“Okay, are you ready to do this?” Harry asked softly. He was in the Chamber of Secrets with Dean Thomas, Neville Longbottom, Fleur Delacour, Viktor Krum and Cedric Diggory. The raven-haired fourteen year old had just finished telling the other five about the ‘adventures’ in which he was forced to participate by, not only Albus Dumbledore, but his two minders, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley, as well as the conversation he and his true Gryffindor friends had overheard. “I know that the man playing professor Moody means to do me harm, and since I’ve had to jump through hoops like a prized show dog since I started here, it’s not too much of a stretch to believe this year’s contest won’t be any different.”
“I agree, Harry,” Diggory remarked, a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder in comfort. After the whole ‘heir of Slytherin’ debacle in second year and Potter’s subsequent stay in the infirmary to recover from a basilisk bite, the Hufflepuff started to realize that much of the younger boy’s life was completely out of his control. So the then-fifteen year old talked with his dad and mum during the summer holiday before third year, and both adult Diggorys agreed to take in the Boy Who Lived, without informing either the Ministry or Dumbledore.
They put some blood, skin and hair into a piece of sandstone from Stonehenge, which had been infused with Harry’s magic, and after dark on July fourth, 1993, Harry snuck back into his relatives’ house and put the stone in a corner of the cupboard that used to be his bedroom. It was this stone on which the wards were anchored, and the headmaster never knew that his sacrificial lamb had slipped his leash.
“I’m glad you offered me sanctuary, Cedric,” the brunet responded, his own hand on top of the one on his shoulder. “I’m also glad that your parents have accepted my offer to court you.”
“If they hadn’t, they would have lost the Diggory heir,” the older Hufflepuff nearly snarled, hand squeezing down for just a moment.
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Fleur was the first to enter the Great Hall the night before the Samhain feast and tossed her slip of paper into the Goblet of Fire. She smirked as the flames flared up, accepting the entry, then turned and exited the hall, nodding to her hidden audience. Viktor was next, and he marched quickly up the aisle, eagerness vibrating through him as he tossed his name into the cup. Snapping his heels together and bowing shallowly as the chalice allowed his entry, he made a smart about-face and marched back to the exit, a malicious grin on his face. Cedric was last, and as his slip wafted into the flames on a current of his magic, the Goblet of Fire glowed a blinding white for a moment, Magic accepting and acknowledging the entries. With an unseemly bounce in his step, he quickly made his way back to where Harry was hiding and pulled him into a squeezing hug.
A noise alerted the pair that someone else was in the Great Hall, and they peered around the edge of the doorway, watching with wide eyes as Mad-Eye Moody stumped his way from the teacher’s entrance to the cup. He stared at the slip of paper in his hand for a long moment before, with an evil smirk he sent it into the flames, nodding in satisfaction as he turned and limped his way back out of the hall. Moments later, the fire in the chalice flared a deep red and the last slip entered was lifted out of the cup and burnt to ash. “Well, now we know what was planned for you this year,” Cedric snarked as his arm tightened around his fiancé protectively.
“I honestly can’t wait for tomorrow night,” Harry agreed as he snuggled into the taller boy’s side. “It’s going to be one hell of a show.”
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“All right, everyone. Settle down,” Dumbledore called as he stood next to the Goblet of Fire. It was October 31, and the students had just finished the Hallowe’en feast. The lights were dimmed, and hushed whispering fluttered through the Great Hall, like the bats who still spun and swooped overhead. Most were speculating on who would be the chosen champions. Over at the Gryffindor table, Harry Potter, Dean Thomas and Neville Longbottom were holding their own private conversation. They sat near the far end of the table, away from Granger, Weasley and girl Weasley, who kept shooting them suspicious looks.
“Do you think it worked?” the raven haired fourteen year old asked worriedly.
“Of course it worked,” the dark-skinned teen hissed anxiously. “After what we’d overheard, we did all the research we could to make sure it worked.”
“Yeah, mate,” the amber-eyed boy agreed, voice trembling slightly in anticipation. “I honestly can’t wait to see what happens.”
“Just a few moments now,” the headmaster murmured, eyes gleaming in anticipation of a truly exciting test for his puppet. His conversation with Moody at the beginning of the month still resonated with the old man, and the quiet word of warning still vibrated unpleasantly in his head. He never knew, and Alistor didn’t alert him because Barty Crouch junior, who was wearing the battle-scarred Auror’s skin, didn’t really know how to use the magical eye, that there were three teenagers listening in on their conversation, and making their own plans.
Flashback
“How are we going to get Harry’s name in the goblet?” Albus asked his oldest friend, a slight edge of panic in his voice.
“I’ve got it all figured out,” Mad-Eye replied with a grin. “I’ll just slip his name in under a different school, and the chalice will automatically select it.”
“But the rules state that there’s only supposed to be three champions,” Dumbledore hissed anxiously. “How do we fool the goblet into selecting the fourth?”
“A confundus charm, of course,” Crouch stated, his impersonation nearly perfect. “I’ll confound the pixies out of it and make it believe that there’s supposed to be four champions. Potter will be chosen. I promise. I caution you, however, Albus, that if you’re not careful, these manipulations could backfire in your face.” Barty didn’t care overmuch what happened to Potter, as long as he was available for his Lord’s resurrection. In order to keep Dumbledore from realizing he was imposter, however, he felt the need to add the warning, knowing that the paranoid ex-Auror would actually do it.
End flashback
The Goblet of Fire’s flames suddenly turned red, jarring the old man out of his reminiscence, and he quickly brought his mind back to the present with a jolt. “All right,” he announced with a beaming smile, “it appears the goblet is ready.” With a hiss and a flare, the first parchment floated out of the cup, and Dumbledore snatched it out of the air with practiced ease. “The champion for Durmstrang is Bartemius Crouch, junior.” For a moment, there was dead silence as the headmaster stared at the parchment, aghast. At the head table, Alistor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody fell to the floor in a dead faint.
Before the headmaster could question the selection, the next slip of parchment flew out of the mouth of the chalice. Albus grabbed at it nearly frantically, blue eyes blown wide in shock. “The champion for Beauxbaton’s is Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort.” The hall erupted in screaming as the dreaded name was announced, and more than a few students passed out in shock. The final slip was shot from the cup, and Dumbledore watched as it fluttered to the floor, the name facing up as it landed. “The champion for Hogwarts,” he croaked, heart in his throat, “is Albus Dumbledore.”
“How did you get their signatures?” Neville asked softly, eyes filled with an unholy gleam as he watched the headmaster pale, wavering alarmingly on his feet.
“I had Dobby pop into Crouch’s personal rooms and find the evidence of his duplicity. He’d signed a letter he was about to send to Voldemort,” Harry told his friends with a grin. “He went to Dumbledore’s office after everyone was in bed and stole the last bit of a contract. There was enough room to put the name of the school. Voldemort was harder, but Dobby was able to sneak into his hideout and find a school book with Tom’s real name, and a letter to Malfoy’s dad with his pseudonym. Piece of cake.”
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The day of the first task dawned, and Alistor Moody was nowhere to be found. He had disappeared the night before, but no one knew exactly why. So it was that a lone contestant made his trembling way to the tent to wait for the announcement of his participation. Since no one else showed up, the only dragon to select was the Chinese fireball. Albus had no intention of competing; he was just going to show up to keep his magic, and let the chips fall where they may. Ludo Bagman called the headmaster out to face his nemesis, and in a far away derelict manor near an old cemetery, the homunculus that held the frayed soul of Lord Voldemort suddenly fell to dust as the magic that had held it together dissipated. Tom Marvolo Riddle had only a moment to wail in agony before his soul disappeared, along with every other shard that he’d hidden all over Britain.
Because he didn’t participate in the tournament, he lost his magic. In doing so, there was no longer anything to hold his soul pieces to the earthly plane and they moved on into the ether. At Hogwarts, a fourteen year old emerald eyed and raven haired boy pitched forward, nearly tumbling arse over teakettle as his scar split open and a black vapor released into the atmosphere. Cedric was by his side instantly, holding him up as blood sluggishly dripped from the split in his forehead. “Are you all right, baby?” the Hufflepuff asked softly, eyes scanning around to make sure that no one else had noticed. Since Harry’s name didn’t come out of the goblet as planned, the bushy haired know-it-all and her red-headed sidekick were in the library, frantically researching ways to get the headmaster out of the contest without the resulting loss of the old man’s magic.
“Yeah,” Harry moaned quietly as, with one final throb the pain dissipated. “Didn’t know that would happen.”
“It just means that Voldemort must’ve left a bit of himself behind when he killed your parents and tried to kill you,” Cedric told his fiancé gently as he kissed the raven haired boy’s cheek. Several rows back, Ginny Weasley’s eyes narrowed on the display, and a scowl morphed her face as she realized that someone else was encroaching on her territory.
“It also means that what we planned actually worked,” Neville said from the other side of the teenager. “Voldemort’s gone, and you didn’t have to die to make it happen.”
In the Defense Against the Dark Arts room, the man who had been impersonating Alistor Moody was lying on the floor, dead. His magic had fled most violently, stripping the body of the polyjuice he’d been ingesting since he started this mission for his master, which resulted in the man’s eyes exploding as the power fled through every orifice it could. The instantaneous loss of his magic sent Barty Crouch, Jr. immediately into a cardiac episode which killed him where he lay. Because no one realized that Moody wasn’t at the first task of the tournament, there was no haste in trying to hunt him down. Everyone was watching as Albus Dumbledore conjured himself a chair and sat just out of reach of the dragon, knitting a rather garishly colored sweater for himself.
In the bottom of Moody’s trunk lay the battle-hardened, bedraggled ex-Auror himself, head covered with bald spots and with raw, bleeding patches where bunches of hair were pulled out none too gently. He was incredibly thin and frail, having not had any sort of steady sustenance since he was kidnapped mid-summer. “Why doesn’t Albus come looking for me?” he rasped out, coughing as his throat ached and itched from disuse. “He has to know that that imposter isn’t me. We’ve been friends for over twenty five years. He should know everything there is to know by now.”
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It was nearly two weeks before anyone bothered to check up on the Moody imposter. Albus was hiding in his office, dreading the next task, as it would most likely result in illness for him. Because the headmaster had taken to shirking his duties to the school, Minerva was run ragged trying to see to all the minutiae of running Hogwarts, and the missing DADA professor never even crossed her mind. No one noticed, nor did they really care, that the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes had been without a professor. Though Crouch was an excellent teacher in his Moody disguise, the students were relieved not to have to face the paranoid Auror anymore; especially the Gryffindors, whom he seemed to target rather frequently.
Harry was grateful that he wouldn’t be called up to the front of the class for ‘practical demonstrations’ anymore, and since the headmaster was conspicuously absent, no one thought to look for his missing friend. The students had begun to self-study, and quite a few from all houses would meet in empty classrooms to practice their spell work, under the watchful eyes of the seventh years. Unfortunately, no one wanted Granger or either Weasley to join their groups, so the three Gryffindors were left in the weeds, frantically trying to figure out what they should study to pass their OWLs the following year.
Minerva, wondering why she never received any financial requests from Alistor, finally opened the door to his personal rooms two weeks later and gasped at what she saw. There, lying on the floor in the same position in which he’d perished, was Bartemius Crouch, Jr.; a man who had presumably died in Azkaban nearly twelve years ago. Pulling her wand, she called forth her cat patronus and said, “Poppy, I need you in the DADA professor’s personal rooms. I think we have a serious problem. Get the Aurors and Amelia Bones here immediately.”
Twenty minutes later, Pomfrey bustled into the room, followed by Amelia Bones, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Gawain Robards. “What the hell…?” the DMLE head yelped as she looked at the body of a man who had supposedly died shortly after the fall of Voldemort.
“Why is Crouch, Jr. here, and what happened to Alistor?” Shacklebolt queried as he allowed his professional demeanor to come forward.
“I can only assume that he came disguised as Alistor to be our defense professor,” Minerva replied as she watched the mediwitch run her scans. She sat back on her haunches and looked at the other three, shaking her head sadly.
“How did he die, madam Pomfrey?” Bones queried, a recording orb floating next to her head.
“It looks like he had a massive heart attack,” she replied with a frown. “I can’t find any physical cause for the myocardial infarction, but I do believe that it may have resulted from the loss of his magic.”
“Why would he lose his magic?” Robards questioned a little harshly, making everyone in the room flinch at his vehemence. Flushing, he explained. “I’m only concerned that whatever took his magic might attack the students.”
“As you are aware, the Triwizard Tournament was brought here,” McGonagall told everyone on a sigh. “On the night that the champions were selected, something rather...unusual took place. Instead of students’ names from the three schools, what came out of the Goblet of Fire was Bartemius Crouch, Jr. for Beauxbaton’s, Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord V-Voldemort for Durmstrang, and Albus Dumbledore for Hogwarts. Since their names were chosen, they were required by magical contract to participate, or lose their magic. Albus was the only contestant to show up, which means that Crouch,” she indicated the rather remarkably preserved corpse on the floor, “and He Who Must Not Be Named lost their magic, since they didn’t appear.”
“Where is the real Alistor Moody, then?” Bones asked, frowning in consternation. Inside, however, she was doing the Snoopy dance in glee that the threat Dumbledore had been warning the wizarding world about for the last thirteen years was finally gone.
“That is the question,” Pomfrey added worriedly. “If he’d been missing since shortly before school started, and it’s already the beginning of December, he’s in rather desperate straits if we don’t find him soon. Considering he’s in his mid-sixties, I daresay that he may already have died of thirst, if not starvation. We need to hurry if we’re to have a hope of his survival.” Everyone spread out and scoured the room, but it was when Gawain Robards barked his shin on the trunk in the middle of the floor, and it didn’t even budge that the Auror became suspicious.
“I have something here,” he called out as he cast a plethora of Auror-level unlocking charms on the trunk. “I banged into it and it didn’t move; not even to tip over, which means that this might be one of those trunks with expansion charms on it. If we can get it open…” A loud snick sounded through the room, and with a crow of accomplishment, he flung the lid back with a flourish. The odor, that had wafted up from the bottom of a set of stairs that went down, had everyone backing away, gagging harshly as they fought not to throw up. The smell of feces, urine and decay was overwhelming, and Amelia cast a bubble-head charm on herself before she began her descent.
All was quiet as everyone waited by the window, frantically waving their wands to disperse the noxious odor. “It’s too late,” the DMLE head’s voice drifted up out of the trunk. “From the looks of it, he’d been rather badly abused before he was tossed down here. He was probably dead within the first week. I’ll need help getting him out of here, and we’ll need to call in the investigation teams as well as the coroner. I suggest letting the students go home for a week until we get all the necessary steps out of the way.”
In an abandoned classroom in another part of the castle, Harry and Cedric were curled up on a conjured couch, discussing their future plans, now that Riddle was gone forever. “What do you think’ll happen to those who have the Dark Mark?” the raven haired teen queried softly.
“I’m pretty sure they’ll be rounded up and tried for their crimes,” the Hufflepuff answered absently. “Honestly? I couldn’t care less what happens to those who had pledged their souls and their magic to that madman. I’m just very, very glad he’s gone.”
“But...but how do we know he’s gone, Ced?” the Gryffindor asked worriedly. “I don’t want to get my hopes up, just for them to be dashed later.”
“His magic was lost to him when he didn’t show up for the first task,” his boyfriend explained again. He’d had to reassure Harry several times since the first task, but he was willing to reassure the younger teen as long as he had to, in order to keep him from worrying unnecessarily. “Nothing he created would have survived that loss. That includes any other horcruxes he might have made. Do you still feel the oppressive weight of that monster’s magic in your mind?”
“No,” Harry replied hesitantly. “But the way my luck’s gone since my parents’ deaths, I’m not counting my chickens before they’ve hatched.”
“Understandable,” Cedric soothed, amber eyes narrowed. Ruddy muggles. “Trust me. He’s gone, and he’s never coming back.”
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It was the end of fourth year, and Albus Dumbledore had won the Triwizard Tournament by a landslide. Considering he was the only one to show up to each task, even though he didn’t participate, he won the accolades and money anyway. His victory was tempered with quite a bit of sadness and guilt, however. He’d known Alistor Moody for a long time, and to realize that he didn’t even notice that it wasn’t his old friend teaching the students devastated him. The headmaster was a shell of what he once was, and he’d tendered his resignation from the Wizengamot, the International Confederation of Wizards, and planned on retiring as headmaster after the next year. He wanted to stay on long enough to make sure that whomever took over control of the school was suitably trained for the task.
“Hello, Harry,” he greeted the teen as the boy entered his office. Tomorrow, everyone was leaving for their holiday and he wanted to touch base with the young man before he left. “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here.”
“Yes, sir,” came the flat response. The teen refused to meet the headmaster’s eyes, and yet another wave of guilt swamped the old man as he realized he’d lost the trust of a boy that he’d considered like a grandson. Heaving a disappointed sigh, Dumbledore continued.
“I wanted to talk to you about the Triwizard Tournament. So many unexpected things happened this year, and I’m greatly confused by it all. How did my name get into the goblet, along with Barty’s and Tom’s?”
“I had a chat with the ones who were planning on entering their names and a couple of friends,” the teen replied, voice hard. “I talked everyone else into not putting their names in, and I asked Cedric, Fleur and Viktor if they’d replace their names with the names of you, Crouch and Voldemort.”
“But how did you know that Alistor wasn’t who he said he was?” Albus asked, confused. “If you knew, why didn’t you say anything to Minerva or myself?”
“I have the Marauder’s Map, given to me by the twins,” the fourteen year old replied. “I watched it a lot when the tournament was announced, but especially after I heard you and the fake Moody planning on putting my name in it. I figured it out when I saw two Moodys, but only one had two names. So, the other champions and I made our plans, and on the thirtieth of October, Fleur put Barty’s name in, Viktor put Voldie’s name in, and Cedric put your name in. Barty showed up afterward and tossed my name in, but the cup spit it back out and burnt my entry to ashes.”
“Why would you do that, child?” Dumbledore pleaded, hands out in supplication. “Why would you endanger innocents?”
“The only person in this whole mess who’s truly innocent is me,” the brunet snapped angrily. “You and your ‘friend’ were plotting on getting me into that tournament. Whether to test me or to use me to bring back Voldemort, I don’t know; nor do I care. I studied up on magical contracts after you made that announcement about the tournament at the beginning of the year. I found out a lot of really interesting information, and I saw entering the three of you as a way to free myself from being hunted, and from your persistent manipulations of me. Tom Riddle is gone. He winked out of existence, and took all his horcruxes with him when he lost his magic. I can now have the life I deserve, with a family who took me in when I desperately needed it. I can honestly say that I’m glad to see the back of you, and I hope you never come near me again.”