"Oh my bleedin' god," Fletcher said. "Oi Cedric, come and look at this. Some effin' mirror that makes invisible objects visible, I think." He was looking into a mirror which showed him standing in a dank underground chamber that was piled with treasure and shiny items. His underground location was not news to him, but the treasure was, and his eyes widened at the thought of getting his hands on some of it. He had spent the last five hours with Cedric Diggory completing six tests that had really stretched the pair of them to their magical and intellectual limits, the promised reward being a valuable object of some kind.
"Huh," Cedric said. He had been Confunded two hours prior when they had taken a bit too long to get past the troll. Who even knew that trolls could cast the Confundus Charm? Or perhaps it had simply been a wand malfunction. Either way, the troll had taken Cedric's wand, beaten it to a pulp and at some point, it had expelled out an unusually strong Confundus Charm which had hit Cedric straight in the forehead.
Cedric gawped at the mirror, mouth hanging wide open, as he saw himself standing in the dungeon, but smiling and with a sticker on his forehead reading ‘I am not confused’. Confunded-Cedric's desires were quite limited.
"Dumbledore's gotta be up to something, it'd just be too bleedin' easy if the mirror pointed to the treasure," Fletcher concluded, after rummaging around most of the room and not finding any invisible goods. "Knowing him it's some bloody message like 'compassion'. How about I just ask the damn thing? Oi, mirror! Lend a hand. Let us know what we have to do to get past you."
The mirror didn't respond, being inanimate. This enraged Fletcher. "All these bleedin' games, the plant that tried to kill me and the effin' riddle I had to work out while the kid over there was just sucking his thumb. I still don't know what it's all for."
Right on cue, Dumbledore appeared at the front of the chamber, facing the mirror. "Ah, what I wouldn't do for some socks."
"Wotcha talkin' about? You're wearing a bleedin' pair," Fletcher said.
"So I am," Dumbledore replied. "What good fortune." He paused and turned around, looking quizzically at Diggory. "What, um, happened to the student?"
"Effin' troll did this, if you can believe that. This bleedin' fourth year was useless, Seed or Cedar or whatever his name is."
"Huh," Cedric said, in faint recognition.
"I'm here because your time is up, Fletcher," Dumbledore said. "Six hours, like we agreed. I'm afraid the treasures on offer will have to remain hidden for the foreseeable future."
"Now listen 'ere, Dumbledore. You've just wasted a full day of my effin' life and now I'm not going to get the treasure you promised."
"Huh," Cedric said, apparently in agreement.
"Alright fine, I'll give you something for your time," Dumbledore replied, carelessly pulling off an ornate metal torch casing from the dungeon wall. "This is worth about 200 Galleons because of some magic thing inside it or something. I don't know, ask the Grey Lady. That good enough?"
Dumbledore took Fletcher's prompt drooling at the mouth as an indication of agreement.
"What was the point of this bloody exercise?" Fletcher asked once he'd wiped his mouth dry.
"Ah, you see, I want a series of unnecessarily complicated tests that should make an appropriate challenge for three first-year students, who will need to pass them relatively uninjured as part of a long training plan I have for them to defeat Voldemort."
As a member of the Order of the Phoenix, Fletcher had heard so much nonsense coming out of Dumbledore's mouth that he knew better than to question any of the practicalities of this plan. "I'm a bit confused at why you picked the two of us to do this, though – it's an unusual pairing," Fletcher commented.
"It's actually quite elementary. You're the only wizard I know who's alright at chess, and Cedric, well, Cedric was the spare."