America woke up at the crack of dawn. It had been the norm growing up, so even if he'd been sleeping in more in the last century or so it wasn't hard to reset that internal clock. He didn't feel quite as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as he used to, though. Where did that phrase even come from? he wondered as he pulled on his robes. Is it about squirrels? I mean, they do always seem like they're about to have a heart attack from an energy overload, but are they really the most awake animal? If it isn't about them, what is it about?

He grabbed his quill, an inkpot, and a lot of parchment and went down to the Common Room to get to work. He had the perfect plan to get into the Triwizard Tournament. Okay, technically it didn't guarantee that he'd get picked, but he was the hero! If he got his name into the Goblet of Fire, there was no way it wouldn't pick him! And it wouldn't even risk their secret. He wasn't stupid enough to just go waltzing through the Age Line – unless somebody else managed to cheat their way through. But they wouldn't get the chance to do that before his plan succeeded. Probably. No, not probably, definitely! Doubt is the enemy!

He wrote 'Alfred F. Jones – Hogwarts' on the parchment as many times as he could, ripped it into pieces, then made his way down to the Entrance Hall. The Goblet of Fire was sitting right in the middle of the hall, sitting on a stool. Somebody had drawn a yellow chalk circle around it, saying to the world, 'Children sixteen and under, do not come within ten feet of this thing or vague bad stuff will happen!' Nobody else was around. Very few people were up this early even on weekdays, and the few who had presumably woken up early to enter their names into the Goblet privately were already in the Great Hall getting breakfast. It was literally the perfect opportunity.

America stood at the very edge of the Age Line, crunched a piece of parchment into a ball, and threw it at the Goblet with the skill of the world's best basketball player. Sure, technically Canada had invented the game, but America had perfected it!

Or at least he thought he had. The parchment went sailing over the Goblet and landed on the floor. "Okay," he said to himself. "It's your first throw of the day. Not even a hero can be perfect on the first try! You just need to warm up a little!"

The next one hit the stool. The one after that veered to the left. The one after that went too high again. The one after that missed. The one after that missed. The one after that actually bounced off the rim of the Goblet, so he was making progress! The one after that missed. The one after that missed. The one after that missed. The one after that missed. The one after that just went straight to the ground, because he was starting to get annoyed and tried something completely nonsensical because that was just how things worked at Hogwarts.

He lost track of time around that point, but he knew that people were trickling in far too early. It was a Saturday! Sure, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see history in the making, but would it kill these kids to take advantage of an all too rare opportunity to sleep in? To make it even worse, most of them were stopping on their way to breakfast to watch him fail! No, that couldn't be right, could it? Surely, they'd have the decency not to do that. British people were supposed to be all about politeness. They must be stopping to see his inevitable success. Yeah! That's definitely what it was!

He was running dangerously low on scraps of parchment when a familiar voice in a very familiar disapproving tone called out, "Alfred!"

He turned to see that Harry, Ron, and Hermione had arrived. Hermione was looking aghast, but as soon as Harry and Ron took in the parchment graveyard surrounding the Goblet they burst out laughing. "What?!" America asked defensively.

"Y-you're just throwing it?" Ron choked out between laughs.

"Well, yeah, it seemed like the simplest solution!" America tossed a ball over his shoulder. "Did that one go in?"

"No, it just hit Neville on the head," said Harry.

"SORRY, NEVILLE!" America yelled over his shoulder. "Oh, hey, Hermione, you have parchment and a quill on you, right?"

"Of course," said Hermione, the alternative unthinkable. "But I'm not-"

She was interrupted by Fred, George, and Lee Jordan laughing as they hurried down the staircase, excitement radiating off of them in levels usually only seen when they'd just pranked Filch without getting caught. They all burst out laughing when they saw the sum of America's efforts, too.

"Well, I'm sorry that some of us don't want to wave our wands for everything," America huffed.

"Tell you what, Alfred," said George, wiping away tears of mirth. "Once we've put our names in, you can have some of our Ageing Potion."

"But don't go chugging it," Fred warned, sharing the sudden mental image in America's head. "You'll age so much you turn to dust. And we didn't make a De-Ageing Potion, so if you're destined to get a growth spurt you're on your own when you have to explain why you grew a foot overnight."

"I'm not sure this is going to work, you know," said Hermione. "I'm sure Dumbledore will have thought of this."

They ignored her. "Ready?" Fred said to the other two, vibrating with so much excitement he was in danger of phasing into another plane of reality. "C'mon, then – I'll go first –" He pulled a slip of parchment out of his pocket and hesitated at the edge of the Age Line. Recognizing a dramatic moment when he saw it, America resisted the urge to give his throwing plan another try while everyone was distracted. Fred took a deep breath and a large step forward.

As so many disasters do, everything seemed fine for a split-second. George certainly believed it as he leapt forward to join Fred, just in time for a loud sizzling sound to fill the Entrance Hall and something undoubtedly magical tossed them both outside the circle. America was already feeling pretty smug about his own plan at that point, but Dumbledore had nothing if not a sense of humour and a pair of identical, long white beards appeared on Fred and George's faces with a loud popping noise and America felt no shame in joining the rest of the people gathered in the Hall to laugh at them. Even they joined in, once they saw what had happened.

"I did warn you," said a deep, amused voice. Professor Dumbledore was walking out of the Great Hall and surveying Fred and George with a twinkle in his eye. "I suggest you both go up to Madam Pomfrey. She is already tending to Miss Fawcett, of Ravenclaw, and Mr. Summers, of Hufflepuff, both of whom decided to age themselves up a little, too. Though I must say, neither of their beards is anything like as fine as yours." He glanced at the floor around the Goblet and raised a silver eyebrow. "Ah, it seems some of our students struggle greatly with their hand-eye coordination, to miss the Goblet from a few inches away. I certainly wouldn't want to think somebody was trying to throw their name in from outside the Age Line." He looked directly at America, but the joke was on him, because America was already hiding his hands behind his back so there was nothing suspicious to see. "If somebody could clean this up, I'm sure Mr. Filch would appreciate it."

As soon as his back was turned, America raised his arm to throw. Hermione yanked the parchment out of his hand with a frustrated sigh. "Alfred, come on, let's go get breakfast."

America was actually kind of hungry, so he went with them to sit at the Gryffindor table. "There's a rumour going round, Warrington got up early and put his name in," Dean told them. "That big bloke from Slytherin who looks like a sloth."

Harry shook his head in disgust. "We can't have a Slytherin champion!" America didn't quite agree – theoretically, he knew there had to be some decent people in Slytherin – but even he had to admit his mouth was too full to make anything resembling coherent conversation.

"And all the Hufflepuffs are talking about Diggory," said Seamus contemptuously. "But I wouldn't have thought he'd have wanted to risk his good looks."

America glanced over to the Hufflepuff table. Cedric Diggory was indeed the center of a lot of attention, and he did indeed have a surplus of good looks that, for posterity, should be preserved for as long as possible. America lost track of the conversation while he tried to fix his face in his memory, only returning his attention to it when he heard Hermione say S.P.E.W. It turned out that Harry, Ron and Hermione had decided to go visit Hagrid, and Hermione wanted to ask him to join. America wished her luck, but he had his own duty to perform, and by the way, on a note completely unrelated to illegally entering the Triwizard Tournament, could he borrow some parchment and a quill?

"I really don't think it's going to work, Alfred," she said, but she still handed the supplies over before running up to Gryffindor Tower to fetch the S.P.E.W. badges. We really need to come up with a new name, he thought to himself as he again wrote 'Alfred F. Jones – Hogwarts' as many times as possible.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of failure. He paused only when seventh-years and unfairly lucky sixth-years put their names in legally, when he ran out of paper and had to browbeat the nearest student into giving him parchment, when a teacher walked by (in hindsight, the smirk on the Bat-Dude's face when he saw him not-quite successfully hide his crimes should have been a dead giveaway), and when it was time for lunch. By the time Harry, Ron and Hermione came back for dinner, both his arm and pride were sore and the inside of the Age Line looked like a crappy Winter Wonderland some unenthusiastic grade schoolers had pulled together.

"I swear, this totally isn't normal!" he said as they approached. "I'm actually really good at basketball!"

"Of course you are, Alfred," said Harry soothingly.

"The Goblet is a lot smaller than a basketball hoop," Hermione reasoned.

"The bloody hell is a basketball?" asked Ron, bewildered.

America put his hands on his hips, tilted his head back, and took a deep breath. He really really really really wanted to punch something. Sadly, Malfoy wasn't anywhere within punching distance. "Did you at least recruit Hagrid to our cause?" he asked Hermione. Hagrid was all about freedom for magical creatures, after all. Surely that extended to the sapient ones.

"Er, no. I tried, but he wouldn't listen." America stared up at the ceiling, battling down his punching instincts. "I'm sorry. Let's just take our seats, shall we? The feast should be starting soon."

"Give me a minute." He stomped down the hall and into the nearest empty classroom, stuck his head out the window, and screamed at the sky.

"Oh dear, did someone remind you zat processed meat isn't a food group again?"

America pulled back and turned to the door, which France had thankfully shut behind him, even if he was leaning against it and wearing that annoying smirk of his. "Ugh, what are you doing here?"

"I should hope zat most people would investigate when zey 'ear a child screaming," France said lightly. "I am honestly curious, though. I usually expect zis sort of be'avior from Arthur, not you."

"I think the Goblet of Fire is cursed," America huffed. "'Cuz you know I'm really good at getting baskets, but I was throwing parchment at it all day and none of them went in!"

France held up a finger. "'Old on. I need a moment to translate. Basketball… parchment…" He burst out laughing. "You spent ze entire day throwing slips of parchment at ze Goblet?"

"Why does everyone keep laughing at me?" America demanded. "It's totally a reasonable plan! And I crumpled them into balls first!"

"You do know zey placed an Imperturbable Charm on the Goblet, yes?"

"An Imper-what Charm?"

"It's a charm zat was pretty much invented specifically to protect objects from getting zings thrown at zem."

America slammed his head into the wall, leaving a spiderweb of cracks in the stone. "Of course. Of course th-" He froze mid-word as he remembered something. "Iggy knew! He walked by a couple hours ago, saw what I was doing, and didn't say a freaking word! That jerk!"

"'Ow dare he," said France sympathetically. "You know, if I recall 'is schedule correctly, he should be walking into ze Great 'All any moment now."

"Thanks! That's – wait, you just got here. How do you already know Iggy's schedule?"

"Alistair put in a good word for me with your resident poltergeist. In order to sabotage a machine, you must know its inner workings very well."

"Why not just smash it? Seems like a lot less work."

France rolled his eyes. "Are you going to confront 'im or not?"

"Oh, yeah, right!" America cracked his knuckles. "Just sit back and watch the show!"

A/N: Would have posted this earlier, but apparently the website decided to take Remembrance Day off. I feel like the fact that nobody tried just throwing their name in in the book proves that wizards and witches are useless and incapable of coming up with solutions that don't involve magic. Also, gonna need a name for Denmark. I'd prefer one of the ones Himaruya suggested, because I have no idea why everybody seems to call him Mathias. Thanks in advance, and \(^-^)/