"Nothing. He just asked him to get up."

"I really thought he was-"

"What?" Everyone was out in the middle of the compound, mulling around and waiting for the start of the competition. When Hermione didn't answer him, Harry asked again, "You thought he was what Hermione?"

"You know," she hedged, "I thought he was coming around."

"To me?" Harry laughed. "I don't think so."

"We have to make this a Hogwarts win," came Draco's voice from behind them suddenly, and Harry and Hermione turned to find Draco and Ernie.

"A Hogwarts win?" Hermione asked.

"Everyone else here are dim witted. We have to show we're the better school. We need to have at least three of us in the top five."

"What did the others say?" Harry asked. There were other Hogwarts students that he hadn't interacted with at all that summer.

"They're not competing," Ernie said. They didn't come for the certificate or the Ministry jobs. They came to get 'cultured.'"

"So it's just the four of us."

"I assume you have a plan," Draco drawled. "You've been doing so much tutoring with Professor Snape."

Harry gave him a hard look and Draco rolled his eyes. "Come on Potter. I saved your rear earlier. If it comes down to you and me and gits from other schools, I"ll take them out first."

He waved to him and Ernie then and they huddled together. Hermione cast a charm around them to keep others from listening in.

"Hermione, show them the herbs." Hermione pulled several plants from her pocket that she'd collected despite that Harry had told her he thought they couldn't start with anything but their wands.

"Collect these while you're out," she told them after she'd explained what each of them was for.

"That's it?" Draco asked. "Heal yourself if you get hurt?"

"The contest could go all day and into the night and maybe even into tomorrow," Harry said. "I don't know. Snape said that even if someone passes out, that doesn't count as incapacitated because they could still get up and make it to the finish. They're going to spell all of us to tell them whether or not we're out of the competition. When we are a teacher will collect us. So collect these, especially the tingurf and keep it with you. If you're hurt and close to passing out you can eat it and it will keep you from showing up on the teacher's radar, and it will keep you from passing out."

"What else?" Ernie asked. "What else do we do?"

"Snape said a good strategy was to hide. If you can do a Bubble Head charm you can hide out in the water somewhere until most everyone else is out. Or else try to camofalge yourself. I reckon a lot of people will just try to hide though so there might not be many places to hide. Also at some point if everyone left is hiding, someone will have to come out and hunt them down or we could be here for weeks. There's something else too. Snape said the top 5 from this contest will face off again in the last week of school and the winner from that will get another certificate."

"We know that already," Ernie said.

"You do?"

"My dad told me."

"Mine too," Draco said.

"Don't forget to secure whoever you knock out," Hermione said, "or they don't count as incapacitated."

Draco smiled then and gave Harry a funny look.

"What?" he asked.

"How very- Slytherin, of you, this plan," Draco said.

"I haven't told you my plan," he said then. "I've only given you the information I was given."

"Slytherin," Draco said as Hermione waved the spell away and they could suddenly hear the other people around them again.

"I think they're starting," she said, pointing to where the Professors stood up on the porch of the study building.

"Attention!" Professor Iva said, pointing her wand at her throat to magnify her voice. People stopped chatting to look at her. "I need every student who is participating to form a large circle around me. Students not participating should step back at least thirty feet or the spell will hit you. Once the spell is on you, you must participate."

People moved to do as they were told and Harry noted that Draco and Ernie separated from them and moved to opposite sides of the circle. "See you later Hermione," Harry said, and moved off too. Maybe it wasn't good to be seen as having allies at the start of the contest. Harry went to stand next to Axle, who gave him a smile and a nod.

"Is this everyone? Ok then. She waved her wand and said a spell and everyone in the circle glowed blue for a moment. Harry looked down at his arm and was surprised to find that there was now a glowing blue number 30 there.

"As you can see, there is now a number on each of your arms. This is the number of participants still left in the contest. When the number reads five, you must return to this spot and present yourselves for your award."

"Now for the rules. Number one, you will not permanently damage, maim, or disfigure another person. You will refrain yourself from using any of the four unforgivable curses. You will not kill on accident or otherwise, another person. Anyone breaking this rule will be sent home immediately and will be dealt with by their governments Auror division."

"Two, you may not take anything into the battlefield with you except for your wand and the clothing you are wearing. Please empty your pockets and form a line for the professors to check. Once the competition starts, you may use things that you acquire after that point in time."

"Three- you may go anywhere, including any building that is on school grounds. The boundaries have a spell on them. You will not be able to pass school boundaries while the spell is on you."

"Those are the three rules you must abide by. We have a map inside this building of the grounds. Each of you shows up as a blue dot on this map. There are no names to label these dots so we do not know who is where. When one of you is incapacitated, your dot turns red and after ten minutes a teacher will come to you to bring you back. Your goal is to incapacitate all other players and be one of the last five left. I suggest you find a way to bind or otherwise immobilize whoever you have incapacitated, because when one of you is incapacitated you have ten minutes to get out of your situation before a teacher retrieves you. Once a teacher gets to you, you are out of the game. Are there any questions?"

No one raised their hand. "We wish you all good luck, and we adivse you to stay safe and not take up a position that could endanger yourself against the elements. The competition will go until there are only five left. If you wish to give up, then you will have to incapacitate yourself with a petrificus totalus, preferabbly you will come to the center of the compound to do so. I will count to ten and then shoot sparks up in air with my wand. At that time, the competition will begin. 1, 2, 3-" He gave a last look to Gan and Snape who were both looking at him and then ran. People scattered in every direction. Harry's goal was to run as far and fast as he could because he didn't want to get into a firefight there in the middle of the compound when she hit ten. He'd just gotten to Axle's cabin when he heard people shouting hexes at each other and he dodged not knowing if something had been aimed at his back. It hadn't and he kept running giving a look behind him.

His arm tingled and he glanced down at it to see that it already read 28, make that 27. Three people had already been taken out of the game. His lungs burned by the time he made the tall grasses at the other end of the compound. He dove into them and watched, trying not to breath too loudly. A Durmstrang, a Boden, and Hermione were having a three way battle in the middle of the compound and in the distance he could see students running towards the forest and paths to the beach.

Hermione took the girl from Boden out and then turned to the girl from Durmstrang. She was throwing hexes at Hermione that Harry had never seen. They were only a foot apart and Harry was surprised that they had time to react to each other's spells. Hermione seemed surprised when the girl reached out and punched her in the face. Just as she fell back, Harry saw the Durmstrang girl's wand come up and he reacted, aiming a hex at her. He put all the force he could muster into it and was surprised when it raced all the way across the compound and hit her in the wrist. She pulled her wrist back, which was now covered in boils and Hermione took the opportunity to bind her with ropes and then cast a petrificus totalus on her. She gave a wild look around, sent another spell at her, though Harry wasn't sure what, and then took off running towards the hill she and Harry had once battled on. Don't go there, Hermione, he thought. He'd already see three people heading up it. He looked at his arm. 24. There were 24 people left including him and Hermione. That meant he needed to take out 19 of them.

Harry looked around. He was in a ditch. This wasn't a good hiding place. Anyone walking through here could find him, plus he'd just given away his location with the hex he had cast.

He got on his stomach and crawled through the grass as fast as he could hoping that no one was looking at the grass just then. Where is a smart place to hide? He wondered. He wondered how many students were in buildings now, in their cabins or in someone elses. He may have to go cabin to cabin later to find them if it came down to it. His arm tingled several more times before he made it to the cliff face on his stomach. He'd never really explored this end of the grounds. There were only a few Gemini trees and mostly tall yellow grasses and weeds. He didn't know how far the boundary extended but thought that now was a good time to find out because unless he could find a way down the cliff face, the beach was not currently an option.

Harry crawled into a ditch and then got to his feet, crouched down and ran. He was surprised when he moved along the ditch for several minutes and didn't hit the barrier.

A hex zipped past his left ear and Harry dropped flat to the ground, uncertain of where the attacker was. He waited. He could be pinned down or the person could have moved on. He found a stick and lifted it into the air. There was no response so he lifted his head experimentally. There was another hex, green this time and he ducked again and began looking around for any of the plants Gan had shown him. There was a small ammount of Tingurf so Harry picked it. It would be just enough to stuff into his mouth if he had to make a run for it. At least then if he got hit he had a chance to keep himself from getting hurt.

There was a scream somewhere from in the distance and Harry wondered if someone else had been taken out. The number on his arm still read 24 so he knew that at least Hermione was still in it. He lay still and quiet for long minutes, and just when he wondered if he would be here at a stand still all day, a quiet voice said, "Got you."

Harry turned his head and looked up. One of the Karh boys faces was just visible through the tall grass above him.

"You're supposed to take me out," Harry said quietly. The boy raised a finger to his lips and then smiled.

"I will be one of the top 5, and at the end of school, we will have our battle."

"I don't think that's how this is supposed to work." The boy put a finger to his lips again with another smile then and his face disappeared from the grass. Harry heard him moving away this time and wondered that he'd snuck up on him so quietly in the first place.

Harry got to his feet again and continued on his running crouch through the grass. It was odd to be spared like that. Had Gan told him to leave Harry alone? He didn't know but knowing that he needed to be prepared for real battle in the real world, didn't think it had done him any favors.

After another five minutes, Harry finally felt himself come up against an invisible barrier and knew he'd hit the edge of the battlefield. He rose slightly to get his bearings and see if there was any good place to hide. He spied what he thought was a path down the cliff and hurried over to it and looked down. Below the cliff was crashing waves. It wasn't a path exactly, more like potential handholds on the way down to a little ledge. It might be a good place to hide. Exposed, but only from directly above him and from the ocean, and he didn't think anyone would be down in the water this far away from the main beach. Harry slid over the side of the cliff on his stomach and found a hole in the rock for his feet before he made the decision to climb all the way down. Hopefully he could get back up once he was down there.

It took Harry several strained minutes until he reached the little ledge, it was just wide enough for him to sit cross legged on, and so long as he didn't fall asleep, he felt confident he wouldn't fall over the edge and fall the rest of the way to the water and sharp rocks below. Now to address the problem of being seen from above. Harry was already wearing a gray shirt so he supposed that blended fairly well with the rocks around him. He touched the wand to his hair and began transforming it into the rocks that he could see. He didn't know if he'd done a good job or not, but after he'd done his arms and then transfigured his pants, he thought that of what he could see, it looked like he'd done a decent job.

Harry sat for hours on his ledge and every once in a while his arm would tingle to let him know someone else had been taken out. When it hits ten, he thought, I have to climb back up and start searching for people. At 15, his stomach started to growl becuase he'd missed lunch, and at 14 he knew he was getting sunburned sitting in the open like he was. The sun was starting to make it's way down towards the horizon when the counter hit 13. It was nearing two o-clock.

Harry used the time to think about his next move. They said every building was available to use. What would the teachers do if he strolled into the study building where they were at to look at the map? Blazhe or August might announce his presence to everyone, but if Snape or Gan or Adeline was there... but what if they weren't?

The counter hit 12 and then 11 in quick succession and Harry waited to see what would happen. A few moments later, it popped back up to 11 again. Someone had managed to come back into the game and Harry wondered what had happened.

Finally, when Harry thought it was around three o'clock, the counter hit ten and after ten minutes it hadn't gone back up again. Time to come out, he thought. He stood up on his small rock shelf and stared up at the climb he faced. He could spot all of the hand holds he'd used to come down. Up couldn't be that much harder, right? He struggled. His arm muscles weren't as strong as he'd thought and by the time he made it to the top, his arms felt like jelly. He was just wondering if they would stop feeling weak anytime soon when a cold, foreign voice came from behind him.

"Well, look who it is. The one who doesn't belong." Harry pulled out his wand but Acel had already fired something at him and it had hit him in the chest. He couldn't move. As he lay there on the ground he thought about the plant in his pocket. If only he could get some into his mouth.

"Oh, don't worry, the spell will only last for a few minutes, but once we're done with you, you won't be able to get up. Muggle defense is allowed you know." Acel kicked him in the side and then laughed.

"Nikolas, come here."

Nikolas came into Harry's view and the two boys laughed. They lifted Harry up and dragged him away from the cliff before they began pounding and kicking him mercilessly, laughing and joking with each other as if Harry weren't a person, as if they were kicking a rock or a sack of flour. They were right, Harry thought when he began to regain some feeling in his limbs. He was fairly unable to move after the three minutes of beating they had given him.

"Now, we have had our say about your laziness," Nikolas said. "We deserve to be here. We worked hard to be here. We don't want to go to a school where they let just anyone in."

"And now you know what is coming to you if you don't leave after tonight," Acel said. "More of this, from more of us."

Harry lay there as they walked away. He was fairly certain his ribs had been broken and his arm too. He'd heard it crack. He was bleeding from several places and he hurt everywhere. He'd thought this would be a summer away from pain being away from the Dursleys, but so far he'd already spent so much time in the infirmary.

He rolled onto his side and dragged himself the distance back into the ditch he'd hidden in earlier and fished in his pocket for the plant he'd picked earlier. It would be barely enough to keep him awake and he wondered if his dot on the map was already red. He was certainly in no condition to fight anyone, or even make it back to the compound.

Lying on his stomach he saw more of the plant and picked it, stuffing it into his mouth and chewing it, desperately hoping it would keep him in the competition. If he couldn't survive this silly game, then how could he survive Voldemort and a horde of death eaters and other dark creatures? The way things had gone down at the Ministry at the start of summer had served to show him just how unprepared he was for the real world battles he faced. He stuffed more of the leafy weed into his mouth and wished the other plants were there before him too so he could stop some of the bleeding, but there was nothing else. "Accio Hagave," he tried, but nothing came to him and he thought that the roots of the plant were holding it into place wherever it was.

He sighed and laid there. It wasn't the worst beating he'd ever received. He'd survive. He knew how to handle the pain, though he didn't by any stretch want to feel more of it by moving around unneccesarily. Stupid, stupid. He said to himself. You should have stayed put until there were only five people left. That would have been the intelligent thing to do, but Draco's voice came to mind then and said it would have been the 'Slytherin' thing to do. I am almost a Slytherin, Harry thought to himself. The hat wanted to put me there and I spent my time today hiding. Will hiding keep me alive when I have to face down Voldemort? It seemed he had done the more cowardly of his options. Even Hermione had stood her ground in the compound and dueled it out at the start. Harry had run.

His arm tingled a few more times but he didn't bother to look at it. It was under him and it would hurt to much to bring it out. When it tingled again, he did drag it out though. The number 6 stared back at him. It was finally getting dark and Harry felt like he had no energy. The pain was sapping it out of him, but he also hadn't eaten anything since eight that morning. He gingerly pushed himself up and looked around. He couldn't see anyone and wondered if the boy from Karh was still hiding in the tall grasses somewhere. Dragging his feet and not bothering to crouch, he began to make his way back towards the compound. It wouldn't take much for someone to finish him off at this point, but he didn't feel like being cowardly anymore. He tripped and caught himself several times as he went, almost feeling like he was in a daze. It felt like when he was under the water trying to do the Bubble Head Charm and was running out of air. Everything felt hazy and slow. Even if someone attacked him now, he thought he'd be too slow to react. It was almost at this precise moment when someone came running out of the tall grass at him though, and he saw Acel's blond hair gleaming in the last of the sunlight. Acel yelled, maybe trying to scare him, and Harry did the only thing he could think to do. He dropped his wand, hand too weak to hold it, and let the energy from the grass and plants around him climb up his feet and into his hands. "NO!" he shouted, and a blast of hot air shot out of his hands and hit Acel in the chest. Acel flew backwards and landed hard in the grass. Harry watched for him to get up, but Acel only groaned. He had to be sure though so he raised a hand again and thought the binding charm. He was surprised when it worked. It had been one he hadn't been able to manage wandlessly or wordlessly. Ropes appeared from thin air and wound themself around Acel, and one even went across his mouth and tied itself tight. Bound and gagged, Harry thought. He stooped, painfully, to pick up his wand and then went to stand over Acel.

"Only people who deserve to be here Acel. I'm one of them. You aren't." And then he walked away. His arm tingled and he knew the number had dropped to five. Hopefully no one else would attack him now as he made his way down the hill and towards the study building. It was slow going and the sun had sunk below the horizon when he reached the edge of the compound. He could see people gathered around the study building and wondered if he was the last to come in. He hadn't seen a teacher going for Acel but maybe he hadn't noticed. Things were still foggy for him.

People stared when he got near and there were whispers but he didn't hear them. He didn't think he liked this 'game' very much. As he rounded the side of the building he spotted the teachers standing there with the other winners. Draco, the boy from Karh, Axle, and a girl from Hogwarts were there, which surprised Harry because he hadn't seen her enter the contest and thought that the others from Hogwarts weren't participating.

They stared at him as he made the edge of the porch, and then Snape shouted, "Catch him!" as Harry's world tilted sideways. Someone caught him painfully under the arm before Harry hit the ground, but he thought that if he had just been allowed to fall it might have been better.

"Dramatic as always," he heard Draco say, but he was out of sight somewhere.

"What happened Potter?" Snape asked.

"Nothing," Harry said stubbornly. It wasn't like they'd do anything about it anyway. Muggle defense was allowed and the competition had given Acel and Nikolas the excuse they'd needed to stun him and then beat him to a pulp.

"You look like hell," Draco said, finally apearing through the crowd.

Harry ignored him as someone levitated him onto a stretcher and then levitated it off towards the infirmary. Inside, Acel was nowhere in sight. Ernie was on the other bed and a girl from Beauxbatons was on a chair getting some salve onto a burn on her wrist.

"They get you too Harry?" Ernie asked. He seemed to be all right.

"It was a Hogwarts win," Harry said. "Three of us."

"I fell and broke my leg and had to stun myself," Ernie said. Hermione almost made it to the end but a boy from Karh took her out.

Adeline hurried to Harry and fussed over the state of him for a full five seconds before Snape came in and started to gather supplies. Draco and Axle followed.

"You don't have a scratch on you," Harry said to Axle. Draco had a healing bruise on his face and his arms were scratched up and dirty, but Axle looked like he'd never even competed.

"I stayed in the study building all day. Had lunch and dinner and everything."

"Cheater," Draco said, and Harry got the feeling that he'd said it several times already.

"Smart," Harry told Axle though.

"That means we're competing against each other later," Axle said, and Harry nodded as Adeline shooed them out of the way in the tiny space.

Axle and Draco left to give them room and Snape sat beside Harry to clean his dirt and blood covered injuries off with a wet cloth.

"Are you going to tell us what happened?"

"No."

Snape motioned to Adeline for something and she handed him a handheld mirror, which Snape brought into Harry's face to show him his reflection. He looked like he'd been stampeded by a herd of hyppogryffs.

"Hid, came out, got caught."

"By a gorilla?"

"Something like that."

There was an 'ow' from Ernie at the other end of the building and he heard Adeline clucking her tongue.

"Take pictures," she told Snape and he pulled out the same camera she and Gan had used to show his injuries earlier in the summer. He wondered if they'd taken a photo of him with hypothermia too.

Harry tried to look as un-injured as he possibly could as Snape snapped the picture, and the man sighed. "Stoic as always." He hadn't meant it to be that way, it was just habit.

"Will the next competition be like this?" Harry asked.

"No. The next one is a duel in the center of the compound where everyone can see. No two or three will be able to gang up on a student then." Harry gave him a hard look.

"Stop Potter, before your face gets set in stone that way. I do know of a spell..."

Harry sighed. After they'd set him on the mend, he was brought dinner and a tall cup of water and helped to sit up so he could eat. Snape left to take Ernie back to his cabin and the girl was also released, leaving Harry there alone to eat. "Hermione was ok?" he asked of Adeline.

"Of course. I gave her some bruise balm for her eye and sent her to rest in her cabin. She said she had homework to do."

"That's Hermione."

Adeline stopped what she was doing and turned to Harry. "What Professor Snape said is true. Several students ganged up on you?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Of course it does."

"Nothing happened to them the last time it happened. I don't expect it to be any different now." She looked sad to hear him say that but he tried to ignore her as he finished his meal. Later that night, Snape came back to take him to his cabin. There was a Slytherin green note taped to his door that said, 'For the Hogwarts Win' and Harry gave a tired smile. Once he was inside, he expected to turn and get some bit of praise or else rebuke from Snape, but there was nothing. He was already gone.