The Amulet

Snape did not say another word, simply continuing to move the dummies around. Clara did not know how many rounds she went through before Snape finally stopped, when her Sectumsempra no longer left any visible marks on the dummies. She stood there gasping for breath, the tip of her wand still faintly aglow from the spell she had cast. Of the three dummies, one lay against the wall, one had been blown to pieces, and one hung crookedly from its stand with an arm torn off.

Snape emerged from the shadows and looked down at the mess covering the floor. He was silent for a moment.

"It seems we can only stop here for today, Miss Albert. Your stamina really is abysmal."

Unable to speak, she merely nodded, then dragged her aching legs out of the dungeon. The lady in the painting in the corridor was already asleep. She rested against the wall for a few seconds and raised her right hand. The ring on her little finger was growing warm. She straightened up, turned, and headed for the Headmaster's Office. She still had to draw her own blood; the amulet was one step away from completion.

Dumbledore was already waiting for her. When he saw Clara come in, he set down his cup and nodded to her.

He had clearly prepared everything. The amulet disc lay on his desk, with a slender silver needle and a small bottle of ointment beside it.

Clara slipped off the ring and pushed it toward Dumbledore, then pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the desk. She picked up the silver needle and pricked her fingertip with a quick, clean motion. A drop of blood fell into the center of the six-pointed star, and Dumbledore added the blood from the ring.

A strange light shone from the six-pointed star.

The two drops of blood wound around each other in a strange manner, forming some kind of contract. Like two ribbons, they slowly intertwined at the center of the six-pointed star, chasing and drawing each other along, until they formed an extremely fine blood-red concentric circle that settled into the grooves on its surface.

The amulet slowly split in two along its pattern. The silver threads at the edges rewove themselves into two smaller pendants, no longer discs but two symmetrical Gabriel petals. Three gemstones were set into the tip of one petal, and the other three into the second.

Dumbledore picked up one of them, took a silver chain he had prepared earlier from a drawer, and threaded it through. Then he stood and walked over to Clara.

"Hold out your hand." Clara did so, and Dumbledore wrapped the bracelet around her wrist. The silver chain adjusted its own length, fitting snugly above her wrist bone. The petal pendant rested against her pulse. The coolness lasted only an instant before it grew warm, like a leaf freshly plucked from a branch. "Please keep wearing it for the time being. It needs to get used to you."

After a pause, he pointed to the other petal. "As for this one, I'll have the house-elves make four sets of tournament robes for the Champions immediately. I'll sew it into Mr. Diggory's robes myself. After all, I can't think of anything besides clothing that he would definitely take into the arena. One set for each of the four Champions-fair and equal, with no sign of special treatment. I don't think anyone will be suspicious; they'll simply take it as hospitality from the host."

He closed the small box and placed it on the corner of the desk, then looked up at Clara. The easy smile had vanished from the blue eyes behind his half-moon spectacles, leaving them serious and solemn.

"Now, Miss Albert, what you must do is try to keep both Mr. Diggory and yourself alive. I think I should remind you again-there is no pattern to the rewinding. It could stop at any time. You must be prepared for the possibility that you will never have another chance to rewind, and treat each time as your last. Above all, make sure you stay safe."

Clara glanced down at the warm petal pendant on her wrist, then looked up and met Dumbledore's gaze.

"I will, Professor."

"There has been a bit of news from the Ministry of Magic recently. Mr. Barty Crouch has not appeared at the Ministry for quite some time, and I think that may be of some help to our investigation. So I'll probably be away from the school for a few days. If you have any problems while I'm gone, you can go to Professor Sprout or Professor McGonagall."

The days that followed were almost unnaturally peaceful.

No new bad news arrived from outside the school. Fake Moody still patrolled the corridors, dragging his wooden leg. Her schedule had no room for any more training, and the three professors had all increased the intensity at once, as though they had arranged it beforehand. Every night, it was eight or nine before she returned from the dungeon in a sorry state, then munched on pumpkin pie and beef rolls Rowle brought back from the kitchens.

One afternoon, Clara returned from the Room of Requirement drenched in sweat. She was about to go back to the dormitory to change her robes before heading to the dungeon for her lesson when Rowle suddenly stood up from a sofa in the common room and called her over. She held a small bundle of envelopes tied with twine, and her expression was a little strange. "There have been loads of letters on the table whenever you eat lately. The owls drop them and leave before anyone can stop them. I brought them back for you. I haven't opened any of them."

Clara frowned, puzzled, and looked down at the bundle of letters in her hands. Letters from Mr. and Mrs. Albert were usually delivered to her by Banban, and she went to the Owlery to collect them regularly. These clearly were not from them.

The envelopes came in different colors and sizes. Some were made of heavy parchment, while others looked like scraps torn from notebooks, and their seals bore different colors of wax. Rowle stood beside her, twisting the edge of her robes between her fingers. The curiosity on her face was genuine; she had clearly been holding it in for days.

Clara opened the dark red envelope on top, pulled out the letter, and glanced over it. The handwriting was messy and the ink heavy, as though the writer had pressed hard enough to carve every letter into the parchment. After reading two lines, she folded it without expression and put it back, then opened the second. This one was written on pink paper, but its contents were no friendlier than the first. Then came the third, and the fourth.

Rowle watched her expression grow colder and colder until she could no longer hold back. She snatched one of the letters and opened it, then looked up sharply after reading only a few lines. "Merlin—these people say you're 'involved with two Hogwarts Champions at once,' and that you're 'torn between Potter and Diggory'-where did this rumor come from? All you do every day is train. You don't even have time for me anymore, so how would you find time to be involved with two Champions?"

She suddenly remembered something and turned to pull the latest issue of Witch Weekly from the magazine rack beside the sofa. She opened it to a page in the middle and slapped it down in front of Clara. "It's that Rita Skeeter again! She added another little paragraph after her report on the Triwizard Tournament, saying, 'According to an inside source, it seems that, besides competing for the trophy, Hogwarts' two Champions, Potter and Diggory, have a young Hufflepuff lady to distract them.' These letters must have been sent after people read that report—that's her usual trick, hinting at things and letting people fill in the details themselves!"

Clara picked up the magazine and glanced over it.

Rita Skeeter's prose was as flowery and vicious as ever. Every sentence concealed a barbed thorn; not a single word was an explicit accusation, yet everyone who read it would feel they already knew the whole truth. She put the magazine back on the table and began throwing the letters into the fireplace.

She had a fairly good idea why some Ravenclaw girls had been unfriendly toward her these past few days. She hoped this bullshit report had not caused Cedric any unnecessary trouble.

Rowle grew agitated. "Aren't you angry? Aren't you going to send them a few Howlers?"

"I am pretty angry. But wouldn't that be falling for Skeeter's trick?" Clara disposed of the last letter. "Besides, she isn't just targeting me. Look at the front page of the same issue-Hermione Granger got it even worse than I did. It says she used a love charm on Krum to make him invite her to the dance. The Howlers Hermione has received could probably fill an entire cauldron."

Rowle stared for a moment, then turned the magazine to the front page and skimmed a few lines before letting out a muffled grunt of anger.

"That Rita Skeeter really should be turned into a beetle and squashed."

She tossed the magazine back onto the table, took a deep breath, and turned to Clara again. "But Lyla, don't just brush this off. My dad is a newspaper editor, and he's told me that public opinion can crush a person more easily than anything. If you're unhappy, you have to tell me, all right?"

Clara looked up and smiled at Rowle. "All right. Thanks for collecting my letters."

Rowle huffed, picked up the magazine again, and slapped it hard against the table.

"I'll submit something to Witch Weekly later and show them what it really means to insult someone without using a single swear word."

Clara smiled and nodded, approving of her friend's decision, and watched the last corner of the final letter burn to ash. The flames swallowed the messy handwriting and malicious words, casting a small patch of dancing shadows on the stone wall. She brushed the ash from her hands, returned the magazine to Rowle, then picked up her schoolbag from beside the sofa and headed for the girls' dormitory. She was angry, but she did not seem to have much time to argue with anyone over it-Snape's lesson would start in an hour, and she had yet to practice her offensive spells to her satisfaction that day.

Dumbledore worked quickly. One evening, a month before June 24, four sets of tournament robes were delivered to the four Champions.

The Hufflepuff Common Room was packed. Even the potted magical plants that usually sat in the corner had been crowded onto the windowsill. Cedric stood in front of the fireplace, holding a flat box bearing the Hogwarts crest and a line of small gold lettering: "Triwizard Tournament robes, a gift from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Several rings of students surrounded him. Rowle jumped up and down on tiptoe at the edge of the crowd, calling, "Open it! Open it!"

Clara did not push forward. She leaned against the stone wall by the entrance to the girls' dormitory passage, arms folded, and watched through the layers of people as Cedric bent his head to untie the ribbon on the box. It was a hand-tied silk bow, and he fumbled with it a little. Ernie Macmillan called out impatiently from beside him, "Use scissors!" Cedric smiled and shook his head, continuing to work the knot loose with his fingers.

The moment he lifted the lid, a chorus of subdued gasps rose around him. Cedric held up the tournament robes. They were yellow and black, much like the colors of his usual Quidditch practice robes, but the fabric held its shape better, and the shoulders and arms were reinforced, allowing flexibility while offering some resistance to the impact of spells. The Hufflepuff crest on the chest had been embroidered stitch by stitch with extremely fine gold thread, and it gleamed softly in the firelight.

Clara felt the petal pendant on her wrist tremble gently. She looked down and saw a faint silver-blue glow beneath her sleeve-warm and soft, as though answering some distant resonance. It was the amulet's reaction to sensing the other petal.