Chapter 248 The conspiracy behind the competition

Time goes back to ten minutes ago.

After leaving the auditorium, Snape and Karkaroff hid in a dark corner of the entrance courtyard corridor, discussing something in secret.

Neither of them opened their mouths to discuss the matter about the Four Powers Tournament. Instead, after observing the surroundings vigilantly, they talked about another rather secret matter——

"Severus, do you feel it?" Karkaroff asked mysteriously.

Unlike in public, he called Snape by his first name, as if he knew the Potions Master very well.

"...I don't understand why you are making such a fuss, Yingol." Snape said coldly, "You are just scaring yourself."

"Severus, you can't pretend this didn't happen!" Karkaroff's deliberately suppressed voice sounded frightened and hoarse, for fear of being heard. "Over the past few months, it has become more and more obvious. I I'm very worried now, I can't deny it..."

"Then run away," Snape said impatiently. "Run away and I will excuse you. But I will stay at Hogwarts -"

"Severus, you know exactly 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 spitting out of its mouth——

It is the Dark Mark that represents the Death Eaters!

"If the Dark Lord could come back, wouldn't it be a good thing for us?" Snape glanced at the Dark Mark on Karkaroff's arm and said nonchalantly.

"A good thing?" Karkaroff sneered, "Since when can you, the Hogwarts professor who took refuge with Dumbledore right after the war, be considered a loyal believer 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 go back, otherwise you should know your fate."

"Oh, it seems you are determined to go back, right?" Karkaroff gritted his teeth and said, "In that case, I only have one thing to ask of you, Severus... until you see the Dark Lord When you really come back, 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 have already left by then..."

"...I agree." Snape thought for a moment and said slowly, "That's it for now. Now it's time for us to discuss the matter of this game."

…

Mr. Crouch and Bagman left after explaining the game procedures and precautions, and answering questions from the five warriors.

Bagman originally wanted to stay one more night at Hogwarts, and was planning to secretly give Harry some individual tips so that he could make money from gambling. But Mr Crouch did not get his wish.

As for Ms. Maxim and Karkaroff, because they were both dissatisfied with the current form of the competition, they each quickly left the room with their students.

"Thank you so much for your help today, Lally." Dumbledore looked at the only principal who had not left except himself, and smiled, "If you hadn't suddenly stood up, I don't know if I would have been able to convince Maxi Where are Mu and Karkaroff."

"If I remember correctly, Headmaster... Karkaroff should have been persuaded by me." Snape's gloomy voice suddenly sounded next to him.

"Ah, of course, 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 guests first. Emotions……"

"You're too polite, Albus." Professor Eulalie Hicks waved her hand casually, "I just said a few fair words. I really hope nothing happens to this little guy during the game. "

"Take care of yourself this school year, little one." She looked at Harry with sympathetic eyes.

"I will, Professor Hicks," Harry said with a firm nod.

After looking away from Harry, Professor Hicks said angrily to Dumbledore: "Albus, you must find out who did this... They didn't even have one Even the children are not spared!”

"It's true, the older I get, the less I see this kind of thing..."

She was mumbling as she took John Kowalski with her and left the room.

"Harry, Cedric, I suggest you go back to bed early." Dumbledore then turned to the two warriors of Hogwarts and looked at them with a smile.

"I believe that Gryffindor and Hufflepuff students are waiting to celebrate with you. They finally have an excuse to make a fuss, and it would be inappropriate to take away this opportunity from them. .”

Professor McGonagall glanced at Dumbledore reproachfully, but rarely raised any objections.

Harry looked at Cedric, who nodded, and they walked out of the room together.

The auditorium was now empty, and the flames of the candles had been turned down very low, which made the grinning grin of the jack-o-lantern look flickering and eerie.

"So," Cedric said with a forced smile, "we are rivals again, outside of the Quidditch field."

"I guess so," Harry murmured.

He had absolutely no idea what to say. His mind seemed to be in chaos, as if his entire brain had been robbed.

"So, tell me..." Cedric hesitated for a while and finally asked, "How on earth did you put your name in?"

"I didn't," Harry said, looking up at him, "I didn't vote, I told the truth."

"Oh... okay." Cedric said, and Harry could see that Cedric didn't believe him, "Okay... then goodbye."

Even though Professor Hicks analyzed all of this very reasonably and believed that someone wanted to harm Harry, most of the students did not think about it this way.

Compared with the dangers in the competition, the honor is more eye-catching and easier to blind one's eyes.

Who else but Ron and Hermione would believe him?

Harry thought this deep in his heart.

Everyone thinks he signed up for the competition on his own? But how could they think that? You must know that his competitors have received three years more magic education than him - and you must know that the project he will face not only sounds very dangerous, but also has to be completed in front of hundreds of people!

Yes, he had imagined it, he had fantasized about it... But it was just a joke, a daydream... He had never really, seriously considered participating...

Yet someone thought about it... someone wanted him to play and made sure he made the cut.

Why? To do him a pretty good favor? He doesn't think so.

So, is it to make a fool of him? If so, they would probably get what they wanted. As for whether they really wanted his life...?

Could someone have put Harry's name in the goblet just as a prank, as a joke? Did anyone really want him to die? Harry couldn't answer the question immediately.

Yes, there was someone who wanted him dead, someone who had wanted him dead since he was a year old... and that was Voldemort. But how could Voldemort guarantee that Harry's name would be thrown into the Goblet of Fire?

Voldemort should be somewhere far away, hiding his whereabouts, alone, weak...

But in the dream he had, the one in which he woke up and felt pain in his scar, Voldemort was not alone, he was talking to a young man...

Harry suddenly woke up and found that he had arrived in front of the Fat Lady. At this time, there was another pale witch in the portrait. He vaguely remembered that she was originally hung in the small room in front of the auditorium.

"Okay, okay, great!" the fat lady said excitedly, "Violet - it's a portrait painting friend of mine who just told me everything. Who was just chosen as the school warrior?"

"Nonsense," Harry said dryly.

"I'm absolutely not talking nonsense!" the pale witch said angrily.

"No, no, Violet, that's the command," the Fat Lady soothed, and she swung forward to let Harry into the common room.

When the portrait opened, Harry almost fell over from the sudden noise that filled 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. They were all screaming, cheering, and whistling.

"You should have told us you signed up!" Fred yelled. He looked half annoyed, half excited.

"How can you get by without growing a beard?" George yelled.

"I didn't," said Harry, "I don't know how..."

"We've prepared something to eat, Harry, come here and have some!" Someone dragged him to a table.

"I'm not hungry. I ate enough at the party—"

But no one wanted to hear him say that he was not hungry, and no one wanted to hear him say that he did not put his name into the goblet. No one seemed to notice that he was not in the mood to celebrate at all...

Lee Jordan dug out a Gryffindor house flag from somewhere and insisted on wrapping it around Harry like a cloak.

Harry had no way to escape. Whenever he tried to sneak towards the stairs leading to the dormitory, the crowd closed in on him, surrounded him, forced him to drink another butterbeer, or forced him to eat biscuits and peanuts. In his hand...

Everyone wanted to know how he did it, how he fooled Dumbledore's age line and put his name into the goblet...

"I don't know," he said over and over, "I don't know what's going on."

But everyone ignored him at all, as if he didn't say anything.

"I'm tired!" After about half an hour, he finally couldn't bear it anymore and shouted loudly, "No, seriously, George... I want to go to bed."

He particularly wanted to see Ron and Hermione, hoping to find some sanity, but neither of them seemed to be in the common room.

Harry repeatedly insisted that he needed to sleep, and finally got away from everyone and hurried upstairs to the dormitory.

To his great relief, he found Ron lying on the bed fully clothed, alone in the dormitory. Ron looked up as Harry slammed the door shut.

"Where have you been?" Harry asked.

"Oh, hello," Ron said stiffly.

Ron was smiling, but it was a very awkward, forced smile.

Harry suddenly realized that he was still wearing the bright red Gryffindor flag that Lee Jordan had just tied around him. He wanted to take it off quickly, but the knot was very tight. Ron lay motionless on the bed, watching Harry struggle to untie the flag.

"So..." Ron said after 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 crying with his mouth open, "Not even Fred and George. What did you use - the invisibility cloak?"

"There's no way the Invisibility Cloak will get me over that line," Harry said slowly.

"Oh, by the way," Ron said, "If it was an invisibility cloak, I think you would have told me... because the cloak can cover both of us, right? But you found another way, right? ?”

"Look," said Harry, "I didn't put my name into 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 thought what he was about to say sounded lurid and theatrical, "just to kill me."

Ron had an expression of disbelief on his face - not disbelief that someone wanted 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 others to know, that's fine, but I don't understand why you would lie? Especially when you made up such a story …Funny lies.”

"You didn't get into trouble for this, did you? The Fat Lady's friend, that Violet, she has told us all that Dumbledore selected you. The prize of a thousand galleons, and you There’s no need to take the year-end exams yet…”

"I didn't put my name in that goblet!" Harry shouted.

He was feeling a little annoyed now.

"Really?" Ron said coldly, with the same skeptical tone as Cedric, "But you don't have a chance this morning, you can do it last night, no one will see you... you know , I’m not a fool.”

"You certainly make that impression on me now," Harry said angrily.

"Really?" The smile on Ron's face finally disappeared without a trace. "You need to go to bed, Harry. I think you need to get up early tomorrow to accept photos from the media and so on."

The two of them broke up unhappy, fell heavily on the bed, and said no more.

Harry didn't expect that even his best friend was unwilling to believe him. Fortunately, he was still thinking naively before, and fortunately there are Ron and Hermione...

At the same time, in the room in front of the auditorium, Dracula, Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were checking who had been in the hall last night and threw the note into the Goblet of Fire.

The results of the investigation were unsatisfactory.

…

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