The other arm...
Harry walked to breakfast on Boxing Day with a jar in his hand. He went straight to the head table where Dumbledore watched him with curious eyes.
“Professor McGonagall,” he said, drawing her attention.
“Yes, Potter? What is it?”
“I’ve found an animagus in my room.” He set the jar in front of her, where the insect buzzed indignantly. “It’s spelled unbreakable so they can’t transform.”
“And just how is it you’ve managed to recognize an animagus, Potter?” Snape drawled from his end of the table.
Harry turned to him. “It wasn’t that long ago that we discovered another animagus in my dormitory. Peter Pettigrew? You saw him with your own eyes. Sir.”
McGonagall cleared her throat. “This is a serious accusation, Mr. Potter.”
“I am curious,” Dumbledore said, “how you discovered this alleged animagus, Harry.”
“It wasn’t me, it was Crookshanks.”
“Meow.”
Crookshanks jumped on the head table to stare at McGonagall.
“Also, look at the markings on it. It looks like glasses, like Professor McGonagall has when she’s a cat.”
McGonagall lifted the jar and peered in. “Well, there’s a simple way to find out.” She tipped the jar over and as the insect tried to fly away, cast the reversal spell.
Rita Skeeter fell out of the air and landed on the table, knocking plates and cups over. Her curls were in disarray, her clothes torn, and she moved painfully as if bruised. Crookshanks smugly thrashed his tail.
“Ms. Skeeter,” Dumbledore said. “I believe I have banned you from the grounds.”
“Headmaster, good morning,” Skeeter said, perfectly composed.
“This is the second time an animagus has broken into the school,” Harry said. “I think Hermione’s memorized the registry. Is she on it?”
“She is not,” McGonagall said with barely contained fury. “Albus, this is truly outrageous.”
“I agree, Minerva,” he said, standing up. “I shall contact the authorities. Please escort Ms. Skeeter to my office.”
Skeeter gave Harry a toothy smile, her gold teeth flashing.
“I did like the articles you wrote about Sirius and the World Cup,” Harry said.
For a moment Skeeter looked surprised, but she arranged her face into a slick smile. “Thank you, Harry. It’s good to have my work appreciated. Happy Boxing Day, dear.”
Later that day, he found a small arm under his bed, clad in Bulgarian red. The arm was still moving. Unsettled, he picked it up and placed it in Ron’s area of the room, wondering if he should talk to someone about it.
Harry stood back with the other boys as a woman named Professor Grubbly-Plank and the girls interacted with an adult unicorn.
“If I’d been gnawed on by Voldemort, I’d prefer the woman’s touch too,” Harry said unthinkingly.
Theo started coughing.
Ron remained blissfully unaware, and said, “It’s that thing Hermione talks about. Sexism, yeah?”
“What do you reckon’s wrong with Hagrid?” Harry asked Ron. “Skrewt attack?”
“He hasn’t been attacked,” Malfoy cut in. “He’s just too ashamed to show his big, ugly face.”
“You speak from personal experience?”
Malfoy sneered and shoved a paper at Harry. “Read it yourself.”
Dumbledore’s Giant Mistake
“Which one?” Harry asked, reading through.
Skeeter had buzzed off and paid her fine for being an unregistered animagus, just in time to continue her smear campaign against Dumbledore. Hagrid was a half-giant, and his giantess mother Fridwulfa was in hiding with her people, following Voldemort’s fall. Having assumed Hagrid was an actual giant when he first met him, and having heard the man admit it himself, Harry wasn’t surprised. Nor was he surprised by how vicious his peers were towards half-breeds. He was one himself, according to them. He wondered how well the blood supremacists would take it if they learned muggles shared their proclivity for discrimination based on heritage.
The article notably didn’t mention that Hagrid had been expelled due to Tom Riddle’s machinations. That, in Harry’s opinion, was the giant mistake.
“I knew the skrewts were some kind of crab,” Harry said, folding the paper up. He’d talk to Sirius about revealing the truth about Hagrid’s expulsion. “Crossing them with a manticore is a bold move.”
“What’s this rubbish about Crabbe being bit by a flobberworm?” Ron asked. “They haven’t even got teeth!”
Grubbly-Plank interrupted before things came to blows. Once class was over, Harry showed the article to Hermione.
“She won’t be able to do something like this anymore,” Hermione said. “Now that everyone knows how she’s been getting her information, that is. I can’t believe they ran the article.”
“Should we talk to him?” Harry asked. His feelings about Hagrid were complicated. Hagrid wasn’t a bad person, but he wasn’t a great teacher, and he personally had a hand in subjecting Harry to ten years of the Dursleys. Among other things. Having a giantess parent wasn’t a reflection on his character, however, and he didn’t deserve mistreatment based on it.
Grubbly-Plank was a better teacher, though.
When they went down to visit, they heard Fang scratching at the door, but Hagrid refused to answer.
In mid-January there was a Hogsmeade weekend, and Harry had plans.
“You’re taking advantage of the common room being quiet, I see,” Hermione said proudly. “Get to work on that egg, right?”
“Right,” Harry said, wondering if Hermione thought he was an idiot. He did have egg-related plans, however, but once again he didn’t think it was something his two Gryffindor friends would approve of.
He saw Hermione and Ron troop off, then went down to the kitchens. Theo was already there, explaining to the house-elves what they wanted.
“I left a note on Hagrid’s door that we’d feed the thestrals,” Harry said, taking out his wand. The elves brought over buckets with chunks of meat and others with greasy-looking offal. Harry levitated half while Theo got the rest.
"One person from each house? It's a good cover."
"And likely the only two who can see them. We can say it's for extra credit."
They made their way out of the castle and towards the Forbidden Forest. They passed by the Durmstrang ship. Krum was swimming, doing laps in the lake.
“Looks like he’s worked it out,” Harry said.
“Or Karkaroff told him,” replied Theo.
As they continued walking, Harry said, “Hermione told me, ‘he’s not like you think, coming from Durmstrang.'”
“‘Dark’ means ‘evil.’”
“She has a very…blinkered view of magic.”
“We aren’t even there yet and you’re already making horse jokes.”
They found the thestral herd where Harry had first seen them. Surprisingly, there was a small blonde girl petting a foal.
Harry dumped the meat in a line for the thestrals to munch on.
"Hello, Harry Potter," the girl said. "And Theodore Nott."
“Hello,” Harry said. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Luna Lovegood,” Theo said. “Third-year Ravenclaw. Friends with Ginny Weasley.”
Used to Theo inexplicably knowing things, or perhaps simply paying attention, Harry nodded. “What happened to your shoes?”
“The nargles took them,” Luna said. “They are quite mischievous.”
“Her housemates,” Theo translated. “People call her Loony.”
“Doesn’t Flitwick do anything?”
“Does McGonagall?”
“Good point.”
“They prefer pig intestines, you know,” Luna said dreamily, looking towards the lake. “They taste most like humans.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Harry said.
“Goodbye, Harry Potter.”
Harry and Theo left the peculiar girl with the thestral herd and made their way around the lake.
“Is she some kind of seer?” Harry asked.
“I’m not sure,” Theo said. “She often talks about creatures no one else can see. Her father runs a paper called the Quibbler.”
“There are a lot of things people weren’t able to see that ended up being real,” Harry said. They reached the lake shallows and set down the buckets of offal. “Maybe I’ll get a subscription.”
Harry scooped up some intestines by hand and began scattering them in the water. While researching the types of creatures in the Black Lake, he had learned there was a small herd of kelpies. His initial thought was to find a kelpie and let it drag him under the water, but he learned they could be tamed to some extent with a bridle.
The water began to foam and swell, and soon Harry saw creatures with bright black eyes and manes of kelp snapping at the intestines.
“They’re vicious,” Theo said, eyes narrowed. The water rose over their feet. Harry grabbed another bucket and tossed more in, observing the kelpies. He’d need to get an adjustable bridle.
“I like them,” he decided. “They’re interesting.” Cautiously, he reached one bloody hand out to the water. A smaller kelpie approached to investigate, and Harry pulled back right before his hand was bitten off.
“You’d have to explain it to Madam Pomfrey, you know,” Theo said with faint amusement.
Harry scowled. “I wanted them to get used to my scent.” He stood up. “I’ll have to come back here every day.”
“I will too,” Theo said. “After all, I’m helping with the thestrals. Now, hold out your hands, I think I’ve got scourgify down.”
Harry did so, and smiled.
They passed by Luna again, who for some reason was brushing the cadaverous horses down, and crossed the grounds. Harry heard a commotion at Hagrid’s hut, and spotted Hermione and Ron banging down the door and shouting.
“I should see what’s going on,” Harry said.
“I’ll take the buckets back,” Theo said, brushing Harry’s hand as he reached for them.
“Er, right. Thanks.”
Theo gave him a half smile and walked the rest of the way to the castle. Dazed, Harry watched him for a moment, then shook his head and made his way to Hagrid’s.
The door opened just as he arrived, revealing Dumbledore. He looked at Harry for a moment with twinkling eyes, then motioned for them to enter. Fang launched an assault as soon as Harry was across the threshold. He managed to fend the boarhound off, and saw Hagrid sitting at his table, his face swollen from crying.
Tea was made, and so began the long, arduous process of lifting Hagrid’s spirits. He learned Dumbledore had a brother named Aberforth who had done something newsworthy with goats, who Dumbledore believed was illiterate, or said so to disparage the brother no one had ever heard of. He added Aberforth to the names Ariana and Kendra. Who were they?
Harry woke up, once again, to Dobby standing on his chest.
“Good morning,” he said, bemused. “Is it Christmas again?”
“Harry Potter needs to get his Wheezy!”
Harry sat up, dislodging Dobby. “They really did pick Ron,” he said wonderingly.
“Dobby knows Harry Potter hasn’t found the right book!”
“I haven’t?” Harry said, reaching for his glasses. He had been switching book covers around.
“You has to eat this, sir!” Dobby thrust a wriggling mass into his face, which Harry took.
“Is this gillyweed? Nev’s told me about it.” It was one of the ideas they had partially rejected, since the duration of the transformation was variable. Not even Neville could parse the fresh versus salt water debate. He did have some he’d nicked from an upper year greenhouse—behind Neville's back—just in case the kelpie plan didn’t work, and if for some reason his bubble-head charm failed. He’d broken into one of the prefect’s bathrooms to practice the charm, and swimming, under Theo’s somewhat embarrassed guidance.
“Dobby heard in the staffroom! Professor McGonagall and Professor Moody talking about the second task!”
“Is that so,” Harry said, watching the gillyweed writhe in his hand. “Thank you for looking out for me, Dobby.”
Dobby crushed him in a hug then vanished back to the kitchens. Harry wasn’t sure what to do with the extra gillyweed, but decided to keep it. He got dressed in joggers and one of Sirius’ old band shirts, stuck the gillyweed in his pocket, and replaced his forearm holster with a thigh one. He didn’t want to give away where he normally kept his wand. The self-sizing bridle he got went into his other pocket.
Breakfast was tense, and Harry felt the familiar, uncomfortable weight of everyone’s eyes on him. Hermione and Ron were both missing, so Harry sat with Neville. Surprisingly, the Ravenclaw girl Luna joined them.
“There aren’t many wrackspurts around you,” Luna said. “Sometimes they go away entirely.”
Harry picked up his tea thoughtfully. “Did that happen a lot last term?” he asked.
“It did,” Luna said, eyes wide with surprise. “You notice them too?”
“I notice my own,” he said, thinking he understood what wrackspurts were. Perhaps Luna was an empath. “But it’s not good to get rid of all the wrackspurts.”
Luna nodded emphatically. Harry caught Theo looking up from his book at the Slytherin table and smiled a little ruefully.
Down at the Black Lake, Harry stood next to the other champions and rolled up his hems. The others kept eyeing his bucket.
Bagman started spacing them out further. When he reached Harry he checked the bucket and asked, “Alright, Harry? Know what you’re going to do?”
“Isn’t it a bit obvious?” he said, looking at the bucket.
Bagman looked uncertain, but squeezed Harry’s shoulder and went to the judge’s table to count them down.
As soon as the whistle sounded, Harry picked up his bucket and waded into the water. About waist deep, deep enough for a kelpie not to get beached, he dumped the offal into the water and cast a bubble-head charm. He chucked the bucket onto the shore. While he waited, he took the bridle from his pocket and shook it out, watching it grow.
It didn’t take long. He’d got most companionable with one of the younger kelpies, who he named Kelp. She swam right up to him, seaweed hair shining in the water, and started in on the intestines. He’d even got a liver for her, which she loved. As she ate, he slipped the bridle over her head, a move she had grown used to over the past few weeks. He straddled her back and tugged on the reins. They were instantly underwater, careening through the Black Lake at a blinding speed. Besides the Giant Squid and the merpeople, nothing in the lake wanted to tangle with a kelpie, a creature known to feed by evisceration.
In a few minutes they were at the merpeople’s village, where Ron, Hermione, Cho Chang, and a little girl who looked like Fleur, were tied to a statue of a merperson.
Harry spent some time debating who to take with him. He remembered what Ms. Davies said: he had to behave as if he wanted to win. Taking Hermione over Ron, however he might justify it, would not get him full points.
Resigned, he used his wand to sever Ron’s bindings, grabbed an arm, and directed Kelp to the surface. She raced towards the murky light and leapt out in an elegant arc, seaweed flapping in the chill morning wind, sunlight dazzling against her deep sea skin. Harry didn’t bother to rein Kelp in since she was having fun, but once back in the water he did urge her to shore, where he dismounted with a spluttering Ron and removed the bridle. It had taken, all told, ten minutes.
Harry watched Kelp gambol in the water, vaguely worried what would happen if any of the others swam past her. Ron was on his hands and knees vomiting water. Harry cast drying charms over both of them, while Madam Pomfrey hurried over with blankets and Pepper-Up Potion. Harry didn’t need it, but it was fun to drink so he took it anyway. He went to collect the bucket, and found a kidney stuck to the bottom. He threw it into the water for Kelp.
As they waited for the others to be done, Harry realized how boring this particular task was for the audience.
“What happened?” Ron asked.
“I rode a kelpie.”
“You what?”
After about twenty minutes Fleur showed up in a panic, having been attacked by grindylows. It was her sister who had been taken.
“There’s still time to go back, right?” Harry asked, looking up at the judges. Percy had a stern look on his face, but Bagman smiled and nodded.
Harry turned his back to them and pulled the gillyweed out of his pocket as Fleur watched. “It’s gillyweed. It’ll give you gills and help you swim faster.”
“Why are you giving this to me?” Fleur asked suspiciously. “Why are you helping?”
“Because I don’t need it, and it’s the right thing to do,” Harry said slowly. “It should last about an hour.”
Fleur hesitated, but took the gillyweed. “For my little sister,” she said, shoving it in her mouth and running back into the lake.
Another half hour passed, and the others began showing up. Cedric with Cho, then a shark-headed Krum with Hermione, and lastly Fleur with her sister. The audience finally had something to watch as Madam Pomfrey swooped in with more blankets.
Harry hadn’t seen Sirius during the second task, as he didn’t want to be outright banned like Skeeter, but they talked that night and he praised Harry’s performance, what little had been seen of it. Harry thought he was in first or second place, or maybe tied, but he hadn’t been paying much attention during the scoring. He avoided answering how he’d done the second task. Hermione was particularly persistent as she hadn’t witnessed any of his work, and didn’t know he’d solved the egg months ago.
It was easy to dissemble, since Ron had put himself at the center of attention, making increasingly ridiculous claims of what had happened, most of which involved him single-handedly fighting off hordes of armed merpeople. Hermione was eventually annoyed enough to put a stop to it.
They learned in Potions there was a Witch Weekly article about a supposed love triangle between Harry, Hermione, and Krum, making note of Harry attending a cat-astrophic Yule Ball with Hermione’s cat Crookshanks, Crookshanks being a relic of their star-crossed love.
Snape confiscated the paper to read aloud, and made Harry sit at the front of the room apart from his friends so as to better harass him. Press attention, inflated heads, a nasty little boy, breaking into Snape’s office…
“I haven’t broken into your office,” Harry said. “What are you on about?”
“Boomslang skin and gillyweed? From my private stores?”
“If I needed boomslang skin I’d just talk to one, and I got the gillyweed elsewhere,” Harry said. “I don’t need to steal from you, Sirius can afford it.”
“Don’t lie to me!” He pulled out a vial of clear liquid. “Do you know what this is? As I recall, you requested it before. Familiar with it from a certain trial?”
Harry stopped slicing his ginger roots and looked up at him. “You know, my mum had pictures from her childhood,” he said quietly. “I wonder what she would think, seeing you like this.” Harry turned back to his ginger and kept slicing.
Before Snape could reply, the classroom door opened and Karkaroff strode in, demanding to speak with Snape. He stayed behind Snape’s desk until class let out. Watching the way the man kept trying to touch his left arm, Harry could guess what it was about.
Harry made sure to tell Sirius about it that night, though it wasn’t clear what the dark mark becoming darker actually meant. Was Riddle physically nearer? Was he getting stronger? Sirius in turn told him about Crouch effectively having gone missing. Crouch was the one who sent Sirius to Azkaban without a trial. His son, however, did have a trial. He’d helped torture Neville’s parents, which explained Neville’s reaction to the Cruciatus. The son was placed in Azkaban, where he died a year later. Crouch’s wife died as well.
“Crouch’s career was ruined,” Sirius said.
“They died around the same time?” Harry asked. “That’s a big coincidence.”
“My mother died not long after my brother,” Sirius said. “A few years. She wasn’t that old, for a witch, but it destroyed what was left of her.”
“Still…”
“Crouch had no tolerance for Death Eaters, or even suspected Death Eaters. Like Moody, he was almost fanatical about catching dark wizards. Even his own son.”
While waiting for her new Daily Prophet subscription, Hermione got four owls. The first one looked like a ransom note, using cut up letters from a newspaper. Harry burned the other three before Hermione could touch them.
“Harry, why did you do that!” Hermione cried out
One smoked and stank, the liquid it contained spilling on the floor to hiss. They watched it eat a hole through the stone.
“That’s why.”
After beating his head against the limits of his arithmancy and runes knowledge, months of observing the mirror and deciding it was some kind of charm-potion thing, Harry finally cracked and asked a teacher for help. Flitwick told him about the Protean Charm, warning him it was something beyond even a N.E.W.T. student's ability. Undeterred, Harry for the first time in his life asked Madam Pince for a book on the subject. She looked down her nose and told him such books were in the restricted section, for N.E.W.T. students only. So Harry spent weeks breaking in to find them.
And he was done. He was finally done. Months of furtive research, experimentation, testing, a flock of owl orders, and he had done it.
Midnight, under the cover of darkness, bed curtains dense with protective charms, he had two journals in front of him.
Harry opened one. Willing his hand steady, he wrote at the top of the page, April 6th, 1995.
He opened the other journal. April 6th, 1995.
Finding Theo that day was a test in patience. They had classes together, but Theo was swept away in a tide of his fellow Slytherins. By dinner Harry was at his wit's end. He didn't even touch his food, getting up and running to the owlery to find Ranog, hoping she would sense his urgency and fly directly to Theo. He raced back down, bursting into the kitchen, house-elves anxiously orbiting him as they plied him with tea.
An eternity later, Theo arrived. He looked tired, dark eyes shadowed, awkwardly hunched as if afraid of being too tall. Harry didn't say anything, just took the two journals out, sliding one to Theo as he sat down.
Harry got out a pen.
"What is this?" Theo asked.
"Open it."
Slightly raising an eyebrow, Theo did. He looked up at Harry.
"Just watch."
Harry opened his own and wrote, Happy Birthday. He watched Theo's face brighten with shock as the words wrote themselves.
"How?"
Harry smiled, taking out his notes. "I'll explain."
Harry stood in front of the desecrated quidditch pitch. Cedric had been traumatized, though the pitch was just sort of there and of no real use to the aerial game itself.
The third task was a maze.
After they looked at the maze, which Harry made a note of to map later, Krum pulled him to the side.
“What is there between you and Hermione?” Krum asked, having some difficulty with her name.
“She’s like a sister to me,” Harry said. “An older, bossy sister. Maybe a cousin.”
“Oh,” Krum said, looking less hostile.
Having nothing else to say to each other, they started for the castle. Then something shifted in the forest. Harry got his wand out, and after a moment so did Krum.
“What is it?”
Crouch staggered out from the trees, clothes torn and bloody, mumbling to himself.
“Mr. Crouch, are you alright?” Harry asked, not moving closer.
“...and when you’ve done that Weatherby, send an owl to Dumbledore…”
“Mr. Crouch?”
“Dumbledore!” he gasped, stumbling forward and grabbing at Harry. Harry stepped back and Crouch fell onto his knees. “I need…see…Dumbledore…”
Harry tapped his wand on Crouch’s head. “Dormio.” The older man’s eyes closed, and he slumped to the ground. Levitating his body, Harry started back for the castle.
“What did you do that for?” Krum asked.
“He needs medical attention,” Harry said, looking around. “He’s been missing for ages. Keep an eye out,” he said sharply. Krum stopped and took his wand back out. “He looks like he’s been attacked, they could still be after him.”
They hurried back to the castle in silent apprehension, making it to the hospital wing where Madam Pomfrey gasped and began treating the heavily injured man.
“He said he needed to see Dumbledore,” Harry said as she worked. “He sounded desperate.”
“Albus will be contacted,” Madam Pomfrey said shortly. “Now go back to your dormitory and allow me to work!”
The sudden appearance of Crouch fueled the castle’s weekend rumor mill. When Harry spoke to him, Sirius wasn’t sure what to make of it. Theories ranged from dementia to werewolf attack. By Monday, Crouch was still unconscious, and curious students were banned from the hospital wing.
Harry was half asleep in Arithmancy, having finished his work early. He doodled idly on the edges, yawned, and closed his eyes for just a moment…
He woke up on the floor, eyes watering, hand pressed to his scar, Wormtail’s Cruciatus-induced screams ringing in his ears. Theo was half out of seat, but Hermione was closer and Professor Vector was rushing over.
“Are you alright?” Hermione asked, kneeling next to him.
“Of course he isn’t,” Theo said, before biting his tongue.
Professor Vector crouched over him, helping him sit up. “I think we should get you to the hospital wing, Mr. Potter,” she said.
“I’ll take him,” Theo said, standing up. “I’ve finished the transformations.”
“Thanks,” Harry said, heading Hermione off. He pulled himself up using his chair. “Could you check my work, Hermione?”
“Of course,” she said, eyes worried. “I’m sure it’s fine, though.”
He started putting his things away, but Theo already had his bag and did it for him.
“Thank you, Mr. Nott. Now, class, if you’ll please turn your attention to the board, you can see the invariant…”
Theo wrapped his arm around Harry, half carrying him down to the hospital wing. “What happened?”
“A dream,” Harry said. He fought the urge to touch his scar. He hadn’t told anyone about the vision he had the summer before, except Sirius. It wasn’t wise, not when it was about Voldemort. “About him. Usually it’s only in my nightmares.”
“Does it hurt?” Theo asked, reaching over to touch Harry’s scar. Harry knew Theo was fascinated by it, not as a marker of him surviving the impossible, or an identifier of his fame, but by it being a curse scar, by its rune-like shape. Or perhaps that it was Harry's.
“It does,” Harry said, not wanting to explain how badly. He could barely see straight.
When they got to the hospital wing it was in disarray. Madam Pomfrey was in a chair fanning herself, and Dumbledore and Moody were standing next to her with a familiar auror.
“Harry?” Tonks asked. “What happened?”
“Passed out in Arithmancy,” he said. “Professor Vector had Nott bring me here. I think it’s stress from the tournament, I’ve been practicing like mad.” He squinted at the beds. A few were tipped over. Something was wrong. “What happened here?”
“Harry, you should lay down,” Dumbledore said. Theo’s arm tightened around him momentarily, but he let go, and Harry walked himself to a bed. Theo set Harry’s bag down in a chair, gave him a concerned look, then silently left.
“Crouch legged it,” Tonks said. “Stunned Madam Pomfrey and jumped out the window.”
Harry sat up, though it made his head spin. “What? He’s been awake?”
Madam Pomfrey got up and hurried to Harry’s side, asking him questions as she moved her wand over him.
“Not for long,” Tonks said. “He—”
Moody growled, and her mouth snapped shut.
“Drink this, Mr. Potter,” Madam Pomfrey said, handing him a vial. “You’ll be staying here until dinner.”
Hermione and Ron came by, then Neville with a small plant. It had tiny blue flowers that made a soothing sound. Theo’s shadow darkened the door to the hospital wing. Harry had written to him that he was fine, but clearly Theo didn’t believe it. Which was fair, Harry wasn’t.
When he got back to his dormitory he contacted Sirius, explaining he had seen Nagini, and Wormtail, and something with Voldemort’s voice, holding a wand.
“He must have some kind of body if he’s holding a wand,” Sirius said. “He was in a chair last time, too.”
“Maybe he can’t move,” Harry said, eyes burning with exhaustion. Sirius noticed that, and urged Harry to get some sleep.
Hermione’s anxiety reached new heights. She, along with Ron, were committed to helping Harry prepare for the third task. Harry appreciated it, but there were only so many spells he could memorize, fewer he could master, before he forgot more than he retained. They also had exams to study for, which he didn’t, so he guided them away from speed reading turn of the century books on hexes and to active spellcasting. They were more focused on him winning the tournament than why he was in it at all.
With his two friends trying to fill every moment of his life with practice, it was nearly impossible for Harry to find time to meet with Theo. They wrote to each other, of course, sometimes while in class, but Theo also had exams to study for.
“Three is a magically powerful number,” Harry said. They were in the library. Ron was in Divination, and Hermione was in Ancient Runes, which Harry had skipped with the excuse he had another headache. He couldn’t use that one too often. “That’s one of the first things we learn.”
“Three tasks, three competitors. But there’s a fourth. That disrupts most symbolism.”
“Three tasks, three schools,” Harry said, rubbing his temples. “We both know anyone could walk into this school and try to kill me. The number of break-ins is frankly absurd. Why go to all this trouble?”
“And we’ve eliminated the possibility that it’s a prank,” Theo said. “It’s too high risk with too little pay out. The second task was a joke.”
“Not for the other three,” Harry said. “But it was. No one even saw anything. The results had to be reported by the merchieftainess.”
"If they wanted to sabotage the tasks, they didn't do so the first two times. Not that anyone noticed, that is."
"Which leaves this the last opportunity," Harry said, pulling over his map of the maze. The night after he'd found Crouch he'd gone back for a flyover. Since then they'd plotted out potential routes to the center. Neville had taken a sample of the hedge and found it was self-healing for various kinds of damage. Harry would have to annihilate it to carve a path through. "What kinds of magic come in threes?"
"We've done one," Theo said, looking at him significantly. "You're effectively in one right now."
"A ritual?" Harry sat back.
"A tripartite ritual," Theo said. "The question is what kind?"
Harry pressed his hands to his eyes. "And I can't get out of it. I have to see this through to the end."
Harry walked into an antechamber off the Great Hall, having been told his family would be here. He didn’t know what to expect. Cedric, Krum, and Fleur were all with their own families, and he saw two heads of red hair. He smiled, though he was more than a little let down that Sirius wasn’t there. He was Harry’s godfather, and a free man. Why wasn’t he?
“Surprise!” Mrs. Weasley said, kissing him on the cheek.
“Alright, Harry?” Bill said, shaking his hand.
“This is really nice of you,” Harry said.
“We can do you one better,” a voice said behind him.
Harry spun around. Sirius had just walked in, followed by Andromeda, Ted, and Tonks.
“It’s been a while,” Ted said. Andromeda skipped greetings and pulled him into a hug. Tonks had turned her entire head into a lion’s. Harry didn’t know the Tonkses that well, though they had been to his birthday party the year before, and they exchanged some letters throughout the year. He was still thrilled to see them, most of what was left of the Black family.
“The headmaster invited us,” Mrs. Weasley said. “And I passed the message along.”
“Thank you,” Harry said, releasing Sirius. “So much.”
“It’s great being back,” Bill said, looking around.
“Tour, tour, tour,” Tonks began to chant when she finished roaring. Andromeda pinched her nose, and Ted just laughed.
As they walked back into the Great Hall, Amos Diggory decided to make a comment.
“Bet you’re not feeling quite as full of yourself now Cedric’s caught you up on points, are you?”
“Piss off,” Harry said flat out. Mrs. Weasley gasped in shock. “I don’t give a single solitary fuck about this thing. I’m just trying not to die.”
Sirius and Tonks started cackling, and Sirius pushed Harry through to the Hall.
“I didn’t think anyone could shut Amos up,” Bill said thoughtfully.
The air grew chilly around Andromeda, and Ted just looked exasperated, likely having got his fill of spirited teenagers from his daughter.
“Let’s have a walk about the grounds,” Sirius suggested. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Whomping Willow.”
The rest of the day was spent wandering around the castle. Harry pulled Sirius aside once, chasing off Moaning Myrtle to show him something the Marauders never discovered: the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. He did have to hold Sirius back from diving into the tunnel. Sirius took the opportunity to pass Harry a chain with a ring on it. It was a heavy gold ring, bearing the Black family crest. He slipped it over Harry’s head, and Harry tucked it under his shirt.
“It was my father’s,” Sirius explained, briefly expressing distaste. “It will take you right into the house. His bedroom, unfortunately. The password is our family motto.”
Harry nodded, touching it briefly. “I’ll remember.”
At dinner, Harry couldn’t eat, no matter how much Sirius and Tonks piled in front of him. It felt like everything was coming to an end, and he kept looking at Theo, who had faded to a near ghostly white. There were too many things that could happen, too many motives, not enough information. They couldn’t even know with any certainty Voldemort was behind it, except for the visions, his obsession with Harry. Every conclusion was doubted.
Harry didn’t know what would be at the end of this, but he had to get there and survive.
Dumbledore made a speech Harry didn’t listen to. Everything was so distant, surreal. Harry pressed into Sirius’ side, the Tonkses closing rank as the rest of the Great Hall cheered and applauded, ignorant and ready to be entertained.
Harry stood. Sirius gripped his arm for a moment. “Don’t make doing that a crutch,” he said quietly. Harry looked down at him, taking too long to realize what he was talking about. “You’re going to be fine.” Harry nodded, and walked out of the Great Hall.
“Feeling alright, Harry?” Bagman asked, walking beside him. “Confident?”
“Are you betting on me?” Harry asked.
Bagman chuckled awkwardly and hurried away.
The hedge now rose twenty feet into the air, abysmal under the cover of night. Harry wondered what, exactly, was being spectated. The shrubbery? He joined the others in front of the entrance, a yawning chasm that drew the eye.
Something brushed against his leg. He looked down and saw Crookshanks.
“What are you doing here?”
Hagrid, Moody, McGonagall and Flitwick arrived to patrol the exterior. McGonagall tutted and picked up Crookshanks, who bore it with ill grace, waving Hermione over to retrieve him.
Harry learned he was tied for first and, when the whistle blew, walked in with Cedric. At a fork Harry went left because Cedric had gone right. It would have been smarter to stay together, but they were competing. Harry sighed and kept walking.
Harry didn’t bother lighting his wand, and he walked as silently as he could. He felt like he was being watched, and he was certain it was Moody doing the watching. That man had him on edge almost more than anything else the past year, his magical eye unerringly focused on Harry, his volatile classes, happening to find Harry on his own, cornering his friends. Crookshanks hated him too.
He heard something behind him and placed his back to the hedge, wand out. He should’ve got Nette to add night vision to his glasses. Cedric ran out of a path, shaking and smoking slightly. He looked around, not noticing Harry, and ran off again. Harry went around the corner and saw Vernon swinging a belt.
“Riddikulus,” Harry said bitterly. He didn’t want to waste time and magic ridding the world of this particular boggart. He watched as the belt wrapped around Vernon’s neck, strangling him, and bit out a harsh laugh.
Harry moved on.
The lack of challenges made him feel very led. So he was meant to get to the center.
He came across a gold mist that didn’t disperse when he tried a ventus at it. He snapped a branch from the hedge and chucked it in, watching it flip over and come out the other side unharmed. Harry sighed and walked through unhappily, nauseated when he landed back on solid ground.
A scream echoed through the night.
If Harry was being guided through the maze, it didn’t matter much if he followed the routes he’d mapped, but he avoided dead ends as best as he could remember.
He ran into a skrewt. Harry knew the blast-ended thing was part manticore and resistant to spells. He tested a stinging hex on its shell and underside and, finding the underside vulnerable, used a charm he learned in first year to throw it in the air and dump it elsewhere. Harry knew Hagrid loved the skrewts and didn’t want to hurt it.
After wandering around some more, and feeling very overprepared, Harry heard Cedric yelling at someone in the next path over.
“What are you doing? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Disarm them!” Harry yelled back, but not before he heard Krum’s voice shout, “Crucio!”
Harry blasted a hole in the hedge and walked through. He stunned Krum, cutting Cedric’s screams short.
“What the bloody hell is going on in here?” he said, kneeling next to Cedric. He helped him stand up, and they both looked at where Krum had fallen.
“I don’t understand why he’d do that,” Harry said. “Why risk Azkaban for a stupid tournament? I wonder if he did Fleur in. Did you hear her scream?”
“Yeah…should we leave him here?”
Harry shot up red sparks. “Now we can. Oh, and Cedric?”
“What is it?”
“Stupefy.”
Harry sighed, stepped over Cedric, and moved on, checking the sky for direction, spotting Polaris, a little annoyed that the Draco constellation was so visible. It felt like bad luck.
It was profoundly dark, and quiet. Harry felt that he ought to have won by default, now that everyone else was out of the running, but he kept moving to the center of the maze.
He found a sphinx.
“How on earth did they convince you to do this?” he asked, overawed at seeing an actual sphinx. She just smiled at him, and presented her riddle.
“It’s a spider,” he said. It was a suspiciously easy riddle, which cemented his belief that the maze was rigged in his favor. Even Krum throwing Unforgivables around was suspect.
After another long stretch of maze, he found the cup, and a giant spider. He should have expected it after the sphinx, really.
“Exintero.”
He walked past the spider’s cooling body and stood in front of the cup.
Harry’s mind raced through possibilities of what it could be. This was it, this was the end of the tournament. If anything was going to happen, it would happen as soon as he touched the cup. It could have a contact poison, it could be an illusion, it could be some disguised creature, enchanted, cursed, a portkey. Or was it just a cup?
Harry placed his hand on the Triwizard Cup, and it pulled him away.
Harry landed on his feet, not outside the maze as he hoped while he was torn through space, but in a graveyard. It corroborated the ritual theory, and given the location it was not the nice kind of ritual.
With no intention to stay, Harry reached into his shirt and pulled out the ring.
“Toujours—”
“Petrificus totalus!”
Harry fell over and knew he was going to die.
A short figure in a cloak walked over, holding what appeared to be a baby. They grabbed Harry by his hair, dragged him through the dirt, and slammed him into the headstone of a man named Tom Riddle.
Wormtail—it had to be him—conjured ropes around him, choking him and tying him to the headstone. Harry was unpetrified, but still couldn’t move. He swallowed nervously, trying to think of a way out of this.
“Hey, Peter,” he said. “You don’t really deserve the name Wormtail anymore, do you?”
Harry was ignored, as Wormtail was busy checking the ropes. Harry knew that if he was really, truly, incandescently angry he could burn them off.
He was terrified.
Harry was also immeasurably glad he’d knocked Cedric out, otherwise he’d be dead too.
He cleared his throat. “Is that you, Tom? Are you possessing a fetus? Step up from Quirrell, if you ask me.”
The blinding pain in his scar confirmed it. It was impossible to think.
He didn’t even have his wand on him.
There was noise near his feet, and he saw a large, dark shape encircle the headstone. Nagini.
Wormtail was pushing a cauldron large enough to fit a body in front of the grave. Liquid sloshed around in it.
"Are you not even going to explain what you're doing?"
Wormtail lit a fire under the cauldron, and the cauldron started boiling and giving off sparks.
"Hurry!" baby Voldemort shrieked.
"You know, muggles have stories about witches eating children. Is that what's happening here?"
The surface of the potion was alight with sparks.
"It is ready, Master."
"Now…"
Wormtail opened baby Voldemort's swaddling to reveal what looked like a starving child, curled up in the fetal position, scabrous and charred. It has a face like a squashed snake, and blood red eyes that shone.
"What the bloody fuck did you do to yourself?"
"Silence!"
Whatever Voldemort was now wrapped its arms around Wormtail's neck and was lowered into the cauldron.
Wormtail was shaking like a leaf, but raised his wand and intoned, “Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!”
It was a resurrection ritual, or a renewal ritual, and it made terrible sense.
The grave cracked beneath Harry, and bone dust drifted into the cauldron.
“Flesh—of the servant—w-willingly given—you will—revive—your master.”
Harry closed his eyes, trying to remember the words. Was it something Voldemort had created?
Wormtail’s hand plopped into the cauldron. Harry watched as his stump bled.
“B-blood of the enemy…forcibly taken…you will…resurrect your foe.”
Harry couldn’t think of what to do. Would denying that make whatever was happening worse? Better? He hoped someone was coming to find him. Who had made the portkey? Why hadn’t Dumbledore or anyone tried harder to save him from this?
A knife sliced through his arm, and Wormtail carried the blood back to the cauldron. Wormtail collapsed, having done the least useful thing ever in his entire worthless life.
Harry squinted as he watched the cauldron go off like a trunk full of fireworks. Then it was over, and a skeletal figure climbed out.
“Robe me.”
Harry choked on a laugh. He was losing his mind.
He blinked, tried to focus on the fire, but Wormtail was making a racket and waving his bloody stump around, and trying to dress Voldemort.
Voldemort turned around, having been properly robed, and looked at Harry. Only having bad choices at this point, Harry looked back. He was tall, thin, pale as a maggot, had a flat nose, and the same red eyes.
“Hi, Tom,” Harry said.
Voldemort ignored him, preferring to examine his new body instead. He pulled out a wand—yew and phoenix feather, Harry knew—and used it to throw Wormtail around. Then he turned to Harry and started laughing. Harry flexed his fingers.
“Hold out your arm. Your other arm.”
Voldemort jabbed his finger into Wormtail’s dark mark, turning the mark black and making Harry’s scar burn. Harry wondered what kind of connection that was. If he survived, he would look into it.
“How many will be brave enough to return? How many will be foolish enough to stay away?”
Harry watched Voldemort pace back and forth, Nagini circling him, as he recounted his origin story. His muggle father, his witch mother, raised in a muggle orphanage.
“Look, Harry! My true family returns!”
Black cloaked figures began appearing in the graveyard, falling to their knees, crawling forward to kiss the hem of Voldemort’s robes. He spoke to them, and Harry listened. He tortured someone, he gave Wormtail a new magical hand. Lucius Malfoy was lead muggle-torturer. There were more names. Macnair, Crabbe, Goyle, Nott…
Harry stared at him, a stooped man, watching Theo’s father right until Voldemort was standing in front of him, putting his fingers in front of Harry’s face.
“His mother left upon him the trace of her sacrifice…”
A finger touched his cheek and Harry tried to pull back, repulsed, even as his scar exploded with pain.
Harry learned how Wormtail had followed rats to Albania, to a part of the forest they were afraid to go. How information was ripped from Bertha Jorkins’ mind. How there was a faithful servant at Hogwarts responsible for sending Harry here, someone who Bertha Jorkins’ knew about. A potion of unicorn blood and snake venom. An old potion and three ingredients. Harry was still processing this new information when he was struck.
“Crucio!”
He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth against the pain, an all consuming and interminable agony.
Then it ended, and he took a shaky breath, so busy collecting himself he nearly missed the next part.
“He will be allowed to fight…give him his wand back.”
Harry was untied, and he landed unsteadily on his feet, watching as the Death Eaters closed in. Nott looked like a stiff breeze could knock him over. Wormtail gave him his wand back and fucked off somewhere.
“You have been taught how to duel, Harry Potter?”
“No, I haven’t. I’m fourteen.”
He reached up for the ring hanging from the chain around his neck, grip tightening around his wand. Harry had no idea what Voldemort was thinking.
“We bow to each other, Harry,” Voldemort said, giving a brief bow.
“Oh, right. I’ll do that then.”
Not believing his luck, Harry gave a deep bow, grabbed the ring, and whispered, “Toujours pur.”
He thought he heard someone scream, but he was ripped away, thrown through space and into a huge bed. His heart hammered madly in his chest, limbs still shaking from his torture, but he had got away.
“I’m alive.”
Kreacher was immediately at his side.
“Young Master Harry should be at school. Young Master Harry used the emergency portkey.”
“Young Master Harry was just part of a resurrection ritual for Voldemort,” Harry said, staring at the ceiling. “He called it a rebirthing party.”
Horribly, Kreacher started to cry.