Hey friends and fans, Kairomaru is here with another chapter of Arch Mage, the Path of Magic! The Third Task is upon the three Triwizard Champions. The challenge appears simple enough, a massive labyrinth of ever-shifting magical hedges and filled with spells, enchantments, and magical beasts of various kinds. Surely, it’s nothing that the three champions can’t overcome. But sinister forces lurk in the dark, ever reaching out to try and snuff out those that they deem as enemies. This confrontation will be the spark that sets off a new ‘war’.
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Chapter 46 – The Third Task
It was the evening of June twenty-fourth and all three Champions stood before the large hedge maze on the Quidditch Pitch. Every seat in the stadium was filled, including the extra seating that had been made just for the Third Task to allow more spectators to attend the event. Bagman had brought Krum, Fleur, and Harry aside to show them the maze just a few days ago once the magical hedges had reached their full height. Fleur and Harry had already taken a peek long before, of course, but didn’t say anything about it. Krum hadn’t looked surprised at the reveal either, leading both of the other Champions to believe he’d snuck a peek too. Now the stands were packed with spectators looking down on the hedge maze. From the height difference, they’d be able to see into the maze and watch the Champions find their way through it.
Harry barely listened as Bagman blathered on about the Task, the man’s magically amplified voice reaching everyone in the stands from the high stand that the man was commentating from. All he really needed to know was when to start and the overall objective. But the former Professional Beater really enjoyed hearing himself talk it seemed. Both Fleur and Harry shared a look between them, the French witch even rolling her eyes as Bagman continued to wax on. Harry grinned at her and Fleur smiled beautifully at him. Harry would be going in first, according to Bagman. Apparently, the points they’d been awarded in the First and Second Task determined the order of entry. Harry, with his ninety-six points would be going first, Fleur, with ninety-two points, would enter four minutes after him, and Krum, with ninety-one points, just one minute behind her.
A minute after Bagman finally stopped talking the first blast went off to start the Third Task, much to the cheers of all the spectators, especially the Hogwarts students and the spectators that had come from across Magical Britain to watch, since Harry was in the lead. Fleur gave Harry a little wink before he walked over to the entrance of the maze and stepped inside. Walking between two towering hedge walls, Harry activated his Mage Sight spell and examined the magic within the plants for a moment as he made his way around the first corner.
“They have the ability to move and grow so as to maintain their shape, huh? Maybe I should’ve asked Neville about magical hedges after all.” Harry mused to himself as he continued walking. “Triwizard Cup.” He said and the glowing ball of light that only he could see appeared before him before turning to the left slightly, indicating where the goal of the maze was located. “Left it is then.” He took the left path at the first fork in the labyrinth of hedges, wondering just what he’d find within the shifting maze.
The first obstacle he ran across was a part of the path that glowed to his Mage Sight spell. The soft golden color of the enhancement was easily parsed through and Harry chuckled at what it did. “Inversion of perception, huh?” Reaching out with his Magic Manipulation, Harry ‘turned off’ the enchantment as he walked through the area, and then ‘turned it on’ again after he’d past. “No sense in making the path easier for Fleur and Krum.” He chuckled lowly to himself.
In the stands, Sirius, Tonks, Andromeda, Ted, and Remus were sitting together and watching Harry as he made his way through the hedge maze.
“It’s moving again.” Ted mentioned, seeing the edges of the hedge maze shifting and closing off certain paths while opening new ones.
“I’m not worried much by the hedges themselves, but the creatures seem a bit excessive.” Lupin mentioned as he’d already spotted a few huge magical spiders crawling through various paths, and he was certain that he saw a few tall boxes in the corners of certain paths as well, most likely hiding boggarts. “Hopefully, Harry can avoid the more dangerous paths.” He eyed one where something large was curled up and partially hidden by the magical hedges as they grew and stretched over top of the creature.
Ted agreed with a nod, having seen one of the paths being blocked by a large Sphinx, the woman-faced creature with a massive lion-like body lying on the ground and just waiting for a Champion to appear. “Quite a few dangerous creatures that no witch or wizard would want to run afoul of.”
“What part of this is ‘safer’ than the previous tournaments?” Andromeda questioned with a sharp and derisive tone. This was clearly just as dangerous as any previous tournament, at least for the actual Champions.
“Just go through the walls, Harry!” Sirius yelled out, though his words were drowned out by the loud cheering of the crowd all around the stadium.
Tonks laughed at Sirius’s suggestion. “Knowing Harry, he’ll do that once the maze stops entertaining him.” It was nice to get out of the Auror offices and take a break from the ongoing graverobbing case…which they’d already hit multiple dead-ends with. “Wait a second… NOT THAT WAY HARRY!!!” She yelled out as Harry took a path that had opened as the hedges moved and shifted.
Down in the hedge labyrinth, Harry stopped as he saw part of the path that he was on overgrown. His Mage Sight spell saw the magic of the hedges in the overgrowth, but they also saw the magic of the creature shifting and standing up from beneath the cover as well. What stepped out of the overgrowth was a massive reptilian creature, resembling a dragon without wings, each of it four powerful legs ended in large and wickedly sharp talons and its scaly hide was marked with various short spikes used for defense. The long tail that swung behind it was thick and strong as well, and showed the creature had the same blue-grey scales from snout to tail tip. The dull bronze color of its slitted reptilian eyes nearly shone in the magical light that helped illuminate the hedge maze and it opened its fang-filled jaws to unleash a roar.
“ROOOAAARRR!!!” The drake roared loudly at Harry; it’s body taking up almost the entire width of the path.
“First a dragon and now a drake…” Harry sighed at the outright lie that the tournament organizers had given to everyone about this tournament being safer. The drake charged towards Harry, its talons tearing up the ground beneath it as it barreled forward like a nearly spell-proof battering ram. “Hm…” Harry tapped the ground with his foot and the soil between him and the charging drake rose up swiftly and then turned into a two meter thick and five meter wide granite wall.
Thud
The dull impact of drake meeting stone wall almost made Harry wince. Undoing his transfiguration, the wall returned to being dirt and melded back into the ground as if it had never moved. The slumped over form of the drake lying on its side briefly made it look dead, until its underside expanded and then shrank, showing the reptilian creature was breathing.
“Knocked yourself cold, huh?” Harry said to the unconscious drake before walking past it and heading around the far corner at the end of the path. The blast going off overhead alerted him that Fleur had just entered the maze. “Huh, it’s been four minutes already?” He slightly sped up his walking speed, knowing that Fleur would most likely have little trouble with the obstacles within the hedge maze.
Fleur stepped into the maze and took the only path available. A few swishes of her wand and half a dozen Revelio spells had been cast at various distances. As each one came back to her, Fleur got a detailed layout of the nearby area. “The first fork in the path has an enchantment upon it.” She jogged towards it, and a jab of her wand undid the enchantment. “Finite!” The fork in the path wavered to reveal three paths, rather than two. “Point me!” Fleur laid her wand flat on her palm and it spun once before snapping toward the left unerringly, which just so happened to be close to the newly revealed pathway. “Tricky…but not enough.” She smiled as she took the newly revealed path and continued on her way.
Up in the stands, Marius, Appoline, and Gabrielle smiled happily as Fleur easily saw through the first trick of the maze.
“That’s our little flower.” Marius beamed in pride for his eldest daughter.
Gabrielle was practically bouncing in her seat. “You can do it, Fleur!” She cheered for her big sister with a bright smile.
“The way the labyrinth shifts and moves some of the enchantments with it is quite ingenious. Unfortunately, for them, they seem to have underestimated our Fleur.” Appoline grinned with both joy and pride for her daughter and how great a witch she already was at such a young age.
Fleur continued jogging through the maze, casting Revelio every two or three steps to alert her to any hidden tricks coming up ahead of her. It was a good thing she did, as just around the next corner, crawling through the pathway, was a massive spider. Slowing her pace, Fleur peeked around the corner of the hedge maze and spotted the magical spider. It easily had a leg span of three meters, every part of its body covered in a thick, spiky red carapace. “Not an Acromantula…” She had seen detailed sketches of Acromantula since coming to Hogwarts as some apparently lived in the Forbidden Forest. “Red…spiky…” Fleur wracked her brain for this particular giant spider’s species. “A Thornback.” She finally recalled which version of giant magical spider she was about to face. “Weaknesses are fire-based spells and disorientation via levitation.”
This was a VERY BAD match up for the Thornback.
“Chshk?” The Thornback let out an odd sound as Fleur walked around the corner of the pathway. Its aggressive nature kicked in automatically as it scurried straight at the witch, intending to devour Fleur alive.
Fleur grinned and her Veela Fire wrapped around her body.
“Shhk!” The Thornback quickly stopped its approach and skittered backwards a bit at the sight of the flames.
“No worries, araignée.” Fleur smiled at the massive spider. She shifted her emotion, recalling embarrassment, and her flames wavered, becoming hazy until they, and Fleur herself, became nothing more than a faint haze in the air. Even that disappeared as Fleur cast a Disillusionment Charm through her flames and her presence completely vanished.
The Thornback’s eight eyes could see in nearly every direction, but it had completely lost track of the dangerous flame thing. It slowly creeped towards where Fleur had been, its mandibles moving to ‘taste’ the air for scents, but only smelled flames and faint smoke. Likewise, the thin hairs along its body picked up no vibrations around it either. What it had thought of as prey, but had proven a potential threat, had completely vanished from its senses. The giant magical spider turned around, examining the long pathway behind it, but still didn’t get a trace of Fleur.
Halfway down the path beyond the Thornback’s corridor, Fleur reappeared as her Veela Fire dispersed from her body if a hazy wave of flame. “Not too hard, and I didn’t even have to fight the spider.” That had certainly saved her some time as she cast another Revelio to check for more enchantments or magical creatures ahead of her. The loud burst of noise above the maze alerted her to Krum entering and Fleur brought up the emotion of excitement and began to practically skip through the pathways at greater speed, casting Revelio near constantly to increase her pace further.
Krum was a bit annoyed that his competition both had a head start on him. Fleur wasn’t so bad, given the young woman only had one minute ahead of him, but Harry Potter had a full five minute head start. That was going to be difficult to overcome after everything that he’d seen the younger teen pull off. Krum was nothing if not competitive and a good judge of the skill level of his competition. “Point me.” He incanted while resting his wand flat against his palm. The wand spun once before swiftly pointing to the left, down one of two corridors. With a nod, he took hold of his wand again and rushed down the left pathway, hearing the rattling of the wooden branches of the hedges as they started moving behind him to close up the pathway.
“Huh?!” Krum cried out as something hit him in the ankle mid-step and he tripped, falling onto his front, barely managing to get his left hand down to stop himself from slamming face first onto the ground. “OOF!!!” The rough impact still almost knocked the wind out of him.
“Hehehe…”
“Hahaha!”
“He fell! He fell!”
Krum blinked at the small voices and quickly looked over his shoulder. From this angle, he could see a thin line of golden wire at ankle height across the pathway. But he also saw three little humanoid figures dressed in earth-toned clothing, including green jackets that he was familiar with from the Quidditch World Cup. “Leprechauns…” The little pranksters weren’t known to harm humans beyond some light bruising from their tricks, but they were annoyances when they chose you to be the target of their pranks. “Immobulus!” He waved his wand and caught all three of the short little Leprechauns in his spell, making them stop moving. “A prank for a prank.” He said with a grin, knowing that the Leprechauns wouldn’t follow him if he returned the prank they’d pulled. “Wingardium Leviosa!” All three immobilized Leprechauns floated into the air upside down. With a flick of his wand, the golden wire near the ground animated and tied up the three little prankster, leaving them hanging upside down from near the top of the hedge wall.
Krum quickly took off again, this time casting Revelio ahead of him.
“Good one.” One of the three Leprechauns said as they hung upside down.
The other two nodded as they used their own magic to easily undo the Immobulus Charm.
“He was funny.”
“Nearly fell on his face!”
The little laughter of the Leprechauns filled the air as they freed themselves from their own golden wire.
“And Viktor Krum gets by the Leprechauns by turning their own prank back on them! It seems he knows the lore of our little Irish friends!” Bagman commentated on the actions of the three Champions with a laugh. More than a bit of the crowd also laughed as well, the Irish among them laughing the loudest at Krum getting pranked by Leprechauns.
Harry was further into the ever-moving hedge maze and saw the greenery moving to close off a path. Reaching out with his magic, he held back the hedge and slipped down the pathway that was about to be hidden as his Locator spell pointed in that direction. As soon as he pulled back his magic, the hedges nearly fused together, looking like they’d always been in this configuration. Turning the corner he stopped as a crate in the far corner of the pathway fell open and revealed the corpse of Tonks within.
“Riddikulus!” Harry barked out a laugh at the Boggart’s attempt to frighten him with his biggest fear: losing those he loved.
“Gotcha, Harrikins!” The ‘dead’ Tonks hopped out of the crate with a bright smile, her injuries vanishing into bright confetti. The illusion faded into black smoke as the Boggart screeched and retreated back into the wooden crate as fast as it could, slamming the lid closed and setting the crate back upright from the force.
Up in the stands, Tonks smiled warmly. “Harry…” That his greatest fear was losing her made her heart flutter.
Andromeda gently placed her hand on her daughter’s arm and gave her a gentle smile.
Ted softly patted his daughter’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze of reassurance.
“Harry loves you even more than magic.” Sirius said to Tonks with a smile, happy that even though Harry was such a prodigy of the magical arts, he didn’t put even magic above his family.
Remus couldn’t help the small smile on his face. “So much like Lily and James.” Sirius threw his arm over Remus’s shoulder with a chuckle, both of them smiling, knowing how proud James and Lily would be of Harry and everything their son had done.
With a wave of his hand, Harry had the Boggart’s crate wrapped in thick, heavy chains and sealed shut, preventing the creature from emerging until the chains were removed. “No more of that.” He sped down the pathway, hearing the sound of spellfire coming from a distance…and not nearly as far as he expected given his initial headstart. “Should’ve guessed that Fleur and Krum wouldn’t have too much trouble with this maze.” Following his Locator spell, Harry took the right path at the next fork, and passed through a pathway that was nearly blinding to his Mage Sight spell with how many enchantments were upon it. “Yeah, not going to worry about moving through these.” With some Magic Manipulation, Harry weaved his magic into the multitudes of enchantments and removed them all. “Much less harsh on the eyes, now.” He chuckled to himself as he raced down the pathway and turned the corner…only to stop dead at what was blocking the path ahead.
It was a creature that he’d only seen in his Care of Magical Creatures textbook before. With the body of an overly large lion, including the massive, clawed paws and the golden furred tail ending in a tuft of thicker fur. The head, however, was that of a woman, with almond-shaped eyes filled with intelligence as she looked right back at Harry. As he took a few steps closer, the Sphinx stood up and began to slowly pace from one side of the pathway to another. Then she spoke in an almost growling voice, that was still somehow distinctly feminine.
“You are very near your goal. The quickest path lies beyond me.” The sphinx said as she continued to pace, her eyes never leaving Harry.
“Don’t suppose you’d be willing to step aside?” Harry asked rhetorically, already knowing that no sphinx that was guarding a place would ever allow that.
“No.” The sphinx answered anyway with a single shake of her head. “Not unless you can answer my riddle. Answer correctly on the first guess…I let you pass. Answer incorrectly…I attack.” Her large claws scratched against the ground, leaving marks, before they were retracted again. “Remain silent…I will allow you to turn back unscathed.”
Harry wouldn’t say he was especially bad at riddles, but figured Hermione, Daphne, or Luna might be better at them. ‘Fleur might be able to solve a riddle faster than me too…’ That would be bad if she was right behind him like the previous sound of spellfire had indicated. “May I hear your riddle, sphinx that guards this pathway?” Harry requested respectfully, recalling from his textbook that sphinxes appreciated respect, much like Hippogriffs.
The sphinx sat down on her back legs right in the middle of the path before she began to speak. “First think of the person that lives in disguise, who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies. Next, tell me what’s always the last thing to mend, the middle of middle and end of the end? And finally give me the sound often heard during the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together and answer me this: What creature would you be unwilling to kiss?”
Harry blinked at the style of the riddle and contemplated the actual question. “Creature I’d be unwilling to kiss…” He looked at the sphinx again. “Surely, she’s not coming onto me, right? Even I’m not that handsome.” He murmured under his breath, but the slight raising of the sphinx’s left eyebrow made it obvious that she’d heard Harry’s murmuring. “From the top then…” He considered the first part, someone that lived in disguise, dealt in secrets, and told naught but lies. ‘Disguise… Secrets… A life that’s a lie? Maybe a spy?’ Going with that as the first answer, Harry mentally examined the second part of the riddle. ‘Last thing to mend…middle of middle…end of end… Mend, middle, end… Oh, that’s actually obvious, it’s the letter ‘D’!’ That gave him Spy and D, assuming his first answer was correct. ‘A sound often heard when searching for a hard-to-find word… Would it be ‘uh’? Spy…D…uh… That’s just gibberish. A sound when you’re trying to find a word…’ Harry rolled his head around, stretching his neck a little as he tried to think. “Searching for a word…um, uh, er…” He blinked at the last one. ‘Spy, D, er… Spider!’
“Do you have your answer?” The sphinx asked as Harry looked back at her, giving him a small, mysterious smile.
“The creature you’d be unwilling to kiss…is a spider.” Harry answered, preparing his Barrier spell just in case he was wrong and needed to defend himself.
The sphinx nodded once, smiling a bit more broadly at the correct answer, as she stretched out her front paws, looking much like a stretching house cat, despite her immense size. “Correct.” She padded to the side of the pathway, leaving it open for Harry to pass.
“That’s good then.” Harry smiled at the sphinx as he walked past it. “If I’d been wrong, I was going to put you in ‘air jail’.” He chuckled at the confused look on the sphinx’s face before passing her entirely and heading around the corner.
With his Locator spell guiding him, Harry took the right-hand path at the next fork in the pathway and as soon as he turned the corner he saw the gleaming light of the Triwizard Cup not even one-hundred meters ahead. On top of a plinth stood the silvery cup that was filled with magical flames of blue and white that never crested the top. The crystal-like body of the cup showed the magical flames moving within and the word ‘Triwizard’ was etched into it. The three handles of the cup were the same silvery metal as the other parts that held the crystal vessel in place, but each was topped with what appeared to be a stylized wolf head facing into the cup with their jaws wide open and their tongues sticking out, as if they were about to lap up the magical fire.
“Right then.” Harry nodded to himself as he jogged over towards the Triwizard Cup and the plinth it sat upon. He noticed a few other entrances to this center area of the maze and briefly wondered if the ever-moving hedges opened and closed the various paths randomly or if one or more were always open. Just as he reached the plinth, Fleur emerged from the path opposite of the one that Harry had entered the central area from.
“Step away from the cup, mon chéri.” Fleur said, her wand in her right hand and her Veela Fire swirling around her body like a cloak of flame.
Harry grinned at Fleur brightly. “Did you have fun in the maze, mon amour?”
Fleur stepped closer, steadily closing the distance between her and the Triwizard Cup. “Non, it was barely a challenge.” She answered, keeping Harry’s attention on her and away from the cup.
“Same.” Harry agreed with a chuckle. “But it looks like I won in the end.”
“You haven’t won yet, Harry.” Fleur said as her Veela Fire shifted and flared slightly. “I’ll duel you right here and now for the cup.”
Harry raised an eyebrow at the prospect. “That could be interesting…” With a grin worthy of Sirius, he made a counter offer. “I suppose I could also be tempted by your feminine wiles.”
Fleur couldn’t stop the roll of her eyes at that. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, mon chéri?”
“Very much so!” Harry grinned, wiggling his eyebrows at Fleur. He could see that she was about to hex him, the look in her eyes alone was directed right at his center of mass, the easiest location to land a spell.
A blast of spellfire lit up one of the remaining paths and Krum jogged into the central area of the maze, looking a little roughed up, but not overly injured. “Ah…damn. I’m last.” He trained his wand on Harry, the closest to the Triwizard Cup. “Could you kindly back away?” The way the tip of his wand began to glow made it clear that wasn’t a request.
Harry saw both Fleur and Krum approaching at steady paces, their steps measured and their wands—and Veela Fire in Fleur’s case—at the ready. “Three-way standoff, eh? Well, the only thing I can say to that is…” He grinned since his Mage Sight spell had already spotted the Portkey Charm on the Triwizard Cup. “…bye!” He grabbed the cup and felt the ‘hook behind the navel’ feeling like the last time he’d used a Portkey before he was whisked away in a swirl of colors.
Fleur and Krum both blinked at Harry’s sudden disappearance.
“Was the cup supposed to be a Portkey?” Krum asked Fleur, not having heard anything about that.
“Bagman didn’t mention it…but it would be the fastest way to get the winner out of the maze.” Fleur said as she tried to make sense of the cup being a Portkey.
Krum looked around and even listened closely. “I do not hear any cheering for the victor.”
Fleur also noticed the lack of cheering. “Are the organizers going to come get us now?” Something wasn’t adding up about this situation and that was concerning.
-Graveyard, Little Hangleton ~ England-
Harry reappeared in a swirl of light and slammed into the ground with a grunt, dropping the Triwizard Cup in the process of his rough landing. “Bloody…Portkeys…” He grunted out, only to quickly notice a sharp—and unnatural—chill in the air. For June in any part of the British Isles, it shouldn’t be so cold. A wandless use of Revelio alerted Harry to many people hidden amongst the area, which was clearly a graveyard. “Well, this is cheery.” He stood up carefully and examined the graveyard. It was old, overgrown, and filled with both headstones, mausoleums both stone ones above ground and one visible beneath a small mound to Harry’s left. The faint outline of a small church building was noticeable beyond a large yew tree to his right. Beyond the graveyard Harry could make out a hill that appeared to have an old manor house on the side. “Not at Hogwarts anymore, that’s for sure.”
A figure approached through the darkness, practically gliding between the headstones and overgrown statues of angels. In the hooded black robe they wore, nothing could be seen of their body. No indication of whether they were male or female, no skin visible, even the movements of their legs weren’t able to be seen clearly as they walked.
But one thing Harry could see with his Mage Sight spell was the odd blackness of the magic that not only surrounded the person, but suffused them entirely. Compared to the magic he normally saw within the world, this was like the complete opposite, no color at all, just a void where color should be. It not only looked wrong, but to Harry’s senses it felt almost revolting and completely unnatural.
“Harry Potter, how nice to see you after so long.” The sibilant hiss of words came from the cloaked figure as they stopped walking upon entering the small empty space within the center of the graveyard where Harry had appeared.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you and your friends didn’t bring me here because you’re fans of mine.” Harry said, revealing that he was very much aware of the ones still in hiding. The fact that they all stood out with the unnatural blackness in their magic to Harry’s Mage Sight made it easy to spot each and every one of them. ‘There’s one near the back that’s got normal magic.’ He noticed a cloaked person standing just a bit behind a large towering memorial statue a distance behind the robed figure.
The person in the black robe let out a mirthless chuckle. “I don’t suppose you’d remember me, Harry. You were only an infant the last time we met.” The figure pulled their hood back to reveal a bald head with pasty pale skin and a small, almost flattened nose with thin slit-like nostrils. The reddish eyes were filled with a dark amusement as they looked at Harry.
Harry slightly raised his right hand, index finger extended upward. “Can you put your hood back on?” He requested with a grimace on his face, as if just looking at the man was a pain to his eyes.
“How amusing you are, Harry.” Voldemort commented calmly, his tone cold. But it didn’t take an expert to see the anger that flared up in his eyes.
“You’ve really gone and messed yourself up, haven’t you…Tom.” Harry asked rhetorically as he saw the black magic that clung to Voldemort and suffused his entire being.
A chill breeze whipped up around Voldemort at the use of his birth name. “Where did you hear such a name?”
Harry had finished his count of the hidden people by the time that Voldemort had asked his question. “You told me…or a memory of you did, at any rate. I thought the teenage version of you was odd, interesting, but still very odd. But whatever you’ve done to yourself now, Tom, is MUCH worse.”
The headstone closest to Voldemort cracked in half and fell to the ground. “Don’t use that name. I am Lord Voldemort.” The fact that Harry mentioned a teenage version of him hinted that his first Horcrux had been found somehow. He made a mental note to torture Lucius with the Cruciatus Curse later and find out everything that had happened to his old diary.
The cloaked figures hidden all around the graveyard moved forward, creating a large circle around the clear area where Voldemort and Harry stood across from each other. All of them pulled out oddly white wands with what appeared to be strange glyphs carved into them. Voldemort let his own Osgravis slide into his right hand, the bone wand was a bit longer and more finely crafted than the ones his undead had though, a testament to Voldemort’s growing experience in making the necromantic items.
“Seems were done talking, yeah?” Harry brought his magic to bear as he saw the blackness around the cloaked people and Voldemort move as well, ready to cast spells. Without a motion or a word, Harry used his Bind spell to immobilize all of the cloaked individuals.
“Avada Kedavra!” Voldemort cast at Harry, the sickly green light racing towards Harry…only to suddenly veer off and strike one of the immobilized cloaked figures.
Harry blinked as his Mage Sight saw the Killing Curse strike the person, but there was no change to their magic at all. ‘Dying should make most magic leave a person’s body almost instantly.’ That was the findings of centuries of Healers and was an accepted fact among witches and wizards. The black magic that suffused the cloaked person hadn’t barely twitch after being hit by the Killing Curse. “That’s…not right.”
Voldemort had a dark grin on his face. “Surprised, Harry Potter? Lord Voldemort has pushed the boundaries of magic further than anyone else that has come before! My forces are no longer susceptible to fear, pain, or even death.”
“How…interesting.” Harry said, a grin spreading across his face as well, while his green eyes lit up with interest and curiosity.
For reasons that Voldemort didn’t understand, a tiny flinch passed through his body at those two words. “You will die tonight, Harry Potter. With your death, Lord Voldemort will announce his return to the world.”
Harry only smiled at the threat, his slightly glowing eyes taking in all of the cloaked figures with the same ‘wrong’ magic as Voldemort. “Time for some tests.”
All of the cloaked people were still held in check by Harry’s Bind spell, until he watched with his Mage Sight as his magic was eroded away by the black magic and came undone. They all aimed their bone wands towards Harry, but over half of them were split in half at the waist, while the others were split in half vertically. Voldemort snarled, even as black ichor-like blood flew through the air, from his undead Death Eaters and the other criminals he’d called back from the land of the dead. A jab from Voldemort’s Osgravis and a dark purple spell lanced at Harry, only to fizzle out as it ran into a square Barrier about a meter in size.
Harry cast both his Float spell and basic Levitation to move swiftly between the gravestone, statues, and mausoleums. He took note of the cloaked figures pulling themselves back together and standing up again. It seemed Voldemort hadn’t been exaggerating as much as Harry thought. “Fascinating.” A dozen ‘Shot’ spells crackled to life all around Harry and then rocketed through the air in erratic zig-zag patterns before slamming into the cloaked beings from different directions to check their reaction times.
Voldemort shattered any Shot that came at him with a flick of his bone wand. “Confringo!” he cast and the spell rocketed forward, only for harry to easily avoid it with his mobility, leaving a granite statue of an angel to explode into fragments and flames behind him.
“How about…” Harry conjured fire and blasted one of the cloaked beings pointblank with it, engulfing them in a localized inferno that would torch a normal human into a blackened husk. The body hit the ground, the cloak and clothing burned away and the flesh blackened. But the thing still tried to move, even it that horrid state.
“Crucio!” Voldemort roared out.
Harry grabbed another of the strange beings with his magic and put it in the path of the Unforgivable Curse. Only for nothing to happen to it, no twitching, no screaming in agony, no response at all. “I see.” He sliced the thing apart with a dozen cuts that rendered it into bloody chunks and then sent a fireball straight at Voldemort.
Voldemort seemed almost offended by the large flames coming at him and waved them away with his bone wand. “Reducto!” The blast reduced the headstone behind where Harry had been to dust in a burst of force.
Water was conjured in mass amounts, more than enough to flood the graveyard, and crashed down upon the cloaked beings. Harry froze it instantly into a massive block of ice, trapping them all within, only for the ice to shatter as a dozen of the strange beings still managed to casts spells without movement or words.
“Silent, point-casting… That’s not a skill most wizards and witches reach with such powerful spells.” Harry remarked on the skill these beings had with spellcasting. He had a large Barrier form between him and the literal wall of incoming spells of various colors. Every spell fizzled out against his defensive spell, but he noticed that the lingering blackness of their magic clung to his Barrier for a few seconds after the spells failed. “Hmm.”
“Kill him!” Voldemort said as his Osgravis swished through the air and a dozen white Gytrash—white dog-like spirits—were conjured and chased after Harry at speed. The Dark Conjuration was much more powerful in an undead, like Voldemort’s, hands as the vicious spirits heeded his calls much more readily.
Harry saw the multiple Gytrashes coming towards him and merely grinned as a massive Lumos Charm briefly turned day into night within the graveyard, banishing the dog-like spirits that were naturally weak against light. “Now that was just silly.” He chuckled before zipping backwards and around various tombstones and mausoleums to avoid the hail of deadly spells cast at him by the strange beings that Voldemort had brought with him. As he moved through the graveyard, he threw various spells at the chasing figures. Many of them had lost their cloaks at this point, revealing them to be people, but Harry had seen their magic and knew they were not what they appeared. “Oh?” He ducked under a dark purple spell and noticed that one of the beings was naked, the one he’d burned black a while ago. “So, you can even survive and recover from fire, huh?”
“Diffindo!” The naked being slashed their bone wand in Harry’s direction, their spell easily splitting stone as two gravestones and a statue of an angel fell to the ground.
Harry, having ducked under the spell while still moving, was right in the being’s guard a moment later. The bone wand was almost leveled at him before the hand holding it went flying off, severed cleanly at the wrist. “How about this then?” He conjured Fiendfyre in his palm, the writhing and crackling flames lashing out to try and devour and consume everything around them, but were held in check by Harry’s will and intent. The cursed flames were shoved against the naked being’s chest and Harry let go of his control.
Fwooom
The naked being was instantly engulfed in the Fiendfyre and thrashed around, trying to get the flames off, falling to the ground and rolling around even as skin blackened and flaked off, then muscle and the black ichor for blood burned, letting off a thick, foul smoke.
Before Harry could observe the entire process, he was forced to move as another dozen lethal spells rained down on the area. He did see two of them blast apart the burning being, but that only fueled the Fiendfyre consuming the leftover pieces. “Mark that one down as a ‘possibly’, for now.” He zipped through the graveyard, leading the strange beings on a merry chase before flicking his fingers once as he sped past two mausoleums.
Bam
The fastest of the beings was crushed between the two mausoleums as Harry’s magic slammed them together. The thick, black ichor splattered from between the large, heavy stone structures, but Harry still wasn’t sure if crushing these things would actually kill them.
The sickly green light of the Killing Curse filled Harry’s vision, a massive version of the normally quick bolt of death was barreling towards him from Voldemort’s bone wand. But a spell was still a spell… The massive green light hit something unseen and split into hundreds of smaller green lights that peppered the area behind Harry, blasting apart more tombstones and parts of the ground, even knocking back a couple of the chasing beings.
‘That phenomenon again…’ Harry noticed the blackness inherent in Voldemort’s magic clinging to his Magic Manipulation strings before sliding down them like oil. Without an bit of hesitation, Harry threw his palm forward, straight at Voldemort.
“Ukh…” Voldemort made an odd noise as his body jerked strongly. Looking down at his chest, he saw a conjured stake of wood—the size of a fencepost—pierced through his chest, right where his heart was. “I am no mere vampire, Harry.” He vanished the wood and the wound filled with the bubbling black ichor before sealing up and leaving unmarred skin behind.
“Interesting.” Harry said as another possibility was ruled out. “What about…” Lightning crackled around Harry’s palms and he threw two bolts at Voldemort.
Voldemort raised a large and powerful Protego to block the two bolts, and then dispersed his shield to lash out with his bone wand, casting a purple lighting bolt at Harry. The fast-moving Spellcrafter easily dodged and the bolt blasted a mausoleum to rubble. All of that rubble floated into the air and each piece was surrounded by a brown orb of magic that quickly formed into large, humanoid Shikigami which landed on the ground with heavy thumps. The new Earth Shikigami wasted no time in charging straight into the incoming spellfire from Voldemort’s minions, slamming their large fists into the beings and smashing them into the ground or sending them flying.
“Finite!” Voldemort roared out and a powerful pulse of his wand spread throughout the area, but it barley made the Shikigami waver. They were no mere spell, after all, but something much more complex. “Reducto!” The overpowered spell blasted the Earth Shikigami to dust, destroying their physical mediums and taking them out.
The broken beings quickly reformed themselves and stood back up to give chase to Harry once more.
But the Shikigami had bought Harry more than enough time.
A tiny black sphere was hovering just above Harry’s extended index finger, the air around it vibrating as the two opposing forces within were forced to exist in the same space. “Paradox.” He flicked the little orb forward and it shot towards Voldemort like a bullet.
With a single thought from Voldemort, every one of his undead threw themselves in the path of incoming force, casting the most powerful Protego or other defensive spells they could manage. The first Protego was bypassed as if it wasn’t even there, the tiny black orb leaving an equally tiny hole straight through it…and through the first undead body behind that Shield Charm. Then through the next one, and then next one, before it hit a raised wall of earth and finally destabilized. The orb expanded in total silence, all sound vanishing for a moment, a pitch-black sphere engulfed a five meter area from the point of impact and swallowed up everything within it. When it vanished a second later, sound returned to the world and eight of the undead were gone, not a trace of them left, only a perfectly semi-circular hole in the ground a testament to where they’d been standing.
‘What was that?!’ Voldemort hissed in his mind, unwilling to admit the fear that had risen up within him as he lost connection to eight of his undead in an instant.
Harry flew up into the air with his Flight spell, looking down on the graveyard with a wide and interested smile. “So Paradox works then, good to know.” He clapped his hands together and the air around him rippled visibly. As he spread his arms wide everything wavered…before being sliced into pieces. The beings were sliced over and over and over again, becoming smaller and smaller pieces, but Harry’s eyes focused on Voldemort, the self-styled Dark Lord was walking straight through the dozens and dozens of cuts per second, his strange body being sliced, but never all the way through, even as the thick, black ichor flew through the air, the wounds reformed almost as fast as they were made.
“I feel no pain, Harry.” Voldemort called out, amplifying his voice with a Sonorus Charm. “Injuries mean nothing to me. Your spells mean nothing to one that cannot die.” With a deep inhale, Voldemort exhaled a massive serpent of Fiendfyre straight at Harry, the magic of the hundreds of slashes being consumed as soon as they touched the flames.
“There’s still plenty I want to test out, Tom!” Harry called back over the roar of the Fiendfyre serpent. The cursed flame splashed against his will and intent, losing their form as he used Magic Manipulation to take apart the magic fueling the Fiendfyre and remove it, rapidly shrinking it down into nothing. ‘There it is again…’ Harry noticed the clinging blackness of the magic touching his own magic and saw small parts of it erode away.
A hail of spells came from below and behind as the beings below had taken up various positions now. They were fighting tactically, using cover and various different spells to try and take Harry down. A far cry from when they ran headlong into whatever Harry threw at them. The loss of eight of them had clearly prompted a change in tactics.
Harry flew about, dodging most spells easily, and those he didn’t were blocked with a small Barrier. There were still a few things he wanted to try out, his mind was engaged in ways it hadn’t been in a long while…ways that he couldn’t satisfy without killing someone with some of the spell ideas that he was now using. Finally getting to test them out after coming up with them was an excitement that Harry didn’t realize he’d been missing out on. Zooming down into a dive, Harry barely pulled up right before he hit the ground at high-speed. The beings couldn’t keep track of him and he snatched one on the edge of the group before ascending high into the air again, far out of reach of most spells.
“Potter!” The being snarled at seeing Harry’s face, the memories of its previous life saw James Potter, an enemy of his Lord.
“Eat this.” Harry conjured an ember of Primal Fire and shoved it down the being’s mouth before dropping it and letting it fall to the ground far below.
“Avada Kedavra!” The falling undead pointed his Osgravis at Harry and the sickly green light sped towards its target.
Only to splash harmlessly against Harry’s Barrier.
Whump
The sound of the body hitting the ground was so loud that everyone in the graveyard heard it, but a mere fall wouldn’t keep any of the undead down. So, they ignored it and continued to take shots at Harry’s flying form from their positions of cover.
Voldemort circled his bone wand twice through the air and the air rippled before him, the air bending visibly as force raced upwards towards Harry. “Come down, Harry Potter!”
BOOM
A sound like a bomb going off was heard as Harry met force with force and stalemated with Voldemort’s spell.
Harry conjured up hundreds of iron rods, each with a heavy pointed tip, and with a wave of his hand, launched them down upon the beings trying to reach him with their spells. The rain of iron pinned all of them to the ground, punching though dirt, cobblestone, and granite alike as another part of the graveyard was devastated. With a moment to focus, Harry’s Mage Sight found the area where the being he’d dropped had fallen and he saw the things back on its feet, but now, within the blackness of its magic, was a small spark of light. The Primal Fire was slowly, but steadily, burning up the black magic and converting it back into normal magic that it could consume and use to grow. “What is this black magic?” He’d never seen the like of it before. ‘It’s like normal magic has been…inverted, maybe?’ Harry thought, but wasn’t sure if inverted was even the right word to describe this strange magic.
The impaled undead felt no pain, so they easily used their Osgravis to undo the conjuration of the iron rods impaling them. As their injuries were filled with more of the black, bubbling ichor, they were all left unharmed again a moment later.
“If you will not come down, then I will come to you!” Voldemort bellowed, a swish of his wand levitating one of the many pieces of rubble, which he stepped up onto and then took off into the sky straight towards Harry. Once he killed the boy, he’d figure out his own method of self-flight as well. It greatly irritated Voldemort that his prophesized enemy had accomplished such a thing when he himself had not.
“Watch your step!” Harry called out just as the rubble that Voldemort was levitating himself on turned to dust.
Voldemort lashed out with dark violet curse that hissed through the air, even as he began to fall back towards the ground. His red eyes nearly glowed with malice and his curse was equally as wicked as it slammed into Harry’s Barrier and wrapped around the sphere of protection, needling at every point of it over and over again as it tried to break through. Only to fade away when it couldn’t before the magic powering it ran out. The normally translucent barrier was stained a semi-opaque black after the curse though, the lingering black magic trying to erode the Barrier spell.
Harry dispelled his Barrier and used his magic to start swirling the air, forming a whirlwind, then a small tornado, then a towering, howling column of wind which he directed straight down at the falling Voldemort. Voldemort defended himself with a large Protego and crashed down into the ground a second before the howling wind sent his minions flying from their positions. As rubble, dust, and bodies flew about in the powerful, high-speed winds, Harry once more dived through the air and only pulled up right before hitting the ground. He needed to confirm something before this continued.
“Ugh…” Harry stopped and scrunched up his face as he returned to where he’d set one of these beings alight with Fiendfyre. The flames had guttered out without any magic to consume, but the entire area was filled with a foul smelling miasma-like smoke and the ground was covered in burnt black ichor that looked almost like a curse to Harry’s Mage Sight spell. “So Fiendfyre is a pyrrhic victory at best, given it seems to leave a lingering poison behind.”
“Avada…” A man’s voice began the incantation for the Killing Curse from behind Harry. With barely a thought, the hand holding the wand was severed at the wrist, sending it falling to the ground. In the next half-second the man was immobilized by Harry’s Bind spell, locking him in position.
“Oh, it’s you.” Harry looked at the only normal man that had come with Voldemort. “I’d like you to come with me, I have A LOT of questions for you.”
The familiar sickening green light illuminated Harry’s face from the opposite side of where he was looking at the immobilized Barty Crouch Jr. and he barely had a fraction of a second to react before the spell hit him. Green light flashed, briefly lighting up this part of the graveyard.
Voldemort stood almost ten meters away, his robes shredded to almost nothing, but his right arm was outstretched and his Osgravis aimed right at Harry. He’d cast the Killing Curse with all of his desire to kill, made more effective than ever before by just HOW MUCH he wanted Harry Potter to die after what he’d seen so far tonight. The green spell hadn’t come out as a massive beam, nor the usual crackling bolt, but as a spiraling ‘bullet’ of lethal intent, flying faster than any other time that Voldemort had ever cast the curse.
When the light faded a second later though, it revealed a tiny Barrier, no bigger than a playing card, having intercepted the Killing Curse.
Voldemort’s red eyes met Harry’s green and the interest and excitement that he’d seen since Harry had arrived and began ‘testing’ various spells was nowhere to be found. Instead, what he saw was a cold indifference, as if Harry saw nothing when he looked at him, HIM, the Dark Lord Voldemort!
In the next fraction of a second Voldemort had been launched backwards in a blur, smashing straight through three different granite mausoleums before plowing through the iron doors of the underground mausoleum and impacting the solid granite wall at the very back, sending a spiderweb of cracks throughout the heavy stone. A force was still pressing so powerfully on his body that more cracks formed in the stone as even his magical black bones cracked throughout his body and black ichor run from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears from the way his undying body was being compressed.
‘Wh-what…is…this…?’ Voldemort’s mind was hazy, something his undead body shouldn’t even be capable of experiencing. ‘This isn’t…a spell…at all…’ It was just pure force that had sent him flying through everything in his path before crushing him against this wall. “Im…possible….” Voldemort managed to get out, only for his bleeding red eyes to somehow still make contact with Harry’s indifferent green, even across distance, through darkness and clouds of dust, their eyes were still locked. With fear rising up in him, Voldemort sent the mental command to his undead to swarm Harry and kill him.
Harry finally broke his indifferent gaze with Voldemort as he heard the rushing of the strange beings coming towards him with calls for his death. “Time to go, I suppose.” He turned to the immobilized man and with barely a wave of his hand had the bleeding stump of his right wrist wrapped up in a tight conjured bandage to stem the blood loss.
Barty Crouch Jr. just stared at Harry, unable to speak both from the Bind spell and from his own shock at what he’d just witnessed. Harry Potter had sent the Dark Lord flying without a word, gesture, or seemingly having used magic at all. Even as the undead Death Eaters came into view, surrounding their location, Barty couldn’t comprehend what had happened at all.
“Hah…” Harry exhaled as the strange beings tried to surround him and the man he’d captured. He was done here, for now, his Mage Sight looked past the blackness of their magic and spotted the single one with the growing light inside him from the Primal Fire. That one was lagging severely behind all of the others, the Primal Fire within having grown into a large flame that had all but consumed the blackness. As Harry watched, the being’s body came to a jerky stop and nearly collapsed to its knees, the slightly grey-toned skin turned a dull, blackish-brown, like soil, and then fell apart into nothing but dust and dirt, not a trace of anything else within it. All the magic was gone now, and with it, the Primal Fire quickly burnt itself out. “Glad I got to see that.” With his final question answered, Harry raised his Barrier and surrounded himself and the man he’d captured, allowing the spells of the remaining strange beings to splash against it harmlessly.
“You can’t hide in their forever, Potter!”
“Die! Die, damn it!”
“Crucio!”
“Avada Kedavra!”
“Reducto!”
“Confringo!”
Harry ignored all of it as he focused. “Principle Presence… Principle Absence… Principle Time… Principle Space… Principle Attraction… Principle Rejection…” A second later and everything seemed to just ‘glitch’ for a fraction of a second, dark was light, light was dark, color was inverted, sound stopped, sensation vanished, then a crack appeared as if the world itself was merely glass. Harry grabbed ahold of the man he captured and walked forward through the shards of reality, everything moving in slow motion except for Harry and Barty. They walked right by the attacking undead, spells hanging in the air unmoving, and were soon past them all.
Then reality reasserted itself and everything was back to normal.
Spells flew through empty air and the undead Death Eaters stood silent and motionless, unable to process what had just happened.
Harry dragged Barty along, heading back to where he’d arrived. He looked at the Triwizard Cup with his Mage Sight and saw a Portkey spell still on it. “Two, huh? I suppose he did say that he was going to use my death to announce his return. Sending back the corpse would definitely have done that. I wonder how they got access to the Triwizard Cup to place two Portkey Charms on it?” He looked back at Barty, who didn’t seem to be blinking or reacting at all. “I’m sure you’ll be able to answer that later.”
In Barty’s mind, twisted as it was, he was still stuck on witnessing reality fracture. He had no concept of what he’d seen, felt, didn’t feel, heard, and didn’t hear…none of it made sense. No one should be able to do what Harry Potter had just done. It was magic beyond what witches and wizards knew as magic. ‘The Height of Magic…’ It was the only thing that Barty’s mind could try to understand that experience as. It was simply beyond him, beyond comprehension, and so his mind spared itself a breakdown by categorizing what he’d witnessed as ‘Magic’.
Harry summoned the Triwizard Cup back to his left hand and in a swirl of colors was whisked away again, but this time with a passenger.
Meanwhile, in Little Hangleton, every resident was terrified and every phoneline was calling the police over in Greater Hangleton. They’d all seen the lights, heard the explosions, it was like a war was going on in their local graveyard. Nobody was brave enough to step outside, much less go and investigate the mysterious incident.
-Hogwarts ~ Entrance of the Hedge Maze-
Harry and Barty spun into existence and crashed to the grass in a heap. “Hate…Portkeys…so much.” Harry grumbled as he got to his feet quickly, leaving Barty lying on the ground, still immobilized by his Bind spell.
The five judges were quick to notice the reappearance of the missing Triwizard Champion and rushed over to check on Harry. Not too far behind them were Fleur and Krum, both having been retrieved from the maze after standing within the center area for a couple of minutes with the Triwizard Cup—and Harry—missing. There was also Minister Fudge himself, bringing up the rear, here to fulfil his role to hand over the one-thousand Galleon prize to the winner. But the politician wouldn’t miss a chance for a photo op and so had ‘invited’ along a cameraman from the Daily Prophet and Barnabas Cuffe, the Chief Editor of the paper himself. They’d been waiting to get the story of the Triwizard Tournament Winner when Harry had been reported missing by both Krum and Fleur. Seeing that Harry had returned, the three men were eager to get the scoop and the free press.
“Can someone call the Aurors?” Harry asked as he was nearly being bum rushed by the group of people. Thankfully, the rushing group slowed down when they noticed the unmoving man next to Harry’s feet…and the fact that said man was missing his right hand and had thick bloodstained bandages over the stump. “I have a Death Eater to turn in.” Those words stunned everyone present, but the flash of the Daily Prophet camera quickly snapped everyone out of their stupor a moment later.
“Who is th-that?” Fudge looked confused by the unexpected words from Harry, though his face quickly broke out into a sweat as the term ‘Death Eater’ processed in his mind. The unmoving man seemed stunned still, but his eyes were slowly blinking, as if he was coming around from a bout of unconsciousness.
If anyone had looked at Karkaroff, they’d have seen the man go as pale as milk from terror as soon as he looked down at the unmoving man at Harry’s feet.
Ludo Bagman looked confused, as he glanced between Harry and the unmoving man. He felt like he recognized the man on the ground from somewhere, but couldn’t recall where or when.
Madame Maxime was clearly perplexed by the situation, wanting to focus on the safety of the previously missing student, but not being able to ignore the unmoving man with a missing hand either.
Percy, still filling in for the unwell Mr. Crouch, had no idea who the man at Harry’s feet was. The situation was far beyond anything that he expected to happen at the Third Task, and Percy Weasley was NEVER the best when it came to dealing with sudden, unexpected changes.
“How are you alive, Bartemius Crouch Junior?” Dumbledore questioned the man seriously, easily recognizing the Death Eater that had been condemned to Azkaban and then reported dead not very long afterwards.
The name of the infamous Death Eater made more than a few people gasp. Well, Fudge’s gasp came out more as a high-pitched little squeak of fear.
Another flash of the Daily Prophet cameraman’s camera went off and the group began to move again.
Fleur pulled Harry into her arms and made to move him away from the immobilized Crouch Jr., her blue eyes focused on the Death Eater as a threat to her beloved.
Krum grabbed Karkaroff’s arm right as the Durmstrang High Master was about to bolt. The glare in the professional Quidditch player’s eyes was so accusing that even Karkaroff felt that Krum’s wand might be turned on him if he tried to make a break for it again.
“Th-That can’t be right…Albus!” Fudge was starting to bluster and try to deny that Barty was who Dumbledore said he was.
“I assure you it is, Minister.” Dumbledore said, not going to argue with Fudge about the blatant truth right in front of them.
Madame Maxime quickly put herself between the three students and the Death Eater, her wand in hand and trained on the immobilized man.
Barnabas Cuffe and the cameraman were in full ‘news’ mode. The cameraman was taking pictures so fast that the flash barely had time to dim between shots. Cuffe was already writing swiftly in a small notebook of parchment, clearly creating a headline and a story for the morning issue of the Daily Prophet.
“Is someone going to call the Aurors or not?” Harry asked the group at large, only to see Tonks, Sirius, Andromeda, Ted, and Remus rushing towards the group. “Oh, never mind, here comes one now.” He said with a grin as Tonks rushed towards him, her hair flickering between various colors as her emotions were running rampant.
Harry knew this whole incident was going to be a pain. But as he let Tonks wrap him and Fleur both in a hug, he was glad that he was the one to grab the Triwizard Cup instead of Fleur or Krum.
-End Chapter-
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Well damn… I think Harry has shown off a fair bit more than ever before, huh?
Makes one wonder just what HIS interpretation of magic is…
Voldemort and his undead Death Eaters get firsthand experience of just why Harry is the youngest High Sorcerer in history. Barty got captured (and lost his right hand), so it’s going to be a bit harder to cover things up.
Not that Fudge won’t try and a certain sycophant will definitely fully back him up on it.
And the Third Task was going so well before Harry grabbed the Cup.
What will be the reaction to Harry’s testimony of what happened while he was missing? What of the capture of Barty Crouch Junior?
Many more questions have been made than answered, and Harry is absolutely going to be looking into the strange ‘black magic’ that he experienced while fighting Voldemort and his undead, even if he didn’t know they were all undead.
But perhaps the biggest question…
Will Harry get that one-thousand Galleon prize for winning the tournament?
Keep reading to find out!
Until I get your reviews, later!