Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

going to be around much longer … half the Triwizard champions have died … how long d’you reckon you’re going to last, Potter? Ten minutes into the first task’s my bet.’
    Crabbe and Goyle guffawed sycophantically, but Malfoy had to stop there, because Hagrid emerged from the back of his cabin, holding a teetering tower of crates, each containing a very large Blast-Ended Skrewt. To the class’s horror, Hagrid proceeded to explain that the reason the Skrewts had been killing each other was an excess of pent-up energy, and that the solution would be for each of the class to fix a leash on a Skrewt and take it for a short walk. The only good thing about this plan was that it distracted Malfoy completely.
    ‘Take this thing for a walk?’ he repeated in disgust, staring into one of the boxes. ‘And where exactly are we supposed to fix the leash? Around the sting, the blasting end or the sucker?’
    ‘Roun’ the middle,’ said Hagrid, demonstrating. ‘Er – yeh might want ter put on yer dragon-hide gloves, jus’ as an extra precaution, like. Harry – you come here an’ help me with this big one …’
    Hagrid’s real intention, however, was to talk to Harry away from the rest of the class.
    He waited until everyone else had set off with their Skrewts, then turned to Harry and said, very seriously, ‘So – yer competin’, Harry. In the Tournament. School champion.’
    ‘One of the champions,’ Harry corrected him.
    Hagrid’s beetle-black eyes looked very anxious under his wild eyebrows. ‘No idea who put yeh in fer it, Harry?’
    ‘You believe I didn’t do it, then?’ said Harry, concealing with difficulty the rush of gratitude he felt at Hagrid’s words.
    ‘’Course I do,’ Hagrid grunted. ‘Yeh say it wasn’ you, an’ I believe yeh – an’ Dumbledore believes yer, an’ all.’
    ‘Wish I knew who did do it,’ said Harry bitterly.
    The pair of them looked out over the lawn; the class was widely scattered now, and all in great difficulty. The Skrewts were now over three feet long, and extremely powerful. No longer shell-less and colourless, they had developed a kind of thick, greyish shiny armour. They looked like a cross between giant scorpions and elongated crabs – but still without recognisable heads or eyes. They had become immensely strong, and very hard to control.
    ‘Look like they’re havin’ fun, don’ they?’ Hagrid said happily. Harry assumed he was talking about the Skrewts, because his classmates certainly weren’t; every now and then, with an alarming bang , one of the Skrewts’ ends would explode, causing it to shoot forward several yards, and more than one person was being dragged along on their stomach, trying desperately to get back on their feet.
    ‘Ah, I don’ know, Harry,’ Hagrid sighed suddenly, looking back down at him with a worried expression on his face. ‘School champion … everythin’ seems ter happen ter you, doesn’ it?’
    Harry didn’t answer. Yes, everything did seem to happen to him … that was more or less what Hermione had said as they had walked around the lake, and that was the reason, according to her, that Ron was no longer talking to him.
    *
    The next few days were some of Harry’s worst at Hogwarts. The closest he had ever come to feeling like this had been during those months, in his second year, when a large part of the school had suspected him of attacking his fellow students. But Ron had been on his side then. He thought he could have coped with the rest of the school’s behaviour if he could just have had Ron back as a friend, but he wasn’t going to try and persuade Ron to talk to him if Ron didn’t want to. Nevertheless, it was lonely, with dislike pouring in on him from all sides.
    He could understand the Hufflepuffs’ attitudes, even if he didn’t like it; they had their own champion to support. He expected nothing less than vicious insults from the Slytherins – he was highly unpopular there and always had been, as he had helped Gryffindor beat them so often, both at Quidditch and in the Inter-House Championship. But he had hoped the Ravenclaws might have found it in their hearts to support him as much as Cedric. He was wrong, however. Most Ravenclaws seemed to think that he had been desperate to earn himself a bit more fame by tricking the Goblet into accepting his name.
    Then there was the fact that Cedric looked the part of a champion so much more than he did. Exceptionally handsome, with his straight