The desire to stand out above others is one of the most basic, primal urges there is.
The thought that a single offhand remark, a small smile, could leave a lasting impression on someone else—even imagining it sends a thrill through you.
The sense that you matter that much. That you can hold dominion over others. That desire, running parallel to the hunger for control and power, was not unlike a drug.
Carina, too, harbored that hunger for dominion.
It was similar to a lust for power, yet distinct from it. People who, without any external coercion, became so enchanted by beauty or grace that they willingly surrendered themselves. Looking down upon such foolish souls and savoring a quiet sense of superiority—that was Carina's most ideal form of dominance.
A thoroughly Slytherin desire.
Whether by fortune or misfortune, Carina had the ability to inspire exactly that.
A beauty beginning to bloom, the Malfoy name behind her, exceptional magical talent, and an undeniable charisma. The word 'protagonist' seemed to exist for Carina alone.
And then there was this year's Triwizard Champion, Harry Potter—not quite on Carina's level, but more than qualified in his own right. His becoming Champion had been the result of some conspiracy, but that aside, Harry had genuine ability.
For just a brief moment, Carina had looked forward to the Yule Ball. She had dreamed of becoming the centerpiece of the evening, capturing the gaze of everyone in the room.
And when she actually became that centerpiece—
Carina found her thoughts tangled into knots.
After Harry had knelt before her, she had indeed become the star of the ball. But there was far too much crowding her mind to simply enjoy the attention with any composure.
"Focus."
Harry caught her and spun her around. Carina, lost in her thoughts, grabbed the back of his coat in a hurry to keep from stumbling.
Harry drew her gaze back to him and whispered.
"You're thinking too much. I'm right here in front of you—whose mind are you in, exactly?"
"It's your fault. You, of all people—"
Carina stopped mid-sentence and glanced around.
The ballroom was gloriously loud—The Three Fates, the popular band, were playing, and the students dancing to their music filled every corner with noise. Even with a gentle waltz drifting through the air, there was no chance Carina's whisper would carry to anyone else.
Besides, Harry and Carina were nearly cheek to cheek.
The sound of breathing, which would normally go unnoticed, was almost deafening at this distance. The beat of the other person's heart, felt through the press of their arms, thundered like an earthquake.
This close, and yet Carina was still afraid of being overheard—she barely breathed as she whispered.
"...We agreed to keep this a secret."
"I've been thinking, and I'm not sure it's worth the trouble anymore."
"But somewhere in this room, there's someone who put your name in the Goblet of Fire."
"Not anymore."
Carina looked down at their joined hands. The wound hidden beneath his sleeve. It was unmistakably the mark of a curse.
The small swell of happiness in her chest settled back down. The hostility was far too clear to let herself drift into any dream.
Carina said, her voice edged with worry.
"The wound on your arm—did you get that fighting that person?"
"Yeah. I managed to ambush him and get his wand, but I walked into a trap and spent a few days wandering the bottom of a trunk with Sirius."
"You're injured. Go to the hospital wing, quickly. Don't just stand here like this."
"Right now, dancing with you is more comforting, Carina."
Harry whined like a small child.
"Carina. I worked hard for days. All so I could dance with you tonight without any complications."
Harry had been looking forward to the ball just as much as she had. That was precisely why he hadn't waited for Dumbledore's return and had moved first with Sirius.
So he could spend a peaceful evening with Carina—perfume and all, hair done, dressed in her finest robes.
Right now, all he could see was her face.
Harry was more than satisfied.
"I'll explain everything at the after-party, so for now—will you just look at me?"
Something most people didn't know: Carina Malfoy was an exceptionally diligent person.
Her manner of receiving things was prickly, but once she was asked to do something, she carried it out with genuine care.
When she'd been told to ask Viktor Krum to be her partner, or when she'd been blackmailed with the diary into cooperating—Carina had done it faithfully, even when she didn't want to.
This time was no different. Having heard Harry's request, Carina fixed him with a remarkably earnest look and gave him her full attention.
As though she had forgotten every small worry entirely.
"Good girl."
"...Don't say useless things. Just dance properly."
Harry's dancing was awkward, even viewed without prejudice. He was moving to avoid stepping on Carina's feet, but it was less dancing and more evasive footwork.
She nearly scoffed at the clumsy lead—but Carina was curious where he was taking her, so she followed. The two of them drifted gradually toward a particular corner of the ballroom.
The closer they got, the more restless Carina became.
Because hanging from the Christmas tree at the spot Harry was leading her to was a wreath of mistletoe.
Carina looked at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"I like you."
She had lost count of how many times he'd said it. But one thing was certain—this was the first time he'd said it in front of everyone.
Carina found herself remembering the worries she'd briefly forgotten in her happiness.
How she would explain this to her parents. Whether something might happen because of it.
Whether Harry would be all right, having made this so public. Whether he'd get hurt. Anxiety chased anxiety in an endless chain.
"...Me too."
But right now, this moment was so unbearably happy, and she wanted to feel this fleeting instant stretch on forever.
She didn't resist. She closed her eyes.
Magical snow drifted down from the ceiling and wrapped around them both.
The dancing was over.
The stars of the stage had stepped away, but in this moment, every person in the room was the protagonist of their own story.
Carina and Harry, that burning topic of conversation, had left the floor—but countless couples danced on, each carrying their own private feelings.
Fleur Delacour was complaining about Hogwarts' decorations, while Roger Davies nodded along like a bobblehead, agreeing with her every word.
Cedric and Cho Chang were passionate. Whatever had been building between them since last year seemed to have ignited with the Triwizard Tournament as its spark. The two of them refused to let go of each other for even a moment.
Harry and Carina, Hermione and Viktor Krum, made their way to a table in the corner.
"Are you thirsty? I'll get some Butterbeer."
Viktor and Harry headed off for drinks. That left only Carina and Hermione.
Hermione, flushed from dancing, was fanning herself with her hand—and kept stealing glances at Carina with an expression that looked very much like suppressed laughter.
Carina found that gaze deeply uncomfortable.
That look—as though Hermione were peering down at her from a great height, as though she found Carina utterly adorable—was getting under her skin.
"...What are you staring at?"
"Nothing at all!"
It was clearly not nothing. Hermione's lips were twitching, and she'd even raised both hands to cover her mouth.
Carina found that reaction intensely irritating. But she could already predict exactly what would come out of it, so she held back from pressing further.
In the end, Carina changed the subject with a blunt remark.
"What about Weasley?"
"Oh."
It had been a purely tactical subject change, but Hermione reacted as though she'd been poked somewhere tender. She cast one glance toward the distant table where Weasley sat, then shrugged.
"I don't know. He can sort himself out."
"...Right."
Carina sat quietly and waited for Harry, hoping Hermione's interest in her would simply expire.
But Hermione had no intention of leaving her alone.
"Hey, Malfoy. Weren't you planning to keep your relationship a secret? Wasn't the original plan to make it look like you'd both been left without partners so you'd have no choice but to go together?"
"...It was."
"So? What happened all of a sudden?"
Watching Hermione's eyes sparkle with curiosity, Carina found herself taking stock of her own situation.
Harry's plan had been simple. Make it look as though Carina had been turned down, and ensure he himself had no partner either. Then invoke the rule that Triwizard Champions were required to have a partner, and take Carina as his.
In hindsight, it was a straightforward enough scheme, easy to see coming.
Perhaps Carina had been disappointed over nothing. Perhaps she'd made Harry worry over something trivial, and pressured him into making a reckless choice.
She felt a brief pang of guilt—
But thinking it over once more, a wave of grievance crashed over her like a tide.
"That idiot was in the wrong."
"What?"
"A plan? So I was the enemy, was I? He moved me around like a piece on a board without saying a single word to me!"
"Wha—?"
"I had to wait until the day of the ball without knowing anything—not even whether he was alive or dead!"
"Oh—?"
"He left me for days, and then—after all that—he thought he could fix my anger by just doing something like that! Not a chance. If he thought something like that would be enough to—!"
Carina stopped there and fumed in silence. Hermione, who had looked slightly alarmed, seemed to catch on to something and ventured a careful probe.
"But... it did work, didn't it? Your anger?"
"Absolutely not. I gave it a temporary reprieve—just a brief one! Do you think I'm that easy? As if a single ki—ki—kiss... as if that one thing would fix everything?"
Hermione read Carina's expression and smiled again, warm and knowing.
"You didn't find a new partner even without Harry. Wow..."
"What are you on about? It's because there was no one here on my level. I'd rather go alone than pick just anyone off the street!"
"Mm-hmm. Of course. Oh my..."
Carina had no desire to say another word, so she turned her head sharply away.
The silence didn't last long. Harry came walking back to the table with impressive dexterity, carrying three glasses of Butterbeer. Carina was quite pleased to notice that only her glass had a flower pattern drawn in the foam—she tilted it slightly toward Hermione in a show-off sort of way, but Hermione looked as though Carina simply existing and breathing was enough to make her happy.
Hermione turned to Harry.
"Why did you come back alone? Where's Viktor?"
"Karkaroff had him cornered. I slipped away."
"I feel a bit bad for Viktor. Getting caught up in our business like that."
Hermione glanced sideways at Carina.
Carina's mood soured. She took a sip of Butterbeer and set the glass down on the table with a thud.
"You might as well tell us now."
"Tell you what?"
"'Tell you what?' Is that really all you have to say?"
Carina fixed him with a sharp look, and Harry waved his hands in a placating gesture as he sat down beside her.
"Hmm. There are too many people around. Everyone's watching us."
"So what."
Carina reached for the wand secured to the belt strapped around her thigh. She flicked it through the air and murmured.
"*Muffliato*."
A faint buzzing sound enveloped them for a moment. Carina slid the wand back into the belt, and it vanished from sight entirely.
Harry looked impressed.
"That's brilliant."
"Hmph. A proper witch or wizard should never be without their wand. You'd do well to remember that."
"No, I meant the belt design suits your thigh very well."
"What?"
"Anyway—Muffliato? What kind of spell is that?"
"It makes our voices sound like buzzing to anyone nearby."
"Oh, that's a useful one. Maybe I should learn it."
"Professor Snape taught it to me. He might teach you if you ask."
"...Sounds like the sort of spell someone would use for shady scheming in dark corners. I'll pass."
Harry grumbled. He tested it by calling out to Dean and Seamus by name, but neither of them showed any sign of having heard him.
Satisfied that the spell was working, Harry turned to Carina and Hermione.
"This Christmas, I started to suspect someone close to us. Since Professor Dumbledore was away, I called on Sirius. I wanted to ambush the person before the ball. After thorough preparation, I managed to get his wand—but..."
Harry gripped his injured arm and spoke quietly.
"I was trying to subdue him without killing him, and I walked straight into a trap he'd set. Sirius and I were locked inside his trunk... If Professor Dumbledore hadn't come looking for us, I wouldn't have made it to the ball at all."
"What? You were trapped for three days?"
Hermione gasped.
"I thought you and Sirius had gone outside Hogwarts to do something important!"
"That's what it was meant to look like. Otherwise there'd be no explaining why Sirius had sneaked into Hogwarts."
He'd deceived Ron and Hermione as well, to draw out the suspect's complacency—Harry confessed this plainly.
"Anyway, since I had his wand, he couldn't put up much resistance and fled. I would have liked to give him Veritaserum and interrogate him properly, but the fact that he ran without even offering an excuse tells me he has something to hide."
"And Dumbledore? Does he know?"
"Of course. Even Professor Dumbledore seemed surprised—apparently he hadn't expected this particular person to be the culprit. But in the end he agreed with our assessment and tightened security to keep him out."
"So who is it?"
Carina, burning with curiosity about the identity of whoever had put Harry in danger, pressed him. Harry drew out the pause before answering.
"Among the officials connected to the Triwizard Tournament—the one who isn't here. That's who it is."
Carina glanced sideways toward the high table.
Dumbledore, watching the ball with a contented smile. Karkaroff, locked in some argument with Viktor Krum. Madame Maxime wore an expression of vague displeasure as she surveyed the tables, and Ludo Bagman was bouncing in his seat as though he desperately wanted to join the dancing.
Five judges for the Triwizard Tournament. Carina realized one of them was missing.
And that person was—
"W—wait. Barty Crouch? That Crouch?"
The revelation was so unexpected that Carina was stunned—
"Hm? He's not here either?"
Harry looked toward the high table and only then noticed that Barty Crouch Sr. was absent.
He corrected himself.
"He must be busy—he's an important man. No, that's not who I meant. The person I'm talking about is someone who should be at the staff table—right there..."
Harry had been trying to draw out the suspense, quiz-show style, before delivering his answer. He was, after all, a boy who couldn't help but enjoy a moment of drama.
"Sometimes I think you're testing me, Harry Potter. Seeing how much I know. How much I can take..."
But the timing was wrong. Harry caught the darkening of Carina's expression and rushed to give the answer.
"...It's Mad-Eye Moody! Alastor Moody—it was him all along!"
And indeed, Moody was nowhere to be seen.
Neither at the staff table nor anywhere in the ballroom was there any trace of the irritable clack of his prosthetic leg—a sound only he could produce.
It was the Christmas holiday, so she hadn't noticed until now, but Carina realized it had been three full days since she'd last seen Moody. The dates matched exactly with when Harry had gone missing.
The revelation was so utterly unexpected that both Carina and Hermione were struck speechless.
Hermione's jaw dropped.
"Professor Moody? That's impossible. He's a legendary Auror!"
"To be precise—we suspect he might be someone disguised as Mad-Eye Moody."
Mad-Eye Moody was famously ill-tempered, known as a paranoid loner who trusted no one. If someone had disguised themselves as Professor Moody, who had little interaction with others, it would not have been easy to detect.
But Carina didn't want to believe it. Because if Harry was right—
Carina murmured, her face gone pale.
"W—wait. He could see through Invisibility Cloaks. He knows I've been meeting with you."
"Yes. That's why I decided there was no point in hiding it anymore."
Better to bring everything into the open than to keep up a clumsy pretense—that was Harry's reasoning.
"I should have suspected him from the start. I shouldn't have trusted Professor Dumbledore's word and let him guard my surroundings. I even handed over the Marauder's Map because he said he'd keep watch over you and me—I was completely taken in... He wanted to eliminate any chance of being found out from the very beginning."
"B—but he ran away, didn't he? He could still be hiding somewhere nearby?"
"Possibly. But Professor Dumbledore has tightened security, and Sirius is keeping watch in the area. He's physically impaired, and he fled in a hurry—he couldn't have taken much with him. He won't last long outside Hogwarts. Surviving in the Forbidden Forest with only the magical eye and the Marauder's Map would be no easy thing..."
But the danger remained. With the Marauder's Map—capable of tracking every student's movement—and a magical eye that could pierce even an Invisibility Cloak, there was nowhere to feel truly safe.
Carina shuddered, remembering the way Moody's eye had fixed on her.
To Carina, Mad-Eye Moody had always been an enemy.
He was an Auror who considered it the great regret of his life that he'd never managed to put Lucius Malfoy in Azkaban—and he had made no secret of his contempt for Lucius's daughter. He had goaded Carina until she drew her wand, and then, as though that weren't enough, had transfigured her into a ferret.
The only reason Carina had held her tongue all this time was that Moody had supposedly been deployed to protect Harry.
So she had swallowed her fear and pressed her feelings down, telling herself to endure—and now it turned out he was the enemy.
Carina bit her lip and said quietly.
"...Harry. Be careful. He's completely unhinged."
"Obviously. And... you need to be careful too."
Carina nodded.
Whether Moody himself was the enemy, or whether it was someone disguised as him—it made no difference to Carina. Either way, both were her enemies.
It was then that Dumbledore descended from the high table and walked directly toward them.
He gave Harry and Carina a gentle smile and said.
"My apologies, Miss Malfoy. Would you mind if I borrowed your partner? It's time we saw to that arm of his."
Carina turned sharply to look at Harry. Harry avoided her gaze with an uncomfortable expression.
Dumbledore seemed to be enjoying the pair of them—and to find it genuinely regrettable that he had to separate them—as he continued.
"It's a curse, you see. The mark of a rather remarkable carnivorous plant discovered in the South American jungle. It seems to have grown quite vicious after spending time on the sixth floor of Moody's trunk. If it isn't treated soon, the scar will be permanent."
Harry scratched the back of his head.
"Ah, Professor—surely a man can have a scar or two, can't he?"
"What are you talking about? Get to the hospital wing this instant! If you're too stubborn and end up with a permanent scar, I never want to see that shameless face of yours again!"
Carina snapped at him. Harry kept glancing back at her as he rose, clearly reluctant to leave so soon.
Carina, with no other choice, reached out and caught his tie, pulling him close enough to whisper.
"Tomorrow... is still coming..."
She said it as though nothing had changed.
But from now on, things would be different.
No more need for an Invisibility Cloak. No more need to lay a smokescreen before meeting.
They could spend time together, just the two of them, with nothing held back.
"Make sure you recover properly before you come find me. Don't show up half-dead like today. I'll be waiting too..."
Carina said it, then looked down. Harry, reassured, rose to his feet with a lighter air. Hermione wore an expression uncannily similar to Dumbledore's, beaming softly.
Harry smiled at Carina.
"See you tomorrow."
"Yes. Tomorrow."
Tonight was going to be a long one.
The students in the common room would grab her and pepper her with questions, and Barnette, Gray, Daphne, and the rest would come find her in bed and demand explanations until the small hours—and even after all that, her heart would be beating too fast to sleep.
But tomorrow would still come. And when it did, Harry would be waiting for her.
Carina smiled back and gave a small wave.
******
[Carina. I read the article in the Daily Prophet. It was tawdry gossip unworthy of the galleons I have spent supporting that publication. Linking you with that Harry Potter without the faintest understanding of the situation, and dragging in that half-blood as though it were some love triangle—it seems they have forgotten both dignity and pride entirely.
You need not concern yourself with that article. I have already taken care of it. That journalist will not be publishing anything in the Daily Prophet again.
Though I am not at school with you, a great many things reach my ears. Are you enjoying the Triwizard Tournament? It is, after all, a festival revived after two hundred years—it would not be strange to feel caught up in the excitement. I understand, too, that the Champions competing in such an atmosphere might appear rather dashing.
-----------------------------------------
I hope you enjoy the remaining tasks.
I trust that a girl as clever as you will understand my meaning. Take care of yourself. Your mother is deeply worried.
With love, your Father.]