If we consider the events around the judges' platform during the Second Task from Sirius Black's perspective, some details emerge that Draco had no way of knowing.
Not long after the champions entered the water, an argument broke out.
"Viktor was struck by a powerful Stunning Spell — this is not some convenient illness!" Igor Karkaroff's blue eyes blazed. "Mr. Bagman, as Durmstrang's Headmaster, I am demanding a postponement and a rematch. The competition has been compromised."
"That's not a simple matter," Bagman said uneasily. "The Task has already begun—"
"Do not tell me you missed it! This was almost certainly the work of a champion from another school!" Karkaroff's voice rose. "Viktor has spent months preparing for this — diving in that freezing lake every day since October. He knew the golden egg. He was ready. And now he is to forfeit because someone had him Stunned this morning?" He looked around the table with barely-contained fury. "I will not accept this."
"I understand your frustration, Igor, and I am genuinely sorry for what has happened to Mr. Krum," Dumbledore said calmly.
This earned him a sharp snort from Karkaroff.
"However," Dumbledore continued, "we cannot accept accusations without evidence. Madam Pomfrey is with Mr. Krum in the medical tent on the shore, and he may wake at any moment. Once he does, I suggest we all attend and hear his account directly."
Karkaroff's face darkened. He opened his mouth — and was pre-empted by Madame Maxime.
"We will not accept a rematch," she said, in her enormous, composed way. "It would be fundamentally unfair to the other champions. The Task's details are no longer secret; the methods employed are known. The other champions have already been in the water and expended significant effort. If there is a rematch, one participant will begin it fully rested while the others do not."
"You're suggesting we *put on an act*?" Karkaroff turned on her, his expression icy. "That we deliberately incapacitated Viktor to avoid facing him in the water?"
"I'm suggesting," Madame Maxime said, straightening her considerable frame, "that I find the timing suspicious."
"And I find *your* school's results suspicious! If I didn't know better, I'd say Beauxbatons simply doesn't want to see anyone else succeed—"
"How dare you—"
"Please, please—" Bagman stepped between them with the expression of a man who had chosen the wrong career. "Mr. Karkaroff, you have to consider the practical situation. The preparations for the Second Task — three months of planning, enormous resources, the design of the task itself — to void all of that and start again, we'd need an entirely new event. The timeline alone—"
"The timeline," Karkaroff said, with contempt. "You're a British official. Of course the timeline matters more than justice—"
"Mr. Karkaroff!" Percy Weasley rose from his chair. He had his father's red hair and a junior official's spine, which was proving more useful than most people would have expected. "The Goblet of Fire operates on a fixed schedule. A new Task cannot be arranged before it goes dark again — the logistics alone make it impossible. Furthermore, each Task requires an adequate recovery period for the champions. These aren't bureaucratic obstacles; they are structural requirements of the Tournament's design."
Sirius stood to one side and looked at the sky.
They sounded less like heads of academic institutions and more like vendors at a Muggle market arguing over the price of cabbages.
He was here for one reason: proximity to Harry. As the school's Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, he had taken on a support role in the Tournament — helping to monitor the water and rescue champions in genuine distress. He had absolute faith in Harry's nerve and ingenuity. He had less certainty about the contents of the Black Lake, having never been down there himself, despite some extremely questionable decisions in his youth.
"A rematch is out of the question," Percy said, with Barty Crouch's intonation and Barty Crouch's complete absence of flexibility. "The Task is underway. There is no negotiation."
"Who gave *you* the authority to speak here?" Karkaroff gave Percy an unpleasant look. "Where is Barty Crouch? He's apparently too important to attend his own Tournament."
"Mr. Crouch is unwell." Percy straightened his back.
The red hair, Sirius thought, brought Ron to mind — and the twins — and the general Weasley tendency toward being extremely themselves, which Percy was embodying with full commitment in a direction quite unlike his siblings.
"How is Mr. Crouch?" Dumbledore asked, with what sounded like genuine interest.
"I believe he'll recover shortly. In the meantime, matters at his office have required attention, and I've been managing them." Percy smiled at Dumbledore, which softened his expression by approximately three percent.
"We didn't come here to listen to a Ministry assistant discuss his workload," Karkaroff cut in. He switched targets. "And what of that student who jumped into the lake without authorisation, Albus? What exactly are we going to do about that?"
"I was equally surprised," Dumbledore said, pleasantly.
"This is not the moment for understatement!" Madame Maxime stepped in, visibly displeased. "That boy could cast spells on the champions underwater — he could interfere directly with the Task. What does it say about Hogwarts' commitment to fair competition that this was even possible?"
"That is correct," Karkaroff said. "This is a clear breach—"
Percy went pink and said nothing.
Dumbledore's expression did not change. "Given Mr. Krum's current incapacity," he said, "Durmstrang's hostage did require someone to retrieve her. As for the young man in question — I can assure you on my honour: he is an excellent student, and I believe his only intention was to bring that hostage safely to the surface. He would not interfere with the champions, and he will not bring shame upon this school." He paused. "I trust him."
"Well, I hope you're right," Madame Maxime said, somewhat mollified.
Karkaroff, however, smelled an opening. "I don't recall anyone informing me that the host school could permit unrelated students to enter the water during a Tournament Task. Just as I don't recall anyone informing me that the host school could arbitrarily enter two students as champions."
"Igor," Dumbledore said, quietly, "I thought we had reached an understanding on that matter."
Karkaroff glanced at Madame Maxime. "Madam, since you also have reservations about certain practices, perhaps you'd reconsider the question of a rematch—"
Madame Maxime's expression became carefully neutral. She didn't want a rematch. She also didn't want to be seen passing up leverage.
Sirius stopped listening. He was watching the lake.
He had been deeply, viscerally shaken by Draco's jump.
He'd been watching the stands from the platform, and the whole thing had taken perhaps four seconds: a robe being stripped, falling sideways off the stands, and a slim pale figure going into the water like a thrown stone. Clean, fast, and utterly without hesitation.
*Who could have imagined it.*
He thought of Narcissa — who would be apoplectic — and Lucius — whose reaction he couldn't actually predict — and then he thought of Draco himself. The boy he had mentally catalogued as cold, arrogant, guarded, and deeply Slytherin. The boy who sounded like his mother in a bad mood and looked like his father in a good one and who, as far as Sirius had been able to determine, genuinely didn't want to be either.
Dumbledore had opposed him on the matter of Hermione Granger being used as a hostage. Sirius had objected to it directly.
"She's not suitable," he'd said.
"Sirius, it's a controlled environment," Dumbledore had replied, in the tone of a man who had already decided. "No hostage will be harmed."
Sirius had no recourse. He couldn't tip Draco off — not as a Tournament official — and so he had avoided the boy entirely rather than look him in the face.
He had told himself Draco would be fine about it.
He had been, clearly, an idiot.
That jump — resolute, immediate, no calculation, no hesitation — reminded him of something. Of someone he used to know, who had been best friends with a boy named James. They had jumped off things together, the two of them. Into situations that probably hadn't required jumping into. He had missed it for a very long time.
*Narcissa and Lucius raised this?*
He found himself smiling at the dark water.
Draco had said, on more than one occasion, that Harry Potter was none of his business and that he had no interest in the boy's welfare. He also, apparently, had arranged the Gillyweed a month in advance, prepared contingency plans for the Bubble-Head Charm, and helped Harry practise for the dragon. Perhaps the most hypocritical Slytherin since Merlin himself. What was the point of maintaining such a convincing surface when the interior was this transparent to anyone paying attention?
The thought brought him a disproportionate amount of warmth.
He kept his eyes on the lake.
---
Fleur Delacour's Bubble-Head Charm was punctured by a Grindylow.
They had come out of the weeds in a coordinated rush — long pale claws grabbing her wand arm, her hair, her legs, her throat, all at once. She had fought, which was the wrong thing to do with Grindylows. She was tangled and bleeding and running out of air and she sent a spark of red light upward with the last thought available to her: *please.*
A hand closed around her arm.
Spellfire. The claws released her neck. She choked on water.
She was moving upward, fast, held by a grip that would not let go.
She looked up along the arm and saw Sirius Black's face — dark hair moving in the current, grey eyes scanning the water around them rather than looking at her, his wand working steadily as he propelled them both toward the surface.
He was beautiful, she thought distantly. He was terrifyingly competent. He was also pulling her along with the total efficiency of someone rescuing an obstacle rather than a person, which she chose not to be insulted by given that she was currently not breathing.
They broke the surface. Cold air. Someone wrapped a blanket around her.
She had failed. Her score would reflect it.
"Where is my treasure?" she asked, barely coherent, looking at Madame Maxime.
"Your sister," Madame Maxime said, distracted by the argument still underway at the judges' table.
"*Gabrielle.*"
Fleur stopped hearing anything else. Her sister — who was in France, who should have been in France — had been placed at the bottom of that lake.
"*Gabrielle!*" She threw the blanket off and ran for the water.
"Stop her!" Percy shouted.
Sirius caught her from behind just as she reached the edge.
"Let go — my sister — she's down there — she's seven years old—" She was screaming in a mixture of English and French, clawing at his arms, and she bit him, she was aware she bit him, and she couldn't have stopped herself if she'd tried.
"*Stop.*" Sirius held on. His voice was very controlled. "Listen to me. *She will be fine.*"
"You don't know that! It's dark and cold and there are monsters—" Her voice broke. "She'll be terrified. No one will come for her. I failed — I left her there—"
"Dumbledore does not allow hostages to be harmed," Sirius said, close to her ear, forcibly restraining the arm she was using to go for the water again. "They are protected. They will be brought up. She will be *fine*."
She stopped struggling. Her face was wet with lake water and tears and she couldn't tell the difference.
"Really?" Her voice was very small.
"Yes." He let out a breath. "Don't go back in. If you do, I'll have to go in after you, and I've already been in once today."
She became aware, suddenly, that she was standing on a lakeshore surrounded by hundreds of students and staff, and that she had just bitten a professor and been dragged back from the water like a stray cat.
"You were extremely rude," she said, straightening.
"You bit me," he said flatly. He held up his arm. The marks were clear.
She looked at them. She looked at him. She had no adequate response.
"Go to Madam Pomfrey," he said, in the voice of someone who is done with this conversation. He pulled the towel Madam Pomfrey had given him off his shoulder and walked away.
Fleur stood in her torn robes, watching his back.
*No one has ever treated me like that in my life,* she thought.
She found she was uncertain what to do with the feeling.
---
Sirius pulled Draco and Hermione ashore not long after, following Cedric and Cho Chang, and was rewarded with the image of the two of them wrapped in towels, Hermione crying slightly and Draco looking approximately as shaken as Sirius had ever seen a Malfoy look, which was saying something.
"Oh, youth," Madam Pomfrey said, dreamily.
"Give me a break," Sirius said. "Get a room, the pair of you."
Neither of them appeared to hear him.
"Honestly," he muttered.
"Don't you dare!" Madam Pomfrey said, rounding on him. "Don't you dare ruin it with your—"
"Ruin *what*—"
"It was *romantic*! The whole lake saw it! Leave them alone, they're *children*—"
"One of those children just jumped off a twenty-foot platform into a lake—"
"Out of *love*! You heartless man—"
Sirius looked at Madam Pomfrey's flushed, delighted face and elected to retreat.
He found Harry ashore, dripping and bright-eyed, with Ron beside him. Harry had, apparently, pulled Fleur's sister up as well, which Sirius mentally filed under *that's my boy* with deep satisfaction.
And then — Merlin — Fleur Delacour was kissing Harry on the cheek, and kissing Ron on the cheek, and looking sufficiently emotional that her Veela charm was radiating off her like heat.
Sirius watched Harry go slightly opaque.
*Watch yourself, Harry.*
He turned back to the lake.
Ludo Bagman was wrapping up the scoring, his voice carrying over the water. Draco had received fifty points for Slytherin — Dumbledore's personal decision — and the Slytherin stands were currently making more noise than they had in three years.
Sirius looked at his adopted nephew, who was still damp and pale and currently permitting Hermione Granger to fuss over him with a second towel, wearing the expression of a boy who had received something he hadn't entirely been expecting.
*James,* he thought, *you would have found this extremely funny.*
He laughed quietly to himself.
Then his eye caught something at the entrance to the medical tent: Dumbledore, moving quickly and quietly in Sirius's direction. His face said everything.
Sirius went still.
"Krum woke up," he said, as Dumbledore reached him. "What did he say?"
"Come," Dumbledore said.
---
"It was the judge from the British Ministry of Magic," Krum said. "Barty Crouch. He Stunned me this morning at the edge of the Forbidden Forest."
Silence in the tent.
"Impossible!" Percy's face had gone the colour of his hair. "Mr. Crouch is bedridden — he couldn't have come to Hogwarts — this is slander, it's—"
"Test me with Veritaserum," Krum said flatly. "Anything you want. The answer won't change."
"No one will be administering Veritaserum," Karkaroff said, his hand on Krum's shoulder. "They have no right to, Viktor, and they're not going to use it as an excuse to ask you other questions." He looked pointedly at Dumbledore.
Krum's jaw was tight. His eyes moved toward the tent entrance, like a man thinking of something else.
"I believe Viktor, naturally," Karkaroff continued. "Which brings me back to my position — the British Ministry's own official has actively sabotaged this Tournament. The results of the Second Task must be voided—"
"If the situation is as Mr. Krum describes," Madame Maxime said, "I would second that."
"*Of course* you would," Percy muttered.
Bagman looked deeply unhappy.
Dumbledore let them talk for another moment.
Then he raised his voice — not loudly, but with a quality that stopped rooms. "That is enough."
The tent went quiet.
"I believe Viktor. He has no cause to lie about something of this magnitude." He acknowledged Krum with a brief nod; the champion's expression eased slightly. "I also believe the officials of the Ministry act with integrity, and will not cast judgement before we understand the full picture." A look at Percy, who accepted it with visible relief. "The most urgent priority is to find Mr. Barty Crouch. Ludo, Percy — report this to the Ministry immediately and send someone to his home. Igor, Olympe — return to your residences, see to your students, strengthen security. I will conduct a thorough search of the castle and the Forbidden Forest."
Karkaroff looked as if he wanted to object. He looked at Dumbledore's face and reconsidered.
"I will inform you the moment I have anything," Dumbledore said. "You have my word."
Karkaroff left. Madame Maxime followed. The officials filed out one by one.
Krum sat alone for a moment, then looked up.
"Is Granger alright?" he asked. "My treasure. Has she been brought up?"
"She's perfectly safe," Dumbledore said warmly. "Thanks to a young Hogwarts student who went to some considerable trouble on her behalf."
"Malfoy," Krum said, his brow furrowing. "That boy. He went in?"
"He did," Sirius confirmed, with uncomplicated satisfaction.
Krum's expression darkened. He said something, very quietly, in Bulgarian. Sirius didn't speak Bulgarian, but the meaning was not obscure.
"Right," Sirius said cheerfully. "Exactly."
---
Outside, he fell into step beside Dumbledore.
"He wasn't lying," Sirius said.
"No," Dumbledore said. "He wasn't. But Crouch's behaviour makes very little sense. Whatever he is, he has always been disciplined. Calculated. Viciously careful about his reputation. Why would he risk everything to Stun Viktor Krum before the Second Task?"
"Polyjuice," Sirius said. "Or the Imperius Curse." He paused. "Or both."
"Yes," Dumbledore said. "I think so too."
"He won't be easy to find."
Dumbledore didn't answer.
He was found that same afternoon.
Hagrid's dog located him at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, stumbling and barely coherent, the knees of his robes torn and bloody.
"Professor Dumbledore!" Hagrid called, as they came up the slope. "Toothpick found him, sir — he was talking to himself by the old oak—"
"Barty," Dumbledore said, kneeling beside the man. "What happened?"
Barty Crouch looked at him with eyes that were present for only part of the time.
"I'm sorry — I couldn't — he made me — Voldemort — he used the Imperius — he forced me to attack the champion — to ensure Harry's victory — to — to—" His voice broke. He was fighting to stay coherent, fighting the lingering threads of a curse that had been on him for months. "He's at my house — after the first Task, he came to my house—"
Dumbledore's expression changed.
"Sirius." He was on his feet already. "Come."
He grabbed Sirius's arm, and the edge of the forest vanished.
Professor McGonagall stood staring at the space where they had been.
"Minerva." Hagrid blinked. "Should we—"
"Fetch Madam Pomfrey," she said, looking at the half-conscious man on the ground. "Quickly."