McGonagall chimed in, and Snape looked like he would rather drink rat poison, "if your Slytherins could keep their comments to themselves, then we wouldn't have situations like this arise, would we?"
Snape said nothing, but the Twenty points ended up not being reduced from the Hourglass near the back of the Hall.
Lucifer sat back down just as Harry finished reading the article about him as everything else calmed back to pre-interruption.
"Gone off me a bit, hasn't she?" Harry asked lightly, folding up the paper.
"How did she know your scar hurt in Divination?" Ron asked, "there's no way she was there, there's no way she could've heard-"
"We have Divination down next to the Forest now, remember Ron?" Harry cut him off.
"Oh... right... she could've easily overheard you..." Ron said regretfully.
"Potter," McGonagall said as she came up to them, "the Champions are congregating in the chamber off the Hall-" she said.
"But I thought the Task wasn't until this evening?" Harry asked in a hurried voice with scrambled eggs running down his front.
"The Champions' families are invited to watch the final task, you know. This is simply a chance for you to greet them," McGonagall informed him.
At that, Lucifer's heart and stomach both dropped to the floor, 'What? Eve was most likely taken care of by Delacour's? A-And... sh-she'll most likely tell them what kind of horrible guy I am... oh fuck...'
He was already busy thinking up every escape route out of the Castle, and if all else failed, he could just use his wings to leave Hogwarts.
Lucifer pushed away his plate, no longer feeling hungry as Harry stood up to go and see who showed up for him, "What's wrong?" Hermione asked him.
"It's time for Binns Exam," he said quickly as he hurried out of the Great Hall.
He wasn't entirely truthful with her; the main reason he wanted out of the Great Hall was to leave before Eve had a chance to walk back in with her new family and point him out amongst the crowd.
"But do we have to-" Hermione started to call after him, but he got so far away that yelling after him was pointless.
She sighed and gathered her stuff up as well, following him out of the emptying Hall. She arrived in History of Magic to see him already prepared in his seat, ready to write.
After the exam, Hermione felt confident in History of Magic; she felt confident in all of them, to be quite honest, but with how much she helped Harry, she had been afraid she wouldn't feel great about any of them.
She worried for no reason, though, as all of her exams she felt good about.
At lunch, they were all sitting down when Harry had come in and, to their surprise, Molly and Bill had come up alongside him.
He sat down, with Molly on his right, and Bill on her right.
Lucifer glared at Molly for a moment before just looking at his food, not wanting to get into it.
"Mum! Bill!" Ron had said the second he saw them, "What are you doing here?"
"Come to watch Harry in the last task!" Molly said brightly, "I must say, it makes a lovely change, not having to cook. How was your exam?"
"Oh... okay," Ron said unconvincingly, "Couldn't remember all the Goblin rebels' names, so I invented a few. It's alright, though," Ron said, helping himself to a Cornish pasty, while Molly looked stern, "they're all called stuff like Bodrod the Bearded and Urg the Unclean; it wasn't hard to think up a few names."
Fred, George, and Ginny had all joined them, with Ginny giving odd looks at Harry and Lucifer, which only Hermione seemed to notice.
She glared at the red-head for a moment before she looked at Mrs. Weasley, who was giving her an unpleasant look, "Hello, Hermione," she said, more stiffly than usual.
"Hello..." Hermione said quietly, her smile fading as she realized Molly really did believe that rubbish Skeeter wrote.
"I'm surprised, Molly," she heard Lucifer say.
Mrs. Weasley looked shocked at the use of her First Name, "I beg your pardon?"
"Believing what Rita fucking Skeeter wrote about Hermione and Harry being together, when they don't even have romantic attraction to one another," Lucifer said as he glared at Molly.
"It's true, Mrs. Weasley," Harry said quickly, "Hermione isn't and has never been my girlfriend. It's past clear to most like everyone at this point who she's dating after what happened at the Burrow under...."
"Harry!"
"R-Right, of course," Molly said, and immediately warmed up to Hermione, but Lucifer wasn't so forgiving, and he didn't interact with her the entire lunch period.
After lunch, Harry continued walking around with Bill and Molly.
xxxxx
They returned for the evening feast after their exams had finally ended, but Lucifer hadn't been awfully hungry, so he didn't eat a whole lot.
Hermione chided him for it, but she didn't press him much beyond that.
Pretty soon the enchanted ceiling began to fade from blue to a dusky purple, and Dumbledore rose to his feet at the staff table, silence falling as a result, "Ladies and gentlemen, in five minutes' time, I will be asking you to make your way down to the Quidditch Field for the Third and Final Task of the Triwizard Tournament. Will the Champions please follow Mr. Bagman down to the stadium now?"
Dumbledore soon asked everyone else to make their own way down to the Stadium, and Hermione suddenly felt nervous.
She began wondering if Harry had practiced enough, and wondered how badly he'd get hurt.
He always seemed to be getting hurt near the end of the year, so she was expecting it, but to what degree, she wasn't sure what with the Tournament and all.
When they arrived down at the stadium, Hermione sat on Lucifer's right, Ron sat on her right, Ginny on his right, and the other four Weasleys behind them, "I'm excited and nervous," Hermione said.
"I'm just waiting to see how Harry manages to send himself to the Hospital Wing," Lucifer said casually.
"Lucifer, is that anyway to talk about your friend?" Molly asked him from behind Ginny.
"It's true, mum," Ron said, "every year so far, near the end of it, Harry's ended up in the Hospital Wing, or at least being checked over by Madam Pomfrey."
"And that's not counting the times throughout last year," Fred said.
"Namely when those nasty Dementors showed up to the first Quidditch game and his Nimbus Two-Thousand was destroyed by the Whomping Willow," George finished.
"I dunno, but Hermione did have her own bed reserve by Madam Pompfrey, she's away for most of the night....," Ginny said, turning to look at the other Weasleys.
'Oh shit! Did she have to open up that topic?!...' Hermione lamented in her head.
xxxxxx
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