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They were halfway through their fifth game when Harry decided to ask them.

“You going to tell us, then?” he said to George. “Who you were blackmailing?”

“Oh,” said George darkly. “That.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Fred, shaking his head impatiently. “It wasn’t anything important. Not now, anyway.”

“We’ve given up,” said George, shrugging.

But Harry, Ron, and Hermione kept on asking, and finally, Fred said, “All right, all right, if you really want to know… it was Ludo Bagman.”

“Bagman?” said Harry sharply. “Are you saying he was involved in—”

“Nah,” said George gloomily. “Nothing like that. Stupid git. He wouldn’t have the brains.”

“Well, what, then?” said Ron.

Fred hesitated, then said, “You remember that bet we had with him at the Quidditch World Cup? About how Ireland would win, but Krum would get the Snitch?”

“Yeah,” said Harry and Ron slowly.

“Well, the git paid us in leprechaun gold he’d caught from the Irish mascots.”

“So?”

“So,” said Fred impatiently, “it vanished, didn’t it? By next morning, it had gone!”

“But—it must’ve been an accident, mustn’t it?” said Hermione.

George laughed very bitterly.

“Yeah, that’s what we thought, at first. We thought if we just wrote to him, and told him he’d made a mistake, he’d cough up. But nothing doing. Ignored our letter. We kept trying to talk to him about it at Hogwarts, but he was always making some excuse to get away from us.”

“In the end, he turned pretty nasty,” said Fred. “Told us we were too young to gamble, and he wasn’t giving us anything.”

“So we asked for our money back,” said George glowering.

“He didn’t refuse!” gasped Hermione.

“Right in one,” said Fred.

“But that was all your savings!” said Ron.

“Tell me about it,” said George. “’Course, we found out what was going on in the end. Lee Jordan’s dad had had a bit of trouble getting money off Bagman as well. Turns out he’s in big trouble with the goblins. Borrowed loads of gold off them. A gang of them cornered him in the woods after the World Cup and took all the gold he had, and it still wasn’t enough to cover all his debts. They followed him all the way to Hogwarts to keep an eye on him. He’s lost everything gambling. Hasn’t got two Galleons to rub together. And you know how the idiot tried to pay the goblins back?”

“How?” said Harry.

“He put a bet on you, mate,” said Fred. “Put a big bet on you to win the tournament. Bet against the goblins.”

“So that’s why he kept trying to help me win!” said Harry. “Well—I did win, didn’t I? So he can pay you your gold!”

“Nope,” said George, shaking his head. “The goblins play as dirty as him. They say you drew with Diggory, and Bagman was betting you’d win outright. So Bagman had to run for it. He did run for it right after the third task.”

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1. A bright silver light appeared right ahead of him, moving through the trees. Whatever the source, it was moving soundlessly. The light seemed simply to drift toward him.
2. A chill that had nothing to do with the iced champagne was stealing through Harry’s chest.
3. A dark figure came bustling toward them, and Harry saw a glint of silver to the light of their wands. They had found Gryffindor’s sword.
4. A gale of laughter from the middle of the table drowned the rest of Bill’s words. Fred, George, Ron and Mundungus were rolling around in their seats.
5. A mixture of gratitude and shame welled up in Harry. Had Lupin forgiven him, then, for the terrible things he had said when they had last met?
6. A motherly-looking Healer wearing a tinsel wreath in her hair came bustling up the corridor, smiling warmly at Harry and the others.
7. A paralyzing terror filled Harry so that he couldn’t move or speak. His Patronus flickered and died.
8. A porter’s cap pulled low over his mismatched eyes, Moody came limping through the archway pushing a trolley loaded with their trunks.
9. A roaring, billowing noise behind him gave him a moment’s warning. He turned and saw both Ron and Crabbe running as hard as they could up the aisle toward them.
10. A seam had split on Hermione’s bag. Harry wasn’t surprised; he could see that it was crammed with at least a dozen large and heavy books.
11. A vivid image of the shrieking, spitting portrait of Sirius’s mother that hung in the hall of number twelve, Grimmauld Place flashed into Harry’s mind. “I bet there has,” he said.
12. A whistling in Harry’s ear told him the Bludger had just missed him again; he turned right over and sped in the opposite direction.

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