Chapter 17:
The courtyard of Hogsmeade had been transformed — a grand stage erected at the center, polished to a mirror gleam and draped in banners of all four schools.
he Japanese sun burst crimson and gold beside the French crossed wands, the red stag skull and antlers of Durmstrange, and Hogwarts’ own stitched crest of lion, snake, eagle, and badger.
Ministry officials moved like anxious shadows across the stage, checking clipboard charms and perimeter spells, while enchanted lanterns floated overhead to compensate for the cloudy skies. The crowd, meanwhile, was packed shoulder to shoulder — students crushed against staff, reporters elbowing diplomats, elbows and quills and quick, frantic bursts of flashbulb light turning the air into a battlefield of attention.
Harry stood near the front of the platform, trying not to fidget as the press murmured and cameras clicked, and as the piercing gaze of every single spectator burned into the back of his skull. Just behind him, Kingsley and Moody lingered like gargoyles in Auror red, their three good eyes locked on the crowd like they could see every heartbeat through cloaks and flesh. Moody's magical eye was still missing and he was still visibly naked without it, and Kingsley’s fingers never strayed far from his wand hilt, his stance relaxed in that dangerous way that meant he was ready.
To Harry’s left, Cedric looked pale but dignified, standing tall in Hufflepuff robes pressed so sharply they looked starched by hand. Fleur Delacour adjusted the fall of her hair with the composure of someone used to this sort of spectacle, her expression serene as a statue. And Viktor Krum — hunched, brooding, barely blinking — stared out over the sea of faces with the same intensity he wore on the Quidditch pitch.
But Harry wasn’t thinking about any of them. Not really.
His eyes kept flicking to the tall, stern figure standing near the podium in maroon and ash-grey robes, silver moon pin gleaming at her collarbone: Madame Wu Li. She hadn’t smiled once since arriving. Nor had any of her students, whose precision-bordering-on-paranormal movements reminded Harry less of classmates and more of a marching unit trained in synchronized execution.
Albus stepped forward first, his breath puffing visibly in the air, his voice echoing through the enchanted microphones hovering like metal bees overhead.
“It is,” Dumbledore said, his words calm and deliberate, “a bittersweet thing to see such promise leave our halls.”
He paused, letting the sentiment hang. The crowd shifted.
“I speak not only of a student, but of a symbol. Mr. Potter has, against all odds and every reason to withdraw, chosen a path that few could have imagined. And though it pains me to lose him, I find solace in the knowledge that Headmistress Wu Li’s care will guide him well.”
Another pause. The silence this time felt uncertain, almost wary. No one was quite sure if he was being serious or dryly funny. His expression gave nothing away.
Then, Wu Li stepped forward — her robes utterly still despite the wind, her posture perfectly erect, as though the very notion of slouching offended her ancestors.
“On behalf of Mahoutokoro,” she said, her voice ringing like a bronze bell — soft in volume, piercing in tone — “we accept Mr. Potter as a student, a scholar, and, yes, a symbol.”
Harry winced.
“We will endeavor to maintain both his safety and his educational development, befitting the greatest celebrity of the modern magical age.”
That earned a ripple of chuckles and camera flashes. Harry wanted to crawl inside his cloak and vanish.
Wu Li turned to face the audience, then lowered herself into a graceful bow, spine forming a perfect forty-five degree incline. As one, every Mahoutokoro student on the platform mirrored her, folding like reeds in the wind. The fluidity, the timing — it was like a ritual.
Then the parchment — the great transfer contract — hovered into the air.
Signed in ink that shimmered between silver and midnight blue, it hung for a breathless instant, then split in four like a blossom opening, each copy flashing once with sealing magic before zipping away: one to Wu Li, one to Dumbledore, one to the Ministry’s official recordkeeper, and one straight into the outstretched hands of Minister Fudge, who beamed like he’d just won a prize pig.
He stepped forward with a bounce in his gait and a paper-eating grin.
“As of this moment,” Fudge proclaimed, “Harry James Potter is no longer merely a Hogwarts — he is now, by magical citizenship accord, an honored guest and adopted citizen of Japan. Furthermore, by unanimous agreement of the Triwizard Council, the nation of the rising sun and the Mahoutokoro School of Magic are formally entered into this historic tournament!”
The words had barely left his mouth before the uproar began.
Flashes burst in a barrage. Reporters surged forward with quills scribbling so furiously Harry feared some might catch fire. Students shrieked — half from excitement, half from the sheer volume — and Harry heard someone loudly sobbing in confusion near the Slytherin contingency.
And then the building behind the stage exploded.
The air screamed as the wall of magical fire tore upward in a roaring pillar, shattering glass and setting banners alight in its wake. Students shrieked. Reporters fell over one another. A siren blared — low, magical, full of warble — and the enchanted lanterns above turned blood red.
In a blur, Kingsley stepped forward. Moody raised both arms. And Albus, with a sweep of his wand, conjured a shield — not a dome, not a bubble, but a golden hemisphere of solid light, slamming into place around the central stage with a sound like a bell being struck underwater.
Inside the shield, Harry stumbled back, coughing against the sudden smoke curling inward, only to be steadied by Dumbledore’s firm hand on his shoulder.
And through the fire walked three figures.
Their robes were black — not Hogwarts black, not funeral black, but void. Their faces were masked — skeletal white, horned and toothy, Death Eater design warped into something more primal. Each step left ash behind them. The fire seemed to part for them.
And then the first mask was removed.
Sirius.
Firelight danced across his godfather’s face, casting deep shadows that warped his features into something feral. His grin was too wide. His eyes shone not with madness but with deliberate intent.
“I am,” Sirius said, his voice amplified by no charm yet somehow cutting through the air like a blade, “the rightful heir to the Dark Lord’s legacy. His chosen successor. The chaos has ended. A new order begins.”
Gasps. Screams. Spells fired and struck harmlessly against the golden shield.
Severus Snape and Remus Lupin flanked him now, still masked, arms crossed over their chests like loyal knights. Neither spoke. Neither moved. But the flames coiled around them like serpents around statues.
“I call upon all Death Eaters, all werewolves, all dark-blooded folk and creatures spurned by the Ministry to gather beneath my banner,” Sirius continued. “I claim no seat in the Ministry. I wear no mask of politics. I stand only to protect the innocent. To protect him.”
He jabbed a finger straight at Harry.
“I declare war on all who would threaten my godson.”
And then, with a raised wand and a whisper Harry couldn’t hear, a flare shot into the sky — not green, not shaped like a skull. Greenish-black, and shaped like a paw. A dog’s paw, outlined in flickering flame and smoke.
The crowd was silent. For the first time all morning, absolutely silent.
Sirius held the silence in the palm of his hand.
“This,” he said, sweeping his arms wide, “is but a warning. A gentle reminder. The boy is under my protection now.”
And with a flick of his cloak, all three men turned to ash and vanished.
Harry had honestly expected him to ham it up a little more. Be ridiculous. But the acting had actually sent a shiver down his spine. He finally started to understand why people believed this poppycock to begin with.
Harry stared at the scene, standing tall and defian, pulse thudding in his ears, as the golden shield dissolved and the first screaming Ministry official began shouting orders.
And despite the noise, the chaos, the shouting, Harry smiled.
Just a little.
-
Mexico City, Mexico — December 19th, 1994
The flames on the wireless flickered green and gold as the final words echoed like a funeral bell across the high ceilings of the Santa Muerte church:
“The boy is under my protection now.”
The voice was unmistakable — Sirius Black, godfather of the Boy Who Lived, self-declared heir to the Dark Lord, and apparently the newest lunatic staking a claim to the wizarding apocalypse.
David Rojo paused mid-carve.
The kukri — enchanted, polished obsidian with a handle made from a wand snapped during the last cartel raid — hovered an inch from the corpse’s cheekbone, a long sliver of facial muscle hanging loose like peeled fruit. The smell of clove smoke and rotting velvet drifted through the incense-heavy air. Across the church’s basement, beneath the flickering saint candles and graffiti-covered altars, his sisters had gone still, clustered around the battered wireless like acolytes around a prophet’s bones.
They were supposed to be practicing today. Not just the killing curses — though the pretty green streaks had left scorch marks along the pews — but also the other AK: the Muggle one. The Kalashnikov. Sleek, black, and oiled with care, it rested beside a sack of spell-shocked melon rinds, half of which were now pocked with bullet holes and curse burns in equal measure.
But the wireless had stolen their attention. And David — blood up to his elbows and sacrificial dyes drying on his chin — found himself just as guilty.
He stood, letting the half-flayed skull of a small-time cocaine dealer tumble with a wet clunk into a silver bowl beside the altar. The man had made three mistakes in rapid succession: selling to the wrong barrio, disrespecting the unspoken lines of magical territory, and — most egregiously — laying hands on David’s favorite sister during a Santo Domingo rave.
He approached them now, his sisters startled into silence at his movement. Wide, shadow-ringed eyes stared up at him as though he might strike them for their distraction.
He didn’t. Not this time.
“This… is Sirius Black?” he asked, voice low, not angry — just curious, the way a predator gets curious when it smells something new.
They nodded, lips parted, hands curled in silent reverence, not just for the man whose voice had just filled their temple — but for the one who had stood beside him in fire and ash. For Harry Potter. Their favorite little heartthrob.
David had never understood their obsession with the boy. He’d always found the British poster-child for martyrdom too clean, too wounded, too polished to be real. But maybe that was because David preferred filth. The real kind. The kind you couldn’t wash off your hands.
But this… this was different.
The flame-borne declaration still rang in his ears like a hymn. A godfather cloaking a boy in war. A banner of fire. A mockery of the Dark Mark remade in the image of a dog’s paw. It was sacrilege. It was spectacle.
And David found himself smiling.
“I never understood what made you so obsessed with him, nor cared” he admitted aloud, the words slow and thoughtful as he wiped his hands clean with the cocaine dealer’s shirt. “But now… I think I want to find out.”
He turned to the altar, lit a fresh candle of bone wax, and kissed the Saint of Holy Death on the teeth. The teeth of the previous skull he was attempting to replace. He already forgot who that one belonged to.
His sisters shared a glance — the one they always gave him when they weren’t sure whether he was serious or about to gouge someone’s eyes out just to test the shine. They gave him that look a lot.
“Tell Mamá,” he said, brushing his hands dry, “I’ll be needing a ticket to wherever the ICW’s sticking its diplomatic nose this year. Geneva? Delhi? Don’t care. Find out.”
Still they stared. One clutched her wand like a rosary. Another mouthed a prayer in Nahuatl.
“It’s like an early Christmas gift,” David mused, walking back to the corpse and tapping its teeth with his wand until they sang in tune. “I’ve been waiting all month for a sign. Something with neon skulls and hissing snakes. A villa bathed in blood. But this?”
He looked back at the smoking wireless, at the last echo of Sirius Black’s vow still hanging thick in the incense haze.
“This is clearer.”
Arua District, Uganda — December 19th, 1994
The radio crackled in the quiet, spitting static between foreign vowels and magical interference. The local warding kept the worst of the interference out, but some of it — the fire, the screaming, the echo of a British madman’s proclamation — came through like a prophet shouting across a thunderstorm.
“I declare war on all who would threaten my godson.”
The voice boomed, not in volume, but in weight. It was Sirius Black — or so his eighth wife whispered, her voice hushed and reverent as if afraid to say the name aloud.
Mustafa Adrisi Abataki sat forward in his chair.
It creaked.
This alone was enough to cause a ripple of stillness across the room. A man who had not risen under his own poweweeks. A man whose body had become more throne than warrior. The old rocking chair, carved from extinct wood and reinforced with bloodsteel, shifted beneath him like a throne waking up alongside its king.
“What was that?” Mustafa asked, voice like the creak of old war drums left too long in the sun. His eyes narrowed beneath the heavy brow he had once used to glare entire courts into silence. “He said… war?”
The eighth wife — youngest and newest, skin bright as varnished bark and belly round with the child he’d insisted she bear before speaking at council — looked up from where she sat cross-legged beside the hearth. The others were silent. Watching. Waiting.
“Yes, husband,” she said gently. “He has declared it in fire. They say he is Sirius Black, godfather to Harry Potter. It was a message to the world.”
Mustafa squinted toward the ceiling, as if trying to see the sky through the tin roof and thatch.
“Sirius Black,” he repeated, the name rolling around his teeth like a bitter herb. “That is the escapee, yes? The crazy one. They called him murderer, then prisoner. Now he is wizard-king?”
His eldest wife nodded. A good wife. Too quiet, perhaps. He missed the fire of her courtship years. But pregnancy had made her soft, and he had always preferred the difficult ones. The ones who threatened hexes between kisses.
“And this Potter boy. Where is he?”
“In Britain, my husband.”
The room shifted again.
He rose — slowly, not because he was weak, but because he remembered the weight of pageantry. Each inch of elevation from that chair was a declaration. Each crack of joint and tendon a summons to war. His back straightened. His chest expanded. The bones of his spine aligned with a series of sharp, organic pops. One of the older wives gasped audibly — the sound of a ghost returning to flesh.
Outside, gunfire echoed distantly. Another rebel faction playing war in the bush. They had been loud lately. Arrogant. He had tolerated it.
But now?
Now, the world was changing.
“They will not listen to peace,” he said aloud, though no one had spoken. “And yet they call themselves leaders. They make war with sticks and gasoline, and call themselves warriors. No. They are gnats. And I have been idle too long.”
He turned his head, just enough to address the eighth wife. His voice sharpened to steel.
“Fetch me my machete.”
Aum Colony, Japan — December 19th, 1994
Tomoko Matsumoto gently squeezed her husband’s shoulder as he drank from the porcelain bowl of matcha she’d so lovingly — and magically — prepared for him.
She watched closely, eyes narrowed just slightly, her wand hidden up her sleeve in case he hesitated again. Last month she’d had to Imperius him and slip in the love potion by force. And she'd told herself — quite reasonably — that once was understandable. Twice was rude.
This time, though, his hands merely trembled as he brought the tea to his lips. Progress. Sort of.
“Oh, Shoko dear,” she cooed sweetly into the wild tangle of his beard, stroking it as if it were a frightened cat and not the facial outgrowth of a severely delusional terrorist. “You don’t want to hurt my feelings again, do you?”
He whimpered.
“You know how I get when you hurt my feelings,” she added, just loud enough for the floating teacups on the shelf to pause mid-spin.
There was a creak behind her.
Tomoko stiffened, hand moving to her wand—only to glance back and remember the decoration. The pharmacist. Yes. Still hanging there. Still occasionally groaning despite the stasis charm. She really needed to reinforce that ceiling beam.
Her husband finally drained the matcha, and she beamed, clapping softly as he choked it down like a good little warlord.
“Goooooood boy,” she purred, patting his cheek with affection that hovered somewhere between maternal and predatory. “Now come. Let’s get some fresh air. We’ve been cooped up in the fallout shelter all day.”
She helped him to his feet, guiding him through the reinforced door and out into the misty hillside air of their private mountain colony. The cultists — no, followers — were quiet at this hour, likely meditating or fermenting soybeans. Only one home along the central path still buzzed with activity, its paper-thin walls letting the wizarding wireless leak into the open air.
Tomoko froze mid-step.
A voice echoed from within — brittle, elegant, unmistakable.
“I declare war on all who would threaten my godson.”
Her breath caught in her throat like a fishhook.
The next words came low and vicious, wrapped in fire and grief and the silken promise of mass murder. Her knees went a little weak.
“This is but a warning. The boy is under my protection now.”
Tomoko let out a tiny squeal and clasped her hands to her chest. Her poor, manic husband flinched beside her like a whipped dog.
“Sirius Black,” she whispered, reverent.
Her hands shook. Her breath hitched. And then came the laughter — soft, high, spiraling like steam off boiling mercury.
She didn’t care about Harry Potter. Never had. Too young. Too British. Too... well-behaved. But Sirius? Sirius was anger and grief and bone-deep trauma wrapped in righteous vengeance. Sirius was a man.
She had kept all of the newspaper articles, and animated photographs of him therein, and had hoped to extend an offer of sanctuary to him, but he had been so hard to contact.
It looked like he wasn't anymore.
-
Somewhere in the Siberian Taiga — December 19th, 1994
The fire in Rasputin’s hearth had long since gone out, but the wood still smoked.
He hadn’t fed it in days.
The cabin groaned in the wind — an old thing, older than memory, its timbers held together more by habit than structure. The only light came from the crackling wireless in the corner, a magical relic of British manufacture with a coat of frost clinging to its dials. He’d forgotten it was on. He forgot many things, lately. Names, centuries, the proper order of his wives’ faces.
But the voice — that voice — pulled him from the drift.
“I declare war on all who would threaten my godson.”
He looked up.
His beard was longer than it had ever been, halfway to his waist, matted with pine sap and blood from a nosebleed caused by dryness a few months back. His eyes, watery and pale, barely blinked anymore unless reminded. But now they flickered.
“The boy is under my protection now.”
Rasputin sat perfectly still.
Even the wind stopped for a moment, as if to hear his breath.
"Ah," he murmured, voice like cracking ice and boiled vodka. "a sign at last. So this is the next field of death to tempt.”
He leaned back against the wall, letting his spine settle against the logs like bones clicking back into prophecy.
He rose slowly, joints creaking like thawed trees. A nail in the floorboard tore open the skin of his foot, but the blood closed before it could drip.
Of course it did.
He was not allowed to bleed for long.
Outside, snow fell so slowly it seemed unsure of itself. The taiga was deathly silent. Even the wolves had grown superstitious of him, and no longer howled near the cabin.
He wrapped himself in his robe — a priest’s cassock, stained by blood and wine and bullets that never quite finished their work.
And he walked through the winter snow barefoot, heading west.
-
Somewhere in Southern France, December 19th, 1994
The bandages came off one layer at a time, slow as molting. Amable sat in silence, stiff as wax, her breaths shallow and wet as the cultist doctor unwound the last of the linen from her temple. The mirror in front of her—crudely propped against the wall of the underground chamber—was a hand-me-down from a shattered brothel. Cracks spiderwebbed through it, distorting what little remained of symmetry in her features.
She leaned forward. Blinked once. And laughed.
It wasn’t a full sound. It came out in rattles, in choking gasps, in a wheeze that might have been laughter or the start of something much darker. One eye—the one Sirius Black hadn’t torn out—was cloudy from potion damage. Her mouth, reconstructed from leftover lip meat and imitation glamour weave, tilted upward in a permanent half-grin that exposed far too many teeth on the right side. Where her cheek had once been, there was now only waxed scar tissue stretched tight as parchment, the folds unnaturally white against her brown skin.
“Beautiful,” she crooned. “Oh, doctor. You’ve made me beautiful.”
The man behind her swallowed, the sound comically loud in the tight, sterile space. He shifted his grip on the wand at his hip like a nervous intern.
“The procedures were difficult. You lost—”
“I lost?” She stood so fast the metal stool behind her clattered across the room. “You think this was something I lost? I survived, you swine. I survived Sirius Black. And now I live looking like this?”
She turned slowly, the side of her face with no ear catching the light like cheap lacquer. The doctor paled. He had the good sense not to run—but only because he didn’t know she’d sealed the door behind him the moment she felt the wireless static crackle through the underground.
The broadcast had started just before the bandages came off. She hadn’t expected it—hadn’t wanted it—but as soon as she heard his voice, she froze.
Not Sirius Black. No. Not anymore.
He called himself the heir to Voldemort now. Called himself the protector of the boy. Declared war. Spoke as if he hadn't spent a whole minute gnawing her face off like a bone.
The rage that ignited in her chest wasn’t clean or righteous. It was something swampy and primal, the kind that grows in sealed-off rooms and underfloor rot. It wasn’t about revenge. Not yet.
She advanced on the doctor with measured, lurching steps. The limp was permanent, just like the rest of her. Each step felt like dragging something dead behind her.
“You patched me together like a child gluing pasta to a greeting card,” she hissed. “You let me live like this.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but the flick of her wand silenced him. She didn’t use the Killing Curse. She didn’t want it fast. The room filled with a sick, shimmering glow as she pulled one of the old blood-curses from her ribs—something old, something Kenyan, something forbidden even among their kind.
When it was done, the doctor was a twitching smear of organ and teeth and melting bone, and Amable stood alone in the room, chest heaving, hands shaking, that half-grin etched across her butchered face like a scar in the earth.
She stared at the wireless.
“He said the boy is under his protection,” she muttered. Her voice had a gargled quality now, hollow in the back of her throat. “Good. Good.”
The mirror caught her reflection again. She turned her head left, then right.
“I want to see him again,” she whispered. “So he can see what he made.”
She picked up the dead man’s coat, dragged it across her shoulders like a robe, and limped toward the back exit of the bunker—into the cold wind, the smoke of woodfires from distant villages, and the widening crack inside her mind.
Amable was gone.
What remained had no name yet.
But it would.
-
⚰️ David Rojo — Mexico
A convicted cult leader and murderer, Rojo ran a Santa Muerte–inspired death cult in Mexico that blended drug violence with ritual killings. He was arrested and imprisoned after a string of brutal crimes involving human remains and ceremonial executions. In this story, he’s reimagined as a magical bone carver with a flair for theatrics and a fondness for AKs and Avada Kedavras.
He is a muggle.
⚔️ Mustafa Adrisi Abataki — Uganda
A real historical figure. Mustafa Adrisi was Idi Amin’s Vice President during Uganda’s blood-soaked dictatorship in the 1970s. After a suspicious car accident sidelined him, he faded into obscurity. He was a real badass and a warrior, we can condemn him for his crimes but not for how he held himself.
He is also a muggle but surrounded by magic. Recall Kingsley's explanation of how open magic is for most african tribes? Yeah.
I was going to use Nelson Mandela's wife, but she(and her husband) were too disgusting and racist that I didn't want to write them. And I didn't want to have to write necklacing scenes.(Necklacing was their favorite hobby. It's where you take someone, preferably of a different race from you, wrap them in barbed wire, put a tire around their neck, fill it with gasoline and light it on fire.) Nor do I want characters who bomb women and children out of racial hatred. So yeah, I chose a villain who actually has some positives, unlike Nelson.
☣️ Tomoko Matsumoto — Japan
Based on a real woman of the same name, the wife of Shoko Asahara, leader of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo. The group carried out the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack, and Tomoko was a high-ranking member(Who got the manson girl treatment and was never held accountable).
She is a witch. This characterization is a mix of Merope and Toga. She is currently pregnant, but that's not going to slow her madness down.
Grigori Rasputin — Russia
Yes, that Rasputin. Mad monk. Alleged sorcerer. Survived poisoning, shooting, drowning. Died in 1916… probably. Or maybe not.
Here, he’s immortal with a meeseeks complex. "I just want to die!"
Amable:
You may remember her as the cultist that escaped Sirius, Severus and Remus when they attacked the Death Cultist cabin. Padfoot pretty much ate her face. Well, she's back and here to stay(Until she dies horribly)