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Chapter 248: The conspiracy behind the competition

Neither of them discussed the matter of the semi-finals. 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 name, as if he was very familiar with the potion professor.

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

"Severus, you can't pretend that this didn't happen!" Karkaroff's deliberately suppressed voice sounded panic and hoarse, afraid of being heard, "It has become more and more obvious over the past few months. I am very worried now, I can't deny..."

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

"Severus, you clearly know what I am talking about!" Karkaroff suddenly pulled open the sleeve of his left arm and growled hoarsely, "This mark, it has become more and more active recently... That person is back!"

On the inside of his left forearm, there is a skull with a snake head spitting out of its mouth-

It is the Dark Mark representing the Death Eaters!

"If the Dark Lord can come back, isn't that a good thing for us?" Snape glanced at the Dark Mark on Karkaroff's arm and said indifferently.

"Good thing?" Karkaroff sneered, "Since when did you, a Hogwarts professor who defected to Dumbledore as soon as the war ended, become a loyal follower 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 after I go back, otherwise you should know your fate."

"Hehe, it seems that you are determined to go back, right?" Karkaroff said with gritted teeth, "In this case, I only ask you one thing, Severus... in When you see the Dark Lord return, you must tell me immediately. "

"At that time, 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 will leave by then..."

"...I agree." Snape pondered for a moment and said slowly, "Let's talk about this matter here. Now we should discuss the matter of this game."

...

Mr. Crouch and Bagman left after explaining the game process and precautions and answering the questions of the five warriors.

Bagman originally wanted to stay in Hogwarts for one more night, preparing to secretly give Harry some separate tips so that he could make money from gambling. But Mr. Crouch did not let him do so.

As for Ms. Maxime and Karkaroff, because they were dissatisfied with the current form of the game, they each took their students and left the room quickly.

"Thank you so much for your help today, Larry." Dumbledore looked at the only headmaster who had not left except himself, and smiled, "If you hadn't suddenly stepped forward, I don't know if I could have convinced Maxim and Karkaroff."

"If I remember correctly, the headmaster...I should have convinced Karkaroff." Snape's sinister voice suddenly sounded beside him.

"Ah, of course, of course I have to 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 guest's emotions first..."

"You are too polite, Albus." Professor Eulalie Hicks waved her hand casually, "I just said a few fair words, I sincerely hope that this little guy won't get into trouble during the game."

"Take care of yourself this school year, little guy." She looked at Harry with sympathy.

"I will, Professor Hicks." Harry nodded firmly.

After moving his eyes away from Harry, Professor Hicks said to Dumbledore angrily: "Albus, you must find out who did this... They didn't even let a child go!"

"Really, the older I get, the more I hate this kind of thing..."

She kept muttering as she took John Kowalski out of the room.

"Harry, Cedric, I suggest you go back to bed early." Dumbledore then turned to the two warriors of Hogwarts and said to 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 big fuss, and it's wrong to take away their opportunity."

Professor McGonagall looked at Dumbledore reproachfully, but rarely did she raise any objections.

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

The hall was now empty, and the candles were burning low, making the jack-o'-lantern's toothy grin flicker and look strange.

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

"I think so," Harry muttered.

He didn't know what to say at all. His mind seemed to be in a mess, as if his entire brain had been robbed.

"So, tell me..." Cedric hesitated for a long time, and finally asked, "How did you vote in?"

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

"Well... okay," Cedric said, and Harry saw that Cedric didn't believe him, "Okay... goodbye then."

Even though Professor Hicks's analysis of all this made sense and believed that someone wanted to harm Harry, most students didn't think about it in this way.

Compared with the dangers in the tournament, the honor in it is more eye-catching and easier to blind the eyes.

Who else would believe him, except Ron and Hermione?

Harry thought to himself.

Everyone thought he had signed up for the tournament? But how could they think that? You know, his competitors had received three years more magical education than him - and he would face a task that sounded very dangerous and had to be completed in front of hundreds of people!

Yes, he had thought about it, he had fantasized about it... but it was just a joke, a fantasy, a daydream... He had never really, seriously considered participating...

And yet someone had considered it... someone wanted him to participate in the competition and made sure he was selected.

Why? To give him a pretty good advantage? He didn't think so.

So, was it to make him look stupid? If so, they might get what they wanted, but as for whether they really wanted him dead...?

Could someone have put Harry's name in the goblet just for a prank, for a joke? Did someone really want him dead? Harry couldn't answer this question right away.

Yes, someone did want him dead, someone had wanted him dead since he was one year old... That was Voldemort. But how could Voldemort guarantee that Harry's name would be cast into the Goblet of Fire?

Voldemort should be in a faraway place, hiding his whereabouts, alone, weak and powerless...

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

Harry woke up suddenly and found himself in front of the Fat Lady. There was another pale witch in the portrait at this time. He vaguely remembered that she was originally hung in the small room in front of the hall.

"Good, good, great!" The Fat Lady said excitedly, "Violet - a portrait painter friend of mine just told me everything. Who was just selected as the school's champion?"

"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.

Harry nearly fell backwards at the sudden noise that filled his ears as the portrait opened. The next thing he knew he was being dragged into the common room by about a dozen hands, facing the entire Gryffindor House. They were all screaming, cheering, and whistling.

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

"How did you get away with not growing a beard?" George yelled.

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

"We've got food, Harry, come and eat!" Someone dragged him to a table.

"I'm not hungry. I ate enough at the banquet--"

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. It seemed that no one noticed that he was not in the mood to celebrate this matter at all...

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

Harry had no way to get away. Every time he tried to sneak towards the stairs leading to the dormitory, the crowd approached him, surrounded him, forced him to drink another glass of butter beer, or stuffed biscuits and peanuts into his hands...

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

"I don't know," he said over and over again, "I don't know how this happened."

But no one paid any attention, as if he had said nothing.

"I'm tired!" he shouted after about half an hour, finally losing his patience. "No, seriously, George... I want to go to bed."

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

Harry insisted that he needed to go to bed, and finally got rid of everyone and hurried upstairs to his dormitory.

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

"Where have you been?" Harry asked.

"Oh, hello," Ron said stiffly.

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

Harry suddenly realized that he was still wearing the bright red Gryffindor flag that Lee Jordan had tied on him. He tried to take it off quickly, but the knot was tied tightly. Ron lay motionless on the bed and watched Harry struggle to untie the flag.

"So..." Ron said, when Harry finally took off the flag and threw it into the corner, "Congratulations."

"What do you mean, congratulations?" Harry looked at Ron and asked.

"Nothing... No one else crossed the age line," Ron laughed dryly, looking as ugly as crying, "Not even Fred and George. What did you use - the Invisibility Cloak?"

"The Invisibility Cloak couldn't have gotten me over that line," Harry said slowly.

"Oh, yes," Ron said, "If it was the Invisibility Cloak, I think you would have told me... Because the Invisibility Cloak can cover both of us, right? But you found another way, didn't you?"

"Listen," Harry said, "I didn't put my name in that goblet, someone else must have done it!"

"But why would they do that?" Ron raised his eyebrows, looking unconvinced.

"I don't know," said Harry, who felt that what he was about to say would sound sensational, like an act. "To kill me."

Ron's face was filled with disbelief - 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 lied? Especially when you made up such a... ridiculous lie."

"You didn't get into trouble for it, did you? The Fat Lady's friend, Violet, told us all that Dumbledore had chosen you. A thousand Galleons, and you don't have to take the end-of-year exams..."

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

He was feeling a little annoyed now.

"Really?" Ron said indifferently, with the same suspicious tone as Cedric on his face, "But you didn't have a chance this morning. You could have done it last night, and no one would have seen you... You know, I'm not a fool."

"You really left me with that impression now." Harry said unhappily.

"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 the media's photo shoot or something."

The two of them parted unhappily, both fell heavily on the bed, and no longer said a word.

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

At the same time, in the room in front of the hall, Dracula, Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were investigating who came to the hall last night and threw the note into the Goblet of Fire.

The results of the investigation were not satisfactory.