TRAINING WHEELS—
THE GOBLET OF FIRE.

002

"I'm hungry."

Leon huffed as he looked at Amora, narrowing his blue eyes. It was the fifth time she had mentioned it in about an hour, yet she made no attempt to get up and go and find the woman with the trolley. She sat on the seat across from him, her legs curled up and her head resting against the window. Her breath would create condensation on the glass, and every now and then she would reach up to draw a half-hearted heart with her finger.

"Why don't you go get something to eat, then?" Leon suggested.

"I don't want to waste my money," she admitted. "I'd rather wait until we get to Hogwarts and eat everything on the Hufflepuff table... Then if I'm still hungry I'll move onto Ravenclaw's table."

Leon chuckled a little, shaking his head. A small silence filled their lonely compartment of two and Amora's thoughts drifted back to the Quidditch World Cup less than two weeks ago. Nobody knew what had quite happened, or how exactly the Death Eaters had managed to take over so quickly, but Amora was just thankful that her friends had all made it out safely. She didn't like to dwell on it too much.

Amora started to play with the ends of her hair when she saw a group of boys walk by, the leader pausing when he noticed who was in the compartment. She sighed, rolling her eyes as she sat up. Draco Malfoy wore a shit-eating grin as he pulled open the door and leaned his head inside. He was taller than last year and his face seemed to have matured a tiny bit more.

"Well, if it isn't Buckley and her boyfriend," Draco sneered. "What are you doing in a compartment all by yourselves? Nothing too crude, I would hope."

"What do you want, Draco?" Amora sighed again.

"I just think it's a little inconsiderate for two people to take up so much room." Draco gestured with his hand to the entire compartment. "You wouldn't mind if we joined you, would you?"

Draco most likely had seats further away, but Amora knew Draco liked to annoy her. He would do anything he possibly could to get under her skin, almost as if he liked to see how long it would take until she snapped and bit his head off. One time she actually did, back in their first year when he'd been terrorising Ron and Harry. She tackled him to the floor there and then, a pathetic fight took place where Draco refused to hit her because she was a girl whilst she just shook his shoulders as hard as she could, screaming some sense into him.

"Piss off, Draco," Leon hissed.

Pansy Parkinson laughed from where she stood next to Blaise Zabini, Goyle, and Crabbe. "Oo," she teased. "We've got ourselves a feisty Hufflepuff."

Leon rolled his eyes when Draco laughed. "Oh, leave it, Pansy," the ice-haired boy smirked. "Leon just wants to spend time alone with his girlfriend. We should respect that."

"So go away then," Amora huffed. "I'm sure you have better things to be doing, Draco, and if you don't then you live a rather sad life."

The grey-eyed boy's brows knitted into a frown, but before he could say anything, Amora heard a voice come from behind them.

"She said go away, Malfoy," Harry warned.

Draco lifted his hands up to mock surrender. "Calm down, Potter. A bit of a love triangle you have going on here, hm, Buckley?" He teased her with the sick smirk he constantly wore.

Sometimes Amora wished she could reach up and smack it right off of his face, but she was sure to regret it straight after. Draco didn't say anything else but shot his eyebrows up at Harry, as if to seem intimidating. He made sure to shove him with his shoulder as he went past, leaving Harry with Amora and Leon.

"Are the two of you okay?" Harry asked, standing in the doorway where Draco had been.

"Yeah, thanks, Harry," Amora smiled sweetly at him. "You didn't have to do that, honestly."

Harry's cheeks seemed to redden a little and he scrunched his nose as he adjusted the circular glasses sitting above them. Leon looked between Harry and Amora with a knowing expression, except he knew the brunette girl was far too oblivious to even notice what was going on. Amora lived in her own little world-- Leon always said that she read too much, it filled her brain with too many ideas and forced her out of the real world.

"Anything for you, Amora," Harry meant for it to sound teasing, as if to lighten the slight tension in the compartment, but it came out in a rather breathless chuckle.

Amora chuckled back. "Hey, why don't we join you guys? If you don't mind."

"Oh, no, no, no," Harry stepped aside so they could walk past him and out of the door. "I'm sure Hermione would love some girl company. Ron's doing her head in."

Leon scoffed. "I'm sure."

D.M + A.B

"Well, no we're all settled in and sorted, I'd like to make an announcement."

Amora sat beside Leon at the Hufflepuff table which was now filled with plenty of new, younger faces. Her stomach growled as she waited anxiously for Dumbledore to get his annual welcoming speech over and done with, her brown eyes practically glaring at the empty wood in front of her. She couldn't wait for it to be filled with the food she'd been craving since breakfast this morning.

Stood at the front of the room, right in front of the high table, was Professor Dumbledore in all his glory. "This castle will not only be your home this year, but home for some very special guests as well..."

Amora glanced up when she heard quiet giggling, her eyes landing on Filch who was running in between the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables. At least, Amora was pretty sure he was meant to be running-- it looked like he was trying to shake something off of him at the same time, his knees lifting far too high to be practical with each step. The brunette stifled a laugh of her own behind her hand.

Once he reached Dumbledore, the pair began to whisper incoherently before Filch began to rush off again, leaving the headmaster to straighten himself up and clear his throat.

"So Hogwarts has been chosen to host a legendary event: The Triwizard Tournament," Dumbledore's words caused everybody to start whispering excitedly, whilst Amora leaned forwards, eager to know more. "For those of you who do not know, the Triwizard Tournament brings together three schools for a series of magical contests. From each school, a single student is selected to compete. Let me be clear. If chosen, you stand alone. And trust me when I say, these contests are not for the faint-hearted. But more of that later... For now, please join me in welcoming the lovely ladies of the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and their headmistress, Madame Maxime."

The large oak doors to the Great Hall opened and the girls from Beauxbatons stepped through, causing a small ripple of gasps throughout the Hogwarts students. Amora shifted in her seat to see them better and she couldn't help but gush over how beautiful their uniform looked. They wore blue dresses with matching hats, their hair all tied back into low ponytails. Amora thought they looked so... angelic.

They did some sort of small dance as they walked down the length of the Great Hall, and that's when Amora noticed the woman following them. She felt Leon nudge her harshly as if to ask if she was seeing what he was seeing, to which Amora nodded quickly without even taking her eyes off of the woman. She was much taller than Hagrid, and that was saying something. When Dumbledore took her hand at the end of the hall it looked almost comedic.

"Blimey..." Amora whispered. "I wonder what milk she has in her cereal."

Leon snickered before the two were hushed by Susan Bones, the Hufflepuff girl wearing a small glare on her face. The two best friends shot each other looks and quieted down, cheering with the rest of the school when the Beauxbatons were finished with their routine.

"And now our friends from the north..." Dumbledore boomed. "Please greet the proud sons of Durmstrang and their high master, Igor Karkaroff."

The boys came in next, and Hogwarts seemed to be stunned into silence. They were a complete contrast to the purity the Beauxbaton girls had shown, instead holding walking sticks that they hit on the ground with every step and released deep rumbles from the back of their throats. Amora raised her eyebrows as they spun them around and then hit them on the floor, sparks shooting from them.

Then, they took off running to the end, a familiar figure walking through last. Everybody started to whisper frantically-- it was none other than Viktor Krum, a Quidditch player from the Buglarian team that had played in the World Cup a couple of weeks back. Amora was sure that Ron was having a heart attack wherever he was on the Gryffindor table.

The show ended rather abruptly after that, and Amora quickly grew bored of all of the talk about Beauxbaton and Durmstrang-- she just wanted the food to come out. Nevertheless, it did only a minute later, and there was a beautiful selection of all of Hogwarts' best food. Her plate was stacked high within a couple of minutes of the food coming out.

"Blimey, Amora," Leon wiped his mouth with a napkin. "Slow down or you'll be sick."

"I'm so hungry, Leon, you don't understand."

However, despite being hungrier than... well, whatever was hungry, Amora ended up only eating half her plate before collapsing her head onto Leon's shoulder and groaning dramatically as she rubbed her belly. She did this every evening. Her mother always said she had eyes bigger than her belly, though Amora hated that expression with a great amount of passion for some reason.

"Your attention, please!" Dumbledore called from the front once nearly everybody had finished eating. "I'd like to say a few words. Eternal Glory. That is what awaits the student who wins the Triwizard Tournament, but to do this, that student must survive three tasks. Three extremely dangerous tasks."

"Count me out," Amora whispered to Leon, who nodded in agreement.

"For this reason, the Ministry has seen fit to impose a new rule. To explain all this, we have the Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, Mr Bartemius Crouch."

Before the man stepping forward could talk, lightning  and thunder struck outside so viciously that the Great Hall seemed to rattle, the floating candles above being put out. Small screams echoed around them and Amora shielded her own head, looking around in a panic as people yelled in confusion.

Suddenly, a man at the front of the room cast a spell with his wand, zapping the candles and relighting all of them once more. The thunder and lightning stopped outside and Amora glanced up, recognising the man as an Auror, Alastor Moody. She'd seen him in the Daily Prophet on multiple occasions, since he happened to be a mighty good dark-wizard catcher.

Everybody stared for an awkwardly long amount of time at the man with the eye patch, a few whispers coming from the Gryffindor table where Harry was sitting. Amora sometimes wished she was a Gryffindor simply for the gossip, but then always had to remind herself how badly she did with keeping secrets and handling the stress of other peoples' lives.

Mr Crouch moved to the front of the room to finally deliver the news. "After due consideration, the Ministry has concluded that, for their own safety, no student under the age of seventeen shall be allowed to put forward their name for the Triwizard Tournament."

"No way!"

"That's not fair!"

"That's rubbish!" Amora heard the twins over everybody else, making her snort slightly.

"You don't know what you're doing!"

"It sounds like the crowd at a football match," Leon joked, earning a confused look from Amora. "Right. Um, you know football, but the matches in the arenas... Yeah... Crowds full of grown men who are way too passionate. Normally it's racist stuff they're yelling, but yeah..."

Amora hummed to herself with a small frown. "Oh. It doesn't sound very... nice."

"Silence!" Professor Dumbledore boomed over the boos.

He lifted his wand and cast a nonverbal spell that caused the golden statue beside him to turn into a huge goblet emitting blue fire.

"The Goblet of Fire," he continued. "Anyone wishing to submit themselves to the tournament need only write their name upon a piece of parchment and throw it in the flame before this hour on Thursday night. Do not do so lightly. If chosen, there's no turning back. As from this moment, the Triwizard Tournament has begun."

D.M + A.B

The Hufflepuff common room was filled with laughter when Amora pushed the door open that evening. She was more than tired from the train journey to Hogwarts and she couldn't wait to go to bed in her dormitory which was honestly comfier than her mattress back at home. Much to her surprise, Cedric stood in the middle of the seating area, people surrounding him as he spoke.

"Ah, there's my cousin." His eyes landed on her and he grinned proudly. "You missed the news, Amora. I'm going to be putting my name in the Goblet of Fire!"

This caused another roar of applause from the Hufflepuffs surrounding him, but Amora frowned slightly, a bad feeling forming in the pit of her stomach. Leon started to clap excitedly from beside her.

She reached up and grabbed Cedric's arm, pulling him away from their fellow students and over to the corner. Plants hung low from the ceiling and Cedric had to move his head out of the way of one of them, warning Amora to slow down a little.

"Cedric, I don't think you should," she admitted worriedly.

"What?" Cedric frowned. "Why?"

"Well, I- I just think that Dumbledore was barely trying to sell it to us back then... In fact, it sounded more like a plea for us not to even do it in the first place, Cedric," Amora expressed her concerns with animated hand movements.

Cedric chuckled and lowered her hands. "Amora... I'll be fine. Even if I do get picked, which I doubt will happen anyway, I bet I could beat off the others with a blindfold on," he joked.

"Hm..." Amora didn't even crack a smile, which was unlike her. "Have you talked to Uncle Amos about it yet?"

"Not yet, but I'm sure he's going to be more than thrilled when he discovers a Diggory has put his name forward. It's too bad you're not seventeen yet--"

"Oh, bloody hell, no," Amora cut him off right there. "Don't go spreading lies now, Cedric. You and I both know I can barely go twenty feet in the sky on a broom without feeling faint."

The Hufflepuff boy laughed and shook his head. His large palm came down on Amora's shoulder and he gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Just trust me, yeah?"

Amora bit her lip as she hesitated, "Okay."

Amora would wish she had gone with her gut instincts in the months that came.

....

this is quite short and stuff, but i already have the next chapter written up and it's more exciting and draco-centric than this one, i promise.

thanks for reading!

dyiansobrien